141–150 of 166 posts
My guess before reading the article was that the ice cubes were made with heavy water. I'd pay $8 an ice cube that sinks[1]. 1. http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2006-07/ice-capades
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You'd be surprised. The $150 hdmi cable is likely manufactured alongside the $5 cables in the same factory, then just sold to different brands (Monster vs. Store-brand). It's fairly common... Samsung makes almost all the parts of the Best Buy store-brand TV's... they're essentially a slightly lower-grade samsung tv with the store-brand slapped on and sold cheaper.
I too often encounter cheap Ethernet cable which only works at 10Mbps because maker saved money on wires.
I don't think this is ridiculous. I remember watching this one scene in Star Trek Into Darkness where Kirk was sitting in a bar enjoying a drink. The drink that he was enjoying had this perfect spherical ice in it. I remember talking to myself at that moment that this is a very nice business idea. Retail price aside, I do believe premium ice is a viable business.
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They're not. They're actually paying for the del... illusion it brings. Just further proof that marketing doesn't actually need a product to succeed.
Maybe I should start selling Läce Oxygen, the better breathing experience certified to be fresh as it was extracted directly from a sealed room filled with plants. Don't breathe secondhand air from the mouths of peasants! Get Läce Oxygen! :/ EDIT: I was kidding, folks. ^^;
Please note that oxygen, even if mildly purified from what's in the athmosphere is one of the most destructive substances there is. If you're standing in 72% or more oxygen, a cough will burn you to a crisp. Much of the age related damage in human bodies is ultimately the effect of too much oxygen in one place at the same time.
I know how it sounds, but please do keep in mind : oxygen is toxic, makes anything corrode, burn or explode (literally, you can coax half the noble gases into burning in sufficiently pure oxygen). Keep in mind the human body consists of water, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen. Everyone of those will react violently with oxygen, and while athmospheric concentrations are obviously safe, concentrated oxygen is NOT[1]. For the love of God, DO NOT aim a can of pure oxygen at a flame.
And yes, concentrated oxygen can keep you alive with a damaged lung system (e.g. done to newborn infants, post-operational care, etc). Please do not confuse that with the idea that it's good for you. Please remember that 2-3% of people that that is done to end up with severe burns on their body (due to something unexpectedly catching fire with pure oxygen aimed at it). This is with professionals handling it.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1#Pure_oxygen_atmosphere [2] http://www.oxygenplus.com/
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But the high end drink chiller exists, and it is called "whisky stones" or similar.
Those are bunk. The cooling power of ice comes from the phase change from solid to liquid, which absorbs a ton of heat. The temperature change from 25 to 32 degrees Fahrenheit is minor in comparison. Whiskey stones do not change phase, and so they have a much smaller amount of heat they can absorb, and I haven't found them to be very effective for chilling a drink to 32 degrees and keeping it there. There's no diluti…
So, they're not bunk - they just weren't designed for your use case.
Of course, as another reviewer suggests, a cheaper way to chill your whiskey by a degree or two would be to put the glass in a fridge for a minute ;-) (Then again, someone else comments saying that "You don't want to chill your glass, because the moisture will effect your whiskey. You're still exposing your whiskey to the moisture (water) as the glass warms.")
As stupid as this sounds, there is actually a difference between these ice cubes and the standard variety. And that's the appearance. Just look: http://www.glaceice.net/uploads/3/9/6/9/3969825/3969289_orig... Because there's no air bubbles, the ice is perfectly clear. That's not a trivial fact. Humans innately like clear stuff! Just think how unappealing cloudy water is in comparison to clear water. The only exceptio…
You don't actually believe a product marketing photo matches reality? Any piece of ice will crack as it melts, so it won't look like this. Yes, you can avoid the bubbles, but you can hardly see the bubbles behind the cracks that will form anyway. Look at a marketing photo of a cheap McDonalds burger, and compare it with the real thing.
You can get really nice clear ice cubes at most grocery stores if you aren't hung up on what shape they are.
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Silver > Copper > Gold > Aluminum for conductivity. Gold is used as plating for anti-corrosion/tarnishing and wear, as the other user pointed out. It can be pressed extremely thin and still act as a good coating, so it's not really all that expensive.
At warm temperatures. Aluminum is a superconductor below 1.2 Kelvin.
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I'm pretty sure you can get clear ice cubes by just freezing hot water. Bonus: they actually freeze faster than cold water.
Maybe? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect Apparently the science of water freezing is still not that well understood
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> They're all digital connections, so the signal/bits are either there or are not. Absolutely not true. There is quite a lot of engineering behind making an HDMI or Ethernet cable work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_line And, there are plenty of ways to mess it up and make a cable that only sort of works. TMDS, the signaling mechanism that HDMI uses, does not have error correction codes. It does do some e…
Again, the bits are either there or they are not (corruption). I don't see your point, because it seems to back my earlier point.
What digital signaling does is fix some common failure modes of analog. The signal is balanced, so it's more immune to picking up and emitting noise. The electrical signal only has two defined states, so if you degrade the signal in some way (attenuation, noise), you'll probably be able to pick the right state. But, you don't get infinite ability to do that, only more. Eventually, the two states become indistinguishable, and then you can't tell which bit was transmitted to you. (But you can't tell that you can't tell, so you start picking bits at random.)
If we take this to the logical extreme, your argument implies that you can build an infinitely long cable with an infinitely tiny amount of material.
Reminded me of the Priceonomics article on diamonds, some business guy literally created a market for something found in nature