Posts by Snow Hill Island

Re: Still the next big thing

The problem with fuel cells is that they either consume hydrogen or hydrocarbons. A hydrogen economy is likely to be a dead end, and synthesised hydrocarbons are not energy efficient compared to battery tech. Biofuels should be abandoned asap because they're either grown on viable farmland we need to feed people, or require land to be converted to arable use which was otherwise growing wild. At least batteries are agnostic as to where their energy comes from, so we can choose the best option for the environment for their production and manufacture.

I *won't* be buying a fuel cell vehicle unless there's no other option.

Re: Props

Ion motors only work in vacuum.... (At least, with a decent efficiency)

Re: The ICE will be with us for...

Just to clarify, new ICE vehicles will be with us for 12 in the UK too, in hybrid form, but a "pure" ICE will only be available new for 7 years.

Re: The most useless metric ever: from 0 to 100 in xx seconds

"Materials wise, EVs are less expensive overall "

Have you got a citation for that? The cost of a reasonable sized battery pack using decent quality cells (60 to 80kWh) is probably equivalent to the rest of the vehicle combined That's why EVs currently cost more than a similar ICE car, at least in the price range I can afford.

Re: Surveillance

It was a prediction of the future. Pity the author got the date wrong by about 38 years...

Re: The charger numbers seem a bit low.

The trouble is, the process of building the charging infrastructure for 2035 needs to be started *right now*, and it's not happening.

Re: So technology works as intended...

"And yet the official figures from the US show that for mile driven Teslas has less accidents than other Human controlled cars....."

In the US, there are vast amounts of roads where pedestrians, cyclists and cars don't mix. I'm not aware of a specific comparison of the accident rate per mile driven for accidents solely involving pedestrians and cyclists and no other vehicles, which is what this study is simulating. (i.e. we're comparing apples and some form of root vegetable here. Oranges, being a fruit are too similar for this comparison...)

Re: F**k bluetooth for the in-flight entertainment.

"popcorn-free oxygene"

I had no idea there was a mashup with a BBC Radiophonic workshop tune.... My copy is already popcorn free.

Re: Why not test it on earth?

"Glass is more transparent and a lot cheaper"

....and many types of glass are strong enough to be used as a pressure vessel to withstand one atmosphere of pressure, as anyone who's owned a traditional thermos flask or a CRT TV can attest. You can also give glass coatings to reflect or absorb UV light which barely weigh anything because they're only a few microns thick.

Re: A thought experiment

"Facebook is dying a natural death anyway."

Clearly you're not in a circle of parents with school aged children. The kids all communicate with apps other than facebook, but the parents still use facebook to find out whether their little darlings have forgotten about the latest bit of history homework, or whether the teacher really hasn't set any this term...

Re: It appears from the article that Mr. Wolmar is a railway enthusiast...

"Why in God's name would I want to spend £20,000+ on something I'm not going to use much?"

Because otherwise you'll have to leave for work at 6 am and come home at 8 pm, because you'll find that the fleet of pods is mysteriously difficult to book during the rush hour.

The company buying the pods doesn't want to spend £20,000+ on something you're not going to use either...

Re: Who still uses farenheight for things like this ?

"Or I suppose I could do KCal, Ne(w)tons, and Celcius"

Make life easier for yourself, use Joules instead of KCal. And if you're working with steam tables, bare in mind you may well be using Kelvin rather than Celcius, or you might get some rather surprising answers...

"I use cheap cable (£7 for 30m)"

I use twin and earth cable, because it's what I had hanging round in the garage, but cheap doorbell wire would probably have been good enough. And I'd bet that no matter what I spend on cables, it won't sound any better despite them being the analogue part of the path in my setup. Once you've got a decent cross section of copper in your speaker wire, it's the quality of your DAC, amplifier and speakers that matter, so long as you route the speaker cables sensibly, and remember not to wire them into the mains... :-)

Re: I am obviously alone in this.

I enjoyed the film too.

Even though I found the "Weirding Modules" pretty irritating, they still somehow managed to not ruin the film for me. Saying that, I've tried (and failed) to enjoy other David Lynch films...

Re: Market saturation again

We have definitely reached market saturation. We're now in the situation where the consumer has to pay a large premium for a small increment in performance. as far as I can tell, the biggest bang per buck improvement is between the £20 to £30 android phones to the £50 to £100 phones, with the user experience only improving in small increments for each £50 spent above that. Even a landfill android phone that costs £20 on PAYG is OK for some use cases.

Given the above, what I don't understand is why the second hand phone market is so bouyant, apart from for iphones, where no "budget" model is (or is ever likely to be) available.

Re: Yes. We've always known the Internet is inherently insecure

With apologies to Douglas Adams:-

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly how to make the internet secure in a way which satisfies everyone, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

Some people argue that this has already happened.

Re: Old who

I quite liked Sylvester McCoy as Dr Who and Sophie Aldridge as "Ace". First assistant I actually liked after Adric.