Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: Sort-of inevitable

"competing with companies looking for drivers, which is less stressful."

That probably depends a lot on what the driving job is and where. I'm not sure I'd want to be doing deliveries in and around a a busy city centre!

Re: Not great news for youngsters

And with the cost of gas and 'leccy shooting up, hospitality are seeing massive increase in costs too. Not to mention the number of people no longer wanting to go into that industry after being laid off for so long, coupled with the difficulty of getting in foreign workers. Quadrupole whammy in that industry.

It might be somewhere for "unretirement" if looking for part-time, choose your own hours work :-)))

If not, there's always fruit picking :-)

Re: Scalability

FWIW I only ever seem to see electric Amazon delivery vans these days around my area. The size of large Transit vans. No idea of the range, but I suspect it's decent.

Ah, here's an atricle about them buying 1800 Mercedes vans. It only seems to have a range of about 90 miles, although MB claim the average van driver only does 62 miles per day. I'd imagine Amazon have charging points at the loading docks so they can top up between delivery rounds,

They're also trialling electric HGVs. I suspect they will be a short range only option for the foreseeable future though, where vans are not enough. It has a claimed maximum range of 155 miles between charges but doesn't specify if that's empty, "average load" for a 37t full load and as far as I can tell, can only be charged at it's Tilbury and Milton Keynes depots for now.

"Toyota. 12 gallon tank. 34 miles per gallon. That's 400 miles, at 70 mph that's 5.8 or so hours."

Must be a big, heavy SUV if that's all you get! :-)

As for charging costs, I've heard it said here in the UK that at current retail prices including taxes, those using EVs and charging only at commercial fast charging points are nearly up to or above the price as an ICE car per mile.

Commercial EV charge points pay full rate VAT (20% tax) on electricity while charging at home on the standard consumer rates only incurs 5% VAT.

"or belong to a union,"

The unions in the UK were originally against it. Especially when the tachograph was mandated to enforce the laws. "Spy in the cab" was coined as part of the opposition to both the rules and the device.

Re: Not union, it's the law

It doesn't, but Jake referred to "people who drive stuff around for a living", implying commercial deliveries, not commuters or holiday travellers.

Yeah, but you much less of the battery capacity in heavy traffic and get more regen braking. Battery capacity is more related to distance than time. Heavy traffic for 3 hours will be a lot less distance than 3 hours on a clear road.

Re: How?

Well, for a start, printing doesn't get borked as often by monthly patches.

"This is one of those dumb laws designed to pander to the twatocracy, which is bound to become a right, royal shitshow at some point in the future."

Is that what happened when micro-USB was mandated for phones? As with the micro-USB legislations, this one is also designed to adapt to future technology changes in that this one supercedes the last one.

100% agree with that last point. As I said in another post on another topic, the number of people who lift up laptops one handed, and always seem to manage to pick them up from the side opposite the power lead, thus bending the plug in the socket, is astounding. Invariably that's classed as user damage and not covered by the warranty.

(Lets not even go down the rabbit hole of people who lift the laptop up by the screen and at some stage will leave "fingerprints" in the LCD panel.)

"To say otherwise would be to say there could never be a connection better than USB-C."

For a connector capable of dealing with 100W, maybe up to 240W in some combinations, just how much smaller or different might be theoretically possible? Does physics allow for much smaller at these power rating? I find it pretty amazing as it is that the USB-C plugs and cables don't melt!!!

Re: "and any other device charged with a cable"

"I predict increased interest in wireless chargers."

Which standard?

Re: One wonders...

Not without buying an add-on.

Re: Finally

It might walk like a duck, but until you investigate further, you have no idea if talks like a duck or how fast :-)

Re: Finally

"We even had at least 2 different ways of wiring a 25-pin D-type serial connector depending on what it was on"

Which end? DCE or DTE? Or is it for DTE-->DTE? Hardware or software hand-shaking? Is one end a 9-pin D? Or an RJ-45? (Thanks Epson till printers!!), Or a round DIN plug (Thanks Tandy printers!!)? Do we need loop-back links across sone/any of the hardware handshaking to fool the device into software handshaking mode to match the other end? Is that 25 pin D connector on the device even a serial port? It might be a parallel printer port (Yeah, I've seen computers where the male/serial, female/parallel was the other way round to most others. On the other hand, that 25-pin D might be a SCSI port, eg ZIP drives and scanners.

Re: I look forward to the "UK only" versions

"Now we can make the buggers fit proper 13amp plugs to these damn telephone things."

And proper junction boxes on the wall so the four wires from the phone can be screwed into the spade connectors for a proper signal connection. No more of this "I'm in a poor signal area, I've only got one bar" malarky.

"One of the points of justice is deterrent. That only works if the gain is more than the pain that results from the illegal action. Poor punishment is poor deterrent."

Another point of the justice system is rehabilitation. Something the US justice system doesn't generally seem to be very strong on.

Re: Whose fault is it?

"Everyone is guilty in this case but there's hardly any punishment."

It seems to be on par with the Google settlement, although comparing the defendants incomes, Google got of way more lightly for a similar number of offences.

Re: Key question

Except that not all "legal persons" can be sentenced to prison or vote so a corporation isn't actually a "legal person" but a "very special legal person" with different rights and responsibilities from the meatbag "legal persons". Maybe it's time to redefine what a "corporate person" is and exactly what rights and responsibilities it has?

Re: Who are their lawyers?

"Their warehouses are DESIGNED to destroy cheap labour because it's cheap and doing a proper job would involve a lot of investment in warehouse systems."

I wonder if 3 shifts/24 hours of manual labour for a year costs more or less than the $20,000 Musk reckons his humanoid robots will cost? Is Amazon his eventual target market?

Agreed. Settled means "out of court", ie this isn't a fine in the legal sense. States should not be allowed to "settle" like this unless a very high bar is reached.

Re: Talked the price down

The SEC might have something to say about that. he's already had run-ins with the SEC for being a bad boy. I doubt they'd look kindly on unfair market manipulation, which is what you just described.

Re: This Might Not Be Over

I think it's more a matter or protocol and courtesy. It's a civil case, so if both sides reach an agreement which by definition is fair, then there's not much point in the judge insisting the case must go ahead. Neither side is going to be introducing new evidence or witnesses or putting on a strong defence or offence and at best, doing the minimum work required to not be held in contempt of court.

Submitting the agreement to the court is probably about making sure the settlement really is fair and there's no backroom arm-twisting or other leverage being used by a powerful defendant against a smaller, less powerful one.

Re: Congrats, He Did What He Agreed To Do

"This is like me expecting praise because I showed up for work."

What? You mean you *don't* get a tickertape parade every day just for turning up?

Re: staff leaving

"Twitter has had difficulty attracting skilled workers since Musk made his offer."

What's Twitters take on home-working? We know Musks attitude. Be there for 40 hours per week or be fired!

That's be a good reason to leave if Twitter are currently more relaxed with WFH.

Re: Humans have, because it can be a way to get around profanity filtering.

OMG! Clearly they've not updated their filters since about 1998. God help investors from Essex, Scunthorpe and Penistone! Or should that be Es***, S****horpe and *****tone :-)

Well, I for one thought it was blindingly obvious and welcome our new sarcastic overlords!

Re: Free Speech

"Someone should phone them and tell them how the Internet works."

That's weird. By definition, all servers are available from everywhere. Only if you take affirmative action to block others through geolocation or similar stops a service from being world-wide. So, yet another lie from a Trump organisation. The only "work" they need to do is to remove the blocks they put in place.

Re: You REALLY want me to buy you?

"Err.. No. It's like FaceMelta in that regard. If you're addicted to anti-social media, it's important. If you're not, you can try finding RealNews elsewhere."

While I upvoted you because I feel the same way, I should point out that with so many people using Twitter and other social media, it really *is* a powerful communications medium. It may not be ii a few years. Or it may be bigger and even more powerful. But don't mistake the fact so many use social media to post pics of their lunch or general inane twaddle that it's not powerful. The printed press have known for years the power of a headline and how to make the inattentive think one thing while the real meat (and sometimes truth) is a few paragraphs further down where many never get to. Twitter is *just* the headlines. it doesn't even bother with the actual story, maybe a link that many don't follow, they just re-tweet the headline.