Posts by John Brown (no body) 25368 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
"I have to imagine that if we can apply 40 or 50 or more years of gained operational knowledge, a brand-new fission reactor will be better, cheaper and safer than ones built two generations ago that are running today - which are still supremely safe."
Whilst I agree with you, I'll just throw this thought into the ring. Institutional and corporate memory. How often do we hear "Lessons Have Been Learned" only for the same mistake to happen again some years later as "Those Who Learned" moved on. The nuclear design and engineering industry is quite small too.
"A printed note isn't going to work for something like a major train station timetable."
Admittedly I don't use trains all that often, but don't "major train stations" have dedicated timetable displays? People need to refer to them all the time, so AFAIK don't ever show adverts anyway.
Already been done. I think there might have been a TV show, not sure, but I am sure I've seen this sort of thing on YouTube where young kids are given tech gadgets from before they are born and left to discover how to make them work. Things like wonder how to skip a track or read the playlist on Walkman, boot up a Commodore 64 etc :-)
"To all those youtube videos of people dragging old electric cars out of barns where they've been sitting twenty years,"
Local BBC news report from June 1975 heralding the beginning of the electric car revolution. It had a 50 mile range even then, 47 years ago. Looks like it used sealed lead acid batteries and took forever to charge from a standard 13A socket though. Clearly, as per the decades old attitudes, only suitable for "housewives doing the shopping" :-)
Wherever possible, I'll stick buying outright. ICE cars aren't going away for a few years yet, probably not for decades on the 2nd hand market. Being able to buy fuel, easily and conveniently for them, will most likely become a problem before the ability to obtain one does :-)
I'm just at the start of beginning to seriously consider replacing my current car. I might look at hybrids, but I've no idea if it's safe to be looking at 2nd hand there yet or consider only new. With my daily mileage, leasing costs get very high and even though it's used for business, I get a car allowance from my employer which is taxed as earnings. I can't claim tax back in the car in any way.
"I appreciate that California has taken this into account by allowing PHEVs"
They are an interesting stop-gap, but not always suitable for all situations. Non-plug-in hybrids are likely more useful for long trips since they have much smaller battery only meant for the slow, stop/start of city driving, the ICE doing the real work most of the time. PHEVs have a bigger battery, but rarely more than 30-40 miles worth on a full charge. So on a long road trip, that's a fair chunk of dead weight being hauled along that's little to no use on the vast majority of the journey. Both type of hybrids have the same disadvantage of the extra weight of the electric motors and more complex transmission and so dead weight on long trips.
There used to be some cars which were full EV in terms of drivetrain, but had a small, lightweight petrol engine used as a generator that could run at optimum RPM for maximum efficiency. I guess there must be a reason we no longer see them on the roads now.
"It's also just as inevitable that increasing electricity demand under the current circumstances is going to be unwelcome."
I see the "Just Stop Oil" or whatever they are called have been damaging petrol pumps at filling stations again today. The same day we see energy prices almost doubling. I wonder what their solution is to keep the UK moving and producing? There's wind turbines and solar farms appearing all over the place at a fairly rapid rate of expansion, but still we don't have enough to replace oil and gas like they want. I wonder if they also protest when a wind or solar farm is planned near where they live?
"We're in this situation due to cronyism and protectionism."
That's why regulation is needed. But in the US, that's "socialism", the great debate ender as both sides immediately distance themselves from any hint of socialism, which is seen as communism by the collective consciousness.
"Ah the universal 'we just need to spend more' solution :)"
That's not actually what he said, but it's a good sound bite.
What he said was to define an achievable goal and spend on that. In a truly capitalist society, that can be very difficult, especially when the target is short term profits driven by shareholders and stock prices. After all, why should the tax payers invest in power generation and distribution when the power company's make money from generating, distributing and selling power? It should be in their interest to provide enough power over good infrastructure since that should mean they can sell more power more reliably and make more money in the long term.
And not forgetting that cars are Public Enemy #1, even though exhaust gas pollutant emission have been drastically cut over the last 30 years and will drop further with more EVs on the roads. Now the anti-car brigade are running out of complaints, they've discovered "micro particles" from the tyres and brake discs. Suddenly, that's now a huge problem too.
Don't get me wrong, it is a problem, but I'm not sure it's a big a problem as is being made out. Risk:Reward ratio kicks. You can't eliminate all risk.
Out of curiosity, what is the average daily commute there? Here in the UK it's pretty low mileage *on average* so many EV owners won't need to charge every day, some might even get a whole week without a charge and with EVs it's how far you go, not how long you are stuck in traffic since the EV is barely using power when stopped plus the regen brakes. Having "played" with a hybrid for a week, I can say the 30 mile range of it's battery easily got me on a "typical" local commute of 10 miles each way, the ICE barely kicking in, so full EV with 100+ mile range should be good for that.
Full disclosure, I'm not in that average group. My daily mileage is in the order of 200-300 or miles per day and I can't afford an EV with that range. I'd need, at the very least, to be able to charge at each end, every day, and maybe even during a trip. ICE or hybrid are my only options.
"1. They made it look like one can drive straight to the Grand Hotel from Chicago. Not only is it on an island, and cars are prohibited except for emergency vehicles (fire/ambulance), but there is the issue of having to go around Lake Michigan, which makes for quite a long drive."
That's normal in TV/Movie-land. The locations you see on screen are "actors" portraying somewhere/thing.
I clearly remember my first realisation of this as a child when a TV advert for a car showed the young couple getting married on the steps of our local, very impressive Victorian era Town Hall, crossing a bridge about 10 miles away seconds later, heading north, then crossing the scenic moors which are south of the town. Because it was local and I knew the places, it just blew my tiny young mind that nothing on TV was "real" in any normal sense :-)
"If any elected official here in the USA suggests such a thing, they will be tarred & feathered and run out of town on the rail."
Maybe. It depends how it plays out. I don't know about the USA, but here in the UK there has been a huge shift to leasing, not purchasing, cars. All it would take would be a slow and gradual increase in leasing, "fuel", taxes, insurance costs and people start to think that maybe they don't need to lease a car 24/7, but just hire one when they need it. The younger generations are already primed for that switch as so many already lease or rent most of what they "own" these days, from music tracks to software, from phones to homes and sometimes even the furniture. So much of life is "...as a Service" these days and all paid for on credit. That's probably why so many are so worried about inflation right now. They own nothing and have no "backstop" for when things go pear-shaped.
I worry when my "dirty diesel" gets below about 48mpg. Cruising down the motorway at 70mph it's more like 57mpg. If I'm not in a hurry and sit behind a lorry at 56mph, 65+mpg is about average. But then UK fuel costs are tad higher than in the USA.
On a different note, I don't really care about cars anymore. It's a "tool" to get me from A to B in an acceptable level of comfort and reasonable (to me, not you! :-)) level of economy. I really don't care that it doesn't have a throaty roar like a Ford GT or Porche. I had a petrol/electric hybrid on hire for a week a while back. I was actually quite impressed with it. Good pull-away with electric start, got a little lower[*] mpg on the motorway, but significantly better mpg around town thanks to the batteries, averaging about 58mpg overall on the same type of daily trips I do normally
* petrol gives lower mpg then diesel anyway, but is also a little cheaper, so probably comparable.
"Feels kinda like the death of the Steam Locomotive. Sure, they're dirty, noisy, inefficient, slow... but there's a soul that an electrified train will simply never have."
That's true. There will always be collectors and enthusiasts, just as there are now for vintage steam, gas[*] and electric cars, as well as old petrol cars.
* Gas gas, not gasoline gas :-)
"especially since it's not like ElReg is the most "this is my serious face" example of reporting."
On the other hand, there does seem to be a slight slide towards more seriousness and little less frivolity in the headlines and sub-heads.
Paris is also gone. Coinkydink? Did she and Dabbsy elope? :-)
"Probably why they now check date of birth too."
I was quite surprised to learn there is someone in my GP practice with the exact same name as me. I only found out when I went for my flu jab last winter and after being asked my name, was then asked "which one? What's your DoB". The other "John Brown"[*] was booked in about three patients after me.
* that's just my Professional Commentard Name, a nom de plume if you will :-)
My response to a comment like that would something along the lines of "well, if you want to call someone out to fix something normally defined as user fixable, that's fine by me. Just remember that I'm not your personal servant and it may take some time to get around to tying your shoe laces for you.
Or I might be more diplomatic and simply point out a 10 second fix the user is normally expected to do themselves is far more productive of their own time than potentially waiting hours for someone to come out and do it for them.
In a hire car with electric button press handbrake, I was very concerned that it might roll away when I parked half way up a steep hill when it moved a few inches after applying the brake. So I did what I normally would in that situation, but this time with a feeling that I really, really HAD to in this case, and left it in reverse with the front wheels turned into the kerb. I had no confidence that the electric hand brake was going to hold for a few hours.
If you live on a busy, main road, they you indicate left and brake while pulling slightly out ready to reverse in, slowing in advance to give the driver behind a clue as to what you are about to do. I'd much rather take that chance than trying to reverse out onto that self-same busy main road with heavy traffic!
It's also a little cheaper. Reversing is using the worst gear for fuel consumption and can often involve a little more manoeuvring. Also, parking usually happens with a warmed up engine running with the auto-choke/fuel management at leanest fuel use. Pulling away is usually with a cold engine at it's most fuel hungry so driving out forwards will usually be smoother and quicker in forward rather than reverse. Not to mention that frequent practice at reversing into a parking space makes you more spatially aware, a better driver, and for more likely to get into a parking spot that other less experienced people might ignore or give up on when they can't drive forwards into it, eg parallel parking.
I must admit I don't often turn around to look when reversing. A properly adjusted rear view mirror in combination with properly set wing mirrors should be all you need in most circumstances, eg I set my wing mirrors so I can *just* see the door handles, and aimed slightly down so I can see the white lines of the parking bay as I start to reverse into it but still see a proper long distance when driving too. Obviously I also look around to see if or where any people might be and what they are doing, but I don't crane my neck around to physically look behind.
I've never hit anyone or anything when reversing. Or going forwards either, for that matter :-)
Reverse assists can be useful too. My car just has beepers the increase speed as I get closer. I've driven others with visual proximity indications and with rear view cameras. All are good, but tend to be over optimistic (or is that pessimistic?) with the distance you are from the object. They all take practice to learn to use properly. The first time I used proximity sensors I found the gap was much larger than I expected.
"Firstly, in the UK at least, it's perfectly legal to remove your seatbelt while reversing - this is to allow you to turn in your seat as required in order to be able to see properly. Audi should know that."
That sounds like one of the laws put in place when seat belts were first mandated and were fixed in place, manually adjustable, rather then the retractable style we now have. I've not felt the need to remove a seatbelt so I could turn around for a reverse manoeuvrer in many, many years.
"Next day there was a sign over each copier saying "to print duplex - press this button", to shrink A3 to A4 - press ... this other button."
Even today, it find a lots of people in offices don't know what "duplex" means. They do usually know how print "double sided" or "print on both sides". I could imaging a sign stating which button to "print duplex" would stump some people :-)
"What a lot of technology appears to have done is simply exchange one form of grinding toil for another."
New "grinding toil" has been invented to replace the rows upon rows of people who used to do certain kinds of grinding toil but were displaced by a very few people doing that grinding toil assisted by technology. Keynes envisaged those rows of people at desks being assisted by technology to the extent that those same rows of people would still be there, just for fewer hours. Instead, most of them were fired
A rural cell tower with solar panels, batteries and starlink connection might well be a lot cheaper than a "traditional" cell tower with a microwave link to the next tower and the next tower and the next tower before it finally reaches the main network. I don't think that's the plan, but it might be more viable than the traditional network of towers and infrastructure.
"Luckily my cars inbuilt sat nav - clunky as it is - does just show current speedlimits."
Out of curiosity, how often are you somewhere where you don't know the current speed limit based on road type and signage and what country are you in? Personally, here in the UK, I find that pretty rare. In fact, if anything, there are times where my Garmin SatNav shows a + sign in the speed limit icon because for some reason *it* doesn't know the limit, even though by reading the road signs, *I* do know the limit.
From your description, it sounds rather like FlatPak, Snap etc are equivalents of Windows installs where all the relevant libraries etc are provided with each app, bloating them up. Am I on the right lines here?
Full disclosure. I use FreeBSD primarily, with Linux and Windows coming a poor joint 2nd place :-)
I've often wondered about some of the SciFi speculations on weird compounds doing stuff we otherwise can't imagine and what we might be missing "because that's impossible" based on accepted science.
As Isaac Asimov is often credited with, it's not "Eureka!" that precedes the best scientific discoveries. It's more likely "That's odd" or "That's funny".
Maybe if we irradiate just the right type of Cheddar Cheese in just the right way with just the right amount and type of radiation, we too can make Cheddite and install an interstellar drive on a Jumbo Jet, or discover that there really is a liquid allotrope of iron to power spaceships :-)
(probably showing my age here, also the age of those who get the references)
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