Posts by cyberdemon 3170 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jan 2010
Yep.. Sell when the world is high on hype, buy when there's blood on the streets.
It's the basic long-game investor strategy, but it certainly doesn't buy happiness, never mind peace
> The smaller footprint also leaves more land for farming.
Hmm. Is that true? The base of the traditional lattice towers are usually left open, you can walk under them, right up to the four tiny concrete foundations.
I guess it depends on what you are farming. They should have minimal impact on livestock grazing, but you wouldn't drive a tractor too close.
> Of course this latter demand should lead to some thinking about how electricity generated somewhere else will get to them
Dear Mr N. Imby: We have carefully considered your objection to pylons in your area we and cede to your demands. Your house will now be in the path of a new 2GW microwave transmission link.
> I actually quite like the British Standard Pylon, a majestic steel giant holding wires aloft. A small price to pay for the benefits of mains electricity, that we all depend on for every aspect of our lives.
Indeed! And a whole website dedicated to their practical magnificence: https://www.pylonofthemonth.org/
Nothing wrong with good old 400kV air-insulated AC transmission lines - but thanks to NIMBYs we are going to spend a whole lot more money to get something much less resilient.
One question I can never find an answer to from experts on the subject is: Why is the UK grid frequency so unstable compared to other countries? In Europe it rarely deviates +/- 0.02Hz for example.
A cynic might say that it could have something to do with the market structure whereby generator operators are paid exorbitant amounts to take emergency actions to stabilise the grid frequency, so those same operators have a vested interest in letting it slip in the first place.. This was reported on in the Private Eye a while back.
Yes, most DC/AC synchronous inverters have such a lockout because if the frequency is out of band then there is a risk they could end up in antiphase and blow themselves up.
In the 2019 blackout, one of the causes was that the brief dip in frequency caused a large windfarm to disconnect, (since modern windfarms tend to operate with DC/AC inverters rather than using synchronous generators, as it allows the turbines to spin at their most efficient speed. Solar farms also use inverters.) This led to the frequency dropping even faster, but luckily the ESO were able to load-shed in time to avoid any further cascade.
If there is a major frequency event that does cascade, we could lose all interconnectors, solar, and most of our wind capacity at a stroke. Then we'd be hurriedly reading the manuals of project black-start to see if we can actually get the grid running again.
I've noticed a few times recently when the loss of a single 2GW interconnector from France has caused a fairly major frequency dip. e.g. this one in January
If one big enough to cause cascade events happens, then we're in for something out of James Burke's "The Trigger Effect"
The trouble is, our energy system as a whole is still AC, and relies on maintaining a steady 50Hz across the network. If the frequency drops below 47Hz or goes above 53, then many parts of it will suddenly trip offline in a cascade effect. Building DC internal links is troublesome, because it increases the grid capacity without strengthening the synchronous AC system.
If one of the DC links trips offline (as they are wont to do) then the AC transmission network suddenly has to pick up the slack and cascade failures resulting in loss of synchronisation ("grid islanding") or loss of frequency control, which can lead to a nationwide blackout of the sort that nobody is quite sure how long it would take to recover from.
The other big issue I have with HVDC subsea links is the vulnerability to enemy sabotage. Spot the russian sub in this picture!
Nothing's changed in 30 years, indeed! (except that it has got much worse and become more brazen)
Another of Deus Ex's many premonitions was that this sort of thing would get worse and worse.
"It's called consolidation. Strengthen governments and corporations, weaken individuals. With taxes, this can be done imperceptibly over time"
The idea of Apple, Google, Facebook, TikTok, Amazon et al taking a large cut of all payments made by or between individuals, is just a massive example of this. No doubt Apple will want 30% of all charity donations made using their phones next.
Well, on the RPi 4 and 5 there is no pin swapping going on either. Its USB-C is nothing more than a power connector, and doesn't support more than 5V. But having USB-C is still useful, because it's that much more mechanically robust, and reversible.
Most microcontroller boards e.g. esp32 have moved to USB-C for that reason. Some have PD support and include a buck converter for fast battery charging or >5V power output for whatever electronics project you are making
The pico2 seems to use the same surface-mount micro-USB that always falls off the board, or the data pins detach at the back first. There also appears to be plenty of space on the board to add (optional?) PD components for those who want >5V in their projects
> Applies to all cars...
No it doesn't. E.g. my Kia Rio is reasonably sized, not too heavy, decent mpg, I bought it 6 years ago second-hand for the price of an electric bicycle, and it has served me very well.
Does anyone know what is the mechanism for embedding executable code into a PDF? The format is -supposed- to make that impossible, isn't it?
If it exploits a specific weakness in one PDF reader tool or library, (e.g. Adobe Acrobat) I could understand - but then (hopefully) the file would just appear as corrupted if opened in any other PDF reader (e.g. SumatraPDF)?
.. What could Possibly go wrong?
Acid attacks and disfigurements to surge in 3,2,1..
Meanwhile it sounds easily defeatable by determined crooks.. e.g. with an AI-generated version of the target's face, projected onto a voice-coil actuated "pin-art" to fool the depth sensor
Well the trouble in this case is that the human was led to believe that the machine could handle most if not all of the driving activity itself, and apparently had no idea what its limitations were. Maybe it performed well in most situations and he gained confidence in its ability and eventually (erroneously) thought he could take his own eye off the road (after all, what else is the point of the tech)
Ensuring safety by supervising a driver is hard thing to do, much harder than driving the car yourself - there are humans (driving instructors) trained to do it, but even they would struggle if they cannot see where the student is looking, what actions they are beginning to take, cannot talk to them, etc.
Indeed - I deliberately said size * range, i.e. sure you can make a huge B-EV or a long-range B-EV, but a "huge, long-range" B-EV is infeasible (unless perhaps it is really, really slow, and has solar panels on the roof)
It is quite telling that the "Tesla Semi" was announced years ago but has so far failed to hit the mass market. The only customers for the 100-odd made to date being beta-testers gagged by NDAs who can't say what the real-world haulage performance is.
No, an AA battery will never* pass current through the body, because the human body is not a wire, it's not even a resistor. It's more like a battery itself in that it has electrolytes and membranes rather than free-electrons. Conduction is ionic rather than electronic and is limited by the rate of diffusion in a liquid, and there is an electrochemical overpotential needed in order to imbibe any atom in that liquid with an electric charge, i.e. there is a minimum voltage required to pass any current at all through a wet squishy thing, and that starts at around 2V (try electrolysing water with 1.5V - you can't). But the relationship between voltage and current through a human is not anywhere near linear - Over 100V then there is enough voltage to separate electrons from their atoms and you suddenly have free-electron conduction, like in a lightning strike.
* Not unless you add an oscillator and a transformer to increase the voltage - then you'll feel it. Even from an AA battery
Safety issue? "Fix it in Software"!
The typical Musk-ian approach.
So when the sensor stops working (due to wet towel or other reason) someone gets injured; a fire starts
My point is: Tesla have reached the limit of how much current can safely be passed through that connector, and they are attempting to push past it with software fudges. This is bad. As the equipment ages, the performance will degrade (due to wear etc.) and the safety will become an issue, even if it wasn't at initial testing. Adding a sensor doesn't change that, really.
Well yes, but it's the volts wot make the amps flow, innit.
A 3.7V lithium battery is never going to electrocute you, no matter what its short-circuit current is, because it cannot overcome the insulation resistance of your skin. Even if you poke through the skin, it doesn't have enough volts to drive ionic conductivity (electrolysis, etc) inside your body. Even a 9V PP3 battery can drive Amps at short-circuit, but when licked, only milliamps will flow.
Somewhere between 50 and 100 volts, dielectric breakdown of the skin happens, and lots of amps can suddenly flow. Touch a HV mains cable and you will see a LOT more amps, even if the "current limit" of the supply is the same.
I have heard DC is supposedly more dangerous because it makes you grab hold of whatever you touched, whereas AC causes paralysis without making you grip.
In any case, here we are talking about 400V at 625A, which is definitely smoking boots territory
All of that is true, but surveillance isn't exclusive to EVs, it's being done by all new consumer cars.
But I am in agreement with the GP post - EV technology is not going to improve significantly. Modern Lithium batteries and electric motors are very close to the limit of what electrochemical cells and electric motors can theoretically achieve in terms of energy and power density.
A future society could perhaps have more railways - you could either hire a small autonomous EV to bring you to the second-class station and maybe hire another one at your destination, or you could drive your privately-owned EV onto the first-class train eurotunnel-style, and charge it on the train
> 7.5bn for 7 chargers
I choked on my coffee and thought that couldn't possibly be true, but I have found a more detailed source:
The program was expected to build 500,000 charger "ports" (i read it that a charge "port" is for one car, so a charger with two different cables that can be used simultaneously is two ports). In the last 3 years since the budget was allocated, 7 "stations" have been built with "a few dozen" ports in total, but it is "expected" that 1000 "stations" will be built under the programme by the end of the year, except that some of those 1000 sites don't actually have any electricity.
So even if the 1000 sites are built (with an unspecified number of "ports" each), that's 7.5 million per "charging station". Even by UK contractor rates, that's still a bit steep, but sadly not beyond belief.
I disagree - I think EVs have simply become too big. The way forward IMO is smaller cars with smaller batteries and less-powerful motors. Going to 800V means either having a pack with 200 cells in series (bad for service life) or else lugging about a 4U rack's worth of power electronics to convert 800V back to 400V for your battery.
Larger vehicles (trucks etc) should use range-extenders. Battery-electric for large trucks is just madness. Beyond a certain size*range, the battery will outweigh the payload.
I've just discovered the "INNengine e-REX", and it looks an interesting invention. Claims to have twice the power-density of a 2-stroke, and as efficient and low-emissions as a 4-stroke
Indeed. Apparently they didn't add enough active cooling to the connector pins themselves.. Liquid-cooling high-voltage connector pins.. Expensive, that.
Note: 250kW is 625A at 400V DC. No sane electrical code of practice would permit that sort of current through a connector the size of a petrol pump nozzle. They must be heavily reliant on thick gold-plating on the contacts, but at a frequently-used charger, that will soon wear off, become dirty/carbonised.
At that current, the contact resistance only needs to go up to a couple milliohms/pin to burn kilowatts in the contact interface itself. Easily enough to cause contact welding (not to mention stripping off the gold plating), so i'm amazed that they don't melt more regularly
And no doubt received the usual "poop emoji" response from Xitler's PR-bot
I wonder how much of this is due to high ambient temperatures, and how much is due to connector wear / dirty contacts. If it's the former, then some extra heatsinking / evaporative cooling in the form of a wet towel will genuinely help, but if it's the latter, then their chargers and/or cars have a more fundamental issue
Tbh, charging a 100kWh battery at 350kW is asking for all sorts of trouble
> the specialised test equipment they use only runs on old (<= XP) versions of Windows
May I respectfully suggest that they update their test equipment? It's probably well out of calibration by now :P (and, if it goes 'bang' one day, it's unlikely to be serviceable)
Also, I wouldn't be at all surprised if, under layers upon layers of proprietary drivers and cruft, that the interface boils down to a text-mode serial port with SCPI commands. Perhaps with an interrupt pin to reduce the polling, but nothing that an Arduino couldn't be bodged up to translate it into something that a modern OS could pass to a more open piece of software e.g. Octave or Python to aggregate the data
If it's GPIB, then Linux has a driver for that, and USB-GPIB adapters are available.
Do we really need a whole article for every piece of nonsense Dave Plummer says?
What's wrong with simply giving a meal to any kid who asks for one?
The extra spend on food would be easily offset by a saving in administration costs and licensing of creepy face-scanning tech
edit: I'd guess the answer to my own question is: In most cases school meals are outsourced to a third-party catering supplier, who are literally the bullies stealing your lunch money. If you are "entitled" to free meals then they need to prove to some beancounter that you are who you said you were, or they don't get their money.
> I expect that auto sales are the greatest source of income for them now.
Hmm, I doubt that. The profit margin on their cars must be tiny, if positive at all. I suspect they make the real money by selling batteries and other tech to European/American/Japanese automakers at cranked-up prices.
Once the competitors are out of business, then they will put up the prices on the cars.
Although, you said greatest source of "income" or "revenue", and that technically may be correct for a high-turnover loss-leader. But if you meant to say "profit", I think that still comes from the batteries.
Jack up the prices on the components that your competitors need and only you supply, while selling at a loss the highly-integrated consumer products that compete directly with them. That seems to be the general Chinese strategy at the moment..
Well, obviously you were trolling, with the requisite icon. My issue is, (aside to the complete irrelevance of your post to the topic, trolling or not) is that some people apparently vehemently believe that sort of crap. And wantonly spouting it at the start of a thread, even in jest, just poisons the whole thread. Kind of like mentioning the B-word on this side of the pond.
