* Posts by John Robson

5178 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2008

Cars in driver-assist mode hit a third of cyclists, all oncoming cars in tests

John Robson Silver badge

Re: So technology works as intended...

Well since you picked an ICE with a pretty decent range, and since seriously rapid charging is now being seen as the way to go... I thought I'd pick the current cream of the crop (and it isn't Tesla, not by a long way).

Oh, and the infrastructure is all being rated to support this, that why the CCS standard is so nice. The car tells the charger what voltage and current to deliver, up to a thousand volts and three hundred and fifty amps...

When you only need twenty minutes.. you'll find the chargers are not all that busy, but even on a nice weekend... what's the issue? You plan for one stop, but you pick where you stop so that you can move on if there is a wait, exactly the same way I used to when I drove an ICE vehicle.

I can't remember the last time I had to wait at a charger.

I use less energy because an EV is inherently significantly more efficient than an ICE.

So much more efficient that you could use the dino juice input material in a power station and I'd get more miles from the energy contained therein than you would in an ICE using the same source material. Of course not all the power we use - currently less than half of our power (and we're exporting 10% of our demand) - is dino juice, so that's an effective doubling down again (at least in consumption terms).

John Robson Silver badge

Re: So technology works as intended...

"The "hype machine" isn't mythical."

What you see as a hype machine clearly isn't what I see.

But then I am looking forward to assistive technologies giving independence to people who are currently denied it.

I am looking forward to vehicles on the roads being reasonably predictable - and safer than the current average motorist (not nearly as a high a bar as you make out).

This test is like criticising a GSCE student for not being able to do degree level maths.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: So technology works as intended...

Wow - so you can drive a car all the way without stopping - that probably makes you the slightly tired, not quite concentrating motorist we're all concerned about.

I can drive all the way to cornwall and back from the midlands, and I do it in an EV that isn't a Tesla. It takes me fractionally longer than it used to in an ICE vehicle, but I use substantially less energy and arrive much more alert...

With the current "best" in charging (i.e. 800V systems, which CCS chargers everywhere deal with happily) the breaks are far more limited by people's own timing (planned breaks, loo stops etc)

To do your hypothetical journey in a current fast charging EV would (ABRP planned, Ioniq5 selected) add a 25 minute break at Lancaster (half way) in a 4 hour 20 minute journey. That's exactly where I would want to break for a few minutes anyway, stretch legs, visit the facilities, relax the eyes and brain.

You'd then park in a car park with a charger, so would set off later in the day with a full charge and do the same on the way back.

Of course in the mean time you have waited for precisely zero time refuelling for the rest of the year.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: So technology works as intended...

Depends what you read and believe from this mythical hype machine.

In certain situations (and I'm thinking motorways predominantly here) I am fairly confident that we can have higher level autonomy in a reasonable timescale, one of the biggest challenges will be working out how to safely return control to a disinterested meatsack (either in the event that that's needed en route, or more typically at slip roads). In neither case will "drop control at the human" be sane.

In certain other situations (emergency braking) they are already a great help (though much of that is, as is typical with safety improvements) being absorbed by drivers relying on it - risk homeostasis.

John Robson Silver badge

So technology works as intended...

And this is newsworthy because?

These are L2 vehicles at best, but appear to be L3/4/5 tests.

The sad state of Linux desktop diversity: 21 environments, just 2 designs

John Robson Silver badge

Re: The curse of overchoice

I had to recently - installed it on a VM because I need access to a specific piece of software (at least in the short term).

It took forever and a day (ok, it took two days).

Takes maybe forty minutes to get a linux install up and running on the same virtualisation setup, and since I use the network installer versions I don't even have to update the iso often. (I do have the advantage of a decent net connection, but that advantage was available to the windows VM as well).

I'll grant that some of that time was me being unfamiliar with windows and double checking what I was doing - it has been a significant number of years since I've had to touch it at all - but it did also just take a _long_ time.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: The curse of overchoice

You mean take a full day to install, and then another to add patches, can't help.

But the linuxmint.com download page has three reasonably well described choices (Cinnamon edition looks fine).

You can even run it live, which you can with most linux variants, and that's also something that can't be done with MicroSoft offerings.

Problem is Windows now looks nothing like I remember it looking, so I don't really know what you are looking for...

Python is getting faster: Major performance tweaks on horizon

John Robson Silver badge

Microsoft Python 3.11

What could go wrong?

BOFH: You'll have to really trust me on this team-building exercise

John Robson Silver badge

Wouldn't let me on the cardiac ward

That was genuinely funny... now everyone is looking at me...

We can bend the laws of physics for your super-yacht, but we can't break them

John Robson Silver badge

Re: ""Don't you know who I am?"

Either that or "have you forgotten again?"

Apple to replace future iPhone Lightning port with USB-C next year, this guy claims

John Robson Silver badge

That's one option for how to use a portable device.

Note that I used the word portable rather than mobile.

My current machine sits plugged into an eGPU (for driving multiple monitors) basically all the time - it occasionally goes into an office with me (either in the UK or stateside), where it gets plugged into monitors etc. I can't recall the last time I needed to use it as a *mobile* computing device. I *do* use my phone to look stuff up on shared documents, I'm not going to write war and peace, but I can update a tracking spreadsheet etc...

Last time I worked on the bus/train/plane I grabbed an iPad mini and folding bluetooth keyboard. Worked an absolute treat (though the keyboard is a touch smaller than I'd like, but it's really compact when folded).

I've used the keyboard with the phone as well, though there's a less clear use case there (since you don't want to do huge amounts of stuff on the small screen).

Though there is always the option to have a thin and light with a battery in the keyboard (to weight it down) and a usbc port - that would then connect to any phone, and the next one, and potentially (though possibly with a dongle) to the back of servers etc.

tldr - multiple different needs, not everyone the same, bear's catholic, pope defecates in the woods.

John Robson Silver badge

The point being that you don't need the accessories if it's all TB, those exist at the various locations you want to do stuff.. and the phone is still useful, even if you wouldn't choose to use it for a large spreadsheet on the train.

The other point being that I wonder if we're actually close to the point where it's a reasonable approach. Don't know if the M1 in a phone would work - might need a copper pad on the back for some extra cooling though.

I've been waiting for it for 15 years now, I suspect it will be a little way off for a while though

John Robson Silver badge

Indeed - it's had a decade of consistent support, which is more than you can say for most other phone charger "standard"s.

Even just a few years ago a phone cable was used for data, but that's less and less the case now - so at what point do we drop them entirely? Or are we close to the point where a phone can plug into a thunderbolt dock and be a useful productivity machine?

John Robson Silver badge

100W charger on a phone?

I think we need new battery tech before that becomes reasonable.

Google Docs crashed when fed 'And. And. And. And. And.'

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Absurd

Highly language specific, and since code *must* be machine readable (and very strongly should be human readable, but that's a secondary consideration) having a system which highlights syntax to aid with the secondary aim, whilst also supporting the primary aim is a good thing.

Can I code in vi*? Yes

Do I code in vi more than anything else? Probably because I am mostly hacking about stuff to stop a specific breakage, and mostly in python, over ssh, in ~minimal containers.

Does that mean that vi is the best tool for the job? In the sense that it is basically always available - yes, in the sense that other tools have assistive features I'd benefit from - absolutely not.

* Other editors are available.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: I can think of legit sentences with lots of ands together

I like the repetition of had - less sleek, but rather mind bending.

In the grammar test James, whilst John had had "had", had had "had had", "had had" had had a better result on the teacher.

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

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Too early.

Apportioning the entire cost of the any product to the first user doesn't make sense - there will be value for the second user, and that value will be

If at 10-15 years the battery is down to 75% range (not unreasonable from the figures I have seen) then there is a serious life remaining for those batteries as home storage... probably the same number of charge cycles again (more, fewer? evidence either way?). So does that second use get a zero cost rating for batteries, or do we amortise the cost of production over the entire lifecycle of the battery, and then amortise the cost of recovery/recycling over the *next* battery lifecycle?

In any event the lower energy usage (even accounting for grid and battery cycle losses) is a net benefit.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Step #1, define your terms

Step #2 read the proposal"

"

It should be possible to switch off intelligent speed assistance, for instance, when a driver experiences false warnings or inappropriate feedback as a result of inclement weather conditions, temporarily conflicting road markings in construction zones, or misleading, defective or missing road signs. Such a switch-off feature should be under the control of the driver. It should allow for intelligent speed assistance to be switched off for as long as necessary and to be easily switched back on by the driver. When the system is switched off, information about the speed limit may be provided. The system should be always active when switching the ignition on and the driver should always be made aware of whether the system is on or off.

"

I have an early version and there are three issues that I come up against:

- It doesn't remember what the speed limit was at the start of a journey (i.e. when it hasn't seen a sign, because it's just pulled out of a parking space)

- It sometimes forgets that after turning at a crossroads the new road has the same speed limit, despite not having a new sign

- It sometimes gets the NSL wrong, particularly when a road changes between dual carriageway and single carriageway (or vice versa)

I have also been in vehicles just a handful of months newer which don't suffer from any of those issues, partly because they back up the sign recognition with mapping data.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Too early.

Or less than 15k miles if you listen to independent analysis:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/when-do-electric-vehicles-become-cleaner-than-gasoline-cars-2021-06-29/

Heck it's ~8k miles (or one year) if your electricity supply is clean (as per Norway)

To get to 80k miles you'd need to use purely coal based electricity

img

And where on earth do you get an expected battery life of 7 years?

Second life batteries will absolutely be a thing, because EVs are about the most sensitive use case to Wh/kg - it's just that there aren't very many, because even decade old EVs aren't being scrapped because their batteries are still fine.

John Robson Silver badge

Why wouldn't I compare the aggregated driving of millions of vehicles?

Particularly those with reasonably developed self driving - they all report back what's going on.

Indeed I recall seeing somewhere that Tesla AP was effectively always on, just not always connected to the controls - and noted when it's predicted actions differed from the drivers... you know to allow more scenarios to be discovered and simulated.

So it's entirely fair to compare the driving of all of the vehicles in a given fleet against each human driver - and even back in 2018/2019 they did more than a billion miles a year - that's 3 million miles a day, or about 30 years of serious trucking (and truckers can fit in about four times more miles than taxi drivers).

John Robson Silver badge

You know what if you'd quoted the rest of my post then you'd have saved yourself some typing.

John Robson Silver badge

Wow - it's almost as if you didn't get to the part where I called out that exact issue with the stats as presented.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Step #1, define your terms

"Computer nopes out of the scenario"

So your assumption is that the failure case is one where the computer simply lets go of all controls, rather than one in which it comes to a controlled stop to hand over?

Well if you never catch errors in your own work then I can imagine why you might think that. This isn't legislation designed for the current crop of vehicles with some self driving capacity, maybe not even for the next generation (which is likely to be sooner than most people think, Elon is of course an eternal optimist. It can't be denied that he has managed to achieve quite a lot with that drive and vision.)

When vehicles are level 4 or 5, then they won't be rejecting control back to a meatsack, at least not at speed - because there is no reason for that to be their failure mode.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Step #1, define your terms

The only time it would ever be an annoyance is when you decide to break the law.

I'm all for that kind of annoyance.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Too early.

You've not seen the footage of a car going into emergency braking just before the car in front puts it's brakes on and collides with the car in front of that?

Frankly to outperform a sizable minority of meatbags an AV only needs about four feet of forward awareness.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Too early.

Any for some reason people still insist on doing 40+mph between the two sets of traffic lights.

With an average speed of 16km/h - why not have a speed limit of 20-25? That would significantly reduce the damage done by vehicle collisions, and would also likely encourage people to use more sustainable transport options... if you're in a city they should be the default.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Too early.

"This is compounded by EVs needing to have longer lifespans to offset their increased pollution during production."

Erm??? ICE Myth alert.

Nope - that's offset within a pretty short time (a small percentage of a typical vehicle's life), and of course a "young" EV failure just means even better batteries to reuse or recycle.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: too poor to ever own a car.

Well - Just from this week: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-61022329

And from a couple of years ago: https://citymonitor.ai/transport/london-roads-tfl-subsidy-vehicle-excise-duty-road-tax-3521

London public transport users subsidising car drivers in London

The 2009 select committee saw a significant subsidy for the motorist (about a grand each IIRC)

The first people Rishi Sunak helps, and it's not just him... motorists (well, and oil company shareholders):

http://www.passengertransport.co.uk/2022/04/a-nudge-in-the-wrong-direction/

The cost of motoring is heavily subsidised by the rest of society - it's time it wasn't.

John Robson Silver badge

One of the reasons to look at Tesla with AP, and Tesla without... it is comparing apples with apples, not Teslas with autopilot against G Wiz drivers...

I've deliberately not listed overall miles/accident. Partly because I imagine that their stats include a variety of countries, so it's rather hard to discern what the "typical" miles/accident would be.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Too early.

Or just maybe the convoy of automated lorries will simply open gaps on approach to junctions... or maybe there will always be that gap.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Too early.

High speeds aren't an issue for an AV on a motorway - there are very limited things to have to watch out for - and continuous 360 degree observation at all available distances, as well as potential v2v communications will make this the easiest element of the journey to automate... Drive to the motorway - tell the car what junction you want to get to and relax.

That would improve safety *off* the motorway as well - with drivers less tired etc.

John Robson Silver badge

Really - you think it's a high target to meet?

You can already look at the stats for self driving vehicle incidents, since they are already driving more miles in a day than basically anyone will ever drive in a lifetime.

Just Telsa:

Autopilot technology on:

Q4 2021: one accident for every 4.31 million miles driven

Autopilot technology off:

Q4 2021: one accident for every 1.59 million miles driven

They're already suffering fewer accidents per mile driven than the same cars being driven manually.

Now I have a serious issue with these stats, in that there is no breakdown by road type, or how many miles were driven when autopilot wasn't available - which could have a serious impact on the distribution.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: too poor to ever own a car.

"Cars are expensive, but not as expensive as public transport."

That's because car ownership is heavily subsidised, unlike public transport.

Starlink's Portability mode lets you take your sat broadband dish anywhere*

John Robson Silver badge

Re: "If Starlink detects a dish isn't at its home address, there's no guarantee of service"

We know that the comms with jets aren't an issue with the antennae deployed on jets.

Do we know those are the same as those on the ground - hardware *and* software?

John Robson Silver badge

Re: "If Starlink detects a dish isn't at its home address, there's no guarantee of service"

I don't think they're aiming for tens of thousands of people in a city - they will generally have much better, faster, cheaper alternatives.

For ~25% the cost I get substantially lower ping (single digit ms), five times higher download and upload. But then I live in a reasonably densely populated area.

John Robson Silver badge
Boffin

Re: "If Starlink detects a dish isn't at its home address, there's no guarantee of service"

You're assuming the airline dishes don't have additional smarts to deal with the motion.

That's not necessarily true (though I can't say it's false)

Datacenters in Ireland draw more power than all rural homes put together

John Robson Silver badge

Re: So 35% of elec is residential

ICT generally, but also the tech giants more specifically.

The CRU notes are significant (and different from the original news), and suggest that the DC owners aren't actually doing as much as they generally crow about in terms of managing electricity supply (no great surprise, but I had been expecting the financial advantages to be more encouragement for them).

John Robson Silver badge

Re: So 35% of elec is residential

Again - not convinced it's that unusual.

We're not saying "<tech giant Q> used 14% of a country's electricity", but that a whole sector, which the country has heavily encouraged, is using that much energy.

What's the largest non data centre industrial segment in terms of electricity usage? (I don't know, it's not broken out anywhere that I've seen).

In terms of energy usage the road haulage industry uses 15% of all energy, air transport takes 21%...

Between 2005 and 2019 (again, last figures I can see) services gradually increased their share of electricity consumption from 35.3% to 42.9%.

Most of the data centres also probably came with investment towards renewable generation, allowing coal plants to be retired. Between 2016 and 2019 there was a massive drop in the amount of coal being used to generate electricity and a substantial increase in renewables. (84% and 54% respectively, though coal has clearly been on the way out for a while)

Is it an industry that uses a lot of electricity? Yes

Is that surprising? I don't think so. It's long been known that cooling and power are two of the most expensive things to deal with when running computers (at least when running lots of them).

Interestingly the CSO publish "energy use per employee" broken down by sector, and that's been remarkably stable for "services and public sector" - suggesting that even as data centres are using significant amounts of electricity they are also employing a proportional number of residents.

Do they use 14% of the electricity on the island, I can well believe it. I just don't think it's particularly shocking.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: So 35% of elec is residential

Is it really that extraordinary?

Any new industry has the capacity to grow to use a significant proportion of the available energy supply in an area. It's what happens with new industries - and data centres are heavy on the electricity, and don't consume much "other" power, at least assuming they are built to use "waste" heat on site.

What's perhaps more surprising is that in 2018 (last figures I can see on the CSO site) businesses' electricity usage was only ~30% of their total energy consumption.

If we assume that data centres are much closer to completely electrically driven then their 20% suddenly becomes 7-8%, and immediately becomes much less headline worthy.

I don't have 2021 figures (because I can't find them), but in the decade leading up to 2018 electricity usage (by businesses) rose by ~20%, compared with a their total energy usage increasing by ~23%. Again assuming that data centres are heavy on the electrical side... they've not made a dent in the energy balance.

John Robson Silver badge

So 35% of elec is residential

...and of the remaining 65% the data centre businesses use less than a quarter of all the non residential electricity.

Rocket Lab to attempt mid-air recovery of descending booster

John Robson Silver badge

Fingers and toes

Very much crossed... should be good

Google tests battery backups, aims to ditch emergency datacenter diesel

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Nuke

"Who'd want a mini nuclear power station in their neighbourhood?"

Me.

Although actually I'd rather the micro ones went in substations - the very small size is actually quite useful here, both mechanically and safety wise.

At motorway service stations I'd put an SMR... a bit more space, and easy reuse of the heat in the service building. Also less nimbyism because they are generally a little way outside residential areas.

Supplement the grid with a pretty well distributed power supply.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Nuke

"The consequences and costs of a nuclear accident - clean-up, compensation, environmental damage, etc"

Well, if you actually cleaned up after any of the other activities maybe we could have that conversation.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Can someone do the math for me please?

There are *other* technologies available. I don't say that since diesel generates smoke we shouldn't use engines because a steam engine is even worse.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Can someone do the math for me please?

Why do you presume that?

I don't know what the expected lifetime of a generator is, but I do know that they need regular testing and maintenance.

Batteries of this sort will require very little maintenance - but they will also be mostly on perma test.

And the batteries will have serious lifetime... it doesn't actually matter if they drop to 80% capacity, they'll still be good for backup purposes.

Hawaiian Airlines to offer free Wi-Fi via SpaceX's Starlink

John Robson Silver badge

Only on outbound flights

Aren't all flights outbound from one airport and inbound to another?

Could a leaky capacitor be at fault on ESA's Sentinel-1B?

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Leaky ceramic?

Thanks

In IT, no good deed ever goes unpunished

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Jumping to conclusions

I was expecting the hardware to be disabled...

Immersion-cooled colo is coming to Ohio... via a crypto-mining datacenter

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Environmental - Warming River Water

The thermal gradient around the plant will exist, but that will be a very localised effect. Looking at the river as a whole, there is a small effect that a localised temperature difference might have by making it hard for fish etc. to pass through the affected region, but I struggle to see that being particularly significant here.

How many miles down a fairly turbulent water flow would you expect a relevant gradient to persist?

Using the whole mass flow is done to account for the fact for the vast majority of the river the effect will be distributed amongst the entire mass flow.

The presence of buildings at all is likely to have a significant impact on the local environment anyway - even if it didn't directly connect to the river it would significantly affect runoff etc.

John Robson Silver badge
Boffin

Re: "without a time component"

Either way it's a rather slow rate of acceleration.

Indeed, although at some point during a reasonable acceleration phase it will be true, although I would imagine that the jerk would be quite high, so it wouldn't be at that for very long (and is therefore a ridiculous unit).