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Comment Latitude matters (Score 4, Interesting) 242

First: I'm on the side of eliminating DST.

Second: Most discussions seem to ignore latitude. This article sort of touches on it, as Canada is mostly north of the US lower 48. Further south in US the swings in hours of daylight aren't as big as the north. In the north the days are so much longer in the summer, much shorter in the winter. ( a 7.5 hour difference in Seattle vs a 4.5 hr difference in San Diego). While both in the same time zone; the difference in daylight hours is much greater than the current time change.

You know what's the same in both cities? Solar noon. Set the clock to match solar noon, or PDT, and the localities will sort out what works best for them for operating hours, school start times, etc.

And in the WTF dept: Alaska observes DST. Juneau peaks around 18.5 hrs of daylight at the summer solstice. Do they really need more hours of daylight after work? And the days are so short in December, kids would go to school *and* come home in the dark. I guess you could shift the clock a bit so only one is in the dark?

Comment Travel trailers too (Score 2) 49

There are a few electric travel trailers out there now. They are fully electric, like these, but I guess when you combine with the hauling vehicle you could call the whole system a hybrid. Besides the usual regenerative braking, you could apply a little resistance on long flat stretches of road to top off the battery for either an upcoming hill, or to run a refrigeration unit. With route planning, the system could know if you have a big hill coming up and need to top off, or if you'll be dropping the trailer before then.

Comment Firestick = pirate device with no skills required. (Score 2) 32

Mostly about piracy, I'd bet.

For years, people who know nothing about torrents or other methods of downloading content would just buy a "firestick'. People have been selling them loaded with apps to stream pirate content, cracked apps, etc. I'm sure Amazon wasn't happy being associated with that.

Comment Probably old news (Score 1) 35

Babies born years ago had their genes edited to resist HIV. There's practically no chance that everyone has been sitting on their hands and not tried this again since then. The jail time for the last one just told them to keep a better secret. When it inevitably becomes acceptable to gene-edit embryos to fix something broken, there is zero chance that another doctor won't be using it to "improve" things that aren't broken.

Comment Re:Pinball machines are still made (Score 3) 51

I can understand wanting to build it yourself, but reinventing the wheel for bumpers, rollovers, and other standard pinball parts seems a bit too far, especially if you want to it work like the original game. Those 3D printed parts looked rough and will take a lot of fiddling to get them to work as smoothly and reliably as an off the shelf part.

Comment Re:How does AI do predicting lottery numbers? (Score 1) 57

There's a Youtube video out there that I can't find right now. A professional gambler did really well at Baccarat, his "system" seemed to give him a tiny edge when followed precisely. A casino asked him to teach the system to their biggest players.

The guy asked why they would want him to teach the players to win, potentially taking money from the casino. The response was that the edge he seemed to have exploited would be difficult to maintain. But if the players *think* they can win, they'll play more and gamble more.

Comment Re:Watched the livestream (Score 2) 53

I'm just glad they made it home safe. Too much seemed like amateur hour.

T-shirts to block the sun? If the sunshades had failed, that would have been one thing, but opening the shades due to fear of overheating the windows? Who the hell tested them?

Post splashdown looked like a landing from the 60s and then coordinated by a wedding planner. Dragon capsules splash down and get picked up out of the water in minutes, not with rafts, multiple helicopters, and an hour to get out of the capsule. The nonsense on the carrier deck with 4 copters all posing in formation, walking inside one-by-one, only after 20 minutes of photos looked like those crappy weddings where the photos are more important than the ceremony itself.

Comment Maybe it'll expose other markets as gambling (Score 2) 57

Their claim is that they are a commodities futures company. If it's found to be really gambling, maybe it will show that futures trading is *also* gambling, as is most stock trading. Investing in a stock that pays dividends is owning a piece of the company and sharing in its profits. Most trading these days gains or loses based on the volatility of the share price. The share price can go up or down based on a wide range of factors that have little to do with the core business. It is gambling just as much as betting on a sport based on who is home or away, or whether you think it will rain at a horse track.

Comment Re:It Will Erase The Historical Record (Score 4, Insightful) 27

How many times have we seen where someone has captured an original website or news story that shows how "history" was later changed? Erasing the historical record is real. So is changing the historical record and trying to claim it hadn't been changed.

Comment Re:Really? (Score 2) 78

Lots of solar panels on a vehicle add negative value. The same money equivalent of panels on a building where the vehicle is parked will generate more power. Besides rooftop solar being cheaper than vehicle solar (and more panels and power for the equivalent price) you can park your vehicle in the shade and not lose out. That same setup could dump excess power to home batteries or the grid and not limited when the vehicle is fully charged.

What is the power consumption of running the AC to get the vehicle back down to a tolerable temperature after an hour of parking in the sun, vs the power generated? A popular thing these days is to cover parking lots with solar panels. The cars are in the shade, and electricity is generated. Will there be special parking spaces for "solar powered vehicles" in the hot sun so they can trickle charge their batteries?

Having a bit of solar to run things like a cooling fan that offsets the heating from parking in the sun is a nice idea. Much smaller and cheaper panels, not generating power to move the vehicle.

And, a 3-wheel vehicle is a motorcycle, not a car.

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