Posts by MachDiamond 8886 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Aug 2012
"Stop at any traffic signal and you're likely to have at least one and often two or three around you"
In larger cities of Texas or California, you may be correct, but not so much in the Dakotas. People in rural settings don't seem to allow themselves to be led around by the nose so much.
"they still cannot be fully trusted and the pilot must still remain alert to take over."
That's provided that the pilot is able to do so. There's been a couple of stories this last week of the pilot dying on passenger jets. The emergency autoland systems that a passenger can activate on a small aircraft seem like a good start.
"I could see the "lane keeping" causing that if some of the road markings are more worn than others and the lane marking nearest the edge of the road (left or right depending country) so the lane keeping system follows the well marked line which lead up the sliproad/exit. "
That would infer a very one dimensional navigation system. I'd think that if the highway was continuing on straight that the car wouldn't veer off to one side if it were also looking at the GPS. If the system were just "lane-keep" assist, perhaps, but not FSD which implies more smarts.
If I'm relying on lane keeping, I'm not engaged enough in driving the car. I've gone decades with being able to keep my car in my own lane. Not 100% perfect, but no accidents and the more crowded the roadway, the more I'm paying attention.
"The other viable approach is much less sexy: designated autonomous vehicle zones. Basically take limited-access roads and allow autonomous vehicles to operate in specific lanes only."
If you look into PRT (Personal Rapid Transit), there are papers on private vehicles using those systems. On a highway or within a large city center, you link with the central scrutinizer and enter the controlled roadway. You car can then be piloted remotely to parking and/or charging and wait for your summons whereupon your car meets you at the nearest station even if you have moved around since you left it. For a reference, look at the pods at Heathrow Terminal 5 and the company that built the system. For an "unproven" system, it works pretty damn well.
"He's claimed on multiple occasions that you will soon be able to let your car function as a robotaxi while you're at work or sleeping and earn you a passive income."
I've seen a couple of videos from people that took the number he threw out (up) and ran with them. The notion of making money by whoring your car out as an automated taxi is nonsense. If there were any truth to it, Tesla would have stopped selling cars to the public and put all of their effort and Elon's money into the program. Oh yeah, Elon doesn't have any money. His wealth is index-linked to the price of Tesla stock and withdrawing from the auto market might impact that. Maybe he could raise some funds as the calculations done certain ways make it look like a business worth quadrillions in just a couple of decades with reinvestment. It's the sort of thing that makes Charles Ponzi look like a complete piker in comparison.
"Me and another colleague totally freaked out and he was like, breaking urgently and saying "don't worry, the car would stop by itself" !"
I'm a bit of a weirdo when it comes to those sorts of situations. I was in a car and the woman driving texted. I told her point blank that if she would like to do any further texting to please exit the highway and drop me off. It wasn't a bluff either. I would have been less bothered if she put the phone on speaker and just spoke to her husband, both of them people I knew. It wasn't any sort of tryst. I did get out of a car being driven aggressively and poorly. For one thing, I didn't think the car was up to it and a wheel coming off is not a good thing.
"And some of their buyers believed the lies because you can trust 'the world's smartest man', right?"
It has to be pointed out that Tesla hasn't done advertising so there isn't official statements about what autopilot/fsd can and cannot do, but there are loads of fans, supporters and others that will go on endlessly about how amazing the technology is and tell others about all of the things it can do without actually testing what they say in varying conditions and pushing it to the point where it fails. Obviously they don't want to destroy their own car or be liable for a serious accident. Elon is famous for talking up things that Tesla products will be able to do in a few months or maybe by the end of the year or confidently by the second quarter of next year for certain. He will also say things like that his non-existent (at the time) semi will be able to line up together in convoys and drive themselves better than any driver. To date, there haven't been any real world demonstrations of that. Material misrepresentation of the company's technology?
"then buy each kid a cheap tablet and load it with whatever dreck they fancy. "
yes, let's make suggestions that encourage the continued practice of poor parenting.
I shudder at the caravan adverts that tout all of the indoor/outdoor TV's the damn things have as being a good thing. The whole concept of "getting away from it all" has been fitted with a raw sewage pipe.
"The BBC archive is VAST. but even we licence holders only get to see a tine, tiny percentage of it via iPlayer on demand. "
The BBC is missing an opportunity by not offering licences more broadly. There's a fair number of pale blue Scottish people stuck in the US with no good viewing options other than less than proper ways of accessing that same content.
Um, commenting for a friend.
"On that point, I've also been camping with friends where one chap had the same idea as me and took a small projector and portable screen to keep the kiddies amused at night"
The rocket club I'm with has two weekends a year where we set up and launch for three days rather than the usual monthly Saturday meets. The club bought a projector and shows movies on a couple of nights. Usually something rocket related with the opening film something for the kiddies. The classics like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Gene Wilder) are still enjoyable every once in a while. The side of the white club equipment trailer makes a good screen. After the second or third helping of a good single malt, the rivets aren't noticeable at all.
"Except she likes going to the office, so she's actually in the office most days."
For some people, that is a good option. If there are others in the household and no good place to seal yourself off, the office might be the only place you can get your work done. I worked at a place where the office manager's kids would call every 5 minutes with the classic "he's hitting me" sort of nonsense. It was a bit frustrating that she didn't shut that sort of thing down. In an odd bit of logic, it may have been better if she were working at home and could give the little whiners a daily knuckle duster to keep them inline. That was decades ago and there wasn't the tech for her to do her job remotely. I remember that we were using a DEC PDP11/73 for operations and a couple of PC AT's for engineering stuff. Ah, the memories.
"Not like the store manager for a fast food place I worked at as a teen where she just sat on her ass in the office the whole time, "
That manager could have been a lazy so and so, but they could have also been so loaded down with required reports, scheduling issues and a bunch of make work that she honestly didn't have time to do anything else. I'd lean towards your assessment, but I've seen the what I describe often enough. Some regional manager comes through and finds the store manager wandering around and doing things like pulling stock from the back and decides they'd rather see them do something more managery instead. The trouble is that wandering around observing things can be a good way to manage.
"Even if the solicitor errors on caution, getting the solicitor to write to HR is normally sufficient for an improved “no fault” severance payment, especially if your friend is disabled…"
By insisting on a change in location that leads to a 5 hour daily commute that's unpaid in time or costs could also be considered a sacking in practice and subject to severance since it wouldn't be for cause. I'd want to stay away from any employment contract that states they can move the place of employment on short notice and consider not making the move the employee quitting their position. If the person took the job with the understanding that it was a remote position, the company should be on the hook to compensate the employee for the change in terms if they don't wish to accept the changes.
"This seems like one of those US based mandates that hasn't taken regional legal variances into account."
This is why it's important to have competent local managers.
When I had a bunch of employees, I used a payroll service. The cost of one screw-up on my part in fines would pay for the service for 18 months. The other advantage was that the government had stopped auditing those payroll services as their team tended to know more about the regulations than the government drones doing the audits. The same thing applies to employment law. The cost of competent local staff is far cheaper than the legal costs of running afoul or one reg or another.
"but you shouldn't have to need a new cleanroom for every project that needs a satellite"
By the vary nature of what NASA does, they will sometimes need a purpose built facility. Ok, they should build that facility to a certain level/lifetime and decommission it when the project is finished. If some other project can make use of it before its best-by date, fine, otherwise it should be deleted. The best approach is to consider projects that mostly fit within what facilities NASA already has. When I had a manufacturing company, I was alway looking for products that fit within our capabilities. Even if it was sub-assembly work for another company that I could put on a second shift to do. I was paying for the building 24/7, so why not try to use up all of that time? Anything that might have a universal application such as a large machine shop, should be built to a high spec with an annual budget for maintenance and a long term budget for things that don't come along every year such as a new roof or a new sewer line. Those budgets being allocated to a general operating fund and not a specific project. Project billing at NASA is already bad enough. When you see a quote that a particular program cost $XXXmn, a large portion of that is where they shift the cost for things they'd have to pay for regardless to that project. The actual incremental cost of the project is usually far less.
"we don't seem prepared to pay to keep doing it, or fund science enough to do the next big thing."
What's all this "we" stuff?! I've wanted to see mankind back on the moon for decades. I sort of hoped I'd have a chance to go in my own lifetime, but passing the medical exam at this point would take a lot of money in bribes.
"Quite how you land the windturbine on top of a windy mountain site tends to get skipped over"
I'm trying to envision how one would get the bolts lined up accurately to fix the turbine in place with a zeppelin bouncing around all over the place. I've flown in an airship before and they tend to be lively.
"At least with off-shore, a coastal factory can load onto barges for transportation."
So you just discount all of the disadvantages of placing wind farms off-shore?
Tower sections are easier handle in shorter lengths. It takes a crane that doesn't need as much lift capacity, the sections are easier to fabricate and handle at the manufacturers and they are usually moved by train rather than roads for long distances. Some pieces can span two flat bed rail cars if the route can accommodate that.
The location of factories all over the US is a throw-back to WWII and military thinking. Rockets mainly began as weapons projects funded by the military. Add in the oinkish behavior of politicians all trying to get as much PR as possible so they can get re-elected and you get the mess that is now. I believe that Florida should be the prime location for civilian space enterprises with some capability in California near Vandenberg SFB for things being launched from that location. Look at how convoluted a map that Elon has drawn. He builds engines in California, ships them to Texas for testing, ships them back to California, out to Texas or off to Florida. Back and forth, back and forth. Blue Origin is doing the same thing with their plant in Washington state, a test facility in BF Texas and, again, projects that will need to launch in Florida. Not only are huge structures being shipped thousands of miles on regular basis, personnel have to travel to supervise things and be on-site to solve problems. Even if they were 200 miles away from The Cape at a facility in Florida, that's only a few hours of driving.
"NASA does deserve a share of the blame. Many of the staff recommend projects because are likely to get funded rather than because they are part of a sustainable plan to explore space."
Plenty of NASA scientists wind up being shunted from one cancelled project to another. After that happens a few times, they get a bit gun-shy and want to see something they've poured years of their life into actually get built and launched/flown (let's not forget that NASA still does aircraft research).
"Or is "facilities and maintenance" a completely separate budget?"
There's no political value or ribbon cutting ceremony when a roof is replaced on a building. A new building, OTOH is a location for much pomp and circumstance. Those new-construction jobs are seemingly, mo' betta than the jobs that went to the people who removed an old roof and installed a new one.
"And as the article points out, NASA perhaps doesn't need 5,300 facilities"
Conceded. Do you believe that the director has the power to close any of them? I don't. The reason is entirely a political one. He might technically be able to shut something down but then he runs smack into the concrete wall of consequences. A herd of Representatives from that state along with the two Senators will hold up the next budget and vote against any increase. That pack of crows may have been supporters of NASA in the past so losing their votes would be troublesome. One or two of them may be on committees that impact NASA in some way. There will be punishments.
"But what about Charles Bolden,"
I got to meet Director Bolden and found him a likable guy with a true enthusiasm for NASA and space in general. It always has to be kept in mind that NASA directors aren't their own bosses. Too often they are handed agendas by drink addled lawyers (aka: politicians) and have to make the best of what they are given. I'd have no problem with only allowing Congress to have a limited amount of oversight of NASA, hand the agency a big stack of money and let them work out what missions to fly and projects to pursue. It's a giant collection of the best nerds on the planet. While they might make more in private industry, the toys they'd get to play with on the outside aren't as grand. If you go to the open houses at JPL and other facilities and get the chance to talk with the people there, you'll find out very quickly that the sorts of things they'd like to do are the things they should be doing. It's the politics and political fighting for money to go to specific states and contractors that is the issue.
"It has a launch site in Florida which it arguably no longer needs once SLS is abandoned."
The Cape is a good site for rocket launches and since it's in place and interfering development near it isn't allowed, there's no benefit to closing it down. Vandenberg is useful for polar orbits. Wallops is handy for some launches. Having the combination is good so we don't have the same situation that exists in China where spent stages are raining down on the peasants. I argue that closing down the launch sites in Florida would be a bad move.
"Ok, he's only been in post since Biden hand-picked him in 2021, but it's his budget."
Not really. NASA didn't want SLS or as it's sometimes called "Senate Launch System". Many facilities are in places with long entrenched politicians that sit on committees that control the fate of NASA. This means that any NASA facilities in those states have to receive a continuous supply of tasks so the politician can show they are doing something whether the project is best suited to the facility or not. NASA can't decide that an old location is no longer needed and consolidate its work with another. There is then the stupid. Some grandstander who had no idea who Hugh Dryden was decides that the NASA Dryden center needs to change its name to honor Neil Armstrong. Nice gesture, but the renaming cost millions of dollars of NASA budget and money is still being spent to root out all the traces of the Dryden name and transition mail codes, URL's, biz cards, signage, forms, accounting codes, yadda yadda.
I can see softer sales of mobes. Everybody has been pushed at 5G and, in the US, support was dropped for 3G which meant that even some 4G phones were deprecated as they used 3G for voice. There hasn't been a giant leap in smartphone utility for some time and buying yet another $1,000+ phone is getting old. The screens can't really get any bigger as people don't have a pocket that will hold a phablet. The folding screens are a nice try, but it's wishful thinking that those screens will last all that long with regular folding and un-folding. A small screen is one limit with input options another. People still have laptops and those that don't create anything can get by with tablets so there is less utility in a phone with faster and more powerful processors. Granted, there are some niche applications and users, but the broader market doesn't need that extra horsepower.
If ARM's focus is on processors for mobile applications, growth could be limited. They may need to look for applications beyond and come up with new products to fill those needs. Until then, we are just seeing big companies looking to make money by manipulating money. Another set of companies may be looking to preserve their supply chains by making sure they have a stake large enough to be secure, but that's just another sort of game.
"Time to think - nil. And you'll probably be standing on all trains."
That's due to so many people coming from one area to another all at the same time. I expect in your example that the trains going in the opposite direction are nearly empty. I had a job where I was going the opposite direction on the freeway to the regular rush hour traffic so it wasn't a big deal to have "normal" hours.
The US is massive and even in the UK there is all sorts of possibilities to where companies can locate their facilities. With communications today and ease of shipping, having premises in London or any major city isn't a huge advantage. I'd think that the cost of living would be much less expensive outside of major cities so a company wouldn't have to offer the same level of pay if they moved to a much less dense location. Being in close proximity to the trains is an advantage, certainly. It would mean that if people need to get to someplace like London or Los Angeles, it's not very hard or expensive. Just time consuming.
"Overall, only 9 percent of those surveyed have moved away and not subsequently returned, it said."
yeah, well, Covid. People weren't given much opportunity to search for a new home and estate agents weren't able to hire photographers to make images of the few homes there were for sale.
I've seen a lot of people looking for homes with home office possibilities. Properties that have space suited for that are moving quickly now as plenty have had a taste of not being required to commute and liked it. I just photographed a home for an agent (one of the things I do) that had an extension set up as an office. It was off of the kitchen with the laundry in between with two doors to close off the office from rampaging kids/pets and spouses. The utility room had a loo and sink so there was no need to traverse the house and get snagged into 'home' things if one needed a quick session in the contemplation chamber. The home was on the market for 4 days. I have to say that the owners did an excellent job of getting it ready for photos so it looked great on the MLS.
"I was literally told, "I'm not asking, I'm telling you" which to me is basically the same as a slap in the face and a "Fuck you" to go with it."
I've been guilty of that. I had to develop the voice in the back of my head reminding me to not be a dick and make sure I gave reasons. A big part of that was that I did want to get suggestions for improvements from the staff and didn't want to slap people down so I'd never get any.
If it's a trend from a manager, walk or take a complaint up the ladder. If they aren't usually like that, maybe they just got back from their own slap down from their boss(es) and have been told to stop sparing the lash and make everybody row faster to make the poor business plan work in the real world.
"- Being available to offer advice and guidance or offer a second opinion on something if it's not obvious"
Another one is acting as a filter between the people doing the work and manglement's ever changing priorities and edicts.
At one point I had a very good engineering manager that I learned a ton by working with. One of the things he would do is act as somebody the more mundane tasks can be offloaded to so I would be able to concentrate on the things only I could do. He was also keeping track of the project calendar and making sure it was kept updated. He also had tasks of his own and partnered up with different people in the group to get them done. Together we wrote a flight operations and emergency procedures manual that the US Air Force wanted to have before we would be allowed to do launches from Cape Canaveral. (not spacex). I was the safety officer for operations at our test range so I knew our internal procedures back to front and he had worked at NASA , so he could speak governmentese. Between the two of us, it wasn't hard to get done.
"Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company had to optimize its use of what expensive real estate remained, and that coming into the office once or twice a week was not efficient."
Ok, they have a portfolio of overpriced real estate. If they can't get out of a lease or sell it off, why is it important to make it even more expensive by loading it up with employees and having to offset all of the heat they produce with HVAC, supply cleaners, bog rolls, coffee, lighting, etc? Sundar (what's with all of the Indian C-Level execs in the US?) sounds like he's committed to maintaining the status quo when it comes to how people work while sitting at the top of a business that is 100% virtual.
Maybe there is something to having some teams working together in an office environment. Why do those offices have to be located in the largest, most expensive downtown locations? Why can't they have smaller facilities in much better to live areas where the cost of living is such that employees have the possibility of buying a home and their kids don't need a security detail to get them to and from school? I can't see that sticking an art department on the 8th floor of a soul crushing high rise is going to lead to great work. Why not put that department in a small building located in a better setting where a brisk walk around the block could hold something that inspires? A lady I know that was the art department at a small sports wear company was sent to different picturesque locations every year on scouting trips. She also worked mainly from home and had an awesome studio that her husband carved out of the house to bring in the best light with big windows and a gorgeous garden to look out on. Not the sort of space you'd get with cubicle parts.
"Public transport is geared up for large influxes and exfluxes[*] of people to the high density city centre offices."
I see that same sort of thing where I like to have a few choices that make it more of a wheel and spoke arrangement. Having to take a bus through the city center to get to the other side can often take more time than going the long way around.
"1. 15-minute cities (or rather, 15-minute neighbourhoods) are not a bad thing."
Listen here you young whipper-snapper....
When you get to my age and are plagued by an abused back and a menu of aches and pains, walking and riding a bike aren't as easy. They are even less so when carrying a bag of groceries. I don't see home delivery as a great option as it's just as bad as somebody making lots of short trips in their own car to do their own shopping.
I'd love to sit down and debate Adam Something and his ranting about moving everybody into mid-rise flats organized around 15 min neighborhoods. I get along with my neighbors and they don't mind me as there is enough of an air-gap between us that I don't notice that they are early to bed early to rise and they aren't driven mad by me playing drums. I can do a fry up with lots of garlic and onions, and nobody around me is put out and they can have as stinky a curry as they like and it won't bother me.
First year Psych classes cover conflict issues with high density populations. Rats will kill each other or turn into serious bullies, but with people, the police will get called. I've lived in apartments and there is always at least one person or household that couldn't give a rodent's backside about anybody else and will make noise, smells and use up resources that everybody pays a portion of each month.
"I'm so sorry you're so weak of mind that you've been brainwashed by a social media echo chamber into the idea that getting into your car and commuting an hour each way twice a day is useful way to spend your time and energy."
It's more like people aren't taught in school how to "run the numbers". They have a good job in a larger city, but can only afford a house that is 50 miles away. The problem is they've never figured out if the 2-hour commute each way every day (since everybody is doing the same thing) is costing them more and really painful when the price of petrol jumps 25% in less than a week. It might be better to take a lower paying job closer to home or purchase a more expensive home (if possible) nearer to the job. This is the sort of personal financial exercise I mainly had to learn on my own (very expensive). My dad did teach me a couple of things, but he was of a generation that would never discuss money with the kids and he passed away just before my high school graduation so lessons he may have felt would be good to pass on as left home never were given.
There's a couple of small grocers in my town, so I'm covered if I find the milk's gone off and I don't need much of anything else. I'm doing about half of my time in the field so I can whip through the warehouse food store when I'm in that neighborhood and stock up on staples. I like to buy in bulk anything that is shelf stable or I can repackage from large containers into smaller ones. What I'd like to sort out is a Nitrogen purge system so I can vacuum pack some items that should last for years if there isn't any Oxygen in the container.
"Random fun fact. I happened to be in France when that was airing on some TV network, and they changed Taco Bell to Pizza Hut."
I think Pizza Hut is the brand on the DVD I have although the etched glass in the background is still the Taco Bell logo and name. Whoever did the contract for the product tie-ins must have really screwed up.
"We should start subdividing these spaces into additional housing, right sized for work from home, and for smaller corporate offices build around the customer facing operations and team spaces."
Commercial buildings are very difficult to divide up into residential units. The core fabric of the building wasn't designed to provide all of the plumbing, electrical and HVAC for lots of apartments. If they were to remake a building as one flat per floor, that wouldn't be too hard.
I am in total agreement with spaces being set up for customer interaction, training/meetings and workspaces designed with teams (not Teams) in mind. Downtown buildings in large cities are still good for those purposes as there is usually easy to access transportation servicing those places as well as utility deployment.
" Less than a week later, their tour popped up in one of my FB feeds."
You need to comb through the FB ToS and find that little clause that states you have allowed them to plant tracking and you might also find that Spotify is a "partner" of FB so they've run a circle around any 'do not track' methods you have employed. Spotify is one of FB's customers, you are not. You are the product.
"We have two great big UPS batteries sitting in the corner "
Are they completely toast? You could always put them on Freecylce, Craigslist or another classified ad site for free (or for just some lunch money) and see if somebody will come and take them away for you. Even Lead can be expensive these days so somebody may find it worthwhile to recover it.
"But even I'd have a hard time getting one of the forklifts up the stairs to the meeting room,"
There are really small forklifts available that are sometimes used in multi-story buildings. The first time I saw one was in the movie "Head Office" and saw some later in a hotel that had lots of ballrooms on several floors.
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