Posts by Toltec

VW floats catalytic converter as fix for fibbing diesels

Re: Why did I buy a diesel ?

1) No HT ignition to go wrong

Just glow plugs, turbos, dpf and dual mass flywheels. Though turbos and dmf can also be found in some petrol cars. Coil on plug does have issues though so I understand if you have been bitten by that.

2) Better power per litre leads to phenomenal fuel economy. 44mpg for mixed use for a 1.6 engine would be impossible for a petrol

BHP/Litre? Not if you compare a diesel turbo to a petrol turbo. The economy is mainly down to the lack of throttle plates, lean burn and lower parasitic losses. Petrol economy was held back by not being able to implement lean burn due to cats in the early 90's. One of my cars (petrol) has a cat to deal with NOx so does have lean burn, does not need a urea tank either.

3) By necessity, diesel engines are stronger (force of compression). Stronger = more reliable.

As per other comments, they have to withstand higher forces. They are heavier and more expensive to produce.

They do have their plus points though and can be cheaper to run, especially if used for longer journeys and higher than average annual mileage.

Comcast 'rolls out' 'world's first' DOCSIS 3.1 modem, pumping 1Gbps over existing cable

"So guesses for when Virgin Media start offering this? 202X?"

No idea, but the latest Hub 3.0 is DOCSIS 3.1 capable and they are being installed now.

Robotic exoskeleton market to grow 40 per cent a year until 2025

Caterpillar P-5000 Powered Work Loader

There's an epidemic of idiots who can't find power switches

How not to turn it off and on again

The head of an organisation I worked at tried to turn off a projector by moving the input voltage selector from 240 to 110. He was certainly successful in turning it off.

He must have gone to some effort as it was a recessed switch that normally needs the tip of a screwdriver to slide over.

Drivers? Where we’re going, we don’t need drivers…

Features

The car could offer new destinations that you may find interesting based on previous usage.

Auto-tweeting - Can be set for destination arrival or even every junction you pass, e.g Just turned left again LOL.

Speed dating - the car lets you know when you are going to approach a compatible person and you can drive next to each other for 30 seconds.

Drunk? Need a slash? Avoid walls in Hackney

Re: What's to clean?

"the reaming £20k"

Hang on, splash back is one thing, but isn't that taking payback a little too far?

Re: Really, Slash?

Yes, really, however we use so many words with multiple meanings that context is all so I cannot say the guitarist's name ever occurred to me as funny.

Taking the piss out of him is a perversion of a quite different sort...

Or then again maybe not.

Doctor Who: Even the TARDIS key can't unpick the chronolock in Face the Raven

Re: What a corker!

"My thought was "Neverwhere" straight away. Had to check to see if Gaiman wrote the episode. Ashildr did a very passable impression of Door."

I expected that too from the trailers and checked the credits as it started.

Einstein's brain to be picked by satellites

Re: Improved GPS accuracy?

@ Little Mouse

You can of course tweak the average speeds on various types of road that it uses to calculate the journey time. I find Copilot times pretty good when setup, compared to default values which see you arriving 10-15% earlier than calculated. (Sat nav capabilities vary and are available from other vendors).

Doctor Who's good/bad duality, war futility tale in The Zygon Inversion fails to fizz

Re: We've been here before...

4) It occurred to me that he was checking to see if she was really an Osgood and not a Zygon copy. His specs could probably tell him which version of Osgood she really was, though that would imply that she was actually the Zygon. However that would mean that when Bonnie became an Osgood they are both Zygons. But then that would mean...

I give up :)

Exam board in 'send all' fail: Hands up who knows what the BCC button is for?

Re: I can one-up this.

"Needless to say, said manager was out the door shortly after."

Quite lenient really, obviously did not get the BOFH to handle the severance package.

Cash injection fuels SABRE spaceplane engine

Re: Very mixed feelings about this

"t's those responsible for awarding and overseeing the contracts that are to blame - if they are too ignorant to realise that they are paying BAe to re-invent the wheel then it's not BAE's fault."

What also happens is that somewhere in the spec is a number that seemed like a good idea at the time, but in reality is very difficult to achieve. Large amounts of budget are spent trying to hit this number only to find that it was not particularly critical and a far easier value would have been perfectly acceptable in operation.

I survived a head-on crash with driverless cars – and dummies

"Actually lots of evidence that travelling at a constant say 25mph and going straight through lights at green is quicker for you (and everyone else) than going at 30mph, having to stop,queue and then start again. Germany, for example, has been doing this sort of thing for decades with their traffic lights. "

In the UK they appear to do the opposite, on a stretch of road I use fairly often the lights are timed so the the next one will go red just before you reach it unless you break the speed limit.

On the M25 junction 3 roundabout when going from the M25 southbound to the A20 westbound you almost always get stopped by the lights just before the Swanley turn then when they change, stopped again at the next set just before the A20 exit. It is sometimes possible to make it round if you are at the front, there is no traffic in the way on the roundabout and you 'go for it'.

Google snaps Dutch woman completely taking the piss

@ Your alien overlord - fear me

Upvote for the python reference.

Brit boffins build 'tractor beam' out of sound

Now for the hard bit

Very clever stuff, however doing this in air is one thing, doing this in a non-homogenous medium like a human body will be even more impressive. I saw a demo of acoustic levitation some time ago, this is the next step on, looking forward to seeing how far they can go with the idea.

El Reg celebrates Back to the Future Day

This augmented reality is freaky man, seeing dad as a hot babe is bad enough, I don't wanna say what I am holding.

So just what is the third Great Invention of all time?

Re: Writing?

I have seen the invention of iron gall ink pushed as a landmark due to it being indelible and therefore a way of preserving information for hundreds of years.

Exposed Volkswagen 'n' pals get 2 more YEARS to sort out emissions

"Bus lanes cause global worming."

That conjured an unpleasant mental vision!

Watch out VW – French prosecutors are pulling on the rubber gloves

Remapped ecus?

Having a turbo diesel remapped is reasonably common in the UK and, if drivers are to be believed, they get both more power and better fuel consumption. It is likely that this changes the emissions profile of the engine so will this practice be banned?

BOFH: I'm not doing this for the benefit of your health, you know

Re: Use the right equipment for the job

Remember to use the stainless steel ones, they will not melt...

Re: fat

"NOT A FAT FIRE!" he counters."

The safety elf missed magnesium, much more likely to be present in a server room...

Surprised the BOFH does not have any Chlorine Triflouride to hand as well, though being pushed out of a window is the kinder alternative.

Doctor Who storms back in fine form with Season 9 opener The Magician's Apprentice

Sapphire and Steel?

The plots seem to be more meta-physical than SF-physical, fun, but not really Dr Who. Having said that some of the earlier Drs had some pretty trippy adventures.

In the next episode hopefully the Doctor is not going to return to a time and space that he has already affected, unless there is a good reason why the 'fixed point in time and space' rule can be broken this time.

BOFH: Press 1. Press 2. Press whatever you damn well LIKE

Oh Yes

I have seen the light, I now know what UCCX should really be used for.

The remote control from HELL: Driverless cars slam on brakes for LASER POINTER

Re: Anti-spoofing

Rotating the shield frequencies and a minor reconfiguration of the deflector dish should do the trick.

Prof Hawking cracks riddle of black holes – which may be portals to other universes

"It wouldn't surprise if a large part of modern theoretical physics is a house of cards just waiting for someone to whip out one of the cards/suppositions at the bottom."

It is closer to underpinning a foundation than removing one, it allows you to build a new and stronger structure. Physicists are not a priesthood trying to preserve the status quo they are actively trying to rip it down and re-build it.

Google robo-car in rear-end smash – but cack-handed human blamed

Re: To avoid rear-enders

In addition the car could warn the passengers of imminent impact so they can brace into the seat/headrest.

The equivalent of noticing the driver look in the rear view mirror and and say "Oh sh!7" - true story...

The auto-cars could also have active crumple zones, something like the ablative armour on tanks.

Female blood-suckers zero in on human prey by smelling our breath

Re: So what's new here?

Is the new bit the visual then heat signature part?

Possibly feet are more of a visual clue than a head, bare rather than hairy skin, perhaps there should be a study to see if bald people get bitten on the head more often? Once homing in on the feet the heat signature bit has a range of a metre so the head is then out of range?

Microsoft to Windows 10 consumers: You'll get updates LIKE IT or NOT

Re: Don't want updates or want them at convenient times?

The hosts file still exists in W10, possibly easier for a home user and will still allow earlier versions access to updates.

UK TV is getting worse as younglings shun the BBC et al, says Ofcom

Re: Hmm

"Did you see The Honourable Woman? BBC co-pro. Fabulous, intelligent drama"

I found it tedious and pretentious, and did not watch past the first episode, the ongoing episode trailers did not make change my mind and go to pick it up on a catch up service either.

Just looked through the next week's listings for BBC 1 - 4 and could not see a single drama I would be interested in watching. There is the odd thing like Countryfile which I will record and watch later or with a delay so I can skip through the 'coming next' sections.

C4 occasionally has some interesting drama such as Utopia (3rd series canned) or currently, Humans, which even then is teetering on the edge of 'nice idea, shame about the execution'.

Mum fails to nuke killer spider nest from orbit

Re: I couldn't help but notice

"after being stepped on."

Mother of four sues supermarket after slipping on banana carrying death spider.

Hyperconvergence: Just where is the technology going?

Sooner than you think

"although 100GbE is well and truly trotting toward us I reckon that we'll be bonding 10GbE connections for a few years yet"

We are already running kit that has 100GbE line cards available, given we recently bonded four 10GbE on our internet feeds it will not be too long before the first 100GbE link appears here. True though in the sense that there will be plenty of connections where bonded 10Gb will be fine for quite some time in the same way that we still use many 1Gb pairs.

Paper driving licence death day: DVLA website is still TITSUP

Re: They are trying to reclaim their original title

That will be DVLC then?

ROBOTS in sinister public-relations push ahead of coming WAR ON HUMANS

Re: Where was the test site? Hatton Garden?

Getting past chuggers...

Attack of the possibly-Nazi clone parakeet invaders

Someone had to...

Beautiful plumage.

Amstrad founder Lord Sugar quits 'anti-enterprise' Labour party

You're fired

Too obvious?

Volkswagen Passat GT 2.0-litre TDI SCR 190 PS 6spd DSG

Re: "Very sensible"

@AC

"Why you would compare an Elise with a Passat is beyond me though."

It was not a comparison, he meant why not buy a year old Mondeo as white goods transport and a ten year old Elise for fun with the same money a new Passat would cost.

He may be a petrol head :)

My addition, Diesel and FWD meh, I may have the same affliction.

Who thinks Microsoft Edge sucks? Erm, Microsoft

Re: Edge Logo

Try viewing it in a 2012 logo way.

BOFH: Explain? All we need is this kay-sh with DDR3 Cortexiphan ...

Re: Luckily Aussies are bi-lingual

Router is pronouced both roo-ter and row-ter in Britain, but is does depend if you work in IT or kitchen fitting.

The data centre design that lets you cool down – and save electrons

Really?

"All kit that's designed to be installed in a cabinet is designed to have its airflow from front to back"

Ever come across kit by a small company called Cisco? They do not appear to have received your memo...

Want to go green like Apple, but don't have billions in the bank?

Re: Temperature is not the only fallacy

The plenum size can be important in itself as it helps damp out temperature swings, too small a volume and you can get the fans in the AHUs short cycling, which is not good for drive belts etc. Related is how you are going to manage to get cold air to the top of a rack if the feed is at the bottom, if you need to use higher underfloor pressures to acheive it you are going to to drive AHU fans harder to achieve this.

If you vent hot air straight to the outside you need to bring air in, this air may need cleaning and drying so this idea is not quite as free as it seems.

"Technically, all of our energy ultimately comes from the sun, (excluding the absolutely miniscule amount from other stars)."

Tidal mainly comes from the Moon and then there is Nuclear and Geothermal, though you could argue that without the Sun there would be no solar system etc.

ETA- Beaten to it...

Bloke hits armadillo AND mother-in-law with single 9mm round

"I used to bull's-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home. They're not much bigger than armadillos"

Look what happened to Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen...

National Grid's new designer pylon is 'too white and boring' – Pylon Appreciation Society

Re: Electric field?

How refreshing that something designed by engineers is not only more efficient, but more attractive than what an architect produces.

The T design looks like it should have a railway line running underneath it, whereas the Wintrack is begging for a Jacob's ladder!

BOFH: Never mind that old brick, look at this ink-stained BEAUTY

Re: says:

> I'm stull using an IMB-AT keyboard on my main desktop at home, and works like it did when it was new.

I have an old Fujitsu one, built back in the days when it was vital that your keyboard would still work after using it to beat someone to death.

Our 4King benders are so ace we're going full OLED, says LG

Good for LG

Hopefully my Panasonic plasma will keep going for several years, however by the time it dies there may be something to replace it that isn't worse.

They need to make some smaller sets though or I'll have to extend the house to fit one in.

Will NASA's Dawn spot ALIEN LIFE on asteroid belt dwarf world Ceres?

Re: Is There Life Elsewhere ?

Don't forget the teapots.

UK spaceport, phase two: Now where do we PUT the bleeding thing?

"question, is a flange benefit greater or lesser than a fringe benefit?"

Depends if you would rather receive a benefit aimed at your fringe or your flange...

Is light a wave or a particle? Beaming boffins prove it's BOTH

Re: All perfectly clear/unclear now

If a photon within its own frame of reference experiences no time and therefore all points in the universe are the same point then are all photons the same photon?

Hawking thesp Eddie Redmayne and Snowden doc Citzenfour win Oscars

Re: Not about Nerds

"The BBC made a decent film about Hawking called, Hawking, about 10 years ago"

Which no one else seems to have mentioned, odd given that Mr Cumberbatch was playing the lead...

Samsung, LG wash dirty laundry in two separate court cases

Re: If only Apple vs Samsung was as entertaining.

@ theblackhand - I saw what you did there...