Posts by Overflowing Stack 103 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Feb 2014
"Billionaires and MultiNationalCompanies need to be taxed at 75% gross" there would be no Starlink then, no SpaceX, no Tesla and probably no electric cars. They'd also be no smartphones, no Google and no Covid vaccine.
Musk has reinvested all of his money. His wealth isn't mainly cash, it's tied to the value of Tesla and SpaceX shares, if he sold them, they'd instantly be worth less.
Musk's Starship is going to pull the rug from under the airlines/Boeing/Airbus, they'll all go bust in the next 5 years. Business class and above will choose a cramped, no frills 30 minute "flight" point to point anywhere on earth over 8/12/18/24 hours in a tube flown by meatheads whilst smelling other people's farts.
Rockets were around before Jets in much the same way as EVs were before combustion engine cars.
The future is the past!
"Why don't we make all the non-vaccinated wear a yellow symbol on their clothing - perhaps the biohazard symbol? Just so the rest of us know who we're dealing with, of course." yup, sounds good to me. Also helpful for the ambulance crews when they turn up, they can just leave them free to cough up their guts because that's what they "choose" to do and drive on to somebody else who's not a numpty.
"Excepting those with medical conditions " my wife is a doctor and she says that the really aren't any medical conditions that mean you can't have it. People at certain points in their cancer care, but they are actually offering the vaccine before starting any immune suppressing drugs. So there isn't really anyone who can't have it, you could make it 100% if there was the political will. They would be riots though, there's millions in the UK who haven't had it and lots of people reading anti-vax guff on arsebook.
"If you are 'vaccinated" and allegedly "safe", what are you worried about?" the hospitals filling up with unvaccinated morons coughing their guts up and restrictions staying or another lockdown as consequence.
The vaccines don't work 100%, they don't stop the spread as much as they hoped. They do stop most people either needing to go to hospital or dying. So we should be able to go back to normal if everyone or close to everyone gets vaccinated.
However, 5,000,000 adults in the UK are still to have the vaccine and way more than that in the USA, that's a lot of people and if enough of them get Covid at the same time, the hospitals will fall over.
If you've not had the vaccine, then get Covid, you should be denied treatment. I hope the Government adopts this policy rather than another lockdown or closing the pubs.
I don't want my way of life changed again because of other people's stupid decisions.
You're wrong, there's been no over-reaction. Viruses are real and they kill people.
If you look at any graph of the positive tests & deaths there is a total correlation between lockdowns and the rates of infection and deaths coming down. There's a lag in the deaths as it normally takes people time to die, especially if they get treated. There's a lag in infections coming down as once it's at a certain level it will keep spreading.
The hospitals did almost fall over, almost ran out of oxygen and then many more people would have died had we not locked down.
I don't know which rock you were under when this was happening?
The Delta variant is affecting many more younger people, a quarter of the people currently in hospital in the UK with Covid are under 60
At the beginning, in the UK the deaths were underreported as there simply wasn't the testing capacity. More people died of Covid-19 than were reported, this is demonstrated the excess deaths figures. There has been some the other way round since, but look at the excess death figures for 2020/21.
I don't trust anything the Chinese government says about anything, but that's not related to what happened here in the UK If you remember the UK Government was very late to lockdown as they were very sceptical about it actually killing people, but then it did start to kill people and nearly killed our own Prime Minister.
Again, I don't know which rock you were under when this was happening?
How can lockdowns not help in stopping the spread of an airborne virus? To suggest otherwise shows a complete lack of basic common sense.
Most of the population understands all of this and most of the population has had the vaccine because of this.
My wife is a doctor, she took part in the trials of the AZ vaccine in 2020, that's when it was "Experimental". It's not experimental now as billions of people have had it and aren't dropping like flies.
The FDA has approved the Pfizer vaccine, it's no longer on an emergency licence.
There are short-term side effects and risks, but these are demonstrably lower than the risks of getting Covid-19.
Which if you've not had Covid yet, you will get it at some point as it's never going away. Everyone I know who has had Covid says, it's not fun, it's the most ill they've ever been!
It's exceptionally selfish, stupid and misguided not to get the vaccine. There is no valid reason not to get it.
You're missing the point.
The chances of my house burning down are low, I still have smoke alarms and still support having a fire brigade.
If we hadn't have had lockdowns and we didn't have the vaccine far more people would have died from Covid and more people would have died from all the other causes as the hospitals would be full of people with Covid.
The main reason for the vaccine and lockdowns isn't to stop people dying of covid, it's to stop our hospitals being overwhelmed.
Unless you're prepared to let those who get it just die, then it's the only choice.
"Gas" But there's only so much gas and oil in the ground, then it's gone forever. North Sea Gas hit peak in 1999 AFAIK and is about a 1/10th of its peak production and shale is not very popular. Do you really want to be reliant on Mr Putin for gas and the Saudis/OPEC for Oil?
Also, some people think that burning billions of cubes of gas isn't very good for the atmosphere..... I'm personally not one of them...
Nuclear fission/Fusion is a much better idea, but difficult to miniaturise into a car (although GM did have a nuclear car program)
"Too expensive
Limited range
Slow to charge
Short battery lifetime"
Are you stuck in 2011? When was the last time you saw an advert on TV for an ICE only car, for that matter most are now all electric cars?
Yep, they are pricey for the flagship models with the latest tech, but so is an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy S
There are, just like the phones, much cheaper models like the Renault Zoe.
Anyway... Model S 2021 (Just released)
"Limited range"
400+ mile range on the latest Model S
"Slow to charge"
182 miles range in 15 minutes charging
"Short battery lifetime"
There's a Tesla Model S in LA that has done 400,000 miles, it had new batteries at 180,000 (under warranty) miles and 350,000.
Batteries are getting better/cheaper and using less materials. Look at the Tesla 4680 cell that's about to go into full production. EV cars will use less materials than petrol and diesel in time as they are intrinsically simpler, having far fewer parts. There was a recent study that showed over the lifetime of an EV it is better for the environment and will probably have a longer lifespan than an ICE car.
Personally, the environment isn't my driver in wanting an electric car. It's fun, more convenient and far cheaper to run.
Give it 5 years there will be loads of secondhand electric cars on the UK market at reasonable prices (I think there already are). We're a "new" car loving nation but there's a benefit for the rest of us, lots of cheap second hand cars. I was shocked in the USA how expensive secondhand cars are compared to the new price (which is a lot cheaper than the UK). You can't get a second hand running car in the USA for under £1000, but in the UK you can probably buy 2-3!
People need to travel and explore, it's fundamental part of being a human and why we're not all still living in a <100 people villages.
We'll hopefully soon start living on another planet and then there won't be so much pressure here. To do that, we have to have the desire to explore.
The Mitsi wasn't expensive. You can pick one up for about £7-8k second hand. The Jag was a quarter of its original price when I bought it 15 years ago at the age of 27 as my first car! I'm one of the peasants, I'm from Coventry originally! oh and I built the garage for it to live in, some of it in the middle of winter!
Most people you speak to in real life have their own opinions on EVs and this is replicated on forums online.
These tend to range from "EVs are crap, worse for the environment etc.." or "hydrogen is the future" to "EVs are the great and are the future".
I expected better of The Reg audience, but here seems to be the same too.
The facts are that whatever you think, EVs are happening right now. Most, if not all car manufacturers have stopped developing combustion engines and the UK government is going to ban there sale in 9 years time (I doubt any will still be on sale in the UK by then).
OPEC for some strange reason seem to be promoting EV take-up by pushing the price of oil through the roof. This will only speed things up as people look to buy new cars and look at the now reasonable range (200+ mile) EVs you can get for not too different price of entry. If you weight up the overall cost of fuel/servicing, I think it's already a no-brainer.
I personally have a Mitsubishi PHEV that I bought second hand 18 months ago and mainly use it on battery only power. I've got solar, so when it's sunny it's free to run.
Also have in the garage, a supercharged 4.0L V8 Jaguar XKR which I've not driven in 3 years as I've been renovating and extending a house... but I will be soon!
I won't be buying another combustion engine car, but I won't ever be selling the Jag (even when I have to get petrol in boxes).
I used to say that if I had the money, I'd buy a Bugatti Veyron or Chiron, now the car I most want is the Tesla Model S Plaid. Yeah it has Mondeo looks, but the specs are just, amazing.
"The man is a sociopath and the world would be a much better place if he wasn't in it for so many reasons"
He certainly is a sociopath, I can agree with you on that, but he is getting things done.
" this electric car bullshit not the least of them.
Look up John Cadogan - electric cars - YouTube for why they're the shittiest idea since humanity evolved."
Do you love breathing in diesel particles?
Do you love your economic prosperity being at the whim of OPEC members?
"If one of his employees catches it and dies" if they are of working age and healthy, they are highly unlikely to die or even need to be in hospital.
If they are over 65, then yes, they should stay home. The long term economic damage and hyper inflation that's coming our way will kill more people of working age than the virus ever will.
The reality is that governments are doing this to protect the elderly, however many of the elderly are shrugging their shoulders and think its an overreaction.
15% mortality rate in the over 70s. If you're not bothered if you get it and you're over 65, that's fine, just don't call an ambulance when you can't cope, as it's no fair on the people who are bothered!
But that's what they are looking for.
If it didn't do what they searched for that would be spam, but it does do what they want. By being able to know a little bit in advance you can drastically improve the chance of success on finding what they want.
Also, sometimes there isn't an official app that does what the user wants.
Take Sky Q. The Sky Q app doesn't control the box. This app does. Nobody would find an app that didn't have "Sky Q remote" in the title searching for "Sky Q remote".
I think their policy is intended to stop someone renaming say a "calculator" app repeatedly as "Super top calculator app", "Best calculator app", "Cal-cul-ator" etc...
It's the same app, doing the same thing, with people searching for the same thing, therefore spam.
But that isn't the case with these apps
Regardless if you think it is, Google's reaction is over the top, unfair and harsh. It doesn't seem to matter how much they get investigated and fined, they carry on with what seems like absolute power.
The whole idea of the app is to be automatic in its discovery of network devices. No setup needed, for Joe Public, not tech freaks like us.
For most things it's upnp or mdns(bonjour) but some, well lots, have custom discovery mechanisms or both.
The app works with 1000s of different makes and models of devices. Xbox One, Sky Q, DirecTV, Samsung, Sony, Hisense, Panasonic, Hue etc...
If you fire off all the custom discovery routines at once on top of mdns and upnp it overwhelms the Android device and network devices.
If you have separate apps that only fire search routines if they are an "Onkyo receiver app" you can be more selective and have a better chance of finding what the end user is hoping to control. Which if they've searched Google Play for an Onkyo remote app and the app controls Onkyo equipment I fail to see how that is "Spam". The bonus is, it can also control the other stuff that is connected to the Onkyo receiver like a Samsung TV and an Xbox.
Regardless, Google only brought the policy out in 2018 so should at least warn first. The apps have been on Google Play since 2013/2014.
I did try doing that to begin with, I really hate Apple and all Apple products.
But because I need to be using the latest version of xcode and can't stop working because of any issues with running an out of date OS.
Also emulation runs piss poor using VM and doesn't play ball with a real iOS device connected to the USB ports.
It's really easy to do with the stupid touchbar thing.
I thought it was dead too, I plugged it into a monitor in the end to see if it was booting up and then when I plugged it into the power socket too, it lit up and realised what the "problem" is.
I hate my MacBook Pro, would much rather be using an XPS 13, but need a Mac it to build iOS apps.
These islands are of strategic importance to the UK and its allies, Mauritius doesn't have an Army and if they were attacked I am sure the UK and the US would come to its aid.
The treatment of the islanders at the time sounds a bit rough, but that was then and they weren't raped or shot. Ultimately you have to remember that it was the middle of the cold war and the world isn't much safer than then.
Stuff the UN!
There are legitimate reasons.
There needs to be a way to uniquely identify devices on a local network.
My Android app can control many household devices like smart TVs and cable boxes, it searches using upnp and mdns.
If someone has two of the same devices on the same network (say two Samsung 43" 2018 7 series TVs) I need to be able to determine which TV they want to be able to control.
This can't be done by IP address as this changes often and although upnp provides a UUID this can sometimes change or be identical across models, so can't be used.
The MAC address is the only way to do this and you can only get this from the /proc/net/arp cache (As far as I know).
I'm rarely a an early adopter, I still use my Note 3 that is over 5 years old!
This is a game changer though. My first tablet computer was Sony Vaio U70 that I had to import from the USA (2004 ish)
It was almost pocket sized (although I had a foam padded camera case for it) and was useful as a sat nav on the dashboard of my van.
The main reason I'll get it is to make it play ball with my Android app (MyAV), but it is wildly cool and will surely be an excuse for women to chat to me in bars (my round LG Watch sure worked).
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