Posts by I ain't Spartacus

Re: Endeavor…

The A10 defies physics because it is supported on a bed of distilled angry and f*ck you!

Well possibly. Either that, or it's so ugly the ground refuses to touch it.

Re: At workers' expense

Those people wouldn't be billionaires if they shared the value workers produced.

Those workers don't produce all the value. That's one of the many things Marx got wrong.

There is a cost of capital as well. And that capital can be used to vastly increase the productivity of labour. And if it doesn't make a return (a profit) then it gets invested elsewhere, where it can.

There's also a value to ideas, organisation and leadership. Sure we've all met shit managers, who reduce the overall productivity of the workers unfortunate enough to have to deal with them. But that isn't all management. Sometimes individuals can drive companies forward almost entirely down to their skill, knowledge and drive - and you can tell that although they need staff - most of that success is down to the person at the top. Although that effect tends to fall off as companies get bigger, and become more bureaucratic and lumbering.

But I've known several entrepeneur types who've built companies almost entirely on their own abilities. And would have succeeded almost whatever staff they'd had. So long as they hired people who could read and write and didn't steal the silver. If they're then able to attract brilliant people and build a successful team and culture that business can then jump to the next level and keep on growing, so I'm not saying that labour isn't important. But it's far from the only thing.

Re: Is that it?

Well, to be fair to Bezos, There's a New Glenn (orbital) - as well as a New Shepard. So what Blue Origin are doing is setting increasingly harder goals, while they do their engineering work.

And if he wants to spend some of his billions on a quick trip to the edge of space, good luck to him. I probably would.

Re: Papa Elon

Screw logic. I'd do it anyway. Admittedly it costs a lot, but that's what being a billionaire is for.

On the other hand, he's only had a few launches so far. Crew Dragon is still in the test phase. Even insofar as no space vehicle is ever truly out of testing.

Kudos to Branson, the Space Ship 2 has been very extensively tested. And so him flying on it makes sense, as the first proper paying passenger flight.

Bezos is the outlier. New Shepard hasn't flown manned yet. This is still testing. Fine if you want to take the risk - but it's not the well understood craft either SS2 or Crew Dragon are.

I'm not sure I'd call it delicious. It is funny though. Mostly because of what it reveals about Blue Origin - and their sense of inferiority. A confident company would have just put out a quick congratulation.

Although the first flight of a paying passenger into space was surely done by the Russians in a Soyuz...

But calling Virgin's Spaceship 2 an aeroplane is childish bullshit. It's an innovative piece of technology. And while I agree with the quibbling about where space starts - wasn't it Blue Origin that trumpeted launching and landing one of their test New Shephards just before SpaceX did a launch of a commercial payload to orbit followed by a landing - as if both were equal technical challenges?

Particularly as Blue Origin have tested a lot, and done lots of good work, but so far haven't really achieved anything.

Re: Oh, right.

Just to be clear the European Commission can't make law, they can only propose them. A law requires both the agreement of the Council of Ministers (EU member states representatives) and MEPs. MEPs can vote out the Commission.

The European Commission can make laws on its own. At least in areas where it has competence.

What you are describing is an EU Directive. This is a piece of legislation at European level that all member states must write their own laws to bring into force. The GDPR is an example of this (as are the Water Regulations). There's a European model and then national leglislation in order to implement that. These are proposed by the Commission, but then agreed by the triumverate of Commission, Council of Ministers and European Parliament.

However the Commission can also issue Regulations. These have legal force, but are issued by the Commission itself (if they have legal competence in that area). See a brief overview here of the difference.

As an example, when the Commission wanted to show how they were taking tough action on vaccines on January 30th, they issued a Regulation requiring all vaccine exporters to ask for export permission each time they wanted to send out a batch. That's because the Commission have sole comptence in trade policy and the Single Market - and so weren't required to consult the member states at all. Hence they discussed maybe doing it on the Tuesday - and issued the regulation on the Friday night about about 7 o'clock with it coming into force on the Saturday morning. There wasn't even an equivalent of a cabinet meeting (College of Commissioners) to approve the law - it was just emailed round an hour before publishing, asking if anyone had objections.

To be fair, the Commission don't usually cowboy things as badly as that. That was the law that directly broke the Northern Ireland protocol by enacting an emergency application of Article 16 to suspend it without consultation or notice. But they have the legal right to issue law with nothing but a release on the Commission's website with zero oversight.

Re: Oh, right.

You mean like we just did to Australia?

Odd that the NFU and food and drink associations aren't too happy about it, then.

There's a legitimate argument to be had here. But yours (such as you've bothered to make) isn't it.

If we do a trade deal that allows another country to import stuff here that undercuts our own industries - that has the downside of losing some industry. But the upside - that we as consumers get cheaper stuff.

The point about the EU's Common Agricultural Policy is that it's a system of tarrifs and subsidies designed to protect farmers and agriculural workers - at the expsense of European consumers. i.e. it causes food prices to be higher and subsidises less efficient farmers in rural France. Its good points were that food security was an obvious worry post-war - but the bad points are making most people worse off, being disproportionately a cost on the poorest in society and encouraging inefficiency and waste. Plus being awful for the environment - though some of the environmental and waste problems have been at least somewhat addressed.

So saying that "the farmers aren't happy" isn't some slam-dunk killer argument that this trade deal is shit. It's just that one of the vested interests has managed to get all the media attention. Obviously a big risk in politics - particularly on issues where some people might lose big in order for almost everyone else to win only a little bit.

Re: We're going to hit you with a massive fine.....

Google and Microsoft have huge presence in the UK. Google route UK advertising sales via Ireland, though I'm not sure how the tax treatment of that has changed post-Brexit. But they've still got lots of design, research, business, legal, accounting and other stuff based here. Microsoft have a huge campus out near Reading, but I don't know if that's just sales? However they also push a bunch of their sales via Ireland, for tax purposes.

This makes sense for Ireland, because the relatively small perecentage of money it makes from a small number of huge players using it as a tax-base is larger than the money it loses from taxing its own businesses at a lower rate. That may not be true for the UK - where if we halve our corporation tax, we lose revenue from a much larger economy / larger number of companies - and there's only so much multi-national tax-avoidance cash to go round.

Not that it even matters if Google have staff here or not. They'll comply with the law if they can make profits here - and bugger off if they can't.

Re: Ye trillion $ global monopolies

The UK used to be something like 10% of Apple's business and its second biggest market ten years ago. We're now definitely behind China, but obviously Apple are much less a computer company than a phone and digital services company so I've no idea how that's changed.

The figures were similar with Google at the time, which has changed less.

Basically, lots of these big companies make much profit here. And would like to continue doing so. Therefore they'll comply with the law if forced to, because they don't want to forgo that profit. In the case of monopolies like Google, that's even more important. They didn't pull out of Australia (a much smaller economy) over paying for news stories, because if they allow large markets to develop without them - they'll get competition. Which is of course what's happened in China, where they were forced out.

Re: Realities v. politics

Well, it doesn't mean this decision will survive first contact with the enemy. After all the Commission have negotiated two separate deals with the US government, that have been shot down by the ECJ.

One of the problems, for example, is that the GDPR grants exceptions for governments to do policing and intelligence gathering. However these are only allowed for EU members, so the law is actually tougher on foreign governments over domestic, which could mean the European courts kill this decision off as well. Even before the UK Parliament decides to change anything.

Re: Yikes

Do you remember the Japanese solder found on a Pacific island still fighting the Second World War? That's you, that is.

If he is that soldier - it's not like he's the only one. There's an awful lot of people on both sides still trying to fight the Brexit battle - and I suspect politics would be a lot healthier if most of them would stop. Or at least calm down.

Then again, there's always the latest fun-and-games over infinitely tiny definitions of racism and micro-aggressions for people to obsess about, so maybe life is still a tiny bit better if they're all still banging on about bloody Brexit instead...

None of the data that contributed to any serendipitous scientific discovery is personal data. And there are no restrictions on collecting non-personal data.

Graham Cobb,

That's definitely not true as regards medical discoveries. All sorts of not-terribly-nice things have been done in the name of "well that might later be useful for some research" - including retaining bits of body tissue, and in some cases whole organs, without telling the families. And that stuff, as well as medical data has definitely been used for valid medical research later.

Silicon Valley seems to have fallen into the bizarre rabbit hole of trying to hire the greatest minds of a generation in order to target adverts ever so slightly less badly - and it feels like restricting their access to data will have no bad consequences at all. There should be a slightly more nuanced discussion on medical data. While we need good protections in place for people - I think we'd also like to advance medical science - and so might want to consider different compromises (as well as different and better protection) in the medical sphere.

Both of you are wrong! Sails on trains? How silly! Gerry Anderson had this right, 50 years ago. We simply have trains with nuclear reactors. Problem solved!

OK, I admit we may need to spend a bit of R&D money. After all, where else are we going to get the required rocket powered rescue vehicles from, in order to operate these nuclear trains more-or-less safely. But on the upside, the technology also works for airliners, so that's some more greenhouse gasses we can cut.

Oddly the Thunderbirds themselves appeared to be decidedly carbon un-neutral.

Re: Continental

Also it is clear that the respondents of the survey are alcoholic yobs...

Proper Brits then! European travel writers have been writing appalled pieces about the drinking habits of the English and Scots since Roman times. It's a tradition which each generation is duty bound to honour and uphold!

Plus bacon sandwiches are yummy, and no excuse is required! Although I've got to be honest, a full English brekkie is a thing of beauty, but something to be eaten no more than every couple of months, in order to fully appreciate its declisiousity. Also something to be savoured with friends over sereral hours, rather than rushed in order to shovel calories and salt into you.

Also, having cooked fry-ups for ten people in someone else's kitchen - it's not a thing to be approached lightly, or when not in tip-top condition. It needs to be organised and coordinated properly, with thought, in order to achieve close to perfect results. You shouldn't even be starting until 10 o'clock with a few cups of tea in you - also in order to have a good appetite for a meal intended to fill you up until dinner time.

Re: Back in college: junk food

Well, if you've slept through brunch, there's always "linner". Linner is traditionally eaten at about 4pm, between lunch and dinnertime. I think I prefer dunch though - for rhyming with brunch - but it doesn't sound terribly appetising.

Re: Spanish style

Surely any hangover cure needs some serious salt?

Re: No cure for a hangover

The cure is just not to get them. I don't get hangovers. Not that I'm gloating or anything... My only problem is when drinking until stupid o'clock in the morning, and then having to get up early - while still drunk. That's not so pleasant. But I'm older and wiser now, so that doesn't happen too often, maybe once every 5 years.

Obviously it's not true that I don't have any ill effects. But it's just a thirst that's hard to shift, no headache or sickness or anything. And you can deal with the dehydration by drinking a lot before bed - or drking a lot while you're drinking a lot, which I try to do. Although I'm mostly pretty sensible nowadays, I've barely drunk during lockdown and not only am I becoming more sensible with age, but so are my friends - and I tend to be a social drinker.

Bacon sandwich, tea (then more tea), glass of orange juice - happiness. But then that's a nice way to start any day.

Also, were the organisers hung over? There survey doesn't appear to add up to 100. So how come they're giving percentages?

Except that missile defences have been vastly improved since the days of the Falklands. Because the Soviets had the doctrine of saturation cruise missile attacks, the US developed the Aegis system - so a US carrier group will now have multiple SM3-equipped ships, coordinating which missiles they're trying to shoot down.

The Falklands war happened in an odd period, where both sides had some missiles, but most of the combat was still taking place with bombs and shells. The Royal Navy were still doing shore bombardment with guns, rather than cruise missile strikes - and the Argentinian Airforce were mostly using gravity bombs. In general Argentina's Navy stayed out of it after the Belgrano was sunk (by torpedo) - though if I remember rightly they lost a submarine to the combination of a missile fired from a helicopter and land-based small arms and mortar fire. It was caught on the surface.

I wear a cricket hat in strong sunlight, which has a 360° brim. Thus saving me all that tedious hat-twisting effort in order to achieve optimal sunshade angle. As a bonus feature, it also doubles as a frisbee.

Re: "hats solve the problem presented by AR glasses"

I was thinking top hat. A nice stovepipe hat can actually act as a chimney. Put a few louvres in the side, and keep the heat generating electronics at the very top - and you can have a nice through-draft to keep both head and gizmos cool.

But I prefer your hardhat idea. Because that way, when the user walks into a lamppost, their noggin is protected. Plus they usually have a peak on them to hang the goggles off, and are in bright colours - so that other people are warned that a wearer is approaching.

Is it 'Snow Crash' where the techies who adorn their bodies with all sorts of wearable gear in order to be permanently online are called "Gargoyles"?

I also propose a change of acronym. Facebook Artificial Reality Tat Hat. As in, "Hey Hiro, see you're wearing your fart hat today..."

Re: Now I'm just an old duffer when it comes to space tech but...

They'd also want boring things like oxygen and food.

Plus the suits on the ISS are old and not functioning in tip-top order anymore. Which is less of a problem when you're only a few feet from an airlock, than when you're off on a space jaunt.

Just because you've got the fuel to cover the distance, doesn't mean you're going very fast.

The next technology we need to make satellite repair viable, is some sort of in-orbit taxi. Something you can re-use and refuel - and 2 astronauts can live in for a few weeks. But to get that, you need spare crew in space that can be sent off on such jaunts, plus refuelling and repair capacity - to keep them working. I guess we're going to try some of this with the lunar gateway - but it all still seems quite a long way off with government space programmes.