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Comment Complaint sounds a bit fishy (Score 4, Insightful) 123

A boat ran out of gas.
They broadcast a continual distress call, and the first ship to respond was further away than a ship owned by Zuckerberg.
(TFA doesn't mention actual distances, so we don't know if the difference in distance was 10 meters or 10 miles.)

Zuckerberg wasn't the captain of the ship.

Zuckerberg wasn't even aboard the ship.

TFA's Conclusion; Zuckerberg refused to help multiple times.

The fact that Zuckerberg owned the ship should have been a footnote, not a headline. It's even less relevant than the ships country of registry, which TFA declined to mention (multiple times...)

Comment Ford, too. (Score 2) 160

I bought a Ford F-150 XLT (the full-hybrid pickup) and was very disappointed to find that several of the features (Including Blue Cruise and navigation) were subscription-based with an initial free period of a year or so.

Other than that the vehicle is fantastic - but was very pricey when I bought it, so having to pay over and over for the features was a very annoying surprise. (They quit working rather than quit updating when the subscriptions run out.)

Comment Maybe not to individual people, but ... (Score 2) 14

... a bunch of cancer progression theories based on cell culture progression had to be thrown out when it was discovered that the cultures were being contaminated by a particularly robust and aggressive cancer cell culture, HeLa, which had contaminated lab equipment like environmental chambers or survived equipment sterilization and eventually took over culture lines in labs.

Comment Re:Well...let's run some numbers. (Score 1) 50

Electrodynamic Tether propulsion tests have been conducted that generated more than 4 newtons of force -- 9 orders of magnitude more than a nano-newton.

The tethers were much longer than a shoe box, but achieving milli-newtons of force with a shoebox sized superconducting magnet isn't unreasonable (near the earth).

Although in theory you could push into higher and higher orbits until you reach escape velocity,
I think this is only going to be good for station keeping -- basically just enough propulsion to cancel air friction/orbital decay, or maybe lift from NEO to GEO over a long time.

Comment Foccused ultrasound but yes. (Score 1) 37

microwave labotomy ... We just put the machine against your head here for a bit and those bad urges go away, all better.

Another poster mentioned that it's actually focussed ultrasound.

Still sounds like breaking a piece of a system by stirring the brain with a knife (lobotomy) or burning it out with heat (cauterization), electricity (electroshock) or mechanical shock (blow to the head) - just carefully focused without (substantial) damage to other parts of the brain or its casing.

Ultrasonic destruction of a piece of the brain's reward/punishment/desire/avoidance mechanism rather than persistent unwanted fat.

Comment How many checks? (Score 1) 183

I remember a story a while back, diamond couriers were losing too many packages due to theft. Their solution? Send the diamonds via regular mail.
Losses in the mail were tiny compared to targeted thefts.

I wonder if it's mail that's the problem, or if it's banks cashing checks they really shouldn't and trying to blame their customers for the banks own negligence.

 

Comment Re:I want to see inexpensive plugin hybrids but .. (Score 1) 135

You might want to read up on how current hybrid vehicles actually work, 'cause it seems you have more than one misconception going on.

I have. For instance, my latest vehicle is the Ford F-159 XLT,, the full-hybrid model of the F-series pickup truck line. Power train is:
  - 6 cylinder dual-turbo engine. (runs low power but approoximately doubles output when a lot is needed.)
  - 47 HP motor-generator "pancake" on the engine side of the ttransmission, to scavenge / return power to./from a 1.5 kWhr lithium battery.
  - 10-speed automatic transmission, working with the lithium battery;s main alternator to fine-tune match the engine/mogen to the current driving situation. Max power of engine plus hybrid mogen; 430 hp.
  - full four wheel drive.

So it's primarily a gas-engine power train with an electric-car motor mechanically coupled to the engine shaft. Many other hybrids, from the venerable prius onward, are similar, with plug-in variants having a big scavaging/peaking battery good for pure electric operation of tens of miles rather than a minute or so and a wall-powered charger added.

What I'm looking for is essentially a pure electric - totally electronic "transmission" consisting of alternator(s) between the batteries and the motor(s), plus a tiny engine-generator able to burn gas and feed some teens of KW of charging power into the batteries when running down the road or parked near it.
 

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