Posts by Steve Button

Re: 7kW

"I'm sure this has been considered"

That's SO funny. Mwa ha ha ha ha. [ Insert lots of manic laughter at this point ]

Most of the people that govern us have VERY little understanding of science, or frankly anything relating to the real world. They study PPE mostly. They have never had proper jobs. They would struggle to change the oil on a car, even given many hours. Or probably even change the fuse in a domestic plug. Or attach a printer to a PC.

Some minister, who's only going to be in the job for 18 months anyway (if lucky) puts in a target to say that we need to have 300,000 charging points by 2030. Then it's up to someone else to actually make that happen.

The thing is, we're not "all" suddenly going to want to drive 20 year old cars in the next 10 years or so. So, there's be a period of time when most of us are being forced to drive them well before your 30 year horizon, although realistically that's not going to happen as they will HAVE to push the date back (unless they put in a fucking monumental, "moonshot" type programme to build enough charging points, starting right now - and who's paying for that?).

Sorry, just had to add a few more mwa ha ha, because your post is so naïve. Actually "they" would probably do well to come to The Reg forums, as there's a lot of smart people lurking who know how to make things actually work.

Re: 7kW

"The Charging Wars, they have begun" - Yoda, 2026.

Re: 7kW

From the article...

"Overall, the plan sounds like a good one."

Actually, no it doesn't. Not enough current, too close to junctions and fat cables trailing across the pavement. That's in addition to the maintenance issues that you mentioned.

"Much like popping charge points on lamp posts, the infrastructure is there"

Actually, no it's not. Again, not enough current and there aren't the transformers in place to cope with the extra load. Plus the other problems. "Infrastructure" being the whole thing, not just the point of delivery.

It's not just the charging problems that put people off EVs, it's also the resale value and the insurance costs which keep going up. Oh, and the up-front cost. I was thinking that I'd be getting one at some point, but once I actually looked into it it doesn't seem like such a good idea any more. I'll stick with petrol or diesel until things change, and by then we might have some better alternative technology.

I'm imagining people stuck for hours at service stations, queuing for charging points and fights breaking out over who was next in the queue. Isn't this inevitable, if we're all forced to get the bloody things before the infrastructure is ready to cope?

Re: Don't get this confused with free speech.

Here's the distinction. And it's not about what I agree with.

If I call my boss an asshole publicly, I would expect to get into trouble. Probably gross misconduct for bringing the company into disrepute. I would probably expect to get fired. Not much I can do about it.

If I send money to Canadian truckers, I would expect nothing to happen. It's none of their business. It's not brining the company into disrepute. I would take them to a tribunal. I know that this *has* happened to some Canadians.

If I happened to work for His Muskiness, then I would not publicly call him an asshole. Even though I actually think he is, a bit.

If I said "children at six months old should take Covid and Flu jabs" (which I don't agree with) I would also expect no action. It's just an opinion.

Re: Don't get this confused with free speech.

Thumbs up for that. I agree. The "pedo guy" thing really sealed it for me. Steve Jobs was also a bit of a dick, but Musk is way worse by many accounts. I also think he's an interesting character.

I like what he's done with community notes on Twitter (I don't use it any more, but I see it mentioned in SubStack sometimes), which means we get a much more balanced view. In the last few days the Associated Press has been "fact checked" by community notes for making out that the president of Harvard was hounded out because right-wing nutcases are using plagiarism as a weapon. In fact you'd expect anyone committing plagiarism on this scale to have to resign (even an undergraduate would get booted for this level). This would not happen on Facebook, LinkedIN or the BBC, where they would just imply "she had to resign because racism".

So, yeah he's a dick. But he's also standing up for free speech. Not that I'm going to be working for him any time soon, even if asked.

He also talks a lot of bollocks, particularly about AI and being in a simulation... but he also says some interesting stuff. He's pushing back on DEI and equality of outcome (which is very bad if you follow it to conclusion) rather than equality of opportunity (which is very good). He's not a fan of "woke"... meaning punishing people in a performative way for having an unauthorised opinion, including taking away their livelihood.

It does seem a weird world where students can call for the genocide of Jews without reprisals, but get ejected for calling a biological man "him". Which one is more harmful? Is it worse to get actually beaten up, or get hurt feelings?

It's good to have people who think differently, and are willing to shake things up a bit sometimes. And call out the BS when they see it.

I'm literally sitting here with the alarm clock saying it's 20.2 and I'm wearing a vest, long sleeved top, cardigan + thick jumper. That's on top. Got nothing on the bottom half, perhaps that's why I'm still cold. ;-)

Sorry, I'll get the mind bleach.

This reminds me of the great Cambridge Office Heating Wars of 2013 (you all know who you are) where a few people would sit in a short sleeved shirt with a desk fan blowing (I'm looking at you Other Steve), and the rest would have a hat, coat and scarf. A more innocent time. No Trump. No Brexit. No Covid. No Culture Wars.

Re: I have to wonder

Just wait until next year.

Then we can have an equally useless government. Perhaps they'll even surpass this one? The new lot are definitely more in favour of Net Zero fantasies, so let's wait and see how that pans out.

Re: wow

Hey! Some people are doing very well out of it!

It sounds like you DO have a thermostat. It's YOU. And you've got it set very low.

Personally I'm shivering when my office gets below 19 deg C. When it hits 21 I take off the 2nd jumper.

Either way, neither of us want a heat hump.

Re: Not difficult

I'm actually quite happy with that arrangement. I work for my own company. Pay lots of tax. Claim some expenses, which brings down that tax a bit. Get paid a lot more than a "permy" doing a similar thing, and then at the end of the project I just walk away. No need for sick pay. I sort my own pension. Also, if the company needs to scale down I'll be the first to go before they have to start making people redundant. It's a good system. It works. I pay a lot of tax.

It's not good for an Uber or Deliveroo driver, which is what this article is about. They should get some protection... but I don't want to get caught in that same net (assuming I want to work in the EU)

Re: Not difficult

So, IT Contractors should not exist in this scenario?

I've been working for the same "client" on several projects for the last year now. I know this is not the same as a "gig worker" but if you go by a lot of the criteria, then I actually do. Also, if I took on a contractor to help me convert a barn, for example, and gave them 18 months of work (which I will be supervising, directing and controlling - I'm not going to just let them build it how and when they feel like) then am I supposed to "employ" them? Pay their pension? Give them sick pay? Make them redundant at the end of the 18 months? It's all a bit of a mess.

So, actually it IS difficult and blanket rules like this just catch people like me who are quite happy running a business and working for someone for 3 / 6 / 12 months at a time.

Re: bullshit detected

Depends on your definition of "fit".

I can put on an XXXL Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan t-shirt, but I don't think anyone would say it "fits".

Re: The absence of backlighting

I agree about the battery life.

Not sure about the backlighting. I've just removed all the keycaps from my mechanical custom keyboard (not my main one) and put blank ones in, and I'm also "at an age"... but still fighting.

Re: WTF????

"we’re all heading for complete ecological collapse"

Have you got any evidence for that, or do you think if you just shout it in a shrill voice everyone will believe you?

I'm more concerned about pollution. Sewage in the water, heavy metals polluting fish, pesticides, etc. etc.

CO2 is not pollution.

The problem is that the people who fund the studies into Climate Change Religion only want to hear more bad news, and so it's the bad news studies that get more funding. It's a scary positive feedback loop. If there was not much to talk about, how could they justify flying an entourage off to COP28 in a private jet, where they'll eat ... bugs? Veggies?

The thread has been hijacked by people who have seen through all the bullshit.

Sorry did someone offend your religion?

Re: Horses *did* protest

Perhaps YOUR kids. Mine are a lot smarter than a horse. Which is why they don't work for BT*. ;-)

I'm sitting here next to a horse field, and those buggers are pretty bloody dumb.

It's not like cats, where they basically run the house and have humans making everything nice for them. (Or dolphins, or mice. but mainly cats)

* I joke. Over the past 20+ years I've worked with some of the smartest propellerheads I've ever met at BT up the road in Martlesham.

Re: Someone Else's Computer certification

The answer is... it depends.

Is your project going to be truly "steady traffic" 24x7, or does it have steady traffic only during the day? If you design for the cloud you could use much smaller servers and scale out as needed. Migrate to a bigger server instance size? Piece of piss.

Also, what happens if your power goes out for several hours? Are you going to keep a UPS?

Have you factored in the cost of electricity for this server?

When you say "simply renting a server" do you mean at a colo, or in your own premises?

Even with a colo, you are risking a long outage if they have a flood / fire / something you haven't thought of. So, you're gonna need two which are geographically apart.

If your project is down for a week, are all your customers going to disappear and go somewhere else? Or will they not care?

I, personally would not dream of hosting something myself unless it was very small, and I don't care about down time or very big, and not at all bursty. I actually can't think of a small project that I would host myself, but I guess there might be some.

Cloud just takes away so many headaches. They have top class security (Not Azure though). Three AZs if you want it. Backups are super easy. Power supply is reliable. Database administration is super easy. As much bandwidth as you can handle. You can go "serverless" with FaaS, at least for some jobs / workloads, which means you can scale to zero.

OTOH, it can be a confusing nightmare and they seem to release dozens of new services every month. IAM can be particularly mind blowing. If you want to even just list the tags on an EC2 snapshot with Python, you'll end up digging into some horrid JSON queries. Oh, and cost CAN get way out of control if you don't keep on top of thing. It's just too easy to spin up a new xyz and forget to shut it down. But there are LOTS of things you can do to keep cost down.

Re: Remember the 70's promise's

The worrying thing is that these billionaires always seen to want to force us to do things "for our own good" and shape the world the way they think it should be. Gates, Musk, Soros, Thiel and Schwab and ALL megalomaniacs* and are all very powerful. And they all think they are doing good. And they are all technocrats. And we can't vote them out, even though they have much more power than, say, the PM.

*just a few random examples, there are many more who fly into these conferences in their private jets.

Re: It's simple really.

I think I mean Leary. Or Unruly. Or something. Not Leery anyway.

Re: Reverse Midas

We could soon be as safe as North Korea, where there is 0% crime and everyone is happy all the time.

Re: What?

"limitless opportunity to grow the global economy"

Why stop there? Why not go full Iain M. Banks Culture and grow the Universal economy? We could be living forever in utopia before the next election. Right?