Posts by Phil O'Sophical

Re: what the algorithm is to get into your shopping basket

Different varieties of potato and different brands of pasta have very different flavours and textures. Even frozen peas have some variations in tenderness and sweetness.

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

EV's typically cost 25% that of petrol per mile, give or take.

Not even true on your own figures.

You're taking a very poor ICE vehicle, 30miles per US gallon in mixed driving. At $5 - $8 per gallon, that works out at somewhere between $0.28 and $0.16 per mile.

You figures for the Bolt come out at $0.09 per mile, so at best that's 33%, worst is 50%. Not 25%.

Now let's look at realistic UK figures, which is what most of the comments refer to.

Average UK car economy is 52 miles per UK gallon, at a cost of $8.50/gallon (all prices converted to USD for convenience). That comes out to $0.16 per mile.

Electricity costs are very variable, around $0.35/kWh at home, $0.70 to $0.94 for a public charger. Even using your figures for the Bolt, rather than the more typical 3.4 miles/kWh quoted by UK car magazines for EVs here, that is a per mile cost of $0.09 if charged at home, but $0.18 to $0.25 per mile when using public chargers.

That makes ICE cars slightly cheaper to run than EVs if the EV is charged in public charging stations, but EVs are cheaper if always charged at home.

Now consider that tax makes up 5% of home electricity price, 20% of commercial charger price, and 50% of the pump fuel price, a differential that cannot last because the government gets $35bn/year from fuel duty and won't give that up. On a tax-equal basis, ICE is cheaper.

For every pound we've had from the EU, we've paid more than a pound to the EU. That's what "net contributor" means. Pointing out the shiny toys they generously financed with our money doesn't change that.

Re: Still cheaper than HS2...

That's not the point of HS2.

When you run express trains on the same lines as local stopping trains, you're severely limited in the number of local trains you can run. They can only be passed by the expresses at a few places with multiple parallel tracks, generally larger stations.

By separating the express trains onto dedicated tracks you can then run many more local trains to more intermediate destinations, while still allowing express trains to run at speed.

For HS2 you also then get the opportunity to link more far-flung places like Edinburgh to London with a faster and cleaner service than cars or planes.

HS2 has a valid use case, the real question is why it costs almost 10x as much to build as similar infrastructure in other countries. England is a narrow and crowded country, I can see why HS2 might be 2x or 3x the cost of a French LGV, but 10x? That's just more civil service fiscal incompetence.

Re: The full story?

Or an in-house system not intended for release, so probably compiled with a full unstripped symbol table. The hacker got lucky when he saw "secret_key" in the dumped variables list...

Re: Obsolete

The latest VW-group cars now store driver profiles online, so that just having the car detect which key was used to open it, and so set the seats, mirrors etc. for either my wife or I, requires a connection. So does getting satnav map updates. Selecting the max privacy option disables all such "convenience" features.

Even without the slow and buggy implementation, I'd already decided that my next car will not be from VW group.

Re: Terrorism?

At least the PSNI Chief Constable has finally resigned, about an hour ago.

Re: No...Not "Free"......Actually "Pre-Paid"!!!!!

We used to buy PCs for the office, and reinstalled them with Unix. It was a point of principle to always reclaim the Windows licence fee from Microsoft.

Pretty much every device that can do W3W can provide lat/lon coordinates, without license fees.

If you've ever tried to get a user to correctly read a simple error message to you over the phone, you'll know that expecting them to correctly read two 5-digit numbers is a lost cause.

W3W may have potential errors and ambiguities, but you've still got more chance of getting an accurate position than you have by asking the average user to give you lat/long.

Re: "China has labelled [this] a selfish and highly irresponsible action,"

Yes, their complaints about pollution might have more weight if they stopped building new coal-fired power stations.

Re: We need to improve the value for money here.

I mean, we don't even know that it works

Why do you think we're so keen to give stuff to the Ukrainians for field testing against the Russians?

Given they have the biggest companies in the world change their behaviours,

Well, pretend to change their behaviours, at least.

Car manufacturers would never agree to that, they'll all have their own extensions to the standard to explain why say, BMWs run better on genuine BMW batteries.

In any case it doesn't change the fundamental problems of getting enough energy to the battery swap stations to charge all the batteries they're storing. Then there's the small problem of persuading the local fire authority that the storage facility is safe. Personally I'd be happier with a SMR nuclear reactor next door than with a warehouse holding 200 Li-Ion car battery packs on charge.

Re: A possible use

do what people do with pets: put them in a kennel while you enjoy your vacation.

Judging by the number of kids+grandparents I see around here in the summer, that's exactly what parents are doing.

IIRC, the first person prosecuted under that legislation in the 80s was a serving police officer.

Re: Monopoly money

And may have to go directly to jail.

Re: I got rejected on one

Or traffic lights - is it just the illuminated structure, or does it include the support poles?

Re: Eric Frohnhoefer?

When my Dad started work for a company back in the 60s they had a rule that salesmen had to be at least 6ft tall (legal back then). He was 5'11", and always reckoned that he must have been having a tall day...

Re: There is a word missing

And what it really means is "Hey, Congress, we want more money".

Re: With apologies to Phil Collins

Possibly a disadvantage of switching to electronic distribution of magazines, they no longer get printed ones returned marked "deceased"?

I still prefer the printed ones, although not for that reason:-)