* Posts by Phat Tran

7 publicly visible posts • joined 14 May 2007

Re/code apologizes for Holocaust 'joke' tweet

Phat Tran

Re: Nonsensical and unfunny

It was actually an unfunny anti-German joke.

Ford to dump Microsoft's 'aggravating' in-car tech for ... BlackBerry?

Phat Tran

Re: QNX is Blackberry by name only

QNX has also benefited a lot from being bought out by BlackBerry. Their new Car platform is essentially BB10 re-purposed. The delta between BB10 and pre-BB10 QNX was due to BlackBerry involvement. And some major components like the UI framework, the browser, and the Android runtime were BlackBerry-developed.

The REAL JUICE behind leaked BlackBerry OS: Android apps to slip in without protection

Phat Tran

Android apps are kept moated from your secured work partition

Corporate security shouldn't be an issue. BB10 lets companies split a device into work and personal partitions, with a very strong fence between them. From what I hear, Android apps are only run in the personal partition of the device, and thus won't have access to sensitive corporate data.

BlackBerry's security reputation is one of their most cherished remaining assets; they have the motivation, the technology, and the corporate structure to not screw it up.

BlackBerry BB10 devices refuse to leap off shelves

Phat Tran

Re: Slow and steady

That was RIM alerting customers to an Adobe Flash vulnerability that nobody had yet exploited, and providing a patch to address it. Not sure how that amounts to "completely hacked".

Biofuels are the 'next environmental danger'

Phat Tran

Solar calculations

Allen,

Over the surface of the continental US, solar power density averages 198 MW per square km over a full year cycle. Assuming a run-of-the-mill 10% photovoltaic efficiency (as opposed to the 40% efficient bleeding edge stuff), we would only need 660,000 square km of solar cells to supply the entire world's 13 TW fossil fuel power needs. That's only 7% of the land area of the continental US.

Perhaps my numbers are off. I'd like to know which one(s) since my own research corroborates those numbers.

Phat Tran

Carbon neutrality of biofuels

As long as the production of biofuels requires less energy input than it outputs, disregarding the solar energy needed for photosynthesis, then we can divert a portion of the output back into the production process and be carbon neutral. Theoretically. But the whole thing is just so inefficient at harnessing the sun (the ultimate source of energy in all schemes except nuclear) compared to photovoltaic or wind that it doesn't make sense to even consider it.

Phat Tran

Solar is quite plentiful

Andrew,

All estimates I've seen indicate that the earth receives more surface incident solar energy in one hour than the entire world consumes in fossil fuels per year. If you work out the numbers, and conservatively assume photovoltaic efficiency of 10% (satellites use 28% efficient cells, and 40% efficient cells have been developed in labs), then placing solar cells over just 7% of the continental US would completely replace the *world's* demand for fossil fuels.

Nuclear power plants on average only output 1GW. The world consumption of fossil fuels is currently equivalent to 13TW. To replace fossil fuels with nuclear would require us to build one nuclear plant per day for the next 30 years.

I agree with previous posters that biodiesel as a fossil fuel replacement is a sham. It is indeed carbon-neutral, but it's a very inefficient way to harness the sun.

Phat