Posts by W.S.Gosset 1471 posts • joined 18 Nov 2016
> And I really wouldn’t want to drive across a bridge designed by someone who’d never really wanted to be an engineer.
Avoid Australia in future, then. Our current Curriculum designers have formally stated that maths is racist, and that emphasising the idea of a correct answer to a maths problem is white supremacy. Their current curriculum seeks to correct and eliminate these problems.
Not a joke or sarcasm, by the way.
Errr...no. Australia has been singled out by China since September 2019 to serve as "the chicken" in its bullying/weasel-attacks on the Pacific Asian nations. And yes, they have even threatened to invade Australia.
The reference, btw, is the well-known traditional Chinese proverb: "kill the chicken to scare the monkeys". Ie, single out and go psycho on one party in a group, in order to intimidate all the other parties in the group.
Actually a big problem with the France contract was that they had quietly removed virtually all the intended local skills-transfer and even simple building work, out of Australia and back to France.
You appear to be clueless and mal-informed about _everything_ you're ranting about, not just China.
Well, the Brit transmission industry-boys have stated that the retail transmission grid will need to triple in capacity to cope with 100% elec.car use. So factor that humongous cost in as well. (Just the _maintenance_ of existing grid capacity is one third of current bills, so I shudder to think what it'll cost to have that much capital cost rolled in on top too.) But demand-management wise, they'll probably just throttle back all houses they see are charging cars (from their centrally-reported realtime current-demand). So they won't actually full charge anyway.
SmartMeters are specifically designed to provide and implement this capability, in case you've ever wondered why it's the _industry_ that's so gung-ho about such an expensive countrywide rollout: they are remote controls for your house. Initial motivation was just profit, but they can also be used defensively.
"Wind & Solar" is a bit of a furphy, btw. 85% of the UK's renewable energy is actually from chopping down and woodchipping forests to burn in very very VERY dirty versions of coal plants. Not sure what the current numbers are for the US but a few years ago, they were running at just under 60% from woodchips.
Conductive in magnetic field.
So they'll be doing a reverse spider* manoeuvre. Nice.
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* Spiders fly by spinning electrically-charged silk which interacts with the earth's magnetic field. In case you've ever wondered why the silk doesn't just fall down plop on the ground.
First formally identified by Charles Darwin aboard the Beagle way out at sea: he noted spiders arriving from nowhere, then later taking off again and when they did, the strand stood out from the boat rather than in direct line with the wind. He suspected the cause was the well-known local deviation ships make in the local magnetic field, even wooden ones, and that the silk was charged. He turned out to be right.
They didn't say spike, they just said voltage. Given Victoria routinely has to shut down industry *cough* "Demand Management is the bold new power industry tool for a renewable future!" as a result of leaning hard into renewable energy, I personally suspect a voltage DROP rather than a spike. Sustained for longer than Google's setup anticipated in a First-World country, or just not caught/detected for the same reason.
Pity they didn't run South Australia's tactic. After the last stuffup there, SA loudly announced a Tesla battery and decent backup despatchable power. The battery had IIRC 2.5mins power supply (deliverable in a dribble over 75mins). The despatchable power was a trick taken from EUK windfarms* : they built a dirty great diesel park. A$415m to burn 80,000 litres of diesel an hour and sustain the Green Revolution.
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* (The EUK grant-farms tricked the bureaucrats by saying they wanted their despatchable power reqts to be technology agnostic. The govt assumed they meant not cutting off future innovation from the flow of subsidy and cheered+implemented the changed wording ; "imagine the surprise" when they just turned round and whacked in diesel.)
> IE 3.0 indirectly led to Microsoft's first big set of antitrust troubles
No, that bizarrely-limited "prosecution" by the DoJ was the SECOND antitrust action vs Microsoft. And it was bizarrely-limited as a deliberate tactic to avoid getting finessed like they were the first time.
For those who don't know, MS was *convicted* of antitrust breaches (in 1994 IIRC). They were due to be broken up (Sherman Act's only real remedy is The Nuclear Option), but got leave to appeal and managed to do so on a technical matter which by its nature required the Court to NOT consider any evidence. They lost the 4 year court case resoundingly but won that appeal in less than a single day.
DoJ was ropeable. And if you'd scratched your head at the later antitrust action re something so apparently tiny as the bloody browser, well, that's why. Having another go but with massive scope limitation in a bid to avoid another last-minute finesse by MS.
Sorry Doc, there are over 1.2 billion people using one treatment very successfully and more than half a billion using another even more successfully. Based on their numbers and event studies, we could have saved at least two thirds of the lives lost (and, anecdotally, eliminated Long Covid). It really is down to a toxic group of politics-obsessed idiots. See my note above re the Taiwan protocol.
> They tried something in an unprecedented situation.
And even identified a drug protocol which reduces deaths by two-thirds. Published it on 4th March 2020 iirc. 3 drugs, used in early stage (only).
Lunatic political gamesters have blocked its use in most Western countries, but Switzerland are using it. Dig up a graph of their (CH's) Case Fatality Rate and note 2 things:
A. the death rate's absolute value is bizarrely low ; and
B. a surreal spike in the middle where the death rate triples for 2 weeks then goes back to their low normal. What happened? The political mouth-frothers found out they were using the Taiwan protocol and scweamed and scweamed and scweamed and forced the Govt to ban it. Many unnecessary deaths later, the govt manned up and UNbanned it.
Pure science: event study. But unethical.
Most of India is using it; their CFR is _over_stated, but less than half of Australia's. We spend A$7,500/yr per person on healthcare, they spend US$73...
There's also another drug protocol came out about this time last year, even more effective: 86% reduction. Same political nuts are fighting it too. But Uttar Pradesh is using it with outstanding results, Goa used it to hammer Delta, and so did Mexico City. Indonesia _was_ using it until June when WHO forced them to stop. Have a look at a graph of their daily deaths and see if you can spot June 2021 without looking at the X-axis...
> While you can blame the companies for profiteering, that is what they are supposed to do.
Worth pointing out that AstraZeneca are explicitly selling their vaccine at Cost price.
To be clear: they intend to not make a profit from it.
They are doing some price differentiation between rich and poor countries so the rich subsidise the poor, but that's the extent of their variation from Cost Price.
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