Posts by Roland6 9822 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Apr 2010
The Speedtest.net results need to be taken with a large pinch of salt - they only represent a particular subset of Speedtest results and thus are not representative of the wider population's experience.
I'm also wary of reading too much into the results as insufficient information is provided to give any real background context to the headline figure.
Interestingly, there is a big unsupported assumption that the deceased was actually using Google Maps. I assume the phone was recovered from the river and forensically examined to determine Google Maps was the foreground running application; without this level of evidence the use of Google Maps is circumstantial or even supposition.
Disagree, they were using Google Maps...
Yes it does have some route navigation functionality, however, it is in the same category as using the OS Maps in the UK or Rand McNally maps in the US ie. its a map and having a person giving directions off the map without looking out the windscreen.
If, however they were using Waze, a navigation app owned by Google and uses Google Maps data, that would be a different matter.
After 9/11 I was in New England using a current Rand McNally Map, the map showed a crossroads and the main road we were travelling along continuing straight ahead...
We went straight ahead and on the other side of the cross road the tarmac stopped and was replaced by bare cinders, after a couple of miles the tarmac resumed..
Welcome to the new “the US is the world Register”
I missed it on the first reading the key to this piece is the sentence: “ The filing said that according to similarweb.com, the sites collectively were visited by 9 million people from the US each month from March to May 2023.”
This isn’t about us in the world outside of the USA - yet, it’s about US citizens behaving like commies and needing to be saved from themselves.
So the intended outcome is for the corporates to get US based DNS providers or more likely universities, to block these domains.
A concern has to be the words used to prefix the list of domains in the court filing, namely: “without limitation”.
So if a judge is to accept the takedown, joule seem it would give the corporations the power to shutdown any site they claim to be part of LibGen…
This “ownership” of published works is quite interesting.
I’ve often found academics have published a paper in some journal which others will formally reference, however, they will present cut down versions at various conferences and symposiums, plus retain a lightly revised version of the (formally) published paper on their university website. Hence with a little web searching and understanding of the different ways English phrasing can be used to title each version slightly differently but actually say the same thing, it is possible to read the findings and gain sufficient to apply, but if you want the full data because you wish to replicate and prove/disprove the papers findings you obviously need the full published paper.
Nationwide Student account has an interesting perk - free membership of an online textbook library.
According to my students it is useful, but it doesn’t fully replace the uni. Library or need to purchase some core books.
Perhaps the publishers contesting this case need to take the lead of iTunes, Netflix, etc. and deliver to market a student friendly subscription course book library service. If they were particularly “creative” they would call it “Bookshelf” or “Encarta” and get Microsoft to offer it as a component of M365…
>” When a not atypical, required textbook is 50 quid a pop”
I got a shock a couple of years back, the new fully revised edition of a (highly useful) computing book I had used at uni. was published with Amazon pricing it at £156 (and Elsevier wasn’t the publisher).
Back in 1980 the first edition cost £30, according to the Bank of England inflation calculator my edition cost circa £130 in todays money.
From memory many of my core textbooks were around £30, with my yearly (unadjusted for inflation) book spend being a little under £400 - slightly more than 80% of one term’s grant.
This has been brewing for a few years, before Trump started his (first) campaign for the White House - China’s economy was starting to challenge the US’s status as the worlds largest economy. The shock has turned to outrage and as so much is dependent upon Computer technology, the pushback has gained a focus.
The change in building regulations for new builds only came into effect in June 2022. Like all things, it only applies to developments commenced after this date, but expect much wiggle room: if initial plans for 5,000 homes were submitted prior to this date, it is not clear whether detailed planning for releases of homes within this outline plan are new build or simply a continuation of an existing build given the infrastructure sign off would have happened prior to the June date…
The badge and the price tag, plus the BMW “Mondeo” had less usable boot capacity than the Ford Volvo V70 based Mondeo estate.
I think Ford’s take over of Volvo, followed by them having the Volvo engineers upgrade the quality of Ford production lines, was a really good move.
>” How would you feel if you discovered the instructions for the dealer to perform the "upgrade"…”
Depends on when I found this out.
If it was before I had a dealer do the upgrade then realising I could do it myself - joy
If however it was after the dealer did the upgrade - p*ssed off..
>” Some left-handed design engineer (No, not me!) designed a test rig so that it was nigh on impossible for a right-hander to avoid setting an invalid and destructive switch combination”
As a lefty! It amazes me how many assumptions about handedness people make.(*)
I remember my partner as part of her psychology studies doing some textbook test involved the use of scissors, I substituted the assumed right handed scissors with my left handed scissors… the test authors had not realised scissors were handed. I suspect even today there are psychology students running the same test unaware of the fundamental flaw in its design.
My current bugbear is cntl-alt-del , designed to require two hands, because the majority have two hands, however, if for various reason your only functional hand is you left hand… the problem is even more of a challenge to those who either have small hands or were previously right handed…
(*)This is often a hidden benefit of playing golf left-handed as many courses are designed to be hard for right handlers….
>” I'm trying to think of ways to reduce the amount of accounting overhead.”
As you note taxes need to be simple and easy to collect. The simplest being a single annual charge, however who has a savings account for taxes?
Hence the simple way to get taxes paid is to collect them more frequently, which also has the effect of increasing costs. HMRC are encouraging this by increasingly doing things digitally and requiring businesses to do “real time” tax accounting.
Following the free market philosophy that has been dominant for many decades, it makes sense to the government to outsource the tax collection to “for profit” businesses, which provides even more ways for money to circulate though pockets and so raise even more tax revenues.
The regular charging events EVs require seem to be a sensible point at which to apply charges/taxes. Whether these usage charges should take account of more factors than just the kWh taken from the grid is up for discussion. Given we already have fuel duty, it is a simple concept to apply fuel duty to electricity used for EVs.
>” The actual charging network should charge the same amount regardless of location”
Not thinking straight or utopian thinking.
What is actually needed is a clear unit of charge pricing that enables comparison, just as we can today compare petrol/diesel pricing.
>” I say that as it means a whole bunch of accounting to assess the tax on every charging session.”
That’s exactly how it works today; a charging session is simply a purchase.
The only problem is the major utilities billing systems are ancient and so don’t do transactional billing at this scale.
Solution is for EV chargers to be attached to dedicated providers who will have the appropriate IT systems to authorise and manage charging and do the transactional billing etc. which is basically what we have in the UK.
methane is a lot less explosive than hydrogen.
When the gas network was switched over to natural gas, all the boiler, fire and cooker burners had to be changed to support a different gas air mix. I suspect a switch to hydrogen will require a similar project but at a much larger scale due to the massive increase in homes since the 1960s.
It is perhaps notable that serious attempts are being made to do community scale trials of a switchover to hydrogen, I don’t remember there being any such trials before the switch to natural gas/ methane.
Surely, the car maintains a (possibly basic) log of recent charging events, just like existing engine management systems retain the last 20’ish fault codes. So should be relatively easy to upload as part of smart charging or via the GSM spy recent charging history…
In the UK the infrastructure is largely in place:
Vehicle tax: just change EV category from zero to whatever.
Fuel duty: can be applied through the existing EV charging networks to which all home wall warts and public charging points are connected to.
Just needs the politician will; given the agenda to end new ICE sales, I anticipate the next Westminster government will start the ball rolling with steep increases after 2030 as fossil fuel revenues begin to fall (I expect also duties on fossil fuels to also increase).
>” Whereas I conclude that a major build out and re-engineering of the grid to allow more the energy efficient future, which is going to happen”
History and reality says it isn’t going to happen anytime soon, particularly given the extra load EVs would put on the grid was easily calculable back in 2010. We’ve had 10+ years and very little has been done to prepare for a re-engineer of the national grid, so as you note if we start today it’s probably going to be 25 years before it’s ready…
Need to investigate the mains cost of EV electricity, as I expect this will be on a different tariff to general domestic. I suspect your game changer is the solar panels and having sufficient to charge from these.
I would treat the free charging as a bonus as I expect as numbers increase charging will be introduced - it’s costing the shopping centre to provide “free” charging and the government is going to want to shift revenues gained from petrol/diesel fuel onto EV fuel.
The only real question is going to be your lifestyle and can it adapt to your local EV charging constraints.
The same size doesn’t mean the same skills set.
Interesting to know the size of the team, I note it was only 6 people in 2012 and in 2022 the entire company was 80 people [ https://world.hey.com/jason/on-company-size-8095488d ].
Would not be surprised if the team has lost “racking and stacking” staff (outsourced) and gained more business systems management and operations staff. Ie. What is considered “ops” has changed.
The challenge is going to be to make this compatible with the existing charging interfaces so that, when it is finally agreed, it does not require a complete replacement of the thousands of charging points currently being deployed.
Obviously, for this V2G to work charging points will need to be upgraded, however, this should only be those charging points where this is desired.
You clearly don’t understand what a LLM is and thus what it is and isn’t capable of.
Your doctor made a diagnostic and treatment error. If you had Googled “heart attack” or “chest pains” you would know from reliable medical sources the diagnostic steps a medical expert (with access to the right equipment) will take.
Even asking a random person (ie. Not a medical expert) in to the street would most probably got you the answer: do you want me to call you an ambulance?
An answer the LLM is highly unlikely to provide.
The “why” from my experience would seem to be because of politicians…
In the early 90s many local government systems came due for renewal, for various reasons: changing business demands, changing legislation and obsolete hardware. Because local government was a small market the cost of systems development were a big component of the price ticket. The politicians were obsessed with public sector: overspend, over specification, spend of delivery/change, and decided if COTS products could deliver to business then as local government were effectively businesses they could use COTS products rather than the bespoke systems used previously…
To me “public code” is where the source is available to all with no access qualifying precondition - remember the issue with RedHat and “free software” is that the licensing model only requires distribution of source to customers ie. Public code is freely open source not just “free software”.
This is Microsoft, so can expect the current “open” Windows print services to be depreciated - why have a print service that can be extended by third-party (non-MS store) drivers when you restrict it to UWP and Microsoft’s variant of Mopria.(*)
(*) Given previous performance with Standards: PDF, Office document formats, HTML, we can expect MS to vary from the agreed Standard.
Plan A - fixed line ISP - Full service to whole house
Plan B - mobile data ISP - Email and web service to whole house
Plan C - get in car and visit friends/relations in neighbouring villages - fixed line full service to individual(s) who make the journey…
Plan B is two providers, the EE 4G mast backhaul uses the same duct as the fixed line - twice in the last two years 400+ metres of this duct has been emptied of cables taking over a week for service to be restored. The Other provider (Three) I have a directional (3G) antenna on the roof to their mast which has a differently routed backhaul…
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