Posts by Stoneshop

Re: "...a [Lidar] blind spot low to the ground all around the car."

What about sinkholes?

Perfect, especially when they're large enough to swallow the whole Uber self-driving car.

Re: cost-effective but results in a blind spot low to the ground all around the car .

Hedgehogs. Why those haven't yet evolved titanium skin with tungsten spikes is one of Evolution's Great Mysteries.

A hedgehog is strolling the edge of a road, and comes across two rabbits. "Hey guys" he speaks up, "What is it that I see so much of my fellows being flattened while trying to cross, and only rarely a rabbit or a hare?". "Geometry", one or the rabbits answers. "If you're trying to cross at night, and you see headlights approaching, then either move back to the verge, or sit right in the middle of those lights. And by day you can use those headlights as markers too, even when they're off. Let me show you.". He jumps into the road, positions himself (looking over his outstretched front legs towards the approaching car's headlights), and indeed, the car passes right over him and he hops back to his mate and the hedgehog. "Aha" says the hedgehog, "Thanks, I'll try that". And as he starts crossing the road, another car approaches. The hedgehog shuffles around a bit, positioning himself and finds the right spot. "Oh look", the other rabbit remarks, "you don't see those Reliants much any more".

Too late to avoid the accident, but never too late for an emergency break,

If the parts the car is supposed to break into are small enough, and dispersing sideways, the pedestrian about to be hit will have a much greater chance of survival, maybe even just suffer a few scratches and bruises.

(I've long fantasised about red-light cameras being able to send out a disintegrating beam, turning the offending vehicle into gooey snot. Subjecting the driver, not physically hurt very much, to howls of derisive laughter from all onlookers).

You are assuming that the approaching human in question was in the 'cone of surveillance' for the lidar.

What part of "360 degree view" is it that you need explained?

Re: local fire brigade was unsure if the car’s battery would explode

Perhaps the First Responders should become more familiar with the internal construction of electric car battery packs, typically consisting of endless numbers of wee feisty little '18650' (18mm by 65mm) cells. In the future, the Tesla cells will soon be '2170' (21mm x 70mm).

The problem is there being up to several tens of kWh of energy in the pack; the actual construction matters less.

Any "explosions" would be an individual cell, and thus not all that big. They may be sequential.

They're not explosions. And if there's damage to the battery pack there will be multiple cells affected. If those start to heat up their neighbours will join in sooner or later, and the cumulative heating may well cause them to combust more or less at once. There's also the problem that you don't know if the cells' internal protection has done its job correctly; with at least one previous Tesla accident some cell packs were thrown clear of the car, and started burning out in the open.

First Responders need to make themselves familiar with the OEMs' safety advice, that has been directed to them specifically, proactively.

They do. At least over here. Just last week there was ample demonstration that turning across an approaching tram (never mind that a turn like that from the direction they came from is prohibited) is guaranteed to ruin your afternoon as well as your insurance no-claim rating. The arrival of a fire truck surprised us a bit, until we got a view of the side of the car that wasn't impaled on the Scharfenberg, showing it to be a Hyundai Ioniq. We didn't see all of what the firemen did, but they were clearly there to assess a possible fire risk before the tram was allowed to move back and the car towed.

How about

slamming the Oxford against the Duden.

With the bit of conslutant protruding upwards out of his collar between them.

Values and such

I take it the values or operations not represented amount to "don't get caught".

Quite

Re: All is not how it seems !!!

Emerdata Ltd created by SCL/Cambridge Analytica's Julian Wheatland, with Erik Prince's business partner Chun Shun Ko

And FYI, Eric Prince is the founder of the thugs-for-hire group BlackwaterXe, and the brother of Trump's Education Doofus Betsy DeVos.

Nice bunch of people right there.

Re: OK, that's it!

Nah - it won't last that long. You can hire JCBs by the day.

Well, there will be more occasions where a popcorn-loading JCB will come in handy, because CamAnal has had their fingers in several other processes where influencing voter behaviour was kind of relevant (*cough* brexit *cough*)

Re: Proves nothing really

Unwarranted triumphalism is one of those 'commenters' who would dispute the wetness of water if it would fit his agenda of riling up people, in particular people who he sees as promoting wetness as a common benefit.

Re: Tinfoil hat time?

Choose one of:

- explaining the data that is there but shouldn't be

- explaining the data that isn't there, but can be strongly suspected (as implicated by various actions based on that data) to have been there (and shouldn't have been)

Re: Re. I like the idea of a smart home but I don't want the IoT internet angle....

Yep at least Alexa and Hive are not made by a company that specialises in spying on you.

You sure?

Re: Abandon hope...

I was wondering if you'd pop the lock just by touching the lock with a 9 volt while the AA batteries were still functional

In a proper design (I know, I know), the 9V terminals would be used to power the lock's logic so that the keypad/RFID/DNA-scanner/whatever can take input again and open the door. And ideally (I know, I know) those external terminals would be protected against overvoltage and reverse polarity.

So your connecting a 9V battery to a still functioning lock would not matter. Now, 240VAC, or several tens of kV from one of those piezo-electric gas igniters, a miniature Tesla coil or something similar, that would be quite a different matter ...

They also have a supply of both mechanical energy and heat energy that are capable of being converted into electrical energy...

That would require flow and/or a temperature difference between radiator and room. If the valve has been shut for a while then both conditions will be absent and you'll have a bit of a bootstrapping problem unless you have some storage element in the valve.

Re: One Ruling System

When they came out with what would be their final system, even the paper for the printer had to be purchased from them.

EXPN.

Re: Nonsense detected

But 72c will cause burns

Ever been to a sauna?

Re: Jumpstart

Or do all these smart locks have mechanical options also?

I haven't looked, but I would expect there being a knob* on the inside allowing you to open the door and get out in any case.

* meaning a protruding bit you can grab and turn or slide to open the door, not the person who bought this stuff.

Re: Did you ask Dave what he thought about that?

Now the default is not to sell "something" but sell a "service" that you first pay and arm and a leg for and then continue paying forever and a day to keep it running at full spec.

You can easily see this just about everywhere: subscription services instead of buy once use forever. Software. Cars (private lease). Even home appliances like central heating systems. Just about the only area where I more or less prefer such a subscription is Renault leasing you the batteries for their electric vehicles (and only the batteries). Of course you can put aside that amount of money per month, saving it up for the moment you need to replace them, but if those batteries have degraded sooner than you budgeted for you still have to come up with the moolah one way or another. And as a getaway vehicle for a bank robbery one with degraded batteries is probably not ideal.

Companies want a steady income stream instead of relying on just item sales. Which tends to become a bit of a problem when you're selling durable consumer goods; you can try to increase repeat sales by selling non-that-durable goods instead but then there's the risk that consumers turn to other brands, exacerbating your problem. So much better if you manage to turn whatever it is you're selling into some kind of subscription, especially if that locks the consumer into a controlled ecosystem.

Re: Abandon hope...

that would certainly make the lock abandon all hope.

s/hope/magic smoke/