Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: Lithium is where you find it

While true, in that that is what will happen, there's not that much environmental impact from the actual mining. It's a few square Km that can easily be back-filled and restored. Unless it's a "special" area. The real problem is refining it.

The problem with most of Europe is that a minority of loud voices are against anything that might damage a blade of grass. I'm not sure exactly what some of the more extremist greenies actually want, but if they object to all forms of mining, they ain't getting any more solar panels or wind turbines.

Re: Lithium is where you find it

I remember a scene in Gregory Benfords Timescape where the people of Cambridge? Oxford? went on "mercury hunts" down the sewers and drainage system around the university.

My current car is approach 6 years old and 250,000 miles on it, so yeah, to some of us a million miles isn't a great deal. To others, it's more than they will drive in a lifetime :-)

But on that note, as someone else mentioned, the Waymo fleet is driving at fairly low speeds in specific geofenced areas of a city. The number specified for human drivers isn't limited by the same factors and includes all type of driving on types of roads and conditions. There are probably no stats for human driven accidents only in similar conditions so the comparis is almost certainly invalid.

Re: Gross misunderstanding of the tool

Well, there seems to be a couple of Alexander Hanffs in Poland. I didn't search any further since Google has many, many li9nks to to the author, but it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that ChatGPT isn't able to tell the difference between people, or at least not always. That could explain the incorrect place and date of birth and the incorrect report of his death. But this still doesn't explain why ChatGPT then went on to make up fake obituary links other than it went down the "create a fictional story" path based on the "facts" it had already discovered.

Tomatoes are vital for powering calculators

"I believe there are longwave radio systems designed to work undergroud."

What sort of data rates can you get over long wave designed for that situation? That might be the primary deciding factor.

Re: People move around shocker !

Agreed. The bit of the article that states "The bottom line is that steel was being used in Western Europe without any external influence bringing it to the region," seems to be a bit of a leap and/or a great assumption. It is absolutely likely that steel was invented multiple times in multiple locations, but nothing in the article makes the Iberians steel definitely a local invention. Trade and knowledge transfer has happened for a long as humans have "owned" stuff and that far back in time it's nigh on impossible to definitively state if something was invented locally or the knowledge was imported.

And, of course, it IS interesting and valuable research, pushing back the dates of steel production and usage in that area and helping us understand a little more of the history of humanity.

Re: The dangers of certainty

"also involved behavioural changes,"

On the other hand, if those behavioural changes helped people understand a little more about the situation and helped, then who can say if those same behavioural changes could have been achieved by other means? Actually wearing a mask may or may not have been helpful, but the behavioural changes that mask wearing caused does seem to have helped.

You like the taste of piss and use an icon of a pint? You must be a yank![*] :-)

Yes, yes, I KNOW the US has some some excellent craft breweries, but your average everyday folk still drink Bud and Coors.

Re: Read the article - it's worth it...

...or discuss your pay rise with a recalcitrant boss?

Re: Cuury and Guiness

"Next morning, Stand Back."

Just remember to avoid the peanuts at the bar. Or worse, make sure to avoid sweetcorn. Unless you like pebble-dashed walls.

"I'm sure the scales are WAY off for that, but it's an amusing thought."

Upvoted for the idea :-)

But, or should that be butt?, scaling up or down with liquids rarely works well. Just look at the difficulties experienced by modellers in the TV and film industry when it was actual models, not CGI. Scaled down ships could look ok, but the water never quite "worked", even with all their cameras trickery and film playback speed adjustments. Same with fire and explosions. What works on a tiny scale with a miniscule nozzle, a tiny drop of pee and some frequency adjustment isn't likely to translate when trying to eject a football[*] sized "droplet" :-)

The round one, not the faux one that's more sort of ovoid and rarely kicked so not really a "foor"ball :-)

PS. Did these researchers just discover biological inkjet printer nozzles? Didn't Canons Bubblejet technology use piezo crystal to eject the ink droplet? Or was that heat and HP did the piezo thing?

Re: BOFH tampering..

For non-UKains, Taken Without Consent, or TWoC, is lower down the scale than theft since it's the crime of taking something, usually a car, without the intention of permanently depriving the owner, eg joyriders, or even just taking dads car without asking him and getting pulled over for no insurance or having prang and cops arrive on scene.

Re: Invention

At least they can't use "on a mobile device" this time around. We have legs! :-)

Re: Speed Limits

Auto-dip? Oh FFS! It's bad enough we have to suffer people driving with headlights on because it's a bit cloudy, or nearing dusk, where sidelights are all you need. I've seen car auto headlights come on because the sun is low in the evening and the road goes between embankments. Coming out the other end, the sun is still shining, I still need my singlasses on, but all those "clever" cars don't quite see enough light to turn of the fscking headlights.

Worst case was dealing with a driver who was in a hire car without auto headlights and didn't know where the light switch was so driving up a motorway in the dark without lights. Stupid driver was old enough that auto-on headlights were not around when he passed his test but still thought it ok that if he didn't know how to switch the lights on it was still ok to drive. Allowing drivers to think they can switch to full beam always and let the car worry about when to dip them is just asking for trouble when we have people like that on the roads.