Posts by John Brown (no body) 25443 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
"I'm reminded of that chapter in Asimov's Foundation, where the declarations of some diplomat were passed through a logical analysis procedure to conclude that said diplomat had said absolutely nothing of substance or significance."
Oddly enough, that's one of the bits I remember from Asimov too. maybe we both read it at a time in our lives where it was highly appropriate and so it stuck. Semantic analysis was the term IIRC.
200 million times better according to the latest reports, for the knock down price of only £0.20.
My wife was watching NCIS the other day. The scene was in their forensics lab. There was an Amazon Alexa device there and in use. I know US TV in particular likes the money from product placement, and I have no doubt Amazon paid a pretty penny for that, but it totally killed any pretence at realism for me. I can't imagine a federal investigative agency allowing something like that on their internal networks, let alone somewhere where sensitive conversations are being had.
I wonder what percentage of unionised workers will be looking for a new job?
I especially wonder if Amazon UK might find they no longer need one of the warehouses and can shift the reduced delivery load to others?
An interesting statement. 12+ months wait time for a new EV and *only* 6 months wait time for an ICE equivalent. Back in the day, you went to the dealer and bought it off the lot unless you had very specific options you needed, and even then, it was a month or two at most before delivery.
Yeah, there doesn't really seem to be the no frill equivalent of the Mini, Fiat 126 or VM Beetle these days. And I mean the original incarnations, not the tarted up modern version full of bells and whistle. On the other hand, would those older no frills cars, or a modern equivalent, get past current regulations on safety standards without becoming the "bells and whistles" costly cars we are complaining about?
"so you'd have a hydrogen plant that randomly works for random amount of times when wind is blowing. at stupidly inefficient conversion costs."
I don't actually disagree with you, but is it stupidly inefficient if the alternative is to waste or not produce the electricity in the first place?
"when we already need extra capacity to fill stupidly expensive battery packs to fill in for no windy day's."
Isn't that what the "stupidly inefficient" hydrogen conversion is for? A storage "battery"? And, of course, if there's enough wind power generation installed to cover peaks, there'll be lots of excess to more times.
There are probably people who know more that might want to chip in, but I'd not dismiss it as an option out of hand. Windmills may not be the best long term solution, but that's where we are right now, so using the "waste" for something productive should be considered if and when there enough excess often enough to make it economical. (breaking the strike price generating cartel away from natural gas prices where natural gas is not part of the process might mean it never becomes economical though)
Prior to the "Dash For Gas" most UK supplied gas was "town gas" created by processing coal and was a mix of Hydrogen, Methane and Carbon Monoxide. Gas boilers and domestic cookers (and other gas using appliances) had to be adjusted or replaced when we switched to "pure" methane from the North Sea. Proposals to switch to hydrogen, or using it as an additive to the current methane supply is not some new tech idea we need to study and learn about. It's history, something we are supposed to learn from. Like having local storage tanks for gas to cover times of high demand rather than supplying it "Just In Time" to save on tying up capital in storage.
"The Government should consider cutting motorway speed limits to 64mph to reduce transport emissions and dependence on oil imports, MPs have said..."
That's a weird number to focus on. My first though was that it might be round number in km/h, but no, 64 mph is 103kph, still not a round number. I wonder why they picked it rather than 60 0r 65?
"It is actually quite ridiculous."
Considering the charger has to have a data connection to work and bill via the app, it's seriously time for government to mandate at least chip'n'pn payment options on all charging networks as a minimum. This mish-mash of every network using it's own propriety app with the occasional "partner" app, is just ridiculous. It's doesn't even need an XKCD "new standard". Just a mandate for and enforcement of an existing one.
So has our company. The lease offers (not purchase, lease only), go up in price until they reach a ceiling at 25,000 miles per year. I do double that and the lease company didn't even bother to reply when I queried how much the monthly cost would be for 50,000 miles per year!! To add insult to injury, their website lets you search for EVs by range and gives prices. But the prices shown are for the lowest rated car that happens to have a more expensive model matching the searched for range so you only find the real price after a few extra clicks or starting the "purchase" process. I could buy a new ICE car for the lease prices of EV and I'd still have a car to sell/trade-in after three years.
The stupid thing is, the company wants to "go green" but are doing nothing for those of us with probably the biggest impact on the environment.
Yes, there are many situations where EVs are the obvious solution. Primarily guided by either only ever doing relatively short journeys or being in a positions to be able to afford higher end vehicles with longer range. I'm in the unfortunate position of having to drive long distances every day but not being able to afford an EV with the required range to make those journeys without a charging break, no guarantee of a charger at the destination and/or the regular use of "fast charge" on the motorway which currently can be nearly as expensive as petrol and wears out the battery life faster.
I did have a hybrid on hire for a week a while ago. On long journeys, it seems better than a straight petrol, using fuel at an efficient 60mph on the motorways and using the batteries (only a 10 or so mile range!) for the bits where the ICE engine is least efficient, eg low speeds, towns, starting up, stop/start traffic etc. It average about 62mpg over the week, which is very good for petrol. On the other hand, I get that easily in my diesel car every day so diesel is probably better than hybrid/petrol.
Considering the remoteness of the village, it'd be interesting to know exactly WHY two DPD vans are on charge there. Maybe both drivers live in the village or at least fairly nearby. I can 't imagine the drivers "commute" to the chargers, but on the other hand, I've heard of stupider "solutions" to edicts from "on high" that are not practical in all situations, especially where green-washing is concerned.
"Not sure what you're talking about. 2nd hand prices of EVs are through the roof, even for older vehicles like the BMW i3, and vastly more so than for even sought-after gas vehicles."
I wonder why that is? It's not yet a mature market and I'd be very wary of a second hand EV without some very careful checking of the battery capacity and how it's been used. I suspect the demand for second hand EVs is more based on peoples wants and expected running costs, low emission zones, the high cost of new, some pressure to switch to EV etc, but few will be considering the different things to check when buying second hand EV compared to ICE. Then again, plenty of people already get stung buying second hand ICE because they don't understand how a car works and what to look for, relying on the seller to be honest (LOL)
"a hybrid with an electric motor and a petrol or LPG generator"
Apparently, that sort of hybrid used to exist, but are no longer made. It does strike me as the most efficent way of building a hybrid, ie much less complex drive train and the ICE engine can be smaller and run at it's most efficient speed to maintain charge. There must be some good technical reason that you can't buy one like that. I think they were called "range extenders" and what to my uneducated mind at the time is what I thought a "hybrid" car actually was. Little did I know then that a "hybrid" as we know them is basically two cars in one in terms of power generation with the downside of whichever power source is driving the car has to also pull the deadweight of the other power source, hence the battery range of hybrids being almost pointlessly low.
If the bottom falls out of the 2nd hand car market in the sort of time scale you predict, I'd expect many more people driving old clunkers to upgrade to a much nicer and now very much cheaper ICE car (which will actually have the effect of softening any price drop anyway). There's a LOT of people out thee who can't afford new or nearly new cars and will keep them running, even if the running costs and refuelling costs are climbing. It's exactly the same financial situation that causes people to continue with inefficient white goods or household heating systems. They can sort of afford the increasing running costs, but not the capital cost of purchasing something more efficient that should save money in the long run.
"How will that happen? All those second/third and fourth hand ICE cars happily being maintained and driven around will create a huge demand for petrol."
Maybe just poor wording on your part, but I don't see how a dwindling proportion of ICE cars on the road can "create a huge demand for petrol.". By definition, the demand is going to go inexorably down.
I was a little surprised at the sentence myself. It sounds fair for what he did, but incredibly lenient by US standards.
I'd be interested know what you think GEs financial loss is though. I'm sure GEs lawyers managed to come up with some very large number which the judge will have taken into account based on reality when applying the sentencing guidelines.
"lane-keeping is almost pointless because you have to keep your hands on the wheel, and naturally steer anyway."
Any Tesla drivers care to tell us how much pressure the steering wheel responds to? I sometimes drive with a very, very light touch when on a long straight nearly empty motorway, eg elbows on knees and hands barely touching the wheel at 20 past 8 position.
"70mph into the boot of a Volvo - which really was a solid lump of metal and took the impact better than the BMW."
To be fair, crumple zones are designed in at the front, less so at the back. It being a Volvo that was rear-ended just adds to the lack of crumple at the back :-)
Interesting that the Tesla didn't even to try to park in a UK standard sized car park space and made a dogs dinner of the parallel parking. If I'd bought a Tesla and the extra for self-parking, I'd be very disappointed.
I suppose it's not been properly "trained" on UK parking and is assuming larger US parking spaces.
I wonder how the US responds when a Russian or Chinese expedition rocks up next to one of their Antarctic bases to set up one of their own? Same situation applies in terms of territorial claims as on the Moon. So why are the US making these sorts of "worries" public with regard to the Moon?
Torrenting is probably on the increase after a decline when Netflix/Amazon used to be quite good and there were no other streamers. Now, it seems every studio/TV channel/Producer has their own streaming service. Too many to track down, let alone subscribe to. Maybe in 10 years, they'll all get bought out or merged into a couple of "big boys" again and it'll become usable.
"Personally I'd argue that Usenet fits the bill perfectly, but you're right."
Even Usenet has sorta been borged into a few very large providers. Few, if any, ISPs run a news server these days, something they pretty much all used to do. Many ISPs don't even offer email nowadays, and if they do it's often a branded gmail or similar. Likewise, webspace. ISPs aren't real;y "service" providers any more. The are ICPs or Internet Connection Providers.
"If releasing a piece of software to the bad guys would make the situation worse for someone, then that could be weighed against the benefit to the good guys before a decision is taken about releasing source code."
Not enough "experts in the field" to do that, so it will be politicians and civil servants wielding the rubber stamps, so most likely it will inconvenience honest and "good" people while the "bad" people will still obtain what they need one way or another.
I have memories of certain encryption methods on the banned from export listed as "munitions" from the USA. They were, of course, easy to get a hold of and s/w which had optional dependencies on it simply asked you if you were allowed to use it and, naturally, happily compiled and ran with the "banned" encryption included, no matter where in the world you lived.
"So having the power generation at the point of demand, with any extra being fed into the grid does seem like a serious option."
I wonder what the security costs of having an SMR on site would be compared to putting multiple ones on a single site and upgrading, where required, the local power lines and having only one security problem and one set of Nimbys to deal with? In an over populated country like the UK, I'd imagine it might be better to simply add them to existing nuclear sites already secured by Civil Nuclear Constabulary
"50 Try Amazon Prime free for X days."
My wife does that every 3-4 months or so. She (and sometimes me) binge-watch anything new and interesting that might have shown up since the last one and she has a carefully curated calendar/reminder set up to cancel before any payments are taken. She also saves up her shopping basket to get the free/next day delivery options while the free Prime trial runs. She's very good and now well practised at cancelling it. It's a just learned skill like with any other problem. She says it's a bit like playing an adventure game :-)
"A simple security fix should not slow a phone down."
Unless it's "fixing" predictive branching, rowhammer or whatever hardware CPU vulns have been discovered over the last few years that apply to ARM etc. Other than that, yes, those "slow down security fixes" do seem to coincide with when the OEM decides it's time for us to upgrade.
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