Posts by MachDiamond

Ford pulls the plug on EV strategy as losses pile up

Re: Once upon a time....

"(can an EV carge an EV?)"

Yes. If the supplying vehicle has V2L (Vehicle to load) and there is a "granny charger" to hand. It would be rather slow, but running out of battery is silly in the first place as EV's will generally bitch and start shutting things off such as HVAC if the battery is nearly flat. Most EV's (not Tesla apparently) do a very good job of constantly projecting the range left and if you've put your destination in the SatNav, it will tell you if you won't make it and start suggesting places to charge.

There are some service trucks with DC charging and those are likely going to be more widely deployed as time goes on so it won't take ages for a quick charge for enough range to get someplace to plug in.

Re: Once upon a time....

" I had the additional 100 miles of range I needed to get home and I was on my way. It literally didn't take me any longer than if I'd stopped without needing to charge."

Ah, ah, ah, but what if that 100 miles of added range took you 20 minutes? What about that, huh? Multiply that by 400 days in a year and that extra 5 minutes will cost you 83 days of your life every year for the next 100 years! /sarc (duh!)

Your scenario fits mine although with a trip to mom's once a month, I'd have a few more public charging stops, but not always. There's loads of charging around her house and if we go to lunch, which we often do, I could plug the car in while we eat and have plenty of range to not need to stop on the way home. The savings over buying petrol would make it that much easier on the wallet to make that trip. On the weekend I can take the train for less than driving as they have very cheap fares, but I don't always want to get up before the chickens so the train schedule with transfers works well or I might be taking things to and from that would be a chore to carry on the train. There's only one train back with a fast transfer and the rest would have me waiting an hour or so in the middle.

Re: Routes round here are electric

" I'm old enough to remember when people worked the fuel pump for you. Given a surplus of cars over sockets at a destination that might catch on, and indeed anywhere that parks cars for you might return them charged."

For petrol of diesel, having a pump at each parking space would be problematic, but with an EV, it's much easier and charging can be managed so the charging points are turned on and off depending on whatever factors need to be in place. If you will be parked up for 8-10 hours, you could choose a lower priority and save money per kWh. If you are only going to be shopping for an hour, you could pay more for priority charging. The EVSE that often gets called a "charger" is just an interface and tells the car how much power it can supply. That can be changed so if there is 10kW of power available and two cars are plugged in, they can each be told the limit is 5kW or some other ratio that adds up to that 10kW. Scale that up or down as required. If two cars are plugged in and one completes charging, the other can be told it can now use up to the 10kW limit if the car's onboard charger is good for that much. I'd guess that it would be cheaper in labor and insurance to not have a valet moving cars around. There's also no requirement that a 50 space installation is put in place all at once. A location can start with a few and add on to keep up with demand.

Re: Platform

"Japanese manufacturers in general have been holding out for solid state batteries."

Good luck with that.

Saving weight is a good goal. I wonder how much lighter an EV could be if all of the driver assistance carp was pulled out. All of the motors and solenoids that cater to people that are too lazy to manual open the "gas" flap. It will take a big jump in battery technology to see a rise in energy density. How close to C4/TNT in terms of energy density to you want to sit on top of?

Yes! The ability to make something and the ability to make money doing it don't always mesh and the last mover has the advantage of not having dug a financial hole in the mean time by having to sell under build cost to sell at all.

Even without a load of breakthroughs, there are plenty of good use cases for EV to be useful for a large number of people. How many of the naysayers are driving coast to coast in the US every other week as they seem to be saying? When called out they often have to back down to saying they'd "like to have the option". Why? If I needed to get half way across the US for a family emergency, I take off in my car immediately. I'd go home, find the first flight I could catch, shower and pack a bag long before I'd embark on a few days of driving. I once ran the numbers to get from Los Angeles to Chicago via the car, the train (with a room) or a business/first class plane ticket for two people traveling together. All in, they were about the same price. I don't fit in economy plane seats so those were out. Anybody over 5'4" is crammed in these days and I'm 6' with shoulders several inches wider than those seats. If I had to make the trip in the shortest amount of time, I'd (cringe) fly. My preferred mode would be train unless I wanted to dawdle along the way and stop a lot in which case I'd drive. I might also consider flying one way and taking the train in the other to shave a day or two off. It's not a bad trip in an EV now. There are plenty of high power chargers along the way so with a fast charging car, it's about the same time to charge while making a quick visit to the loo. I chose the city pair since they are well served by all three modes of travel. That can't be said for many trips in the US using Amtrak.

"The second is that at least since I retired I make most of my journeys within a fraction of EV range from home but half of my mileage on those few long trips."

You see that the details will vary from person to person. The vast majority of my field service work is well within the range of a basic EV. The bulk of my long trips already have charging along the way. The few really long journeys I am planning over the next couple of years also have enough charging to do them with, admittedly, little margin but two years ago they weren't all that possible at all without many stops to charge very slowly. Really really really long trips I'd rather take a train than drive.

Long trips in an ICEV are easy to make now, but that's after 100ish years of the personal automobile. To expect the same level of "jump in and go" for an EV in the next week is silly. Change costs money and rapid change costs lots of money ( loads of it due to fraud). The US is thinking that the government throwing loads of taxpayer money at it is a good tactic. They also think that "to be fair" money should be allocated to low-income and historically disadvantaged neighborhoods to install chargers. I predict zero charging and a 100% chance the copper will be stripped from end to end in the first few days in those places. People that have to scrape together bus fare aren't buying EV's.

"Around me, the speed of an EV refueling at home is infinite. Area is all terrace housing with no off road parking, so you _can't_ charge while you sleep."

**Attention, Rude response follows***

Sucks to be you. In many parts of the world where cities were designed around horse drawn carts, the modern automobile isn't a great option at all. If you live someplace with no charging options, mixing that with an EV is a bad choice. It's slowly being overcome, but it's the fruit at the top of the tree. Those that do have off-street parking are the best candidates for an EV right now and over time it will be less of an issue for others.

Re: Spent Batteries

The battery packs in EV's don't just fail one morning as can happen with lead acid car batteries. They tend to lose capacity over time but, a 60kWh pack that's lost a third of its capacity is still a 40kWh battery and can run a home for a few days or a week with some conservation.

The reason quotes for a new pack are so expensive right now is there is no market for third parties to manufacture replacements. The Tesla Model S early models are out of warranty, but there's demand for those batteries sans the car as they are very high quality and modular. If you look at the Toyota Prius, there are lots of replacement and refurbishment options that are not outrageously expensive. The Li packs that are drop in replacements for NiMh OEM batteries even give a bunch more pure electric range for a reasonable price. There's no reason not to expect major aftermarket parts makers to be selling replacement and refurbished EV packs when it's economic to do so.

"Hertz aren't dumping their EV fleet. Hertz EVs are mostly Teslas"

I haven't seen any postings on where they deployed these Teslas. An airport location might be the worst place for them. Somebody on a business trip or holiday that isn't already familiar with a Tesla may not want to try and figure one out on the fly. A neighborhood location might attract people curious to try one out for a weekend or while their car is being repaired and could get along ok with one full charge if they can't figure out how to charge it on their first go and need some help.

Re: Once upon a time....

"For the one driver who gets to it first. Not for the rest of the drivers who may have been hoping, or even depending on getting it. "

The point of not fitting high power charging is so many more can plug in for a given amount of power to share around. There are fleet management schemes available so people could pay a premium to be sure of a charge or only buy in at the lowest level if they aren't desperate. If the system is in full use most every day, that would be a strong signal that it's in high demand. If nothing is put in, nobody will ever know.

Re: Purchase cost is one thing

"And of course a degraded battery is still perfectly serviceable, and valuable as a second life battery."

A good second life for EV batteries may be as a buffer so fast charging can be installed in places where there is limited electrical service. A highway rest stop is an obvious location and many of those in the US are located on very desolate stretches of highway where there's plenty of adjacent land to install solar panels or a wind turbine and recharge the onsite batteries. That could be far less expensive than routing MW class power lines to those locations.

"Refueling speed - poor."

The use of AC posting needs to be throttled back.

The refueling speed of an EV plugged in at one's home is nearly instantaneous. It's like a sleeper train, you sleep while it's happening so the time involved is very small compared to the process.

Public fast chargers are only necessary on motorways for long trips. The US is well covered along many of the interstate highways and getting better all of the time. Why are people expecting a charging station every 100m? Petrol stations weren't put in everywhere at once. Early in the dawn of personal motor cars for the masses, there were still plenty of trips that couldn't be made. You took a train (or even a stagecoach) as there were no places to refuel. With EV's there already is a vast amount of infrastructure in place even if some of it means waiting long than people are used to or it requires taking a specific route. I've been planning a route to travel to see the total solar eclipse in a few months while spending nights at a campground rather than wasting money on motels. Many campgrounds with full hookups offer EV charging during the day. Yes, it's not super speedy, but it will bridge DCFC gaps. I expect in another decade a much greater number of even two lane highways will have suitable charging options of adoption of EV's continue. Plenty of lower power options only require the fitting of an outlet and some way to meter the use.

Re: Once upon a time....

"The MG4 is actually a quite a nice EV... in summer its range is around 200 miles, in the winter it's not that great (120-150 miles)."

Why is 150 miles of range not that great? IF you can charge at home, it could be more than adequate given how far most people drive on a daily basis and especially how far people drive in the middle of winter. The variance is also much less than you state. Moggy at Electric Classic Cars in Wales did some tests on three different EV's. His YouTube channel is a lot of fun. If you lose 20% range in the winter due to a cold battery, that's still 180 miles of range or ~3 hours of driving. Most people make long trips in the warmer months. There's no EV that's going to be a "one size fits all".

A car that runs on petrol or diesel needs to have a fairly long range or you'd be stopping to fill up too often which would mean there would need to be many more petrol stations and it would be inconvenient. Charging up at home by spending 30 seconds plugging in the lead each night or every few nights isn't an onerous task. It's also much easier to fit charging points in a car park over some sort of refueling scheme. A very limited level 2 charging point (3kWish) at a train station where you catch a train to get to work would be sufficient to replenish a battery over the course of a working day. Even somebody buying a Ford Lightning and towing short distances with it could bide fine if they can plug in every night or every couple of nights.

Alaska Airlines' door-dropping flight was missing bolts

Re: Major major cock-up

"I think he's making an oblique reference to the DIY experience of ending up with more bits than you started with."

I've had that plenty of times. If it's from working on the vacuum, whatever, if I've just done something major on the car before a long trip, that's a concern. When I was working on rockets, it would have been inexcusable. Since I got schooled in aerospace, I'm much more methodical about tear downs and reassembly so I rarely wind up with an Exeter. When I do, it's often by choice, as in Hobson's choice. The part that got left out was damaged and there was no replacement part available so something got glued. When the glue fails, it's into the bin with it since there will be no hope in getting parts at that point.

Re: Major major cock-up

" Even we recreational pilots and maintainers know that all fasteners and components come out into clean containers for each kind. Replaced components are placed into tray away from new components."

I was trained to write things down. Every bolt that comes out is noted and when something is reassembled, there is a cross list going the other way to check things off. Used parts that will not be reinstalled are bagged with a note and saved. The repair is written up in the log. One of the Mars Exploration Rovers nearly went unlaunched as they had to find some explosive bolts that were set off to make last minute repairs and check that they did not wind up in a shorted condition which would have damaged internal electronics. Getting to Mars and not being able to deploy the solar panels would have been more embarrassing and expensive than just cancelling the launch. Even with all of the protocols NASA has in place, there are cock-ups. I would hope there were spankings all around for the crew that did the work.

Re: Major major cock-up

"What you can say is that the initial design engineers did a pretty fantastic job, the plane flew multiple times without the locking bolts, triggered the pressure loss light (3 times!), but didnt lose the door in any of those occasions."

Boeing hasn't been especially good at not cutting corners so something like this is going to be blamed on them regardless of who did what to whom. The pressure fault light was there to denote a fault. It's a pain in the ass to bring in the gear and do a pressure check, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than winding up with a load of criminal and civil lawsuits just in lawyer fees. Having the fault show up multiple times (logged) and removing the plane from overwater service due to repeated faults is the airline hammering in coffin nails as fast as they can. I've watched the same sort of thing happen where I worked once. We had a device under test go boom and management made the decision to test again without any analysis of why it happened the first time for a second boom of the day and $30k down the crapper. Nobody was going to listen to my concerns about not doing the work to understand why the first one went off bang. The big problem is a couple of the parts take a fair amount of time to machine and the machinist that made them can take time to schedule the work in. That added another month to the project. There was enough left of the second device to see that there was a error in the design that meant too much slop between two parts meant to index very precisely together.

EU repair rights bill tells manufacturers to fix up or ship out

Re: This looks good on paper ... but

"Where does a consumer's "right to repair" get obstructed by manufacturers "working the system"?"

I had a truck repair shop next to my building and the owner told me of a story about a Ford fuel pump that was an $800 parts cost. The issue was if the vehicle ran out of fuel, there was no fuel to cool the pump which would burn out. Ford only sold the whole assembly that fitted into the tank and not the pump as a component part. The TL:DR was that it could cost $1200 plus to run out of fuel plus a tow.

Re: I haven't read

"What is missing is a way of processing broken boards quickly and efficiently so that components or materials can be recovered for reuse."

I keep some PCB's around to salvage surface mount parts from. There's little point in spending any time harvesting those parts unless I need one and getting a new one will cost more in shipping plus a couple of days. Over time I've bulked up my selection of things such as SMT resistors, but only when I'm buying a minimum shipping amount of other components. The ever rising shipping cost is the same for a few grams as a few hundred so I might as well buy enough things to amortize that cost. I've got nearly the whole lot of 1/4W resistors from .5ohm to 16meg in 5% increments and 1% through a few sections. I don't have the caps as well represented, but those are getting fleshed out too. Panasonic should send me a thank you letter. It's been down to getting all of the bins labeled and mounted. I went all OCD for a week and got a lot of that done. My frustration level gets to a point from looking for things I know I have that I tell the world to go soak its head and put the time in organizing.

Re: I haven't read

"Most of the time, repairs are as simple as bad caps. My 55" TV started having audio problems, then no audio at all. I opened it up, and there were bulged caps."

The manufacturer likely cheaped out and if you spend a few extra pennies, you can buy much higher spec caps from a quality maker than what was installed. I do that all of the time. People give me loads of TV's to the point where it's hard to give them away when I've fixed them (if economic to fix). It's the power supply, the LEDs (PIA to get to) or the T-conn board. I've broken down a couple of smaller TVs and flogged off the PS and T-Conn for money and recycled the rest to avoid an LED repair. I could build a fixture to help, but TV repair is a hobby and storing the fixture would be a pain. The local schools love me as I've upgraded a bunch of what they had when they've failed. Fixing things is a good way to make friends and influence people.

Re: I haven't read

"Today if you include schematics with the product, you may expect 20 clones show up on Amazing in few week's time at fraction of the price, "

If that's the case, you aren't bringing enough value to the product. I thought I'd build my own graphic EQ many moons ago when I got some schematics from name brands. A very rough look at the cost of the parts convinced me that I was better off buying one. Maybe I could save money by finding one that didn't work and fix it.

What I noticed back then is product that could be repaired at a local shop was popular. Anything that required it be sent back to the factory for service, not so much. The fancier one might have had better specs, but in real world use, it made no difference. Any of that audio gear could be made by any number of companies, (and was) so it was up to those companies to differentiate themselves somehow. Parts and service was huge. I have to admit that I was swayed by fancier packaging and "features" that didn't add up to anything. I could get the cheaper one and rent out my sound system for the same money and eventually I learned that if I spent money on the things customers wouldn't budge on such as effects, I was much better off than having amplifiers with a bit more slew rate and lower output impedance that nobody could hear or appreciate.

Re: I haven't read

"Had the AdBlue injector fail on a Citroën. Garage offered to fit the Citroën-branded part or, since the car was nearly out of warranty, the exact same part from the exact same production line at Bosch without the Citroën stamp for about half the price."

Samcrac's Youtube channel shows how many exotic car parts are OTS parts with a custom stamp. I think it was a Ferrari where a part was painted red and marked up 6 or 8 times over what it would have been for a Ford. Exact same part. Great knowledge to have so you don't get fleeced.

Re: I haven't read

"Failing that, measure them with a digital vernier and go to a bearing specialist."

Good example. I've been restoring a very old Craftsman router and just got one of the bearings in today. In the 1960's, they weren't as commoditized so I was lucky to get the bottom motor bearing at all, but I've found that the top one is a very common size in a replacement. The thickness of the old one is 12,6mm, but a 9mm thickness will work just fine. If the whole thing works when I get it back together, I'm sure it will outlast me. The bearings, a new power lead and some polishing up and it's going to look and run like new. The old power tools are awesome. The two later plastic routers I've picked up at estate sales are junk. I'm sure I'll find some use for them.

SAP hits brakes on Tesla company car deal

Re: Tesla warp erp

"Well, from what I've heard, off the shelf ERPs tend to range from bad to worse. Given how terrible the one we use is (which is supposed to be the best of what was available), that doesn't sound all that much of a stretch."

It can be if you try to shoe horn in what you've been doing into how the software wants to do it. To think you have a better way isn't a great battle call. Yes, you may have a better way, but then you have to write and support the entire package in-house, train everybody you hire how to use it and spend resources on that endeavor rather than designing new products or improving what you already sell. With something as well entrenched as SAP, chances are good that you'll find new hires that already know it and don't have to spend the time and money on them which really sucks if they don't work out.

Re: Tesla warp erp

"Anyway, building your own was advocated by some people as a solution."

I had a good mentor that taught me about that sort of thing. His advice was if you can buy it off the shelf and it isn't a component of your product, buy, don't build. Concentrate resources on what you do to make money. It will often sound like a great deal to do things such as software in-house, but only if it goes exactly as planned. I built tangible products, not software.

Re: Are they kidding?

"Its not my special subject, certainly, but evidence within my physical field of view show it’s the business, product definition, customer acquisition, supply chain issues that are the bit that is going to kill you, not the engineering of “getting a car on the road”. "

When you hear people speaking a different language, it's way past time to quit digging.

The automotive industry is not easy. The stakes are enormous and there's considerable talent needed to move from four wheels, a power plant and a chassis into something that will sell and turn a profit. If you can find the 3 part special with James May, Kate Humble and some other person I can never remember when they followed a car from sheet metal to leaving the factory at the Mini plant, schedule the time to watch it. I had a manufacturing company for 17 years and the sort of operations that are required to be an auto maker is next level and beyond. I learned an enormous amount and it dispelled a load of misinformation I had installed.

Re: Are they kidding?

"A 50% year-over-year growth in production?"

Early on, it's not as hard as when the numbers and market share increase there's no way that sort of growth can be maintained. Maybe if they figured out how to make transfer booths and cars were made mostly obsolete, but EV's are only a car with yet another power train option. You can (could) get a Ford Mustang with a V6, a 4.6l V8 or a 5l V8. The trim levels also increase but the main chassis components are the same. The big makers will also fit diesel or 4cyl engines in a model for different parts of the world where a gas guzzling V8 would cost more in petrol every month than the payments. The main point is making the non-power plant of the car isn't something that Tesla is good at and there's no way they can continue growing the same way has they have done. When it's economically more feasible to make EV's (Time to railroad) everybody is going to be on the band wagon. Tesla might be able to compete with any one of them, but not everybody at once.

Apple Vision Pro is creating a new generation of glassholes

The idiot is strong in this one

" "I pulled to the right most lane, turned on Autopilot, and put the headset on for the video," Lentini told us via email. "I wasn't pulled over, hence didn't receive any ticket." "

Why does this brain surgeon think that he would have to be pulled over to be ticketed. It's commonplace, but if you get spotted doing something illegal, you aren't off the hook if you turn into a mall and park up. Even if you make it home and get inside before being tackled, there's no "get out of jail free" card for that.

America's broadband bill subsidy runs out of money and halts enrollments

Re: Affordable Connectivity: A Vital Lifeline for Millions

" if internet companies offered affordable internet services at affordable prices for low-income people on welfare. "

They don't have to. They can keep the prices high since the government will sponsor those that don't have enough money to pay for it.

"It is about time the US government prioritizing the needs of US citizens and committing to ensuring every low-income and impoverished US citizen has affordable access to the internet, as the internet is more of a vital necessity than a luxury."

What about all of the Obama phones? Poor people are given free phones and service. It's not unlimited everything, but WTH, if you want something, it must be paid for. How much internet should people be given for free?

Return to Office mandates boost company profits? Nope

Re: Just reduced my office time

"Prototype has issues you think shouldn't happen."

So if you need to talk with somebody or they need to talk with you, email, DM, etc rather than constant interruptions. At that point, what was the reason again for having everybody in one office? Before the explosion of communication methods, people did need to be in one location and the company needed to be in an office district with other companies in the same line of work and not too far away from the financial district and the ports. These days a person could be based in luna and it would make very little difference.

Re: Top mangers

"Numerous company top managers argue that working from home reduces the need for top managers.”

Managers are still needed, but if they can't manage people they can't see, that would reveal either that manager isn't necessary or isn't good enough.

Guy Kawasaki wrote that Steve Jobs had a technique of MBWA (Management By Walking Around) and that was after his return and Apple's big growth spurt, but Steve was sort of a dick. Things happened, but plenty of people left and some of those that hung around would have preferred he stayed in his office, in another building. The big boss wandering around looking over people's shoulders and asking them questions doesn't work as a way to encourage productivity.

Re: No WFH - WTF

"Today's smart phones are terrible devices for phone calls."

My long lost POTS lines were better, but I still use the mobe for voice calls. Text is a time waster for me and I don't live my life looking at the phone and banging off the walls.

Anybody not on my contact list calling from a number I don't recognize is going to enjoy my dulcet tones delivered by my Voice Mail message. If they don't leave a message, they are giving up their chance to get me to renew my auto warranty coverage. I'll also look up the number later and if it's noted as a spammer, it will be blocked and assigned a silent ring tone. A good way for a politician to get me to vote for the other person is to send me a text. I used to have text turned off on the carrier level, but they won't do that anymore. Every once in a while it's handy if somebody needs to send me a lockbox code or some other bit of info that I'd never remember unless I could write it down.

Cory Doctorow has a plan to wipe away the enshittification of tech

Re: Wait he's saying tech LOST?

"Sure instead of a few hundred companies there are a lot fewer due to buyouts like Facebook buying Instagram and Whatsapp or companies like Blackberry folding because they couldn't see beyond their current market to where the future would lead."

In some places the number of competitors is down to one with a huge barrier to enter that market. In the US, Live Nation/Ticket Master owns nearly all live music. Since they do, a face value $40 concert ticket can easily cost $80 and if you can't go/change your mind, they've got the laws passed to prevent you from selling that ticket. These days I only go to shows to see my friends when I can get in for free or when acts play small venues that sell their own tickets. I've even driven a couple of hundred miles to do that. It's also great to see bands in smaller venues where you aren't 7 leagues back. A friend just saw G3 (Eric Johnson, Steve Vai and Joe Satriani) mid-week in a smallish club and his mind is still blown. It can pay to live in out of the way places.

Re: Bog Zech?????

"That job should have been automated into oblivion decades ago."

Say that in earshot of the union bosses and you might go missing. They very forcefully don't want that sort of discussion taking place.

Re: Bog Zech?????

"The labour of a cleaner is unskilled compared, say, to the labour of a computer programmer. It is a fact. And none of your lefty ideology is going to change it."

There is no contradiction in saying somebody is a skilled cleaner. I see it as mostly a supply and demand issue. A really smart person can be an excellent cleaner as well as somebody that dropped out of school at age 10 and there's a greater supply of people at the latter end of the scale. The gag about buying bespoke rocks on the way into the arena for the stoning is a play on this theme.

Re: Deliberation

"It sounds like in your utopian world everything is government-owned and government-run."

I got tired of typing. I could go on for paragraphs on all of the ways a government run search engine would suck. The utopian world in a pure form wouldn't have any need for a government as everybody would be honest and all would work for the common good. I didn't even fall for that when I was in college, but it still seems to be a popular theme on university campuses.

Missed expectations, zero guidance: Tesla's 'great year' was anything but

"Heavy hauling is a very demanding industry with little tolerance for failure on the reliability and service side of things."

I found it interesting that most trucks in the US "cube out" more often than they hit the limit on max weight. Pepsi/Frito lay hauling packets of crisps from the factory to distribution warehouses is a good application for the Semi. For that it's more about volume than mass. The runs are also well known and regular so there's no questions about running out of battery and charging can be installed dock-side on both ends. As a general purpose vehicle for sale to owner/operators, it's not that attractive.

Re: FSD on old Hardware

" 300 000 lines worth of code replaced with an unverifiable AI black box? I do not see it happen.."

That made me think of some of the early chat boxes becoming very rude and obnoxious. What will an AI autonomous driving system devolve into after dealing with stressed rush hour drivers? "Kill them all, every one of them, and their newts" wouldn't' be a good result.

Rocket Lab is a David among Goliaths in the space race

Re: Which rocket?

"There were thousands of comments on the internet about loads of concrete dust but I did not see any official document saying there was anything but sand. Concrete did get a mention: SpaceX were asked not to tidy up chunks of concrete to avoid disturbing nesting birds."

Pulverized concrete is sand, but not the sort of stuff you find at the beach. The fine particulates being pumped into the air as also a huge health hazard. SpaceX is required to pick up off of the debris from the nature reserves, but it must be done by hand, not vehicles and machinery. Pieces that have to be broken down must be surrounded by drop cloths to prevent debris from being left behind. All of this requires permission too. The only exception is for the retrieval of things like explosives, toxic materials and batteries. Those much still be removed by hand.

"The quote I was irritated by referred to the largest rocket ever created exploding in a national reserve. The full stack Starships exploded far from Boca Chica,"

The first full stack rained down in Mexican territorial waters. The second stack fed the fish in the gulf of Mexico and a to be determined point off of the coast of Florida. SpaceX did such a hack job that they had no telemetry. If an amateur astronomer could get footage of the upper half of the second stage falling, an antenna located in the same area would have been able to receive telemetry and they would have known it went boom much sooner.

Every other test of just the upper "Starship" has blown up with the exception of SN15 and that was taken apart never flown again. If a full stack detonates at the launch site, it will be very bad for numerous endangered species.

Re: Which rocket?

"Sometimes people like to describe the workings of a rocket motor as controlled explosion."

The workings of a rocket motor is not any sort of explosion. If it goes beyond vigorous burning, there's a fatal problem.

This is other than Orion that was supposed to be sent into space via a series of nuclear bombs dropped from the bottom and detonated.

Hundreds of workers to space out from NASA's JPL amid budget black hole

"JPL is getting budget cuts, but we are still dumping billions into SLS. It sounds about right!"

JPL is getting budget cuts because NASA is required to dump money into SLS without a proper allocation. FTFY.

Common Sense Sceptic has done a series on the moon lander contract that was awarded to SpaceX. There were supposed to be two finalists, but through some suspect dealings, SpaceX was the sole awardee and NASA didn't have the funds to properly fund that due to an insufficient appropriation from Congress. It's worth a view as it makes it plain how NASA gets whipsawed with changes in the political wind.

I'm not a fan of the SLS, but it's here and the Artemis missions (return to the moon) are built around it and I don't want to wait any longer for that even though I'm too old to go now and don't have enough money to do a DD Harriman. I think I can remember my dad waking me up to watch Neil and Buzz take the first steps on the moon and I've met most of the men who have left their footprints and dreamed of doing it myself when I was younger. You take what you can get.

Re: Adapt or die

"100 year old house would be perfectly fine today (even for the fact it has been up for 100 years alone...)."

I've noticed that homes a few hundred years old that are still in use tend to be the best examples of their time. Those are the ones worth renovating and bringing up to more current standards since the electrics might have been fitted so long ago that the materials are just plain dangerous at this point. The same goes for plumbing. What it's rare to see are cheaply made tenements a few hundred years old. They were crap to start with and wouldn't age well if they survived. Some of the issues with today's builds is with modern understanding, they aren't overbuilt as much as was done in the past. Given this winter's heating bills, I'd love to have an old house with walls 2' + thick and a comfy snug with a wood burner.

You could have heard a pin drop: Virgin Galactic reports itself to the FAA

" I'd like to introduce you to this product called Loctite."

Loctite is a brand name, not a product.

DEF CON is canceled! No, really this time – but the show will go on

Re: Nerd Conferences

If the hotels, bars and restaurants aren't doing well, that's their own lookout. A casino hoping to draws people out of a conference and onto the gaming floor might not have thought enough about it. People going to Vegas to gamble are the people going to gamble. Give those people the meal vouchers and reduced pricing on rooms. Somebody going to attend CES will be pressed for time just to get through everything at the show. Maybe a disinterested spouse will venture off to other things, but if one is going to Defcon, even on a company expense account, it's Defcon they want to be there for. I'll be making a trip to a convention in Las Vegas later this year (long drive so I'm working out in preparation). I won't be gambling as I've allocated just enough time to do show things before I need to head back home. Even with some of the best prices for hospitality (mostly), it's still expensive.

Re: Voting Machines don't get Hacked

"At least not the ones that I've worked with and used. The older card readers did total ballots but they also collected them and one thing the poll workers had to do at the close of polls was to balance the totals with the card count."

From a statistical sample of how many, you make the sweeping statement that all voting machines are honest?

Just as important as the machines giving honest outputs is they are SEEN doing so. A paper ballot filled out and deposited at a supervised polling site is much harder to hack. It's also very difficult to do in large numbers for a low cash price. It's also easier for people without any technical skills to envision the process since they'll have tangible examples to use as a model. Hollywood has made plenty of people think that it's easy to hack systems in minutes and take over something to inject false data. That goes back even before Matthew Broderick's character in War Games was fiddling his school grades via modem.

If paper ballots were counted in a "tell me three times" manner by different people and tabulators, it could allay a lot of FUD, rumor and innuendo. It would also help if the CCTV didn't show a few people pulling boxes out from under tables and doing some after-hours work at the counting sites.

Re: "That's because we studied math at school."

"Where I live, we have a state-run lottery whose proceeds (supposedly) go to funding education. "

Those lotteries were sold as a way to continue having many of the non-core classes that schools were having to delete. The problem was that once lottery money was flowing into the schools, government started reducing their allocations which put those classes and activities back on the block next to the axeman.

Aircraft rivet hole issues cause delays to Boeing 737 Max deliveries

Re: >but the problem may also exist in 737s already being used by airlines

"their QA system didn't catch them in the fuselages already delivered."

I didn't see any mention of how far off the wrong holes were. Is it something QA could catch without needing precision templates to overlay over all screw/rivet points? I expect there are plenty of things that are only inspected to the level of noticing that there is a fastener there and it's doesn't look like it wasn't properly installed. Somebody working on the assembly line that could also be seeing it from a POV that makes it obvious the hole(s) is out of place is going to be the best person to spot the issue. Those people should get bounties. When I worked as a doorman at a bar, we got a pay out for catching fake ID's. That kept all of us very focused on checking since we could do rather well on a popular night. The bar figured out that it was cheaper to pay the bounty than pay the fine for underage people being caught inside and having their license suspended for a period of time. For Boeing, it doesn't have to be cash, it could be points towards a flight voucher or paid days off. Look how much all of this negative press is costing them.

Re: Reap what you sow

"They spun off what is now called Spirit AeroSystems out of the larger Boeing company to keep the bean counters and shareholders happy. "

The downside is it creates little fiefdoms with boundaries that can't be crossed without formal negotiations. It can also lead to differences in workflows, QC norms and work standards. On the bookshelf behind me I have a set of McDonnell Douglas engineering standards manuals. Those applied across the whole of the company. One of my specialties when I was in aerospace was developing that sort of thing and I borrowed heavily from those MD publications. It keeps everybody doing things the same way and especially keeps the documentation consistent.

Re: Reap what you sow

"Aircraft are built around the wings, not the fuselage."

Wings are a massively important component, but those get outsourced in many cases too. At what point does Boeing convert from an aircraft manufacturer to a design and sales office?

Re: Reap what you sow

"Do Boeing actually make aircraft now or are they just assembling kits these days?"

I also find it odd that there would be a case for outsourcing a core component of a product. If it can't be made in-house at a lower cost, why not? I can see the reasoning behind not making the engines or avionics as customers will want choices but every 737 starts as a basic airframe.

Office gossips beware – chitchat could choke your career chances

Re: II always remind my staff

"From knowing who's getting the chop before even they do"

That's not IT, it's the furniture movers. People see them coming and shit. (Paraphrased from the movie, Head Office).

Come work at HQ... or find a new job, Roblox CEO tells staff

Re: The struggle is real

"I have both experienced and heard from others that creative collaboration is markedly improved in person. Of course, the counterpoint to that notion is that individual productivity is often much higher at home since home is usually more comfortable and more conducive to focus. In short, I suspect that hybrid work arrangements will become more common."

Many jobs that can be done remotely do no have a creativity aspect to them or management doesn't welcome any creativity they haven's supplied themselves. For a group that is meant to be creative, perhaps it's better for all involved that their office is located someplace people can afford and want to live with good schools, goods shops and a local that serves the best perspective and soda for miles. Unless you'd prefer a nice thick pint of sanity.