* Posts by Lars

4256 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2007

UK science suffers as lawmakers continue to dither over Brexit negotiations

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NI business and people are quite OK with the protocol finding new friends closer too.

However if Britain doesn't implement anything promised then it will of course not function that well between NI and Britain.

Perhaps the problem for some is that the NI will become more "Ireland" and more "EU" over time.

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This article forgets to mention that Britain doesn't want to take part in the Erasmus Program.

This about that and there is indeed the smell of cherry picking about it.

"

Why did the UK withdraw from Erasmus?

So why would the UK back away from all this? Mr Johnson has recently started saying that the programme is too elitist, despite the House of Lords report also concluding that ending the programme would disproportionately affect people from disadvantaged backgrounds and those with medical needs or disabilities".

Read that "elitist" as you can.

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Re: Negotiating...

A few things worth remembering about financing the ESA.

Numbers from 2020 in Mill E.

EU 1,683.3

France 1,311.7

Germany 981.7

Italy 665.8

U.K 464.3

Spain 249.5

Belgium 210.0

........

........

GT 6,680.0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Space_Agency

Brit MPs blast Baroness Dido Harding's performance as head of NHS Test and Trace

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Re: Scientists and Science

"Britain in practice isn't much of an island ".

Very true, it's indeed the English Channel not the English Sea, then again what about the people.

The first proposal for a tunnel was French, the first proposal for a bridge was English.

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Re: @Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells

There is also former "Red Rupert" in the background.

"Murdoch studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Worcester College, Oxford in England, where he kept a bust of Lenin in his rooms and came to be known as "Red Rupert". He was a member of the Oxford University Labour Party,[20]: 34 [25] stood for Secretary of the Labour Club."

Electric car makers ready to jump into battery recycling amid stuttering supply chains

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Re: "Less than 5 per cent of lithium-ion batteries are recycled today"

"China has shut down various recycling efforts already.".

No but they don't want to take our trash anymore.

James Webb Space Telescope completes its voyage to French Guiana

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Re: Shipping Label

To be precise.

French Guiana is an overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France on the northern Atlantic coast of South America in the Guianas.

Area 91,000 km2 (35,000 sq mi)

Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula.

Area 6.8 km2 (2.6 sq mi)

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Re: Progress

It's the minutes on top of Ariane that are the most scary.

Hope things go as planed.

EU Commission may extend antitrust probe into Nvidia's $54bn merger with Arm

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Re: British!

I would agree but it can get a bit complicated.

Looking at Arm on Wikipedia we find this:

Arm Holdings, a multinational company that designs the ARM computer processors

and

Arm Ltd. (stylized as arm) is a British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England.

But looking for the HQ for Airbus you find this:

Headquarters

Leiden, Netherlands (Headquarters)

Blagnac, Greater Toulouse, France (Main Office)

Madrid, Spain (International Office)

Hamburg, Germany (Operations Office)

I suppose you will not call it a Dutch company due to the HQ.

Ireland signs up for plan to make Big Tech pay 15 per cent tax everywhere

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Re: €750,000,000

State subsidies are allowed and often strongly needed but there are also rules agreed upon regarding them.

To quote the Wikipedia:

"Subsidies come in various forms including: direct (cash grants, interest-free loans) and indirect (tax breaks, insurance, low-interest loans, accelerated depreciation, rent rebates).

Furthermore, they can be broad or narrow, legal or illegal, ethical or unethical. ".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidy

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For a while I had the feeling this article was simply deleted.

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Re: €750,000,000

That link is one year old and who knows how that will end. You find this in that article too - "Case likely to be appealed again up to Europe’s highest court".

And it's indeed funny how some claim the EU sticks it's hands in things they should not bother with and then again complain if they don't.

It should by now be clear to everyone that EU countries define their taxation and a hell of a lot of things all by themselves.

Intel's €80bn European chip plant investment plan not bound for UK because Brexit

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Re: Excellent

@codejunky

I must admit you are strong in your belief, at least one happy Brit around here.

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Re: rafts of EU bureaucracy and Brussels red-tape

@Anonymous Coward

Should in your opinion the European Commission and the European Parliament be particularly beholden to some particular country.

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Re: Deal done

There was a time when smoking was allowed but only in the back of the plane. Sitting down there was already a woman there and later when I offered her a cigarette she told me she doesn't smoke but she always sits among the smokers as they are the more interesting people.

I suppose there is no truth in that claim but I still remember it.

No there are no cigarettes in the pocket anymore.

Fukushima studies show wildlife is doing nicely without humans, thank you very much

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Re: Ha

@codejunky

Affraid of using the B word.

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Re: Warmed or Hot

Company greed yes, they had been warned about the poor emergency power availability but did nothing about it.

Had they had that power available to calm down the reactors nothing "radioactive" would have happened.

Their power production from their local electric generators was destroyed by water due to the tsunami, they had been warned about that too.

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Boffin

Re: Warmed or Hot

Finland will get its fifth nuclear plant beginning next year and for the wast problem for all five, probably six, plants a wast storage has been built.

More on that in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYpiK3W-g_0

Finland Might Have Solved Nuclear Power’s Biggest Problem

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Re: So: in 100 years time ...

Rereading Michael Hoffmann's comment with the "about 1-1.5 billion years left" is perhaps a good estimation but I would still wait and see.

I was thinking more on the planet, not us.

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Re: So: in 100 years time ...

Big numbers are very hard to grasp and that goes for time too.

I found one way of visualizing time quite good.

Assume you have a measuring tape in your hand and it is say 4.5 Km long ( 4.5km= 2mi 1401.260yd) to make it so much easier to grasp for those who find the metric system difficult.

That 4.5 km 4500m represents the age of the planet 4.5 billion years.

Looking down at that tape, 1mm represents 1000 years so that 5mm is when the pyramids were built.

Looking down that tape a bit further, some 70m will represents 70 million years, that is when the dinosaurs went extinct.

And behind that 70m is still 4430 meter, 4430 million years, 4.43 billion years.

PS. I suggest you check your numbers.

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Also some people decided to remain in Chernobyl and when people had to leave and could not take their cows with them they let them loose so that now they have "wild" cows living a "free and happy life" in mother nature.

There is a video on YouTube about that.

One could however add that no species come back, what comes back is what already is there or moved there, they are just given a better chance to multiply, or well get "wild" again.

I am all for green and nuclear power.

Airbus to help build Mexican Moon-mining automata

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Re: What resources on the moon ...

"Makes zero sense."

Could well be, but that is what they want to find out about, not that many bumps in the road from the Moon to Earth when you think about it.

One-size-fits-all chargers? What a great idea! Of course Apple would hate it

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Re: What a load of stuff and nonsense

Nobody is going to confiscate your equipment and you will never run out of old flavour of USBs you won't even notice the possible change unless somebody tells you about it.

Just calm down you are perfectly safe and that goes for all your stuff until they stop working, and so forth.

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I have 4 working laptops all have a different charger, and in a box I have at least 25 and that includes cellphone chargers.

Of course it's stupid and a waste, and it's not just the plug but all the different voltages too (that creates the demand for different size plugs).

It's a jungle and each company would like to make some money on it as long as they can.

Car manufacturers would create special size wheels too, more than they do, if given an opportunity

So the big brothers have to stand up and regulate it, and the EU is big enough to be able to do it.

And those who oppose it will pull the standard bullshit like - stifles innovation and harm consumers.

And who knows perhaps some Marxism and what not.

CutefishOS: Unix-y development model? Check. macOS aesthetic? Check (if you like that sort of thing)

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Re: Which do you choose a hard or soft option?

@Def

"Do you equally advocate developers only use the Windows Store....".

You don't sound like a developer with your problems so he did not advocate if especially for developers.

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Linux

The year of "Linux on the desktop" is the year you put it on your desktop. for me it was 1995.

I haven't had to use the command line once since more than 10 years, which is actually a bit annoying as I have started to forget commands.

There are things you can do using a script that are far faster than using the GUI, this of course is not part of the normal Windows world.

Also I have never had any problems getting a printer/scanner up running or any WiFi problems.

I settled for KDE now with Mageia, not because I consider Gnome or other distributions rubbish but I like to stick to something more European as we need the knowledge here too.

Comparing Linux to Windows is always a bit silly because Windows comes preinstalled in every possible shop.

Linux does not, so it will be up to you and perhaps your friends should you have some with Linux experience.

Steve Jobs understood very well that to compete with Windows side by side in the same shop was no good so he created his own Apple stores.

We won't find all that many Linux shops around.

First RISC-V computer chip lands at the European Processor Initiative

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Re: That….doesn’t make any sense?

@Justthefacts

So what, do nothing because somebody is ahead, or try to catch up.

Buy from abroad or try to produce a more domestic industry to buy from and sell to the rest of the globe.

What would have come of Airbus (or China) if they had thought like you.

Are you actually revealing the history of Britain without thinking of it.

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Re: That….doesn’t make any sense?

@Justthefacts

"I can’t find any record at all of anything that came out of any of them.".

I am not all that convinced about the honesty of your comment but could it be you should have worked a bit harder or perhaps searched a bit harder.

PS. Britain was a part of the EU, perhaps you should look at the British failing more so than those 27 other memberstates.

Perhaps the real failure the "EU" made was really to let the British with guys like you waste money like that achieving nothing.

PPS. what makes you think RISC-V is useless, and over fifteen years behind the times.

PPPS. That comment was as dumb regardless if he was American or British or whatever.

And with your knowledge what would you recommend in stead.

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Re: Can someone clear this up please

@Gordon Shumway

Interesting question, caught up with what?

You might know that on the whole it's China that is catching up with the west and surpassing too in many fields.

To quote CIA on China.

"Measured on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis that adjusts for price differences, China in 2017 stood as the largest economy in the world, surpassing the US in 2014 for the first time in modern history. China became the world's largest exporter in 2010, and the largest trading nation in 2013.".

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/china/#economy

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@elsergiovolador

"So the European tax payer is forced to subsidise big corporations." .

If you are American and wrote that then let me sell you a bridge, also, not that it matters, but I bet you have never read anything Marx wrote.

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Re: Laughable

@StrangerHereMyself

"RISC-V is an open standard instruction set architecture (ISA) based on established reduced instruction set computer (RISC) principles. Unlike most other ISA designs, the RISC-V ISA is provided under open source licenses that do not require fees to use.".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V

PS. No engines were invented in the USA.

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European Processor Initiative

There is this link to Nextplatform from 2018.

The article ends like this.

"Time will tell if Europe will be able to pull off the massive hardware and software development necessary to field a true exascale system. An interesting parallel to the EPI effort is Airbus, another multi-country European collaboration. Airbus has managed to succeed over time versus tough competition from Boeing, selling more single aisle planes than the American company and, more importantly, doing profitable business in a cutthroat industry. EPI is an Airbus-like collaboration addressing even bigger markets, can they engineer the same success?".

https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/10/24/the-plan-for-europes-homegrown-exascale-hpc/

Clegg on its face: Facebook turns to former UK deputy PM to fend off damaging headlines

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OMG Arthur the cat

What is it with you, I wrote "that the pressure in both pipes is equal." and "It's as simple as that".

And now you write I don't understand what you are missing. Incredible.

OMG again, there are two pipes one with hot water and one with colder water.

They meet in a mixer in that one multipurpose tap (all without any air), in front of the boss, the person who decides how warm he/she wants the water to be coming out of the tap.

That person operates that incredible multipurpose tap "handle" by moving it horizontally, colder to the right and warmer to the left. For more or for less water that person will lift it higher for more, and for no water at all he/she will press it totally down. That works exactly as when screwing down one not so modern water tap.

I am beginning to understand the Brexit vote.

PS.there are more advanced taps too but lets wait with that.

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Re: re. Brits' issues with ID is one of the things that baffles us the most

"sometimes to carry,"

There are no such countries in the EU where you have to carry an ID and I don't think there is in the rest of Europe either.

PS. If I have to prove my identity I use my driving license.

I think they are not unknown or hated in Britain either.

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"there are two separate pipes right up to the end"

Of course there is, Sherlock, but the reason you can join them into that one tap is that the pressure in both pipes is equal.

It's as simple as that.

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Clegg wrote this

Clegg wrote this many years ago and I had to copy/past it because I was surprising a politician had the guts to be both honest and brave and British.

"All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism. But the British cross is more insidious still. A misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war, is much harder to shake off"

And I would claim he has managed to find a less crooked future than Cameron.

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Re: Intelligence

Facebook exists only because ..... people use it, I don't, nor should you.

PS. I was able to stop smoking too.

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No the water problem is absolutely ridiculous you let your self remain behind the rest of Europe in exactly the same way taking a vote in the parliament takes half an hour with MPs wandering around the chicken house when the rest of Europe uses a minute or two before pressing a button.

Most Brits don't actually understand why they need two taps and I now wonder if it's still true, and for sure, it cannot be so in any bigger town.

Your explanation for the two taps is rubbish, also there was a time when you had no cars and still you have cars today.

I love you too and wish I could help you.

This is AUKUS for China – US, UK, Australia reveal defence tech-sharing pact

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Re: A hint at the UK's future

@ I ain't Spartacus

There is nothing wrong in being proud and optimistic about "oneself" but there is also a limit to the superlatives one can use before it gets ridiculous.

I once pointed out to one Brit that Britain is not the world's fifth largest economy anymore.

And his response was - yes but Britain is traditionally the fifth largest.

My question is what is it that makes the British repeat that in front of every text, every speech.

Is there even one other country that has this same funny need, France, Germany, China, India ?.

Is this need the result of a immense lack of belief.

A bit like a woman who keeps repeating - look I am beautiful, look I am beautiful.

Britain was number two in car manufacturing for some time after the war but about number thirteen today and foreign owned, an industry hardly happy with Brexit.

But I give you credit for not using the "world leading" even once.

The exports look like this so far.

Country Exports 2021

China $2.16 Tn

United States $1.58 Tn

Germany $1.40 Tn

Japan $683.30 Bn

South Korea $577.40 Bn

France $551.80 Bn

Netherlands $526.40 Bn

Italy $499.10 Bn

Hong Kong $496.90 Bn

United Kingdom $436.50 Bn

Canada $433.00 Bn

From:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/exports-by-country

The services part would make me worried due to the word that shall not be mentioned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJrz3Ambln8

All the best, life goes on.

ExpressVPN bought for $1bn by Brit biz with an intriguing history in adware

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More like a Sponsored article

"generally known for being one of the best"

"to form the global leader in digital privacy.", with six million users.

Vaccine dreams: A trip to Oxford to see a biscuit tin, some bed pans and ChAdOx1 nCov-19

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AZ is still AZ in the EU, I got the PF while my wife got the AZ.

But you are right, no head of state in the EU will start every speech with any mention of any vaccine.

Using the Wikipedia we find some information on price per dose and what has been produced around the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deployment_of_COVID-19_vaccines#Equitable_access

SAP 'investigating' after viral video allegedly shows anti-mask employee coughing on shoppers

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Re: It's sad

It's very sad just listen to these two Christian pastors, madness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae5O8lzlsIs

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Re: Regardless..

"It's not just a US problem, and it's getting worse."

It's more or less only a English speaking problem and to just mention a few reasons, lets start with Rupert, the two party system, education for profit, the "parliamentary" system and there is more.

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Well done SAP

What else could one say.

Open-source software starts with developers, but there are other important contributors, too. Who exactly? Good question

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Re: How about the translators?

As a Finnish programmer (ex) in a country with two official languages, Finnish and Swedish I can assure you it cannot be automated and it's not so easy at all.

One of the big reasons for that is that when, what you want to "say" in one language is fine in 10 characters it's gibberish in that other language.

I got 40 years of experience in that particular problem and it's easy only if you accept the result to be as we say in Finnish - "kuin juosten kustu". And no Google Translate is not there jet but you could of course try it out to understand it.

UK gov blocks the acquisition of Welsh graphene fiddler Perpetuus Group over national security concerns

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Mushroom

It remains childish to call it stealing, so save it and if you are too dumb to do it let the Chinese save it.

Arm says it has 'successful working relationship' with Chinese joint venture run by CEO who refuses to leave

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Re: This is a no-win for China

Size matters.

This on the transfer topic.

The importance of China’s high-speed tech transfer policy.

https://www.railway-technology.com/features/featurethe-importance-of-chinas-high-speed-tech-transfer-policy-5748075/

But I would shut up regarding the "stealing", companies are there because they expect to gain from it, and if they are not somebody else will and they don't like that to happen either.

If we want to be really worried about technology transfer we would close universities for foreign students but that would perhaps bankrupt them so it won't happen.

Can we talk about Kevin McCarthy promising revenge if Big Tech aids probe into January insurrection?

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The African ex president indeed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt9QtHHx-9M

EU to formally probe Nvidia's $54bn takeover over British chip designer Arm – report

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Re: Whatt???

It's indeed called the Brussels effect:

"The Brussels effect is the process of unilateral regulatory globalisation caused by the European Union de facto (but not necessarily de jure) externalising its laws outside its borders through market mechanisms. Through the Brussels effect, regulated entities, especially corporations, end up complying with EU laws even outside the EU for a variety of reasons. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect

'No peeing towards Russia' sign appears on country's Arctic border with Norway

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Re: “Norway is the only neighbor that Russia has not been at war with.”

@Irony Deficient

Yes, sorry you are right. I stand corrected as they say.