I probably have read the most about Gen IV nuclear power plants and gotten pointed to the best articles by user Trog at CommonDreams.org (example https://commons.commondreams.o...). I'm not really familiar with Bill Gates's effort, I have seen more on Moltex, Elysium, and ThorCon (which all fall under the MSR category at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...).

These plants don't store electricity because the storage is before the electricity is produced from heat - they store heat (clear in the linked article). Many such designs can do this (including the 3 companies I mentioned) and if there is something about what TerraPower is doing that is unique compared to other ventures that might be interesting to know. As far as I can tell, they are not ahead in the race to make an actually useful, safe, and efficient (with potential to consume much more of the existing spent fuel if it is converted to a compatible input and the devil's in the details there).

I look forward to seeing what happens in the New Brunswick plant being built by Moltex (perhaps running before the end of the decade).

I'm happy to see the PinePhone getting a good review. This one looks pretty thorough - best text review I've seen so far but I've only read a few and heard a few YouTube enthusiasts talk about the phone.

I myself was more in the market to get the PineTab as I have a smartphone (iPhone 7 Plus which I hope to make last another year or two) but am getting tired of only a 5.5" screen for many things and would rather have 8 or 10" to work with. I'd probably have gotten one, but they decided not to even include GPS (mind boggling to me) on the PineTab.

Also, Android enthusiasts moving to PinePhone (or PineTab) should really have a good feel for how much their app ecosystem is going to change. One of my favorite apps is OsmAnd (hence the need for GPS) and it doesn't run on Linux nor am I aware of a program of its caliber that can be substituted. Now it is open-source so there is no reason it can't be ported if there were enough people who wanted it (there is an iOS version which I use though new features come out on Android first). But I imagine the typical Android user who is into FOSS may have a suite of apps they like including a bunch from F-Droid and find a big project ahead of them to replace all that in the straight Linux environment. Though for those that have the desire - I hope many do - it will certainly help improve the project. I look forward to getting a future version of the PineTab and or the PinePhone when it has matured further. (and I sure hope the next version of PineTab has GPS.)

Wikipedia has a nice graphic for understanding the EM spectrum at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... Note that EHF which tops out at 300 GHz is still well away from the ionization breakpoint (usually defined for a water molecule which is in the higher UV band). Normal wireless communication is always under 100 GHz (follow the EHF link in the image) since for one reason, atmospheric absorption is a killer at the upper end of EHF. It's possible to use lasers for communication (more practical for space, but experiments on land have been done - not very practical for replacing wireless comm to omni-directional antennas though). For now, you can just think of all wireless comm happening at frequencies below light and thus non-ionizing which means an individual photon only has enough energy to cause heating. Throw enough photons at the same place and this can result in burning or death of course, but this is why levels are spec'd not to go above a certain flux density (usually to protect your eyes which are one of the most sensitive places to heating damage). Some military/civil/commercial transmitters will exceed this density which is why they are strict guidelines for workers interacting with these transmitters. Wi-fi transmitters aren't even remotely close to these limits.

Any other damage mechanisms besides heating are still speculative and to my knowledge, there is no scientific validation for any of them. So like you Tom, I am not afraid either - there is enough to worry about as it is (climate change and other ecological problems - some of it from technology, political problems, etc.). I sure hope this woman is shut down hard by the court system (which is another one of our problems I'm afraid - so nothing is certain).

Since all Prius models are PZEV (SULEV w.r.t compustion emissions + some specs on evaporitve emission). SULEV definition is:

SULEV mandates that a vehicle emit no more than .01 grams/mile of hydrocarbon, 1 gram/mile of carbon monoxide, .02 grams/mile of nitrous oxide, and .01 grams/mile of particulate matter.

Since a Prius burns 1/2 the gas of the 24 mpg case I posted earlier, and 1/10 the CO, the percentage of C that comes out as CO2 is getting closer to 99.9% (50/50.4 = 99.2%).

I am surprised CO2 is measured directly and not computed based on fuel consumption and other carbon based pollution components. I had hoped that 99.9% of the carbon would move to CO2 in which case it seems pointless do do anything but measure the fuel flow and compute the CO2. However, depending on the car it can be a bit worse. Try googling "Average Annual Emissions and Fuel Consumption for Gasoline-Fueled Passenger Cars and Light Trucks" and read that PDF. On page 4, they give an example with 368.4 g CO2 (12/44 of that is carbon so 100.5 g C), but there is 9.4 g of CO (12/28 of that is carbon so 4 g C). Jeez, around 4% of carbon is going into Carbon Monoxide (Note: there is also Total Hydro Carbon = 1.1 g and there is some very small amount of PM10 and PM 2.5 bit most non CO2 carbon seems to be CO). Kind of disappointing. Maybe this is for a crappy car - hopefully my 2005 Prius is doing better than this.

Add to this another issue which I see so rarely brought up. If we get past breakeven to the point of practical power generation, we still have a nuclear waste problem since all breakeven computations I've ever seen were for deuterium triitium reaction which will produces fast neutron which will eventually make the reactor core and some amount of material nearby radioactive waste. At just what level and how much per amount of energy produced I don't know I assume because no one has bothered to project an unknown design into that much practicality of concern. I believe the deuterium-deuterium reaction is quite a bit more difficult and I don't see the issue being addressed that way.

I'm ok with public money for research - heck, I'm ok with some money used on thorium reactors too, but I don't have my hopes up and whatever money goes into that bucket needs to be smaller than more immediate renewable energy research into improving solar (either by making solar thermal tower designs better, or improving PV panel life and cost, or improving battery storage). That and a whole lot more money towards efficiency gains too. And it would sure be nice to have politicians talk about a sustainable population target and changing the economy/tax code to get off this pro-natal kick.

The author tells us about his experience with watches and the sizes that they have moved through over the years. This analogy is not very strong. I don't want a big heavy watch either. A phone is in my pocket (and if I'm sitting down, usually in my car console or on a table). Big phones these days aren't even that heavy (the SIII is not heavy at all).

I have a hand me down iPhone (3GS) and a Nexus 7 and I now think the perfect phone for me would be a phablet with a 6" 1920x1200 screen with the tiniest bezel that can be achieved (145x85mm would be nice). This will still fit in front pants pocket (unlike the Nexus 7 which I can cram in a jacket pocket, but not in any of my pants) and have an amazing display for pretty much anything I want to do away from a laptop. Too bad 6" seems to be no mans land right now - I know of Toshiba's prototype (6.06", 2560x1600), I can't wait to see if it will show up in anything, preferably a future Nexus 6 (with phone features).

I'll never understand this attitude of Nokia can't enter the Android market because they'll get slaughtered by HTC and Samsung. Other posters make a lot more sense when they say Android is much more popular than Windows Phone and Nokia is essentially already in competition with other phone companies anyway.

Ideally, Nokia never would have entered into an agreement with Microsoft that was exclusive. My position is that they should have offered an OS neutral phone and sold it with stock Android, WP, or Meego (as well as letting users install something else if they want to). To avoid the button problem, just get rid of them and use the same soft button method ICS uses for the other OSs. Smart phones are all about getting the biggest damn screen you can get in the smallest package.

Finally, nobody should sell Nokia short in terms of the admiration people have for their hardware quality. If they offered an Android phone with the PureView camera, a 1280x720 Clear Black display, typically excellent call quality, as well as exceeding on GPS, speaker quality, etc., then people would be all over it. They could easily beat out HTC, Samsung, or Motorola - none of which impress me all that much - they can't seem to get the entire package together. Even the Galaxy SII couldnâ(TM)t get the DAC right.

The number of non-rich countries that have had success reducing fertility is much bigger than China (maybe not in number of people, but in diversity of cultures): Tunisia, Azerbaijan, Costa Rica, Vietnam, Uruguay, Iran, Chile, Bahrain, Lebanon, Algeria, Thailand, Albania, Cyprus, Cuba, all have less than 2.05 (roughly steady state) now and I'm pretty sure none of them did 50 years ago. This goes to show the problem is very tractable if we just decide to DO SOMETHING. I know the most about Iran's success as half my family is from there and what they did was very different than China but both countries succeeded. India, Afghanistan, many countries in Africa, the Middle East, and South America are not showing the will to do anything. It's true that at 2.06, the US could be better given our lousy per capita consumption numbers (we should be at 100 million the way we burn through resources), but at least we've finally got free birth control! (if you have insurance that is).

I don't believe our world wide food production / consumption has the degree of safety that your post implies. We are only going to have that if we deprecate a lot of animal agriculture (eat a lot less meat) and start choosing as many low water plant food sources as we can. Because at the rate we are going, we are going to run out of water (aquifers anyway - and rainwater won't cover it). Unless some free energy source materializes so we can desalinate, it doesn't look that promising to keep growing in population and for people to aspire to a Western high meat.diet.

Dara (one kid, vegetarian, but I like my toys, and I drive/fly at least as much as the average US citizen)

That bugged my about the iPad ($100 premium for GPS since you have to get the 3G version).

I got around to checking out the spec sheet for the Lenovo tablet and it sounds like the $200 won't be available in the US anyway. For $250 with 16 GB, I'll have to shop around and see what else is available when this one comes out since as another poster pointed out, there are a lot of cheap Android tablets with GPS. Archos has interesting models some that include hard drives which might be worth it if you want to store every damn topo map in the whole US and Canada so you don't have to think about what is loaded before a trip. But if a tablet doesn't have access to the market (as the article pointed out is the case for many cheap tablets), that isn't very useful, since the main GPS apps that I want are through the market.

I disagree with this, though during the roll-out of the first Android tablets, it was true. The point of Android as I (and many Slashdotters) see it is to divorce the hardware design from the basic OS and apps. When the next Android version comes out, I would be interested in this tablet since it is low cost and it has as one mandatory feature for me: GPS. I would already own a Nook Color if it had this feature.

As you say, what matters is what you can do with the tablet, but that IS a function of what the hardware is. What the software is/does should be available to everyone. For me a big task is to bring the tablet in the car and perhaps even on some walks/hikes and have a very nice map display with a "you are here" feature.

Those are nice quotes. But can you defend Eisenhower presiding over the CIA when they overthrew democratic governments in Guatemala and Iran? Can you imagine what the Middle East would be like now if Iran had a democracy for the last 58 years? The people of Guatemala suffered a lot until the current period of democracy. Iran still hasn't recovered (they can only vote for candidates approved by unelected Mullahs, better than Saudi Arabia, but not democracy).

I can't see the case for nuclear weapons anymore, so the less the better for me, and I don't want to spend a dime making new ones. If they want to spend some money shuffling things around and reprocessing so the 1,000 we keep are reliable, that's better than reports I've heard about what we're doing.

I'm not convinced we ever needed them, but I can see the argument that MAD prevented direct conflict between the US and the USSR. But now, we'd be better off spending the money on making our country more economically competitive to start paying off some debt, or just use it to pay off debt.

I agree with similiar_name that carriers are the fundamental problem (in the US). Manufacturers are being a pain too, but if we fixed the carriers, there would be more competition in the manufactuering side, and I think the worst (Motorola) and others would clean up a bit as well as opening it up for new smaller companies which will cater to user subsets (e.g. geeks) much better.

Simply put, we (in the US) must demand of our regulators that they force cell phone companies to offer all plans to users who come with their own phone if they have compatible hardware (GSM vs CDMA, etc.). All plans shall be month to month (or pre-paid fixed number of minutes) - no multi-year contracts available. I don't mind if carriers want to try their hand at the phone rental business as well, but no tie ins (discounts if you get a plan and a rental).

Unfortunately, I don't see that happening, and now with T-mobile going away, I'm not sure what a decent nationwide option is for those who want to buy a phone outright is anymore.

Another poster asked HTC if they would start a line of vanilla Andoid phones. I'm not sure if that would work in the US if none of the carriers offer to subsidize it. I'm aware of Geeksphone, but until the Two comes out (if it does), the hardware isn't very interesting to me. But if I could get really good open hardware, I guess I'd forgo the $20 month subsidy on the typical plans in the US (i.e. I'd pay the same rate as someone who is getting their phone for cheap).

In the meantime, more power to Google, I'll take whatever incremental improvement to the very real fragmentation problem that I can get. I sure as hell am not getting an Atrix.

I agree with your point that interacting with the screen becomes different as the screen gets larger. Perhaps it would be chaos, but I still think it is possible to have a single OS and app for phones and tablets that is configurable enough that a device sitting in the middle (say at 5.5") can choose the right blend of UI elements (multiple columns, etc.) to satisfy the given user. Perhaps I'm naive though, and the quality control issues are just too great and there needs to be more fixed configuration to quash bugs.

I owned a G1 for a month and returned it, partly based on T-moblie's reception in my area, and partly based on the stability of the phone. I looked at the Nexus 1 and S and I was disappointed with both. The N1 didn't have a subsidy with AT&T (and there is no discount plan as there is with T-mobile when you own your phone). The Nexus S had some interesting features, but it didn't work with AT&T (I think an upcoming version will), and if I were to switch to T-mobile again just to get this phone, it didn't even have 4G (that was crazy). If the Motorola Atrix where a Nexus M (stock Gingerbread, no Blur, no locked boot loader). I'd probably have it now even though it's back camera is so-so, and I don't like pentile displays. I agree, it doesn't make sense for Google to sell phones, that's not what I meant - the manufacturers sell the phones and the carriers subsidize them, but they are under tigher requirements to be referred to as Nexus devices.

I have lots of reasons I'm done with Apple now, but the frustration I experienced with the 3G is a significant one. At least if I had kept my G1, I could have rooted it and put Cyanogen on it. I can jailbreak my iPhone too, but everything I read says there is nothing that is going to help with performance issues. Other issues are: I want sideloading of apps (so I probably have to leave AT&T unless I root and in that case, I could jailbreak an iPhone to get the same result), I want access to Google's more advanced services (e.g. Navigation), and I want to get a bigger screen phone (if the iPhone 5 came out with a 4.5" screen, I don't think I'd stay, but I'd take a look). Even with the criticisms of Google on not releasing Honeycomb AOSP yet, I do consider the more openness of the framework preferable to Apple.

If the only difference between Android 3.0 (which admittedly, I have not tried - just seen some videos such as http://ces.cnet.com/8301-32254_1-20027466-283.html) and 2.3 is the About Screen, then I wouldn't care (nor would I understand why there are two versions). But it looks like there is a fair amount of difference to me (perhaps not in Google Maps, but many of the other programs). I don't know how much is the apps and how much is the underlying OS, but it doesn't really matter - most people, including me, think of an Android release as the whole package.

I'm arguing against this difference - I think it would have been better to make Honeycomb as simply the next version of Android which included more features that allowed it to be configured to work better on tablets, but would still work just as fine for small screen phones and any size in between. So I hope they merge the two on the next iteration (whatever the number is).