* Posts by Scoular

148 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Aug 2013

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New cars bought in the UK must be zero emission by 2035 – it's the law

Scoular

Re: Think of the Grid!

It is exceedingly rare for us electric car drivers to need a full charge overnight.

Data from US and AU, where driving is more every day than UK, indicate that most travel less then 100km/day.

For most electric cars that 100km only requires about 15-20kWh.

Car dealers openly beg Biden to put brakes on electric vehicle drive

Scoular

Meanwhile BYD and Tesla are selling all they can produce.

Perhaps the dealers are not offering what people want to buy.

The dealers seem to make more money from servicing than they do from selling and electrric cars require a lot less servicing.

Cruise patches robo-taxi software to not drag humans across the road anymore

Scoular

The self driving problem cannot be solved by rules it is going to require actual intelligence.

We await the real breakthrough.

Scientists, why not simply invent a working fusion plant using $50m from Uncle Sam

Scoular

It has the POTENTIAL to supply energy.

So far it has not delivered anything despite decades of substantial investment and some encouraging signs.

Then it has to provide energy economically to compete with renewables which even if honesty prevails and the cost of storage is included fusion may not achieve generally. Some uses will exist even at high prices but economics is always the key to success.

Boris Johnson set to step down with tech legacy in tatters

Scoular

Re: Sub-sea nukes

That is not true!

There was a totally unrelated network failure.

The owners of that big battery are done very well indeed out of having installed it.

Batteries are excellent for short term supply or storage but alternatives are required for longer term. Fortunately there are several available.

Even in a flat crowded country pumped storage can make a big contribution, you do not need the geography of Norway or Switzerland.

EV battery can reach full charge in 'less than 10 minutes'

Scoular

Re: Full charge in 10 minutes?

You are correct, no one will be able to upgrade a home to supply such high energy.

However as the owner of a Tesla S I can assure you that no one would want to really simply because there is no need. It would be a waste of money. In almost all situations the daily use can easily be handled by existing home supply capability in developed countries. Apartment dwellers can have a problem because they may have to depend on charging away for where they live but overnight lower power charging would still be attractive it street level charging was provided.

The need for fast charging mostly only exists for the case of people doing long trips and that is real in that case but for most people infrequent.

British motorists will be allowed to watch TV in self-driving vehicles

Scoular

Re: Too early.

I drive a Tesla and love it BUT none of the automated cars are even close to the point where I would be confident sitting back and letting it do the job.

Sure the best of them do fairly well most of the time in good conditions, but my son could do that after a few hours as a learner driver. A really automated car must do way better then mostly works.

Humans taking over when the car recognizes that it is not managing and sounds an alarm is a pipe dream, there will not be time to assess the situation and react, the accident will have happened before that happens.

US watchdog opens probe into Tesla's Autopilot driver assist system after spate of crashes

Scoular

Re: A solution looking for a problem

Yes I have driven in America for years but currently live in Australia.

I also drive a Tesla S.

I love the car, easiest and most fun car I have ever driven.

However the so called FSD is nowhere near being able to drive the car except in vary particular easy situations.

I would much rather drive it myself than sit there terrified waiting to have to take over.

Night driving is particularly an issue.

One day real full level 5 may arrive but It seems very much a future prospect like fusion power stations.

Tesla Autopilot is a lot dumber than CEO Musk claims, says Cali DMV after speaking to the software's boss

Scoular

Re: Fully Automatic my arse!

The cost in Australia is dropping and there are a fair number of Teslas around including my model S.

It is a great car to drive and I feel no need for the NOT nearly FSD.

Why bother paying $10000+ to get a software package which does not handle the real roads nearly as well as I can. If I have to sit and watch it terrified to take over when it cannot handle a situation I would prefer to drive myself. This is dead easy and fun.

Dangerous flying car drone zoomed into UK's Gatwick Airport airspace after killswitch failed

Scoular

Fail safe is a very old concept and it n3ver depends on expecting the device to respond to a kill command when it is already in trouble. Go back and look at deadman controls designers.

Those furious gun-toting Aussies were just a glitch. Let's try US drone deliveries, says Wing

Scoular

Remember 3D TV

It does look like a solution looking for a problem.

3DTV is no longer a significant matter simply because no one wanted it since it was more trouble than it was worth.

Drone delivery in most cases seems likely to achieve the same status.

Cisc-o-no! 'We’re being uninvited to bid' on China deals admits CEO as Middle Kingdom snub freaks out investors

Scoular

Re: The Great Wall of "Thanks, but no thanks. We're good."

Like the US and every imperial power in history they want to be in total control of their own destiny and as much as they can of the destiny of everyone else as well.

The first part is reasonable, the second is a worry to everyone else.

Jeep hacking lawsuit shifts into gear for trial after US Supremes refuse to hit the brakes

Scoular

Re: Bogus Bovine Excrement

We have little real choice about using the Internet, like electricity decades ago it has become a practical necessity of normal life.

Buying a vehicle with network connected risks is not (yet anyway) at that point. Buyers had real alternatives and may well have decided not to purchase a Jeep.

Scoular

History not favourable

History suggests that if companies can find a way to betray your trust they will.

Then we have the non company hackers.

We have managed so far without network connected vehicles so we have to consider the possible advantages against the fairly obvious disadvantages.

Uncle Sam fingers two Chinese men for hacking tech, aerospace, defense biz on behalf of Beijing

Scoular

Rather a lot of pot and kettle work going on recently.

All countries have people trying to find out anything interesting about other countries. It may not be nice and friendly but it sure is what has been happening fora VERY long time.

The pretence that only those other evil people do such things is absurd.

The best approach is to require government and business to get serious about security. In my experience management has low to no interest because it costs and that may lower executive bonuses.

US told to appoint a damn Privacy Shield ombudsperson already or EU will take action

Scoular

And foreign governments are not too keen on being treated as US puppet states even where they are like one or two Pacific countries.

nbn™ isn’t fixing HFC, it’s ‘optimising’ it

Scoular

Or the stupidity of politicians

Politicians who decide they should make technical decisions totally out their field of expertise and make a right mess of it.

When you are dumb in the mind the whole body suffers. In this case the whole country.

Australian SigInt spooks won't get power to spy on locals

Scoular

Do it anyway?

If the actions of other agencies are any indication what will actually happen is they will do it anyway and just not tell the public about it.

Australian government plans to do a Facebook on citizens' data

Scoular

Ingorance is bliss

Given the ethics of government and business I want them knowing as little as possible about me.

Any data they have is more likely to be used against me than for my benefit.

They are much the same as Facebook or Google in their attitude

nbn™ CEO blames copper for performance problems

Scoular

Politicians should keep out of technology

In fact politicians should keep out of everything they do not understand.

Stick to ritual abuse and generally stupidity guys you excel there.

Transport for New South Wales told to stop tracking oldies, students

Scoular

Re: as it should be

Surely one or a few people behaving badly is not justification for an agency to collect personal data on a class of users most of whom do not behave badly. Particularly when it does not require the same information on all users.

Perhaps the government should lock up all footballers because some of them behave badly enough to get locked up too? Seems to lack a little fairness to me.

Will the defendant please rise? Utah State Bar hunts for sender of topless email

Scoular

Terribly American

Terrified of tits.

Enjoy a good machine gun game or movie as family entertainment.

Funny lot.

We should pass laws to make Google's life hard! Oh no, sorry, did we say that out loud? asks IBM

Scoular

Self interest yes but is there a vaild point too

IBM has not been above bad behaviour by a long way but perhaps they do have a point in suggesting the newer competitors are even less ethical.

If this laptop is so portable, where's the keyboard, huh? HUH?

Scoular

It is a human power problem

The basic problem is that when humans get into a position of power, lawyers, doctors or politicians and the very rich they all gradually assume that they are right - always right and cam do whatever they want.

Hence the behaviour described here and also the failure of communism and now democracy. Both might have worked except for the fact that those who got to the top became unhinged and totally self absorbed.

If we want to get the world stable we need to address this issue. For politics one possibility is shorter maximum terms. The complaint is that that does not give them time to get things done - precisely.

Robot cars will kill London jobs – but only from 2030, say politicans

Scoular

Re: It's a conspiracy!

Basic rule of life;

NEVER volunteer any information to any business or government agency unless you have to and even then be as careful as possible.

Anything they know is more likely to be used against you than to your benefit.

A few millennia of human experience in one line.

Aut-doh!-pilot: Driver jams 65mph Tesla Model S under fire truck, walks away from crash

Scoular

Re: 2018: "But it was on Autopilot!"

Wrong country it is NZ.

OK silly in either case

Level 5 driverless cars by 2021 can be done, say Brit industry folk

Scoular

Wake me up when someone tells us what these are going to cost and if there is any real reason to believe that enough people want one.

You can sell some of anything and there is a ready supply of suckers but this might need suckers with money and for the trendy ones it may lack appeal. Even footballers prefer to crash their own cars.

Birds are pecking apart Australia's national broadband network

Scoular

Why have unprotected cables there at all

The birds are well known to enjoy what they do and if the active cables are protected why bother putting in spares and not protecting them.

It has all happened before The SF BART system suffered from cables being destroyed by gophers so all the buried cables had to be dug up and replaced by the armoured ones which should have been used in the first place.

Being a dumb cheapskate costs money.

Deputy AG Rosenstein calls for law to require encryption backdoors

Scoular

If they succeed than US software will be at a disadvantage elsewhere in the world.

Anything known to Apple, Microsoft, Facebook etc is automatically known to the US government is not a good advertising line.

Flight Centre leaks fliers' passport details to 'potential suppliers'

Scoular

It is a fair bet that many companies and government bodies are only too willing to 'share' data with others and not ask too many questions about the potential uses of the data.

Queensland Police want access to locked devices

Scoular

The real risk

In Queensland the statistics indicate that citizens are more likely to be killed by police than by terrorists.

That may change of course but police everywhere have a long history of wanting more power and less to no scrutiny of their activities.

Windows 10 nags, Dirty Cow, Microsoft's Linux man love: The Reg's big ones for 2016

Scoular

Re: Windows 10 upgrade suvivor

This week I shifted another now happy user to Mint Linux. The Windows 7 updates problems had become so annoying she became happy to abandon Microsoft. Found that the world does NOT revolve around MS after all.

Melbourne man arrested for broadcasting fake messages to pilots

Scoular

The problem is that any sentence will not act as a deterrent to those with autism.

They are simply unaware (depends on severity and that is highly variable) that what they are doing is not advisable. It is not malice they just do not comprehend the consequences of their actions as 'normal' people do.

There is a genuine problem and governments around the world can find the money to lock people up for decades but never the money to avoid the problem by helping families with a person with this quite genuine problem. Families with an autistic child have problems, families with an autistic teenager have bigger problems and they just do not go away.

Upstart bags $2.5m to help put the brakes on self-driving car hackers

Scoular

Re: All or nothing

Have you considered programmer stupidity or lack of knowledge or experience with the complexity of actually controlling something in a complicated and changing situation.

I think many are underestimating the task and overestimating their own brilliance. It may happen but it is going to take longer and cost a lot along the way.

Humans are actually quite good at adapting and it is really hard for a programmer to think of every possible situation, Just jamming on the brakes when confused is a long way short of elegant engineering.

Dirty diesel backups will make Hinkley Point C look like a bargain

Scoular

Wind power in South Australia

Wind power has some obvious problems but it was not the cause the the outage in South Australia.

There was more than adequate generation capacity available, the problem was transmission towers being blown over because there was too much wind.

Unexpected and unprecedented storms were the problem. South Australia has traditionally not experienced cyclonic winds so built somewhat lighter transmission towers which have been adequate until now. I bet the new ones will be stronger.

Latest Intel, AMD chips will only run Windows 10 ... and Linux, BSD, OS X

Scoular

Re: @ Jonathan 27

Mint will work just fine, I have had it running on similar hardware for a year.

No Win 10 crap thanks, bye bye MS.

Cooky crumbles: Apple mulls yanking profits out of Europe and into US

Scoular

People annoyed fancy that

Tim is annoyed but not half as much as the people who have finally started to wake up that the system in place for the past 40 odd years has actually not benefited them, just the rich.

Hence we have Brexit , Trump and similar politicians emerging around the world. Many of them barking mad or incompetent but desperate people try desperate remedies.

The 'Establishment' needs to do a quick review and actually get on with serving the people as they claim to do but have not.

Blocking ads? Smaller digital publishers are smacked the hardest

Scoular

Re: It used to be called

Lost hope might be more accurate.

Scoular

Loose something you never had?

Advertisers are not loosing anything actually, they are missing out on something they would have liked to have.

Anyone who ever bought a lottery ticket has had that experience, or almost everyone.

Many of those sites would vanish without trace and without loss to anyone but the operators if viewers had to pay and that would probably be a good thing.

Australia's broadband policy is a flimsy, cynical House of Cards

Scoular

Sold down the drain

We have been sold down the drain for cheap short term political gain. We will pay for this stupidity for a long time.

Do it properly and do it once is good engineering. The half baked desperately cheap short term is always long term stupid.

Bruce Schneier: We're sleepwalking towards digital disaster and are too dumb to stop

Scoular

Do governments care anyway

Or are they likely to be happy to have another way to gather information on their own people whilst also exposing them to attack by others. Politicians are woefully ignorant and happy to stay that way as it lets them hold absurd beliefs comfortably.

I suspect governments want systems as leaky as possible in the belief that if they only have a little more information all problems will be solved. Those iPhones for example.

Reminder: How to get a grip on your files, data that Windows 10 phones home to Microsoft

Scoular

If Microsoft was sincere and honest

If Microsoft was sincere and honest they would give users a clear and full explanation of what data they wanted to collect and allow users to decide how much they wished to share including NOTHING THANKS.

They they would actually do as the user requests.

Recall: Bring out yer dead and over-heating Microsoft Surface Pro power cords

Scoular

Re: Are "electronic" components involved in the failure?

Not all cables are equal.

The amount of conductor is very important and copper is not cheap so using less saves a few $ and makes the cord more flexible too.

The fact that the cord to your electric kettle does not get hot is irrelevant to the Surface problem.

Australia and America working on global no-state-hacking pact

Scoular

The US will agree and get on with 'Business as Usual'

The US has a very poor track record of observing the treaties it imposes on weaker parties.

https://chomsky.info/ "Failed States"

No escape: Microsoft injects 'Get Windows 10' nagware into biz PCs

Scoular

I am not convinced it is hard to boot Linux.

I bought a new ASUS Z170 motherboard and latest CPU and memory.

Installed Linux without a hitch, using it here right now. Not a problem in a few months of use.

Linode: Back at last after ten days of hell

Scoular

They were out of luck anyway weren't they?

Windows 10: What's coming in 2016?

Scoular

Re: Plan B

I switched to Mint a few months ago and am happily staying there.

A VM with Win 7 gives me the ability to use the few Windows only programs I need to run.

I have had to work with Win 10 supporting the usual friends and family group most of us have and really do not like it, particularly the snooping of course. I value my privacy. I have - nothing to hide/done nothing wrong - but our government and companies sure cannot say that.

Huawei who? We probe the sleeping storage dragon's brains

Scoular

We are the best!!!

"Of course the growing Chinese market, who are fiercely loyal to Chinese goods and brands is a massive driver in Huawei storage sales."

Never seen a similar attitude in other countries then!!!!

Google engineer names and shames dodgy USB Type-C cable makers

Scoular

Depend on a cable?

Surely in a sane world the charger would be self protecting including from a dead short, it is quite possible to do.

Similarly at the other end the device should limit the current drawn to whatever limit the designer intended and that is also possible.

Why would anyone in the right mind depend on a cable from an unknown supplier to protect their expensive kit. The pullup resistor as part of a signaling scheme? Why not have that in the device so you know it is there.

LG uses sucky logic to force Dyson admission its vacuums suck badly

Scoular

Wasn't it claimed of that august English company Joe Lucas that the only product they made which did not suck was a vacuum cleaner.

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