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Comment Useless metric and Misleading headline (Score 1) 144

Waymo vehicles can operate 24/7 with no breaks. According to a Princeton University study, 50% of Uber drivers work for less than 15 hours per week. In California, Uber drivers are limited to 12 hours in a 24-hour period and must take a 6-hour break once they hit that limit. So, of course, a Waymo vehicle is going to complete more trips in a day than 99% of Uber drivers. So what? What does that matter? I'd rather know if the trips were completed faster, if the on-time completion rate was better, or if the accident rate is lower.

Comment It's possible to make safe Li-ion batteries (Score 1) 85

The crazy thing here is that it's perfectly possible to make Li-ion batteries that do not burst into flame when damaged. Few people do it because Li-ion batteries are often treated as a commodity and bought from the lowest bidder, not necessarily the safest battery. There needs to be standards for Li-ion batteries to withstand physical damage, and device makers should require these safety standards.

As an example, see this video showing cells being punctured without bursting into flames:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Comment Samples tested were produced by the Rochester team (Score 1) 28

If you read the paper (https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2306/2306.06301.pdf) it's interesting to see that the U of Illinois team tested samples given to them by the Rochester team. The paper also notes that the Rochester team observed about a 35% success rate in producing material that exhibited room temperature superconductivity. The material itself is hard to fabricate. That could explain the difficulties other teams have had in replicating the results. Although the results here are interesting, we're still a long step from a practical room temperature superconductor. Research like this is making incremental progress and offering us insight that might someday lead us there..

Comment Airplane AC outlets need to support more than 75W (Score 2) 57

The two 67W USB-C outlets are a great addition. However, we need broader availability on all airplanes of AC outlets that will handle more than 75W. Most airline AC outlets will trip a circuit breaker above 75W. You cannot plug a 100W USB-C charger with multiple USB-C ports into the AC outlet and charge your laptop and cell phone at the same time. United's addition of two 67W USB-C ports will help with that on those planes. But what about the rest of the fleet? AC outlets need to be upgraded so that we can charge two 67W USB-C devices.

This is an example where United is bringing an over-the-top experience to a small number of customers while the vast majority of customers suffer with an unacceptable experience.

Comment Only 32GB, no storage expansion (Score 5, Insightful) 358

I love the Google phones with one exception: lack of storage. Google devices don't have microSD expansion slots, and the maximum storage sizes are small. If you're going to have small built-in flash sizes at least have an expansion slot. Or if you don't have an expansion slot, at least have versions with large storage options. HTC has a 64GB version of the One, for example. Apple has iPhone models with 64GB.

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