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Comment Re:how are they managing the heat? (Score 1) 36

75kW is a lot of heat. Think about the heat from a 100w light bulb (99% of which is heat) Now stack 750 of them and feel the sun!

Also, this car isn't flying down the freeway, forcing massive amounts of air through the radiator to cool it. This one's parked, and only has the forced airflow of the radiator's fan to keep it from melting into goo.

But that 75kW is talking about the charger, which may be able to handle more than one vehicle, or larger vehicles like EV trucks and busses, so the number is likely a lot smaller for the average EV car. But still, lotta heat!

Comment making plans (Score 2) 32

"It was hard to figure out how do you balance getting ready to go, not go, all that stuff,"

That must be pretty stressful... "hey you MIGHT be going to space in a few months, but maybe not! Plan accordingly!"

Those are some pretty radically different options there, going to space and staying on earth really aren't two separate scenarios that are easy to come up with a flexible plan that can cover both.

I recall Neil saying he wasn't able to get life insurance when he was flying the experimental planes, and so NASA had to cover him. I wonder how that works with astronauts? I can just imagine making that phone call to your insurance company.... heeeey say I'm going to be flying around the moon next month so... "thank you for letting us know, we've suspended your insurance coverage for the next two months". Gee thanks.

Comment constitution should be a "living document" (Score 1) 137

That phrase gets tossed around from time to time and this is why. The only reason we don't have warrantless searches and other intensely invasive government surveillance right now is it's specifically banned in the US Constitution. But of course the founding fathers knew nothing of cell phones, so this one is fair game.

Unfortunately for us, the Constitution, which the founding fathers envisioned as a "living document", one that was periodically updated to address new developments, only very rarely gets updated anymore. And all this modern tech that WOULD be in the constitution (like personal electronic devices, online privacy, etc) if they'd have known about it when it was written isn't, so it all just gets trampled on.

The concept of the Constitution as a "living document" is basically dead, and that's unfortunate for all of us. What we really need right now is a "Technology Bill of Rights". That would breathe some life into this important document, and bring us closer to what the founding fathers envisioned a free people to be protected by.

Comment Re:so many gadgets have built-in batteries (Score 1) 114

According to my notes, I have here:

9v: 13
AA: 13
AAA: 17
AAAA: 1
C: 8
D: 2
coin: about 30
SLA/FLA: 5
LIFE: 4
lipo/nimh pouch and pack: 25
lipo cell: 9
nicd/nimh cells: 20
sealed plug-in charged: 16
sealed usb-charged: 27
uncommon disposable: 3

Those are not battery cells, those are devices. So for example, 16 of my AA devices use six AAs. (I have a crap-ton of NiMH AA, well over 100) and all of my C devices use at least three cells. So, sadly for me, there's a huge amount to keep an eye on. I realize I'm somewhat of an edge-case here, but that also makes me a good "how bad can it really get?" case study.

Comment so many gadgets have built-in batteries (Score 1) 114

I reviewed all the gadgets in my house that have batteries. Not just non-replaceable or rechargeable, but ALL batteries. I'm a bit tech-heavy here so I was expecting there to be a lot, but the final count still surprised me. (and I'm still finding stragglers from time to time)

The "biggest offenders" I have are flashlights. I've got a few cheap "webcam" lights, as well as several house flashlights that all use built-in lipo pouches, which I can replace, but not the average consumer. And I've had to replace my car GPS batteries several times over the years. I'd bet 98% of these are thrown away as soon as their battery gets marginal. I like to maintain and repair my stuff, and it "grinds my gears" to see these made to be thrown away.

The other thing that annoys me is that most of these gadgets have almost no "battery management". When you plug them in, they charge to full, and hold at full charge if left plugged in, which will inflate a lipo pouch in a few months at most. And many of the others will allow their battery to deep-discharge to the point of battery damage or even placing the device in an unrecoverable loop. My Garmin GPSs are terrible that way. If they get too low, they'd be bricked for most people because they always boot up when their dead battery gets a little bit of a charge in it, which isn't enough to boot the device, and then the boot process crashes, draining the battery faster than it can charge. Recovering that requires removing the battery and manually charging it, which most users can't do since the battery isn't "user" removable.

And then I have the related problem of dozens of infrequently used devices that I could easily go a year between uses on, and when I get them out their battery is dead and probably slightly deeply-discharged. And I can't leave it on charge because it'll cook off the battery by the next time I need it. Which again is really frustrating.

Then there's the "big ticket items like the exploding (pun intended?) market on rechargeable yard maintenance. Be it a hedge trimmer or a mower. Nobody knows how to take care of their batteries, they don't tell you in the manual, and few have management, so they leave them on charge over the winter and the battery is half cooked by spring. Then after another winter on charge the battery is totally cooked and they have to replace a $40-$150 battery. It's quite the scam! Along with removable batteries, built-in management needs to be legally required for batteries over a certain price. Even my quad (DJI Spark)'s batteries are smart and will self-discharge to 65% if not used for 10 days straight - so it's not difficult to do even for smaller batteries, they just refuse to do it because they want to sell you new batteries regularly instead of making the batteries last.

Comment Re:It's gonna be fun (Score 1) 44

Of course if those aren't securities, then the entire site is illegal as it's operating as a securities exchange. That's their legal argument for why they aren't gambling sites, and shouldn't be regulated by state gaming commissions. So expect the full might of all those prediction market sites to be lining up against that argument and for finding him guilty.

Comment it's not about power (Score 5, Insightful) 123

POTS lines use very little power nowadays. Decades ago they still used very little power, except when ringing. Those electromagnets hitting big bells did take some juice, but the actual power required once you lifted the receiver is very low. Modern (transistor-based, with piezo tweeters for ringing) are much more efficient, all the time.

This is about them having to continue to keep tabs on and maintain equipment that they've been maintaining for decades. This isn't about additional costs, it's about them wanting to cut costs by ditching gear that's expensive to maintain and gets far less use than it was designed for. (it's efficient at scale, and the scale has gone)

I can't say I blame them. Imagine your old house got central air a decade ago, and you still have a window air conditioner in the living room, and you'd like to get rid of it, but the city is saying you can't remove it, and have to keep it maintained and working, and pay for annual inspections.

The only reason we still see around 4% landline usage is simply inertia. Old people don't want to give it up because they don't like change or learning something new, younger people that have it don't have a reason to get rid of it and see it as a cheap "just-in-case" backup, and there's a really small percentage of people (I'd venture a guess at under a tenth of a percent) that have a good reason to keep it.

So the question is "at what point do we tell that tenth of a percent to look elsewhere?" There's tons of other good examples, how about leaded gas? or R34 freon coolant? or businesses accepting cheques? or something closer to home on the issue - pay phones on many street corners? Technology moves on, and the longer you wait to move on once the writing is on the wall, the bigger of a personal hassle it's going to be. (I see this all the time with computers, upgrade people! get rid of that ten year old doorstop! I don't care if "it still works", you need to modernize!)

so the TL;DR of my rant is "it's not about the power use, but the telco doesn't want to come right out and call you a hold-out that needs to get with the times so we can all move on." Power savings looks like something that's "good for everyone" instead of pointing fingers at the stubborn few.

Comment Re:Scalper incentive (Score 1) 41

Scalping isn't, and shouldn't be, illegal. You own the ticket, you should be able to do what you want with it, including reselling it.

And no, getting rid of scalpers wouldn't make ticket prices higher. Scalpers exist because the concert ticket prices are lower than what the market will actually bear. If a theater full of people are willing to pay 1K for a concert and they sell the ticket for 500, a scalper can make a profit via arbitrage. The only actual way to get rid of scalpers is to raise the prices to the sky (like 2-5x current prices) and slowly bring down prices over time until they're all sold. But my guess is you probably wouldn't like that any better, as the end price would likely be higher than the current scalpers price.

Comment 29 months ago? (Score 4, Insightful) 52

I hope nobody's complaining that it got publicly disclosed because "they only had two and a half years to fix it but hadn't gotten around to it yet"

IMO, "responsible disclosure" taps out after six months. Anything that happens after that is entirely on the devs for not bothering to plug holes that they were privately notified about.

Comment and the question everyone is asking is (Score 2) 26

does anyone (govt etc) have back-door access to it?

It seems that lately governments are "insisting" on back-doors into user-encryption, going so far as to bar sales of products to their citizens that they can't just look at anytime they feel like it.

We need to read your texts to stop Terrorism! and Think of the Children!

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