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Comment Re:The greatest national security risk (Score 1) 61

This is not true. Because whatever your personal motivations, the mathematical result of you not voting is that you are voting for whatever majority comes out in the end. And because only a minority voted against Donald Trump, a majority either voted directly for him or was ready to accept his election win.

Comment Re:too bad (Score 2) 312

It definitely didn't originally mean "government approved"

That is exactly what it meant. Regulation (from Latin rex = king) means: per the King's law. Or as Wiktionary has it: Borrowed from Latin regulatus, perfect passive participle of regul (“to direct, rule, regulate”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)), from regula (“rule”), from reg (“to keep straight, direct, govern, rule”).

Comment Re:Stupid(?) Astrophysics question: (Score 2) 27

You can do the calculations yourself. To break apart, a rotating object has to reach its escape velocity at its outer perimeter. Otherwise, the gravity would pull back anything that was trying to break apart. A black hole by definition has all its mass within its event horizon, and the event horizon is defined as the surfaces where the escape velocity equals the speed of light. That means that a black hole would have to rotate so fast that its equator surpasses the speed of light to break apart.

Comment Re:Well cult followers (Score 4, Insightful) 334

Nebulously talking about known problems without naming them just shows you don't know the problems or won't enumerate them in fear of sounding ridiculous.

If I have my own source of electricity not relying on the grid, then that is my decision. If it makes business sense, why should I forego it? If it satisfies me as a hobby project, why should I abandon it? If the utility wants to pay me for my leftover electricity, why not sell it to the utility? This is none of your concern.

And the alleged problems for bird life are about the same than each single tree on the landscape. Yes, birds sometimes hit trees, because either they have misjudged their trajectory from the start (birds can be clumsy too), or because a sudden gust of wind blew them away. I sometimes find birds knocked unconsciously on our terrace, because they flew against the wall. Shit happens. To make this a problem of wind turbines is just arbitrarily and selectively projecting blame.

Comment Re:NO we dont (Score 2) 237

A lot of those computers are necessary to squeeze out the required efficiency of the car, both in mileage and in reduced exhaust pollution. It would be far more expensive to try to recreate the same with purely mechanics and fluid dynamics. Imagine recreating the functionality of the motor chip with something else! You would either have a very simple setup, which can only be tuned for a narrow range of conditions, and everything else sucks. Or what you need in a car would dwarf anything in a mechanical clock with ten complications. And for all the riding comfort, you won't be able to recreate it anyway. Electronics are the cheapest way to control a car.

A typical modern gasoline engine consists of about 1300 parts. But it allows your car to get 200 hp from a 2.5 liter engine without your mileage dropping being below 10 mpg, and without your engine blowing up after 40,000 miles, or you having to replace the cylinder gaskets every 5000 miles. You can have a look at American cars of the Malaise era to get an idea how a low electronic car would look like, 3 liter six cylinders barely getting above 90 hp.

Chinese EVs (and similar Korean cars) cost the equivalent of $10,000 in China. That they sell for $25,000 or $30,000 in Europe is due to the adaptation to European standards, of the cost of getting them licensed in Europe, and because of tariffs.

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