My understanding is that he owned a 2013 model. Also, @chingalera, my understanding is that the car was traveling south, and thus the engine was found a couple hundred feet in front (not behind) the vehicle.

Personally, I find this suspicious. Most suspicious is the call a few hours prior to the accident he made to a wikileaks attorney. Normally, I wouldn't expect official agencies to put out a "hit." There are just safer ways of going about preventing a damaging story, like detention, or smear campaigns. However, if it's possible he had damaging documents that he could release via wikileaks, it would be out of their control. In that case I'd entertain the possibility.

Also, Richard Clarke (former Counter Terrorism Czar) has points out that we have good reason to believe that major country intelligence organizations have the ability to remotely control cars. Further, he pointed out that this crash (especially the lack of skid marks) is consistent with such. He was careful, however, not to explicitly implicate any particular agencies. For my money, LAPD is at least as likely as the FBI. Those fuckers are no good.

Right, in future wheels will have three spokes instead of 5. Cargo bikes and long tails are for n00b5.

You understand the principle right? The flywheel is effectively a mechanical battery which stores your momentum through braking. In other words, it's analogous to an electrical assist. They both add weight. They both help you conserve momentum lost during braking.

Right, but the same could be said about an e-bike electrical assist.

I don't know... looks kind of incremental and lame. Also, the guy thinks he's way more of a rockstar than he is.

Dumb argument is dumb. We need to regulate internet comments. I propose a competency test. No more comments until you correctly report the number of jelly beans in this jar.

Why does he seem reasonable all of a sudden?

I wish I knew how to spell the sound of those mandibles.

@arekin @NinjaInHeat -

"Sushi is all about the fish." False. Sushi is as much about the rice as the fish. In fact, it literally means "vinegared rice." Certainly the fish is important, however my understanding is that much of the subtlety that distinguishes various chefs is their preparation of the rice, not the fish. This may be why it is more acceptable to apply wasabi and soy to sashimi rather than to nigiri or maki. So yea, it's like a hamburger on a really fancy bun. I still want my barbecue sauce.

Yup, it's a motion after effect. I doubt it "evolved" for a specific purpose however. Adaptation effects of this sort are thought to result from neural "fatigue." That is, the tendency for a neuron not to fire after a prolonged period of high activation. The idea that short term neural adaptation exists for some purpose other than straightforward biological constraints is appealing on the surface, but unlikely imo. You have to remember that it only works if stimuli are held perfectly still with respect to the retina for periods that are much longer than natural. In fact, there are some that argue there are special eye-movements to ensure that exactly that doesn't happen (look up Troxler fading for a similar phenomenon).

However, it's an extremely useful phenomenon empirically. The effect can be used to probe the stimuli that a distinct subpopulation of neurons (the adapted subpopulation) is responsive to. This ability to make inferences about neural mechanisms from strictly behavioral evidence rather than direct neural recordings makes it an important psychophysical tool. Behavioral arguments of this sort, where it is shown a population of neurons specifically responsive to X must exist, often precede physiological confirmation obtained later either with functional imaging studies or electrophysiological recordings in animal models.

You can tell by the pixels.

Still too soon.

My understanding is that he's a bit off on at least some of his biology. When it comes to the ear, I believe he's referring to otoacoustic emissions.. However, if you note from the abstract I linked, it doesn't quite work that way. Yes, homosexual or bisexual females tend to have patterns of otoacoustic emissions with more masculine characteristics, however the same is not true for homosexual or bisexual males. While the results are insignificant, I'm told that the trend is in the opposite direction (that is, homosexual males have slightly "hyper masculinized" cochlea). These changes are often sloppily attributed to "genetic" differences. However, many theories suggest that it may have something to do with testosterone exposure in utero or during early development (though genetic mechanisms are possible in many circumstances).

With regard to the voice box, I dunno. I stick to sensory systems.

My understanding is that those infrastructure enhancements have been put on the back burner if not scrapped altogether. This, coupled with a bus fare hike (9 cents was enough) broke the camel's back.

I don't think many of these companies (Google, Apple, etc) were in cahoots with the NSA. My suspicion is directed towards the conspicuous absence of Cisco's name from the conversation. Almost like - redacted - conspicuous. How else could something like this be implemented?

I found this article interesting: http://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/2012/10/30/china-removes-us-routers-over-security-concerns/

Softbank can't buy sprint unless they promise not to use Huawei (Chinese) routers? It's all about the core node. If you own the core node, you own everybody on it. They don't need anyone else to play along.

I also considered this one: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/05/leaked-cisco-do/

What better way to get all their traffic on your switch than by offering to censor the internet for them?