Congratulations on your patience.

But of course, they won't be able to get funded through kickstarter now. That well has been poisoned for this sort of project, at least.

But maybe this will be what convinces an investor to get on board there. And then hopefully that won't become as contaminated as this. And it's what's really wanted, a good augmented reality display. I don't just want to replace life, I want to augment it :p

You mean fire roads? That's nominally true, I guess. I'd take a Subaru. And in fact I have driven my good old 300SD way on up into the BLM land roads out of Upper Lake. If it were made out of steel, the A8 would probably do OK up there as well.

In fact, most SUVs are not much better than the best cars off-road. I'd take a Forester before I'd take an Explorer. But I'd take my F250 before either of them, sure. However, before the 4" lift it had 2" of front suspension travel. It's only got maybe three or four now, I hope to never find out. It would take an unfortunate amount of force to compress these spring stacks that far.

Sadly, trucks have generally gotten worse at off-roading over time, because they keep making them heavier. This trend is only reversing significantly in recent years, e.g. the 2015 F150 is going to have an Aluminum body, and the standard engine is all the way down to a 3.5 V6 while the 6.2 V8 is history. But the desirable trucks for 4-wheeling are all older, back when they were lighter in weight. Yet oddly, the classic Toyota had bigger rocker panels than the Taco, among other significantly better structural features.

Anyway, I'd drive a Subaru off-road before I'd drive most unmodified trucks. And I have done. Without the lift to clear 35", a 1993 Impreza has more center ground clearance than a 1992 F250 XLT 4x4.

That's only true for wheels with a massive offset (I always get which is positive and which is negative wrong, so uh, outwards.) And while those are in the majority today, some sort of protective hubcap could be used. It could feature transparent elements to show off the CF for markets which desire that sort of thing.

I suspect that eventually someone will come up with a clever way to determine whether the CF is failing. Some sort of capacitance test through an edge connection (conductive epoxy?) is my gut instinct. If you could detect both conductivity (fiber failure) and leakage (epoxy failure) you'd really have something. Probably an astronomically expensive part.

It'll probably just be steel and more steel. If it's a kite string it's going to be doing a lot of flexing and handling even more tension, both its weight and the pull on the kiteblimpgenerator.

Apples to zebras, my friend: VISA and MasterCard process transactions in hundreds of currencies. Even if one of those currencies (or even ten) were to simply become worthless it wouldn't really do any damage to them: They'd just figure out how to process Visa card transactions in the currency that replaced whatever disappeared.

Bitcoin processors are basically fucked. Maybe they can repurpose some of their uber-expensive GPU rigs to mine other currencies, too.... But maybe not.

I think it would be hysterical if, in three years, eBay had 10,000 auctions running for these overpriced "GPU in a box" rigs that were selling like hotcakes last year before the late-adopters figured out BitCoin wasn't really a workable currency.

If you want it to go higher, you're going to need to make the cable longer. If the cable gets longer, the conductors are going to have to get thicker. Barring room-temperature superconductors, making it go higher is probably not practical.

Aluminum sucks for wheels which are at risk of impact, no matter what kind of vehicle you're talking about. That's why you often still see steel wheels on 4x4s even now that aluminum wheels are cheap. But CF spokes with a steel rim would be all right. That way your rim wouldn't explode if you ran over a curb or a rock.

So uh, it's a touring car that can only be driven on boring roads? Whoopdeeshit.

Lots of cars are offered with a selection of wheel packages for different conditions. Tesla only offers you one choice, and it's not suitable for most cities (full of potholes) or mountain roads (rocks) so you can drive it only on the freeway?

I would be wanting to make it make a biofuel better than alcohol. If you're gonna think about gene-tampering, think big.

Uh no, and also no. If you go back and read the thread you'll see it's clear that's not what's being talked about. And if you speak English, you'll see that a motor "at" the wheel must by necessity be attached directly, at least to the hub carrier. A motor which is attached to the body and connected to the wheel via a shaft is not "at the wheel". It's for the wheel and it may be near the wheel but it is certainly not at the wheel.

You could, oh I dunno, not use this service.

If you bought such a map, providing you didn't muck it up, in most places you could seek a refund.

There are over two centuries of 1st Amendment jurisprudence that backs the notion that private interests have very wide latitudes in free expression.

Well, I guess I'll try it again, but every few years I read that it's improved and it really hasn't. Maybe this time is the charm.

I'm still waiting for an eyetap. In such a system, the cameras are off to the side, and they also don't need a dedicated lens. It's aligned to your pupil width, so eye tracking is relatively easy.