I'm surprised there aren't more philosophy-oriented books mentioned here. I think they make great gifts.
Many of my friends are straight out of university, and it's a period where most people seem to start asking existential questions. The two books which have affected me greatly (and which I regularly give as gifts) are:
* Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
* Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
You hit the nail on the head here. The real issue with abundant rare earths is that over 95% of the global shipment of rare earths has historically been controlled by China.
Because of this, there's significant exposure to their export policies and hence high price volatility for these materials. For instance, in 2011, Neodymium saw a significant surge in price just because the government decided to limit export quotas.
but also at the same time, the prices of these metals are very low, thus suppressing interest in developing new mines. China is playing a fine balancing game here, because if they were to highly restrict access, then prices would justify heavy investment.
They control it yet ironically cant do anything with that control or else it will sow the seeds of destruction of that control.
> 98. Testimonials. Create commercials featuring real-life people in situations where buying a Mac (or switching to a Mac) saved the day.
This is an example of one thing that Apple gets really right. For some reason, other companies have found it really difficult to achieve the success that Apple has with their commercials and branding. Some (in my opinion) great work by Apple:
Many of Einstein's actions were driven by the fact that he detected growing anti-Semitism early on. In fact, he relinquished his German citizenship twice because of this, and it was largely his fear and prediction of persecution that brought him to the US.
I don't think it's a question of Good vs Evil, but rather what was happening at that specific point in time - the fact that Jewish Germans were very publicly discriminated against (to the point where Jewish University academics in Germany were forced to hand in their resignation and barred from ever being public servants almost overnight).
Particularly excited about the cost reduction of batteries. They remain a barrier to having more affordable electric cars, and 30% goes a long way in putting more EVs on the road.
If you don't have solar panels on your roof, chances are it's still coming from fossil fuels. Generation/transmission efficiency for taking energy from fossil fuels and getting it to your house is around 30%. Electric cars are part of a solution to CO2 emissions, but they aren't one on their own.
I was under the impression that coal plants, et cetera, were quite a bit higher efficiency than ICEs?
And I'm sure we'll continue to bulk up non-CO2 methods of power generation. Hydro power is commonplace, solar panels are a growth area, and likewise wind turbines...
Hmm, wikipedia says ICEs in cars are up to 25-30% efficient. Then there's additional losses from the rest of the car. But the electric car has its own losses from the battery charge/discharge and the motors and whatnot, so it seems like they're at least roughly in the same ballpark. Electric cars certainly have more room for improvement though, since fossil fuels aren't the only way to run the electric grid.
>While the camera was on, which was kind of intimidating
Felt the same way. There should be a homescreen of sorts when launching the app (e.g., an aggregation of all the questions you have asked. If none, then place a prompt to "ask a question" which takes you to the camera).
I'd love to hear some of your thoughts about how technically feasible this actually is (under a single discussion thread).
[1] Sirkneeland states that it's going to be tough to engineer the antenna
[2] nwh states that "Any extendability it has will be stunted by the bus abatable to it; you won't get an external screen or upgraded processor on a flimsy usb-alike connector"
I love the concept, but I can't see how you're going to avoid losing out majorly on size and/or battery life.
As I understand it, one of the major size reduction wins in the modern mobile phone is packaging - taking the major components and packing them in such a way as to lose as little space as possible. The battery shape can be designed to go with whatever packaging is chosen.
In this scenario, the packaging decisions are already made - or rather, there isn't much flexibility. Each device has to be a cuboid, placed next to each other. The same is true of the battery. The packaging of the blocks is going to cost you some space (connectors, case), but you're also going to waste space in a block as it's unlikely the given chip is going to be exactly as big as the package. The same is true of the battery - rather than fitting in a customised space, it's another cuboid.
All of these little inefficiencies of space will add up, so that either you've got a very big phone, or one with a very small battery.
In terms of the bus, I don't think that's a problem. You're right, no one bus technology is going to work for everything, but a couple of different ones might, between them, work for everything.
Coming from Australia, we've never had much exposure to Amazon, which leaves a ton of opportunity for price comparison websites.
Personally, I'd find it a pain if a price comparison website diverged from their core search offering. Sites like [1]PriceGeek still have price comparison front and centre - much more useful for me as a consumer who can't tap into the benefit that Amazon provides.
There's still room for price comparison, just maybe outside of the US.
Many of my friends are straight out of university, and it's a period where most people seem to start asking existential questions. The two books which have affected me greatly (and which I regularly give as gifts) are:
* Meditations by Marcus Aurelius * Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl