Looking forward to seeing solid state batteries for aviation, but the scary part is that they get heavier when they discharge as oxygen from the air turns into solid oxide.
Isn't that good for aviation? Makes it relatively less expensive to carry reserve energy you don't expect to use, don't have to pay the weight cost during takeoff when weight costs the most energy because you just charged the battery and once you're at cruising speed more weight is just neutral momentum.
Probably the least convenient thing would be if you had to land and take off again somewhere without recharging.
The issue is maximum take off weight. Presumably the discharged battery weight would be the one you use in the pre-flight MTOW calculations, because the worse case scenario is one where you're landing an almost discharged battery and have to go around.
100%. We have this thing where every 10 years or so we collectively admit that if we started nuclear 10 years ago it would be fine, but we need it now, so it should remain illegal because its too expensive. Its some of the most insane doublethink in human politics.
And we are swimming in Uranium and water for cooling, and we are tectonically stable.
And every single argument is a weird either or scenario. Like some people want Gas. JUST Gas. Some people want Solar and Wind. JUST Solar and Wind.
Nuclear power can also fill batteries. Can also fill pumped hydro storage. Ditto Gas. Nuke and Gas are good for restarting a grid when theres a catastrophe, see Spain.
Give engineers more tools, not less. Its infuriating.
Doubly so when you consider their enormous reserves of bauxite, iron ore, and met coal.
They could have set up green steel and aluminum industries supplying the world. Instead they ship millions of tons of unprocessed ore and thermal coal to east asia where it's processed with CO2 intensive energy, and then the metals are shipped back in the form of automobiles and construction materials.
Yea, micro reactors sound like a great idea for pollution control. But, given how many ships get seized every year trying to fake inspections and a dozen other things- the only way this works out is a modern version of Clipper ships (with less sinkings). Large premiums for getting your cargo across the ocean faster.
How much faster, is for somebody more knowledgeable than me to answer.
And now politics comes into play: these ships would have to not only have significant permanent armament, but given significant latitude to use lethal force.
I suspect this unawareness of language use is universal. When I lived in the UK in the early 90's, people would discuss the weather in celcius when it was cold and fahrenheit when it was warm with seemingly no idea that they'd switched.
Easy transfers between different people's iThings with Airdrop. I got my CompSci degree over 30 years ago and yet my 74yo aunt taught me this - the shame!
One other benefit, if it happens to matter to you, is that Airdropped files like photos or videos retain their original quality as opposed to taking a slight hit to quality when being transferred via text or email.
Also good to know is that if you crop a picture in your iOS photos app and then airdrop it to someone, they can undo the crop in their photos app. It is a non-obviously non-destructive operation.
I am not sure as I mostly use android. Perhaps there is an app to help with that. On android, I use an app called Imagepipe[0] as the default app for sharing/opening images. It crops images destructively and removes exif information.
Make sure you select the “All Photos Data” in the Options, right at the top showing the selection in the share sheet. This has to be, somewhat annoyingly, done each time one Airdrops photos/videos.
Apologies for a trivial question. I have an odd fascination about the edge cases of birthright citizenship.
If a non- citizen gave birth in an American embassy, would their child be entitled to US citizenship? What about US Antarctic Territory or aboard a boat within US coastal waters?
Congratulations YC! I remember prior to HN, pg used to post his essays to Slashdot under the username Bugbear and all the attendant sniping and lame memes that would come back in response. Hacker News was a breath of fresh air and continues to be my favourite online community.
Thankfully, Natalie Portman setup a Beowulf cluster with hot grits to handle my memes!
I quite like(d) that silliness - but your could always choose to downgrade and hide 'funny' posts. I still miss the post/comment visibility functions from Slashdot.
Looks like pg 'joined' 6 Oct 2006; so we've a bit to wait for the HN 20th anniversary.
