Posts by MachDiamond

Power grids tremble as electric vehicle growth set to accelerate 19% next year

Re: Someone is working at the 'skipping the infrastructure' problem

Aptera has been around for quite some time now. The concept of covering a vehicle in solar panels has been proposed many times and it still doesn't make sense. Not every facet will be flat on to the sun so won't be getting anywhere near the nameplate power generation. It also means a more complicated set of electronics so there aren't issues with shaded cells within a string. On bright sunny days I rather fancy parking in the shade so the interior of the car isn't vinyl melting hot when I get in. Leaving the car out in the sun is what I try to avoid and would rather put solar panels on the roof of the garage and store that to use to charge later or while the car is inside protected from UV damage.

In the case of something like the Aptera, its crash-worthiness would be a big question in my mind as well as stability in the wind.

Cost of refining oil

Petrol doesn't come straight out of the ground. The refining of crude oil into transportation fuels is one of the biggest users of what's generated along with Ammonia production, BTW. One would think that it's not a grid melting issue that comes up since people driving an EV aren't using petrol that has an electricity input. It's not zero sum either, but likely tipping in favor of EV's. Power companies encourage charging in the wee hours when they have lots of unused capacity and EV owners take advantage of that which means more sales and better utilization in a traditionally slow time of the day.

I need to have my roof redone and when that happens, I'll have them install rail standoffs at the same time so I can install solar panels. Since I work half of the time in the field and the other half in my home office, charging an EV will be a good way to use the power from a solar installation since the feed-in tariff is crap and keeps going down. When the time comes, I'll invest in power management devices too so the last thing the system will do is export power to the grid. At that point I'll have a large tank full of hot water, the car will be charged and the house will be heated/cooled as much as I like. I don't have enough usage to justify battery storage over just paying for grid power on a time of use tariff. I'll run the numbers again when I'm at that point.

Re: For many of us, hybrids make more sense than BEVs

"If you're going to start charging EVs fuel duty, you better be prepared to charge homes and businesses that have electrical service as well."

In the US there are states that add an EV surcharge to the annual registration. The thing is that the charge is more than what one might pay if they owned a moderately efficient petrol vehicle in fuel taxes. It still wouldn't bother me as the EV is so much less money to operate that paying a bit more in "tax" isn't a big deal. The problem I have is that EV's in the US are nearly all luxury priced and my current car is in good nick and having a low mileage used engine fitted along with a fresh coat of paint would mean another 150k miles for 7x less money than a used Chevy Bolt.

Re: For many of us, hybrids make more sense than BEVs

"Where I am in the UK my electricity rate is 27.60p/kWh, which would make charging the car more expensive than petrol."

You didn't keep track of the decimal properly when using your slide rule. I pay more than that for leccy and less for petrol and an EV is still much less expensive to "fuel".

Re: For many of us, hybrids make more sense than BEVs

"But overnight rates run from 1:30am to 8:30am where I am, so if I have to drive to work, I'm only going to realistically get about 5 hours."

If you can charge at 7.5kW, that's 37.5kWh or roughly 131 miles of travel (3.5miles/kWh) or put another way, over 2 hours of driving. If you drive further than that each day and only have access to charging for those 5 hours, that could be a problem.

Miniature nuclear reactors could be the answer to sustainable datacenter growth

Re: hahahahahahaha

"There was even an incident here in Pretoria where someone illegally stored explosives in his garage and destroyed some of the neighbouring houses."

There was in incident in Los Angeles where the bomb squad overloaded their bomb lorry with illegal fireworks and the bang wrecked a bunch of homes in the neighborhood. The problem was the bomb squad not knowing what they were doing.

"And what "hot side" are you thinking of ?"

It's a common term for the part of a reactor containing nuclear materials.

Re: Whoa whoa whoa

"Anon, because you don't need to know."

Only my water brothers know about my stock of edibles. If things start going pear shaped, I have a plan to make that inventory just disappear. A bit too inconvenient a thing right now.

Re: What waste

"Don't you just dig a hole in the ground and drop the waste in? Who'll know?"

Digging a hole was too much work so they used to just take it out on a barge in 55gal drums and push it overboard at sea.

Musk's mighty missile is ready for launch once FAA says OK

Re: I doubt the FAA

"I suspect the focus will be on the APUs as in why one quit at 36 seconds, and then the other at about 2 mins, followed by the FTS not actually working when the controllers realised they'd lost control when the last APU failed.."

Steering was lost 85 seconds in and past that point, the rocket was out of control. Elon is saying they had already planned to move away from a common manifold hydraulic system to all electric actuators (so why did they fly?) and that's another thing they haven't tested before on just a Starship.

Re: I doubt the FAA

"I doubt the FAA

really care about the pad destruction beyond a brief bit about how far some of the concrete chunks got(out to sea if you watch one of the replays)"

The FAA cares more about the welfare of the uninvolved. Toxic pulverized concrete raining down on a city and the impact to neighboring wildlife preserves are a big deal. SpaceX could wreck things all day long and not have an issue with the FAA if it doesn't have a chance of impacting others.

Re: Oh no!

"Oh - here it is. A video showing take off and landing at 6 times Lunar gravity without the oversized landing legs expected for HLS."

You call that an "unprepared launch site"? Order up a load of JSC1a simulant and try using that under a small model rocket. A dry lake bed is a big upgrade from that stuff since the soil will have undergone a lot of consolidation through being wetted and dried multiple times. Lunar regolith is nothing like that.

"Big rockets make a big mess when they blast off, you cant avoid that with a complex launch pad and the water system they are now building,"

I suppose you meant to say the "can" avoid the issues with a deluge system. The downside is that Elon is building a "not a deluge" system since he doesn't have approvals but insists on blundering on anyway.

"- The starship that will be landing on the moon will be a variant on the existing (test) starship so no one (outside of SpaceX) knows even the proposed design at the moment."

They are well into the CGI phase of development and NASA has given them money for development. I'm pretty sure the contract award came with some sort of presentation from Elon. In fact, I know it did. The money for propellant transfer isn't as well defined since they are just now "looking into it" and don't even have prototypes of the connectors they would need.

Re: OR

"Musk gets annoyed again, as has happened before, throws a Brox Cheer at the FAA, and launches anyway. He'll pay the fine out of petty cash."

That sort of defiance couldn't go unpunished. Elon would be picked up and put in a cell along with the flight director and perhaps even Gwynne. If you look at a map, you can see how easy it would be to block a couple of roads to contain everybody in the area and spend a bit of time separating the wheat from dirty rotten scoundrels.

Re: environmentalist wackos throwing a sueball

" it's more than capable of flying to Port Isabel in only a few seconds and blowing the whole place"

Brownsville isn't that much further away and much larger. There's also people living just a couple of kms over the border in Mexico. The last joy ride did land in Mexican territorial waters and didn't come crashing down on any fishing boats, but that doesn't mean it might not happen the next time especially if the rocket is returning in lots of chunks rather than just one big lump as has been the case a few times with this model. Crossing the border and causing problems just compounds the issues.

Re: Premature Stackulation?

'From the FAA's point of view, the first launch's safety ended up relying on pure luck "

The stack lost steering at 85 seconds in addition to a whole bunch of motors going off bang. The termination system didn't activate automatically as advertised and only punched holes in tanks rather than ripping the airframe to bits as finally happened in the end, but wasn't due to a RTS. It's not just the FAA, it's loads of nature and wildlife management agencies that are showing how SpaceX hasn't lived up to the mitigations they agreed to in writing, ever. For a deluge system, SpaceX is required to work with the Army Corps of Engineers, but the application was closed after SpaceX failed to respond to inquiries. Elon instead goes off and has built a "not a deluge" system that will pollute a saltwater habitat with millions of liters of fresh water and may not even function as sold under the pounding of 20 something Raptor engines (maybe more if they can light them all at once). Even being optimistic and believing the water system will work, the question becomes how many times in a row will it where and where will all of that fresh water come from and go to. The top of the milk stool the grain silo sits on gets heavily eroded. That turned out to be a bigger issue than first thought due to the slow liftoff speed. 12mm/second is the number Elon throw out. That's 12mm of steel eroded from the top of the OML every second for greater than 5 seconds. That's not going to be replaced between the time the stack lifts off and the booster comes back to be caught with the chopsticks and flown again the same day.

Sadly, I know the FAA representative who's signature is at the bottom of the last authorization. She was great to work with when I was in aerospace and she was part of the group that kept our group from behaving badly. It makes me think she's being handed decisions from on high rather than it being her discretion.

Re: Reuse landing on the Moon

"Starships have taken off from Earth and landed several times. "

And there was even one time when it didn't explode. Yes, just one. Most of the landings have been at speed with one flight done in the fog landing thousands of times in small bits. The last one "landed" in Mexican territorial waters.

Re: Cost

"How will resusability work on the moon when theres no pad there ?"

No pad. No fuel. No Ground Support Equipment (GSE) etc. If the moon becomes a constant destination, facilities will need to be constructed and they will need to be either very generic or highly defined. It would be silly to spend any taxpayer money to build out a spaceport on the moon that can only accommodate one company's rocket(s).

Re: Government subsidies

"Starlink was in line for a significant payday for rural broadband as were other ISPs"

Given the costs, it isn't a significant payday and could be a loss.

Re: No

"The development costs for space-x in total is less than that of the SLS."

Reference needed. SLS, while stupid expensive, is already building serial number 3 with 2 coming up for launch. The SLS system works, Starship/Booster keep blowing up.

Re: unsettling

"There is a stock of Atlas Vs waiting for payloads but no new ones will be built. They were killed off by Falcon 9/Heavy."

The Atlas 5 was killed off due to not being able to buy the Russian RD-180 engines anymore. They could have come up with a new engine, but it made more sense to build Vulcan rather than take on the expense of engineering new engines and integrating them on an old platform. F9H isn't taking Atlas 5 work. There isn't much call for the F9H as it is and the Atlas 5 was far more configurable to meet the needs of launches.

Re: Cost

"They can launch everyone else's cargo at just enough under competitors rates such that the competitors will find themselves unprofitable."

There isn't a market for jumbo payloads. Just look how how little Falcon 9 Heavy gets used. It's not like a years worth of satellites can be taken up in one go as they need to go into specific orbits as much as up really high. There's also no real understanding of the launch costs SpaceX will have to support for the Starship since it isn't done. The only thing that can be said is they are spending billions and billions on development with no end in sight.

Bombshell biography: Fearing nuclear war, Musk blocked Starlink to stymie Ukraine attack on Russia

The internet bill must have some in the mail

Starlink isn't a backbone provider, it's an ISP that plugs into the backbone so Elon gets a bill every month for the bandwidth that gets used. If he can't collect a monthly fee from users in Ukraine, he'll want to axe that service. This must seem to him a good time and place to stop providing service now that the PR isn't giving him the same amount of glowing praise that he wants. It's never been about helping out or standing up for the underdog for Elon. It's been nothing but self promotion and PR to deflect people away from things he doesn't want focused on.

IT needs more brains, so why is it being such a zombie about getting them?

Re: Exams as a system

"have much more cash to spend on kids who already come from relatively privileged backgrounds. "

A friend of mine sacrificed a lot to make sure his kids all went to a well regarded private school. Part of the school's approach was to keep the parents active within the school rather than just dropping the kids off and complaining about this and that. All of his kids did exceptionally well. The lowest ranking (his only son) went to trade school instead of uni and now has his own general contracting firm and does very well. The two daughters have great careers and families. It wasn't about turning every waking moment into a "learning experience" but concentrating on important subjects at age-appropriate times. My friend and his wife are both well educated so they were also there to help the kids with their school work.

Re: Exams as a system

"ditto with nurses (and I'm sure there are a few other professions"

My mom was a nurse in the US and earned a very good salary. She went on to get her "Registered Nurse Certified" qualification in Labor and Delivery. That's what she liked and the added qualification meant more money.

There's been a nurse shortage in the US for ages so there are opportunities to make very good money. My mom worked the registry (temps) in addition to her full time position (long days/short weeks) for a period to stack away a healthy down payment on a house. The temp work was 1.5-2.5x her full time salary.

My aunt taught school and it was very low pay for the amount of work involved. She also taught at a school where the kids often didn't have any language skills in English and were illiterate in Spanish as well with a ghetto vocabulary/usage. She still found the work rewarding for those few students each year that might make it in the real world.

Re: Exams as a system

" i.e. there is a massive bias to candidates with good memory for rote learning. "

I'm pretty good at that sort of thing and have a wall of certificates to show for it. It's a skill worth learning if you can since you too can build a wall full of certificates that open doors to the things you are actually good at. I do spend the effort to learn the things that I need and will use on a job. I was going to use a cake/frosting analogy, but it worked out backwards since all the cake is there for is to act as a carrier for the icing in my world.

Re: Plenty of specialists, massive shortist of generalists

"HR is also there to protect the employees.from the employer.

Through a colleague, I get to hear some horror stories of senior execs and their (lack ofl) grasp of HR responsibilities."

That's sounds more like the company protecting itself from itself. You want to have somebody around that can remind senior execs that it's a bad idea to 'get your honey where you get your money' and harassment trials are very expensive.

Re: Plenty of specialists, massive shortist of generalists

"The point being that these are all disparate, and often very inventive, solutions and so show general knowledge across many realms, but which cannot be codified in a way that is tick box friendly. "

All of that is fine and dandy, but how good are you with Powerpoint and how much experience do you have with (proprietary in-house) CRM? You'll also need a reference that shows your published work using Adobe Illustrator. Oh, we start everybody on second/third shift and you may be asked to cover people out in offices 200 miles away on short notice. Oh wait, no degree? We're going to go with the kid that's fresh out of Uni with a degree in Diversity Studies as there's a big push on right now for that skill set (if it can be called that).

Re: Plenty of specialists, massive shortist of generalists

"And I am not the only one of those who is close to retirement :)."

No, I've shifted gears into something I like to do more than what I have to do to make enough to pay for things. I still keep my fingers in various things such as product development. I find it much more fun to work with people that have great ideas but need somebody to help them make it go (or show them why it won't every work). When I worked for a company, especially a large company, there's no telling them their idea is unworkable. They've spent a load of money on focus groups and market research and need to bring this perpetual motion machine to market to justistfy all of that expense. At least justify it long enough that those who's head will roll have time to retire or find a position someplace else while they can still get a good reference.

Re: qualities HR doesn't like

"aha! I knew my PnP DnD skills would come in useful oneday!

I have a lot of experience with fireballs - both on the receiving and delivering end."

I'd love to see some numbers on this. There could be a strong correlation between programmers and DnD players. It would be hilarious to see a job questionnaire that asks what color flame your sword has and its level.

Re: qualities HR doesn't like

"This is a gross example and most HR people would catch something like that before the job was ever advertised"

The trouble is that you aren't showing a gross example. HR doesn't know if there isn't something like a "fireball" in a computer field vs. a "firewall". That's the big problem. They don't know what the job entails nor how to ascertain whether somebody is a good fit. They don't get happy, they don't get sad, they just run programs.

"Having staggered through O level maths i always reckoned I learned O level algebra doing A level physics."

Having some context has always made math much easier for me. I volunteer with a group that supports kids with model rockets. That's a hobby that can go from super basic fun to seriously advanced concepts and everything in between. There's a contest every year where groups are given a challenge. They have to launch one or two fresh eggs, to a specific altitude and recover them intact. Every year the criteria changes a bit such as trying to hit an exact time from liftoff to landing or putting limits on motor/parachute size. I really enjoy being a mentor for that.

"University has historically been where one goes to actually learn to think independently. "

In the later years of school, it makes sense to start bringing in the "thinking" parts rather than just radially shifting gears. University is already going to be a big wake up call for many. There's much less prodding from teachers and parents (for some) so students have to motivate themselves and take responsibility for getting something out of their classes. Not everybody is going to go to university so there should be classes in life skills the last few years of school. Some of those life skills are lots of thinking, planning and walking through scenarios to see what the consequences of an action could be.

"drone learning, measurable targets etc."

That's not a bad thing in early education. Kids need a good foundation in the fundamentals such as multiplication tables, grammar, etc. Much of that is going to be learning by rote. As children get older the approach has to change and what's being taught needs much more context. Measurable targets can also pick up on learning problems and some health issues early.

"I could probably re-learn them, but what would be the point?"

It's good to be exposed to those sorts of things and if you need to go back and learn them again, it should be easier and you'll have more context since there will be a reason to relearn. Anybody doing new work is going to need to spend time figuring out the 'new' parts. If you can do 90% of the job hungover with puffy eyes, you should be a good candidate unless you are always showing up to work in that condition. Companies always seem to want a new hire that is feature complete right from day one and never has to revise or spend time inventing something new. Preferably, the person will be coming from a competitor they are trying to copy and will take a salary 10% lower than market norm.

"Qualifications are overated in my opinion.

Show me what you've done. Tell/Show me how you think.

Unfortunately, these are rather nebulous qualities so HR doesn't like them. "

The problem is HR doesn't know anything about the job they are filling so they can't conduct a subjective interview to test a person's knowledge and approach. If all they have to do it tick (or not tick) boxes, that's about the limit of what they can do.

Moral of story: Make sure your resume ticks every box in the job description (lie) if you can make heads or tails of the posting.

"Amazing how much it motivates me to do it properly in the first place when I know who will have to fix it."

It always motivated me to follow up with good documentation for the same reason.

Silicon Valley billionaires secretly buy up land for new California city

Re: They keep trying to build in deserts

"What’s wrong with Detroit ?"

If one tried to enumerate all of the things, they text box would get very fuzzy.

Re: They keep trying to build in deserts

"There's no question California has a housing crisis, but it also has a water disaster which is only going to get much, much worse "

California has a population crisis. It's not the cheapest place to live, but it does have very generous free-money programs for the druggies/insane/unemployed so it attracts people that really can't afford to live there. The state is also good at fixating on things like a rare fish that may, or may not, still be existent that holds up lots of water development. They don't invest in water storage even to keep pace with a growing population much less a worldwide demand for crops grown in California.

Forget annual river floods refreshing an agricultural area each year. There's too many people on the planet to feed to have that sort of reliance on nature.

A few good ideas

I like the thinking behind some of these proposed projects, but they have the tendency of going too far and ignoring how things happen in the real world. This particular project is a concern to at least me as it paves over agriculture land and is sat right next to an important military base where nobody that works at the base would be able to afford to live in the project.

I really like "Oath of Fealty" by Larry Niven, but I can see many of the places where it would fall down if somebody tried to build it. I can see a modified version being applied to a large ghost mall if there would be a city flexible enough to allow a mix of office businesses, retail, light industrial and residential in one development. It would be easy to incorporate things like grocery delivery if that was built into the design from the beginning.

Re: They keep trying to build in deserts

"Yeah, and it always works out like California City or Arcosanti."

I'll have to look up Arcosanti, but I know California City is still a going city. It's close to Edwards Air Force Base and Mojave Airport and Spaceport. They also have a prison out there so I imagine the staff would live in town. The grand plan of building another Palm Springs was a bust and lots of people still hold worthless parcels of land that may never do more than cost money in property taxes every year. I wonder how much of the land is owned by the county/state after being foreclosed for overdue tax.

We all scream for ice cream – so why are McDonald's machines always broken?

Re: No sh!t Sherlock

"My question was: would that include allowing some local Rick Sanchez to repair the Musk/Tesla autopilot and then take it for a spin?"

Rick wouldn't be modifying the software.

"The venerable Commodore 64 and 128 came with schematics for the mainboard, too."

If you were to build your own from those schematics, you'd see how much less it would have cost to just buy one.

I was just looking at building a flanger for my bass rig. After just totting up the cost of the most expensive bits (w/0 the PCB), I was at $150. I just got an offer to buy one new on eBay for $31+shipping. If I was going to build a couple of hundred, I could likely get it down to $40. What I envisioned was massaging the design to use standard-load surface mount components to get the PCB's nearly fully assembled and tested. I'd just stuff the last few most expensive or through-hole parts myself and do the final mechanical assembly. Unfortunately, I'd be competing against units selling for less than my cost, so not really a good business venture and a waste of my time. I'll stick to more niche items with lots of markup.

"It is sad that error codes are now 'copyright'."

That's weird as they aren't much of a creative endeavor. The listings in an old phone book were not able to get copyright protections as the were just a compendium of factual information. After a lawsuit, one phone company started inserting listings they 'created' to show enough to be protectable under copyright law. Something that has to be pointed out is that the format of the data might be able to have a copyright. If a phone book had blocks/boarders/graphical elements on the pages, that could be registered.

I suppose with enough money spent on lawyers error codes could be registered with a copyright office, but to me, it doesn't rise to the level of creativity to exceed the bar.

Re: Wait, their milkshake maker works like an HP printer ?

"So, this is McD corp selling hardware to franchises that is specifically locked down to not work properly all the time ?

What business school told them that was a good idea ?"

Most of McD's locations are owned by franchisees. The corporation strictly mandates the hardware and product so it's not a stretch to say that Taylor is paying a commission to Corporate on hardware sales to the franchisees and possibly a portion of the take on repairs/maintenance.

It is a very stupid idea to have the machines going down and needing to be reset frequently. If a franchisee isn't making money, their next franchise might be something else. They may also decide that having the ice cream machines is useless and take them out. If they can't take them out, they will be permanently off-line to save money on power and ingredients.

If I go to a McD's for an ice cream on a hot day and they are out of order, I'll go someplace else. If they are out of order a few times when I visit, I'll strike them off my mental list of places to go for an ice cream. Even in my small town, there's a few choices for soft serve. I will usually buy ice cream at the store and match it up with a homemade apple or berry crisp. In the time it takes to go out for an ice cream, I can make something even better at home.

Re: Limiting choice is anticompetitive

"Where can you buy the parts to fix it?"

Many repair shops buy equipment that is too expensive to fix to have a parts source. This can work for laptops but not as well for tractors.

China's top EV battery maker announced a breakthrough, but top boffin isn't convinced

"At some point the battery swap station says your battery is worth significantly less than a replacement. Pay $8000 for a swap."

I expect there would be a swap plan where you lease the battery in your car and every battery pack in the system would be at least a certain percentage of capacity from new.

Concorde? Pffft. NASA wants a Mach 4 passenger jet

Re: Energy

"That would translate into $3000 air fares for a NYC - LDN trip"

Out of curiosity, I looked up the cost of Los Angeles (LAX) to Heathrow (LHR) and business class was in the realm of $4,000 with baggage since it should be a huge flag if somebody is making that trip with no bags. I would expect a supersonic flight (or perhaps just NY to London supersonic) would cost closer to 3x that much or more. A 747 used about 4x less fuel and could carry more passengers on a flight than Concorde. Concorde used around 2 tons of fuel just to get from the gate to the end of the runway. Those hydrocarbons just keep getting more expensive so become something airlines pay close attention to.

Re: Civilian spend on, uh...

A big question is if a hypersonic missile is worthwhile. I'm sort of hoping a field trial isn't forthcoming to put theories to the test.

The question of point to point rocket travel hasn't changed in 100 years. It's not feasible and not an improvement over regular airline flights that even when they are behind schedule are going to be much faster and safer on average. What problem would a rocket solve? Speed?, that's disproven given the operating requirements. Cost?, luxury first class on a premium airline is cheaper. You can get up and use the loo in-flight as well. Destinations become a big issue as well. The sound of big rockets means they have to be far away from population centers. Rockets also have a much less safe accident record than aircraft as well.

I'll take the train, thank you very much.