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I think this was the first time he mentioned it. I don't recall reading anything about him not being married until yesterday. I'm always sorry to see a potential union between two people not work out. On the bright side, at least no children are involved. Children always complicate a split. I...

The suburbs in general receive a massive amount of direct and indirect subsidies for roads over and above whatever portion of taxes their residents pay which goes for urban transportation. Also, in the context of bus service, the largest cost by far is labor, not the cost of the buses. An...

That's universally true in large cities. I typically even beat out buses on my bike late nights when there's little traffic. The bus needs to stop for passengers and red lights. I don't. Even if I only average 15 mph I'll often handily beat buses late nights. During the day it's no contest...

In the suburbs probably true. In large, dense cities we'll still use conventional buses on fixed routes simply because the street space doesn't exist to replace one bus with 50 or 75 autonomous vehicles going to different destinations. I've heard the idea of autonomous vehicles making mass...

NYC has already been using hybrid buses for at least the last 5 years. Electric buses are probably the next step once the charging infrastructure is in place. Buses often sit for 10 or 20 minutes at the end terminal. That might give enough time to replenish the charge lost in between terminals...

There is some value in cooking/cleaning. There may or may not be value in bringing over other girls, depending upon whether or not they're hooked up, addicts themselves, or attractive/unattractive. I hate to say this but I'm not so sure about that. Right now with my mother going through the...

The real problem here is if anything happens to her you may well end up with a child you don't want and are ill-equipped to take care of. Does she have family members who will take the child if anything happens to her? I understand why you want to help her. Indeed, if not for my parents letting...

That makes two of us. Should make for interesting reading.

I tend to think Putin would rather have Hillary as President. Trump with his America first rhetoric strikes me as someone who would have his finger on the nuclear button from day one.

I think we're still on a major learning curve. The raw materials for any kind of semiconductor are ridiculously inexpensive. The real cost is in the process. I have to think as we get better at it, yields will go up and the cost will come way down. The yields for 3D NAND are probably a closely...

I've heard there's no fundamental physical limit on vertical stacking. There might ultimately be a process limit. In any case, the next few years in storage should be interesting. Obviously cheap, bulk storage will be the last thing to go. HDDs will probably hit some fundamental limit on future...

If I did that means we have four years to go. It's a pretty fair bet HDDs will mostly be dead in personal computing market by then. How many spindles can that 2TB SSD replace? In many enterprise applications using HDDs they actually use more drives even if capacity isn't needed to spread the...

This sums things up pretty well: http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/storage-hardware/ssd-vs.-hdd-performance-and-reliability-1.html The article is two years old however. SSD prices have dropped since then relative to HDD prices, so so of their conclusions may have changed slightly. I think...

Free disk space is the problem. My boot drive with 7 is a 256GB SSD. I only have about 25 GB right now, and chances are good I'll use 5 to 10 GB in the next few weeks with some work I need to do. I suppose I could get a 512GB SSD, clone my Windows 7 install on it, then install 10 over 7 on the...

I just checked the minimum requirements. I don't meet them, so the decision is made for me regardless.

What's the verdict? Install Windows 10 or not before the deadline? I'm leaning towards not because I only have one system new enough to do stuff I need to do on a regular basis. I can't afford to brick it or not have applications I'm using not no longer work. That especially includes my...

The storm itself was another inconsistency. The atmospheric density at the Martian surface is equivalent to Earth's atmospheric density at 100,000 feet. Winds strong enough to tip over a MAV just don't exist on Mars. In fact, the strongest winds top out at about 60 mph. Given the low air density...

The only way this concept seems feasible is to have the solar panels either next to the road or above it. Places like NYC can't even maintain asphalt roads to better than third world standards. A road with solar panels would last until ConEd needed to open up the street for some utility repair...

He most likely would have felt a pop if that happened. It happened to me once. I nearly fell on a slippery road, put my leg out to stop the fall, but the leg went too far due to putting it in a pothole I didn't notice. I took six months before the leg felt normal again. :( In retrospect I...

I've had the same thing happen to me from time to time. Usually in my case the cramp will go from tolerable to excruciating when I'll accelerate after needing to slow or stop at an intersection. Sometimes it gets so bad I can't go on, although this rarely happens. Usually I'll just need to...

Really, there is no viable substitute for gas in aviation on the horizon, other than nuclear power which wouldn't fly (no pun intended) for a whole host of obvious reasons. I seriously hope reduced demand for gas due to widespread adoption of EVs results in perpetually low oil prices. We use...

Gas is only cheap in the very near term. It's already started ticking up and it's almost a given we'll eventually have carbon taxes which make it even higher. I don't understand why people in this country fail to grasp the concept of historical trends. We react to short-term blips as if they're...

That's playing with fire. Sure, I back up on USB drives too, but I also have copies of my data on two SSDs and one HDD. I should probably also put non-changing stuff on DVD-RWs or DVD-Rs. Nobody should trust their data solely to a thumb drive. I've heard of those things just failing without warning.

I'm quite sure all the major automakers would do exactly the same things I mentioned if they really wanted to mainstream EVs. They have plenty of people way smarter than either of us. For whatever reason they don't. The businessperson in me might say it's because they invested a lot in tooling...

This one sounds like the best of the bunch, although I haven't bought one yet. It supercedes this one, which is no longer made.

It's a telemarketing scam for sure. Telemarketers posing as the IRS saying you owe money is an ongoing scam. Best bet is to not answer calls from numbers you're not familiar with and/or block them. In fact, get a call blocker. You can safely block certain entire area codes right off, like 100...

And you'll provide the financing I assume? Tesla is already pretty much doing the same things I would do but they're only one company without the ability at present to produce the same number of vehicles as major auto manufacturers. China will probably be the first to mass market EVs. They have...

The thing is the average person isn't going to use or need enterprise-level drives for backup. They'll probably buy the cheapest external HDD they can find, and then handle it roughly. If it's not their sole means of backing up then that's not an issue but sadly for many people it is. SSDs are...

First, kudos on getting something which is at least partially EV, although I think Chevy could have done way better than a 40 mile electric only range, and even though I still think the concept of having a gas generator is a unnecessary kludge used to basically compensate for some horrible...

Just my opinion but I've long felt that using only HDDs are a really bad way to store anything you care about, particularly if they're external HDDs which are handled constantly. One slip and the drive could be toast. My own preference is to use solid state (SSD or USB flash drives) and perhaps...

Repair are a big factor here also. I've read from many sources even with a higher initial purchase price the TCO of EVs is less than ICE cars. With economies of scale from mass production there won't even be a higher initial purchase price for EVs. People won't buy an EV before they need a new...

I'm talking about the baseline power supply which is mostly nuclear, coal, CNG, and hydroelectric. None of those can easily be throttled down at night, particularly nuclear, so the excess power is there for the taking. Right now we often just burn it up in resistor grids if there are no takers...

Let's be realistic here. Batteries have their limitations but the oil companies spread a lot of FUD out of self-interest. Apparently you bought into it. Something like 95% of car trips are under 40 miles. Almost all are under 200 miles. Obviously a person who drives 500 miles a day can't use an...

Amen to that a thousand times over. IMO the only reason for hybrids to exist might be to get a general public resistant to change used to the idea of an electric propulsion system without being dependent upon a battery. And the need for doing this really only exists because of all the FUD spread...

Anything I care about I keep in multiple places on whatever storage media is in common use at the time. Right now I have redundant copies of my important stuff on several USB flash drives, two SSDs, and a 2 TB HDD. If holographic memory cubes became common, I would put a copy of all my data on...

The charge loss rate is less at colder temperatures. While I don't have any numbers, putting the SSD in a freezer would probably increase the storage time substantially. Also, as Coug said, some large fraction of the people here probably don't need to be concerned about what will happen in 40...

We still use tape? I thought tape was obsolete over a decade ago. I used to use one of these for back up but it became obsolete as soon as CD-RWs became common. Now USB drives have long made CD-based backup obsolete. The open question however is how long will HDDs remain cheaper per GB by a...

OLED inherently emits light on their own. Hence no need for polarizers. LCD displays selectively block out backlighting by using polarizers.

I've only been to family weddings. Weddings are pretty boring, especially the church part if you have to listen to an hour long sermon. Only two things worth doing at most weddings-either get drunk or fuck the bridesmaids. I couldn't do the latter because the weddings were family functions, so I...

Right, and I have my glasses if I want to see clearly in the distance for whatever reason. I may even get a new pair after reading this thread. I'm just happy that I can use my naked eyes for 99% of the tasks I do regularly. Watching TV is typically the only time I put on my glasses. If I...

I've pretty much always done mostly close tasks, like building models, circuit board work, etc. I never went into "ball" type sports where I would need good enough vision to see a ball coming at me from a distance. That and driving (which is something I don't need to do, either) are about the...

I see things just fine in those situations, at least well enough to avoid them. It's not important for me to see details on a car or dog, so long as I see it. I'm not sure what the minimum vision you need for that is but I think anything 20/200 or better is good enough. I can easily see cars 3...

I think the value of getting Lasik depends upon what you wear glasses for. I've read Lasik will correct your distance vision but not the range over which your eye can focus. As a result, your near vision will suffer. 99% of what I do involves near vision. That includes working on electronics...

I just took this vision test out of curiosity. I used 10 feet for the distance. Uncorrected is around 20/125 in the left eye and 20/100 in the right. With my existing glasses it was 20/25 and 20/20 corrected, respectively. This had more to do with the left lens having fine scratches than...

Am I missing something here or did the Snellen system fall out of general use? What do numbers like -10.25 mean?

My father learned English as his first language and came out with some gems: HIV headlights = HID headlights condom = condominium buffet pronounced as bufh-it turlet = toilet three = tree furry = fury That's just off the top of my head. I've been meaning to compile a complete list of his...

I've had the same glasses since my early 20s. That's when my parent's insurance stopped paying for glasses or eye exams. Given that I only need glasses when watching TV, I haven't had much incentive since to get an eye exam or a new pair. I might finally look into it soon given how ratty my...

Unfortunately my mom is going through the early stages of this and it's been taking its toll on me physically and mentally. My siblings aren't really able to help much but they still expect 1/3 of everything when mom goes. Not sure how much longer I'll be able to keep working, either. Pretty...

I think the way it often worked 30 years ago, or even today in places like Europe, is that the business informs its customers in advance it'll be shut down for x weeks while essential staff are on vacation, or at least that certain functions will be unavailable during that time. Here in the US...

For what it's worth whenever professors gave us assignments in advance I tended to finish them early. It was lots of fun watching everyone else with their hand up their behinds trying to finish things up before winter or spring break while I was more or less coasting. Same thing back when I...