Posts by Richard 12

Re: Why I don't understand Wall Street

Another rather large caveat:

Share price is mostly based on confidence.

Confidence that the last statement was true, confidence in a belief that the next statement will be better - or worse - than the last.

Confidence that the rest of the market is correct about how confident to be.

That's why bubbles happen, and why they burst - confidence is lost.

The "rational market" is a theoretical fiction. As a theory it's claimed to work often enough to be useful, but rarely predicts booms or busts.

Re: version 1.0?

This is still in the research stage.

The full specs in the press release will probably never be achieved - some of them are things consumers don't actually want (but possibly think they do)

My ICE car has a "book range" of 699 miles - 1200km.

I've used that (nominal) range exactly twice - taking it down to 50 miles indicated range.

In both cases, if I could have filled up in the hotel car park over the weekend then I'd have used half that.

If I could slowly fill up at home and at my destination, 350 miles would likely be plenty. Add access to fast chargers on major roads and it works even for the less than once a year trips.

That said, I doubt that my local substation can actually cope with a slow-charging EV in half the drives, or hotels with half their carpark charging at 1kW.

Infrastructure is, and has always been, the issue.

Re: There are, of course, reasonable exceptions

One that they're happy to argue in public, and don't mind being splashed across the front pages of every newspaper in the land.

Though you'd be hard pressed to find it on Reach news sites, buried in the deluge of crapverts.

Re: This whole industry is a self-licking ice cream cone

It is however rather more difficult to develop for macOS without an Apple ID, as you can't install xcode tools.

There might be workarounds, like using github Actions to do your compiling, but I don't think you can distribute binaries without said ID.

It appears to be impossible to develop for iOS without an Apple ID.

Some would argue that this is a good thing, of course.

Re: Security Risk MS Office

A couple of years ago it did that.

My work desktop never fully recovered, large parts of Office just vanished forever.

Re: Car wash mode

Yes, but there are times when it would be better if I could lock the vehicle without them folding.

Eg if I'm expecting ice overnight, I'd prefer they stay in the "driving position" rather than potentially needing to de-ice the mechanism before unlocking in the morning.

'Tis a minor gripe of course

Re: Neutral?

It is a requirement of roadworthiness that an average driver can stop the vehicle using the mechanical brakes with the engine "in gear" and at full power.

So if they met that, stomping on the brake pedal with both feet should still stop the vehicle.

It'll take a lot longer than it ought to, so you'll need a fairly long, straight section of empty road.

As well as a clean pair of undies.

That said, modern cars are fly-by-wire. The accelerator pedal is just an input to the ECU.

A sensibly designed EV should treat "90% brakes" as being "90% brakes, zero accelerator", regardless of the position of the accelerator pedal.

I'm not sure what my car does though, and tyres are expensive so I'm not planning on finding out.

Re: I like my smart meter

The standing charge is mostly to pay for failed suppliers who spent all their money on bonuses instead of hedging.

Re: It used to be that it just needed a new washer

They'll need remote monitoring of the level and input pressure so they know when to send someone out to fix the valve.

And of course, it's cheaper to connect the valve to the PLC that's also doing the remote reporting.

However, one usually doesn't connect the RX pin unless it's strictly necessary. So one wonders what actually happened.

Re: The government creates the rules, we just play by them

Something like 90% of people have trivial taxes and do not need any assistance whatsoever to file. They've got one or two salaried or hourly jobs, and that's it.

In most of the world they wouldn't file a tax return at all!

- In the UK for example, if you have one or two jobs HMRC work it all out each year and tell your employer how much tax to take out of your salary. At the end of the tax year they adjust so small discrepancies even out.

In the UK around 75% of workers do not fill out a tax return at all. Maybe 10% pay a tax accountant to prepare their return, generally because that accountant pays for themselves by knowing legal ways to reduce tax due.

The trouble in the US is that some companies are charging quite a lot of money for utterly trivial work.

Re: Not interested

The PII business is entirely about selling advertising space. It's just the other side of the coin.

That's a straw man and you know it.

Supply chain verification has been a thing longer than iPhone.

I'm sure pretty much every consumer agrees on the durability front, but Apple just make more money if everyone buys a whole new phone from them every time they drop it.

Re: EPOS isn't just the terminal in the shop

There's no barcode on loose fruit and veg, and when I get a custom pizza from the counter the person who assembled it prints off an on-demand barcode.

When I go to the petrol station and buy some diesel, car wash, lottery tickets, book of stamps, a bottle of milk, chocolate biscuits and swipe my supermarket loyalty card, each of those items has a different supplier and/or VAT rate, some affect stock and some do not.

The only genuinely unique requirement for a Post Office EPOS is the logo. It really should be off-the-shelf.

Re: This feels like an own goal...

Cases like this end up on the normal news if they reach court.

Probably the AI

Re: Flawed

What exactly stops Facebook spinning up a wholly-owned subsidiary or ten to sell the data unmolested?

Re: Sigh...

The civil service have been repeatedly gutted by multiple governments, but especially over the last 13 years.

Most departments are now massively understaffed and spend a lot of effort simply defending their existence. There's no slack for staff learning - though still plenty of budget for hiring consultants to hire consultants...

Councils have lost a huge proportion of their budget due to the reduced grants from central government that they simply cannot replace by local taxation - even if it were legal, the increases in council tax to cover that would be impossible to actually collect.

It would take a long time and a pretty dedicated central government to fix this.

Working?

Teams has very nearly crushed all competitors out of existence - and absolutely not on merit.

PaaS means you are locked in forever, and the supplier can and will raise prices forever.

Because you cannot leave.

As long as each ratchet is less than the cost of exit, they can raise the price forever.

And with PaaS, the supplier controls the cost of exit.

Do you see the problem yet?

Re: Wish them the very best

Probably not, because Outlook doesn't behave like Outlook either.

The fuel alone...

RP-1 with LOX is roughly the cheapest.

RP-1 is $2.30/kg, LOX about $0.27.

A Falcon 9 burns approx.

120 tonnes of RP-1 = $276000

285 tonnes of LOX = $76950

So $353,000 of fuel, for at most 1 TEU (20ft container) of payload if you're lucky.