paulyg

6 ms·

1.
Scientists Believe US Embassy and CIA Officers Hit with High-Power Microwaves(scitechdaily.com)
37 points by paulyg 6y ago|17 comments
2.
by paulyg 6y ago
If something needs that much flexibility in it's UI that people are messing with it at the last minute it doesn't belong as something people should be messing with while driving. The OP talks about HVAC controls. How much flexibil
3.
by paulyg 7y ago
The article is a bit misleading. They talk about how many AC induction motors there are and how much power they consume. I don't doubt those numbers. But the vast majority of those are synchronous: they run at a set speed. What they ar
4.
Beware the Office Printer It May Be a Chinese Spy Device Experts Say(washingtonexaminer.com)
2 points by paulyg 7y ago|0 comments
5.
by paulyg 9y ago
Its supersonic shock waves. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_diamond
6.
by paulyg 10y ago
It won't help Joe Six-pack. And your questions make me think you did not read the article. The manufacturing output will increase due to automation & other improved techniques. My fave quote from the article: > So while it'
7.
by paulyg 10y ago
I agree pumped hydro is good, but there are only so many places you can site it. > Which is why hydrocarbons produce less CO2 per watt than coal. No. It has nothing to do with water. Coal is a hydrocarbon as well. It has to do with the t
8.
by paulyg 10y ago
It is true that nuclear power is bad at peaking. That's why no one uses them for that. They are good at base-load power, which is where they are used. Use the right tool for the job. Different sources of energy have different upsides a
9.
by paulyg 10y ago
Lower gas prices certainly did not help, but if not for regulations introduced during the Obama administration, many coal plants would still be running. I worked, as an engineer, for a company that made equipment pretty much just for coal f
10.
by paulyg 10y ago
Yes I know how all that works becuase I worked in the utility industry for over a decade. My point was (1) when comparing peakers vs storage you need to consider the cost of: Off-peak generation + storage cost vs peaker cost. (2) This wasn&
11.
by paulyg 10y ago
Why are people comparing and debating "batteries vs combustion turbines"? Batteries only store energy and you still need to generate it somewhere. Probably from a CCGT plant. And it's not risk aversion. Its buried subtly in t
12.
by paulyg 10y ago
Your mention of Alibaba made me think of something. I believe the electrical manufacturing world is much more globally integrated than the mechanical world. I say that as a practicing mechanical engineer. A resistor, capacitor, chip are the
13.
by paulyg 10y ago
Wecome to mechanical engineering folks.
14.
by paulyg 10y ago
This. I took Calc 1 twice. First time was during the day in a big auditorium style classroom. The prof had a pompous attitude, like he didn't even want to be there. I dropped the class mid-term. I re-took it in the evening. Smaller cla
15.
by paulyg 10y ago
What all the non mechanical engineers don't realize is the bend allowance is different for types of material (steel, aluminum), grade or strength (high tensile steel will stretch less than mild carbon steel), and even the tool (mandril
16.
MH370 search: debris found in Mozambique 'belongs to Boeing 777'(theguardian.com)
3 points by paulyg 11y ago|0 comments
17.
by paulyg 11y ago
Yup. This. I have a kettle. Boiling water for tea in 2-3 minutes. But if I run it and the microwave at the same time it trips my 20 amp breaker. :(
18.
by paulyg 11y ago
SharePoint is really good for shared files. But that is what it was created for. It is called Microsoft Office SharePoint. If you turn on Publishing Pages you can make is work as in intranet portal. But you have to work at it, there is a
19.
by paulyg 11y ago
This is also what Composer (package manager for PHP) did. They ported openSUSE's libzypp to PHP to solve the dependency management problem. After resolving versions the dependencies are installed in a flat list.
20.
by paulyg 11y ago
I don't understand how people connect oil and gas imports to electricity generation. Go read this article http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plants... Now how much electricity is generated
21.
by paulyg 12y ago
It was towards the end of the article: "The petrol engine is optimally sized to provide the cruise power at its most efficient operating point, resulting in an improved fuel efficiency overall." The fact that an airplane's sp
22.
by paulyg 12y ago
They are also glazing over the fact that the system uses millions of gallons of water per year.
23.
by paulyg 12y ago
I've seen plenty of pictures on the internet of supercars sliced in half and burned after crashes at that kind of speed. For example the Paul Walker crash. From the picture of the Honda I assume the Tesla broadsides the Honda whiched c
24.
by paulyg 12y ago
Gas turbines are around 35% efficient in simple cycle but combined cycle plants are pushing 60% efficiency.
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by paulyg 12y ago
That plant broke ground before Fukushima. How many permits have been issued since then: 0. Perfectly good nuclear plants like Vermont Yankee have been shut down (decided not to renew operating license) due to "concerned citizens. We we
26.
by paulyg 12y ago
Look at Germany and Canada (specifically Ontario). Not so good.
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by paulyg 12y ago
And that is the reason why all coal burning plants are being required to retrofit with equipment to capture mercury and other toxic metals (along with retrofits for SOx and NOx). But that is not good enough.
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by paulyg 12y ago
I agree with your assessment. To me the reason we keep ping-pnging between the two extremes is a lack of standardized and common caching mechanism. In a perfect world every web server would be behind an HTTP reverse proxy and we could just
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by paulyg 12y ago
This years F1 cars are brake by wire. It let's them control the kinetic energy recovery better.
30.
by paulyg 12y ago
I jump between Creole and Markdown and this seems like an interesting mashup. Though I don't like all the choices made. I have been thinking lately about just combining Creole and Markdown into one master markup lang. The one thing I r

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