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{ Category Archives } factoids

Six Fresh Ways to Think About Retirement Savings

Trent Hamm has a good summary in his Six Fresh Ways to Think About Retirement Savings at the Simple Dollar. From the social security network to retirement fund withdrawal rules of thumb and from basic subsistence levels to choosing a location for cost of living reasons, he provides a good over-view of issues that many don’t […]

Electric transport

Sven Gustafson reports that Tesla’s long-range Model 3 gets 80.5 kWh battery, per EPA. A cell phone has a battery in the 2-4 Wh range so this is about the battery power of 20,000 cell phones. A typical standard car battery is good for about 1 kWh so the Tesla, the “long range” version has […]

Nostalgia: 40 years on in a new era of the Take Home Computer

40 years ago: the take home computer. 30 years ago: it gets a full fledged operating system. 20 years ago: an audio codec for take home computer hardware is standardized. 10 years ago: the smart phone. 1977. 1987. 1997. 2007. 2017?? The August 3 birthday brings back memories. Harry McCracken notes the 40th anniversary and […]

Scientific illiteracy

A good case of illiteracy over at CNN Money: Why more people are suddenly dying on U.S. roads by Matt McFarland. But traffic safety experts said there was no single culprit for the surge in motor vehicle deaths. Smartphone use, cheaper gas prices, climate change and a strong economy all play a role. “It’s a very […]

Numbers: Electric Car Energy

It is hard to get decent numbers from electric car enthusiasts. Maybe this is a problem in transferring from gallons of gasoline to a proper energy measure. Maybe something else. David Nolan does put up some numbers in his item on Life With Tesla Model S: Battery Degradation Update. Culling the piece, here are some […]

Invisible technology

There is an interesting chart at AEI showing recorded music sales over time by distribution media [Mark Perry: Another limitation of GDP accounting – it may fail to capture improvements in economic well-being in the Information Age]. It runs from the peak of the 8 track era to the decline of CD’s and the rise […]

PCD (personal communications device a.k.a. smartphone) theft and trivia

Some interesting trivia by Robert Brokamp when describing How to prevent mobile phone theft. According to Consumer Reports, 3.1 million smartphones were stolen in 2013, which was nearly a 100 percent increase from 2012′s number. Another 1.4 million were lost. … according to a study by Experian. (Android users spend just 28 percent of their […]

Disruptive Technologies: Cell phones

At Strategy Page: Information Warfare: One Technology That Changed Everything. It is about the impact of the cell phone, especially in the mid-East and Africa. “Cell phones have revolutionized life and culture in poor countries. … Cell phone networks were cheaper to set up and in poor countries the governments generally let foreign operators come […]

Water pumps

Gene says his well out in Elko is near 1000′ feet deep. That raises the question of how to get water up to the surface from that depth. Most of the domestic well information on the web calls the well deep if it is 300′ feet deep. A shallow well which can use a suction […]

Air conditioning, humidity, condensate and Summertime

Having to use the shop vac to get a few gallons of water out of the ductwork on a regular basis was an indication of a problem. Where does it come from? I used Calculate Temperature, Dewpoint, or Relative Humidity to see how humidity changes with temperature. 90F at 10% humidity is a 26F dew […]