Recent submissions

Comment · 9 years ago
It does not produce immediate benefits, but perhaps a problem that is 100 years in the making might take a global solution on a 100 year time scale.
Comment · 9 years ago
Comment · 9 years ago
If something like this existed, with the source code on Github with a detailed contributing.md document, I would spend time on it. We have great tools available to do this and it is a worthy cause.
Comment · 9 years ago
If you're going to talk up preservation of the atmosphere while downplaying the enormous technological progress and bold, financially uncertain moves that SpaceX is making, you need to give your head a shake. The atmosphere has already been killed. And the methane that's being unlocked because of it's desecration will kill you, and it will kill me. We killed ourselves with the same type of ignorance towards new, uncertain technology that you have displayed in this comment chain. We took existing, working, and bad technology (ICE vehicles) and paraded it around to the world, and it worked, because we could show people how to use them to make money. We had an MVP with gasoline powered vehicles. People ate it up. Yet electric cars, the correct technology choice, get no mindshare with the serfs because they're heavier, slower, and can't exactly carry a dump truck full of aggregate rock up inclines for 24 hours a day.

You need to stop with the sour grapes, the tall poppy syndrome, and you need to start supporting the people who are actually doing shit. And you need to do it before the window of opportunity to use our technology to save ourselves closes. Keep in mind that me writing this comment to you is an enormous waste of my time, and I really thought it through, so please absorb the meaning in my words and stop having these pissing matches on the internet over things you completely misunderstand.

Comment · 9 years ago
I see your point. Have you thought about how such a militia would communicate, if they were working together? They would have to come up with new communication channels, seeing as how the government has it's hands in all telecommunications today. I think that would prove a great barrier, and perhaps it's insurmountable.
Comment · 9 years ago
It's the seemingly fruitless effort that builds up our familiarity with a problem via intense focus on each small detail. With the clear, detailed problem built up, Poincare could look at it from a distance and see the solution.
Comment · 9 years ago
It would be an overstatement to say that it's way beyond our technological ability to get to Mars. That's just a long trip in a rocket away. Making it habitable is also within our ability - Live in the lava tubes, or radiation-protected inflatable shelters. To live on another planet is to take a collection of solved problems and engineer the solutions into existence.
Comment · 9 years ago
To be fair, in this case it is apples to apples. The average car consumer does not weigh in the electric component with so much weight to overlook poor interior quality. Tesla's cars must be on the same level if they are to win the public's heart.
Comment · 9 years ago
We need more charging stations

That is a solved problem

  Electricity is expensive
If you had a 100km*100km grid of easily maintained solar panels already manufactured and in operation, electricity is generated _without expense or by-products_

  Batteries and electric power have bad by products:

  1. heat generation

  2. by-products of manufacturing

  3. electricity generation by-products
Complete nonsense. We have 8 billion people driving cars that are decimating our air quality and have already drove the carbon cycle so many standard deviations from the mean levels in pre-industrial society that I am doomed to live on a scorched, dead earth. The negative effects of battery creation and usage are infinitesimal in comparison.

I am 22 years old. Because of society's slow uptake of carbon-neutral power generation and consumption, I will live through every consequence of past generation's short-sighted power decisions. The clathrate gun will happen before I am middle-aged. Your comment, complaining about things that are solved problems, is quite detached from the reality of Earth.

Comment · 9 years ago
"What if it's late," "What if someone dies", "It has to go perfectly or else." Mate there's no reason to slow down or criticize science and engineering for being late, having a death, or riding the razor's edge. Just get shit done. That's all that matters, this kind of internet fear-mongering is absolutely detrimental, even if there are huge risks involved in the process. We're not going to mess up the planet, but nay-sayers will absolutely slow us down.
Comment · 9 years ago
First off, speed matters to the young and environmentally conscious EV market. Range has maxed at 800km on a single charge, there is no

> debate

to be had.

GM and any other electric carmaker will be buying their batteries, powertrains, or both from Tesla after they flop with their own native lineups.

Comment · 9 years ago
Incumbent automakers are cash cows, not startups. Tesla will spend all of it's money on the Gigafactory. GM will destroy new product lines that threaten it's current profits.

Remember, incumbent auto makers are not fast moving or innovative at all. They are all cash cows. Although they can predict that a move to EVs will keep them alive long-term, such a move will always be done with a small fraction of GM's resources and labour in the coming decades, and Tesla with Elon's burning desire to destroy them are probably going to win.

Remember, GM can't sell these two products on the same lot: One which is a cash cow, and one which only exists to combat some distant threat of GM becoming obsolete.

Also you're forgetting that Tesla cars are just better in every sense. Better brand, faster, longer range, novelty...

Comment · 9 years ago
He is saying that we the people must hold them to those standards. We should not sit idly and say "We hold you to these standards" while not actively ensuring that the standards are being followed.
Comment · 9 years ago
If you have a good enough product it shouldn't really matter, right? Just ban the trolls, answer questions where you can, but mainly work on the product. No one should be sifting through questions - They should be taking the most commonly asked ones, answering them, and swiftly banning those who seem unhelpful and rude. There's no way that type of moderation would kill your community unless your product just sucked enough that it didn't grow on it's own.
Comment · 9 years ago
This is good advice. Don't be afraid to wield the ban hammer.

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