Posts by jmch 3674 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Mar 2017
"I hope that governments are already starting to think about resilience, blast radiuses and dependency trees like we would in IT related programmes, but focused around key manufacturing, food, fuel and related supply lines at a global level."
Depends what you mean by "governments". I wouldn't be surprised if civil servants around the world had all this stuff prepared, and politicians didn't have a clue they even existed
"Will all the offshore wind farms they're building on the East Coast of the UK have a significant effect on onshore wind speeds? "
Some much cleverer people than me have worked out that there is a theoretical 30% efficiency limit on turbines. So at most they could take out 30% of the wind power even if they occupied 100% of the cross-sectional area the wind passes through. Given that in practice most wind passes above and below turbine blades, and there is a lot of space between turbines, I would say that the turbines themselves occupy far, far less than that.
Also, the wind energy is constantly being replenished by solar heating of the atmosphere, sea and land at different rates to each other and in different locations, so it's not going to run out any time soon.
Short answer, no.
"a Cambridge physicist calculated a few years back that, given the typical density of UK housing estates (20+ dwellings per acre), geothermal heating would not work except for the few, as there wouldn't be enough to go round."
Might have been for currently 'easily-available' geothermal. If we can develop the technology to drill about 5km+ deep, there's more energy than we can ever consume, everywhere in the world.
"abandon the concept of growth being the primary indicator of achievement"
Very absolutely this, and triple thumbs-up. Closely related is using GDP as a measure of "what must always grow". GDP says very little about either wealth (since it's divorced from purchasing power), nor about quality of life (since it doesn't take account of any other factors than strictly monetary). The main advantage of using GDP is that it's easy to calculate. In other words, just like looking for your lost keys under the streetlight is easier cos there's more light, even if you lost your keys somewhere else.
I have a Philips 'smart' TV that's about 12 years old. It wasn't very 'smart' to begin with, and the network cable plugged into it must have lasted all of a couple of days until I realised how crap it all was. It works very well as a dumb screen and can handle inputs from all sorts of devices, and I'm pretty sure it could comfortably continue to do so for another 12 years (though I'll probably want to get a UHD before then).
There's many devices that are specifically built for video processing / consuming that will happily do all the work and simply feed the image to the TV. They are typically cheap (in the case of set-top boxes from cable etc providers, provided free with a subscription) and can be upgraded every few years with minimal cost/fuss.
Why get a 'smart' TV that combines in 1 device a screen that can last 20 years with a bunch of gubbins that are outdated in 2 years and obsolete in 4?? Sad thing is, it's pretty much impossible to get a 'dumb' TV nowadays.
"the only solution to insatiable total demand is working fusion"
That, or deep geothermal. Getting geothermal to work anywhere in the world, not just in particularly convenient locations, means being able to drill not only 4-6 kms straight down, but also in some cases drill horizontally... That's some very extreme engineering challenges BUT (a) It's almost purely engineering and materials science from this point on, as a technology it's much better understood than fusion (that also means that existing turbines from fossil fuels can be repurposed for geothermal steam). (b) the (very large) engineering challenges MIGHT still be easier to solve than containment of million-degree plasma or whatever is needed by fusion.
"Stopping global warming won't stop us trashing the planet. We'll still be over-farming land, digging disgustingly big and dirty mines, destroying nature to make way for our activities, polluting the place."
No, global warming is only one of many eco-disasters humans have been working on the past 2 centuries. However now there is a building self-awareness, and whatever we have trashed we can stop trashing and restore (or allow nature to restore).
Ever-expanding growth and resource consumption is a modern cultural thing. Think of how companies and investors want double-digit growth, countries want ever-higher GDP without stopping to think about quality of life etc. Human life, even culturally advanced, existed in near steady-state for centuries. Human population will peak and start dropping within the next 30-50 years. Long-term, there is a very good chance of having a lower, stable population where everyone has a fair share of resource consumption and quality of life, and the biggest threat to that are the rich people, companies and countries not wanting the plebs to reach their level
Maybe we can harness all that compute power to help solve fusion or deep geothermal, then all the computer cycles will pay for themselves, energy-wise.
*Note* I used "compute power" generally speaking, not referring to "AI". I absolutely would not want an "AI" in charge of the local fusion power station!!!
"There is not a strong resistance movement, very few protests and the approval for the invasion is overwhelming"
Though to be honest, what else do you expect?? A large majority of Russians have no access (or maybe even interest) in non-Putin-propaganda news sources, and have been fed this bullshit for years. In the case of teenagers and young adults, they have literally been inundated by this propaganda their whole life, including quite probably all through school.
For the silent minority, staying silent is what is keeping them out of jail...
"But will the EU overnight greenlight USB-D, and then a grace period whilst you can ship either USB-C or USB-D?"
No way will it happen overnight, and of course there will be a grace period, just as they put a 2-year grace period for this, because contrary to brexit caricatures the EU isn't completely made up of morons.
"It took the EU over a decade of quibbling to approve this mandate. They started talking about it when micro USB was the proposed standard"
That only shows the EU has a proven track record of moving from one standard (micro USB) to another (USB c) while keeping the principle of a universal charger. If a group of manufacturers banded together and told the EU - we've designed a new, better standard connector, let's move to that - you think the EU won't be able to adapt? I agree that nobody has any more incentive to design their own proprietary charger, that's probably not a bad thing anyway.
There will be a USB-D when and as a new spec comes along. Once there is a single standard already specified it's relatively simple to switch to a new one some time in the future, with a couple of years' windows when both USB-C and a hypothetical USB-D could work.
Or have a USB-C type 2 with identical plug that can support faster data / charging that can switch modes based on type of device plugged in
Big assumption, though, given that there are potentially thousands of amino acids:
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-proteinogenic_amino_acids"
If the 20 found were limited to the same tiny subset of "amino acids that are known to form proteins in Earth-based life", it would be statistically impossible that it was a coincidence and would have profound implications!!
"Could something from now be preserved like that?"
I presume that since we are finding fossilised dinosaurs from well over 100 m years ago, that future civilisations could find some trace of fossilised humans 65 m years from now.
Similarly there might be some form of process that can preserve some human artifacts, or traces thereof, for that time span
" if you're going to use in-wheel motors (there must be a reason why none of the mass-market cars (as far as I'm aware) use in-wheel motors)"
Yes, there is a reason not to use in-wheel motors, which is the minimisation of unsprung weight.
Nothing bad per se of reusing an existing platform, it just doesn't give the same optimisations. For example using the battery compartment as a structural chassis component allows battery weight to sit lower, giving better weight distribution and more cabin room
"As opposed to Tesla who just grabbed someone else's normal chassis and bolted on electric bits."
The first Roadster, yes, they bolted onto a Lotus Elise Chassis. All other models were designed with electric in mind from the ground up. First model S was 10 years ago and that's at least 5 years before any other major manufacturer.
To be fair, before Tesla no major manufacturer really took electric cars seriously, and even for a while after that, they just grabbed one of their normal chassis and bolted on electric bits rather than designing electric from the ground up.
Tesla's quality issues stemmed largely from the fact that they were more of a proof-of-concept / hobbyist builder that found themselves thrust into the exacting standards of a mature and cutthroat market, having to push units out the door without having the time to build up expertise in quality. Their forte is the batteries and electrical / electronic gubbins, not bodywork and finishing, and both of those elements show up.
For all the outer refinement of an electric Merc or Jaguar, "under the hood" they're still a few steps behind Tesla. But if (when! :) ) I have a hundred grand to throw around, I'd rather get a Merc or Jag with all the finishing and slightly less performance than a Tesla rather than a Tesla with better performance but with 50% of the build quality of it's competitors.
And frankly, based on some reviews I've seen, I'd probably end up getting a Kia or Hyundai !!!
Recordable Chargeable time is an illusion dreamt up by lawyers and consultants. A huge amount of creative work happens in the mind outside of the actual task execution. Your phone call might have taken 2 minutes from the time you lifted the receiver to the time you hung up, but you were 'working on it' longer than that (preparation and/or follow-up). During a day of 1.5 hours recorded time you are obviously doing a lot more work, just that it can't be recorded within certain rigid parameters.
As many people already noted, the result is that people will fudge the numbers so management are happy.
"some other societies have armed populaces and don't have this issue"
No other country has even close to the firearms per capita of USA. Others who get close are either because most weapons are hunting weapons (eg Canada), military weapons that conscripts keep safe at home (eg Switzerland) or complete nutcase countries emerging from or still at war (eg Afghanistan, Libya etc).
Certainly all the other factors you mentioned are relevant, but not sufficient on their own.
"the problem is violent people, not items"
The problem of violence is due to violent people. The problem of mass killings is violent people having very easy access to people-killing tools, including ones that are very powerful / efficient, and serve absolutely no other purpose except killing large numbers of people with minimal effort.
If anyone has a good solution to identify all violent and potentially violent people and make sure they never act violent, I'm all ears. In the meantime, some sort of limits on high-efficiency people-killing machines might be useful
Amazon didn't order the stay-at-home, that was the government. But, equally, Amazon could have put staff on furlough, extended leave, paid leave, whatever... it was Amazon's decision to require working during the stay-at-home.
Whether people forced to stay at home saved anything on commuting expenses is irrelevant. If the employer doesn't reimburse commuting costs (and what employer does??), then as far as the employer is concerned, it's completely the employee's responsibility. Ergo any savings made by the employee are also not the employer's concern.
The one thing that is a reasonable exemption is that Amazon should be on the hook only for proportional use. Eg using 10% of your apartment space during working days only, Amazon should pay 1/10 of 5/7 of rent. Using broadband for half your waking working day, Amazon should pay 1/2 of 5/7 of subscription etc. The $50-$100 / mth mentioned does not seem unreasonable.
"the biggest tech companies have dropped trillions of dollars in valuation"
The valuation is just a valuation, not real money. The companies in question have not fundamentally changed, what has changed is only investors' perception of them in the market. Perhaps if investors stopped dreaming about expecting 100% returns and focused on fundamentals like actual revenue instead of hype, the companies would not have been overvalued in the first place.
"what's stopping the other retailers who want to benefit from these perks from signing up themselves?"
I would guess maybe cost? Amazon's processes are notoriously efficient but how much of those savings do they pass to their suppliers rather than their customers? The actual fees they charge are below - honestly I haven't got a clue if that's reasonable, expensive or cheap.
https://sell.amazon.com/pricing?ref_=sdus_fba_main_pricing#fulfillment-fees
"Sometimes you have a better chance of finding something using Google and site:amazon.co.uk than Amazon own search."
Absolutely - many times search in Amazon shows up similar stuff sold by them rather than exactly what I'm looking for sold by someone else.
Couple more points
- I actually agree with Amazon that the qualifying thresholds seem to be set extremely high so that in practice Amazon is the only business that has to comply. The thresholds do need to be high enough to not catch SMEs, but still low enough that all companies with multi-billion turnover have to comply
- The Prime thing is a red herring. It's fairly simple for Amazon to request of 3rd-party suppliers whether they can deal with 2-day or next-day delivery, and keep track of that somewhere. It's almost trivial for Amazon to have an additional checkbox for Amazon Prime customers saying something like "also show offers not delivered in 2 days" or similar wording. It's not that they can't, it's that they don't want to
"Call me back when the Metaverse can handle that."
It's already the case that for example a Zoom meeting can be limited to a private/select group, or that in a large zoom meeting there can be private breakout rooms that are not recorded (or recorded only with express participant permission). There isn't any technical reason why a Metaverse shouldn't have public spaces open to all (including recordings) and private spaces in it that are truly private (including end-to-end encryption of all 3D-artifact data in the same way that you currently encrypt text or audio).
The only reason for everything to be recorded is data-grabbing and money
"That is "Too cheap to meter"."
For western middle-class, sure. For higher incomes it's loose change behind the sofa. Not to say there aren't many people around the poverty line who DO have to be careful with consumption. But even then pretty much everyone, even in the poorest parts of the world that have electricity, can run some lights and a fridge.
"you pay a subscription and it's "all you can drink". "
Realistically, a large proportion of the western world uses "all you can drink" at the point of consumption even though they are paying per unit, so yes, right now it is already remarkably cheap. But just as mobile phone connections are still split into PAYG and "all you can use" contracts, I'm sure that even after the advent of "unlimited subscription" electricity there will still be metered connections for low-volume consumers.
"Too cheap to meter" was always a red herring based on the 60s experience that the largest cost of supplying power was the fuel. So teh view was - if we can power this thing with seawater it's going to be dirt cheap... forgetting the billions in capital expenditure needed to build and maintain the plants.
Of course it's not going to be too cheap to meter, it never will be, and there is no problem with that. a few hundred quid a year for all the electricity you can consume is an amazingly good deal for most consumers.
"Those long cables are the weak link in the Xlinks project."
Yes, but it's still something within reach of current engineering knowhow. Current longest HVDC is 2500km (albeit not undersea). Current longest undersea is 580km (operational) and 765km (being built), so 3800km undersea IS going to be a stretch, but the greatest risk is cost not engineering incapability.
Properly built it should be maintenance-free for decades. While ships might be cavalier about dragging an anchor through a comms line I suspect they might be a bit more careful about dragging a metal object connected to their metal hull by a metal chain around a 100+kV cable.
3.6 GW for, conservatively, 12h/day is 43.2GWh/day or over 15,000GWh/year. Even selling electricity at a fairly low £0.20/kWh, and even considering overhead costs, that's a cool £3bn/yr in projected revenue - I'm sure they can raise (probably already have raised) the required capital, even to absorb the spike in Copper prices.
Not going to argue about man-made climate change, you wouldn't listen anyway....
However regardless of your opinion on climate change, there are 2 prime reasons to stop burning hydrocarbons that have nothing to do with CO2 emissions.
1) The west's dependence on oil or gas sources controlled by regimes that range from dodgy to outright evil.... not just the Middle East and Russia but large swathes of Central and South-East Asia, North and West Africa, Latin America.
2) Doesn't matter if it's in 50 years, 100 or 150, at some point the oil and gas will run out. And humanity will have burnt up hundreds of millions of years' worth of stored sunlight in a little over a century. That's a one-time bonus that's never coming back, and it might even be prudent to leave some of the stuff where it is, just in case we might need some of it in centuries to come.
Because of both those reasons, the quicker we move to 100% renewables + fission, the better. And on to fusion as and when (and IF!!) it becomes available.
fission ain't free...
Nope, and it's also not cheap (one of the reasons for which is imposition on it of safety standards far higher than those imposed on any other type of energy generation). Even so, it's not prohibitively expensive, and certainly within the bands of what we should be willing to pay. (Also note that if externalities such as dumping waste CO2 and particulates into the air were correctly priced into coal/oil/gas generation, they wouldn't be so cheap either)
...it ain't green...
What do you mean by green? Land use per power generated for fission is comfortably as good as the best combined cycle gas, better than hydroelectric; and far, far, far better then wind or solar. It doesn't produce CO2 or particulate matter, doesn't play havoc with bird migrations and doesn't require flooding vast areas (usually in mountainous valleys of ecological importance).
...and with all the radioactive waste, it ain't safe.
Modern fission plants burn almost all their fuel and in fact can use spent fuel for older plants as their own fuel (reason being that many older plants were designed to produce weapons-capable nuclear waste as a byproduct). So waste is much less than it was historically. Also, if you know anything about radioactive decay, it is either dangerous (emitting a lot of radiation at one go), or long-lasting (emitting radiation over a very long period of time), but it cannot be both. So for short half-life waste we can store in very secure short-term storage, and move to long-term storage relatively soon (a few years). Waste material in long-term storage (thousands of years) can be shoved into an unused mine or some-such. It might be low-level radioactive for a long time, but not at dangerous levels.
Frankly while not being ideal it is certainly one of the better options to use in teh next 30 years until fusion can replace it. We ARE having fusion in 30 years, right? Right?
"Is TomTom worth paying for, or do free Android Apps do the job just as well?"
For simply getting from points A to B in a car I use Google maps on my phone - It works well enough, is fairly well updated, traffic forecast is quite good. It's certainly better than my in-built car one which is at least 3-4 years out of date and with no real possibility of updating.
For my bike, however I do use a TomTom Rider, and this is certainly worth it and far better than a mobile phone + app would be because of
- being properly waterproof for all-weather riding
- screen is easily visible in wide variety of lighting conditions
- touchscreen recognises being touched by gloves, and buttons are also suitably large
- It has route options to find secondary roads that are more bike-fun and less trafficked
- I can also plan complicated multi-day trips / multi-stop routes on the website and load them to the unit, works generally well but the mapping website is rather clunky
So I guess it depends on the complexity of your usage requirements
"I'm working partly from home and partly from the office ATM. Ironically, a lot of my job involves remote access to PCs and VMs, so in theory could benefit from working in VR, but it really doesn't benefit."
If your work involves pixels on screens with no 3D view necessary (pretty much all developers, sysadmins etc), 3D view is unlikely to benefit. The real benefit is in the replication of physical objects that can be observed and manipulated without having to transport the human observer or the object half way around the world (or even across a building especially for large/bulky objects).
There are surely lots of applications in engineering / architecture, manufacturing of physical products, and medical (remote diagnostics and possibly even remote basic surgery).
Shooting and archery are Olympic sports, darts isn't particularly different in the physical requirements. In fact I have a huge respect for the mental arithmetic capabilities of darts players, who can manage to break down any number < approx 150 into (1..3)x + (1..3)y + 2z before I've even had time to register what the number is.
With respect to snooker, anyone who's had to deal with a cue ball on the opposite side of the table knows that snooker requires a remarkable agility in certain situations, and with respect to 20-30 years ago all the top professionals are exceptionally trim, if not exactly 'fit'. Of course as in any other sport, you get the ultra-talented using their talent to get physically lazy eg Ronnie O'Sullivan just switching hands instead of reaching over the table with his 'stronger' hand.
I don't know anything about esports but surely it requires at the very least a very high level of mental concentration and stamina, which in turn is greatly helped by physical fitness.
"I keep hoping for Truss to challenge Putin to a duel"
I'm of the strong belief that world leaders involved in pissing contests should settle them 1-on-1 (or even many-on-many) in a mano-a-mano royal rumble*, instead of manipulating hundreds of thousands / millions of people to their death and costing billions on weaponry and infrastructural damages, in order to win a pissing contest on their behalf.
*Heck, if you televised it I'm sure it would make excellent pay-per-view
"You/your country may not wish to join a war, but sometimes another country makes a different choice on your behalf."
Exactly!
In 1939, Holland and Belgium were neutral, but had weak army, no defences and a completely flat and convenient terrain, and they were completely rolled over. Switzerland was also neutral, and besides a highly impassable terrain, also had a conscript army and a reputation of tough warriors dating back centuries (hence for example why the Vatican 'army' are historically Swiss). I presume them being the de facto bankers of all sides in the war also helped.
Being neutral isn't in itself enough to avoid conflict, unless you can show any bullies that you will give them a right bloody nose if they try anything funny.
"You can do that and don't even have to own 51% "
One other way is to chain some nested holding companies. You own 51% of a holding company that owns 51% of another holding company that holds 51% of the ultimately owned company. You can make the chain as long as you like, as long as you have at least 51% all the way down, you have ultimate control all the way down with a net of much less than 51% in the ultimately owned company.
*In some cases company laws may require for example 2/3s instead of 50%+1 but the principle still holds
"If you don't like the way Facebook curate your feed, stop using Facebook. "
Why thank you, In fact I've stopped using FB years ago, but that's not the point. FB aren't curating the feeds in a way that the users prefer (since users can't express any preference among all available posts), they are curating it in a way to maximise user engagement and dopamine micro-hits. For most users, they have no way of knowing if the feed is being in their best interest because they have no alternate comparison (ie they don't know what FB is filtering out). FB might be filtering out a bunch of posts that to the user would be extremely interesting (but to which the user has less chance of likeing or resharing), and the user would never know.
Either way, what Facebook is doing, algorithmic or not, is editorial, and therefore they should be liable to clean out illegal content at the very least within a certain time limit of it being flagged, and they should be jointly liable with the poster should they decide to ignore or permit illegal content.
Regarding "And as for your comments on moderation... just go and do some real research before repeating them. You obviously have completely missed the scale of the problem."
I don't need to research the scale, I know it's massive. BUT If FB algorithm can curate a gazillion posts and feeds in real time, it can just as efficiently scan and flag a lot of problems in real time. It needs human eyeballs only on posts that either score very highly on their AI warning scale or on post that are actively reported (ie they use their own users as content moderators to cut costs). Even then, you are probably right that given the scale of the issue, many illegal posts might slip through, but at least it would be an improvement.
Your solution seems to be to shrug shoulders, absolve FB of all responsibility and give up even trying.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
