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Ophelia Became a Major Hurricane Where No Storm Had Before (arstechnica.com) 180

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The system formerly known as Hurricane Ophelia is moving into Ireland on Monday, bringing "status red" weather throughout the day to the island. The Irish National Meteorological Service, Met Eireann, has warned that, "Violent and destructive gusts of 120 to 150km/h are forecast countrywide, and in excess of these values in some very exposed and hilly areas. There is a danger to life and property." Ophelia transitioned from a hurricane to an extra-tropical system on Sunday, but that only marginally diminished its threat to Ireland and the United Kingdom on Monday, before it likely dissipates near Norway on Tuesday. The primary threat from the system was high winds, with heavy rains. Forecasters marveled at the intensification of Ophelia on Saturday, as it reached Category 3 status on the Saffir-Simpson scale and became a major hurricane. For a storm in the Atlantic basin, this is the farthest east that a major hurricane has been recorded during the satellite era of observations. Additionally, it was the farthest north, at 35.9 degrees north, that an Atlantic major hurricane has existed this late in the year since 1939.

Comment Firefox is a project without a system engineer (Score 4, Insightful) 149

Is it so hard to write code that compiles with 0 errors and 0 warnings that will pass valgrind with with 0 warnings?

Firefox (and by extension Tor) need to figure out why with 70+ threads they still have deadlocks. Perhaps they need a language that doesn't do threading?

Actually I exaggerated, currently Firefox is only using 68 threads to display this page...

Project without a _REAL_ system engineer?

Comment Range, armament, altitude (Score 2) 353

Planes had to have a significant range - even drop fuel tanks had to be planned for (complicated plumbing + extra drag/weight at takeoff).
Need to carry significant armament - like a few 30ish calibre machine guns (7.62 mm). By the end of the war the US was pretty much .50 caliber only - and 6 to 8 of those in a plane - that is a lot of weight. The ME262 had 4 20 mm guns/cannons. Are you going to shoot through the props? if not, then you needed wing mounted guns. If so, you needed mechanism to keep from shooting the prop off the plane OR an engine/gearbox that allowed shooting through the tip of the propeller.
Finally, naturally aspirated engines might make for a good low level racer, but at 30,000ft, you need turbo or supercharging to keep things alive. More weight, more cooling

Comment Re:When you have a bad driver ... (Score 1) 961

So drop State Farm.

20 years ago, Mustang 5.0 (1990 model) Erie insurance was 1/2 for a plain 5.0 vs. a GT. The GT had the extra spoilers (OK, higher repair cost), but more imporantly, the actuaries figured out that GTs were more likely to be involved in an at-fault accident. I let you ponder why (crazier drivers like spoilers?).
Anyway, for a $13000 car, State Farm wanted $4000/yr and Erie wanted $1100. Keeping in mind that at the time a 200hp 5.0 was considered a wild performance car.

Comment Re:When you have a bad driver ... (Score 1) 961

Stability control often interferes with certain maneuvers - especially those that go beyond a tires ability to grip. In particular sliding or spinning the wheels. Stability control has gotten better as algorithms improve, but generally speaking, a professional driver can get a car around a track faster with stability control turned off.

Comment Re:Yikes (Score 1) 1176

If you have a real stick shift transmission, not only is the stick actually connected to something (the transmission) but you would also have a clutch. Now clutch releases can and do fail, and at full throttle you would not be able to get the stick out of gear (unless you hit the rev limiter). Under load (like during acceleration) many/most manual transmission cannot be taken out of gear without taking the load off. I have driving a semi-clutch less transmission that allowed me to engage gears without using a clutch - but it needed a spark interrupter to get out of whatever gear it was in.

Comment Re:Some observations (Score 1) 1176

The prius did have an issue with anti-lock brakes. Essentially you hit the brake after going over rough pavement and the brakes would start pulsating (and not stop the car). This was due in part to software they used to transition from regenerative braking to normal hydraulic braking. It lengthened stopping distances, but didn't prevent the car from stopping.

As for Toyota, as far as I know, not a single crash had been attributed to Toyota. Maybe carmats.

Comment Re:Some observations (Score 1) 1176

3) A driver is not strong enough to stop the car against the engine, especially since the engine can down-shift to get more power. Some "mythbusters"-style experimenters disagree with this statement, but their conclusions don't track with these incidents. .

Which is because a vast majority of these 'incidents' are utter BS.

Driver claims total brake failure yet later when examined by technicians, the brake seem to be working fine. Since brakes are an independant system - typically dual/redundant systems - how exactly do they magically completely fail then magically return to normal functions.

More likely the unintended acceleration is from hitting the wrong pedal (or in this case control) or simply coming up with a lie to justify getting caught speeding.

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