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Comment Re:Ironic (Score 1) 71

I'm not so sure the shop should be allowed to choose what agent the user employs. You wouldn't like it if they banned particular web browsers and said you had to use Chrome or Edge. The browser is the User-Agent, a program that acts on behalf of the user and shows the user the results. It might also filter those results in a way the retailer doesn't like, for example removing advertisements or popups, but that's between the user and their browser.

Comment Old news (Score 1) 2

My late wife did undergraduate research in photosystem II where there was quantum effects back in 2002. She did her PhD thesis on proton coupled electron transfer (PCET) in soybean lipoxogenase, then had a long career developing models for Fortran code that did quantum simulation of proteins (she was behind Tagdock in Amber MD). This is nothing new; several biological systems have quantum effects that are central to their mechanism.

Comment Mercator works okay when you are zooming (Score 1) 274

But for a zoomable world map, the Mercator projection isn't too bad. Most of the time you are not opening Google Maps to see a view of the whole planet. You will zoom in to a smallish area, and within that area, the shape and relative sizes are preserved. OK, zoom level 5 in Iceland is a different magnification from zoom level 5 in Colombia. That doesn't matter much, as you just zoom to whatever level shows the area you want.

By contrast if you pick a projection like Equal Earth, it's great for a whole-planet view, but anywhere away from the central meridian is skewed. Your city map of Vancouver will show roads that run due north pointing diagonally up and to the right -- while east-west roads are still horizontal, so you can't just rotate. The fact that your zoom level shows the same magnification as someone in Madagascar viewing the same zoom level is irrelevant.

Comment Re:Hybrids are kinda "ick" .... (Score 1) 157

For what it's worth, a hybrid drivetrain is, mechanically speaking, actually quite a bit simpler than a traditional ICE + automatic transmission. You swap out several set of planetary gearsets, with multiple stacks of clutches and such, for two motors and a single planetary gearset.

Comment Re:I live in Washington state (Score 3, Insightful) 58

Sure, you don't want to pay full sticker price, because that's the sucker price. You have to waste a day of your life haggling with the dealer so that he can charge different prices to different customers. If you buy straight from the manufacturer under a no-haggle system, they have to offer the same price to everybody. So it's likely to be quite a lot less than the sticker price of a dealership-sold car. The manufacturer still wants to segment the market and milk more money out of less price-sensitive customers, but they have to do it by selling more luxurious trim levels.

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