Posts by Snow Hill Island 57 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Oct 2011
From the article:- "The Air Force has been developing AI-controlled aircraft using three converted F-16 fighters and in simulations, the computer-controlled aircraft beat human pilots - in part because they were allowed to pull off maneuvers that would have overstressed the airframe."
So, basically, the computer won in a simulation by assuming that an F16 was disposable, whilst the humans did not.... So the AI wrote off 3 airframes, which is not something you want to be doing on a regular basis, even though an F16 is "cheap" by modern standards.
"Let's not pussy-foot around the obvious here : some asshole thought this was acceptable. He thought that it was perfectly normal to saddle legitimate requests with data exfiltration."
It *could* have been a woman. Now, *my* unconscious bias agrees with you that it was probably a male, but is my unconscious bias wrong?
The problem with fuel cells is that they either consume hydrogen or hydrocarbons. A hydrogen economy is likely to be a dead end, and synthesised hydrocarbons are not energy efficient compared to battery tech. Biofuels should be abandoned asap because they're either grown on viable farmland we need to feed people, or require land to be converted to arable use which was otherwise growing wild. At least batteries are agnostic as to where their energy comes from, so we can choose the best option for the environment for their production and manufacture.
I *won't* be buying a fuel cell vehicle unless there's no other option.
"Materials wise, EVs are less expensive overall "
Have you got a citation for that? The cost of a reasonable sized battery pack using decent quality cells (60 to 80kWh) is probably equivalent to the rest of the vehicle combined That's why EVs currently cost more than a similar ICE car, at least in the price range I can afford.
"And yet the official figures from the US show that for mile driven Teslas has less accidents than other Human controlled cars....."
In the US, there are vast amounts of roads where pedestrians, cyclists and cars don't mix. I'm not aware of a specific comparison of the accident rate per mile driven for accidents solely involving pedestrians and cyclists and no other vehicles, which is what this study is simulating. (i.e. we're comparing apples and some form of root vegetable here. Oranges, being a fruit are too similar for this comparison...)
"Glass is more transparent and a lot cheaper"
....and many types of glass are strong enough to be used as a pressure vessel to withstand one atmosphere of pressure, as anyone who's owned a traditional thermos flask or a CRT TV can attest. You can also give glass coatings to reflect or absorb UV light which barely weigh anything because they're only a few microns thick.
"Facebook is dying a natural death anyway."
Clearly you're not in a circle of parents with school aged children. The kids all communicate with apps other than facebook, but the parents still use facebook to find out whether their little darlings have forgotten about the latest bit of history homework, or whether the teacher really hasn't set any this term...
"Why in God's name would I want to spend £20,000+ on something I'm not going to use much?"
Because otherwise you'll have to leave for work at 6 am and come home at 8 pm, because you'll find that the fleet of pods is mysteriously difficult to book during the rush hour.
The company buying the pods doesn't want to spend £20,000+ on something you're not going to use either...
"Or I suppose I could do KCal, Ne(w)tons, and Celcius"
Make life easier for yourself, use Joules instead of KCal. And if you're working with steam tables, bare in mind you may well be using Kelvin rather than Celcius, or you might get some rather surprising answers...
"I use cheap cable (£7 for 30m)"
I use twin and earth cable, because it's what I had hanging round in the garage, but cheap doorbell wire would probably have been good enough. And I'd bet that no matter what I spend on cables, it won't sound any better despite them being the analogue part of the path in my setup. Once you've got a decent cross section of copper in your speaker wire, it's the quality of your DAC, amplifier and speakers that matter, so long as you route the speaker cables sensibly, and remember not to wire them into the mains... :-)
We have definitely reached market saturation. We're now in the situation where the consumer has to pay a large premium for a small increment in performance. as far as I can tell, the biggest bang per buck improvement is between the £20 to £30 android phones to the £50 to £100 phones, with the user experience only improving in small increments for each £50 spent above that. Even a landfill android phone that costs £20 on PAYG is OK for some use cases.
Given the above, what I don't understand is why the second hand phone market is so bouyant, apart from for iphones, where no "budget" model is (or is ever likely to be) available.
With apologies to Douglas Adams:-
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly how to make the internet secure in a way which satisfies everyone, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
Some people argue that this has already happened.
Another "must see" for anyone visiting London with an interest in engineering is the Kirkaldy Testing Museum in Southwark Street. The main feature of the museum is the (still functioning) test machine which takes up most of the ground floor.
The testing museum marks a change in approach from "seat of the pants" guesstimates of material strength to proper engineering testing.
http://www.testingmuseum.org.uk
Looks like a decent spec for a "general use" laptop, but I wouldn't want Chrome OS or Ubuntu on there myself. How difficult is it to completely wipe off Chrome OS and get any given Linux distro installed?
Are there any UEFI nasties, or can you boot a UEFI aware install disk via an external optical drive, and just wipe the disk and install the distro of your choice? (Probably Sabayon in my case)
Bought an eee 4G at Christmas after it's first release. Had Xandros on it, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Puppy, then Gentoo. I'd still be using it now if I hadn't got someone else's eee 900 when they bought a newer Samsung netbook, but that eee 900 is my main computer for home use. At work I've got access to machines with 16 cores, zippy SSDs and 128GB memory, but I don't need that at home.
Saying that, I would have bought an OLPC XO instead of the eee, if you didn't have to have a US mailing address to use "buy one give one" at the time. I'd still buy one or maybe two now, if they were generally available to the public. C'mon OLPC, how about it?
Ben
Hasn't Boris heard? Ofgem already thinks there's a risk of power shortages risk by 2015. So by 2020 there will be a risk of not being able to get a cab home and you'll have to walk home along the unlit streets. On the bright side, it won't be all that late, because the nightclubs will be dark and quiet. On an even brighter note, if the power's out, all the beer will come from a proper hand pump....
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