Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Probably not as useful. (Score 2) 103

I disagree. The measure of highway utilization for a single vehicle is not just the amount of space it uses (length plus front separation). It's that space multiplied by the amount of time it needs that space. If everyone is supposed to maintain X seconds of separation (I've been told 3) between their vehicle and the one in front, then additional speed won't change the total utilization. Except for one thing: as speed approaches infinity, the portion of utilization that the vehicle length contributes shrinks to zero. Therefore, the faster vehicles travel, the less capacity they use.

Of course, that assumes that everyone drives perfectly, which is the real problem: even something as simple as an unexpected lane change can trigger slow downs in an at-capacity roadway that ripple throughout the following traffic, breaking the flow and potentially causing a cascade down to stop-and-go.

Comment track races also go anti-clockwise (Score 1) 156

Track races use a counter-clockwise oval, as does Olympic speed skating and just about every track sport. Never quite realized it was a default until this article.

Also not sure how to reconcile with the grocery store 'people default to turning right'. So we default to turning right, except when we wander or compete, so we go left? I think this goes to my default answer for everything, "it's complicated".

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.
 

Comment cobalt chemistry, not so nice. (Score 1) 115

Do the Waymo batteries use one of the lithium chemistries including cobalt, or a non-cobalt chemistry such as lithium iron phosphate?

Cobalt chemistries have a higher power/weight and energy/weight ratio, which made them the go-to chemistries for vehicle batteries. But they also produce oxygen when the cells overheat, leading to an unextinguishable runaway fire hazard: A burning cell makes enough heat to ignite the adjacent cells, so the whole assembly of them goes. Bad enough when it's a car's worth, but a disaster if it's a shipping-container sized module of a utility energy storage site. (And even worse when the site is a building full of racks, which someone had "protected" from fire with water-spraying, equipment-shorting system, so the whole site burns up, as happened recently with one in California creating a toxic mess.)

That's why purpose-built stationary lithium energy systems use non-cobalt chemistries - heavier, but a shorted cell just kills itself without getting hot enough to light off its neighbors.

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

I want to see inexpensive plugin hybrids.

But not like the current ones, which are primarily an engine/tranny powertrain with a motor/generator + small battery for scavenging downhill/braking energy for later accelleration/uphill/cruise/power-boost.

I want ones that are primarily a battery-electric with a small aux engine-generator (say 15-20 HP range), big enough to power crusing with a bit left over for gradually charging. That would let you range-extend by the size of your gas tank plus fillups (i.e. indefinitely if only gas is available) or go from battery empty to back on the road in a couple tens of minutes.

The backup engine would only run at max-efficiency speed and could use an atkins-like cycle (see "liquid piston engine") to get the max power out of the fuel. Most operation would use power-grid charging (when available and cheaper than fuel).

Comment Re:UK police false positives on facial recognition (Score 2) 86

Thanks, that is very interesting. But something smells fishy.

1. 1 false positive from "over 641,533 faces" seems too good to be true. Very few systems of any kind are that good, and facial recognition? I don't buy it. And that's an oddly specific number to be "over". It does not pass the smell test.

2. "Shows no bias" is similarly too good to be true and doesn't pass the smell test. Didn't Apple have some problem in the last year or two with trying to spiff up faces, where black skin didn't work as well? "No bias" is not credible.

3. "Zero unlawful arrests" is weasel words. Just because an arrest has conformed to various legal standards, such as having a warrant, being cautioned, not beaten up, etc, does not make it a proper arrest. Lots of people are acquitted at trial after having been lawfully arrested.

4. The rate has not changed. Well, yes, it must have, if this is the false positive rate, since it presumably once upon a time had 0 false positives and now has 1, and the denominator has been increasing all this time unless the first 641,533 faces were all recognized in the first day.

5. The only credible answer. There may well be no national false positive rate.

But it's an interesting response. Thanks.

Slashdot Top Deals

What good is a ticket to the good life, if you can't find the entrance?

Working...