I've been in the medical field service business for 30 years. Fixing / installing Cathlabs, Vascular labs,X ray, Mamo and Ultrasound systems.

The battery or such does not cost an arm or a leg. Its the R&D that goes into it. Its the supply chain warehousing parts and the tax on inventory and all that other stuff like profit.

As far as 3rd party servicing. Apple will loose and have to make their service documents/ tools available. Those tools can be different - but come to the same results.



It is in the OEM interests to keep 3rd party service away for many reasons, not just to hoard more business.

We do provide service manuals and parts to 3Rd party. no problem. They are on the web just to get them.



As far as ripping the customer off. That's wrong. Apple will need to address this. I would not think that is common.

I know iPhones did like 6+ model. Battery replacement fixed it for now. Now, iOS v12 has the option not to throttle down and risk random power offs. I don't recall iPads having this problem though. Have you checked your iOS' battery status to see what is hogging power and how the battery is?

True. As I recall, the excuse was to make the batteries last longer when they get old, but they sure did their best to hide it before coming up with that lame excuse.

Fair points, but this is obviously a prototype.

Ultimately, the price of these will come down and even if you need to swap out the batteries, there's no reason that can't be automated too. Hell, a roomba basically does that now. The point is it doesn't need sleep or meal breaks and it doesn't care about working hours. Or you just leave it connected to a permanent power source (if you can teach it to drywall, you can teach it to avoid the cable).

And yeah, my numbers are obviously estimates, since this isn't commercially available yet, and you'd need to factor in capital investment, maintenance, etc. But you don't have to pay it a salary, it doesn't need medical and it doesn't have to comply with health and safety regs (at least, not for the robots H&S).

I find it difficult to believe that something like this could ever be less cost-effective than a human.

Of course, that's assuming a steady rate of improvement. Bipedal robots (like self-driving cars) have been "90% there" for many years now. It might be that the last 10% is REALLY, REALLY difficult.

My gut feeling is that we will see a tipping point. There will be some really challenging engineering/programming obstacle that stops these going mainstream, but eventually, someone will solve it and then the rate of progress will be exponential.

But you're right in that, that's certainly a few years away yet. I'm fascinated as to how we as a society/civilisation deal with mass automation.

But it's not going to be 1% of the cost for a very, very long time. It probably takes a team of technicians to keep it going right now. 5-10 years from now you can probably get one of those for a hundred grand or so, but maintenance would run you around the same as a full-time drywaller. You're throwing a lot of numbers out there as if they mean something, but they don't. Also, the thing needs downtime to recharge, even once the technology becomes practical and affordable, so 24/7 is not an option. Either you need a worker to replace batteries every few hours, or it needs to plug in to a base station and go offline for significant periods.

Your video, Why Tesla is building city-sized batteries, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Nice to finally hear pumped hydro mentioned when discussing energy storage.
Sure, it takes space, but it's non toxic, proven, doesn't bleed off like compressed air, and doesn't wear out every 10 years. Chemical batteries should be just for quick load shifts with hydro used for the majority of energy storage, imo.

Don't get me wrong, I'm of the same mindset but aren't we all supposed to be treating each other equally now? Aren't we trying to get rid of these stereotypes (e.g. you don't think women should just be house-wives and get back to the kitchen, do you?) Therefore, women are the same as men and the law should apply equally to all? Clearly, that isn't the case.

As I said, I don't really care that this woman knocked the idiot down but she could have just as easily grabbed his arm and confronted him that way, without yanking him by the neck and throwing him backwards - it's not a proportional response to the sexual assault. Once detained - and I'm sure other employees or customers would have assisted - the police could have been called with the same outcome (i.e. the man being charged with sexual battery). But then she wouldn't have been able to "feel empowered"...

20 injured, 1 confirmed death. https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/breaking-at-least-20-injured-in-wonderboom-plane-crash-reports-20180710

funny how the guy filming sighs in disgust because of low battery, as if that was worse than his current situation..

The basic action is, but not the mechanism.
My idea....think spiral channels inside the tube with the cog shown attached to a piston that rides in the spiral channels. As you turn it and force is transferred, it forces the piston forward because the spiral turns rotational force into linear force. With a spring, you apply an opposing linear force so the piston only moves when those forces are unbalanced. This spring could be tunable so you select where the balance point of those forces is, thus selecting the maximum force you could apply before it changes gears for you. When there's more force applied, it "lowers" the gear, when less it automatically goes up a gear. No electronics or battery required.

Looks like the plane will last forever. That old technology is better than the new stuff in many ways. The controls are all hard-wired with mechanical linkages. The magneto means the engine keeps running even if the the alternator or battery fails.

Even with no electric power, a pilot can keep flying.

As far as I know you are pretty much spot on. The 919 was run in the LMP1 class with 8 megajoules of hybrid power and a turbo 4 cylinder petrol engine.

This evolution of the 919 has increased the power of both systems, by removing the fuel flow restrictions and increasing the output of the electric motors. The boost graphic is probably showing the deployment of the stored power from the lithium batteries, but it wasn't 100% clear to me (usually they will indicate when it is charging or discharging, and this didn't).

I didn't find a really good reference, but there is a bit on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_919_Hybrid

Meh, padlocks are not for securing valuable property or for securing property against someone with any sort of tools at all. They are for preventing opportunistic theft. 30 seconds to defeat the lock is plenty long enough for that. Of course, that is a pretty stupid design, so good video nonetheless. If I owned one already, a little solder or permanent loctite on the inner screws would probably do the trick.

Mostly though, The lock company lost me at $100 for the lock. A traditional dial is not *that* hard to work and I'd be worried about false negatives and dead batteries even with a high-quality finger print reader. Just buy a $10 padlock at the hardware store to lock up your garbage cans, or proper u-lock or quality cable to lock up your $600 bicycle (ie, something that will require 15 minutes to defeat).

dem batteries

Distributed storage is potentially a better option than mass storage facilities. A combination would be ideal. Too many people are waiting for the government or industry to do something when they could be doing it themselves. Especially now that a large battery bank doesn't cost $30k and weigh two tons.