Articles: Sun 25.Feb.2024
WashPo: Should you buy a plug-in hybrid car? Here’s what to consider.
If you’re generally driving less than about 200 miles a day and can access charging, switching to all-electric makes the most sense. You’ll be able to top up your battery, saving money and emissions.
Plug-in hybrids will give you longer range without refueling but are less efficient, since they carry around both an electric and a gasoline drivetrain. “Where the plug-in hybrid fails is that you pay for two drivetrains. It’s a suboptimal solution,” says Tal, comparing the technology to a spork, neither a superior spoon nor fork. “If you don’t need the [gasoline] engine, don’t take the engine with you.”
Guardian: Gas’s future looks cloudy as demand and prices tumble
A conference this week will discuss a market being transformed by green energy, LNG and milder winters.
Predicting even the direction of energy prices is extremely difficult.
Fully Charged (YouTube): A Lost Battery Technology Gets Recharged with LiNa Energy
…with Arvind Sabharwal and Will Tope, Chairman and CEO of LiNa Energy, a UK based battery technology company.
By utilising one of the most abundant elements, sodium, the rediscovery of a previously forgotten battery chemistry and borrowing a few bits of technology garnered from fuel cell development, the team at LiNa have created a new, long duration stationary energy storage solution in the form of sodium solid state lithium free batteries.
Takes a few minutes to get rolling.
NYT: In on the Joke at the First-Ever Florida Man Games
A mullet contest, a “mud duel” with pool noodles, an “evading arrest” obstacle course — and a chance to mull why the meme that launched it all keeps hanging on.
🎶 Celebrate good times, come on! 🎶
CBC: Case of unopened 1979 hockey cards from Sask. sells for over $5M at auction
A Saskatchewan family just turned a case of hockey cards into millions of dollars.
Around 1:00 a.m. EST on Sunday, bidding came to a close for a highly touted case filled with thousands of unopened 1979-1980 O-Pee-Chee brand hockey cards that a Saskatchewan family found in their attic.
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The case holding unopened boxes of cards is estimated to possibly hold from 25 to 27 Wayne Gretzky cards from his rookie year, but no one knows for sure, according to Simonds. Values vary, but mint condition Gretzky rookie cards have been sold for $3.75 million.
CBC: Jones advances to face Homan for record 7th Scotties title in final appearance
Jennifer Jones advanced to Sunday’s final at the Canadian women’s curling championship with a 12-7 semifinal win over fellow Manitoban Kate Cameron in Calgary.
The 49-year-old skip is seeking a record-breaking seventh Scotties Tournament of Hearts title in her final appearance. She will face Ontario’s Rachel Homan.
NYT: Duke Shuts Down Huge Plant Collection, Causing Scientific Uproar
Duke University has decided to close its herbarium, a collection of 825,000 specimens of plants, fungi and algae that was established more than a century ago. The collection, one of the largest and most diverse in the country, has helped scientists map the diversity of plant life and chronicle the impact of humans on the environment.
The university’s decision has left researchers reeling. “This is such a devastating blow for biodiversity science,” said Erika Edwards, the curator of the Yale Herbarium. “The entire community is simultaneously shocked and outraged.”
NYT: Severe Frostbite Gets a Treatment That May Prevent Amputation
This month, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first therapy for treatment of severe frostbite in the country. The drug, iloprost, is given intravenously for several hours a day over a little more than week. It works by opening blood vessels to improve circulation, limiting inflammation and stopping the formation of platelet clumps that can stop circulation and kill tissue. Most at risk are a person’s toes, fingers, ears, cheeks and nose.
NYT: When Eyes in the Sky Start Looking Right at You
“We’re acutely aware of the privacy implications,” Topher Haddad, head of Albedo Space, the company making the new satellites, said in an interview. His company’s technology will image people but not be able to identify them, he said. Albedo, Mr. Haddad added, was nonetheless taking administrative steps to address a wide range of privacy concerns.
dpReview: Pixelmator Pro 3.4 Camelot review: An all-purpose image editor for the Mac
Key Features
- Broad layer-based editing
- Variety of ML (machine learning) based adjustment tools
- ML-powered selection, enlarging, and denoising tools
- Opens layered Photoshop PSD and PSB files
- Text and vector illustration tools
- Accepts photos from Photomator
- Inexpensive
- macOS only
Pixelmator Pro is available now from the Mac App Store at the aforementioned price of $49.99, which lets you run the app on up to 6 machines that share the same Apple ID or belong to a Family Sharing group. It requires macOS 11 Big Sur or later and runs on Macs with Intel or Apple silicon processors. It’s not available for Windows systems.
Last Updated: 25.Feb.2024 23:59 EST