Posts by MachDiamond

Re: Permanent status quo

"But that's just me being cynical. Isn't it?"

Not at all. If the game can be perverted to gain an advantage, that's what will happen. It's very important to look for the loopholes and the unintended consequences. The bad guys will find them in very short order. Only the stupid ones get caught.

Re: Permanent status quo

"Unfortunately, the election will only replace the current scumbags with near-identical sumbags who hate freedom even more."

The longer they've been in, the more corrupt they are. It takes at least one term to get their legs under them and learn the sort of graft they can get away with vs. what gets spotted and will have them thrown out. Replacing politicians at each election also forces the outgoing mob to maybe need to find real jobs. At least a real job for a while. Corporations tend to invest the most in politicians that they see will be in for a good long time. Break the chain and realize that even if you have to vote for "the other guy", if they are new, they aren't likely to be able to do as much damage as somebody running for their 8th term. When the choice is between two career politicians, all I can suggest is printing a chart and affixing it to the dart board.

Re: Permanent status quo

"Limiting what we can and can't buy is a wet dream of pretty much every 'I know what is best for you' politician. Just look at the NZ tobacco debacle."

I did notice during lockdowns that the parents of kids that weren't getting the usual free lunches were covered in tatts and bits of shrapnel. They can't feed their children, but can afford to play the part of a pin cushion. If you are on the dole, I don't see a problem with the funds being restricted to essentials such as food and housing. OTOH, money you earn should have no restrictions. If something is legal to purchase, you can spend your money on that and eat ramen noodles the rest of the month if you like.

Re: So, Mrs Rosenworcel is cleaning up Pai's mess

"There was good reason to subsidize the Falcon Heavy, NASA needed a solution now that the Shuttle was decommissioned. "

FH has only flown a handful of times and doesn't have much of a customer base to draw from. Satellites have been getting smaller and lighter with advancements in technology long before Shuttle was closed out for anything except ISS related missions. I don't think that NASA gave SX any money for FH, but the military might have. The military does sometimes want to loft very big and heavy payloads (non-nuclear). The one thing that hasn't gotten lighter is good optics.

Re: rural customers

"I don't know if Starlink's latency is too high for one, though."

Elon's reason for stuffing LEO with 42,000 satellites is to keep latency low and that's about all it has as an advantage over other satellite internet suppliers.

"good enough that you could reasonably share said service amongst a small community."

If all everybody is doing is checking the weather and sending a few emails. The first person that fires up Netflix is going to kill speed for everybody else.

"Finally, remember that Starlink is not an ISP and when you connect to a ground station you get attached to any random ISP that's about,"

What? Starlink is an ISP. What they aren't is a backbone provider. They also have to deploy ground stations that connect to the backbone to relay signals to/from their satellites and not just 'connect' to any random ISP since those other ISP's don't have satellite ground stations.

"The big problem is the short lifetime of the satellites before they need to be replaced."

The terminals are expensive so SpaceX has to subsidize the purchase price paid by the customer. The system gets bogged down in areas with lots of subscribers so they have to limit the number of customers they sign up in each area which has lead to negative reviews. Somebody that gots theirs is very happy but when they tell a friend, that friend winds up on a waiting list which kills word of mouth advertising.

The areas on the planet that don't have internet options where Starlink would be great are also mainly the areas where people don't earn enough money to pay for it. The thing in Africa that hit the news is most likely a lot of people using one terminal and SpaceX is charging less than half the US price for the gear and service. There has to be some sort of internet connection visible from the satellite as Starlink is just an ISP and their birds must have a ground station to relay signals. That might eliminate some places such as Saharan Africa where sats might not be able to "see" any ground stations.

"Where should I pick up my check?"

Form a music publishing company and list with the major licensing agencies, BMG, ASCAP, etc. Until you chart well, you may not get a check that exceeds what it will cost in petrol to take it around to the bank for deposit. They often send paper checks just to get people to not cash them.

The music business is a massive cess pool with sharks. And, you can guess that any shark that can live in a cesspool must be pretty nasty. Musicians are told that if they can dive in and touch the bottom, they get a big reward. Most musicians strip naked and climb the ladder to the 5m platform for a good go. No training, no wetsuit, vaccine regiments, nothing (learning about the ins and outs of the music business).

Re: Which Led Zep Album?

"It is still smaller. Two protons vs two protons and two neutrons."

Yes, but with H2 (the most stable molecule) it's two atoms totaling 2 protons where He is one atom with 2P2N in one nucleus.

"The noise is just FUD."

Travel someplace where the whole city has loads of heat pumps bolted to the side of every building. A bunch of them will be pretty quiet, but it only takes a few that are old, poor quality and out of balance to create a big racket.

Re: Why not just make methane?

"It is pretty trivial using the Sabatier reaction to add CO2 to hydrogen to make methane,"

Most commercial Hydrogen is made from natural gas in the first place. It also makes no sense to use energy to create Hydrogen by splitting water to have a feedstock to use more power turning it into CH4, not to mention what it will take to suck in air and separate CO2 to take that apart for the Carbon.

Re: Hydrogen is absolute SHIT for energy storage or transfer

I'd love to see some commentary to go with the downvotes. In the US, there have been plenty of stories of people going off-grid and having their homes condemned for occupation due to regulations that require connection to utilities if they are available. There's been a couple where kids are involved that are even more painful to hear about. It's nothing about the livability of the home, just that it isn't connected with an active billing account.

Re: Well, duh

"A lot of new houses today seem to be being built with heat pumps installed. It'll be interesting to see how those work out before spending well over £10k to retrofit our older houses."

It will also be useful to get data based on microclimates. There could be swaths that do really well with a ASHP and some that do rather poorly.

Re: Correction

"Hot air is a valuable form of heating."

While what politicians spew is often called "hot" air, it's only slightly above ambient and completely useless. Not enough delta-T.

Re: Hydrogen is absolute SHIT for energy storage or transfer

"And if you don't like it you can just freeze to death without heating as they'll just cut you off."

Depends on where you are. In some places you won't be able to occupy a house that isn't connected to utilities and they'll move mountains to make sure you are out of there even though for 1/4 of the price of doing that, they could pay your bill for you. Chances are a law will be passed that you must be connected and if you fail to pay your bill, they'll put a lien on the property.

Re: I have to wonder

"And somewhere around about 1,054 ministerial appointments up until April of this year. That includes junior minister appointments, and is based on parliamentary data. What a shower of dishonest, incompetent shit."

Do any of them have qualifications in engineering or science? In the US they are mainly failed attorneys so complete shite when it comes to anything very useful.

Re: Well, duh

"Say an all in price of £15k for the heat pump and full system retrofit and make-good."

That's sounds a bit too cheap. Are you including permits and inspections?

Re: Heat pump crump.

"California building code requires heating units, whether you need them or not, but essentially says zip about requiring AC."

The building codes require heating, but that doesn't mean you have to use it or decide to take it out if you like. My heater hasn't been on for 8 years and it's on the chopping block when I get around to redoing the utility room where it lives. I'm eying the space for more storage for my canning habit. I'm in the process of building two more solar collectors for heating the house. I don't mind wearing a jumper most of the time, but not always when indoors. I'm aiming to have most of the south wall of the house covered in collectors in the next year or so. The eves shade the sun from the wall in the warmer months so I won't have to buy blocks of ice come July to compensate. The vent on the roof for the gas heater will also be able to go which will make installing solar PV easier.

"It's currently 12C in my bedroom and about 7C in the kitchen. That's good enough for winter."

I think I sleep better in winter when it's a bit cold in my room. I'm slid under a stack of blankets with the second away from me being electric. It makes more sense to just heat me rather than the whole house. I have electric heat in the bathroom I turn on when I shower.

"To meet the 2050 deadline they would need to be converting 20,000 properties a *week* to heatpumps"

That would also mean the immediate cessation of boiler installation and the scrapping of boilers with plenty of life left in them which also tosses out all of the energy used to create them.

"Protecting an electric system working at approximately 1,000v and probably carrying a similiar magnitude of current, plus a shed load of lithium from water immersion is going to be a heck of a lot harder."

Many EV battery packs are a complete bastard to prize open so provided there aren't any unsealed holes, it could do ok. Fresh water isn't all that conductive. If you studied your Scrapheap Challenge properly, The Nerds just left the electric flapping in the current with their diver tow submersible. Longevity could be an issue. Salt water will be a big dose of fun regardless and you just know somebody will try it.

"In the US? The judge must have run out of ink before he could write the rest of the zeros."

That was a criminal trial so there may have been some statutory limits. The civil trial, which should be a slam dunk now, can have all the zeros it wants.

Re: Tesla Drivers Have the Highest Crash Rate of Any Brand

"Study by car loan giant LendingTree:"

Big heavy trucks have the problem of inertia and less visibility than a passenger car which may contribute to RAM owners bashing their way through life.

The drink driving and BMW pairing doesn't surprise me in the least.

Re: I'm sorry, what was that?

"In any case, for criminals and terrorists, cash is still king,"

It's a problem too. If you watch some of the border patrol TV shows, large sums of cash are sought and they even have dogs trained to sniff out banknotes. This makes crypto something like Western Union without the oversight as a convenient way to move large sums of money from country to country. It's a good argument for governments to keep cash around as moving it, even in large denomination notes, is cumbersome in large amounts. One million US is 10kgs and fits in a large carry-on. Gold is 22-23kgs but much more compact. The downside with Gold is it's hard to transact in large quantities without going off-grid and accepting a heavy discount from spot. Wheat, no the other hand, might be a good way to transfer money if it's transported from one country to another. You lose the shipping cost, but then again, you could also make money while at the same time moving value from place to place.

Re: Only $610,000?

"The old adage about a fool and his money comes to mind every time I hear about someone getting scammed, hacked, rug pulled etc. etc."

I think many people are looking for easy money and haven't yet learned that 'easy' and 'low-risk' are on opposite sides of the graph. Any investment worth getting into is not going to be simple. It will take some knowledge and skill to make a proper evaluation of the risks and rewards.

Plain old currency speculation at least has the benefit of historical records that are based on something real. If you use Euros to buy US Dollars thinking the Dollar will go up, even if you jump wrong, the Dollar will still have value. It's not going to evaporate leaving behind a news story about somebody missing and believed to currently be in a country with no extradition treaties with any other country.

Re: Next steps

"Good stuff but it will also nullify all that guff we hear about crypto transactions being anonymous and free from state or indeed any central control."

The sorts of transactions you would want to hide that would make crypto the medium of choice will be automatically flagged as suspicious. If you make a large transaction using crypto for something like a car or land, the tax authority is going to want a chat about where the money came from and that they've carved out and been paid what they think would be due on that money. If you can't provide a good paper trail on that money, there will be a reckoning. That's the problem with big transactions, they're usually for something that is registered or licensed if they're legit. You could buy tonnes of wheat for delivery somewhere, but what would be the reason for using crypto?

A number of people that were duped by SBF (strange family name since his parents never married) have been screaming for more regulation. I have yet to see the media interview somebody that is just shrugging and saying it was the chance they took and nothing should change.

Re: I'm sorry, what was that?

"Digital pound or dollar anyone? (I hope not....)"

I'd not want to participate in those either. It's those cash purchases that I mentioned above where a Three Letter Agency can really get to know you. If all of your day to day purchases are computerized, it just makes it easier to build a detailed file about you since computers can spot the patterns and spit out matches rather than trained humans pouring over endless minutia.

Re: I'm sorry, what was that?

"if cryptocurrencies were widely used and you were fleeing a despotic government you could walk across the border with your keys memorised or steganographically hidden"

That is way off to one side of the graph. Not impossible, but it might be improbable that somebody with enough money to diddle with crypto would have enough of anything to hide when crossing a border. That would also be crossing a border at a formal crossing.

Sewing a pattern in your clothes would be really extreme. A microSD card is very easy to hide and a simple RFID is even easier.

Re: Spread too thin

"Coat

Re: Spread too thin

"Where else is there left to turn except AI?"

Blockchain!!!!"

Umm, Elon is the lead defendant in the largest lawsuit ever over his pump of Doge. Not only is Elon listed, so are all of the companies he operates. It may not go well for his defense if he continues on with crypto at this time.

Re: Spread too thin

"So, he's not even necessarily spending 40hrs/week at any of those businesses actually doing work."

Deducting the time he spends taking xitts, he may not even be spending a cumulative 40 hours per week working.

Re: Its a competitiveness issue

" I live in Southern California where this is literally everywhere -- you could fall and die of exposure in what's nominally a park if you're off trail "

It's another argument for not going 'off-trail' and only in a group of at least 3 people. If you can't get a couple more people to go with you, just stick to a very popular trail. That said, a co-worker standing on one foot, facing Mecca and holding one hand at the proper angle was able to get service at the top of Mt. Whitney. Too much of a hike for me, but I'd have taken my Ham radio with me and been able to talk to just about every repeater in California with the right antenna.

Re: Autopilot may undermine the effectiveness of the driver's supervision

"Unless you do what sane people do ... purchase a car with logically thought out controls."

The evolution of controls in cars has been over many years and the reason most cars are very similar is that the designs have all converged on what works.

Re: Autopilot may undermine the effectiveness of the driver's supervision

"BTW, how does one toggle turn signals with both hands on the wheel?"

Fair question since I've heard they removed the stalk control that could be operated with finger tips.

Re: In Other News

"The recall/update is because a minority of morons can't be trusted to use it properly "

It's also too easy to use it improperly. At least some of the cases have been on roads where the system shouldn't have been able to be engaged.

Re: "recall"

"So while there are more ICE fires it would be interesting to know what proportion of them result in a write off to make a more meaningful comparison."

The car is likely an insurance write-off in either case. The ICEV may have more parts left that can be salvaged.