For years Toyota have been circulating LF-A prototypes around the Nurburgring, and in doing so treating us to one of the best-sounding cars in the world. Well, in the past few weeks Honda have trotted out their NSX replacement--which is apparently doing 7:37 laps--and I have to say that the exhaust note leaves quite a bit to be desired compared to the LF-A.
A recent survey suggests that consumers aren't that price sensitive to electric vehicles. The majority of 'green' consumers are willing to pay 30% more for a 'zero-emissions' vehicle, but they aren't willing to compromise of features or performance.
But predicting the death of the internal combustion engine is a bit premature. There are many new strategies to develop environmentally conscious fuel for combustion. One such process--diesel derived from algae that breaks down plant matter--took an important step towards prime time.
It's important to remember that pure electric strategies really work best when you can use manufacturing techniques to significantly reduce the weight and shape of the vehicle. In the case of commercial and industrial vehicles, this is very challenging. So finding new sources of diesel fuel is critical to ensuring the viable operation of our infrastructure.
I was arguing to a friend recently that I found it persuasive that the high price of oil must be due in part to some market manipulation. When I looked at the behavior of consumers--U.S. drivers have cut their mileage by 30 billion miles since a similar period last year--I felt that the demand was not very elastic. People seem to be willing to change their usage due to prices, which should relieve some of the supply/demand pressure.
Yet prices continue to rise. But wait, Paul Krugman makes some strong arguments that speculation isn't to blame. His most persuasive angle is to point out that dramatic price inflation exists in markets where speculation isn't technically possible. I'm not sure I'm sold--for instance, I don't know what the supply looks like in these other markets--but it's an article that gives us conspiracy folks pause.
A clever concept that takes advantage of the relative speed of a camera flash and the shutter, the Flugurator exploits this lag to project an arbitrary image onto the subject of the photograph.
A few years ago it was very chic in the digital services world to talk about the 'long tail' effect, which essentially said that digital distribution would favor making more total money by offering a much broader inventory (from 'infinite' shelf space) while at the same time selling less of each item.
A very interesting article in the Harvard Business Review takes the opposite viewpoint, arguing that it's still a hit-driven business, and possibly even more so when you have a huge number of titles.
For product marketers, this is good news: you probably won't be replaced by a algorithm any time soon.
I've stayed away from digital SLRs (which used to mean single-lens reflex camera, but now just signifies that it's a camera body that can accept standard SLR lenses) because only the most expensive--over $5,000--shoot in 'full-frame', meaning a 35x24mm sensor. Because most DSLRs used a smaller sensor (usually 24x16mm) it meant that the lenses you bought were only useful with DSLRs. Also, it meant many of the plentiful second-hand lenses were not particularly useful.
But full-frame technology is coming down market, and Nikon is leading the way. Rumors of a new D700 are hot right now, which is the more expensive D3 FX (full-frame) sensor in a prosumer D300 body. The camera won't exactly be cheap, but it shows that full-frame is the future and will soon be within the grasp of the general consumer.
A power outage hit the site where heiser.net is hosted; as a result, the website and my email has been down for about a day. My apologies. Thanks to Richard and team who worked to get things back up.
Despite major discoveries that promise to change the way we observe the universe, cosmologists are in a state of despair over the apparently lack of any decent theory to explain such exotic phenomena such as dark matter and the anti-gravitational dark energy. I'm one of the romantics that just believes we're seeing things wrong and the pieces will start to drop into place once we gain the right perspective. But the article makes a very good point: the major breakthroughs of the 20th century (relativity and quantum mechanics) were theory-driven, not observation-driven. So we need some more thought, apparently.
Scientists are studying resveratrol, an ingredient in some red wines, as a possible anti-aging drug that shows great promise. Unfortunately, it occurs naturally in such small amounts that you'd need to drink dozens of bottles of wine a day to benefit. There goes my drink-my-way-to-health plan...
In a press release that raised exactly zero eyebrows, the USDA came out against multiple reports that biofuel production is a significant driver of rising food prices. That pits the USDA against, well, just about every economist in the world.
This is an ecological problem I hadn't heard about before. The carbon sinking that the oceans perform is raising the acidity of the seawater much faster than expected. These changes have the potential to significantly impact marine life, possibly in devastating ways. The key points from the article are:
The process is happening much faster than predicted, with acidic water only four miles off the Northern California coast.
The water is already acidic enough to dissolve shells, corals, tiny animals, and fish eggs
What we're seeing now is a result of things that happened about 50 years ago--which is to say that the problem is likely to get far worse even if we immediately shut down human carbon release
On the heels of the video from last week, here's a new system that uses a set of video goggles and a gyro to allow the viewer to pan the camera by simply moving their head. Excellent!
