Personally I agree with a lot of the criticism around current “self driving” technology, especially when it comes to some of the more...let’s just say “optimistic” claims made by Elon Musk. But it’s a BIG leap to go from “current self driving tech is very far from ready for use” to “self driving cars will never be a…

The big difference is that the Harrier was still in use at the time, and privately owned warplanes are always out of use, obsolete models. still a hell of a rush to fly I’m sure, but they aren’t in use so there’s no intelligence value left in them. Even an demilitarized Harrier could provide a foreign power with…

well, technically only the first two points would really be necessary for him to claim the prize... what he does with it after that doesn’t really matter. maybe he wants it to be a really big lawn decoration? It would definitely be a conversation starter.

Flip phones had their battery life stated in hours of talk time and days/hours of standby time. Early smartphones (pre Android / iPhone) did too, it wasn’t until smartphones started featuring larger screens and more powerful batteries that the batteries couldn’t keep up for more than a day or two.

This would encourage people to by more efficient cars, instead of just cars with bigger batteries. I think they actually added a figure for gallons / 100 miles to the EPA ratings a while back (or at least considered it), but nobody pays attention to it. IMO that makes a lot of sense becuase it better illustrates the…

You do use quite a bit more fuel going uphill, but it’s not quite double becuase you spend a lot of time storing up potential energy (in the form of altitude) with the throttle mostly open and at or close to its torque peak. If you could always drive at wide open throttle with the engine at peak torque cars would be…

How a company deals with screw ups is MUCH more important to me than the actual screw up. Of course, ideally they wouldn’t screw anything up to begin with. But that’s not going to happen in the real world when you’re talking about something as complicated as a car. As long as this isn’t the first in a pattern of…

damn... that’s absofuckinglutely right. Have the stones to pull the move Defector did. 

The second rule is.... (wait for it)...

My wife’s car. She prefers larger cars (currently a Honda Pilot) and I prefer smaller (Fit), so if we’re out running errands or taking the kids out and about we take hers and for my own personal driving and for commuting we use mine. If I had my way I’d drive manuals for the rest of my life becuase I love driving…

It was perfectly clear to me...

Aluminum isn’t that strong. And you can’t heat treat aluminum, that’s steel you’re thinking of. I’m sure it is plenty strong becuase it obviously has to keep the air pressure inside the cabin. But they only engineer it a certain margin above and beyond the strength it takes to maintain pressure. I’d rather not find…

When I was a kid I had a poster of a Countach on the moon. Or maybe some sort of asteroid, whatever it was it looked like they took the picture of a Star Trek set and it’s absolutely awesome. 

The whole production of the movie was actually a pretty fascinating clusterfuck. There was an oral history of it that came out about a year ago and as it turns out they got the movie greenlit by signing a massive merchandising contract with some toy company and that contract specified a hard deadline for a release…

Fuck that, the AVClub should just fuckin hire this guy already. This post has some strong “Friday Afternoon Buzzkill” vibes to me.

Honest question here, did he do well as a guest host? And if not, was there ever any reason to think that he would be a good host? I know he seems like a good guy and all that, but does he have experience hosting a game show? I think it’s a fairly unique job and skillset, so being an actor / hosting a kids tv show 40…

That’s a big part of what made Khan a great villian, and the action did add to the movie’s appeal as a whole, but in my opinion TWoK is a great character movie, not a great action movie. In fact it’s not much of an action movie at all, with only two battles and no physical interaction between the heroes and the…

someone could cut out 15-20 minutes of TMP to turn it into a properly good movie.

But it wasn't the violence that made The Wrath of Khan great. And the director's cut of TMP is actually really good. 

It’s all a matter of marketing. Foreign cars were not a significant consideration at the time so we’re talking about the big three American manufacturers. GM products led in sales figures becuase it was the bigger company and produced so many damn variations of the same name plate. As long as we’re looking at the…