Posts by Jellied Eel 5560 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Aug 2008
I try and avoid HVDC on account of never wanting to find out how an arc lamp feels.
Or just watching photonicinduction's YT vids. I did once go look at a pretty impressive crater in the A4 near Newbury where all the magic pixie smoke escaped an oil insulated cable. And managed to shatter a water main, and our 288f cable.
A while ago, 'Skeptical Science' tried to compare global warming with nuclear bomb equivalents. Which was amusing given it's less than the typical energy unleashed by a decent storm.
But climate activists often do that. Hurricanes are proof of global warming! Except hurricanes can be tracked by IR satellites as they suck heat from the surface to radiate it away. Those climate scientists probably think the windier it is, the warmer it gets.
Then again, windmills can create climate change thanks to boundary layer and turbulent mixing. So downwind land can end up drier. Plus the effects on insects, birds and other wildlife.
On the plus side, pumps run on electricity. Which can be produced by taking some of the tank's contents out, pouring it into a petrol or diesel generator and away you go. Priming the pump as it were. OK, so I guess you could use a wind pump, but that probably wouldn't be spinning.
Some EVs might manage to get juiced up given superchargers can rely on diesel or gas gensets.
Someone doesn't understand the difference between energy and power. The 'renewables' lobby does, and so picks favorable, but meaningless metrics. So it delivered lots of GWh over the year. Yey! Unless you do some quick math based on installed capacity and hours in a year to come up with a capacity factor of 30% or less. Or the hourly average production vs demand.
Either way, no amount of hot air from the 'renewables' lobby will make their windmills spin on a calm day. Brinnelling motors can, but that's just to create an illusion of usefulness and protect bearings. Also means windmills are consuming power, not generating it.
So if your DC needs 10MW on a calm day, you'll need to source your electrons elsewhere. And decarbonisation just makes it worse by increasing electricity demand.
Not all the time. But that's just the problem with wind. If there's no wind, Scotland would have to import from the rest of the UK, or elsewhere. There's sometimes the reverse problem when there's more wind than demand, in which case 'constraint' payments are made to wind farmers not to despatch it.
I'm sure Scotland's policy of ending fossil fuels and relying on the weather will be fine though.
At a guess, cost. Downside to Scotland is limited network availability compared to other datacentre hotspots in the UK and Europe. Same may also be true for power, or power density. No idea what it'd cost to add say additional 10MW diverse incomers, or the supply risks from Scotland focusing on wind. DCs want power 24x7x365, wind can't deliver that.
Bah humbug. What's inside the pod, if not overpriced instant? Which may or may not also be CaaS and include DRM. Alternatively, instant comes from a bulk dispenser, with strength adjustable not by button, but by choice of spoon size. I did also try making my own with a vacuum drier before that broke, possibly in a cause & effect way. Which I guess also demonstrates that some production is worth outsourcing.
Sadly not entirely true because care homes became early hotspots. Either because of poor policy, like clearing hospital beds back to care homes, or because they're where the most vulnerable are clustered. But 'protecting hospitals' has also had other consequences due to appointments and operations being cancelled. Case in point being delays in diagnosis and treatment for cancers.
By prioritising Covid, non-Covid deaths will have increased. Then again, some measures may have reduced mortality. Last winter didn't seem to have many flu deaths. Could that be down to masking and distancing, or because those deaths were coded as Covid instead? But that's just part of policy. Die for any reason within 28 days of a positive test and you're a Covid death. Or just having Covid mentioned on a death certificate, even without a test or autopsy.
And of course 'breakthrough' infections amongst the fully vaccinated. If we also have more effective treatments, perhaps it's time to focus on that. Some would disagree, like the drug dealers looking forward to 3 month cycles that align nicely with quarterly profits an bonuses.
Obvious explanation will become clear as rover gets closer, and additional detail resolves. Like traffic cones, some hazard tape and a small hole.
It's just one of those universal laws. Wherever there are vehicles, there will be roadworks. If the moon had trees, there'd be traffic cones in those as well.
I never really understood that. So Win10 often spends a lot of time searching and indexing. I guess this is because MS likes to hide what's happening under the hood. Or doesn't know, so is constantly searching for meaning.
Then when you try to find something, it wants to go via Bing. Maybe that's because MS knows you're as likely to find your file faster on the 'net than on your own PC. But you now when it happens because things slow down, Edge gradually edges into memory, and a list of sponsored links appears. And then probably sucks up more cycles adding those results to a local index. Which you can't view because using an index to find stuff is an old-fashioned concept.
I then after closing Edge, you find it's still wasting memory. Luckily task manager is still there to terminate it.
I live in hope that some day, MS will allow a minimalist mode that only loads essential services into memory. No matter how often it looks, mine is never going to find an XBox.
Your experience is part of the problem with 'cases'. Normally that would mean requiring some form of medical intervention. And testing should really be for viral load, not antibodies. As you say, you'd expect a positive as you'd have antibodies from both vaccination and exposure. But that shouldn't make you a 'case', even though you're still meant to report the result and self-isolate.
But just be glad you're not in North Australia, where a positive result might mean being forced into a quarantine camp. And then charged 2,500 for a 10 night stay.
You aren't really refuting anything, only stating your opinion. Or as wiki might say citation needed. Which is back to FUD. Or perhaps the Bbc is right and vaccination only works on the arm you're injected in.
Otherwise, we know more than we did a couple of years ago. Vaccines aren't as effective as originally claimed, especially against the new strains. Claims like 'it makes you less sick' need supporting evidence. Is that as a result of the vaccines, milder strains, better treatments etc etc? Or although Germany has experience forcing medical procedures on undesirables, what's the point, if people will still be infected and infectious. And despite some experts re-writing science to claim naturally acquired antibodies are inferior to those from patent medicines, there's little evidence to support that claim.
But I guess Germany could try something useful. It knows 30% of it's population hasn't been vaccinated. It doesn't know how many need to be. So it would be interesting to do antibody testing first to see how many of the unvaccinated population have acquired natural immunity from previous exposure. And I suspect that would be a high percentage, especially as for a lot of people, they may have experienced few or no symptoms.
Germany seems to be heading that way. It has around 30% of it's population currently unvaccinated. Who'll now be treated to special measures for refusing to follow orders. Meanwhile, the 'fully vaccinated' will be free to shed & spread the virus, as well as falling ill. In which case, there seems to be some good news, if Omicron infections are mild.
But such is politics. Cases must be counted and placebos administered by hippocrytic oafs who don't seem to understand that vaccines need (generally) tailoring to a specific strain. And over time, populations develop natural immunity.
I guess the devil is in the detail. So what is the difference between the 27 reported case and the unreported?
I suspect the reported were too sick to work. Rest may depend on policy conflicts and the lousy definition of a 'case'. So someone gets a PCR test, it comes back positive. AFAIK, that positive is meant to be reported by whoever administered the test, or by individual if it was a self-test. And then the individual is expected to self-isolate. Presumably they're also expected to inform their employer as well to explain their absence. Hopefully Amazon didn't expect the person to break quarantine and work. But there may be the possibility that a person went to work anyway, in which case, would Amazon know?
So it seems a bit confusing. I don't know if test protocols mean employers are automaticly informed. If so, that has privacy implications, ie sharing sensitive personal information. But employers probably should know because it's an infectious disease that could infect the rest of the workforce. And then there's the measures that may or may not have been in place to protect employees. But if they're not actually sick, what obligation does the employer have, if it's not really a workplace injury, and the case should have already been reported?
But seems like an interesting challenge because I guess from an epidemiological point, you want to be able to track the spread of infection, which means knowing about carriers and potential contacts.
But there's still a lot of Covid FUD, or just outright bollox. So the EU is mulling mandatory vaccination, even though current vaccines don't seem very effective. So reports of people being infected with Delta, or Omicron despite being 'fully vaccinated'. But that's to be expected given vaccines don't always work, especially against a virus that mutates. So should policy shift to treating people who actually get sick, rather than wasting billions chasing a moving target in the wild?
Especially as there are also risks with vaccination. So the Bbc again. It has a helpful explainer about the thrombosis risk, with researchers proposing a potential mechanism. And a nice graphic that explains the process. But also says It is injected into the muscle but sometimes leaks into the blood stream. . Which clearly shows their health reporter has little clue, so sadly normal for the Bbc. The whole point of intramuscular injection is the muscle has a good blood supply to distribute whatever has been injected, so there's no 'sometimes' about it.
People are strange.
So Scotland had an attack of the weather. People have been without electricity most of a week. The dear'ol Bbc has been examining the human cost. One person had been unable to brush their teeth because their toothbush was flat. I had to think about that till realising they had a power brush, not a dependable collection of plastic powered by ATP.
But that'll get more fun with EV mandates, and an inability to charge those. And heat, given decarbonisation means more reliance on electricity.
Greens are strange.
Especially when the pro-cloud argument seems to be it's good for the environment. Even though clouds feed from the same generating mix as on-prem servers. And a large datacenter would be a large energy user, so expected to pay more to subsidise carbon traders and wind farmers.
DHCP stands for Direct Human Control Protocol. It's quite ingenious and the reason large monitors are expensive. There's a lot of nanoscale space between 1 and 0. This is used by DHCP with nanobits interleaved with regular sized bits, and allows wetware and hardware host pairing, along with Direct Control.
It's the reason why people feel anxious when they have no signal. It's simply the nanobots trying to reconnect before their host's lease expires, and they expire with it. It also explains why both Big Data and governments want 100% broadband coverage so the sheeple are never out of contact with a DHCP server.
Furthermore it explains some of the reported symptoms like tiredness and sore arms. The uninfected have videos showing Prime vans collecting 'sleep walking' hosts being collected, taken to a warehouse and being returned later. It's also why the expression 'head in the clouds' has taken on a terrifying new meaning. We only use around 30% of our brains (much less in many cases) and Big Data hates to see an under utilsed asset. So that 75% idle capacity is rented out, and hosts are utilsed more efficiently.
This is also much better for the environment, and the bottom line. Silicon based hosts consume a lot of space, heat and power. Meatware hosts essentially self-provision, saving Big Data billions each quarter. And assets who managed to infiltrated the recent COP (Control of Population) have discovered the next phase. Meatware nodes are being encouraged to install heat pumps. These make little economic sense, unless you realise they can capture waste heat from compute nodes and turn that into saleable electricity.
Of course 'fact-checkers' will deny these obvious truths, but they either work for, or depend on Big Data.
(I kinda wonder if the drug dealers regret ever mentioning nanoparticles. Also pro-vaxxers, don't get too smug. After all, you're only following orders. And replication has always been part of both viral life, and the Prime directive. So get your booster shots, which contain a number of important updates!)
Papers should include the data and methodology used in the paper, or as supplementary information. This doesn't always happen. One of my favorite examples came from climate science where a novel technique called 'Rhamstorf smoothing' was used. And it eventually turned out to have been a standard triangle filter. Other times, data aren't included at all.
Not sure what the solution should be, ie including documented source for a climate model might be excessive, but it should be open to peer review. And I guess how much software engineerin we should expect.
I'm guessing a CFO would wonder why they should pay $100k up front per silo. Then maybe ask the CIO for a full inventory per silo to see how many $100k payments they'd need to be fully locked in to Cisco. I mean flexible licensing.
Bold move by Cisco as it'll give large enterprise customers a good reason to look at service costs, and perhaps alternative vendors. It could make life easier for SP customers who are managing multiple enterprise client networks though.
You seem to be missing a few points with your whataboutery. You can't just shoot someone and then claim self-defence. You might if you were being attacked, or if someone pulled a gun on you. You also can't just shoot someone because they were a convicted paedophile.
I'm also puzzled why you think calling someone a white supremacist isn't defamatory. Or why you think being a Trump supporter also makes you one. Or even why supporting law enforcement. Or the 'ok' thing, which presumably means all divers are racist. Then again the far-left does rather overuse the race card, possibly overcompensating after old-world Democrats like Robert Byrd.
You could argue that not carrying a gun in a riot is stupid. Personally I think the best thing to do in a riot is steer well clear of it, and certainly not stand post solo. But there'd been serious rioting in the 'fiery but mostly peaceful' town.
But as with RobinHood and it's flash mob, the media arguably influenced events. With Rittenhouse, that became the 'white supremacist murderer' meme, and didn't look at the background. One event that stood out for me was who fired first? That turned out to have been Joshua Ziminski, who fired a shot as Rosenbaum was chasing Rittenhouse, and Rosenbaum was then shot. So Ziminski was the first 'active shooter', and was later charged with misuse of a firearm and arson. Arguably that was kind of a 'yelling fire in a crowded theatre' moment that escalated the situation. Rittenhouse was charged with reckless endangerment, which IMHO was a charge that should have been brought against Ziminski.
And then there was the prosecutor's star witness, Grosskreutz, who was illegally carrying a firearm and was shot after pointing it at Rittenhouse. I don't know if the prosecutor did a deal in exchange for testimony. But a very messy situation with multiple armed people travelling to Kenosha and violating the curfew order.
Personally, I rather like the UK approach. Don't take firearms to a riot, and if you do, it makes it easier for AFOs to identify criminals.
Well, for a start there were plenty of people who called Rittenhouse a white supremacist. There was also the Independent, which reckoned he shot 3 black people. Or the prosecutor, who seemed to think that being armed means you cant use those arms in self-defence. Or that going to help protect property is bad, and armed protestors should be allowed to riot in peace. So thanks to the media, you can hold the view that this was murder. Trial and verdict disagrees, but such is politics.
There was no (successful) monkeying with self-defence statute, because the prosecutor's attempt to do that failed.
The 'clown' didn't have an AK-47, didn't wander into a crowd, and was found not guilty on all charges. And now he and his lawyers might sue a lot of media and individuals for slander and libel.
But such is politics, and the sad state of our media. But I guess that's also true in this case. So dismissed because there was no case. Selling order flow may be rather scummy, but isn't illegal, neither are placing limits or restrictions by a retail brokerage. To me, there was a lot of hype from the media that turned the whole thing into a bit of boiler room job.
I guess its a teachable moment. People have been unlocking cars for decades using keyless entry systems. Not always their own cars either.
I'm curious what went wrong. So a 5000 error suggests phone could contact server but and unhandled error. So owners left looking at cryptic message instead of a functional car. I'm guessing car to phone pairing doesn't normally depend on network availability so people can drive when there's no signal.
But seems like a normal IT risk in depending on something that shouldn't be required and might be unavailable. A key seems a more reliable solution.
There's a lot of irony. Smart Care can be a bigger risk to network stability, as well as security. Best practice has always been to expose your control plane to as few people as possible. Now, official vendors expect Internet access to make sure you're paying the right amount of pounds of flesh.
And that exposes what should be obvious risks, like DoS attacks against vendor license servers, customers being DoS'd by their vendors because those servers are down. Or potential shennanigans like maybe a spoofing attack that revokes licenses.
But when this first kicked off, I'd been designing a managed Huawei core for a client that had some sensitive customers. The official government guidance was (and I think still is) classified, but the client had been informed, and we went through risks and mitigation. But that was all best practice around limiting and securing the control plane, along with monitoring for suspicious or anomalous activity.
But there were also political risks. So the evil CCP kills the Internet! In which case, it'd be a rather overt and hostile act, and probaly a prelude to something imminently kinetic. So there'd be bigger problems to worry about. And I'm pretty sure Google, Amazon and Microsoft have caused more large scale outages via config f'ups than Huawei ever has.
But such is politics. So a potential risk was DoS by trade spat. China is evil, so they might block exports. Which ironically is exactly what has happened, except not by the Chinese, but by our own governments. Obviously rip & replace is hugely expensive and disruptive, and those costs will have to be passed on. Sure, there's some good political sense, ie encouraging domestic supply, but that can be a slow process.
And we now have the strange situation where civil servants are essentially in control of vendor selection, and vendors could quickly be added to the naughty list after an SI gets waved through Parliament.. Which may be as a result of lobbying. But a neat example of regulatory capture, with potentially huge consequences, and no real accountability.
Do it!
I had a fun week in Frankfurt being indoctrinated so I could sell Cisco's telepresence gear. In which I learned more about CallMangler than I wanted. Like the brain being basically an under specced and very over priced linux box. And then some fun conversations about why we couldn't just spin that up in our cloud as a VM. Then we could manage the environment and do sensible stuff like simple backup imaging and synchronous replication for DR. But Cisco wants to flog huge margin tin, and of course 'services'.
I can't remember if they did decide to allow a virtual Mangler, but a number of other large carriers were pushing for that as well. Although Cisco pitches itself as 'carrier grade', it often isn't, which can make it a major PITA to offer their stuff as a service with a decent (and honest) SLA. Or being told we could promote their stuff as a 'cloud' service, when realistically it was just hosting core tin in an off-prem DC. Which also creates problems and costs to rack, feed, and manage their tin.
Their was also some other fun stuff. To get their top-end Telepresence solution certified, the room had to meet Cisco specifications, which meant some construction needed. So it was fun telling project managers that they'd need to manage building contractors to code and to Cisco. That also went as fair as paint. ISTR Cisco had done a deal with the holders of Bob Ross IP , which meant a choice of 3 Cisco Powered paints. Exorcist Green, Diarrhea Brown, or a slightly more tolerable blue. Wrong paint, and Cisco wouldn't take the solution into support.
Funnily enough, after talking to other CCDAs, they had the same thing, the cert trains you to push tin, but also when & why not to push Cisco. Their were also other potential challenges. If you're an honest engineer, you design a solution that's best for your client. If you're a Chartered engineer, you risk losing that status, if you knowingly offer a solution that sucks donkey balls. Even if that's the vendor certified design.
But TL;DR Bismarck was dead on about sausages. VoIP and video are mature and more open technology now, and there are a lot of good and cheaper solutions on the market. That includes core services, a slew of VoIP handsets as well as important stuff like regulatory compliance for logging. And there's a good push for open source solutions, either managed or DIY. You may not see those saving Jack Bauer, or in a Marvel show, but they work. And you can often get better support via Reddit or Discord than a big vendor's TAC. It shouldn't be a suprise that large carriers like AT&T have been moving in that direction.
Last time I think Cisco tried was with the 15454 switch they bought in. Added to my collection of polo shirts. But I've also got a few from Infinera, which although post-dating the 15454 are proper optical switches.
OK, so perhaps that's a bit harsh, and there's now a Cat for that*. But much the same problem, ie vendor lock-in with consumables at markups that would make an ink jet vendor blush. And then certifications, service contracts, spares etc. Other vendors are often far cheaper and easier to deal with when you're buying components in city, state or country sized quantities.
Or just take a look at the club pushing for 25gs-PON, because that's a better roadmap than legacy Ethernet players like Cisco are clinging to. As you say, basic Ethernet has long been a commodity, not a 'premium' service like routing. But such is politics. Cisco engineers helped spawn tag-switching, which became MPLS. But Cisco's marketing types decided that would be a premium router license feature, and crippled the Cats so they couldn't (MPL) Switch.
Funnily enough, carriers noticed the bait and switch, and other vendors have been happy to displace the old guard. After all, in an MPLS world, the Internet is just another VRF.
* Catalyst PON. AKA CaPON. Tastes like chicken, only a lot less bang for your cluck.
I dunno. Once upon a time, carriers bought Cisco and Juniper. Now, probably less so. If your network is mostly optical, they don't really play in that space. If your space is Ethernet, they don't really play their either. They're typically the most expensive way to deliver a VLAN in pretty much every capex and opex sense. And the incessant drive for 'service' revenue hasn't exactly endeared them with carriers either.
Some disruption has occurred thanks to trade spats and the world catching a cold. That's also allowed profiteering. But the supply chain shifts, and capacity that was supplying Cisco can just as easily supply commodity switches. For a fraction of the cost of a 'premium' brand.
Musk has reapetedly demonstrated advanced, full self-colliding capability with vehicles operating at a fraction of ludicrous speed. Crash barriers, stationary police and fire trucks, all with relative velocities a fraction of orbital speeds. Well, M25 excepted. And a track record of forward looking statements underestimating risks.
So as billionaires litter space, I think it's a case of not if, but when. And Starlink satellites have even less on-board collision detection capability than a Tesla. Well, Ethernet excepted. And when it happens, well.. Oops. It'll be fine in a decade or so. Or might one be interested in a launch on an armoured* Starship?
*Armoured ish. In theory, potential to carry a bit of armour, once the snags with Elon's bullet proof glass have been worked out.
..are expected to lift off for the station from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2103 ET on November 11 (0203 UTC the next day)
I.. don't think they're expecting that. Especially as they're already on their way to the ISS, having successfully launched at 2103ET on November 10th. And I was watching it live, unless the movie leaked and was released a day early..
Kinda neat given it was an instantaneous launch, ie had to go off on time and to energy budget to dock with the ISS. Which I guess is also complicated if the ISS had to move.
But we can already catalyse methane directly to methanol, so what's the point?
Attracting grants to study the idea further, scale up the product, turn academics into CxOs and millionaires, if their 'clean tech' product IPOs.
But yeh, otherwise an expensive and inefficient way to do something we can do already for less cost.
I was wondering about that too but why do we have to think of solar capture purely in terms of fuel?Can it be used to produce a simple raw material to reduce the need for fuel? For example, a material with an industrial value to supplement more resource intensive or polluting sources?
Yep. And in many ways, it already is. Solar capture produces much of the raw materials used in construction, transportation, fashion, IT and more. Basically wood, cotton, linen, hemp, wool, plant-based plastics. And on a more fuel related area, adulterated fuel, eg ethanol produced from corn and biodiesel. There's also been a lot of work on using plants like grasses or algae to make synthetic fuels like ethanol or methane.
A quick Googling finds this headline: Industrial ammonia production emits more CO2 than any other chemical-making reaction.
Yup. Consumes a lot of gas as well. Which is a slight problem given calles for everyone to be forced to go vegan, and the requirement for fertiliser to then feed that demand. No oil & gas industry, no food for current or future plant-based life forms. Like a lot of Green policies, that one really doesn't make any sense given the vast variety of petrochemical products that give us plastics, medicines, industrial chemicals, fertilisers etc etc.
It would be great if solar energy captured in remote places could be used close to source to create high value readily transported materials.
It already does. Grass grows on marginal/low quality agricultural land. Sheep eat grass. They're readily transportable on account of being slightly smarter than the average Green.
Or there's Canada. Lots of trees, lots of remote. Lots of maple (oddly enough) that can be turned into high value products that can sequester carbon for generations. Or less high quality wood gets chipped, pulped, pressed and turned into disposable flat-pack furniture that ends up dumped after a short time. Or there's good'ol Drax, which just burns forests and spits their CO2 right back out.. Yet is somehow considered 'Green'. I'm sure that's unrelated to one of their execs being on the UK's climate quango.
Ideally we'd have a mesh of generators. High volage DC from PV coming in from the Sahara to south-of-france (the "David McKay" scheme, don't recall the name, although I know it hit problems),
Think Desertec was one such idea. Managed to get free publicity from the 'renewables' PR industry (Bbc <cough>) who didn't look very closely at the economics. But also somewhat overtaken by the politics, ie plans to turn Libya into a solar power plant. I guess some day, we may end up glassing it.
There's also more rumblings in the desert between Morroco and Algeria at the moment, including attacking pipelines. This may or may not escalate, and if not, there's still a bunch of potential hostiles to the south.
freeing France's reactors to sell on to us and Germany, unless our wind is flowing or we can buy surplus hydropower cheaper from Norway.
Or giving France more opportunities to prop up Macron's election campaign by threatening to cut off the UK's electricity supply. Plus France's nuclear fleet is aging, needs replacing and additional capacity, if it wants to keep flogging electricity to neighbours with bonkers energy policies, like Germany, UK etc that drank deeply of the Green kool-aid.
The UK really needs energy security, not reliance on les enfants terrible. Then again, if we do decide to go with desert power*, landing cables in Gibraltar would be a short, if challenging cable route. Then it'd be a case of convincing them to give windfalls from landfalls back to the Mothership from charging transit fees.. Which means we could perhaps improve relations with Spain over Gibraltar, and further annoy the French.
Oh, and how much does the oxide cost, how long does it last, and where would we have to strip-mine to extract all the minerals needed?
PS.. From wiki.. Care must be taken when handling some of the residues as they contain 228Ra, the daughter of 232Th
Ra, the sun deity! Seems apt. Also being found alongside Thorium would be fun. Like digging up megatons of Cerium would also mean more thorium availability, which means people pointing out that we could just use the Thorium instead. Oh, and I guess a benefit of anti-smoking campaign means falling demand for lighter flints, so mebbe some surplus capacity knocking around.
*Reminds me, I must go see Dune.
...but the trick is to store that energy - say by pumping water uphill or making green hydrogen - when its sunny and windy enough...
Sure, but the real trick is the cost of doing that, or the cost of subsidising that. The UK has Dinorwig, owned now by a French company. It can provide 1GW for up to 6 hours. Then all the water needs to be pumped back up hill, which costs more money as it's fighting gravity. Problem can be seen here-
https://gridwatch.co.uk/Wind
with wind providing 2GW, or 6% of demand of 38GW because it's not very windy. And if you look at the monthly graphs, you can see the intermittency. So far this month, min 1GW, max 13GW. The 'renewables' lobby will say we just need to throw billions more at windmills. And sadly the government still seems keen to throw our money at them-
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/articles/windenergyintheuk/june2021
In 2020, the UK generated 75,610 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity from both offshore and onshore wind. This would be enough to power 8.4 trillion LED light bulbs.
Yey! Quick, order more light bulbs. This kind of mathturbation is sadly typical of the wind lobby though. Use an impressively large number and an unrealistic example. Usually thats 'enough to power X homes', leaving out the minor detail that it's windy at the time. But OK, converting say, GWh to miles driveable by EVs would be harder, but an impending challenge. Better stats here-
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-trends-section-6-renewables
Renewable generation fell on the same period last year due to less favourable conditions in 2021, particularly for wind. Windy conditions last year led to record renewable generation and the still weather this year decreased wind generation by 14 per cent.
And..
Demand for natural gas was up by 24 per cent in April to June 2021 compared to last year, mainly because demand for electricity generation was up by 45 per cent. Last year very windy weather led to record renewable generation, which was not the case this year and gas was used to fill the gap.
Domestic demand was up by 27 per cent to 62.0 TWh as temperatures fell below the long-term average and compared to 2020 when temperatures were unusually warm. Industrial demand was up by a fifth compared to the same period in 2020, which saw the first national lockdown in place to curb the spread of Covid-19.
Which highlights the 'Net Zero' problem and the government's plans to further decarbonise the UK. So basically making gas heating and cooking illegal. Or just very expensive. But decarbonisation would consume pretty much all the wind generated capacity currently installed. Except when it's not windy, then we'd need a lot more CCGT gas generation to provide up to 130GWh of capacity for those no-wind days. And then there's the capacity needed for EV cars, lorries, buses..
But wait, there's more-
Renewable electricity generation was 26.9 TWh in Quarter 2 2021, 9.6 per cent lower than the same
period in 2020. This fall was primarily driven by a 14 per cent reduction in wind generation because of lower average wind speeds, which were below the averages for the same months in 2020 and substantially below the 10-year averages. Solar and hydro generation also decreased due to less favourable weather conditions.
We've spent billions adding windmills, yet production has fallen. This is one of the ironies of 'renewables' policy. We're fighting 'climate change' with a solution that's most vulnerable to climate change, or just the weather. And our ancestors new this, and we had the Industrial Revolution happened that replaced the 'Age of Sail' with the 'Age of Steam'. Our current 'leaders' must have slept through that part of their history lessons, even though many of them are humanities grads, not engineers..
So we have around 48GW of installed 'renewable' capacity that generated 26.9TWh of electricity for that quarter. There are 2190hrs in a quarter, so 'renewables' generated an average of 12.2GWh, or only 1/3rd of potential.. Which is where the 'renewables' lobby's dishonesty tends to come in because they usually assume 100% production when showing off their 'enough to power X' claims. Which are of course subject to availability and prevailing weather conditions.
So TL;DR. It's a huge problem that 'renewables' can't solve. If we add more, dealing with intermittency just becomes more expensive because that has to cope with the inherent variability in both production, and demand. Storage is just throwing good money after bad because of the scale of the problem, and the inherent weakness of the 'solution'. Plus the UK doesn't have many sites suitable for the amount of pumped hydro we'd need.
The UK needs reliable and affordable power, and it should be clear that 'renewables' simply can't deliver that, especially with the political desire to decarbonise the UK.
..thus offering a net zero carbon closed system. Unfortunately hydrogen and methane R&D are further behind than batteries...
Congratulations, you've invented perpetual motion! Or, given COP-season, perpetual funding. COP after all being about transferring $100bn+ a year to the UN to dole out to friends & family.
Problem is you're starting with an expensive & intermittent form of energy. This is kind of the 'demand management' and demand shifting problem. 'Renewables' work when they feel like it, or when the wind blows and the sun shines. If that's when demand is low, then their product is pretty much worthless. If demand is high, and they can't deliver, then something else has to provide the energy we rely on.
So currently tha's pretty much gas turbines having to pick up the slack when the 'renewables' lobby fails to deliver. In a slightly more perfect world, this would be factored into contracts. So a generator contracts to delivering X MW(h) at £Y. If their windmills aren't spinning, they'd still have to deliver contracted energy for £Y.
But suppose you have electricty that costs say, £140MWh (offshore wind). You then decide it's a good idea to spend a couple of million building electrolysis or steam reformation to turn MWh electricity into gas. So you'd need CO2 or CH4. So now you've got a fuel cost on top of your energy cost. It's also not 100% efficient, so losses. You've then got to deliver your gas to your customers. Oh, and deal with any plant problems due to intermittent electricity input.
So basically chain a bunch of expensive inputs and processes together, and somehow expect the output to be affordable.. Which it won't, but it could have the potential to generate billions more in subsidies, which will increase infation and energy poverty in the UK.
So like much Green stuff, basically bonkers. There's a better argument that synth fuels are a future solution to any 'peak oil' problems given we can always make 'fossil' fuels if we ever need to. And we might be doing that using ultra cheap fusion power. Or just fission power. After all, SMR's are best as baseload generators, so off-peak, could potentially dump surplus power into synthfuel production.
Or.. I dunno, hot water. After all, one of the reasons the UK got it's 'Economy 7' tarrif and 'smart' radio teleswitches was so we could divert off-peak power into cheap resistive heaters.. Which are far cheaper than dumb ideas like heat pumps. Of course one benefits consumers, the other.. doesn't.
If the ISP host the caching server, then doesn't that mean they still have to deliver all the content, unicast, to consumers?
Yep, and the access portion of a network is the expensive bit, ie installing capacity to deliver a couple of million decent broadband connections.
It might save 95% of traffic at the Netflix end, but probably not at the (downstream) ISP side.
Yep. It's where Netflix is being rather disingeneous. So..
Netflix builds out it's own backbone to popular exchange points, and offers peering there. So cost to Netflix is renting wavelengths or fibre to those points, which on a $$ per Gbps is less than building say a 1Gbps network to a couple of million subscribers.
Where Netflix isn't present, it buys transit to reach it's customers. Transit ISP charges Netflix. As Netflix isn't present in SK, SK ISPs either have to pay for capacity to an exchange point where they are. Alternatively, they'd have to pay a transit ISP.. Usually the one that's carrying Netflix. So that transit ISP already 'double dips' and charges both ends of the connection. If traffic levels increase to Netflix, the SK ISP's costs increase to deliver Netflix's traffic.
If the SK ISP installs a Netflix cache, they can avoid costs of carrying Netflix's traffic either via their peering connections, or their transit provider. But Netflix also saves money, ie it carries less traffic on it's own network, or via it's transit provider. The SK ISP still has to pay for capacity to deliver Netflix's content across it's access network to Netflix (and the ISP) suscribers.
So the '95% cost saving' is probably skewed towards Netflix's own delivery cost, not the ISP.
Maybe they can install a caching server in each neighbourhood though, at great expense, with the fees paid to Netflix.
Sure, but there's a cost in that and also potential operating headaches. One issue is that AFAIK, the caches don't really allow the ISP much control over the traffic. So could be fun figuring out the routing, especially as a lot of access networks are pretty much Ethernet because the cost of delivering LAN services via tech like GPON is a lot less than installing and managing a lot of large (and expensive) routers.
But Netflix's position is pretty clear. It doesn't want to pay for delivering it's customer's traffic, so ISP's only option is to increase costs to their subscribers to pay for the impact of Netflix (and other OTT content providers) traffic.
From some simple Wiresharking, seems like a lot of the slurpers encrypt their traffic. It's times like this that I wish I had the patience to code though. Thinking..
PiHole goes to Google's "I feel lucky" link to get a random web page
Filter out the Google request
Visit random web page with source address of TV
Have random timer
Repeat
Snag is if the slurping is done between TV and slurpers, you'd need to somehow spoof that so it looks like the TV is visiting the sites, not the PiHole.. So it may be simpler to hack the TV and add the randomisation there.
Seems we're living in strange days though if we have to jailbreak a TV just to retain a semblance of privacy.
Can you opt out of that stuff? I would have thought you should be able to. If not, are there not implications regarding GDPR?
I think the best opt-out is the one the reader has chosen. Deny ad spammers access to money. If the Samsung's own ads gloss over this issue, might also be worth reporting them to the ASA for misrepresenting their products and deceiving customers.
Oh.. And pi-holes. Now I'm wondering how hard it'd be to modify it to generate spurious traffic in an attempt to poison & devalue data companies are trying to slurp.
But you have a level of battery storage that you need to cover for grid outagesYou presumably need that level of energy storage to allow for a reasonable time to pass and to kick in the generators for longer term power delivery.
Often the batteries are sized pretty much to allow UPS until the generators fire up and take over. Challenge for datacentres is over the last couple of decades, power requirements per rack have increased, putting more strain on HVAC. Which then means more costs to upgrade those, or less revenue by blocking out rack-equivalents. So say the design was based on 8kW/rack, one rack drawing 16kW means 1 less rack to rent out to other customers.
But it's also possible to play the subsidy game. The 'renewables' lobby pushes for grid-scale batteries. They're expensive, and often only capable of providing <1hr of potential grid demand. But they can also be extremely lucrative, eg the one in Australia makes millions providing grid synchronisation to cope with the instability caused by intermittent 'renewables'. And then of course there's arbitrage opportunities, ie charge when spot price is low, sell when it's gone through the roof because the wind's stopped blowing.
There's also potential revenue from stuff like the UK's STOR, or Short Term Operating Demand where when 'renewables' can't deliver, STOR assets kick in. Not looked at the current terms on that, but from memory, there's a 'stand-by' revenue stream, plus whatever you make from the sale of electricity. Challenge I guess is you'll also need someone who can play the markets a little, or contract with someone who does. There's a few large datacentres that do this, because why not make money from large gensets that would otherwise be sitting idle.
The fundamental problem though is the UK's abject failure wrt energy policy. As seen this week on local and national scales. The COProphiliacs could be shuttled from some hotels to the conference centre by Teslas.. But hotels didn't have power to charge them, so had to rent gensets. So the Teslas were indirectly diesel powered. And on the national scale, winds have been light, temperatures cold. So the usual situation where 'renewables' can't deliver.
So lots of hot air in Glasgow, demands for even more money to be wasted on 'renewables', but the grid would have collapsed if it wasn't for Drax using it's coal fired generators.. Sadly though, both the Tories and Labour are hooked on the Green kool-aid, and think that wasting money on more windmills will make the wind blow. Instead, they should be asking why, if we've 'invested' so much on 'renewables', electricity prices are rising, not falling. Especially as the subsidy-sucking parasitical 'renewables' lobby keep telling us that their product is the cheapest form of generation, and their costs have been falling.
So a vaccine is developed that's delivered on beef - should vegans and vegetarians be forced to partake?
Yup. Public health is about the greater good, not just shareholder profits. The idea being that with a dangerous, communicable disease, it's in the public interest to prevent it spreading. So Typhoid Mary could be quarantined against their will. We have lists of notifiable diseases for that reason, although most of those are arguably far more serious than Covid. Like say, diptheria, or even measles/mumps/rubella which are rather nasty as adults.
But we've also had anti-vaxxers stating that their kids aren't getting the MMR jab. Or anti-vaxxers saying they're not getting the Covid jab.
And of course, the media-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59147248
The UK recorded 33,865 Covid cases on Tuesday and 293 deaths within 28 days of a positive test.
Ohnoes! The media's loved it's Doomsday counts. Cases are just people where the virus has been detected. They're not 'cases' in a more traditional medical sense, ie people have become sick. Especially when PCR tests have been overly sensitive. But governments have also implemented mandatory testing. So the UK's apparently doing something like around 1m+ tests per day now, with the tests having ramped up since case zero.
Unless there's some normalisation, 33k 'cases' is fairly meaningless. More tests, more 'cases'. More PCR cycles, more cases. But less than 1%, and because epidemic, the longer it goes on, the more people you'd expect to find with traces of the virus. The worst part is still the incorrect definition of 'case', ie that doesn't mean they're a carrier in any traditional sense.
And then of course there's the definition of a Covid death, ie someone who's just died within 28 days of a trace of virus having been detected. It may have nothing to do with the actual cause of death, but determining that is more complicated, and waaay beyond the wit or wisdom of the Bbc. But <1% of cases turning into deaths, even delayed deaths. And as we approach winter, we're also into the excess winter mortality period, where we expect more deaths from respiratory illnesses.
But this is also where the Bbc does it's part. Covid's bumped down the headlines, COP is promoted. And thanks to 'climate change' policies, inflation is running rampant, energy costs have rocketed. And we know that cold kills more people than warm. So thanks to energy policies, and energy poverty, more people will die this winter.. But those could probably be spun as Covid deaths, rather than the consequence of bad policy.
Or there's just outright anti-science, ie it's becoming apparent that vaccines don't have the effectiveness originally claimed, and that side-effects might be higher. No matter, jab 5-11yr olds, and if they develop myocarditis, it's for the greater good. Or refusing to believe in natural immunity. Politicians have determined that vaccines are the answer. Get jabbed, or lose your job.
Of course there's an IT angle to that, as in it's much easier to create and maintain a database of the jabbed than it is to measure viral loads, or antibodies. But such is politics.
Disclaimer: I've been jabbed.
The rather infamous SpaceX toilet is, it would seem, still busted.
Not true. Elon's invented the world's first space toilet, just one of the many ways he's revolutionised everything. I have it on good authority that the astronauts found out about the Hertz 'deal', asked what the impact on margins would be, and was promptly punched by Elon. Or one of his assistants. Either that or they quite litterally managed to laugh their *** off.
But such is politics. Or demonstrating the old adage that if you lose money on every vehicle, you can make it up in volume. Elon's clarified the situation by pointing out that Hertz doesn't have a contract, and they'll be paying full MSRP. I mean if you're bulk buying, why wouldn't you expect a discount? NASA may be working on the same assumption with the news that it'll be ditching the ISS and renting space in commercial space stations.. So more orbital pork for SpaceX.
Heaven forbid that you should learn of anything sensationalistic and true is the stuff of fascism that tickles a Goebbels fancy and gives rise to grand delusions of being able to wield exclusive elite executive command and control to power and energy
Funny you should say that, power and energy being a topic of note as we slip into our renewable future. Here's a thing-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-59125188
Methane is responsible for a third of current warming from human activities - and it's one of the most potent greenhouse gases.
Levels of methane in the atmosphere are continuing to rise.
How is it emitted?
Cows may spring to mind... but rice production and rubbish dumps are also to blame. Around 40% comes from natural sources such as wetlands, but the majority is now due to human activity.
Which is a pretty bold claim from the fat-free Bbc. Cows may certainly spring to mind, when prompted, but wetlands? Isn't the EU restoring those, ie increasing them? Along with re-introducing the prospects of the ague to go with your Covid. Swamps around London got drained, ague/malaria was reduced, Now, we're building back better. Or something.
Ok, so fact checking this claim is a bit more complex than just assuming the Bbc is a 'reliable source'. But as with CO2, CH4 is a natural process with some human contribution. Soil bacteria and simple organic decay produces far more than humans. This is in the IPCC's WG1, but still needs some care to dig into the facts behind that literature review.
I guess for me, the most curious aspect of this report is that people actually try getting their news from FaceMeta, and not more reliable sources.
https://tsjournal.org/index.php/jots/article/view/15/6
...especially before fact-checking sites like Snopes or PolitiFact have published their evaluations.
But what if those are unreliable or biased sources? Both have got their facts wrong plenty of times in the past. It's a shame the paper doesn't list the sites it considered unreliable news sites. Would CNN or Fox be included? I may have missed the data, but it would have been nice to see the sites chosen, along with the stories. Partly so I could play at home, partly because in politics, facts aren't always what they seem to be.
It does mention Covid, which was interesting because in the very early days, 'facts' were being 'checked' when it was highly unlikely the fact-checking services could have actually verified the facts. Some of which are stil unknown, ie the origin, or fun subjects like vaccine effectiveness. There is a reference to another paper, which has this in it's SI-
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/2053168019848554/suppl_file/appendix.pdf
With a couple of interesting inclusions, like the Express. Admittedly I haven't read an article from them in a few years. Also Zerohedge, which publishes a mix of facts and opinions. Sometimes it can be hard to figure out which is which, but such is the Internet. A lot of people on the left really don't seem to like ZH though. Then there's good'ol Infowars...
But I'm happy to say I've never heard of a lot of the sites on that list.
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