Surely he's just going to bugger off to Brazil or somewhere similar.
Posts by conel
87 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Jun 2010
Ex-Waymo engineer pleads the 5th in ongoing Uber law fight
No H-1B visas? No problem, we'll offshore says Tech Mahindra
Britain's on the brink of a small-scale nuclear reactor revolution
Thursday 25th May 2017 18:58 GMT
Re: Heat engines
Super critical steam turbines can hit efficiencies of over 48%. So not much difference with CCGTs maxing at about 60%. Utterly irrelevant though, has to be considered with the fuel and the energy density of nuclear fuel can't be beaten.
https://www.xkcd.com/1162/
BTW, gas turbines are heat engines too.
(Pointless discussion but I saw an excuse to link to XKCD)
Three non-obvious reasons to Vote Leave on the 23rd
Wednesday 22nd June 2016 19:09 GMT
Re: Repeating history
"Looking at the statistics for 1974 casualties in Northern Ireland there seem to be 294, and of those 73 were probably army."
The UK joined Europe in 1973 and according to the below data 479 people were killed in 1972. Not that the exact numbers really matter, the point is the UK wasn't a utopia immune to internal strife as Andrew is trying to make out.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=phNtm3LmDZEM2Jpkp5e0ldQ
A gold MacBook with just ONE USB port? Apple, you're DRUNK
What will happen to the oil price? Look to the PC for clues
Wednesday 14th January 2015 16:26 GMT 
Utter BS
This is just plain silly and is a good example of the hubris of economists. Their models are incapable of acurately respresenting the economic world they're supposed to be made for yet economists are happy to apply their nonsense to other disciplines. Mainstream economists not only didn't predict the economic crash but many had convinced themselves that a crash was impossilbe because of how brilliantly they were managing the economy.
This report - which is the type of fluff the Reg usually derides - seems to have been inspired by the increasing use of the term "factory drilling". Factory drilling is used to describe the massive productivity improvements that drilling has achieved through automation and repition. These improvements have been immense but it still doesn't justify the nonsense idea that oil production is no longer an extractive industry and is better described as a manufacturing sector.
http://www.drillingcontractor.org/%E2%80%98factory-drilling%E2%80%99-boosts-rop-with-automation-11614
This report is coming from someone who knows nought about the the oil industry, there are some simple clues like referring to Tengiz, an old field, when he clearly meant Kashagan and using the term "fracking rig" which belongs in a Guardian article.
TEEN RAMPAGE: Kids in iPhone 6 'Will it bend' YouTube 'prank'
Tuesday 30th September 2014 12:04 GMT
Re: Great work
The phones are there for demonstration purposes and the kids were told the phones couldn't be bent... So they were merely testing the assertion of the sales clerk. Don't see how they could be held liable if they can prove the sales clerk told them the phones couldn't be bent.
If I'm told something can't be bent the first thing I'll do is try to bend it, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that instinct.
Boeing CEO says no more 'moonshots' after 787 Dreamliner ordeal
Friday 23rd May 2014 13:31 GMT
OUT-SOURCED PROFITS – THE CORNERSTONE OF SUCCESSFUL SUBCONTRACTING
Boeing moved their headquarters to Chicago from Seattle partly because the management weren't interested in the designing-and-building-airplanes aspect of their business.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/01/21/what-went-wrong-at-boeing/
"In the interview, Condit makes no secret of another factor: as CEO, he didn’t want to be bothered with tiresome “how-do-you-design-an-airplane stuff,” or boring meetings with Boeing’s key customers (airlines) who came to Seattle"
Their fundamental problem with the 787 development was excessive outsourcing. Sadly engineers within Boeing knew full well what would happen.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2011/02/04/2014130646.pdf
Google and Apple in DRAG RACE: It's fanboi Mercs VS fandroid Audis
Why a Robin Hood tax on filthy rich City types is the very LAST thing needed
Tuesday 15th October 2013 09:56 GMT
Asymetric Speculation
From the article is seems that the "Noble" winners are suggesting that the issue with the US housing market was asymmetric speculation, as in lots of people going long and not enough people going short (of course Goldman et al were going short but few people knew).
The suggestion isn't that there wasn't enough speculation but that the speculation was unbalanced due to the nature of the market. To use this to suggest that all speculation is great and that there is a "scientific" consensus that the more speculation there is the better is just plain silly, even if you pretend that economics is a science.
The article reeks of ideology as opposed to clear thinking.
Brits give thumbs-up to shale gas slurping in university-run poll
Google Chromecast: Here's why it's the most important smart TV tech ever
Saturday 27th July 2013 11:19 GMT
HDMI-CEC Remote Control
The dongle supports HDMI-CEC so it can control the tv (turn it on and select input). HDMI-CEC can be used the other way around so it should be possible to use the tv's remote control to play/ pause the chromecast content.
I've a raspberry pi connected to a Panasonic TV. The Panasonic remote can control the pi using HDMI-CEC (no set up required). Google may prefer people to use the touch screens though...
Decade to 2010 was hottest, wettest: WMO
Monday 8th July 2013 11:23 GMT
Data
The second paragraph of the article jumps out at me.
"The WMO's report, which should but probably won't put paid to the idea that warming has stopped"
I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding about what is meant by warming having stopped. By looking at the below graph from Wolfram Alpha it is very clear that there was a warming trend from approximately 1975 to 1998.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=global+mean+temperature
From 1998 to 2012 the temperatures have been shown to be flat, this is entirely consistent with the statement that the last decade has been the hottest on record and it would also be expected that a larger number of temperature records would have been broken in that decade than in previous ones. What isn't happening is the continuation of the trend from 1975 to 1998, I actually didn't think this was considered controversial.
The report is just pointing out something which is obvious from looking at the Wolfram graph... The hottest 10 year period in the last 150 years has been in the last 10 years!
'Liberator': Proof that you can't make a working gun in a 3D printer
Why do Smart TV UIs suck?
Wednesday 21st November 2012 13:05 GMT
Panasonic not fully learning
I just bought a Panasonic smart tv, every time I turn the thing on I get an ad for music from Myspace. That's pretty annoying, although not as bad as every time you turn on the EPG.
There's apparently different standards of Panasonic smart tv, the one I got doesn't have the web browser for whatever reason.
Another thing about UI that annoys me about a lot of tv's is the standard of the remote control that comes with them. The Panny remote is terrible, has all the expected functions but is just plain awkward to use. It really does make me appreciate Sky's remote and UI.
It would help if when tech journalists - definitely looking at the Reg here - would actually put an appropriate emphasis on the quality of the UI and remote when reviewing a TV instead of going on about differences in video quality which are only really apparent when looking at the sets back to back, or if you're trying hard to notice.
Don't panic, but UK faces BLACKOUTS BY 2015
Monday 8th October 2012 11:15 GMT 
The Guardians Solution
Below is a link to an article from a supposedly serious newspaper about how to deal with climate change.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2012/oct/01/50-months-climate-interactive
They've basically asked 50 people how they would solve the global warming problem, which of course is bound closely with energy policy. I'd genuinely recommend looking at all 50 comments, you'll either find it hilarious or depressing.
You'd hope that there's a higher level of discussion going on in DECC...
Google promises autonomous cars for all within five years
Wednesday 26th September 2012 11:36 GMT
Re: praos
Roughly my thoughts as well. For me, the interesting thing is that it will take a start-up or a company like Google (no interest in the automotive industry) to make the change.
Once driverless cars are common people in general won't own private cars (except maybe toys for wealthy people). People will instead use automated taxi like services. So we'll end up with lots of black cab like cars on the roads which will be commercial vehicles so will be designed for long lives and high reliability.
In this scenario there will be far fewer cars manufactured per annum to do the same work as the vast majority of a car's time is currently spent doing nothing so it will take far fewer automated cars to replace them. These new cars will be quite utilitarian so it's hard to see where the market for high end motors will be.
The long and the short of it is the current automotive industry is not going to embrace automated motoring.
How hard is 3D printing?
Thursday 20th September 2012 10:09 GMT 
Even home 2d printing isn't all that great
3d printing used to be known mainly as "rapid prototyping", it's now being used ever more for "rapid manufacturing" and this makes a lot of sense for low volume products.
Various parts of the media, from geek websites to the FT, have been putting forward the notion that 3d printing will revolutionise manufacturing by putting a 3d printer in everyone's home and allowing for decentralised manufacturing. I don't see how this is even remotely plausible.
I always think of home inkject/ laser printers when the notion is put forward. Would anyone seriously consider printing and binding a book at home to be preferable to ordering it online and having it delivered the next day. Consider the cost, time, reliability and hassle. Even for a custom book you would still be better off going with something like blurb.co.uk (think about the difference in quality, TCO and cost of you own time). And this is with technology which is fundamentally a lot simpler to 3d printing and has had decades to mature and become dirt cheap.
I can imagine industrial scale 3d printers, which would be the equivalent of the printing machinery used by the likes of blurb, being used more widely for spare parts and such but the notion of it being done at home seems fanciful to me.
TERROR in SEATTLE: Gang of violent LEPRECHAUNS on the loose
Sunday 24th June 2012 15:55 GMT
Re: And If i feckin hear "Southern Ireland"...............
Mmm, couldn't be much more wrong if you tried. Southern Ireland is not an official name, it's Republic of Ireland if you want to be proper. The reason southern Ireland is an annoying name is the most northerly point and county on the Island is in the republic, so calling it the south is silly at best. Derry is the original name, London may have been added a few hundred years ago but Derry is still the original. And part of Ulster is in the republic/ south/ eire/ 26 counties, simply wishing it isn't doesn't make it so.
GiffGaff in data spaff, goodybag gaffe: ICO says its 'avin a laff
Friday 15th June 2012 10:46 GMT
Overly Sensitive
I use Giffgaff and will continue to, because its cheap...
I've had trouble ordering goodybags, not just the last couple of weeks either. And when I ordered a sim recently it took almost two weeks to arrive. So the reg is right, they are a bit rubbish but they are very cheap.
And for those over sensitive Fans, the style of the article is exactly in keeping with the Reg, and long may it continue!
Study: The more science you know, the less worried you are about climate
Tuesday 29th May 2012 14:44 GMT 
Assumptions
The problem with the discussion here is that the study made some assumptions. Whether or not the're correct can be debated but the position of the authors is that it's correct to have a high level of perceived risk about climate change. They knew going into the study that the level of perceived risk in the population is lower than they considered correct. In order to explain this they considered two hypotheses. One that people were too scientifically illiterate to appreciate the risk and secondly that people's ability to perceive risk is biased by their social environment (peers don't believe it so it's best if they don't either). The first hypothesis was proved incorrect and the second one correct.
It would have been interesting if as a control they considered the belief in god or evolution instead of just risk associated with nuclear, although that is a bit different to perceived risk... Maybe risk of eternal damnation then?
Commentards! Know a good hosting firm? Recommend a good laptop?
Ex-BP engineer cuffed 'for deleting Deepwater spill texts'
Wednesday 25th April 2012 18:24 GMT 
Only Texts
The part that bothers me is that they're only bloody text messages, informal communications which would easily be taken out of context.
The important part of the investigation is what caused the spill in the first place not some comments from one engineer to another after the fact.
Whatever about him, I certainly make sarcastic, black comments to colleagues which would have no use to a formal investigation and could easily be misconstrued. And he's not a scum sucking lawyer so he shouldn't be expected to have the same appreciation for the legal requirements.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
