Episode 131 [Discussion]

[chuckles]

The Digg Song!, 100 Things We Didn't Know, World Record Motorcycle Jump, Hardest Video Game Ever, Cop Tasers Himself, Solar Energy Has Arrived, Your Best Defense Against Crossbow Attacks

[dreamseller]

Sounds like kevins mic is off
and his tea is going to spill

[owlboy]

"Me, you, Jeff, Dan and Me are all left-handed. All five of us."

What? Did he mean Steve?

[eddyman]

anybody else think that kevin's mic sounded a bit crackly?

[balzout]

God I love this show...Its my love.

[frankiethewaffle]

Yes I did notice the mic thing too. And yes the count was off on the five. Saddest thing is, I thought he made sense. Although, I did realize he counted himself twice.

I guess the audio version left my math skills behind. Maybe I will catch it on Sunday with the video. Great show though.

For all those complaining about lacking quality, it is getting much better every week. However, I never did think the quality was falling off.

[lee7822110]

Anybody have the link to the video alex was talking about in 31:15?

nevermind found it: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=2598164

[varunkshenoy]

very good show, i don't have any issues with quality, and even if there are issues with audio/video, alex and kevin make up for it with their content and jokes.

but the fact that alex got his internet speed up by time warner because he had a fan there makes me mad (not jealous, alex deserves it.) Comcast/time warner suck. i hope FIOS comes to my neighborhood soon.

[sns]

I message Kevin on Flickr, with a link to the picture, which is on mmoinn.com, and while skipping towards the end of Diggnation I saw them discussing Kenn Y and I got super excited.

here is the link to my flickr with the pic. http://www.flickr.com/photos/joe_kalicki/2048927302/

[djoutlaws]

I'm glad kevin's mic was broken, I thought my surround sound was on its way out! :(

[xbob]

Not to tick anyone off, but i am too young to drink, and i am probably never going to once i turn 21. But, i hated how they spent their time talking about beer, because i wasnt interrested in the beer talk. But now that they gave it up for a month, i am more interrested in them and the show.

[nextgenxbox]

"Me, you, Jeff, Dan and Me are all left-handed. All five of us."

What? Did he mean Steve?

LMAO. I heard that too. LOL. I don't think he had coffee in his cup. ;)

Oh and diggnationfans@totatallyradshow I mean @gmail -- heh.

Great episode.

[techblaze]

I have Fios in NOVA rocking the 15/15 connection, its amazing. I usually get the best ping outa anyone on servers from wow, cod4, cs, you name it. I would highly recommend it to anyone. We also have the Fios TV hooked up, the picture quality is superb.

[bman]

I'm glad kevin's mic was broken, I thought my surround sound was on its way out! :(

Ohhh, same here! :)

[sniperzero]

I message Kevin on Flickr, with a link to the picture, which is on mmoinn.com, and while skipping towards the end of Diggnation I saw them discussing Kenn Y and I got super excited.

here is the link to my flickr with the pic. http://www.flickr.com/photos/joe_kalicki/2048927302/

LOL... The one they were talking about was on another website ... I was the one who sent the email in.

digg: http://digg.com/pc_games/WoW_gold_buying_website_features_Kevin_Rose_WTF
forum: http://revision3.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12954

[welch]

I have Fios in NOVA rocking the 15/15 connection, its amazing. I usually get the best ping outa anyone on servers from wow, cod4, cs, you name it. I would highly recommend it to anyone. We also have the Fios TV hooked up, the picture quality is superb.

Does fios use power supplies for the ONT tel side or is it plant powered? Other than the speeds, have had 20/5 for several years now at $50, fios doesn't seem to offer too much more than other operators.

[rkiga]

i upped the version of Hard Mario here:
http://files.filefront.com/hard+mariozip/;9390161;/fileinfo.html

it was in the comments of the original digg story, but people get scared when things are written in japanese characters, so i renamed it. scanned with nod32, clean. arrow keys are the only controls, space is turbo mode, which is useless.

[klipschfan]

My wife and I bought our Son-in-law a Cowon D2 for Christmas. I spent about a week with it to tweak it, to update the firmware, and to upload some content (including Revision 3 shows - I'm trying to spread the word.) I was a big fan of the Shuffle for the sound quality, but was disappointed that it didn't do FLAC. (Incidentally, you can still buy a new 1st gen 1GB Shuffle for around $35 without earbuds from a reseller I found online.)

OK, OK, Cowon D2. 52 hours of battery life for music including WMA, MP3, WAV, OGG, FLAC, APE. 10 hours of continuous video playback. B-E-A-utiful touchscreen 320x240 16mil colors. The model that we bought was 8GB flash, but it includes a SDHC slot that currently takes as much as 16GB (theoretical limit is 32GB). This means no hard drive skip, ever. Cowon supports Windows, Mac and LINUX! (Can't wait for RockBox support) It comes with JetAudio and JetAudio VX (Windows only I think) for video compression. Firmware upgradeable. Voice recorder and FM tuner/scheduled recorder. The tuner is pretty good too. I picked up a country station from a town about 50 miles away. Line-in recording and video out to TV (with a special cord). Very high volume output, BEWARE! I almost forgot, with the last firmware upgrade it does Audible too.


PS the banner ad on my page says Kevin and Alex are "rarely sober." Rather ironic considering the last show. Hell hath frozeneth overeth.

[vern2740]

To clarify solar power costs questions raised in episode 131:

Cost per watt means cost to purchase a panel to produce one watt.

Thus, the initial purchasing of a panel producing 30 watts will cost you $30 (at a $1 per watt).
This would be initial cost to be amortized over the life of the panel.

Per web site article:
http://hightechjunkie.mypressonline.com/?p=20

“Currently solar power panels cost $3 per watt.
In order to be competitive the price needs to drop to at least $1 a watt.
Nanosolar’s new technology claims output at $.30 a watt.”

If Nanosolar’s claim of “$.30 a watt” proves to be true, it would mean that solar power would be available to almost everyone.

[rvas]

Does anyone know what teapot thing kevin was using?

[lorax3]

I would also like to know where to purchase the teapot Kevin was using.
A link would be greatly appreciated.

[blazes816]

If I have to listen to TeaNation for the next month, I'm going to be a very unhappy camper.

Did anyone else notice Alex counted himself twice in the lefty countup?

[daikun]

Regarding the list of things we didn't know about last year...

1) Left-handed people as sinistral: Wikipedia has a whole article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-handed#Negative_associations_of_left-handedness_in_language) on the history of the literal meaning of the words left and right. Left-handed writers in ancient times were even punished for using those hands (true story). I was taught about this in my Philosophy course a few years back.

2) Peanuts into diamonds: Peanuts contain high levels of carbon, and that's what diamonds basically are: Carbon allotropes. You can read more info about how they're converted here. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/6244778.stm)

[darknessgp]

If I have to listen to TeaNation for the next month, I'm going to be a very unhappy camper.

Did anyone else notice Alex counted himself twice in the lefty countup?

yea, it seemed to me that they made more mistakes while sober.

[paulg57]

How about getting Alex to show off the Zune during the next episode, I would be very interested in seeing it.

[yearofwindowsontheserver]

Good show, still funny even when sober

Kevin: Zune marketplace DRM free songs are in MP3 :)
Alex: Sadly, zune does not natively do ogg vorbis :(

[nanoguy]

Solar panels are normally rated by the amount of electric power it can produced when exposed to direct sun light. So a 1 watt unit would output 1 watt when the full sun is shining directly on it. There may be some amount of averaging in the rating, because the moves across the sky, to it hits the cells at varing angles.

So if you wanted to run your 1000 watt power supply only when the sun is shining then you would need a 1000 watts of solar cell area at least. If you were storing the energy in batteries, then you would need probably 3 times the area or more to make up for the reduced power then the sun is not shining directly on the cells and to charge batteries for when the sun isn't shining. This week you would be in trouble though, too much rain.

With selling the power power back to utility, you don't have to worry about storage, since you are on the grid, during the night you just buy the power back that you put in during the day.

Kevin is correct, solar power units should be modular, so they can easily expanded or replaced as technology allows for cheaper cells. If we had a government that cared, they would provide standards, so each application wouldn't have to be designed from scratch.

The future is what we make it.

Nanoguy

To clarify solar power costs questions raised in episode 131:

Cost per watt means cost to purchase a panel to produce one watt.

Thus, the initial purchasing of a panel producing 30 watts will cost you $30 (at a $1 per watt).
This would be initial cost to be amortized over the life of the panel.

Per web site article:
http://hightechjunkie.mypressonline.com/?p=20

“Currently solar power panels cost $3 per watt.
In order to be competitive the price needs to drop to at least $1 a watt.
Nanosolar’s new technology claims output at $.30 a watt.”

If Nanosolar’s claim of “$.30 a watt” proves to be true, it would mean that solar power would be available to almost everyone.

[bayareaking510]

Does anyone know what teapot thing kevin was using?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005LM0Z/ref=s9_asin_image_1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=1FE3X90GRMXHN1CDKY18&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=320448601&pf_rd_i=507846

[vern2740]

Good additional info to know.

Solar panels are normally rated by the amount of electric power it can produced when exposed to direct sun light. So a 1 watt unit would output 1 watt when the full sun is shining directly on it. There may be some amount of averaging in the rating, because the moves across the sky, to it hits the cells at varing angles.

So if you wanted to run your 1000 watt power supply only when the sun is shining then you would need a 1000 watts of solar cell area at least. If you were storing the energy in batteries, then you would need probably 3 times the area or more to make up for the reduced power then the sun is not shining directly on the cells and to charge batteries for when the sun isn't shining. This week you would be in trouble though, too much rain.

With selling the power power back to utility, you don't have to worry about storage, since you are on the grid, during the night you just buy the power back that you put in during the day.

Kevin is correct, solar power units should be modular, so they can easily expanded or replaced as technology allows for cheaper cells. If we had a government that cared, they would provide standards, so each application wouldn't have to be designed from scratch.

The future is what we make it.

Nanoguy

[aznative]

An FYI on the subject of solar panels. Ill try to keep it short.

Here is some numbers related to solar and some misconceptions.


For most residentail households solar panels come in systems from about a 2.4 kilowatt hour system to a 10 kW system

So for example if you had a monster computer with a 1000w/1kW power supply and you wanted to run it totally on solar you would need 1kW worth of panels.

the sweet spot for a good return on investment right now is about an 8.4 kilowatt system which runs for about $53,000.

so thats roughly $6.30 per watt. There are some great incentives and tax rebates right now that cut the cost of the system in half in arizona.

So that same 8.4 kilowatt is only about 25,000 bringing he price per watt to $2.98/watt.


Nano solar has totally redone how they make panels and make them in massproduction by printing them off almost like printing newspapers, in big rolls.

So they are cutting the cost by 1/3rd.

Under the current system depending on your utility company an 8.4 kW system generates about $1600 a year, so that 25000 system will pay for itself in about 15 years (assuming the price of electricity doesnt go up)

Nanosolar will be able to have systems that pay for themselves in about 5 years.


Also, these systems dont use batteries( except as an option). You are tied onto the grid. Hopefully if you did it right, in the day time you will be making more electricity than you use and your electric meter will run backwards.


Now alot of people seem to think that you will get a check from the electric company if you generate more electricity than you use.

That is not the case in most states and ulitity companies.

What is required is that the electric companies credit you. So a typical situation here in arizona is that in january you will generate more than you use so that will give you a carry over credit to february. February is also the same and that credit will roll to March, April, then about May you might start to use electricity with the airconditioning on but then your credits start taking affect.

At the end of the year it starts over. If you generated more electricity for the year than you used you just lose that electricty.


You can use batteries on the system but that adds a lot of cost and usually wear out and have to be replaced every 5-8 years. So there is no cost benefit when the electric company will be the batteries for you by just running your meter backwards.

Hope this makes sense.

Theres a ton more but trying to keep this short

Kurt
Phoenix,AZ

[paulsahner]

I'm surprised Kevin and Alex had never heard of Magic Hat. Their beers are pretty easy to find in the NYC area (even my supermarket carries them). They have a whole bunch of varieties, though in my opinion Number 9 is the best.

[superunknown]

What the heck happened at the end? All of the sudden it changed into a giant Zune ad.


Kevin, you know damn well you're not going to use a Zune, it doesn't even work on macs. And the only cool extra thing they can do, wireless sync, it has to be in the dock to do it.

[do0d]

Not to tick anyone off, but i am too young to drink, and i am probably never going to once i turn 21. But, i hated how they spent their time talking about beer, because i wasnt interrested in the beer talk. But now that they gave it up for a month, i am more interrested in them and the show.

I'm sorry to hear you watched the show sober! I sure enjoy the beer/alcohol! Boo to this month/episode! $100 bet is not worth it when a good portion of the show is about drinking!

[darknessgp]

What the heck happened at the end? All of the sudden it changed into a giant Zune ad.


Kevin, you know damn well you're not going to use a Zune, it doesn't even work on macs. And the only cool extra thing they can do, wireless sync, it has to be in the dock to do it.

sounds like the talkings of an anti-microsoft fanboy.

[radzack]

I definitely agree that it wasn't very crafty product placement. They both have iphones which do everything the zune does and more...doesn't make much sense

[superunknown]

sounds like the talkings of an anti-microsoft fanboy.

No, it's just facts...

I, like everyone else, LOVES the xbox.

[dcalvaneso]

I definitely agree that it wasn't very crafty product placement. They both have iphones which do everything the zune does and more...doesn't make much sense

I don't know... I have an iPhone and while it's an absolutely amazing device, I don't think 8gb of iPhone is necessarily a competing product to 80gb of Zune2. If we're talking about the flash Zunes, then yes, the iPhone is much better by comparison (at twice the price).

I'm conflicted. I'm an iPod fangirl at heart, but the Zune really does look like an amazing device that's quickly gaining ground on Apple's audio players. And I think that's a great thing, since they'll be pushing one another to innovate, and in that scenario we're all the winners.

[bertie242]

An online version of the evil Japanese Mario game can be found here (http://www.geocities.jp/z_gundam_tanosii/home/applet/Main.html).

[viperssxt]

iohouj.....................