Posts by chriskno

Asda security chief replaced, retailer sheds jobs during Walmart tech divorce

Real time data from superstores drives production schedules at linked suppliers, e.g. bakery companies

EV sales hit speed bump as drivers unplug from the electric dream

Gosh you really have swallowed the propaganda continually being pushed out by the fossil fuel industry and the right wing press haven't you? EVs don't catch fire anything like as much as ICE vehicles - check it out with the Fire Brigades or the breakdown companies, batteries don't die - my 6 year old EV hasn't lost a cell yet, chargers, including superchargers are very fast, and long waits are reducing dramatically with the fast roll out of new chargers. Check it out with the Zapmap App. And if you've ever driven an EV you will probably be like me and never want to go back to a dirty, inefficient, air poisoning ICE vehicle.

From windfarms to Amazon Prime, UK plans to long range test six drone services

Hans, your name gave you away as being old. Being old myself I may be the only one who recognised it.

Resource burden of electric vehicles set to triple by 2050

Re: 8 mins

My 2018 Leaf has a range of 155 miles, my bladder is at best 120 miles. We've been a perfect match for 6 years now.

China miffed over electric vehicle tariff tiff with EU

Our infrastructure is improving daily (check out ZapMap), making it easy to own an EV. And prices are coming down, particularly so with the Chinese manufacturers, but also Citroen have jus announced a £20,000 model, Dacia have a £16,000 model, and of course there are second hand models coming on the market. My six year old Nissan Leaf still has 100% of its battery available, not a worry for second hand. Governments putting tariffs on Chinese EVs is yet another crazy way they are delaying the transition to net zero.

So you've built the best tablet, Apple. Show us why it matters

"You were the brand of liberation," Really? The walled garden that you spend a fortune to be part of, that controls you and restricts your choice massively. Funny how we all see the world differently isn't it?

Samsung shows off battery tech it says will see you gone in nine minutes

Re: Great news

I've been on self catering holidays where there are no chargers within miles, but have always come to an agreement that I can plug the car into a 13amp plug which gives me 3Kwh. Overnight the car is charged. Used to do it quite often in the early days, not such a problem these days.

Re: Great news

I think its about 100% of ICE cars that can't fill up at home. Had an EV since 2018 when public charging was tricky but I have never run out. Vastly improved today, albeit still parts of the country that need to improve.

Watchdog calls for more plugs, less monopoly in EV charging network

Re: Home charging is worse

"So, great, those will soon be like rocking horse poo since the chances of new build charging infrastructure being backwards compatible with the existing user base is approximately zero." Actually not so. I've had my Leaf for 5 and a half years and am delighted with how much easier it is to charge on the public networks now. Invariably the new charging stations are including Chademo chargers.

VAT

The VAT paid on home electricity is 5%, electricity in charging stations is 20%. So if you don't have a home charger your running costs for your EV are higher, an anomaly that needs to be addressed by the Government.

Updates are plenty but fans are few in Windows 11 land

Re: "you'll start seeing a new user interface on eligible Windows 10 devices soon"

Change is everywhere and rightly so, whether its your new car, your latest visit to the supermarket etc. You should realise that the problem is your (and many on here) irrational dislike of Microsoft. Its not unusual, I have an irrational dislike of Apple, not because the technology is bad, I just dislike their business model so I stay away from it. I have used Microsoft since day 1, it has had some bad stuff, but it has also set worldwide standards that make the world go round. I'm happy to cut them some slack, they are a good 9 out of 10 for me.

New solvent might end winter charging blues for EV owners

Re: Tesla owners complained....

Globally petrol and diesel vehicles are found to catch fire 20 times more often than EVs

Ford pulls the plug on EV strategy as losses pile up

Re: Purchase cost is one thing

My EV is over 5 and a half years old and still has 100% capacity on the battery. Battery life is far more than expected in real life.

The 'nothing-happened' Y2K bug – how the IT industry worked overtime to save world's computers

As a Cobol programmer in the late sixties and early seventies I definitely used the two digit date. It certainly wasn't laziness, I was working on an IBM 360 mainframe with 32K of memory, with the operating system taking 13K. Efficient programming with minimal record sizes was the order of the day, wasting 2 bytes for every occurrence of the date was an obvious saving. And no, the thought of what might happen if my programs were still around in another thirty years or so never crossed my mind.

Need to plug in an EV? BT Group kicks off cabinet update pilot

"Current charging is piss poor". No it isn't, its improving rapidly all the time. In 2018 when I bought my EV it was piss poor, now it is remarkably easy to get the car charged away from home. Have a look at the ZAPMAP app.

Electric vehicles earn shocking report card for reliability

Re: Encoders

I'm not competent to engage in the argument from a technical viewpoint. What I can say is that my EV is now 5 and a half years old, is totally reliable and still has 100% of its battery capacity available. This sounds like FUD from the ICE community.

Japan cruises ahead with drive-thru EV charging trial

Re: Vehicle ID based charging

My Leaf is 5 years old, nearly 30,000 miles (not used much during the pandemic), and the battery is still showing 100% availability. There is still a lot to learn about how well the batteries will last as EVs are still a relatively new technology, but for sure they are a lot better than originally expected. And at end of its life in the car there is still likely to be 75 to 80% available which can be reused as a powerwall. There is a burgeoning industry in recycling batteries with 95% recoverability of the components. Have you ever seen petrol or diesel being recycled? Face the reality, burning fossil fuels is bad on every matrix you look at.

VR headsets to shift 30 million units a year by 2027, vastly behind wearables

Re: I said it before, I shall say it again

I liked "suecase", but quickly realised you meant usecase.

Re: Magical thinking and hype factory

Could you explain what HOTAS is please.

Ford, BMW, Honda to steer bidirectional EV charging standard

Re: So you can still have enough remaining to use the EV to drive

Do try and keep up. Range of 300 miles is common place today.

Re: Voila!

Haven't you heard about wind turbines? We get lots of wind, and storage technologies are developing rapidly.

Power grids tremble as electric vehicle growth set to accelerate 19% next year

Re: For many of us, hybrids make more sense than BEVs

How far is it to work? Most daily trips are less than 30 miles each way. 5 hours on a home charger - typically 6 or 7 Kw means 30 to 35 Kwh into your battery. Average distance per Kwh is 3.8 miles, is between 114 and 133 miles. That's based on my 5 year old Nissan Leaf which still has 100% of the battery cells operative. None of the comments I have read so far has mentioned how much better it is driving an EV, not to mention the zero emissions which is what it is really all about.

Largest local government body in Europe goes under amid Oracle disaster

Re: Great job!

We all agree, I think, that the government is pretty hopeless at running anything. So why do you think they would make a good job of running the banks?

Soon the most popular 'real' desktop will be the Linux desktop

Re: If you thought installing Windows from scratch on a Linux machine ...

None of this is poor for 99.9999% of users who aren't interested in that sort of furtling. Linux in the consumer space is for furtlers and there aren't many out there.

Streaming apps – and maybe even Cloud PCs – coming to electric cars

Re: waaaaaay

My Nissan Leaf is nearly 5 years old, it has a good touch screen and functionality is updated regularly for things like charging stations.

Re: Enough already

Whilst polluting the atmosphere and contributing to climate change. Hope you manage to sleep well.

NASA fixes solar observation spacecraft by turning it off and turning it on again

Re: Recover from latch-up

Nothing happens in business until somebody sells something. Tossers they may be but don't underestimate their value.

Used EV car batteries find new life storing solar power in California

I've had an EV for nearly 5 years, not lost a single cell yet. There are companies waiting to start recycling but there is limited product available as they are so reliable. And with vehicle to grid, vehicle to load and vehicle to home technologies they are much more than just a car. There are many reasons why EVs are so much better than ICE vehicles, check out the Fully Charged You Tube channel or visit one of their shows.

Fat EVs may cause 'more death on our roads' – watchdog

Re: More mass = more energy, right?

I've got half way down the comments and not seen any mention of the main reason for EVs. We have to stop using fossil fuels in all aspects of our lives as fast as possible to mitigate the already catastrophic levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. And as an aside, owning and driving an EV is so much better than ICE vehicles with features that simply aren't possible in the old technology.

BT wins networking contract for UK nuclear site Sellafield

Close and uneasy

As the crow flies I live just over 19 miles from Sellafield in Keswick in the World Heritage Lake District National Park. Having battled with BT many times during my career I have avoided them since retiring. Having had some experience with Sellafield professionally and as a concerned neighbour campaigning against underground nuclear waste disposal sites in inappropriate geology, the thought of them teaming up with BT doesn't thrill me at all!

Software issues cost Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess his job

Re: That stood out to me too

Fast chargers are readily available today (have a look at Gridserve), albeit for high end models at the moment. The development of EVs, batteries and charging technologies is moving very quickly. Two other places to look are Fully Charged on YouTube and zap-map.com.

Why the Linux desktop is the best desktop

Re: Linux "Desktop"

Corporations deal with corporations. There needs to be a business conversation about how your technology is going to improve my business, and do you have the capability to keep it working successfully for the foreseeable future (maybe decades). Having managed large datacentres for international companies my role was to understand the technology and translate that into reliable, secure business solutions. Techies who are only interested in the technology are extremely useful, but not all are willing to understand the business context. Linux simply doesn't have the clout as business solutions at corporate level.

Hardware boffin starts work on simulation of an entire IBM S/360 Model 50 mainframe

Re: BRings back memories...

My career in IT started as a trainee operator on a 360/30 with 32k memory and 2311 disks. It was running a manufacturing plant in Trafford Park, Manchester (quite close to Old Trafford so very convenient to go and watch United). I progressed through programming (Cobol), leaving millennium bugs all over the place as two bytes were very precious, into management roles - Director of Computer Services, Head of Business Development etc, and now retired. Still remember the 360/30 with affection.

Could BYOB (Bring Your Own Battery) offer a solution for charging electric vehicles? Microlino seems to think so

Range and chargers

The article says 143 miles range only ok for local. I have had a Nissan Leaf with a range of 155 miles for over 3 years now and last summer holidayed on the Isle of Wight which included a 320 mile drive from North Cumbria to Southampton. No problem, there are over 18,000 charging locations which is more than there are petrol stations, with over 48,000 connectors. Source: zap-map.com. Sure I have to stop a little longer to charge, but its not a problem, I only have a 120 mile bladder.

Online retailers delaying sales of Raspberry Pi 4 model until 2023, thanks to a few good chips getting scarce

Ordered two Pi 4's, 8Gb, from Pi Hut, arrived in 3 days.

Weeks after Red Bee Media's broadcast centre fell over, Channel 4 is still struggling with subtitles

Re: Testing failover.

Remember the Pebble Mill at 1 presenter, Bob Langley? I bought his house in the Lake District from him 17 years ago. Still here, lovely spot.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the BBC stage a very British coup to rescue our data from Facebook and friends

Re: BBC

Laura Doomsberg does everything she can to run the country into the ground, dreadful reporter

Cheeky chappy rides horse around London filling station, singing: 'I don't need petrol 'cos he runs on carrots'

Re: Do we blame Brexit or Amazon?

If you had an electric car you could plug it into a 13 amp plug at home. Not very quick, but 10 hours overnight would give you at least 100 hundred miles.

Re: "He runs on carrots"

There are 16,377 charging locations in the UK, (not including the over 250,000 home chargers). They have 26,058 devices with 44,686 connectors, and 569 new devices were added in the last 30 days. That is more locations than there are petrol stations. Source: https://www.zap-map.com/statistics/#points. What has also changed is that fast chargers have now been upgraded from 50Kw to 350Kw, meaning 100 miles range in 10 minutes. And the range of the cars have increased to an average of around 230 miles, but over 300 miles is not uncommon. Can your bladder last for 230 miles? The grid is on top of planning for the necessary expansion, and technologies such as vehicle to grid and vehicle to home will revolutionise the energy market. Oh, and driving an electric vehicle is a real pleasure with features such as single pedal driving and semi autonomous driving technology. Its all out there, take a look, and it will last, nothing else comes close.

Microsoft Edge goes homomorphic: Nobody will see your credentials... but you'll need to sign in to use it

This may not be the right lace to ask this question, but I will. Does anyone know why Google stupidly sends ads of products I have just bought? I would have thought there would be some mechanism to register the buying process and act accordingly.

Better get Grandpa off Windows 7 because zero-day bug in Zoom allows remote code execution on vintage OS

Go easy on the Grandpa

Having started work on an IBM 360/30 in 1969, some of us have actually made Granpa status, still keeping up (to a degree!) on technology and supporting lots of our age group. Windows 10? No problem, fast and easy to use, and despite what's said above none of the people I support have had Edge change the default browser. Lots of folk have an inbuilt dislike about anything Microsoft. I understand the feeling, except with me its anything Apple.

C is for 'Careful now', D is for 'Download surprise': Microsoft to resurrect optional Windows 10 updates as 'Previews'

Re: Microsoft Money

Have a similar amount of data on MS Money, the best program (we didn't call them Apps in those days) I've ever bought.