Posts by Fonant 343 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Mar 2014
I heard somewhere that this particular plane's planned route was most unusual. So triggered the problem when all well-worn commercial flight routes would not have one.
ICAO are also trying to eliminate waypoints with duplicate names, but since this needs international agreement, it's taking some time...
Scraping all of this personal data is absolutely no benefit for the targeting of ads.
But Facebook is also used for influencing elections. Remember Cambridge Analytica? For that purpose, which commands very high fees, the personal and financial information is extremely valuable.
We have a pretty standard 4.5kWp PV installation here. Family of four with teenagers, we use around 12kWh per day, averaged over a whole year. We generate 13kWh per day, averaged over a whole year.
Now if we had a 90% efficient storage system that could store 2,000 kWh for six months, we'd be self-sufficient in electricity.
Very happy to have switched from Virgin to back to Zen last year, ditching the coax "fibre" from Virgin for proper optical fibre from Zen/Openreach. 1,000 Mb/s internet connection now, as fast as the internal network!
A faster service is nice, but Support people who know what they're talking about is so much nicer!
Actually the regulations are in the hand of governments.
The makers have the question "how safe does our thing have to be?", and that can only be answered by society, or by government as a proxy.
The questions almost always boil down to moral ones. Would we accept autonomous vehicles killing people are roughly the same rate as human-driven cars do? Or half that rate? Or a tenth?
Except that we already know that:
Looking at the same point from the other direction: there are billions of lithium batteries charged in all sorts of places, and yet the very rare occasion one catches fire (in this case, not being charged) the story is newsworthy.
Lithium batteries, as used in mobile phones and the like, couldn't really be much safer.
The EU, and Northern Ireland, are pretty happy with the Northern Ireland Protocol. It's a good deal for both of them.
The UK Brexiteers, who came up with the protocol, are the ones who are now complaining.
(They're not "completely unrelated issues", they're both solidly linked to the UK leaving the EU and the Withdrawal Agreement.)
I think you'll find that the EU have implemented their side of the deal. The sticking point is Johnson's "over ready deal" and the Northern Ireland Protocol. Which the UK are now complaining about, even though it was entirely Johnson's idea.
To a certain point: as soon as bartering is better than using money, the CBDCs start to lose control again. Worse, they lose visibility of transactions, making taxation very difficult.
I can't think of a way to stop people swapping goods as an alternative to using money. Or to stop unofficial alternative currencies or systems (e.g. swapping a certain number of hours' work for goods) taking over from using money.
AIUI, that's why the Big Stores have "loyalty card" schemes like Nectar. Then they do get to see exactly what you've bought. They'll please you by sending targeted discount vouchers, but mostly it's for their benefit. Nectar particularly interesting as it is a system shared by several Big Stores.
Even back a decade ago the "fanatical support" took a long time to arrive. Remember well a server being supplied that had the wrong OS installed on it. Took a day to get that fixed. Then database troubles that UK support couldn't sort, so we had to wait for the US support team to wake up.
All felt like a company that was too big for it's own organisational abilities.
You really find out what a service supplier is like when something goes wrong.
Agree. Comments in code shouldn't cover the "how" as much as the "why". The code should, usually, show "how", but the "why" is often much more complicated.
Good variable naming helps a Great Deal, too. I find myself refactoring variable and method names all the time.
Here's the official rules for national power rationing if the Grid is overloaded:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/electricity-supply-emergency-code
Check your electricity bill to find out which Load Block letter area you're in, and so when your power would be turned off.
A small advantage of fibre/VOIP equipment, at least for home use, is that it takes 12V DC power rather than 240V AC.
So small "battery backup" units can be used, much cheaper than UPS devices that need complex inverter electronics.
We have two Eaton 3S Mini UPS 36W backups, one each for our fibre terminator and router. The fibre terminator lasts many hours on it, and the router several hours. Enough to cover any planned 3-hour power outages if the UK grid starts to struggle. Keeps "landline" and internet access going, if not the desktop computer.
I remember a trip to Fawley oil-fired power station, in the afternoon when they were "switching it on" to meet the evening power demand peak. An hour or so from stopped to full power, if I remember. Lots of water and metal needing to be gently heated up, and heavy masses set spinning.
Nuclear is indeed "base load" - run constantly at full power. Far too expensive and time-consuming to switch on and off.
Hydro is pretty fast to react, in the order of minutes to ramp up to full power. Pumped storage an old proven technology for energy storage and peak demand handling, but needs mountains.
Large-scale battery banks are excellent for load balancing. Instant reaction times, and can be located almost anywhere. Add in vehicle-to-grid to make use of big static electric vehicle batteries, and grid management becomes a lot easier.
Hydrogen's nice and light, but needs three times the volume as aviation fuel if stored as liquid (very cold). Six times the volume if stored as 700bar pressurised gas.
So planes will significantly need bigger fuel tanks, but will save energy by not having to carry as much fuel weight around.
Batteries, with current technology, aren't as energy-dense as liquid hydrogen. But easier to handle.
Volumetric energy capacity:
- Petrol/aviation fuel: around 34 MJ per litre
- Compressed hydrogen (700 bar): 5.6 MJ per litre (fuel tanks six times larger)
- Liquid hydrogen: 10.1 MJ per litre (fuel tanks three times larger)
Brexit (implemented by the Tories) robbed us of:
As I understand it you can get an airline to pay for all your training. The problem then is that you're ~£100,000 in debt to them, AND they're your employer. Better to keep the debt separate from the employment, so you can switch jobs if needed.
My son is looking seriously at commercial pilot training. 18 months of intensive training costs £100,000. But that gets you to the point of being able to earn £50,000 a year starting salary as a First Officer ("co-pilot") (at least in Europe) and much higher salaries as you progress.
If you're keen enough to be a commercial pilot, you persuade someone to give you a Big Loan, which you they pay back as you earn. You have to be pretty sure it's the job you want to do!
Mentour Pilot pointed out that the training-to-earning ratio was much better for a commercial pilot than for a surgeon...
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