My respect for Judge Richard Posner grows each time he speaks recently

Reshared post from +Talking Points Memo

Richard Posner: “I’ve become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy.”

Embedded Link

Reagan-Appointed Judge Defends Roberts, Says GOP Has Become ‘Goofy’
Judge Richard Posner was appointed to the bench by former President Ronald Reagan, earning a sparkling reputation as a conservative jurist. But Posner, a 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge in Chi…

Google+: View post on Google+

Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.

I spent 3 1/2 months in far northern Sweden with a couple of weeks in England thrown in. 

I was working for an automotive supplier known at the time as Kelsey-Hayes (which was later subsumed into Lucas and then later still into TRW but that's another story). We had begun work a few months earlier on a full speed traction control system that managed both the brakes and the engine torque.  Up until that time we had only done work on brake-only systems so we basically started from scratch. 

I spent countless hours that winter driving on frozen lakes, snow covered roads and even some heated asphalt and learned a lot about real world vehicle dynamics and how we could influence it with electronic control systems. Although I didn't know it at the time, many of the lessons I learned from driving and analyzing the sensor data would later be incorporated into enhanced ABS, stability control and even launch control systems. 

+Motor Trend Magazine takes a look at the differences between traction control and launch control in an excellent primer.

Embedded Link

Launch Control vs. Traction Control – Motor Trend
Just as closed-loop control systems have enabled powertrain engineers to extract more work from every drop of fuel, they're also helping vehicle integration engineers do the same when it comes to enab…

Google+: View post on Google+

Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.

Reshared post from +Mike Elgan

Best name ever for a dessert at a Cuban restaurant!

Spotted at the restaurant Asia de Cuba in L.A.'s Mondrian hotel.

Google+: View post on Google+

Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.

Every year or two +Ford Racing builds a run of just 50 Mustang CobraJets. These are factory built drag race race specials that competitors can buy and trailer directly from the dealer to the local strip. Most of the assembly process takes place right on the same line with all of the other regular Mustangs at the Flat Rock assembly line. Before the body-in-white heads into the paint shop the techs do some extra welding on the seams to extra rigidity and install a full competition roll-cage.

Google+: Reshared 1 times
Google+: View post on Google+

Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.

It's not about fighting fraud, it's about taking away votes from those that would vote for the other party

Reshared post from +Talking Points Memo

Wow

Embedded Link

Pennsylvania Voter-ID Law Could Disenfranchise Up To 750,000
The impact of Pennsylvania’s new Voter-ID law could be much wider-reaching than the state’s Republican officials claimed when passing the bill, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

Google+: View post on Google+

Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.

This is a fascinating concept for actively controlling headlights to minimize the reflections from falling rain.

Inclement weather at night is one of the most difficult and stressful driving conditions imaginable. In addition to reduced traction, drivers have to deal with little or no visibility. 

The demonstration appears to work very effectively although given my own past experience with engineering demonstrations getting something to work in the lab under controlled conditions is very different from doing it in the real world. In the lab the water drops are falling straight down and are unaffected by wind blowing sideways and vehicle speed. There also isn't any spray coming back at your from the vehicles ahead. 

Snow is another huge variable since the size of the flakes and their speed can vary even more dramatically then water. I certainly hope the CMU researchers are successful since it make driving much safer. However, I'm not holding my breath. 

Embedded Link

Carnegie Mellon researchers develop 'smart headlight' prototype
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon are working on a prototype "smart headlight" that avoids shining light on raindrops and snowflakes to reduce distraction for the driver. It works using a Viewsonic…

Google+: Reshared 1 times
Google+: View post on Google+

Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.

An excellent editorial from +Nilay Patel about the broken mobile phone market. 

The mobile carriers are just like every other industry that has been obsoleted and wants to maintain a business model. We're already seeing more people move to prepaid plans where they forego the subsidy for a contract free experience.

Hopefully once http://ting.com/ starts offering some LTE phones we'll start to see some more uptake on their approach of selling voice, messages and data by the bucket and only charging for what you use. 

Reshared post from +The Verge

Is the iPhone's success blinding us to a broken market?

Embedded Link

Five years after the iPhone, carriers are the biggest threat to innovation
Five years ago, the iPhone revolutionized the mobile business and kicked off a seismic shift in the technology industry that continues today. But the massive success of Apple's phone has overshadowed….

Google+: View post on Google+

Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.