Recent Comments:
Western Digital developing 20,000RPM Raptor to take on SSDs? {Engadget}
Jun 6th 2008 10:23AM 20,000rpm and you're worrying about the platter cracking? Pffft. I've ridden a couple of twenty year old motorcycles which redlined at 20,000rpm. If they can do it with shitty 20 year old aluminium pistons weighing how much then they can do it with a thin, light, perfectly balanced disc.
Mozilla launches Firefox 3 RC2 {Download Squad}
Jun 5th 2008 12:26AM It's meant to do that -- it's a Release Candidate. The idea is that they make a release candidate, release it, and if there's no problems, they just start calling it Firefox 3.0. As there's nothing to change, nobody has to download a whole new 10MB or so just to change the name in the About box. Turns out there were some problems with RC1, so they released RC2 -- exactly the same situation.
X10 automated Poker / Blackjack table is decidedly drool-worthy {Engadget}
Jun 3rd 2008 8:51AM @hiko36
That's his point you dumb twat. How that got High Ranked is beyond me. He's saying people buy electronic card games (e.g. for the DS) because they offer something over real cards. This does not -- it's huge, and you still have to play with people in the same room.
Video: ASIMO burns as Yo-Yo Ma fiddles {Engadget}
May 14th 2008 11:01AM What living composer would that be?
Mr Ma is a cellist.
DIY Dynomometer {Hack a Day}
May 11th 2008 12:14AM @gyro john:
I'm a motorcyclist, and one who rebuilds his own engines. The sort of bearings you'd be using for the drum would be pretty heavy duty. The wheel bearings I put in my motorcycle cost about $5-10 each, are used regularly in 300kph motorcycles, and are neglected and exposed to rain, moisture, dust, big temperature differences and massive physical shocks. Imagine the carnage if a wheel bearing failed; you'd be alright in a car, but on a motorcycle you'd be killed straight away. Very, very rarely do you ever hear about wheel bearings failing, and that's usually due to major neglect or some mechanic cocking up. I don't think we have to worry about `high speed bearing failure' in this.
When he puts the brake on, that's to gently slow the flywheel so the engine doesn't take the strain of the engine braking. As for it being more than it's designed for, I would refute that again. Brakes on bike like that are designed to be used up to and well beyond the traction limits of the tyre (which aren't that much lower on the track compared to this drum) again and again, corner after corner, for races that go on for multiple hours. I'm not sure what you're worried about happening; the worst case scenario is usually when so much heat is produced that the brake fluid bubbles, causing the hydraulic fluid to become compressible, so the brakes stop working. Otherwise known as brake fade. I've had discs (and drum brakes) glowing red hot. The calipers aren't going to tear off the mountings or anything.
I know personal computers and electronic systems (of the sort Hackaday readers are familiar with) are usually mass-produced shit that has a design failure expectancy, but designing things like bearings and brake calipers, especially in connection with motorcycles, are generally engineered to a higher standard, as at the end of the day it comes down to spending months in hospital if it all comes to pieces.
Flipping the Linux switch: Xfce, the hidden gem of desktop environments {Download Squad}
Apr 29th 2008 12:11AM Bah, Xfce isn't cool now that it's mainstream --
good thing I've still got Openbox :D
On poor hardware, or any laptop, these sort of lightweight desktops are wonderful. Xfce/Fluxbox/Openbox et al are all great, after using them you just can't stand the slowness and memory usage of Gnome/KDE.
Cybernet's all-in-one keyboard computers get an upgrade {Engadget}
Mar 25th 2008 9:29AM I think the trackpad is in about the right spot. I stopped using an external mouse on laptops quite a while ago, so I'm used to using laptop trackpads for most of my computing. On almost all laptops the trackpad is right under the space-bar, just like here. It just looks weird because it's got a full keyboard, all those extra keys off to the right. Your hands will still be over the main QWERTY keyboard, though.
Army working in more Macs to diversify systems, thwart attackers {Engadget}
Dec 22nd 2007 5:25PM You can tell Evan's from the Army, just look at his spelling =^_^=
Alpine eX-10 makes in-car handsfree calling, iPod integration a sinch {Engadget}
Nov 14th 2007 4:50AM I think you mean `cinch'.
Dvorak: Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone {Engadget}
Mar 29th 2007 10:40AM `their worldwide sales are relatively tiny'
Hence the word `boutique' being used to describe them.
