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[redwallzyl]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/us/politics/scott-pruitt-environmental-protection-agency.html

I guess the environment was good while it lasted.

[Reelya]

IBM has a working system that stores a 0 or 1 in a single atom. Now they just have to scale that up.

[PTTG??]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/us/politics/scott-pruitt-environmental-protection-agency.html

I guess the environment was good while it lasted.

Well, this'll be interesting.

[Vilanat]

IBM has a working system that stores a 0 or 1 in a single atom. Now they just have to scale that up.

Also works on a drop of blood near you:
http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-stored-a-movie-a-computer-os-and-an-amazon-gift-card-in-a-single-speck-of-dna

[Akura]

I'm curious if the following system will work: With three permanent magnets, one attached to a pendulum, the pendulum swings back and forth. The force of the pendulum works a mechanism the turns the other two magnets in such a way that when the pendulum magnet approaches one, its opposite pole is facing the pendulum(thus attracting it), and when it reaches the height of its swing, it turns around to the same pole facing(thus pushing it in the other way), and doing the same for the other side of the swing. Would something like this continue moving without input?

[Sheb]

I'm curious if the following system will work: With three permanent magnets, one attached to a pendulum, the pendulum swings back and forth. The force of the pendulum works a mechanism the turns the other two magnets in such a way that when the pendulum magnet approaches one, its opposite pole is facing the pendulum(thus attracting it), and when it reaches the height of its swing, it turns around to the same pole facing(thus pushing it in the other way), and doing the same for the other side of the swing. Would something like this continue moving without input?

The energy needed to turn the side magnets away would be more than the energy you'd impart in the pendulum.

[Starver]

In general, if you're looking at anything and wondering "would this continue moving forever, without adding any energy from the outside?", the answer is "No. Definitely not. You've forgotten to account for something pretty fundamental."

This may or may not apply even at the level of the whole Universe, but certainly will at any tabletop experiment scale.

[McTraveller]

So just coming off 74 hours of no electricity, I would be all for some kind of green backup power system.  Trouble is, even in an 'advanced' nation, the ROI is hard to justify.  For just critical power needs, I think I need a system capable of 3kW peak and about 5kW-hr daily production.  I figure I could go solar + battery and inverter for this, but it would cost around $5000 in just parts.  If I offset 100% of that 5kW-hr of grid power every day,  at my costs, that's only about $0.80 a day in savings - just shy of $300 a year.  So call it a 15-year payback period... It's just not economically viable on a personal cashflow basis.  And that's not even accounting for the unclear additional value it adds (if any) to the house, so if I sell before the 15 years, I may not even make my money back at all.

I'm actually tired of advancements in "consumer tech" like phones and stuff and 4G wifi - I want technology that lowers my monthly bills.

[Jopax]

Bone conduction headphones are a thing apparently, a thing I really really wanna try/get now.

[Tiruin]

Bone conduction headphones are a thing apparently, a thing I really really wanna try/get now.

OH MY GOODNESS this really reminds me of techniques used to help the hard of hearing or deaf people! :O
Also I really want one given my way of hearing >__>
I wonder how to buy this.

And PTW this awesome thread!

[PTTG??]

Why does California grow food instead of building solar panels?

Economically speaking.

I put together an estimate here of extremely conservative estimates of income and fairly generous estimates of costs. For instance, I've assumed the market value of electricity is $0.04 per kWh, which is less than the cost of producing electricity with coal. I've assumed that the effective sun hours are a flat 5/day for CA, rather than the 6.5 hours we actually get over most of the state. And I've assumed that only half of a given footprint can be actual panels instead of access, structure, and support.

I've assumed a 30 year lifespan and I've included a generous 1.5% decline in production per year.

And still, an acre of solar panels produces $21,000 a year. Including installation costs, that's still $3,200 per acre of profit, with no subsidies or anything. As far as I can tell, farms for staples are happy with a few hundred dollars per acre, maybe something on the odds of $2000 for specialty crops.

For a small family farm on a mere 200 acres, they get $656,000 for watching the sun shine and they never need to pull a weed in their life.

Note that this is the worst-case. With accurate numbers, including a $0.05/kWh pricing, it's a net $33,000 per acre (that's not income, that's profit), and a small farm gets $6.7 Million a year!

Maybe they aren't going to switch the whole farm over at once, but if you can get a loan to put up even a small area of solar panels, do it! Every yard of solar panels pays better than a yard of beets, corn, soybeans, or almonds.

I mean, we're all going to starve at this rate, but aside from that, there's no reason to grow food...

Worst-case scenario, it takes 25 years for the panels to pay themselves off; more reasonable estimates would say 15 years. However, in either case, it's not like you just dumped a pile of cash down; the money would come from a loan that gets paid off as the sun shines.

EDIT: For fun, I used optimistic numbers, like current $.12/kWh prices and slightly lower decay rates on the panels. And I moved it to the Mojave and crammed the panels closer together. All in all, this 'ideal' situation paid off in less than 6 years and produces $182,000 a year per acre.

[TempAcc]

The obvious solution is to start growing edible solar panels.

[Jopax]

Bone conduction headphones are a thing apparently, a thing I really really wanna try/get now.

OH MY GOODNESS this really reminds me of techniques used to help the hard of hearing or deaf people! :O
Also I really want one given my way of hearing >__>
I wonder how to buy this.

And PTW this awesome thread!

You can get them off of Amazon it seems, they're still a bit pricey (around the 100$ range it looks like). And reading up on them, they look like they're able to work for folks with damaged hearing (apparently up to a certain point, not too clear on ear anatomy myself but it seems most things up to complete destruction of the hearing system should work in some way). This combined with those funky LaForge visor things for the blind pushes people with disabled senses further into the able to function normally zone, which is all kinds of cool

[TheBiggerFish]

The obvious solution is to start growing edible solar panels.

....I imagine that would be complicated.

[TheBiggerFish]

Aren't those just called plants?

Plants don't produce electricity.