Recent Comments

There is just not enough known lithium deposits for every car owner to go out and buy an electric vehicle. Heck, according to this article, there isn't enough lead for a similar massively scaled lead-acid battery. Recycling old batteries would at least help.

I think mounting a pad under your desk surface to covert it into a wireless charging top would be neat. Just place your mouse, phone, music player, etc on top of the desk and the field created by the pad would power the device and begin trickle charging it. There are already some products that do something similar, but the pad is placed on top of the desk (very short range transmission) and the phone normally needs a bulky case to hide the receiver coil (not many phones have this built in).

Thanks for some more background on how different roles in the community work... I too will look to submit some stories...

I have always intensely disliked the mobility part of most mobile technologies: cordless telephones, walkmen, mobile phones, laptops... because the battery is often dead or about to run out and you have to run to a cord somewhere for charging, but you've lost your charging cord, and then over time the battery wears out and so on... I've gotten interested in e-reader technology, in large part, because the battery life spans weeks and not just hours or days. I pretty much always use my laptop in a plugged-in state except for emergencies because I prefer the inconvenience of a wire then the inconvenience of my battery dying.

Anyway, I am curious if there are ways to return to wires in more applications to lower the demand for batteries across industries? In other words, would it be possible to innovate away from a dependence on batteries towards a different model of electricity access in those industries where mobility is a luxury rather than a necessity? Cars may need long-lasting batteries, but do all of our computing devices?

I think the lack of a distributed/disconnected work force helps here. Soynuts are all volunteers with their own ideas on how stuff should work, which has led to the tension its had. Maybe they have it under control now, not sure.

I think you had good input, and I enjoyed reading your contribution. I was just trying to present an alternative view to the conclusion using the same reasoning.

Oh lord. Thanks for reminding me why I don't participate in online discussion forums

I'm pretty sure most governments (if not all) don't care about the average US citizen. For the war on "terrorism" the US seems to take note about everyone and everything. The point is, the tools for this war are now used to pursue (corporate?) US interests ruthlessly at all costs and most of you US citizens don't get, is that there will be consequences for this in the long run.

You presented "anecdotal evidence", which you acknowledged as "anecdotal evidence", that vaping helped you quit and claimed you didn't understand how a study could find the opposite "I have no idea how the researchers can come up with this conclusion."

I presented "anecdotal evidence", as a way to encourage discussion, showing that vaping and smoking aren't mutually exclusive and in fact people can do both, thus supporting the study findings. In doing so I've forced you to read the same/similar thing more than once and challenged your myopic view. I apologize for being offensive.

Also mom isn't the only smoker I know, but she's the only vaper I know. I'm sure I shouldn't reiterate that vaping isn't a big thing here in Canada yet, at least not in my part of the country.

The community is (probably) watching, I find myself here more often than in the beginning but I still only have a look every couple of days. As more features get implemented it gets more attractive to use.

Notifications on a reply are quite important; much more than "search", what the last poll here said. One thing that this site already does better than soylent is the fact that there is some equivalent of firehose.

ok, in that case I'll submit anything interesting I see and not worry too much about adding explanatory text. thanks
btw, the site's editors are doing a great job so far

err, my comment was about using them as a tool to quit smoking. I really don't need to hear about how insensitive your mum is for the nth time. most smokers - like most people in general - are decent, tolerant human beings. what the long term health effects of vaping is no-one knows, but are they an effective smoking cessation aid? yes, without a shadow of a doubt. your mum is the exception to the rule, and I get the feeling she's the only smoker you know

I signed up as soon as possible for both sites, but heard about - and started visiting - Soylent first. I really got disgusted with all the drama, airing of dirty laundry in the name of transparency, and general, juvenile ass-hattery. I find this site better run. I think the mob-rule mentality over at Soy will be hard to manage. I hope they overcome the challenge, but I don't see how - sooner or later someone is going to either suggest members pay in, or post ads, or something else, and it's going to be a sh*tstorm.

Full disclosure - I volunteered to help Bryan and am now one of the volunteer editors. If you're worried about what to submit or how to format it, my response would be "do your best" and let the editors bang it into shape, if necessary.

I worry when the pipe is dry. I'd like this to be a place where people can discuss what they find interesting. Let's post a bunch of stuff and see what sticks, and the site will eventually evolve. The nice voting mechanism on the pipe allows every user to have a say in things they'd like to see hit the front page for discussion. Jump in!

I'm certainly not going to mod that off topic.

I've lurked for years at slashdot but I really like it here and would like to help out. However, I'm reluctant to submit new stories as I don't know the correct format or what's acceptable. I also don't really know how modding and stuff works (I never bothered to get a slashdot account). There must be others like me, so I'm wondering if it would be worthwhile creating a brief intro document on how the main points of the site work so that new users like me can help build up the momentum?

Thanks

anecdotal evidence

My mom still smokes even though she's also a vapor. That sounds really weird reading it back.

Anyway, she vaps when she's in a place that doesn't allow smoking. I don't know why or what makes her think, "Hey, no smoking here, well vaping will be perfectly ok then.", but that's what she does.

Fist time she pulled out her e-cig in my house I asked her to smoke outside and she gave me the "it's healthier" spiel, but couldn't cite any studies and, with a quick Google, I couldn't find anything compelling one way or the other, so I asked her again to do it outside. I have a two year old and a responsibility to do what I can for her health and safety. Yeah, yeah, "think of the children" and all that crap, but I'm not going to tell anyone they can't vap, just do it in a well ventilated area, preferably outside and not in my face. I finally managed to quit smoking something like eight years ago, I don't need any incentive to pick it back up or anything else that's going to cost me money I might as well be throwing in a fire place.

I'm really not looking forward to the day when I walk in to a Tim Hortons and smokers have realized "no smoking" doesn't mean "no vaping" and there's going to be fifty people sitting around blowing who knows what into the air. We all share the air weather we want to or not, don't make your habit someone elses'.

"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe. (totally making that my sig now)

Not wishing to turn this into a vaping forum (though why not, any discussion is better than none), but I just switched from the same set up as you (itaste and protank) to those funny clearomizers with the long wicks (Innokin CE5, just checked). I'd highly recommend trying them. The flavour is much better, and the protank used to get gunked up after just a day or two of use, whereas the CE5 has been vaping obstruction free for a week. Only thing is it's plastic rather than the pyrex protank, which means you have to avoid really acidic liquids.

I guess most of us here are the sort to require hard, empirical evidence of things before we believe them, but this is one of those cases where for whatever reason it's best to follow anecdotal evidence. Just ask vapers. I smoked heavily for over a decade. I tried vaping once, and immediately realised that I could give up cigarettes. I haven't smoked a cigarette in 6 months. What's more, because the hit is different from traditional cigs, I can go a whole day without vaping and not feel an overwhelming desire to punch anyone. I could quit entirely, but I enjoy it and it's the only break from work I get during the day. It's the same story with everyone I know who's tried proper vaping (not the cigarette lookalikes). I have no idea how the researchers can come up with this conclusion.

nicotine (not detectable in an 8m^3 room)

That could very well depend on the number of people vaping in the area. As I said any amount, detectable or not, is essentially forcing others in the area to participate.

My mom is a rude person, part of the reason I can't stand to be around her and why I moved back to Canada while she stayed in the states, but the point wasn't to say all smokers are rude people. The point was to say vaping is a new thing, people don't understand it yet and justifiably might not want to be exposed to it, but if people are vaping in public spaces they're exposing people to it whether they want to be or not. I feel the same way about perfume. I can't tell you the number of times I've had to get off a bus or leave a room early because someone (not exclusively women) bathed in some cheap ode 'a la toilette and is stinking up the space so bad the people around them are passing out from lack of oxygen.

As far as the article you cited, I do appreciate that, I have to take it with a grain of salt, for a couple of reasons. 1) How many studies did the tobacco industry fund to prove cigarettes were safe? They made a lot of very ridiculous claims that we now know were false. 2) I tried to traced the article back to the study, in the process I found out that Dr. Robertson the author retired in 1951, that's a long time ago, the study was published in 1947 . I'm not saying the study was invalid, but we know a lot more now than we did then and have a lot more standard practices and regulations in place than we did back then involving studies.

Maybe assertion two invalidates my assertion one because the study is so old that it couldn't have been funded by "the vaping industry", but it doesn't mean "the vaping industry" couldn't be using a faulty study to prop up or exaggerate their claims, as the tobacco industry has in the past.

We know proylene glycol is safe for *ingestion*. Water is safe for *ingestion* too, but get too much in your lungs and you drown. I don't want to make the claim one way or the other that proylene glycol, or other ingredients, are harmful or not, I just want to point out if someone doesn't want themselves to be exposed to it, then we should be respecting that. I'm in my thirties and only once have ever been in the presents of a smoke machine, my mother the chain smoker aside (BA DA CHING!!). They're great for theatrical effect, but I certainly wouldn't want one in the cubical on either side of me going all day at work, as it use to be with cigarettes if you're old enough to remember when they were still allowed on airplanes and in restaurants. I remember when I was eight and it was common to walk into a restaurant so full of blue smoke you couldn't even see where you were going, and sitting on the ten hour flight from Nova Scotia to England beside a smoker, who burned me with ashes, when I was nine.

As a side note, did you know toothpaste is actually not safe for ingestion? Florid is good for helping to strengthen the enamel on teeth, but is actually toxic in a large enough dose.

I'm a soynut. I was an early adopter for both sites and tried to help with Soylent when they started, but I couldn't get slashcode working because of the outdated mod_perl extension and gave up after a few days. I advocated scrapping slashcode and starting from scratch, but NCommander got it working and it was decided that they have it working so they'd just replace it a little at a time.

|. has a much nicer interface, way cleaner and easier to look at and way more stable. Slashcode is a mess, both code wise and the UI, they're doing a good job keeping it running for now, but I figure in the long run everyone will move over here as things over there start breaking down and they realize they just can't fix slashcode.

Soylent was the hare, Pipedot is the tortoise.

Yes, I probably meant "less harmful" rather than "healthier".

You point out that proylene glycol is "potentially dangerous". It is used in and approved for several food products, toothpaste and cosmetics. Not safe for inhaling? Well, it is used in smoke machines too, which have been around for decades and have not been proven harmful. The only difference between an e-cig and a smoke machine is the nicotine (not detectable in an 8m^3 room) and flavorings (does not stink like cigarettes).

There are even some indications that PG might be healthy (from a quick Google search): http://www.news-medical.net/news/20091104/Propylene-glycol-in-e-cigarettes-might-keep-us-healthy-says-researchers.aspx

Vegetable Glycerin is also widely used in e-cigs. It is hard to come across any candy or sweets which does not contain it. It is basically sugar.

I think your mom's behaviour is unpolite, to say the least. It is not a question of wether e-cigs are dangerous or not, but of manners. E-cigs are not subject to smoking laws, at least not in Norway, but you got to respect people around you.

Over all I agree with that. My mom and stepfather were both chain smokers when I was growing up, I picked it up when I was 14 and smoked until I was 25-26. I tried to quit a number of times, but it was really hard when every time someone walked by me I wanted to beat them to a pulp and take their cigs. I finally quit something like 8 years ago now. Where I live there's now a lot of regulations about where you can and can't smoke, and it's awesome.

There's the occasional time where I'm walking into a restaurant and I walk by a few people puffing up, where they shouldn't be, or I'm waiting for a bus and can't stand inside the shelter on a rainy day because a smoker needs to stay dry and smoke, where they shouldn't be. Overall it's a hugely positive move, it's much easier for people to quit and fewer and fewer people smell like, as you say, ashtrays, when you're forced into a crowded space like a bus or elevator with them, making it much easier to avoid situations where I get extremely strong cravings for a cigarette because I smell them on someone.

Modern vape equipment is not only much healthier than traditional tobacco

I'd rather not read that ever again. To say it's healthier is misleading. Although it's less harmful, there are no health benefits from vaping. Nicotine isn't good for you and lungs aren't designed to filter out propylene glycol (most common ingredient) along with a lot of other things that can be contained in a vapor, so you can't say vaping is healthier. My mom tried to use the "vaping is healthier" argument with me to convince me it was ok for her to do it in my house while she was visiting. I have a 2 year old, and I don't trust my mom, so of course I looked it up. The correct phrase is "Modern vape equipment is not as harmful as traditional tobacco products, but we still don't know how harmful it is".

I live in a province in Canada where fairly recently, within the last five years, smoking has pretty much been ban in every public space. As an ex-smoker, I often joke I could still smoke on the yellow line in the middle of the road if I wanted to take it back up, but honestly we're all a lot better off. It was much easier to quit smoking when I finally didn't have at least ten people crowed around me blowing smoke in my face everywhere I went. Looking back, the most horrible thing about smoking is you force those around you to smoke as well. I was probably one of those people blowing smoke in someone's face and was the reason they found quitting so hard. It was very inconsiderate. What's more inconsiderate is although smoking is pretty much ban here, people still light up in places they aren't allowed to. Like open bus shelters or standing next to doors. So to walk into or out of the hospital, stores, restaurants or other buildings you're basically forced to walk through a thick fog of cigarette smoke.

My mom, who was visiting from the states, was the first person I've known to use an e-cig. She tried to light up in several places she knew she wouldn't get away with. We went out for sushi and she tried it, after I went to the washroom, then got in an argument with the waitress in front of my wife and two year old over being asked not to do it in the restaurant. I came back from the washroom to see my mom practically making out with a very offended waitress while trying to blow vapor into her face. I had to apologize and pay the waitress off, more than dinner cost, to not call the cops. The point of the story is to me the "it's healthier" argument sounded like, "Oh this unknown substance isn't dangerous, here let me spit it all over your face so you can see it's alright. Gee, I hope you don't have any allergies..."

Vaping isn't popular here yet, but as a kid from the 80's I still remember what it was like to go to a restaurant or fly on a plane with people smoking. It's much nicer now with all the anti-sent and no smoking policies we have and I can actually breath the air without being assaulted by something someone else wants to force on the people around them. I'm not looking forward to walking into a room filled with people vaping, who don't know if it's harmful or not, puffing god knows what all over the place. As far as I'm concerned, if you're consuming nicotine (not inherently harmful on it's own, but highly addictive) or any other potentially dangerous substance (propylene glyco) and any amount of that is being puffed into the public space for others to inhale, then you're violating other peoples rights to not consume additive/dangerous substances.

I'm glad people are moving away from cigarettes and have no problem with vaping instead as long as you're not forcing people around you to unwillingly participate.

Anything that keeps me from having to smell ashtray when a smoker walks by is OK in my book. From my experience, the vapors of e-cigs are simply unnoticeable. And even if they where noticeable by a non-smoker, they tend to be pleasant - strawberry flavored pleasant.

Benefits of non-smokers forced to be around chain smokers > anything on the smoker end.

I like Soylent for what it is, but yeah, I have to agree. Of course, as the |. community grows, so inevitably will the politicking, but if this could remain the civil N4N site, that would be a wonderful thing.

I was a daily smoker for 15 years. When I got my first e-cigs two years ago, I was instantly able to cut consumption in half. This was with a cigarette-sized 510 device which basically is crap. As time went by better equipment became available, and after a year, with a much better cigar-sized device, I was able to quit totally. I now use an iTaste MVP 2.0 box-mod with EVOD and Protank clearomizers.

About a week ago I forgot my vapestuff at home and resorted to a 10-pack of ordinary cigarettes (yes, I am still an addict). Compared to the raspberry and vanilla flavors I am now accustomed to, the taste was just horrible. And it would not leave my mouth until the day after. Also, I had to go outside in the rain to do it. Next time I will have a nicotine gum, or something similar instead. The cigarettes were just horrible.

Modern vape equipment is not only much healthier than traditional tobacco, the user experience also far exceeds it.

I did not RT whole FA in detail, but it seems like they have just interviewed a bunch of random smokers, found that not very many of them use e-cigs, and concluded that e-cigs does not work as recession.

I can't see how vaporized nicotine is anywhere near as harmful as cig smoke, no tar, no combustion byproducts, not cyanide, or other nasty monoxide combinations..

My understanding is Bryan wants the code to look less like wet spaghetti before he shares it. Hopefully it will be out under AGPL3.

Here in Ohio, tomorrow March 25, the weather people are calling for up to 2" of snow.

Yeah, but that's like getting drinking water from desalination.

http://investorintel.com/graphite-graphene-intel/synthetic-graphite-is-purer-but-the-future-belongs-to-natural-graphite/

I played D3 until I beat the boss. Then I discovered the next round up was the same round around, with different numbers. I'll stick with WoW for the time being.

You don't need natural graphite mines.
http://www.mersen.com/en/focus/article/manufacturing-artificial-graphite.html

I signed on at Soylent reasonably early. Honestly, I like this place more. No, the community isn't here, yet, but it will come. I found the politicking over there to be rather distasteful. Moreso than anything Dice ever did at The Other Site.

I wish I had the skills to help out here, but I really, really don't. I'll have to settle for sitting back and enjoying the ride.

I think you mean for parts of the U.S., not the U.S. as a whole. Remember, it's a pretty big country. (Yes, there are some larger, but that's hardly the point. The point is that the U.S. is sufficiently large that we have wildly different climates across the country. My boss has been out shoveling snow off his roof, while I've been sitting in a t-shirt & shorts)

So I voted "Mild." I think I had to put on a sweater once. Damned inconvenient, if you ask me.

As for the "Just wait until summer!" crowd, sure, I like sitting in the shade and sipping fresh-squeezed lemonade, or going back into the A/C when I actually need to do some work...

Yeah, I hear ya on the lack of community. Even if Bryan does put it up on github, I wouldn't be surprised if others don't pick it up. The soynuts have already put a lot of effort into reviving slashcode, I doubt they would give it up at this point to pursue putting their features into pipecode. In any case, I'd wait until the code was in a good state to show to people after dogfooding it here.

If you believe this article, Lithium is currently not worth recycling...but may be in the future,
http://www.waste-management-world.com/articles/print/volume-12/issue-4/features/the-lithium-battery-recycling-challenge.html
Other parts of e-car batteries may be recycled before Lithium becomes economical. At this time there are several different battery technologies being used which makes it hard for anyone to develop a recycling technology.

I couldn't agree with you more. I love a lot of the computer generated music from a technological perspective, but there is no substitute to a man with a guitar who can read the emotion of the audience and change they way he plays to keep them all hyped up.

Sim City, at least, has an offline mode now. Too bad they didn't start with it, they could have avoided a lot of bad press and flames.

While I think you're right that users don't care that's only half of the equation. If this format can offer a 10% bandwidth reduction to a content heavy web site then it offers significant cost savings and will look very attractive in that light.

True, but with a president who won a Nobel Peace prize, the US can't be everyone's enemy.x

If those companies are bidding to supply critical network equipment, then yes, I'd like my government to breach corporate secrecy to figure out whether the equipment has back doors. That really is an issue of national security.

FWIW, as a US citizen, I have no expectation of privacy vs. the Chinese, French, or Russian governments either. Your question is a little too broad though. Is this the world I want to live in? Any answer shorter than a book would be disappointing.

I would still like to see a notification if/when someone replies to one of my comments, but otherwise I agree. I think this is a great replacement for slashcode, which is a horrible monster, all we're missing here is the community.

It would be nice if Bryan would put his efforts up on Github and allow some collaboration, but it's his baby and I can't blame him if he wants to keep it to himself.

Like the way you're progressing. Thanks for getting things working without Javascript, that was very important for me.

I think my feature wish-list is now practically empty - don't get too bloaty!

We don't generally get more than about 10-20cm of snow in the valley where I live, and it doesn't tend to stay around long, but this year we didn't even get snow on the mountain. In fact, we got more snow in the valley than at higher elevations. The local ski/snowboard facility remained closed for the entire season, and even the facilities further afield received only about a half-meter of snow. All my shiny, new snowboarding gear remains untested.

Selfish reasons for my winter disappointment aside, we are also looking at a serious drought situation, now, and I wouldn't be surprised if this fire season is right up there with some of the worst on record. Not looking forward to the summer.

I love this site! Thanks for doing all this.

If a government treats everyone else like shit, it eventually ends up scraping the barrel for countries like Micronesia, Fiji and El Salvador as allies for its "coalition of the willing". In other words, at some point it may prove expensive to only have enemies in the world.

Same here. Diablo 2 was my favourite game.

Torchlight 2 is a better casual ARGP, and Path of Exile is a better hardcore one. No room for Diablo 3.

You rock Bryan

Be thankful you don't live in Kind Island. The Roaring Forties dumps dumptrucks worth of rain which combined with the cold can drench and freeze you in seconds. Brrrr.