Do us all a favor, and don't text while driving.

It doesn't look too big to me. I don't have skinny fingers, and by the video neither does the demo guy, and when he's typing numbers it looks as though his finger covers about half the face, horizontally. I'm wearing a Timex Expedition that's about the same width.

It looks to me as if it DOES have 3d control with the two handles. But it's not a video game, and it's someone's life and a nearly priceless prototype at risk. We're not sure who's at the controls, either, and how much hover practice they might have.

I'm pretty sure that the insurers of the EAA Airventure had something to say about untethered flight of an early experimental vehicle that close to spectators, too.

My thoughts exactly.

Go for it. No, really. Do it.

Read the actual article. He has a ballistic chute. I don't know the minimum altitude for it, they don't say.

That doesn't work, either. ANY generation of power requires a *difference* in temperature (or pressure, with Boyles Law) to work. So if you coat the rods with the stuff and put them down where it's hot, the rods will heat to the local ambient temperature, and no more electricity will be generated.

Well, cooling towers are the end result of converting fuel into heat, into steam, into mechanical motion, into electricity, and the leftover low-temperature steam is condensed in the cooling towers. I don't think cooling towers are quite hot enough for these. Car engines are much less efficient at utilizing heat energy than power plants are.

But a large-scale efficient thermoelectric device could just cut out all the middle processes at a power-plant, and convert the heat from fuel directly into electricity, kind of like a fuel cell, but able to use any burnable fuel (or nuclear, or solar, etc). Neat.

Anyone remember the nuclear thermoelectric generators they used on the moon during Apollo? The astronauts had to hand load the plutonium rods into them, once they got to the moon. I guess a space suit makes a fair-to-middlin' radiation suit. :-)

Batteries are always charged with DC power, the "three phase industrial" language is just a fancy way of saying "very high current, more than available in a home". Indeed, very high current would be needed to charge a huge battery like in a car in a very short time.

Not so for a cellphone. In fact, if a cellphone has, say, a 1000mAh battery, 5 amps (reasonable for 120V house current) could charge the battery in 12 minutes or so, if the battery technology would take it.

I've been using Etymotic ER-6 earplug 'phones for several years now. They present no more or less risk of hearing damage than any other earphones. The fact that they're sealed inside the ear canal simply means they need to drive that much less sound pressure. The sound quality seems to be MUCH better than any regular earbuds I've used, probably owing much to the sound isolation, as they act as earplugs.
Really nice for loud environments.

Of course, you can turn up just about any good earphones enough to cause hearing damage. Or any really good speakers. :-)

The Etymotic comes with several diameters of plugs, so you can usually find a comfortable one that'll stay in.

If you think earplugs are dangerous of themselves, you don't work in a loud environment, or ride long distances on a motorcycle. I use earplugs every single work-day to PROTECT my hearing.