Posts by John Robson

Agree - there isn't a single solution for everything... I don't see the risks and complications of an H2EV being worth the limited benefits for cars/vans - the arithmetic changes for HGVs, they can afford the complexities of storage, and could store *so* much that they'd be able to deal with a relatively weak supply chain.

For basically any car the issue isn't max single stop range, it's either speed of charge *or* continuous charging for those rare long journeys (maybe a handful each year).

I'd like to see some battery standardisation, so that you can rent an additional battery occasionally, whether that's Li based, AlAir based, or something else, plug it in and boost range for that trip.

Maybe have it "spare wheel" sized, since so many cars are doing away with the spare wheel... yes I know that's a variety of sizes, but it's not that many really.

The one thing that is absolutely clear to me is that direct combustion is a piss poor way to provide motive power - even moving to hydrogen you still generate various nox-ious gases, and the efficiency is substantially worse than fuel cells.

Re: Last night a friend was grumbling that they couldn't get into either ocado or waitrose

Stop using a sieve to carry it then.

Taps work quite well, not aware of anywhere using standpipes at the moment.

Re: It is a different reason for PCs

Yep - I'm holding off replacing the wife's iDevice 8 until the iDevice 7 or 6 starts to fail in the hands of the offspring. The flexibility it allows is one of the major reasons I decoupled telephony contracts from telephony hardware a long while ago.

We used to upgrade (and pass down) one phone every 18 ish months, but it's been a little over two years since the last upgrade (which was feature driven), and no real sign of needing to upgrade any time soon - even then I might also just opt to replace the battery in the 6 (assuming that's what starts to give out).

Re: Basic QC

My last foray into EMC testing was fun. EMC testing facility was basically a small wooden building in the middle of a field - with a rather long electrical supply cable.

Server had three ~1200W (I think) PSUs, and because it was "just testing" we had them all plugged into a single four way extension.

About to do all the zappy stuff to the box, which had been put in the back of my car the previous day, and so we plugged in the four bank. The inrush from those PSUs turned all the lights out for about half a second.

Fortunately the chassis and PSUs were already certified, so we just decided to ignore that...

Re: Does it really need to be AI?

No, it means that my offspring have corrupted my brain with minecraft coordinates.

Depends what you are doing with the car... if you're trying to set a robotically driven quarter mile then it's a good plan.

The issue is that most systems aren't standalone.

" There is really no other reason for this data being published."

How about - to highlight to the judiciary that there exists a terrifying amount of information about everyone which should be protected by law.

Re: OK, stupid question time

https://www.virtualmicroscope.org/content/nwa-7034-black-beauty

Its martian origin was confirmed by pyroxene analyses (Fe/Mn ratios)and noble gas measurements that match measurements of the martian atmosphere. This meteorite is a breccia with a basaltic bulk composition and initially classified as a porphyritic basaltic monomict breccia clasts containing a wide variety of textures and include gabbros, quenched melts, and oxide rich reaction spherules. Other portions of the breccia contain plutonic lithic clasts such as monzonites and norites, basalts, and impact melt clasts. This is a very heterogeneous breccia!

Initial studies of NWA 7034 determined that the meteorite's bulk composition coincides with the composition of the average martian crust determined from mission data. This bulk composition also matches some of the rocks and soils measured in Gusev Crater by the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) and in fact, this meteorite represents the strongest link between a martian meteorite and the geochemistry of the martian surface determined by remote sensing.

Re: More pertinantly

You choose your polling interval according to the length of time you are willing to live with the array in a degraded state - I'd suggest that 12 hours is too long for critical production systems, but might be tolerated on a low usage home setup.

You only ever *know* that the RAID was working at the previous poll (active alerting excepted, though again technically you only *know* at the timestamp of the last event, which we hope was informational).

The assumption that it's degraded isn't knowing that it is and reacting, it's the baseline which tells you how long are you OK to be running in a degraded state before you jump on it.

If the answer is very small then you should be running with a warm spare drive (or several) available anyway.

If the answer is long enough for people to move around and do things then you don't need to check more often than that, the assumption that it is degraded is what defines your polling cycle.

Each polling cycle (or trap/event) either resets that counter or puts you into a "this drive has failed" state, which does require action on some timescale.

Re: While the prospect of toothpaste that DOESN'T taste like mint is appealing

How does that work - homeopathic toothpaste is surely water...

Re: How did they come up with that value

App store profits...

Crikey. I don't think I've ever spent that much money on apps...

Re: Hint to Google

Again, the tory support media would want you to believe that they're all the same.

They're not - but the apathy they can generate by saying that they are all the same is key to keeping the worst of them in power.

Re: Touching Cloth?

Scott Manley's explanation

Basically near rectilinear means it's *really* elliptical, about as far away from a circle as you can get without the lunar surface getting in the way - it's nearly a straight line in, then out...

Halo orbit, it's actually orbiting part of the Earth Moon gravitational system, not just the moon.

It's a clever orbital position, theoretically really nice for a variety of reasons... This mission will confirm a bunch of those

Re: Google's minimum viable response

"The SCOTUS will simply require Google provide that information, and thus they cannot delete it."

Maybe this is a cunning ploy for privacy - make it completely illegal to delete or refuse to hand over any and all data in an attempt to get the tech giants fighting over privacy by not collecting it all to start with.

"look at the second amendment - I don't know how you get around that one though as it's an implicit right."

It's also an amendment - i.e. it's a change to a document. You just need another one, and there is precedent for an amendment to overrule an earlier amendment.

The way to "get around" it isn't to get around it at all, but to update the constitution in line with the modern world.

Re: Didn't the FCC recently drop the ball on 5G masts near US airports?

"The POTS copper network should be retained as a strategic national asset. Getting rid of it to save BT a few quid is like Beeching's rail cuts."

Not sure... it's not like the majority of the network is copper anyway - even in the last mile there are plenty of aluminium cables as well.

What's the strategic national interest in copper over fibre?

Beechings cuts were disastrous because the prevented people accessing the mainline, so alternative forms of transport became necessary, and at that point easier to use that alternative for the whole journey.

Re: what if ...

I didn't say it was practical... it was just that at this kind of power, reflectivity needs to be perfect, and it never is, and certainly doesn't remain that way if you start heating things significantly.

Yield must be awful - I'd love to get a few A3/A2 displays - heck, if they were reasonably borderless I could patch them together with a raspi behind each one.

But they are multiple thousands of pounds each...

Digital signage is such an obvious use case, and doesn't require high refresh rates - doesn't necessarily need colour (though that could be a nice to have).

Re: A hydrogen fuel leak, but everything's fine

That wasn't a hydrogen leak... the tank was annihilated by the impinging of an unintended rocket exhaust directed at the tank rather than the ground.

Re: Hm, I'd say..

No objection to them having the data - but they should be required to:

- Keep that data secure

- Not share that data with any third parties who don't have a warrant for the information

- Share that data with the subscriber