Posts by blackcat

Brits must prove their age on adult sites by July, says watchdog

Re: Here we go again...

The problem is that celebs and politicians really do think they are all powerful.

Re: Here we go again...

It reminds me of the Elton John 'scandal' where the press in England and Wales could not mention names but in Scotland it was fine. The 'super injunction' only covered England and Wales and not everywhere else on the planet.

In the US certain cities have soda taxes so everyone just goes outside the affected area to buy cheap soda.

Do people not learn from King Canute the Great?

Oh, Deere! FTC sues tractor maker, alleging decades of monopolized repairs

Re: This story is just about the US scene: wot abaht foreign customers?

It was a similar story to the US in the UK a few years ago. I don't know anyone with any modern farm machinery any more. In the area where I live now if its from the 2000's its considered NEW.

Microsoft trims jobs as new year begins

I cannot comprehend how they broke something as simple as the taskbar in win11.

UK gives Openreach £289M for 4 rural broadband contracts in 'gigabit by 2030' push

"I have a satisfactory connection on FTTC"

This. I don't need gigabit. Faster than my current 33Mbps would be nice but actually I'd be perfectly content with just having a better contention ratio. There are times when my throughput drops to <1Mbps and its not the copper at fault.

I'm in a similar situation. Getting about 33Mbps due to being on the end of a very long wire. We were hoping to use the rural broadband voucher scheme but that has been pulled. The govt gigabit page for our county has a very low-res map of the planned govt funded rollout so we can't tell if we're in or not. The company that they've contracted with has no real info on their website either, just 'sign up for updates'.

With datacenter power crisis looming, US government looks to Constellation

Re: And the waste?

Recycle it and put it back through the reactor and whatever can't go back in goes deep underground in a nice geologic store along with all the natural radioactive stuff that drives the earth's core.

The 100,000 year figure is not actually that truthful. The long lived stuff is not really that dangerous. The short lived waste is what you have to worry about and that is all depleted within a couple of hundred years.

US military grounds entire Osprey tiltrotor fleet over safety concerns

Re: An interesting concept

Are they still having issues with the sprag clutches?

Re: ... a bit late, innit?

This reminds me of the super puma helicopters where there had been a change which added chip collecting magnets upstream of the electric chip detectors coupled with a similar attitude that 'the odd chip is OK'. The result being the helicopter and its rotor parting company in flight.

Vodafone and Three permitted to tie the knot – if they promise to behave

Plusnet has also pretty much stopped doing support...

UK government plays power broker with small modular reactor suitors

Re: Hmm

"businesses don't pay tax"

Yes they do. They pay lots of taxes and people complain at great length about how mega corps do fun accounting to avoid paying anything other than the bare minimum.

"So foreign holidays would become more expensive in comparison to UK holidays"

They already are. I assume what you mean is that they'd become even MORE costly thus pricing average people out of the market.

You keep contradicting yourself. You say carbon taxes are supposed to hurt but then say it would be offset "so that nobody was particularly financially affected by it". A carbon tax is a disincentive to move you away from thing A to thing B. If there is no thing B or C to Z then you're stuck. There are many things the world relies on that are carbon intensive and have no alternative. Steel and concrete for example.

Re: Hmm

"EU doesn't have a carbon tax"

I am aware of that and didn't imply that it did. I was referring to the bonkers energy pricing model the UK and EU uses.

The EU has a strange carbon boarder tax as well as a trading system. France has a local carbon tax as do some other EU nations and the UK. Not that they do much.

"The point about a carbon tax is that it should hurt - because that incentivises people to find alternatives"

Indeed but usually what happens is the cost is passed on to the consumer and the consumer has zero alternatives other than to pay. So when the Canadians complained Trudeau said there would be rebates so that the consumers would not pay more than before the carbon tax. So how does this actually help?

Re: Energy Security

"Germany is already producing more than 50% of its electricity for most of the year from renewables."

Averages are a wonderful thing! Yes on average its 'more than 50%' but in reality it varies quite wildly from zero to more than they need and on a reasonably fast timescale requiring careful management of the grid.

Over a given time period you can achieve a 50% average by being at a constant 50%, 100% for half the period, 200% for 1/4 the period, 1000% for 1/20th... A 1Hz square wave and a 1GHz square wave have the same average on time.

Re: Energy Security

"a single supplier run by a dictator."

Its not like Germany hadn't been warned by other European countries about this pretty much since they started doing it. German manufacturing is in an utter shambles right now. Their over-reliance on cheap gas has cost them a lot.

Re: Another problem with DCs is water.

The cooling is usually evaporative so the water escapes into the sky.

Re: Hmm

The pricing model is Europe wide. Carbon taxes in theory work but in practice always seem to be abused for profit without any meaningful reduction in emissions. Hedge funds seem to get their grubby fingers into everything...

Carbon taxes also usually impact the poor the most and then the govt has to give money back to people with rebates or subsidies and it all gets complex and mired in red tape. Trudeau has been claiming that households will get back more from the govt they pay in carbon tax... how does that work??

Euro execs extend net zero timescales amid energy cost and supply crunch

Re: Increased demand is being held back by rising energy costs…

"nor Uranium in Europe to be able to rely on them"

Fresh uranium, no. Second hand uranium, yes.

Sellafield has some 80,000 tons of radioactive waste of which a large % is spent fuel. Rather than trying to find somewhere to hide it we should make use of it. Even a spent fuel rod is over 90% usable fuel.

Other nuclear countries have similar as very few recycle fuel.

Relocation is a complete success – right up until the last minute

There is something quite otherworldly about a server room losing all power.

Many moons ago a fire suppression system test resulted in such a situation. The person testing it had removed the solenoid from the huge CO2 bottle so that would not fire, had switched the interlock with the main building fire alarm system so that would not trigger BUT had not turned the magic key for the UPS main contactor.

He triggered the alarm, it does everything as expected and suddenly we are all stood in the dark in absolute silence. And this was mid morning on a work day!

Ford CEO admits he drives a Chinese electric vehicle and doesn't want to give it up

Re: Chevy Volt

I'd argue the point on the HSD not being complex. If you want low complexity the original Honda IMA fit that perfectly. Turn the flywheel into the motor/generator unit. If there is a hybrid issue on the HSD the car can't move. With the IMA system the car drives like a normal car. Manual gearboxes are well proven technology and not overly complex, except for the small input bearing and the strange double synchro honda decided to use on the early IMA cars.....

Re: Famous prediction

"It doesn't have a" "ignition system"

It still has control electronics, even if it doesn't trigger fuel injectors or spark plugs. These are not simple brushed DC motors like an RC car.

The control electronics needed to run a high power multi-phase electric motor will need a lot of cooling, likely active cooling in the case of higher power EVs.

"transmission"

They still have reduction gears which are precision made, ground and hardened elements along with bearings.

"cooling system"

Oh yes they do! The original leaf missed this bit off and cooked its batteries. Plus the need to cool the power electronics and in some cases the motors.

Re: Famous prediction

Mechanically they are more complex but not by much. Electronically EVs HAVE to be more complex by their very nature.

EV motors and gearboxes still need precision parts such as bearings and gears. These are no different to an ICE vehicle. The reciprocating bits in the engine are relatively simple if remove things like variable valve timing.

You can make a diesel engine that runs with absolutely zero electrical parts. Petrol engines have been made to run without an external battery since their very early days.

EV makers seem to have forgotten the magic tricks needed to keep the oil in the oily bit, the water in the cooling pipes and rain out of everything. Long gone are the days of cars marking their territory with oil spots. A worrying number of EVs have issues where the battery packs end up with water sloshing around in them from failed cooling or simply leaks in the seals but there is no evidence of external damage or abuse. Just straight up manufacturing issues. And that then needs a whole new pack.

Re: Charging infra (in the US at least) is dying

This is where Telsa really made themselves different from the old Detroit dinosaurs. They built the car AND the infrastructure. 'Here is your car and here is a map of where you can charge it using our own chargers, enjoy!'

Everyone else in the US just built the cars and expected someone else (namely the US govt) to provide the chargers. 'Here is your car, yeah, not sure where you can charge it, wait a few years and someone else might build a charging station near you'.

A throwback to the old days when the auto makers built cars and it was others who built the petrol stations to cash in on the new fangled devices. But we are a long way from the days of companies rushing to market to be the first and get some of that sweet early customer money. Now companies expect a handout from the govt before they will do anything.

Tech giants set to pay through the nose for nuclear power that's still years away

Re: The Elephant in the Room

Nuclear is not the reason wind farms get paid to stop generating. That is a grid issue. Same happens in Germany and they have no nuclear.

There are lots of things we can safely do with the waste but some group of perpetually uppity middle-class do-gooders always show up to make a fuss as they think they know best.

Google hopes to spark chain reaction with nuclear energy investment

Re: (I think) That does not mean what you think it means

They'd have to start from scratch as the current site is a) full and b) a mess. The MAGNOX fuel is metallic uranium rather than uranium dioxide as used in most other grid scale reactors. So not sure if that makes recycling easier or not. The upside is that the rods have had 50 years for all the short lived stuff to decay away.

Re: (I think) That does not mean what you think it means

My worry is that with the SMR route we will just kick the can down the road with respect to recycling of fuel and other fuel cycles (fast neutron, thorium etc) and be back to square 1 in 20 years time. The human race seems to be very good at stop-gap minimal effort solutions :)

Re: Nuclear power for everyone?

To add to this thorium, if we decide to try again, is often a byproduct of rare earth mining and is currently put back whence it came.

Re: Nuclear power for everyone?

Some of this is due to the design of the plants. Certainly Sellafield was built as a bomb grade plutonium production facility and little thought was given to the future. The plants in the USA were they made the plutonium had some absolutely shocking cut corners and suffered quite a few 'events'. The race to make bombs will forever haunt the civilian nuclear power industry.

Re: Nuclear power for everyone?

Most of the spent fuel we have stored around the world will primarily contain Pu240 rather than Pu239 as it will have been in the reactor too long so the worries about bombs is not actually a real worry.

Re: Nuclear power for everyone?

I would hazard a guess that those figures are based on a once through fuel cycle. Reprocessing increases that by a factor of 20-30x.

A move away from thermal neutron reactors might add another zero to the end of that multiplier.

Sellafield has several (many?) thousand tonnes of un-reprocessed mostly once-through magnox fuel sitting in its ponds. And the US is stacking up its 'spent' fuel in dry stores. If we can come up with a way to make use of all that then we have a ready supply already out of the ground.

Tesla's big reveal: Steering-wheel-free Robotaxi will charge wirelessly

Re: Snakeoil

"One of WiTricity's biggest challenges is fighting the misconception that wireless charging is less efficient than corded. "People say, oh if I charge my phone wirelessly it takes longer, but that's not the case here," she says. "So, we are constantly educating people that they don't have to make a compromise when they go wireless.""

So their metric for efficiency is time, not power in vs power out.

https://www.techspot.com/news/86271-wireless-charging-has-efficiency-issue.html

"Charging from completely dead to 100 percent with a cable used an average of 14.26 watt-hours (Wh). With a flat Yootech wireless charger, Ravenscraft said a full recharge consumed around 21.01 Wh on average, or more than 47 percent more energy."

"Results were a little better with Google's official Pixel Stand charger, as it eliminates the possibility of vertically misaligning the phone during charging. In testing, the Pixel 4 consumed an average of 19.8 Wh. Still, that's nearly 39 percent more power versus using a charging cable."

It is simple physics, the worse the coupling between the two sides of the transformer the worse the efficiency.

If you're excited by that $1.5B Michigan nuke plant revival, bear in mind it's definitely a fixer-upper

Ivanpah? That has turned out to be a proper mess as it uses an alarming amount of natural gas to overcome the variable nature of the sun.

San Onofre had replaced the steam generators but the replacements turned out to be crap.

Uncle Sam lends $1.5B to reignite Michigan nuclear plant in 2025

Re: Clean energy?

The plutonium from normal fuel recycling is no good for bombs anyway. You have to run a different fuel cycle for bomb material.

Re: Clean energy?

These are the same sort of tailings you get from coal mining, rare earth mining, titanium mining... Coal ash contains thorium, uranium, radium, lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium...

If we actually recycled our spent nuclear fuel rather than using the very wasteful once through model then we might not need to dig up any more uranium for a LONG time. And if we moved to a thorium fuel cycle the tailings from all sorts of mining could be cleaned up by extracting the thorium.

Capita wins £135M extension on much-delayed UK smart meter rollout

Re: £5 a month saving

How long ago did you last do the calcs? System prices have dropped a lot in recent years. The trade off has been the reduction in the FIT although savings from not having to consume grid elec have increased due to the unit price going up.

You used to be paying £20k for a 4kw system and now its under £2/watt in some cases. My 2.25kw system cost 2.4k but was self installed and if I'd opted for one larger inverter rather than 2 small inverters (2 aspect setup) it would have been closer to 2k. After 3 years my savings so far have been (based on comparison to consumption figures from the 12 months prior to install) are about 2.2k. So my payback will actually be about 3.5 years.

Re: Biggest waste of money...

It is more fundamental and the roof needs work even without plans for more panels. On the original part of the house so 130 years old.

Re: Biggest waste of money...

If you have a smart meter :) I have a spinning meter that is new enough to not go backwards. Next door tried to get a smart meter and it would not work. I aim for near zero export and in the summer there are days when the only gas we use is for the hob.

Re: £5 a month saving

That is the one!

Re: Biggest waste of money...

I'm in two minds, yes it looks neater but now the roof is reliant on the panels and the joints to be water tight. And if the panels need replacing they have to be replaced with an identical size panel OR require some major work. If you have rails above the roof it is a simple undo bolts, remove panel, fit new, do up bolts.

Re: £5 a month saving

I did find the combo of elec storage heaters and gas fire odd. Why not fit a boiler?!

Ice on the inside of the single glazed windows was always fun.

Re: Biggest waste of money...

The standing charge increase is just a way to keep charging a lot of money while giving the impression that the actual cost of energy is going down.

My OH is from the US and where she used to live the water company was always telling people to reduce consumption while also whinging about not making money as people were using less. A bit like pushing everyone to get low/zero emissions cars by having a zero rate VED and then moaning about the loss of revenue from VED and fuel duty.

I would like more panels and a battery system but the remaining roof needs work first.

Re: £5 a month saving

I had the misfortune to spend 2 years in a house with storage heaters... Woken up in the early hours sweating due to the heat and coming home to a stone cold house in the evening. I don't know when the heaters had been installed, this was back in the late 80s so likely they dated back to the 70s.

Re: Biggest waste of money...

I've only got 2.25kw of panels due to suitable roof space and it has made a good dent in my bills. Payback is maybe 4 years. Next job is a bigger hot water tank to get more use of the diverter. The old tank is 16 years old so coming to the end of its design life anyway.

Re: £5 a month saving

In theory less maintenance and less pipework. Where I live the flow rate is crap so we have a tank and a booster for the shower. So when I installed solar adding a diverter was a no-brainer.

I've seen a very neat device that is basically a tank of wax and you heat it via solar or overnight and a heat exchanger inside then heats the water. It can be small as the phase change adds a lot more energy density. I forget the name but the price was stupidly high, like £3k before installation.

Re: £5 a month saving

All the adverts for smart meters will state somewhere that 'consumer action is required'.

I have a shelly power meter and home assistant so have very accurate plots of what I use and when.

Lebanon: At least nine dead, thousands hurt after Hezbollah pagers explode

Most of the trouble can be explained with Sykes Picot slicing up the whole area into arbitrary chunks, the fall of the Ottoman empire leaving a massive power vacuum and the arab uprising prior to the second small disagreement. The icing on the cake was the league of nations.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch could be gone in ten years – for chump change

Re: Recurrence

The Welsh system seems to work quite well from my limited experience of staying there. We had 4 bins, general crap, paper & card, plastic containers & bottles and finally glass and tins. Didn't take any time at all to sort. One thing I've never liked about mixed recycling is that it is so easy to contaminate paper and card. I've always seen the need to wash out tins as a waste of energy as they are going to get melted down so the last couple of baked beans at the bottom won't hurt anything.

Re: "Curbing their spread feels like a good idea"

Yeah but burgers taste GOOD! I am not eating that fake crap.

Re: "Unless we deal with it at the source"

"harsh reality is that COLLECTION and sorting costs"

Collecting and sorting the recycling I put in my bin is included in my council tax payments. This doesn't cover recycling from businesses but again they will pay their waste removal service. So that part of the process is already mostly paid for.

Re: "Unless we deal with it at the source"

Its bonkers. I want to build a fence and I looked at recycled plastic posts and they are about twice the price of wood. So no sane person wants to buy them. Same for recycled plastic decking boards.

Surely there is a glut of feed stock for these products so why isn't the price lower than wood?

Re: Recurrence

The UK has become so accustomed to being a throwaway society and with comments such as 'it keeps someone in a job picking it up' it will take a long time to change attitudes. There are people who literally abandon their camping gear when a festival is over. They are not going to be bothered by a 25p deposit return.

I fully agree with a return deposit on bottles, cans and other such items.