Posts by Androgynous Cupboard

Bringing cakes into the office is killing your colleagues, says UK food watchdog boss

Re: What a load of cobblers

I did try one, but they're not very niece.

Publisher breaks news by using bots to write inaccurate stories

Re: No reply from CNET you say?

> Do you think journalism might be more for the walking brain dead, and it is the comments sections which are alive keeping everything ticking over whilst considering its collapsing and the parts IT and AI are to play in its destruction and demise/creation and rebirth?

To be honest no, that's not what I was thinking :-)

Re: No reply from CNET you say?

Compose a comment in the style of amanfrommars from theregister.co.uk

"Well, well, well, what have we here? CNET, one of the stalwarts of tech journalism, apologizing for their use of AI in writing articles? Tsk tsk tsk.

It seems that the old adage 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' has once again proven to be true. The use of AI in journalism, while touted as a way to increase efficiency and output, has done nothing but detract from the value of human-written content and raise important ethical questions.

But kudos to CNET for recognizing their mistake and committing to using only human journalists in the future. It's a shame that it took such a public apology for them to see the error of their ways, but better late than never, I suppose.

One can only hope that other outlets will take note and follow suit, for the sake of the integrity of journalism and the trust of the reading public."

I think we can say that although journalism might be dead, the comments section is safe for some time.

No reply from CNET you say?

Allow me:

Compose a statement from CNET apologising for the using AI to write articles and explain why that decision was made

"We at CNET deeply apologize for our previous decision to use AI to write articles. We understand that this decision may have caused concern among our readers and the journalism community. We made this decision in an effort to increase efficiency and output, but we now realize that the use of AI in journalism raises important ethical questions and undermines the value of human-written content. In the future, we will ensure that all of our articles are written by our dedicated team of human journalists, who are committed to providing accurate and unbiased reporting."

Plugging end-of-life EV batteries into the grid could ease renewables transition

A few years ago I had a go at designing a BMS to balance four large cells - using (essentially) an Arduino as the brains.

It turns out to be quite a hard job to do well. I read a lot of whitepapers (google "Quasi-Resonant LC Converter cell balancing" for my favoured design), tested a few prototypes - almost all revolved around sucking charge out of cell A into a capacitor, then pushing it back into cell B. As the cells are hooked up in series you need to be able to switch a "floating" capacitor across a single cell to charge, then switch both sides of it to a another cell with a lower voltage to discharge. Switching had to be controlled very carefully - the two cells are in series with eachother, so at completely different ground voltages. Also, you're talking about very small voltage differences so switching losses really started to add up unless you used a clever design (like the QRLC)

It all got quite complicated, and that was with just four cells. Balancing across N for large versions of N would require more than one capacitor, and with N cells and M capacitors you've got a proper wiring headache. I don't know how they do it in cars - I'd love to find out. In the end I gave up with the conclusion this is a lot harder than it looks.

For reference, one of the best documented, if not most efficient options available for DIY was this http://cleanpowerauto.com/files/HousePower%20BMS.pdf. As I recall this one balanced by simply bleeding charge out of the highest cells into a fat resistor until they were all equal.

Re: You mean

Cute, but not new. Essentially a pretty G-Whiz, with the same issues

No mention of pack size in kWh unfortunately, which I find intensely irritating as it prevents any checking of figures. It also raises my "snake oil" detector a notch.

Unix is dead. Long live Unix!

Re: Ever Hear of BSD?

My prediction for 2023: commenters will be furiously pointing out that you've forgotten about BSD without reading any of the other comments - or, indeed, the second half of the article - until well into 2024.

Twitter 2.0 signal boosts Taliban 2.0 through Blue subscriptions

Re: What?

What?!? This would be the same RT that insisted Ukraine was run by Nazis? Or that Two GRU agents came to Salisbury to visit the cathedral? Or that MH17 just fell out of the sky and it was Malaysian Airlines fault?You might want to rethink that analogy.

Re: What?

I know, I read it, I'm dismayed and angry, as I said above - but it's still not Russia Today. If it were, the government wouldn't be so constantly angry about it.

Re: What?

Angry as I am with the direction the BBC has been pushed in the last 15 years, it's not yet Russia Today. While the state may rage, threaten withdrawal of funding and pack the top layers with government sympathisers, they don't - yet - have editorial control.

Re: What?

Hang on, I thought you thought the BBC was packed full of whiny lefty liberals? Come on man, pick a side - is it a pinko hotbed or an organ of the state?

Unless you think UK.gov is also currently packed with whiny lefty liberals, in which case you are - frankly - terrifying

Boffins say their protective satellite paint job could harvest power from the Sun

Vantablack

From the same team I believe - I think Prof. Silva was involved in that one too.

https://www.surreynanosystems.com/about/vantablack.

Fat EVs may cause 'more death on our roads' – watchdog

Re: More mass = more energy, right?

I have gone full data-geek and read the latest version (version 5) of the same report, from 2020. Some distilled numbers for you.

Well-to-wheel efficiencies are (worst to best):

* Petrol ICE (2015 tech): 212MJ/100km

* Diesel ICE (2015 tech): 184MJ/100km

* Battery EV (150km range, 2015 tech), powered from "EU mix 2015" of grid power: 135MJ/100km

* Battery EV (150km range, 2015 tech), powered from 100% Coal fired plants only: 122MJ/100km

* Battery EV (400km range, 2025 tech), powered from "EU mix 2025" of grid power: 100MJ/100km

* Battery EV (400km range, 2025 tech), powered from 100% wind: 48MJ/100km

That's extracted from (mostly) figures 21 and 35 of the above report. Petrol/Diesel 2025 figures are about the same, and both assume 0% ethanol - the report has figures for E85 etc. The "EU mix" is a representative mix of grid power sources that represents the EU average, but it will of course vary from country to country, and also time of year. In 2020 it was 41% combustibles (gas,coal etc), 24% nuclear, 15% wind, 14% hydro, 5% solar (source)

Figures take into account oil refining and transportation, grid and charging losses and power losses at generation, and apply to small passenger vehicles only (the report covers HGVs too). The report includes CO2 emissions too, which I haven't shown: 100% coal might be more efficient than the EU mix, but in terms of emissions it's way worse.

While it would be nice if this could finally put this issue to bed, I know it won't. But at least now I have some hard numbers I can refer back to for future debate.

Re: More mass = more energy, right?

You are trying to describe "well to wheel" efficiency, which has been calculated before and by people that didn't just make up their numbers on the spot. Google it, you're way out.

First, you've failed to account for energy cost of oil extraction (6.5%) and refining (8-10%) [1] and the fact that ICE cars average 16-20% tank-to-wheel efficiency. So total well-to-wheel for ICE is at best, 17%. I haven't accounted for distribution losses (ie fuel spent in tankers), it's variable depending on country - couple of percent perhaps.

Second, coal accounts for 20% of grid power in Europe, and virtually none in the UK. Fuel mix makes a huge difference, for example in Norway or NZ it's mostly hydro. Even in the US, coal is only 50%. Grid losses are not 30%, they are 8% worldwide average, although that varies by location as well. And EVs don't lose 20% on charging - I've measured. My car loses 10% on AC and less on DC.

If you're going to make sweeping generalisations about grid power you should first understand that it varies where you are on the planet. If your senators keep getting paid off to approve coal plants that's hardly a fair stick to beat EVs with.

[1] https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC85327/ttw_report_v4a_online.pdf - 150 page EU-funded report on the topic from 2014. More interesting than it sounds.

Re: More mass = more energy, right?

Don't be an idiot. I've run out of gas and done the hitchhike-of-shame with a can; the breakdown van can turn up equipped with a generator. It's no different.

Re: Aluminum graphene batteries

More data, including a very useful looking charging curve graph: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gmgs-battery-significant-battery-performance-100000999.html

Re: Aluminum graphene batteries

Ta for that. Just been reading some transcripts from GMG who are prototyping this, they're claiming they're already at 300Wh/kg which is very good, and that's just at prototype stage. LiFePo4 is currently heading towards about 230Wh/kg. So three times density might be a stretch but it's looking quite promising. At least part of the density increase seems to come from manufacturing in pouch form, and I don't know how well that will work in an EV.

I suspect a significant aspect of the density of a pack is going to be the charging curve, as that will affect how effectively cells can be balanced. It will be interesting to see how existing algorithms can be applied to these new technologies.

Re: Temporary Problem

The Model T Ford got between 13-21mpg. A Ford Focus gets about 50mpg, about 3 times more efficient. A Humvee, however, gets about 20mpg, so no improvement over 130 years.

Electric cars 100 years ago ran on lead-acid - I have no figures for this, but modern lead-acid batteries are about 30Wh/kg or 80Wh/l, so lets assume 20Wh/kg back in the day. Top speed was about 30km/hr, range about 60km. Modern LiFePo4 cells have an energy density of about 120Wh/kg or 320Wh/l, so about 6 times more energy/kg and 4 times more energy/litre. And that's just storage - the difference in transmission losses from an electrical system in 1900 to one in 2022? I can't even imagine. Orders of magnitude, certainly.

In summation, your assertion is bollocks.

Re: More mass = more energy, right?

> Claiming the use of clean energy only means that others have to do with dirty sources.

Er, it's not a zero-sum game. Old energy sources are removed, new ones come online and are almost (T&Cs apply) always cleaner than the old ones.

As for construction, what a strange straw man to bring up. Construction of PV, turbines, nuclear reactors, oil refineries, oil rigs, oil pipelines - all industrial processes in fact - all require energy, and currently that means CO2 emissions. No one has ever claimed otherwise. As for destruction of natural lands, you're onto a losing argument there. Visit an open-cast coal mine sometime and see for yourself.

Re: More mass = more energy, right?

> That energy density problem is not going to go away, no matter how many magical vapourware technologies are wafted about.

On a long enough timeframe I suspect that's not true. In the last 20 years we've gone from the energy density of the Prius (rubbish) to modern EV cars, which are a lot more efficient. I suspect a lot of the gain comes from battery balancing tech and motor efficiencies over improvements in battery tech, but still. We're in the early stages.

Mostly, however, I'm commenting to say Four Tonnes for an EV is fucking ridiculous. Unnecessarily ridiculous - it's not like they haven't tried, they've gone out of their way to do the worst job possible.

Of course U2 is one of Bill Gates' favorite bands

Re: If Americans are involved

Well played, well played. As for Belle and Sebastian, maybe he's tried them but just nods off after a minute or two. It happens.

(I'm actually glad he didn't say Mogwai, I'm not sure I could adjust my preconceptions that rapidly without doing myself an injury)

This can’t be a real bomb threat: You've called a modem, not a phone

Re: Blowing up suspicious bags

Similar story at Gare du Nord about 12 years ago - good size backpack had been abandoned, so they pushed everyone back about 10m and then proceeded to stand about within the blast radius, chat and shake hands with new policemen who kept turning up. The UK cop I was with at the time was aghast. Eventually some bloke wandered over to collect his bag - words were exchanged and everyone dispersed.

Remember the Ozone hole? The satellite that spotted it just caused a space junk scare

Re: Why did ozone hole appear and then disappear?

That's just your explanation, it's not the best explanation - which is that is was primarily CFC leaks from aircon/refrigeration units. Once CFCs were banned from these uses the hole started to repair. Even small violations of this ban are detectable in the atmosphere. And it was mostly NZ, where I grew up. During the 80s you would sunburn in minutes. Even now I would say NZ places an emphasis on sunscreen, sunhats etc like no other country, despite being the same latitude as Italy.

This, along with acid rain from atmospheric SO2, are the two standout examples of where humans damaged the climate, recognised it, took action and the problem was resolved. A success we're in no hurry to repeat, it seems.

Virgin Orbit doesn't

Re: Had it been a success....

He's got plenty of company - it's good enough for

* Monaco-based Sir Jim Ratcliffe (patriotically waving the flag for Brexit and his INEOS Grenadier)

* BVI-based Sir Geoffrey Cox (patriotically waving the flag for Brexit and representing his constituents of West Devon)

* France-based Lord Rothermere (patriotically waving the flag for Brexit and the Daily Mail)

* Channel-island based Frederick Barclay (patriotically waving the flag for Brexit and the Daily Telegraph)

Seeing a trend here?

Re: Had it been a success....

As it is I'm looking forward to seeing how the failure will be blamed on immigrants, the EU, striking workers and NHS middle management.

I spy with my little Pi: Upgraded cameras for single board computer

Nope. 3A, 3B and 4 are all showing "Notify Me" on pihut, as they were last week. I needed a couple of 4's, ended up paying £75/each on ebay. Needs must.

Oh, no: The electric cars at CES are getting all emotional

Re: "buttons replaced with touchscreens"

I like the idea of Michael Knight answering a call with his usual “Yo, Devon” and chatting for an hour before noticing he’s been driven to Totnes…

Tesla driver blames full-self-driving software for eight-car Thanksgiving Day pile up

Re: Whose fault...

Funny story. I was walking home one night (technically, I ran out of cash and got out the taxi early) when I saw an altercation between a bus driver and a car at the ligths - strong words. The car driver took off ahead of the bus then slammed on the brakes - the bus hit him, not hard, but enough for the car driver to think he'd just got the other guy fired, and a payout.

Over stumbles me, almost but not completely blind drunk, to inform the bus driver that I saw the whole thing, give him my number and toddled off into the night. A week or so later I spoke to someone from the bus company - sure enough, the car driver was claiming all sorts of damages. I gave a statement - I did explain my overall condition but perhaps this wasn't relayed to other party, what a shame. Apparently he pushed it all the way before pulling out at the last minute, just before the court date. I presume it cost him an absolute fortune and made him uninsurable in the future, all of which pleased me greatly.

So there are exceptions :-)

Elon Musk to step down as Twitter CEO: Help us pick his replacement

Re: Bring on the good Baroness

Only concern with Dido Harding is that with Twitter worth a nominal $40bn, I'm not sure she could work with such a limited budget.

Twitter staffer turned Saudi spy jailed for 3.5 years

> the Bbc makes big about the latest attacks on Kiev and Kherson, yet is strangely silent about Ukrainian attacks on the centre of Donetsk.

What an odd statement. If someone punches you, that's bad. If you punch back, that's considered less bad in every legal and moral code I can think of except yours, apparently.

You seem to have some weird idea of equivalence. Both Russia and Ukraine are fighting in Donetsk so they must be treated equally. Both RT and the New York Times claim to be new sources, so the same applies. But that's just not how things are.

Musk roundly booed on-stage at Dave Chappelle gig

Re: One of the rare times he escaped his own reality bubble recently

"He said that you don't catch the virus once you have the vaccine" - FFS, between you asserting that and half the internet asserting he said the exact opposite, he can't really win can he?

As you "don't know the exact wording" I did a 2-second look on the internet for you: he said "if you're vaccinated, you're safe, if you're not you're at-risk". Given he's a medical expert trying to convey a complex medical issue in words that will not get misunderstood by the legion of people that Won't Or Can't Understand Nuance, that's accurate and admirably concise. "If you wear a seatbelt, you're safe" is equally reasonable but is also not a cast-iron guarantee you won't die.

Victims of IT scandal in UK postal service will get fresh compensation

Re: Justice

You forgot Priest.

How do you solve the problem that is Twitter?

Even if we charitably assume all of that is correct, how is firing the team that deals with content moderation and replacing them with an algorithm going to be an improvement? Surely you would expand, retrain or replace the team, not remove it entirely.

I don't see anyone claiming Twitter was perfect. I do see a lot of people claiming he's just made it worse, not better. Any unmoderated online forum turns into hate soup very quickly.

Re: Problem isn't technical

That is all true. See article in the Guardian today on Neuralink where he's also been pushing staff to cut corners, with predictable results

Your albatross point is true, the only bit that surprises me is that as far as I can tell, it really is $30bn of his own money he's staked - normally if you're going to destroy a company after buying it, you gear up the company debt to pay for it (see eg this great writeup of what happened at Maplin).

Problem isn't technical

Good article but I suspect what will do Twitter in won't be technical, it will be financial. He's found an unprofitable company and decided the solution is to slash costs, but by doing so he's slashed revenue too. Advertisers don't want to be associated with hate speech, but it's categorically going to happen (see Private Eye's "Malgorithms" for inspiration) and when it does it will be publicised, widely. You'll be left with people punting cryptocurrencies and other unsavouries, revenue will collapse and that will be the end. A whimper, not a bang.

There is a clear correlation between staff costs and revenue, but it's not a direct link. Somehow he seems to have failed to notice it.

As an aside, I would love to be a fly on the wall the next time Elon approaches a bank for a loan...

Stack Overflow bans ChatGPT as 'substantially harmful' for coding issues

Re: Speaking Truth Unto Nations Educates, Entertains and Informs

Six downvotes - clearly no-one noticed you just describing UK politicians as "Tools that assemble words into answers with superficial truthiness". Which is both amusing and quite probably correct :-) Have an upvote from me, my obscure martian friend.

That may well be true, but banning a tool that assembles words into answers with superficial truthiness is absolutely the right response.

Medibank prognosis gets worse after more stolen data leaked

Re: "sipped" data / financial fraud + data corruption

“How shall we profit from all this stolen data Dmitry?”

“I don’t know about you Sergei, but I’m going to fly to Sydney and pretend to be someone else so I can get his hip replacement.”

UK cuts China from Sizewell nuclear project, takes joint stake

Re: Also

I know how you just love to agree with the EU, but gas really, really is a fossil fuel.

Re: Also

Yes, pity those gullible ill-informed fools taken in by Putin, like Dr Chris Cornelius, exploration geologist and the founder of Cuadrilla who goes to great lengths to explain why it's not viable in the UK.

You should read it. It's an interesting, apolitical article and you might learn something. Here's a quote that's particularly relevant to your most-definitely-not apolitical comments:

We are not here to disparage fracking and the incredibly important role this technology plays and will continue to play in the global energy transition. But in the case of the UK, there are other low-carbon energy opportunities such as tidal and shallow geothermal heat that are perpetually drowned out by socio-political “fracking soundbites”

Rolls-Royce, EasyJet fire up first hydrogen-fueled jet engine

Re: Revert back to airships?

There's a gentleman in New Zealand who took this to its logical conclusion and used gaseous expansion to cool beer. And of course, the best way to expand gas quickly? Burn it in a jet engine:

https://www.asciimation.co.nz/beer/

Re: Batteries != energy

Ah, you're arguing that hydrogren is useful for this application because it can be moved at a higher ... I think the word I want is "current" - than charging a battery on a plane? Yes, I agree with you on that.

Re: Batteries != energy

I'm not sure what your point is - whether it's 1GWh of energy stored as hydrogen, or 1GWh of energy stored in a battery, I can guarantee it involved an expenditure of greater than 1GWh of electricity at some point prior to take-off to charge the store. Unless we're talking gray hydrogen of course, in which case it's just another fossil fuel.

Elon Musk to abused Twitter users: Your tormentors are coming back

Re: Translation.

Apartheid era emerald mine perhaps, unless you're suggesting that light-green emeralds consider themselves superior to dark-green emeralds.

Aviation regulators push for more automation so flights can be run by a single pilot

"I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my father, not screaming in terror like his passengers" -- Bob Monkhouse

As I recall there have been other cases historically like the German Wings horror. At least two in the cockpit at all times, thank you.

World's richest man posts memes as $44b Twitter acquisition veers off course

Re: Waah

Couldn't agree more.

Re: I'm going to need more popcorn

Someones got to pay for this mess. And damn your eyes for making me defend Hunt. I feel dirty.

Re: Waah

We had a little too much subjectivity in the Lewis Page era, in my opinion - I'm glad they rowed back, an anti-science technical mag is not a good look.

FTX disarray declared 'unprecedented' by exec who cleaned up after Enron

Re: Next chapter

Poorly.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/15/china-el-salvador-economy-cryptocurrency-fall

Shocker: EV charging infrastructure is seriously insecure

Re: And so castles made of sand...

Downvoted for suggesting you've met an EV driver that had a positive opinion about charging infrastructure. Had you claimed to have met one with ten heads and a pet unicorn, I might have bought it