Posts by Twanky 519 posts • joined 17 May 2017
Yes,
I can't find (or be bothered to look further) for the reference I found for a 747's fuel consumption. I've just looked and found a very different number of 18,000 gallons in 5 hours. Assuming these are the undersized US gallons that's about 16365924 cc/hr - or approximately 31,256.5393 grapefruits.
Cheers.
At 15kW they hope to be able to produce Kerosene at 20% efficiency.
Combustion energy of Kerosene is about 36MJ/l
So they need 36*5 = 180 MJ = 50 kWh to produce 1 litre of Kerosene.
For 15kW they focus solar energy onto a 16 inch aperture (square?) and average 2,500 solar equivalents. So their collecting reflectors are 16*16*2500 = 640,000 sq inch or 413m2.
To get 50kW they need 1,376m2 of reflectors
1,376m2 of reflectors should produce Kerosene at 1 l/h
A 747 jet burns kerosene at about about 136,000 l/h
To get 136,000 l/h they need about 187km2 of reflectors.
187km2 of reflectors to keep one 747 fuelled. Assuming the jet only flies the same number of hours the converter can run each day. Remember, this is at the suggested 20% efficiency - they've so far only got 4%
It's an example of the dangers of shortterm-ism. If PRC moves in on Taiwan and somehow avoids a shooting war with 'the West' then TSMC and the like will be a valuable asset for about 5-10years. After that period, manufacturing closer to 'home' will have become more common. If they move in and a shooting war starts it will be valuable until its facilities are 'taken out' as strategic targets by one side or the other.
Let's do whatever we can to try to avoid either scenario.
China doesn't like that language, but has lived with it for over four decades – during which time the likes of TSMC turned Taiwan into a vital source of technology on which the US relies. US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo recently stated that losing access to Taiwanese tech would crash the US economy into a recession.
So, stuff Taiwan produces is vital to the US (and elsewhere, of course), but they (we, 'the West') also don't want to stop buying stuff from or selling stuff to PRC. Trade is good for international stability but vendor lock-in is a stupid mistake.
From time to time I've looked at what the pay-back time would be to replace my server - mostly in terms of power savings. Previously I've decided that I probably won't last long enough. With current energy prices and lower component costs (if we can get them), I'm now not so sure.
Time for some more spreadsheet arithmetic on my prehistoric laptop.
^
This.
'Dear valued customer, we can't even be bothered to send you this message from our own servers but click on the links anyway which will take you to some other server which isn't ours either and fill in the survey with lots of your personal information... Ta everso. Trusty Trusty Co.'
I'll assume you meant appalling.
You need to check your sources. Using a medium term trend of mid-year mortality from 2010-2018 and comparing the 4year period 2019-2022 Sweden is 1.05% down on trend while Norway is 0.53% up, Denmark is 4.31% up and seems to be having a really bad 2022 (for Denmark 2022 is currently more than 11% up on trend).
Why not include 2019 in the trend? There's a significant dip in mortality for UK and Sweden (and some other countries) in 2019. Many of those people who we might have expected to die in 2019 died in 2020 or later.
Sorry it's a late reply - I had to go retrieve the data and do the arithmetic.
Oh I say, well played.
However, it is vitally* important that we do not allow our politicians, experts and other leaders to start revising what they said and did especially in the early part of the epidemic. This applies everywhere, not just in the UK.
Dominic Cummings {spit}, for example told a parliamentary inquiry in May 2021 that he 'hit the panic button' on 11 Mar 2020 and that the Prime Minister ordered the lockdown 'at least three weeks too late'. 'Ordering' the lockdown 21 days earlier would have required all the processes that preceded it to be started at least 21 days earlier - and that would only work if Parliament as a whole felt the same sense of urgency as it eventually did when it passed the Bill 'without division' in just 6 days (including a weekend... gotta have weekends off, you know). So the Coronavirus Bill would have to have been introduced on 27 Feb 2020 (when there had been 3 Covid deaths in UK, but none had been registered) and enacted on 5 Mar 2020 (on that day two Covid deaths in the UK, still none officially registered). The Scottish Parliament would have to have given their Consent on 4 Mar (Scotland's first Covid deaths were on 12 Mar 2020).
From his own testimony Mr Cummings was convinced to 'hit the panic button' by reports which predicted half a million deaths in the UK. I've no idea if that was just a preview of Imperial College's rubbish 'Report 9'** - probably not - but we ought to find out and remember.
Various politicians of all stripes, medical, industrial and Union leaders all clamoured for urgent, unnecessary, action. These must not be forgotten.
*I hesitated before using the term 'vitally'. Yes, it is a matter of life and death that we don't forget who wanted to make this cock-up even worse.
**'Report 9' would have to have been published 21 days earlier too - on 24 Feb 2020.
For those still wavering over whether Imperial College's 'Report 9' was useful:
Warning: This analysis contains more numbers that are not just dates. Big numbers - you will run out of fingers.
Report 9 predictions published on 16 Mar 2020:
1) Peak of about 22 deaths per 100,000 people per day in GB = 14,340 deaths/day
2) Total of 510,000 deaths
The report says:
Epidemic timings are approximate given the limitations of surveillance data...
Observation:
3) Epidemic deaths started in early March. The first day with more than 1 death was 5 Mar 2020.
Best fit Gompertz curve for the above three constraints:
cumulative_deaths = 510000*EXP(-15.13*EXP(-0.07645*dayno))
Where dayno=1 is 1 Mar 2020.
Results:
Note the report covers 'GB'. England, Wales and Scotland. So the Reality numbers do too.
a) 9 Mar 2020: Reality: 13 cumulative, 5 daily. Report 9 calc: 254 cumulative: 115 daily.
b) 16 Mar 2020: Reality: 153 cumulative; 53 daily. Report 9 calc: 5,941 deaths; 1,770 daily.
c) 23 Mar 2020: Reality: 1,006 cumulative; 202 daily. Report 9 calc: 37,603 cumulative; 7,036 daily.
d) 28 Mar 2020: Reality: 2,969 cumulative: 507 daily. Report 9 calc: 86,087 cumulative; 11,347 daily.
e) 31 Mar 2020: Reality: 5,072 cumulative; 819 daily. Report 9 calc: 123,962 cumulative; 13,176 daily
f) 5 Apr 2020: Reality: 10,357 cumulative; 1,203 daily. Report 9 calc: 194,281 cumulative; 14,339 daily (peak).
g) 8 Apr 2020: Reality: 14,251 cumulative; 1,450 daily (peak). Report 9 calc: 236,774 cumulative; 14,003 daily.
The data available from a week before the publication date of 'Report 9' showed it was catastrophically wrong. Lockdown still went ahead on 23 Mar even though further data also supported the view that it was complete bollocks.
What was the evidence that persuaded the government to order the lockdown?
Yes, most of those numbers were only available in hindsight. Our government can maybe be forgiven for being panicked into imposing the lockdown on 23 March. But not for 5 Nov 2020 and 6 Jan 2021.
For such a major decision and huge expense they should have checked the evidence they were being given far more carefully. I still have not seen convincing evidence that lockdown worked.
For example: Imperial College's 'Report-9' was demonstrably wrong before it was published. It was only given credence due to the eminence of the authors - not the evidence in the report.
Their later 'Report-13' published on 30 Mar 2020 contained this:
In China, strict movement restrictions and other measures including case isolation and quarantine began to be introduced from 23rd January, which achieved a downward trend in the number of confirmed new cases during February, resulting in zero new confirmed indigenous cases in Wuhan by March 19th.
Quoting figures from China destroys what little credibility they had.
I'm glad to see that you're backing the 'slow it down until there's a vaccine' line. It was the only credible argument at the time.
Evidence: I'll show you mine if you show me yours...
I'll go first.
Summary:
Other observations:
Supporting information:
Are you drawing a distinction between the severity of the lockdown in Wuhan and elsewhere in Hubei and China as a whole and that implemented in England and Wales?
If so, you are right, of course. Until the UK Parliament passed the additional law the government didn't have the power to order the curfew. Thank goodness they didn't go any further.
Yes, we did copy China. Not their future policies from 2022 but their recent past policy from 2020.
I am, as you well know, referring to their lockdown policy in Wuhan and beyond.
Since you mention the vaccine: I personally think it's been a remarkable success.
There is, however, no convincing evidence that the lockdowns have been a success - but there is evidence that it has not been (at least, in England and Wales)..
Shirley a gallon is 10 pounds of water? Or 8 pounds if you must... but I don't see where 8.345 pounds came from? Heavy metal contaminants? Dissolved helium?
Also, unless you want a visit from the reg standards bureau I think you need to recalculate the volume as 74,254,027.9469 chickens' eggs (approximately).
No London borough council will have truly unique needs when compared to the other 32. A common solution with a common implementation would be most appropriate. The only difference should be the migration to get away from the legacy systems. Boroughs could even co-locate/share and get economies of scale.
That said, Oracle??? Really?
Of course you can get it - they bugged his phone so that they could work out the maximum price he was willing to pay to snoop on the terrorists in Ukraine... all you need to do is pay NSO enough and they'll share that info with you.
Of course, it might be a good idea to go back to using a feature phone after the deal.
icon: careful who you sup with --->
Yes, I'd like to have inserted the crowbar of common sense ...somewhere.
The bank already had seen my proof of LPA a few years previously - which was why they had allowed me to manage her accounts. What brought the spirals to a close was a copy of the death certificate, Mum's Will and my ID documents.
What I wanted when I called was a pointer to my role in their procedures.
What I thought was particularly crap was the bank 'managers' willingness to take a shortcut through their procedures - and potentially lay the blame on me..
...rights of the deceased...? I think these also cease at the time of death.
I had Lasting Power of Attorney over my Mum's financial affairs in the final years of her life. I was also one of the Executors named in her Will. When she died I phoned her bank to 'freeze' her account and was told, not unreasonably, that they couldn't just take my word for it over the phone but that as I had stated she was dead my LPA was no longer valid - and that they had 'made a note' of the call. They asked me to either write to them or attend a branch in person.
Next day I visited a branch of the bank with all the required details and personal ID. The duty 'manager' duly 'froze' the account. I commented that that had seemed very quick and easy and he told me he had used my LPA authority to do it (no, I had not given him any passwords). I pointed out that my LPA was no longer valid and that I'd already contacted their call centre so there was a 'note' on the system. He looked distinctly embarrassed as he hastily reversed the 'freeze' and then went though a much longer process to do it according to the bank's official procedures.
It was a Friday and I think he had Beer O'clock in mind.
I know death is not a subject people like to dwell on, but a not-too-hidden link to a guide on banks' web sites on what to do would be very useful.
...run the uninstaller for the old version of Exchange, then display a message thanking you for "upgrading" to Office 365?
It's far more complicated than that: First it's got to merge all the private shared mailboxes into one massive open to all mailbox. Then it's got to trim all the unshared mailboxes to the default 250Mb limit. Ideally, it then needs to identify the CEO's mailbox(es) and remove the content of all messages older than 2 months but not the headers. Only then can it issue the message that it has successfully upgraded.
...in large part to the increase in online mobile payments, the use of mobile devices for tasks that involve sensitive information – such as banking information and credit card and social security numbers
My bank keeps trying to get me to download their app for my phone. I keep wondering why they think my phone is secure. What do they know about my phone that I don't?
...if he does get Twitter then he probably will do no more than destroy it than change the world.
Destroying Twitter might well change the world. For the better, obviously.
How the hell did we reach the point where politicians attempt to offer sympathy to victims of violent crime via Twitter?
...news of the sudden surge in new COVID cases in Shanghai
That 'news' will be as unbelievable as this week's and the last few years' news about how their lockdown was suppressing cases.
Not sure if this is a real quote. but:
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Attributed to Albert Einstein https://cdn.quotesgram.com/img/27/90/624908764-albert-einstein-physicist-i-know-not-with-what-weapons-world-war-iii-will-be-fought.jpg
I expect the UK (and most other countries) has some interesting boilerplate draft legislation held in standby by the civil service. The question in my mind is do the ministers get an adequate briefing on what's available in case of emergency - and the implications if they try to deploy it?
The Coronavirus Act 2020 was ready to go suspiciously quickly - I suspect there are boilerplates.
It was being implemented before reaching Royal Assent ie before it became law.
For even faster responses we don't really need any additional 'orders'. Instructing the armed forces to assist the police to 'keep the Queen's peace' has been done before in parts of the UK. Not having a pesky written constitution (sorry, Constitution) makes it easier to do.
IIRC with MS, annual support costs are typically 25-33% of the perpetual licence costs - not 2%. We then get 'support' and upgrade 'rights' when a new version comes out - though usually they'll move useful features to the next grade up so you'll have to upgrade from 'pro' to 'pro-plus' or some such bollocks.
Whatever happens they'll stick us for more money each year until we get off the damn treadmill.
Their brilliant licencing move was the 'no-downgrade' rule - so we can't buy a perpetual licence for a newer version for new staff and then run the (less capable) older version to remain compatible with colleagues.
icon: Would you like a sweetie?
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