Posts by John Brown (no body)

Electric vehicles won't help UK meet emissions targets: Time to get out and walk, warn MPs

Re: The ones calling for it first.

"Thats the first step for some of them to start floaing the idea of human culling..."

At least we'll get a guaranteed weekly ration of Soylent \Green.

Re: The ones calling for it first.

"the next government would end up being led by nigel farage on a committment to "restore common sense" "push back against green fanatics" - which is chilling to me,"

Have you seen Trumps stance on climate change and his roiling back of what little environmental protections are in place in the USA?

Re: 50 miles???

"What? Doesn't everybody have essential breakdown equipment in their car?"

These days? No. Very few even seem to be able to change wheel if they get a flat (or the car doesn't even have a spare, just a can of foam sealant. Most people these days seem to rely on the AA or similar for every type of break down.

Just today I say a car broken down on a main road, "parked" mostly out of a left turn junction (from his point of view). He was on the grass on the phone. He didn't even have the presence of mind to push the car a few yards back onto the side road. Theoretically, it might have been a fault which immobilised the car, in which case I apologise for calling him a twat under my breath as a drove past on the wrong side of the road avoiding him.

Re: 50 miles???

"Also noise pollution is greatly reduced."

Mmmm...yes. Shard use space, pedestrians and cars...almost silent cars. Bad enough with the sort of people who don't pay attention. Now imagine blind pedestrians in those scenarios. "Ringtones" for cars could be the next big thing. Got shitty little CityCar? Buy a Porche Carrera engine sound for it and pretend you're Ayrton Senna!

Re: 50 miles???

"This year so far I have seen maybe 3 EV's driving and 1 charging. However I see hybrids everywhere, plug in hybrids almost but not quite as rare as EV's."

I drive about 35-40k miles per year, and I'm definitely seeing an increase in pure electric, from almost none to a few more than none. Hybrids are more prevalent. But then I'm on the motorway most of the time, so pure electrics, other than Teslas, tend not to be there other than junction hopping. And to be fair, I'm not that interested in what type of car is in my field of view. I'm more more concerned with what it and it's driver is doing or about to do. Electrics tend to stand out for me when I'm at a junction or in a queue of some sort and may notice the car in front doesn't have an exhaust pipe.

Re: 50 miles???

"Sure, but also we are decades away from contemplating 100% EV coverage"

That's technically correct, but misleading (assuming Govt. plans stay on track as currently stated). The current plan is to ban ICE car sales in the next 15 years. That means ICE car sales will start tailing off then drop off a cliff in probably 10-12 years. As ICE cars disappear, finding a filling station still in business is going to get harder so fewer people will even want an ICE car. Resale value will be down the toilet for any ICE car bought after about 2030, and certainly by the cut off date. That gives national grid next to no time to improve the grid (they said they need to do this) and very little time to vastly increase the availability of charging points. Two or three per car park is not going to cut it.

Re: 50 miles???

"There is a company that has developed fittings to use power from common lampposts by changing out an access door."

Lamp posts need to be replaced every so often. They have a physical life span limit. Our borough considered converting the street lamps to LED but found the conversion cost was about 75% the cost of replacing the 40-50 year old posts with new ones with a 50-60 year life span. In addition, they needed fewer lamp posts for the same illumination levels so they are now spaced further apart, On narrower streets, they only put the new lamp posts down one side of the street, none on the other side.. Replacing older lamp posts with fewer new ones with an even longer lifespan was cheaper even if the older ones still had 10-20 years life in them. But now not very useful as charging points on streets with no off street paring since now there's only one post per 12-14 cars instead of the slightly more useful one per 8-10 cars. Great in 15-20 years when ICE car sales are banned.

Re: 50 miles???

"Adding a socket at pavement edge isn't a huge problem."

Maybe not for a single house. But scale that up to every house in the street. And then watch the fights over who gets to park where. I've seen it mooted that every street light could be a charging point. Well, with better.more efficient street lights, they are further apart now than they used to be. And even with the old style ones, there still wasn't one for every parked car. Not to mention that some councils now turn off some street lights from midnight to 5am in some areas to save money. Sucks to be you if that's also your charging point.

Re: 50 miles???

"and finally, something that nobody seems to want to think about. crime. theft of electrical cable is relatively common."

Well, obviously the answer is to dig up all the streets and put wireless induction charging loops in the roadside parking areas, it works for mobile phones, especially iPhones. (lets not mention the extra power waste in induction charging, eh?)

Re: 50 miles???

"Yet, if you keep a full jerry can on petrol in the shed "just in case" suddenly you find you can drive..."

You could always jog down to the local supermarket and buy a rucksack full of those 3 quid disposable emergency phone chargers. For the car, not the phone :-)

Re: 50 miles???

"There isn't capacity to charge 32m cars plus the huge commercial fleet - which will need way more energy at a much greater rate to charge overnight - at any time. Overnight is viable now, but try to charge the entire fleet and it just won't work."

And not forgetting all those huge lorries that travel overnight and will need to charge up during the peak daytime. Just picture every courier depot in the country. Each one gets at least one HGV delivery every night, which then returns to the hubs with the outgoing cargo from that depot. And that's a just a small part of the overnight haulage industry. Many of of those will need a range of 200-300 miles or more or a fast charge en route.

Re: 50 miles???

"Even with many more electric cars it is unlikely to surpass the electricity requirement required at peak times during the day for a long time."

As coal is wound down and gas is being villified in favour of solar and wind, I wonder just how much wind will be able to supply over night when the "peak" period is over, the sun has moved around the other side of the planet and the solar panels are producing almost nothing from the moon and starlight? Don't count on nuclear. Old ones are being decommissioned and the new ones have been dogged by protests and enquiries for years. I suppose we could import from Polands "brown coal" plants via the EU interconnects so long as the import tariffs are not too high, assuming the Germans aren't buying it all because they shut their entire nuclear fleet down.

Re: 50 miles???

"Most EV drivers will always have a full tank waiting for them in the morning and probably, at some point, when they leave work too. They will only need to use those chargers infrequently, a few times a year on average."

Even if you can charge overnight at home (about half of car owners can't do that), many won't be able to get a full charge overnight. A full charge can take longer than that unless they have the space and resources for a higher capacity charging point. You are also assuming that every EV car owner will be able to access a charging point while at work. That's will require a VAST increase in charging points in public and private/works car parks. Currently, even if everyone plays nice and goes to move their car from a charging point as soon as they can (leaving work to do so), there only ever about 0.5% at best charging bays per car park.

Lots of people seem to be throwing around figures like 20-30 miles per day. Last time I looked at average daily commute figures, it was more like 50-75 miles per day round trip and rising.

Re: 50 miles???

"you'd need a 2sq.km field per charger just to replace power used in one hour"

Most of the big solar installations I've seen do seem to be just that. Solar panels in fields. Even with dense coverage, you could still use the field to graze sheep. But I wonder if it's possible to share space with crops that are normally hand-picked? Leave larger gaps between the panel rows to allow machinery to plant or do what needs doing to crops happy to grow at least partially shaded by the panels. I'm sure farmers or solar panel installer type people could come up with ways to co-exist and more or less double the productivity of the land and still keep the panels safely wired together such that they don't get cut off by ploughing or hungry sheep.

Re: There is no possibility of charging via a smart meter

"If say 10% of people can do that then they can't mandate a tax for 90% and not the other 10%."

Like the feed-in tariff paid to a very small minority and funded by the green surcharge on everyone's gas and electricity bills? Nah, that would never work.

Re: There is no possibility of charging via a smart meter

"So if you don't cook with electric"

You know the next step in the "green" plan is to reduce and then eliminate gas usage in private homes? Good luck pumping 7kW into your car of an evening when the kids want their meals and showers etc.

Re: 50 miles???

"Will anything come of tidal power? There are enough tidal areas around the UK to power half of Europe but judicious use and cancellation of grants over the past 30+ years has prevented them from providing huge amounts of totally predictable energy."

Almost every plan for tidal energy in a way that might be economic has been scuppered by environmental "concerns". Little consideration seems to given to what environmental benefits there may be for different species that may move in to replace those that may move out. It's always about the loss of existing species in a locality. And those inquiries and appeals always take years, by which time the investors of all gone off to do something else with their money. Like spending it on hookers and blackjack to help kill the memories of trying to do some good and being shot down in flames for it.

Re: 50 miles???

"Most people will be able to charge their car at home. Anyone with a private drive or garage can do it today."

Those two statement are contradictory since fewer people have a garage or driveway that you seem to think.

I'm not sure what future you are seeing where people who charge their car at home will be able to do it "potentially for free". Are you expecting fusion power, "so cheap it's not worth metering it" sometime in the next few years?. How do you think the government is going to replace the income from fuel duty + 20% VAT they get on millions of litres of petrol/diesel per day?

Re: Hydrogen

"The biggest problem with hydrogen is that until we have an excess of carbon free generation "

Overnight excess wind power for electrolysis?

(No idea here, just farting in the wind)

Re: legal target

"Battery rental £60 month for 7500 miles/year"

AN average car does 12,000 miles per year. That's a pretty restrictive limit. What do they charge for the excess miles that many people will do? That make it even less economic other than for the school run.

Re: legal target

"What the country (indeed all countries) is the ability to charge at ANY charge point just using a standard credit card without joining a "club" first. By all means give club members a 5% discount for using their own system but charging infrastructure is a public service and should be open to all."

FaaS - Fuel as a Service. But only if you have the correct type of car. Everyone wants their share of the XaaS subscription market and will stop at nothing to be the next Apple or Google with a vendor lock-in.

After all, the car analogy is an old favourite here on El Reg and my, how we all laughed at the idea of cars being like computers, only being allowed to use certain facilities and not just "any" filling station or road-type, or type of tyres etc. This is US influenced "free market" at work, not international co-operation on standards for all.

Re: Hydrogen? Seriously?

"Add to that you can just plug an EV in an walk away, shop, go to the loo, have a nap, watch a Ted Talk, have some food etc, whereas a fuel station you have to stand there waiting to fill up."

Apart from not having time to walk away from a petrol pump because the process is so quick, how many charging points are under utilised because you went off and did some shopping for an hour or three and came back to find the charging finished 30 mins ago but no one else could use it? Not to mention the 10 other electric cars desperately driving around trying to find an unused charging point because the 300 space car park has only two charging points, one of which you just blocked for nearly half the working day.

Re: Hydrogen? Seriously?

"The Americans are sitting on loads of minerals, including the lithium needed for batteries. It is just that they would prefer not to pollute their country in the way that others are doing, which means that it is not currently cost effective to extract using environmentally clean methods. That may change once supplies run out in countries that don't care about such details."

Trump is currently rolling back environmental protections, so there's even less need for battery tech in the USA while they ramp up oil, gas and coal production. And when there is, maybe they won't care about the pollution from the processing.

Re: Hydrogen? Seriously?

"See other posts, there are more charging stations that the public can access in the UK than fuel stations."

5 mins per pump versus multiple hours at a charging station. Needs massively more charging station to match throughput.

Re: Hydrogen? Seriously?

"There no longer really seems to be the need for hydrogen any more for transport. Battery electric works in nearly all standard use cases and already has a national supply to every home (almost), road, street."

I was listening to a BBC report on this same topic yesterday. The "green" interviewee was gleefully telling us how the number of electric car charging stations in the UK was now higher than the number of filling stations.

My first thought was "big deal", because the number means nothing unless an electric charging point can service as many cars per hour as a petrol pump can. You need vastly more charging points to even match the number of petrol pumps. Then there's the range. I fill up with diesel every 700 or so miles and it takes me 5 minutes. Charging points are still a long way from matching that. For those who don't have off-street parking, then charging infrastructure needs to be vastly better than two or three charging points per car park, at least one of which will be "hogged" for far longer than is needed to charge the car. eg at Newcastle Civic Centre, there is a big black BMW that seems to be almost permanently plugged into one of the three charging points. I'm guessing this is owned by a senior council exec who can't be arsed to come out and move it after an hour or three.

Re: Hydrogen? Seriously?

"I'm not saying it's not potentially dangerous - it is potentially more dangerous than petrol... but look at how much petrol we handle on a day-today basis with very little accidents. I think it's possible to make a safe H2 infrastructure."

Yes, we have a decent number of filling stations offering self-service LPG top-ups. We don't hear of LPG vehicles going up in flames very often at all (except in some of the former soviet-bloc countries but not only do they tend to be self-conversion that blow up, but they have a far higher number of dash cams per capita for other reasons so we get to see them blow up). On the other hand, storing hydrogen at pressure has it's own problems, eg leak proofing with something that won't be corroded by the hydrogen itself on much more vast scale than has ever been done before.

Re: Self Driving

"When I was a young child (early 70es), the local beer depot used horse and cart for delivery. No problems with drunk driving, and the horse knew the route."

Vaux in Sunderland still had horse drawn drays for the local deliveries right up until they closed down the brewery in 1999.

Brit rocketeer Skyrora reckons it'll be orbital in 3 years – that is, if UK government plays ball

Re: Arse

Spaceport Cornwall!! Yarrrrrr!!!!!

Re: Arse

Gov.uk needs something to launch the gps.uk fleet, so they better bloody well pull their fingers out.

Although what will actually happen is if they ever get some legislation in place to allow launches from UK soil, it'll end up being so loose and woolly that anyone with the money can do it and it'll all be bought up by foreign companies. All in the interest of "fair play" of course, rather than nurturing UK industry.

Buying a Chromebook? Don't forget to check that best-before date

Maybe the Year of Linux on the (2nd hand) Desktop/Chromebook is nigh!

"Having said that, I think Google has vastly underestimated the sales lifetime of their devices. Looking at the models, they appear to be supporting systems for ~3.5 years after a new model is released which means stock is likely to be in the channel for a further year or more."

And as per the article, entire education authorities standardising on them across the school system where pupils might well be expected to use them for 5 years. (yeah, yeah, lifetime of "free" tech given to schoolkids etc etc etc), but what happens when (not if) a school or LEA managing a fleet of 1000's of chrome books suddenly finds that on a certain day, 100's if not 1000's suddenly can't be managed by the remote systems and they're only 2-3 years from purchase date?

"If it's a security issue and the device is compromised you can't go back to the manufacturer because they will say it's end of life and where does consumer protection sit on that?"

With general laptops, that might be less of a issue but the Chromebooks and ChromeOS is designed primarily to be used online so security issues affecting the safe use of the device are an inherent part of the usability and functionality of the device.

Re: Consumer Rights?

"Yes you will not gain protection from newly discovered vulnerabilities that were built-in from new or added by the updates that arise and are exploited"

FTFY.

Re: Consumer Rights?

"Would *you* do online banking on a PC that hadn't been patched in ages? If so, you'd better hope your bank never gets to hear of it because the terms & conditions almost certainly state that you are only allowed to access that service if you have taken reasonable steps to ensure that the client device is properly patched."

I wonder if "I emailed $supplier requesting security updates and they ignored me/told me to piss off" is "reasonable steps"?

Don't trust Facebook's Libra cryptocurrency, boffins warn: Zuck & Co know that hash is king

Re: Nice reasearch

"if we don't post sufficient officially approved information about ourselves on the surveillance platform, we'll be denied financial credit,"

I've not used any form of credit in the last 20 years or so other than paying bills by direct debit so probably have a shit "credit score" anyway. From what I hear, the way to get a "good" credit score is to be in debt and demonstrate that you can pay it off. It all sounds barking mad. Why would I want to service a debt and make profit for some lender just so that I can borrow more?

Disgruntled bug-hunter drops Steam zero-day to get back at Valve for refusing him a bounty

Re: From my understanding...

"Personally I've never released vulnerabilities into the wild like this. It also means I know dozens of companies that have vulnerabilities in their products and they know it, and I know it, but that's it. It's now their problem, not mine. Spin that Karmic wheel and watch it goooo!"

An ethical dilemma? Balancing the risk of loss to possibly millions of people against the legal "fiction" of some likely overly onerous NDA that might not even be a legal document if it's untested in court?

Re: From my understanding...

"Releasing the code into the wild after having it denied is also a complete d&ck move. "

Yes and no. If Valve say it's not a problem, then neither is releasing the code. If the code being in the wild is a problem, then it's a bug Valve should be dealing with as soon as they are notified of it. After all, they don't know if a blackhat is already exploiting it.

Overseas investors eat the UK tech sector for Brexit: More cash flung about in 7 months than the whole of last year

Greenland is not for sale!!!

And with the fall in the pound, it's firesale prices :-(

Eighty-year-old US 'web scam man' on the run after pocketing $250,000 in Dem 'donations'

Re: Mmm, changed name once, how 'bout I change country?

"Rinaldo sounds like nothing in particular. (Apologies to any Rinaldos who might read this, but I think this is correct.)"

Sounds like a top flight multi-millionaire football player to us right-pondians (Soccer player for left-pondians)

Spelling might be different. I don't follow football, but he's so famous here, even I've heard of him.

Re: Mmm, changed name once, how 'bout I change country?

Most people seem to have a general impression that the elderly are all nice, wonderful people who bake cakes or play chess all day. Criminals get old too! This guy may be a serial scammer from years back.

Brits are sitting on a time bomb of 40m old electronic devices that ought to be recycled

Re: contain elements that could run out in the near future

"pounced on by the men in hi-vis and told that it was theirs now, and it couldn't legally be given to anyone else. "

You should have told them to mind their own business. Until it's in the skip, it's still yours.

Re: Want my old devices? give me money

"Last time I went there they wanted to CHARGE me to drop them off, "

Back in the day, when doing a refresh install of new kit for customers, we would ofyen pay them for theor olf kit as we could sell it on to refurbishers. Then we reached a point where that was barley economically viable and would offer to take away the crap for free. Once the WEEE regulations came in (actually probably sooner than that) a point was reached where the only option was to charge to take away their crap or simply tell them we don't want their crap.

Re: But remember folks...

But how do you then recycle the "soup" into usable stuff in a sustainable way?

Clip, clip, hooray: NASA says it will send Clipper probe to Europa, will attempt no landing there

Re: Nitpick

...and don't forget the mice!!

Squabbles over NASA's lunar lander, Astrobotics takes a punt on ULA and India arrives at the Moon

Smart Dragon-1 (SD-1),

"Smart Dragon-1 (SD-1), took less than 18 months to develop, according to Chinese media, and is capable of sending 200kg to solar synchronous orbit. The rocket, which uses solid propellant, is notable since it can be produced within six months and fired off less than 24 hours after arriving at the launch site."

I'm surprised they went with all solid propellent. Easier, of course, and cheaper in the short term, but I'm surprised the Chinese aren't going for re-usability yet.

Lenovo ThinkPad X390: A trusty workhorse that means business but it's not without a few flaws

Re: Super Fishy

That was a nasty slip by Lenovo, but it only infected affected the consumer grade stuff.

Re: Chiclet keyboard == No Sale

"varyingly weird, bouncy touchpads"

The "bouncy" touch pad is because it has "mouse" buttons under it giving yet more options on how to select/click/drag.

UK.gov opens £250k competition to tackle first-world problem of crap conference Wi-Fi

Re: "help Britain attract more international business events"

On the bright side, at least they aren't trying to promote some non-existent VR solution to attending conferences without using air travel and all the problems that come with it such as wasted time and energy not to mention all that extra high altitude pollution to make the UK "carbon" free by some far to soon and unrealistic target year.

Overstock's share price has plummeted. Is it Trump's trade war? Bad results? Nope, its CEO has gone bonkers...

Re: I'm not trolling

"not something a CEO of a billion dollar company is supposed to say,"

Maybe it's the time people to say things they are not supposed to say. Even Presidents are doing it.