* Posts by Androgynous Cupboard

1719 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Mar 2012

Filipino police free hundreds of slaves toiling in romance scam operation

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Re: Modern slavery

Not necessarily. For example, as I understand it in Rome, slaves would include people who were purchased to teach the children of the household - relatively high status. And in ancient Athens families would enter slavery when they had debts they couldn't pay, exiting when (or, perhaps, if) they were paid off. Solon the lawmaker put an end to this, but before then it was pretty widespread. Both those definitions are much broader than what we would think of as slaves now.

I Ain't Spartacus mentioned the Janissaries below - a slave army yes, but they elected their own generals! Usually after the previous one was assassinated, true, but it's not what you might think of slavery. Many people volunteed to join as a way out of worse situations. Same for the Barbary pirates, many elected to stay after they were freed.

An engine that can conjure thrust from thin air? We speak to the designer

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Re: Sorry to pour cold water on a plasma jet

You have massively misunderstood. This isn’t even my field but I immediately realised this isn’t for “maintaining Mach 20”, to quote your earlier post, this is for course adjustment.

Job interview descended into sweary shouting match, candidate got the gig anyway

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Re: The worst job (interview) I ever 'ad...

What, the International Color Consortium? Can't see why they'd get involved on this. It's not really within their... gamut.

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

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Re: I will purchase an electric vehicle - eventually

Ahh, all the FUD in one post. Great, saves me time.

> ICE vehicles have effectively free heating as they use the waste heat from the engine

EVs have effectively free cooling as they don't have to deal with waste heat from the engine. The last time I saw this argument it was against LED lighting and in support of incandescent bulbs due to their "free heating" - it was just as daft then. I drove all winter in my EV. Do you know how I coped? I wore socks.

> heating and lighting massively increase the needed electrical energy.

No, they just don't. Please consider the amount of energy to accelerate two tonnes of metal to 70mph vs the energy required to heat a small space - they are orders of magnitude apart. Experimentally when I have turned on heating or aircon to check, it has a less than 5% impact on range.

> In winter when the electricity demand is already the highest, EVs will require far more energy from the electricity system than they do in summer.

Yes, grid demand is higher in winter. But it is also lower in summer. ICEs, meanwhile, have high energy requirements all year around.

> One of the other big problems with the electricity supply is likely to be the local 240 volt distribution systems - the underground cables are sized for the current loads - adding a significant number of EVs charging overnight is likely to need the cables

Cables to the house are already sized to supply whatever the house fuse breaker is set to - 100A so so. I have yet to see an EV that will draw more than 11kW off three-phase, or 7kW off single phase AC charger. 7kW is 30A - not to be sneezed at, but there are many induction hobs that draw this on the market already. And I note you're not suggesting the cables under the street will all need replacing if everyone cooks dinner at once.

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Re: Home charging is worse

There is exactly one smart meter display available to purchase that will do exactly that. Google "Hildebrand Go" - I can confirm the MQTT output works nicely. £90 or thereabouts last I checked.

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Re: Home charging is worse

This is nothing to do with net nothing. It’s just what happens when “smart home” is interpreted by manufacturers to mean “works with other stuff made by us”

You should be able to connect any smart charger to your home network, have it register on a control interface made by a different manufacturer and any other kit that cares, including PV panels, hot water heater, and whatever box your power company gave you. That’s the dream. Instead we have software and hardware lock-in. It’s like the pre-open systems days. Before UNIX. Dark times.

Of course there are systems to manage this, eg openhab (and I ended up writing my own). But they shouldn’t be necessary.

German defense chat overheard by Russian eavesdroppers on Cisco's WebEx

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Re: Why?

What, us? The country of government by Whatsapp?

AI to fix UK Civil Service's bureaucratic bungling, deputy PM bets

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I don't know about central government, but I had to prepare a paper advocating against the closure of a local school for the (former, mercifully) head of Surrey County Council a few years ago. After several hours of editing I managed to distill many pages of longhand arguments, tables and statistics down to terse bullet points on two sides of A4, and was very pleased with myself.

We gave it to our contact at the council, she took one look and said "oh, he won't read all that".

Apple's Titan(ic) iCar project is dead as self-driving dream fails to materialize

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Re: I don't get it

Thought for the day: if you fuck up your encryption and your customer data is stolen, you have to report yourself to the information commissioner, contact your customers and eat humble pie. But if you fuck up your encryption and your cars are stolen, you don't have to do a damn thing. Because apparently, it's not your fault.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be coders, Jensen Huang warns

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Re: Steve KIRSCH

My biologist friend says the vaccine was fine, but the lasers in optical mice are actually death rays and are responsible for the deaths of millions.

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Well I'm damn certain that people that attempt to predict the future of the industry can be replaced by LLMs. In fact I'm not entirely sure that hasn't already happened.

Crowning glory of GOV.UK websites updated, sparking frontend upgrades

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If you don't like the way society is going, it's all on github - you can just fork it.

No, I didn't read the article carefully, why do you ask?

Trident missile test a damp squib after rocket goes 'plop,' fails to ignite

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Re: HMS Vanguard

It's HMS Cillit I'm worried about, especially a nuclear capable one. Bang, and the dirt is gone!

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Re: What the hell?

> they got a plastic tube and started sticking sheets of carbon fibre to it overlapping them. They might of well have used papier-mâché.

To be fair, that's the form of construction used for masts on racing yachts, which are subject to some spectacular loads. It's just unfortunate that's it's not the sort load you get in submarines.

Forgetting the history of Unix is coding us into a corner

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Re: Man pages

Man pages have been deemed inconsistent with proper revolutionary thinking, comrade. Info is the new man. And we have always been at war with Eurasia.

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I too, have never read it but would also like to thank you for pointing out the anti-forward. Most quotable extract:

"Like excrement, it contains enough undigested nuggets of nutrition to sustain life for some. But it is not a tasty pie"

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Not *everything* is a file

Surely it's that everything *required for inter-process communication* is a file? What you're describing sounds like internal state to me.

I don't know Wayland at all, but I'm fairly certain that if there is a way for unrelated processes to communicate with the Wayland compositor, it's done by means of a UNIX socket, TCP socket, pipe, pseudo-filesystem, shared memory mapped or message-queue, because (from memory) those are all the options for inter-process communications on UNIX. And they all live behind a file-like interface (definition stretched slightly for TCP sockets). Did I miss any?

Twilio reminds users that Authy Desktop apps die next month – not in August

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I've just done the Authy-to-Bitwarden migration - 13 accounts, took about 30 minutes but actually fairly painless as most sites smart enough to use a third-party 2FA like Authy are fairly clued up when it comes to changing the process. The Bitwarden 2FA interface is fine too. Annoying, but you'll only have to do it once.

I'm not quite sure what happens if I don't renew my $10/year in twelve months time - "Authenticator key (TOTP) storage is available to all accounts. TOTP code generation requires premium" apparently, so I guess I can continue to use my existing TOTP keys even if I don't renew, but can't create any new ones?

Angry mob trashes and sets fire to Waymo self-driving car

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Re: Vaguely reminiscent of the opening of a film ?

This is definitely how it starts. If humans burning self-driving cars, it won't be long before the cars start plotting their revenge.

Affordable, self-healing power grids are closer than you think

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Re: Scotland and wind

Don't be smarmy. We exchanged maybe a dozen posts on this topic last time you bought it up. You made some points but failed to back up your main assertion which was that H2 fuel cells in cars were the way to go.

Or, we didn't because you're a different AC and we have to go over the same ground again. You see? It's painful. Make an account, call yourself something anonymous. Own your opinions.

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Re: Scotland and wind

Ah, it’s you again - presumably. Maybe you should set up an account, you’ve been making the same statements as an AC now in multiple articles and it’s hard to have a discussion when you always post AC

Rise of deepfake threats means biometric security measures won't be enough

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Re: Baldur's Gate approach needed

Or just ask the person video calling to reset their password to give you instructions on how to make a bomb. If it refuses, you’re talking to ChatGPT

ICANN proposes creating .INTERNAL domain to do the same job as 192.168.x.x

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Re: .local

We didn’t burn him!

Macy's and Sunglass Hut sued for $10M over face-recog arrest and 'sexual assault'

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Re: scary

Jesus christ, that's some article. Junk science is too kind.

How long before they ask generative AI to draw them the face of a likely criminal, then run that through facial recognition?

Burnout epidemic proves there's too much Rust on the gears of open source

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Re: "Burnout"

I expect they pay peanuts. Fortunately for Zoos, that probably turns out to not be such a bad thing.

The Post Office systems scandal demands a critical response

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Re: I fail to understand

There's been a long enough timeframe that all political parties have been dragged into it in some way.

It's all very well pointing at politicians, but I'm struggling to put either them or Fujitsu as first in line for blame. Bugs happen (even though these were particularly egregious) and and weak political oversight is situation normal in the UK. But to me it seems like the vast majority of the harm was done by the continued prosecutions by the Post Office long after they had been directly informed - externally and presumably internally - that these were unsound.

Can solar power be beamed down from space? Yes. Is it commercially viable? Not yet

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Re: Alternative uses

"When I use a word," Jellied Eel said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."

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Re: Alternative uses

The "green blob" (waves) doesn't even remotely support CCS in general and Drax in particular. Thats 100% Tory pork you're criticising.

40 years since Elite became the most fun you could have with 22 kilobytes

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> they used the dot product of a shape's surface normal and the ship's trajectory to work out if that surface was in view or had to be "hidden".

Still how it's done today. Well, maybe not in hardware but if you're doing 3D stuff in software (which, coincidentally, has been what I've been doing all morning). And yes, I still love that what appears to be an almost infinitely complex problem disappears in few multiplications. Maths FTW.

Going green Hertz: Rental giant axes third of EV fleet over lack of demand

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Re: The problem with EVs for rentals....

No need, we knew you'd be along to build then demolish the straw man for us.

Kia crashes CES with modular electric vehicle concept

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Re: What goes around come around.

> The answer to slow charging is fast charging

Amen. If it were me I would put a ban on 400V cars, or "charger blockers" as I now think of them. The ones who plug into a busy charging station, connect then head off for a leisurely lunch, drawing 50kW for an hour. Despite them being yesterdays technology, new cars are still coming onto the market with severely limited charging (eg https://ev-database.org/uk/car/1943/Lexus-UX-300e - a brand new Lexus model, but supplied with a CHADEMO charger that maxes out at 50kW!)

Apple sets new 16,000-foot iPhone drop test after 737 fuselage fail

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What a shame

If the phone had only had skitracks running, the owner would have had bragging rights secured for decades.

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

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Re: may be zero carbon

The lifespan of everything sold by B&Q is too short. I’m not sure it’s a fair to judge the green tech sector based on a toy windmill

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Re: From what I can recall ....

Yeah, I think the point of these is there are lots of them and they’re in areas where people live, and therefore park. So isn’t a panacea, but it all helps. Particularly as you can see a green box easier than a lamppost socket!

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

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Re: Hmmm..

A second hand EV is a great way to dip your toe in.

There's a fantastic website, https://flipthefleet.org/ which publishes and analyses huge amounts of data on EVs in New Zealand, particularly the Nissan Leaf. If anyone is considering a second hand EV, there's a lot to read there. The NZ climate is a little different to the UK, but I think not enough to make a massive difference.

The first EV I bought (second hand 2016 Leaf) had been almost entirely fast-charged, something I didn't know how to check at the time. I suspect this has had an impact - I'm pretty close to the bottom of the battery capacity curve for an 8yo car as a result, which is irritating. However even then we're really only looking at 5-10% less capacity than average. Considering it was a lot cheaper than new, and in the 5 or so years I've owned it it's had basically nothing spent on it in terms of servicing, it was still a good decision.

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Trollface

Re: Think of the Grid!

Watch out. Some Homes under the Hammer fans came into our local when some Antiques Roadshow fans were already there - 2 deaths, 15 arrests, took weeks to get the blood out. I have never seen a georgian writing table wielded so effectively.

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Re: Think

Thank you, that's another interesting link - you have many, I'll give you that. I'm pleased because it confirms my 20% estimate and also completes the other part of the equation, losses from fuel cell back to electricity, which we can now estimate at 25% (they state total efficiency is "above 50%").

Green hydrogen is manufactured from green electricity, so is by definition going to be more expensive per kW. And even if we imagine that we somehow achieved a huge excess of green electricity, and therefore a huge amount of Green H2? I still don't see the argument that converting the worlds car fleet to fuel cells is the best approach. I'd burn it in CCGT, myself. Here's a fun paper on this (which reminds of the the late-great David McKay's book - I'm a sucker for a good "what if"). Key takeaway: we're a long way from a having a glut.

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Re: Think

"The pilot fleet of the BMW iX5 Hydrogen is not intended for sale." - from bmw.co.uk. It's another research project.

I have two EV cars. No ICEs. I can drive across Europe (did so two weeks ago) and go from 10-80% in 18mins, which - after two hours driving - is fine by me. You're telling me that H2 is better because I can do it in 5 minutes? That's nice, but I'm weighing that up against being able to charge at home - in summer, for free from my PV panels - where I do a measured 80% of my charging, I would lose that unless I put an electrolyser in my shed or my community. In addition I wouldn't be allowed in the channel tunnel (no LPG, certainly no H2), and physics says I'd be at least 20% less energy efficient, because there's about a 20% cost in cracking water to H2 - presumably there are more losses in the fuel cell converting back to electricity, I don't know anything about that. But if you're making a green argument, efficiency matters.

You've shown a lot of research projects, and some fairly specialised uses. And I've conceded that for HGVs the argument is stronger. But your original post specifically said "cars", and you stil haven't convinced me of this. Nor are you going to convince the rest of the market either unless you can demonstrate a generational improvement over EVs - a good solution that has wide support and is already well established on the market. In twelve years time? They will be even better established.

This has been fun, but I'm going to find something else to do now.

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Re: Think

Oh, and your community electrolyser is an R&D project put in by an energy and gas network. Which is fine, but there's no evidence it's commercially viable, and even the article you linked to says it will produce hydrogen "from surplus electricity" - which presumably they'll have by over-provisioning the village with turbines. My point, the point, is that the EU energy mix does not yet have surplus green electricity.

Run cars on electricity. Build enough clean generation to do this without fossil fuels. Then build more capacity to convert the excess to H2 for storage. That's the order things need to be done. H2 in cars is a distraction.

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Re: Think

Still nothing to support your "burn it in cars" suggestion I see.

H2 in heavy commercial vehicles, maybe. You could have also suggesting burning it in hugely energy intensive things like smelters, I would have bought that. But still not cars.

> Germany has nearly 100 filling stations.

100? Wow, that's just amazing. The EU has 400,000 fast DC EV chargers.

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Re: Think

Stop demolishing straw men. Presuming you're the same AC that kicked this off with "H2 cars are the future, why bother with EV", you're now banging on about molecule sizes. Lets take the facts:

* transporting and storing hydrogen is well known to be harder than (say) bunker oil. Yes, there are solutions, but at a cost.

* I see now you're suggesting deepwater, floating wind-farms generating H2 far off-shore, in particularly windy locations. Possibly the most hostile environment for industry on the planet, and yet your idea of reducing a single point of failure is to not run a cable to the plant, in favour of generating and storing massive amounts of hydrogen in tanks for offloading to tankers. I can't see how a risk assessment of this project would conclude that an electricity cable (already run in the hundred to every existing offshore, shallow water windfarm) is a problem compared to your proposed floating bomb.

* "Green H2 does not have to be produced at the very moment you fill your tank" - no, it doesn't, and again as a grid storage technology I think it's a great idea. Green H2 is a way of storing excess electricity, and viewed that way it's excellent. I'm arguing against burning it in cars, which was your original suggestion.

* "Green H2 can be produced by people themselves, or by communities, or by the gas station"

Now you're just being silly. Green H2 is produced from electricity. Can communities run their own solar panels? Yes, they already do, and they put the electririty straight in their car batteries. I do this myself, it's passive and uses relatively simple hardware. The idea that anyone should be cracking water to H2 at immense pressures and temperatures instead, incurring a 20% conversion cost (roughly, as I recall from last I estimated this) is just ridiculous.

H2 is good. H2 in cars is not - it doesn't solve any problems we have now, which is basically lack of charging infrastructure and (more long term) lack of generation capacity. H2 currently has *no* charging infrastructure and is generated from electricity that could otherwise be used directly. It's not a solution, and you haven't made any argument that says it is.

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Re: Think

Yes, Why in gods name would you build an off-shore wind farm to generate electricity, then instead of running a cable to the shore where we could consume electricity, you use it to generate H2 to be stored (difficult) and shipped to a plant on the mainland for storage until distribution. And then, once you get it on the mainland, why would you drive it around the country in tankers to put in cars, rather than just burning the H2 in existing CCGT plants to generate electricity?

I have other questions but lets start there shall we?

I'm all for H2 as grid storage generated from excess electricity - great idea, once we have enough generation to make that excess, which we currently do not. But burning it in cars, or home boilers or whatever other shit idea the government and their fuel company donors come up next is just stupid.

US fusion energy dreams edge closer to reality, Congress permitting

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Re: I'm glad we've finally found an expert on this subject to clear things up...

> The only thing that concerns me is when people try to display their (non-existent) erudition of a subject by obfuscation and diversion.

> You could start convincing us of your technical and academic prowess (one must assume, at the very least, post-doc experience in astrophysics on your part)

My irony meter can't take much more of this. Please, enough.

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"It's never been about fusion energy." is an actual quote from the article, but you've managed to wrap it in claims this is great for fusion energy - starting with the headline. As I understand it, laser ignition as practiced at LLNL is almost entirely unrelated to the kind of magnetically-controlled plasma being explored in fusion energy prototypes, no?

War of the workstations: How the lowest bidders shaped today's tech landscape

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Re: Highly enjoyable read

Seconded. Interesting article, even more interesting responses. To the many Graybeards that posted here, even though you are clearly far, far too old to be of any practical use, you’ve got some good stories :-)

England's village green hydrogen dream in tatters

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District heating is a definite non-starter under a Tory government largely funded by donations from construction firms. Under the next lot, I hope we'll find out.

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Re: The EU...

> To me, the EU nations’ plan shows evidence that they looked into how Hydrogen could actually work in reality, have planned a large-scale bulk distribution pipeline for the gas to allow it to be sent efficiently from where it’s cheap to make to where it’s needed to be burned by electricity generators, and they are now proceeding with building that, even if it will take nearly a decade to complete.

This, exactly this.

Is it 2000 or 2023? Get ready for AI-anchored news. Again

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Re: claims all news it presents will be fact-checked by humans

Quite. "We're starting with news vetted from trusted sources", he said - as for where they go after that, I think we can guess.

NASA engineers scratch heads as Voyager 1 starts spouting cosmic gibberish

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Re: Have they tried

Careful now. Our MPs are already complaining about “Woke Archeology” this week, “Woke Physics” can’t be far behind.