* Posts by John Smith 19

16327 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Boffins build ant-sized battery, claim it's tough enough to start a car

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Keep in mind it's still V 0.1 tech

So it's better than the best supercapacitors.

Supercapacitors are good at high rate dumping and absorbing power. The actual capacity (compared to regular batteries, but not capacitors) is pretty bad.

Perhaps it's 2000x better than other micro batteries, but I suspect most batteries scale down badly.

At micro and nano scales materials can be used that fail at larger scales because their bulk properties (IE their conductivity) are not good at meso scale. They only work at this scale, but the conditions at this scale means they turn an unworkable architecture into a practical power source.

Cautious thumbs up but it's yet another battery chemistry which will need an infrastructure to support it.

Here's the thing. It's novel. That does not equate to better and by "better" I mean against the existing battery form factors and chemistries that are already commercially available.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: The problem with batteries ...

"Well duh! When you design hardware, you design it with the limitations of the technology at hand."

The real world life expectancy of every laptop and mobile I've ever seen suggests that theory is in fact rubbish.

Foxconn must pay Microsoft for EVERY Android thing it makes

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

Re: …And we still have no idea what these patents are

"You could be violating those patents right now!"

"We are Microsoft. All you software belong to us."

As Machiavelli said "Let them that hate also fear me."

Applicants sought for one-way trip to Martian Big Brother house

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I'm sure it would be more interesting if other people nominated them.

After all that suggests they have enough self awareness that they are attention seeking fame whores.

Now what about those who don't realize that?

Thumbs up for this as Spacex can always do with a bit more non-NASA money to stop them drifting into govt contractor land.

Antares aborted after launchpad mishap

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

What's not mentioned

The umbilical was connected to the 2nd stage.

Which is the bit that is built in the USA but was not included in their earlier Wet Dress Rehearsal (it's a solid, so no wetness involved). Had it been a full dress rehearsal perhaps they would have picked it up but all previous Orbital flights have been solids, so I guess they felt there was nothing new for them to learn. Which turned out to be quite a heroic strategy.

As for cost Vs price. This is a "risk reduction" flight which NASA added to the COTS budget. IIRC they kicked in about $360m (but the figure is out there) As Orbital is the "safe pair of hands" option for NASA they were planned to fly 1 demo flight that would berth to the ISS on the 1st go (as opposed to those dangerously unproven Spacex cowboys, who NASA felt would need 3 flights to achieve this).

As for what NASA are paying Orbital per launch divide the fee by the # of launches. What it's costing Orbital is another matter.

Note this is a fairly minor glitch and the equivalent Dragon flights also had launch delays. I'll note Orbital started about 18 months behind Spacex when COTS (the development programme) started and are now about 36 months behind where Spacex is (This is the equivalent of the Spacex F9/Dragon simulator, not even the "cheese" delivery flight).

Orbital does a lot of business in missiles defense solutions so this is not quite the core interest for them that it is for Spacex.

But it would have been nice to see the start of competition.

Cutting CO2 too difficult? Try these 4 simple tricks instead

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

I will note that oil is a "cost plus" commodity.

So any profit the companies make is a % of the cost +taxes

It's not really like other commodities where companies may have to cut their profit margins in order to sell their goods.

Oil companies run on a planned oil price, because that gives them a planned profit. Oil companies hate sudden price falls as they have to cancel investment plans (I've talked to oil companies when this has happened).

As for the "We've only got reserves for 10 years" that's because oil companies tend to lay off their exploration teams as long as they've got those reserves. They tend to run there geophysical surveys through bigger processors (the RS6000 SP2 was the processor of choice back in the day) to find anything missing in the data. People appear to be starting to look at tar sands and shale oil slightly more seriously because of the price rise.

But eventually oil will run out. As for alternatives. I quite like partial combustion of tobacco plants.

Big Tobacco becomes the Big Oil of the 22nd century. Of course any remaining tobacco left for cigarettes will be hugely experience.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: Are we Super Humans?

" from the land masses of the northern hemisphere to the Antarctic Ozone Layer?"

Perhaps you'd like to look at just where CFC's were use in their heyday.

At one time nearly every piece of plastic foam was made using a CFC blowing agent and every aerosol spray used them. They were cheap, non flammable and inert except if exposed to UV, when they broke down to release Cl radicals. Either you did not know this or have forgotten. They were ubiquitous.

As for "density" you forget their inter molecular bonding is close to non existent (low boiling points). You might like to look up "evaporation" and "Brownian motion."

Perhaps you might like to study a little more chemistry?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Re: Are we Super Humans?

<long, very dense paragraph snipped>

In a word yes.

Ever looked at the history of the Ozone Hole?

The data at which CFC were first produced is known precisely. As is it's effect on the Ozone layer. As is the effect on CFC bans.

Human beings can bring about global atmospheric changes on a human time scale.

It's not a theory its a fact.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

Re: Rising sea

"Most of the population won't have a problem with the sea rising."

Tell that to the citizens of London, New York, Venice or indeed any port city with a sizable population.

Only someone with a deep ignorance of geography would say that.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Re: Soot.

"The health benefits from eliminating soot would be large, too. So go on Big Industry, why shouldn't we eliminate soot?"

In this context "soot" includes subsistence farmers doing slash & burn framing on jungle areas and individual wood burning stoves whose fumes are the equivalent of a 60 cigarettes a day smoking habit.

Collectively they add up to quite a bit of soot.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: Birth control is simple

"One glaring omission in the list is: To not have kids. No kids, no future heritage of pollution or any other way of altering the Earth. "

An admirable idea.

Now is the US Govt actually funding the WHO programme on population control or are the swivel eyed loons religious Republican right still blocking it?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: I keep coming back to the same thing....

" Many private waste dumps were abandoned/not kept up right, and often placed near schools or buried and then built on, so now they're underneath actual communities. "

Oh BTW some of the early nuclear hardware (IE WWII into the 1950s) was crushed up and used for road bedding in some parts of the US.

Yes it's still detectable from the air with suitable sensors.

And from the ground, where it's slow cooking the locals.

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Time to start picking that low hanging fruit?

Actually all of these are good idea wheather or not you believe in AGW.

The nice thing about most of them is that they can wash out of the atmosphere fairly quickly.

Unlike CO2 which will be around for a long time (unless active measures are taken).

Historically the hard greens (Jades?) have not wanted to talk about these options, viewing them as a diversion from the real struggle of getting you to live in third world squalor reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Thumbs up for publicising these options.

Smart metering will disrupt weather forecasts, warns Met Office

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Re: In other coutries they have another name....

"In other words, just before the fuse goes in the power station, they just shut off "non-essential" power users. Just' like that."

This also happens in the UK, for industrial users.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Flame

Security anyone?

The last I heard getting hold of smart meters for penetration testing has gotten a lot harder as the mfgs are worried the testers might find something. They have already on at least one ocasion

Mfg don't really seem to think your data is not for just anyone with a radio receiver and the necessary software to read.

And they want to make it 2 way giving suppliers control of your power.

Do you thing you're being conned? You are. But don't tell me. Write to your MP and tell them it's BS.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: real savings?

"Also, all meters need to be replaced over a ~10-20 year period so the roll out is not going to be a vastly expensive elective project as it's something which will have to be done anyway."

Except every one of them will be substantially more expensive (while delivering very few benefits to the consumer)

Now Mr AC, you were saying about it not be "vastly expensive" ?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Re: Alternative

"Stick a dongle with a SIM in it in the meter - I'm sure the leccy meter could probably trickle off a teeny bit of power to transmit an SMS, the gas meter one might need a small battery,"

Many UK gas meters went digital (using an ultrasonic flow metering technology which was less accurate than the mechanical tech it replaced.

UK gas companies want to phase them out.

Having to replace the battery every five years is too frequent for them.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: Hmm,

" I pay for it up front and i pay a lot. "

You do indeed.

IIRC the price per unit of electricity for UK prepay meters is (roughly) 2x that for billed meters.

Of course it does mean you've got some light, TV and internet if you've just raided the local supermarket for cider.

At LAST, scientists tackle the problems faced by alcoholic rats

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Pint

Re: Let a thousand frat parties boom!!

Party on dude.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: Several points

"1) I would think a rat with a drinking problem would be more in need of a liver than a kidney."

True. Although I'm not sure if rats, like humans only have 1 liver & 2 kidneys.

"2) This still requires you to have a kidney to provide the scaffolding. Thus, it won't stop the need for donors - only reduce the need for recipients to be on immunosuppressant drugs."

Actually it will. The original kidney template could be provided by the patient (after all the bulk of its function is not working) alternatively any old roughly matching sized kidney can do the job, including one from a recently deceased.

"3) If we could figure out how to print the needed scaffolding, rather than needing an organ, THEN this would be great, unless...."

Some versions of this already exist. You may remember a rat with an ear on it's back. The fact it just needs a roughly (not necessarily living) template opens up the field a lot.

"4) Since this uses the patient's own cells, if the reason their organs are failing is a genetic issue, they will be getting an organ with the same failure, unless we can work out how to treat the cells beforehand to remove the genetic flaw.""

Not necessarily.

AFAIK this work use embryo stem cells, so the default source is nothing to do with the donor of the cells. However at least some organs seem to be growable from so-called "precursor" cells (heart cells are an example) which appear to be a half way house between stem and fully differentiated cell types.

Cellular architectures not great for TV: study

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Had to be done to *demonstrate* the idea is stupid, not just believe it is.

It's proving a negative and (very occasionally) it produces counter intuitive results.

But not in this case. Which is good.

Now will Ofcom take a blind bit of notice?

Thumbs up for proving the idea is b***ocks, not just thinking it is.

Under the microscope: The bug that caught PayPal with its pants down

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Flame

How much does PayPal turn over a year?

Sanitize your f**king input.

Everywhere,not just in the one place someone found for you.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: What about the testing ?

" ... time consuming, but easy. "

Err, don't these guys use some kind of script driven bot to just hammer the site with stupid s**t and see if any of it crashes?

I mean if it's your day job you'd streamline it, right?

Brit cops blow £14m on software - then just flush it down the bogs

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Memex, bought by SAS in 2010?

Wikipedia Memex

Looks like they were a spinoff from Hairy Wonk U.

Timing suspicious? Project stuffed as company gets assimilated by new parent?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

I smell con-sultants telling the force "This is what you need."

As others have said it may not be cut and dried. Surey might have had legitimate reasons why COTS software (I mean in this sector, not something you can get at PC World) could not hack it. But boy has it taken a long time to get anywhere near release.

There seems to be obsession in govt/local govt/public sector work with "Ohh we do something so special no one sells anything like what we need." I'm looking at you especially MoD.

And boy do the HP's, IBM's and Crap Geminis of this world (and their smaller breathren) play that one.

I would suggest this is wrong most of the time. The problem is abstracting the unusual features of the task and identifying software that meets those, possibly from very different industries. And of course there are 46 English and Welsh police force. It's pretty hard to believe they catch criminals in a totally unique way.

Bottom line a package (even a modded one within reason) spreads costs across multiple users and should catch bugs faster (more users testing it).

CIOs: Are you your CEO's business partner or their gimp?

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"security of a website can be directly correlated to the number of tattoos...

on the recently graduated designer who got the job "

Priceless.

Antarctic ice sheet melt 'not that unusual', latest ice core shows

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: To be fair...

"Utopia" was a work of fiction.

As in not real.

You do understand that, right?

Flexible flywheel offers cheap energy storage

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

A few notes

Gyroscopes don't have quite the energy density of batteries.

OTOH they have no degradation modes. A flywheel energy storage system can store as much energy in 10 years as it can the day it was installed.

Personally I always thought for low cost the train wheels on the TGV would be a good candidate.

Mass produced, designed for high speed and with a significant mass on the rims (where you want them).

I also not that a Halback array can double the force on the flywheel from passive magnets (the T/W of magnets is pretty good at about 50:1).

The jokers are mass, containment and motor/generator electronics.

AFAIk this proposal side steps the heavy containment and lowers the precision of the drives needed to keep the flywheel in position and properly orientated.

As for gyroscopic effects on vehicles the obvious solution is a contra-rotating pair. However there are issues with bumps in the road and what would happen if the 'wheel hits the casing at full speed?

Space elevators, vacuum chutes: What next for big rocket tech?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

All launch systems are solid fuelled.

By rectangular pieces of paper.

Space elevators. People talk in terms of "Yuris" as a measure of the strength needed. A good design needs materials of about 40 Million Yuris. Current materials are hitting 3.5 Mega Yuris, but it's not clear if you could build such a structure out fo Speltra fibre.

http://www.spaceward.org/elevator-when

IIRC there is a prize to get materials to about 1 Mega Yuri.

Skylon's Special Sauce (C Lewis Page) is a TSTO payload fraction (3-3.5% of GTOW) in an SSTO. No previous design could offer this. It's important because development budget scales with payload. Previous SSTO' needed to be 3x bigger to give the same payload). However while they have tested the hardest part of the design they are currently building a complete sub scale test engine. Note there are still plenty of hard problems in the design to solve but they are moving forward. I'd love El Reg to get an interview with some of the players.

BTW Skylons development budget is in line with vehicles like the A380 and the Shuttle (with allowance for inflation). It's what big aerospace projects cost.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Re: Fuels

"I thought the V2 ran on hydrogen peroxide and kerosene - not liquid hydrogen for oxidizer, and certainly not ethanol diluted with water as fuel. "

LOX/Diluted Ethanol for main propellant. Decomomposed Hydrogen Peroxide (Steam and O2) drove the turbo pumps, as it still does for some Russian launchers.

It's readily available information.

IT salaries: Why you are a clapped-out Ferrari

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: £718pw?

" I'd be better off driving trains or something."

Have you seen what train drivers make?

John Smith 19 Gold badge

Re: Languages? Its not just that

"What would you advise your kids? As a girl I would suggest she puts on a short skirt, flashes her cleavage and pretends to be a singer, for a boy I have no idea - probably just grow half a beard and be an 'actor'. "

For a slightly more scientific approach you might look at what "shortage occupations" are listed by the UK govt. These are the things HMG is willing to fast track into the country.

IIRC "Coded" welders are somewhat in demand but it's experience and apprenticeship, which means taking low pay up front.

Just a thought.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

And woe betide if you don't have *exactly* that specific version of the language they want.

Either what the system was developed in or the system they want it re-developed in usually.

And remember

In the wrong environment you can be get carpeted for not using the GOTO statement (that's not an UL).

NASA-backed fusion engine could cut Mars trip down to 30 days

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Bottom line. *Potentially* efficient enough to get the propulsion job done

But not continuous power generation.

But if it gives us Mars in 30 days WTF cares?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Facepalm

Re: Smooth ride?

"Naturally, I'm completely ignoring the practicalities of getting this to work..."

In fact you're completely ignoring the article's contents.

RTFA.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Mushroom

Re: Solar panels??

" A fission reactor can easily kick out 200kw or so"

On Earth

In orbit a 5Kw fission electricity reactors is big (and Russian).

OTOH if you go for thrust the NERVA design had power ratings in the GW range but a T/W of about 7:1 and an Isp of maybe 1/3 of this design (and LH2 is a pig to handle).

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Re: Commercial power generation potential?

"Well, that's a frontier also, getting ion drives up to reasonable thrusts (right now they are mainly used on Russian satellites for station-keeping)"

You're missing the point. An SoA big ion drive is about 100x smaller than that. They do not gang together very well (plume interference) and the power level needed for a 3000N thruster will be in the MW range at least.

The solar energy is used to run the machinery and trigger the fusion burn, which amplifies the energy you actually have to collect and store, but in a way that gives good thrust but poor options for collecting electricity out the back. This trade off is viewed as acceptable for a propulsion system (less shielding as the liners act like disposable radiation shields, renewed after every shot). Likewise the pulsed nature virtually eliminates cooling needs given the low duty cycle (completely unacceptable in common fusion power architectures) and so on.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: For those just knowledgable enough to be dangerous.

"If they build it in orbit, it'd start its journey at the relevant escape velocity and accelerate from there."

No. Escape velocity from Earth is roughly sqrt(2) x orbital velocity

As any standard mechanics text book would tell you.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: Commercial power generation potential?

"Why not use the power to accelerate the propellant directly such as an ion engine? Why bother with all the extra gubbins at all?"

Try and find an Ion drive with a thrust of 3000N while retaining an Isp of c3000secs.

John Smith 19 Gold badge

Re: So, for those of us who are a bit thick...

"so there's still a fair bit of science and engineering to be solved"

Definitely. This is far from COTS technology.

"it's a probably worth about an 8 on the 'fusion thing worth getting excited about' scale"

With the caveat that this applies for its use as a propulsion technology. The electric power generation application remains as far off as ever.

John Smith 19 Gold badge

Re: So, for those of us who are a bit thick...

"This is it in summary, yes? "

Correct.

"The only real issue is going to be lifting a 150t spacecraft into orbit in the first place"

That's not exactly trivial but there are options.

" (and presumably telling a lot of people not to look at the sky when it starts up, since that would be like staring into a teeny weeny star)?"

People look at the Sun (for very short periods) fairly often and (as long as it is short) that does them no permanent harm.

"Please someone tell me the downsides."

Well the scale up is pretty substantial. The power array would be the 2nd biggest after the ISS (most PVs on sats are 1/10 the size at most). So far (IIRC) they've demonstrated single shots with Al rings without fusion and this mechanism has to deliver these rings at 1 a minute over 2 three day periods (which is a serious mechanical engineering problem in a space grade vacuum), coupled with dumping enough energy into the pellets (and actual pellet mfg on this scale is pretty substantial as well).

I guess the key question is how viable is sub-breakeven fusion. This is the critical bit that all those rings wrap round to give the thrust.

A comparison with the VASIMIR concept (to see what things it shares) might also be useful.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Commercial power generation potential?

"If the fusion is effective enough, you've got a system pushing out more usable power than went into it."

That's the point.

It is not that efficient.

The goals of space transport and Earth power generation are sufficiently different that this concept is good enough to push things around in space but not good enough for Earth power generation.

The latter (it turns out ) is much harder

Researcher hacks aircraft controls with Android smartphone

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

On the up side. *Lots* more mobiles available at *very* reasonable prices on eBay

Courtesy of the "hard" working men and women of the Thieves Support Association.

Hurrah!

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Pilot can regain controll

"You probably don't need *much* of a deviation in some parts of the world to send a plane into restricted airspace, at which point someone else will do the shooting down bit."

How about a tricky landing somewhere the airport is inside a mountain range, a slight deviation off line (and the pilots trusting the computer) and before you know it.....

Of course that could never happen IRL.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Knew It Was Coming

"This sort of thing has been discussed in military confrences in the past but considered low risk mainly because:

A) It was assumed that technology to interfere/control civilian aircraft systems could not be obtained by civilians.

B) State entities that could exploit civilian aircraft systems vulnerabilities would not because they are civilian aircraft and not considered military targets."

So the first, last and onlylime of defense has turned out to be the assumption that "smart people who want to do this cannot get hold of the tech to do so"

Remember the video feeds from drones in Afghanistan which also were thought "secure" because a) They can't do this and b) What use would insurgents have with seen themselves? Answer by seeing what you see they can know where you are not looking.

Chemical-dipped TRANSPARENT BRAINS bare all for science

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Thumb Up

Astonishing

Turning a brain clear is pretty impressive.

I suspect it gets really clever when you add stains which are specific to various chemicals and see where they are concentrated.

This is just the Start of the Art.

Planes in thunderstorms cop gamma ray bursts

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Might explain a porttion of random laptop failures?

Just a thought.

Capita's top brass bags 20% rise - as IT bods shiver in wage freeze

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Unhappy

What is that? About 10x the rate of inflation?

Somebody pointed out that when the UK Premier league started player salaries were about 40x support salaries.

Now it's more like 150x.

The cult of the "superstar Board." Heads we win, tales we still win.

But note with so many shares held by hedge funds/pension funds too many shareholders are too f**king gutless to say "No, you don't deserve this."

US Navy blasts drones with ship-mounted LASER CANNON

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Happy

Re: Are they serious?

" No I think it's named after some famous military Merkin."

Well that was my rather obvious guess. US warship, some famous (to Americans) naval figure who no one else has ever heard of.

"(I've been there, it's very nice -- they have a very impressive art museum)."

I did not know this.

AFAIK most people went to PR (or the 51st state as I like to think of it) for booze-and-screw holidays. Like Cuba before Castro.