* Posts by MachDiamond

8717 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Aug 2012

Musk 'texts' Nadella about Windows 11's demands for a Microsoft account

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: If he thinks that's bad he should try MacOS

"Sure, if you want to neuter half the bundled apps."

BONUS!

Underwater cables in Red Sea damaged months after Houthis 'threatened' to do just that

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Why do they need a submarine?

"Depths are obviously still a challenge, "

I don't see why. Just build an ROV with very little air space inside and it could go down as far as you like. If the intent is a one way mission, building cheap would be easy. The big expense comes with making something robust enough to last a decade and carry very expensive sensing gear. LED lighting can be awesome and can be given a spray or dip in some sealing goo just good enough to see the lights through one mission and there is no need to put them in expensive pressure tight housings. Water and electricity can mix if you only need the thing to work for a limited amount of time (low-voltage).

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Why do they need a submarine?

"But all that is specific to the English Channel, everywhere else in the world telecommunication cables are just sitting duck to a stray anchor except when they come near the coast "

Ehhhhhh, the cables are installed in places where ships aren't expected to anchor just for the reason of the cable being damaged accidentally. If you ever wondered why cables come ashore in some odd hollow along the coast away from the ports, now you know.

I expect that it wouldn't be too hard with the proper resources to get the exact path of an undersea cable. With that information, rigging up a cable cutter that can be lowered down to snag and severe the cable won't require a sub. With a powered cutter, it wouldn't even take a very large ship to do the work. Make the dangly bit cheap and there's little value in bringing it back up to use again.

It is a bird, a plane or a Chinese spy balloon? None of the above

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: China insisted was an errant weather balloon

"I'm pretty sure that the typical weather balloons used in the US are designed to come down fairly quickly."

There is software that lets you calculate how much H2 or He to put in a balloon with a given mass carrying a payload of a given mass to either have it top out at a high altitude and cruise or make a trip up until it goes bang whereupon a parachute is deployed and the payload drifts back down to the ground. The last one I worked on some years ago did a fast trip up to about 48,000' and traveled about 80 miles downrange. I can't remember what our calcs were for but I think it was pretty close.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: China insisted was an errant weather balloon

"That same article makes an unverified claim that some governments may have low single-digit centimeter per pixel resolutions already. "

Any photographer knows that the more atmosphere you are trying to see through, the bigger a thing has to be to see it clearly. This is why I chuckle at the conspiracy theorists that make claims that the gubbamint can read license plates from space. On a hot day, you can't read them from a few hundred meters due to the heat shimmer coming off the road.

Cutting kids off from the dark web – the solution can only ever be social

MachDiamond Silver badge

"In the old days, us kids would have been watching a copy of Hellraiser that someone managed to rent from the corner shop. "

Let the age guesses commence.

I remember sneaking into a drive-in cinema with my cousins to watch a Dirty Harry or Charles Bronson movie. I say sneaking, but they didn't seem to care. It was R rated so there's no way any of us could have bought a ticket for a sit-down cinema. It wasn't the sort of movie that I'd prefer given a choice. I expect that I would have become numb to that sort of movie if I was constantly exposed to them. I like comedies and especially sci-fi comedy. Just watched Paul again last night. I may have seen it enough to pick up on all of the references except the most obscure. Anybody want a bagel? Huh?, interested?

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Root causes?

"The fundamental question we need to answer is "why are torture and murder sites interesting to anyone ?""

Why can't so many people never learn maths? How come women, on average, aren't as good at spatial analysis?

When I see people that have obviously gone around the twist, I have a hard time understanding their lack of connection with reality. I expect there are a long list of reasons why people might be drawn to violence.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: The law is not everything

"From what I have seen of ice hockey* its really is a form of armed combat. :)"

The local league I played in didn't allow checking. Most of us were working professionals and didn't want to wind up in hospital with broken bits. The defenseman I was paired with quite often was an orthopedic surgeon, so he was good to know. There were a few other doctors, a couple of lawyers and a bunch of other business owners like me. We all loved the game but left the mortal combat aspects to the guys on TV with big salaries and hot/cold running medical coverage.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: The law is not everything

"It's worth noting that around 1/3 of ALL sex offenders are under 18"

I remember a story where a gf/bf wound up 'with child'. Both were in high school, but the boy was 18 at the time and the girl 17. Both sets of parents were not happy, but supportive. The law viewed the matter differently and charged the boy with rape. I can't remember if I ever found out what the judge said, but thought that the matter involved a judge was silly. If convicted, the boy would wind up in prison for a number of years and have to register as a sex offender on release. Because of that story, I have my doubts when it comes to statistics about sex offenders. If an underage girl uses her phone to take a reveling photo to send to her boyfriend, he can be up for charges of possessing child pron. She might be scolded but there's an odd problem with charging a minor if they self-produce the content on their own without any coercion (US). It has been reported on multiple occasions usually due to the boy showing the photo around.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: The law is not everything

"Who needs ridiculously invasive laws when PARENTS are the ones ultimately responsible for what their kids are doing."

The government wants to take over that job and in many cases there can be a good justification made. What would turn that around is if the parents were held responsible for the acts of their minor child. How many parents would keep better track if they had to spend their days off painting over graffiti or picking up trash in the local park?

When I was growing up, the police were the least of my worries. My concern is what my dad might do if I were caught doing something bad. My dad bought a small pickup for me to use when I got my license. I put it that way as it was registered in his name and the truck came with a list of rules. The most serious rule breaking/bad behavior would have him selling the truck. I did get a parking ticket one time and owned up right away. I borrowed my mother's car when mine was in the shop and didn't put the parking tag for the college (started while still in high school) in mom's car. It was an honest mistake and I was let off the hook where "the law" would have me losing use of my car for a week for a parking ticket. My dad could be tough, but he as also very fair. Nothing he required of me was onerous or out of line. When I was staying with him, I had chores. It was a ranch so there were always things to do. When I was done, I could ask to go run off with my friends and as long as I did my chores properly, the answer was never in doubt. How many parents these days set the same sort of bounds?

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Forbidden fruit

Kids have a lot more time to suss all of this stuff out too. I've got work, household chores and all sorts of other stuff I have to get done every day that many kids don't. They've also got a big consulting network comprised of all of their school mates where I have a few good friends that I'm not talking to every day and aren't going to bother continuously about figuring out some thing online just because. Besides all of that, being a bit naughty isn't as compelling as it once was and the consequences of being really naughty are much greater.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Chilling Effects

"The ones I've seen are cheap Android devices that have been locked down with some unverified tracking and blocking software, never get updates, and have terrible specs."

You list those as if they are bad. Many parents want for their kids to be able to call them at any time from any where. Fewer parents want the devices to be entertainment appliances that the kids stare at all day long and go into fits when the battery won't hold at least 3 hours of a charge anymore.

They don't need "specs", updates or be able to access the internet. They just need to be a phone (and an unannounced tracking device).

Ford pulls the plug on EV strategy as losses pile up

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: It's the cost that gets you in the end

""You can only charge where there's a charger.""

The "charger" when using AC is in the car. All that's needed is someplace to plug in. DC charging requires an external charger and those are mainly for rapid charging on trips.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: It's the cost that gets you in the end

"I can quite easily see a situation where I say "I want between 50% and 90% at the start of each day... and then I plug in each evening and if the grid is expensive for a few nights not much charge will be added, the car will drop towards that 50%, and get topped up the bare minimum to meet the stated need - but then there's a really cheap day and the car gets charged to 90%,"

This is where a smarter grid would really be a big advantage. It can also mean that when there's a huge supply of wind, rates can drop encouraging people to charge, having programmed their car to take advantage and be plugged in, rather than turning the turbines out of the wind due to oversupply issues. It could even create services that look at the weather and other factors for the coming week and program the EV's of customers signed up for the service to be in a position to take advantage of cheap rates. One can always push the "charge now" button if they need to. All of this would mean better use of the installed infrastructure.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: It's the cost that gets you in the end

"On the other hand, if you want an EV with similar range to an ICE vehicle, you do need a battery of that general size."

No, you don't. EV's don't need a maximum range similar to an ICEV. My petrol car can go ~8 hours on a full tank. My bladder and blood sugar can't. The overwhelming majority of the time I have no need for as much as half a tank of petrol for a day's work. I like having a tank as large as I have due to it minimizing my need of filling up more frequently which is a hugely parasitic task against waking time. It's not 5 minutes, it's far longer unless I want to pay the top price and pull right up to a pump without waiting. If I'm planning a trip where I want a full tank when I leave, I need to plan for that the day before and stop to top up which can be at least a 15 minute time waster rather than a generous 1 minute plugging in the night before. I expect that plugging and unplugging is one minute so even if I could refuel my car in 5 minutes, that's 5x the amount of time required and usually more.

I commented much further back that GM might have replaced the recalled Bolt packs with a lighter one (didn't make that entirely clear) since the new cells were more energy dense rather than increasing the capacity by 10% through filling up the container. A lighter car is more efficient. Bigger and bigger battery packs have diminishing returns since very few people would use them to empty often enough to make lugging around the added mass worthwhile.

I can do a full day of field service work within the range of most current EV's. That's me sorted 90% of the time. That last 10% can't be accommodated with a bit of time and a bit of planning. Paying for double the battery capacity to get me past another 6% of my needs is silly since the battery in an EV is the largest component cost. This is the same reasoning why the lighting fixtures in the family bath aren't LED. The cost of specialty lamps to fit what's there or what it would cost to replace the fixtures is far more than what I'd save in electricity over the next several years given how much that bath is used.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: It's the cost that gets you in the end

"There is yet to be a viable alternative to petrol and diesel so I doubt it could be realistic in its assessment"

In what situation? EV's are not a Silver Bullet, which should be obvious, but could be a good solution in enough cases to be viable for a majority of people.

My dad needed his pickup to pull the horse trailer and get supplies for the ranch, but it was a poor vehicle as a daily driver to get to and from his day job. He bought a cheap compact that saved money each month on the bottom line. There was no "universal solvent" vehicle that could do all of the jobs that needed to be accommodated so owning 3 cars (including my step-mother's car) was the best solution. I'm not saying that everybody has to own an ICEV AND an EV, but that an EV is not a drop-in replacement for everybody's FF car.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: It's the cost that gets you in the end

JR, you are getting the pattern of the bricks on your forehead from the wall you keep banging your head against on this one, mate.

Some people will look for ways to not make something work. I try to see it the other way around and I happen to be in a place where an EV would work great, but they are too expensive for my budget. One of the reasons one would work is because I've looked for ways to make it work. If I plan a trip I might want to take that doesn't seem to have enough DC chargers along the route, I'll see if there are RV campsites that welcome EV charging to bridge the gaps. I'd rather spend effort trying to find a way to make something work. I do the same thing with my business. I've learned it's better to find a way to say yes to a customer than to automatically say no. Sometimes it is no, but not for lack of trying. Things change too so at some point I might find myself needing to replace my ICEV and find an EV at an affordable price. Since I've done the work, I know where that break point is where I can say yes, get the EV.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Purchase cost is one thing

"My EV is over 5 and a half years old and still has 100% capacity on the battery. Battery life is far more than expected in real life."

Most manufacturers seem to be installing packs with more capacity than they advertise and have software dole out the excess as the battery degrades so it appears not to degrade. It makes sense as the batteries settle initially and spend their middle years at a fairly steady capacity.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: re: EV fuelling speed - Poor

""Why use the nearest shell charger" There's no shell chargers around me. The closest public charger is 16 miles away, and is motorfuels group, they charge 79p/kWh."

You might want to check every month or so and see if there's more competition (lower rates). If you can charge at home, a public charger nearby isn't a test. You want to know if there are public chargers along the routes you are most likely to take. I like A Better Route Planner and it's international so it works just about everywhere. I'm not sure if some of the others are US only or not. 79p/kWh is very expensive for charging. 50p would be more in line with prices in the US where there's competition. The price varies by location and charge rate as well. If you need better than 150kW, it's more than a charger that's only good up to 150kW which is more than one rated up to 80kW. I find it funny to see articles where a "journalist" complains about plugging into a 350kW stand and only getting 75kW max when that's all the car they are "reviewing" is capable of.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: @MachDiamond

"I'm afraid people are still going to say things you don't like, whether they are posting as AC or not."

I'm good with that. Echo chambers aren't nearly as interesting as an informed debate, but unless there is a good reason for somebody to post anonymously, I find it better if there is a name attached to the comments.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: choice of fast/ultrafast charging rates depending on your model choice

"And how many of those can you be sure are working and not occupied when you need them?"

Of course there's an app for that. Holiday weekends can be a real chore right now.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Once upon a time....

"Some drivers may think they can hold their concentration, hunger and bladder for 3-7 hours but they haven't convinced me."

This is where I think Hyundai/Kia have hit a good balance. They have models that go for a good 3-4 hours on a full charge, say from breakfast to lunch, and can charge very quickly so in 20 minutes during that stop for lunch, the car is up to 80%+ and ready to go again. You may wind up breaking for dinner a bit earlier than normal, but only on a really long trip. On a multi-day trip, booking a hotel that has charging can mean a 100% battery in the morning once again. Even camping somewhere with RV hookups would charge most EV's overnight (240v50A).

Staff say Dell's return to office mandate is a stealth layoff, especially for women

MachDiamond Silver badge

"Might be worth driving a camper van to work."

I know a person that was on a 4/10 schedule and had bought a camper van that he left in the car park. It was cheaper to do that than to have an apartment in town since his home was a distance away. Some co-workers rented a small basic flat to stay in since the city was expensive and they could have a home an hour or two away that they could afford. One of those finally figured out that they could find a job paying less where they owned a home and still come out far ahead at the end of each month.

MachDiamond Silver badge

"Stopping WFH-allowances last year was also not the first indication."

They may have found that people were still saving bucket loads of money by not commuting and having moved someplace with a better cost of living that the loss of the allowance wasn't much of an incentive to return. Even a good set of trainers is expensive while very comfy bunny slippers are cheap. There may be a reason why I mention this.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Do not Google.

"I googled "markov chains" once, and was startled by how many ads offered free shipping on them. "

My search on that yielded lots of "related" ads for leather and latex.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: re: FTFY

"From recent experience of reading CVs people want a LOT of money."

Was the ask justified? People can be very full of themselves, but so can companies. I'd ask for much more to work in London than Norwich. My costs and the level of aggravation are much different between the two areas.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: re: FTFY

"I'm in aerospace/defence, and I regularly see high skilled senior/principal engineering jobs which pay around the same as being the manager of a McDonald's restaurant, and the latter job doesn't require expertise and experience in a range of specialist areas."

The manager of a fast food restaurant isn't an unskilled worker. It's a different skill set than designing and building avionics. I managed a wood shop for a time and also worked as an engineering manager on rockets in charge of avionics. Both were not entry level jobs and the fast food manager is likely dealing with more stress.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: re: FTFY

"If they are it is because they made a deliberate choice to live beyond their means. If you give someone who makes that choice 10-20% higher pay they will live further beyond their means and still have unpaid bills."

If somebody has had no instruction in personal finance, it might not be that they are such big spenders that they are living beyond their means from over consumption. They may have wanted a job, working for a particular employer and never ran the numbers to see if the pay they'd get matched what it costs to live where that employer wants them to work. Plenty of people will always spend 10% more than they make, certainly, but that's not always the case.

MachDiamond Silver badge

"My company (UK, aerospace, not IT) is struggling to offer decent wage to get engineers"

It's not always wages. I'd never move back to the big city after having lived where traffic jams are the times when people have to drive the posted speed limit. I see arguments posted where companies say they have to be located <<here>> to be able to attract the sort of people the need. It's a load of tosh. I know people that have taken a job in the Silicon Valley and left shaking from the financial worries. It's not a good place to live and even though they were given a large salary, the cost of homes and the cost of living in general ate their paychecks piranhas. Traffic sucked. They worried for their kids and left town at every opportunity. I'm old and cynical enough now that my goal is comfort rather than wealth. I wound up somewhere that allowed me to buy a house and pay it off in a short time. Taxes are not as good as some places, but lower than many.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Sueball Time

"I wonder how many secret documents he'll take next time he leaves."

Whose to say how many secret communications were hoovered up when that scary Clinton woman decided to run her own server to bypass official documentation rules?

There hasn't been a marginally good contender for US President in ages. To bring the mood down, look at the non-mainstream US political parties. They are so far off the pitch that they're even well clear of the car park. The Republican and Democrat parties have stopped grooming the best of their lot to boost into the top jobs and just spend what little time they put into the job on campaigning for the next election, making sure they have a cushy job with a big company in the wings just in case and making sure their investments are all stitched up.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Sueball Time

"I've never seen an employment contract that explicitly states where the work needs to be done"

There can be an assumption made if it isn't in a contract and an employee might not like the decision of the labor board/tribunal. If you expect that your job will be remote, in office or some ratio, you want to put that in your contract. Anything promised verbally is only as good as the paper it's written on, as the saying goes.

If your job changes, you should get your contract amended to match the new circumstances. I review my Terms and Conditions at least once a year and my contracts annually as well. They are all living documents that change over time.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Sueball Time

"This is why the US needs more unions, or at least stronger labor regulations. "

I was in a union once and never again. They originated at a time when there were almost no labor laws protecting employees. Today, they are something of a love/hate relationship. GM isn't that pleased with the UAW in the US, but they also see the problem of dealing with each worker (they are employees of the union for practical purposes) individually. It's much easier to have a well defined contract that spells out details of the post and pay scales. There are unions now that represent the cleaning staff at hotels. I know everybody wants better wages and they aren't going to be able to go to school to learn computer programming, but it's a minimum skill job so it's not the sort of thing that should be expected to support a single parent household with 5 children.

There are reams of labor regulations. Some are enforced and some aren't. Adding more isn't a good use of time. Along with personal finance and real world economics, the realities of the workplace should be taught in school.

MachDiamond Silver badge

"Mail order brides are still a thing, eh?"

They are. There's also plenty of people looking to get out of their country that will "hook up" with the right person, marry them for a bit and then get a divorce once they've met the minimum time quota to remain as a citizen. That can be a bit of a let down if you get into one of those arrangements without knowing in advance.

MachDiamond Silver badge

"It wouldn't really suit me but for them it means that they can work when they might otherwise be not able to."

Just having a professional job comes with some expense. Commuting, wardrobe, etc. If childcare has to be tacked on, it might not be financially worthwhile for a parent to work at all. I think many parents don't run those numbers to see if the difference is all down to a take away coffee 5 mornings a week.

MachDiamond Silver badge

"What's probably more likely is that the majority of those that need to work remotely have child-based commitments which are disproportionately women by and large"

If Dell had previously accommodated that really well, they would have attracted many more women to those posts since there's still a handful that aren't all that keen on handing off their kids to daycare and who knows what sort of influences. As Jellied pointed out, if the work is getting done, why not. It should make no difference if the employee is putting the time in on a different schedule so they can look after their family. A WFH arrangement also means that a parent doesn't have to call in when they need to remain home to look after a sick child.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: "sexist in favor of females"

"I don't really care where an employee works, when they work or how they work as long as the work they're hired for gets done."

Some employers sort of miss that point even though the execs might have held weeks of meetings to thrash out how many people they need on something when they've estimated the amount of work needing doing and how fast an average person can be expected to do it. There's no point in getting mad at people if they do it in better time. Some people are better than others at finding the best way to get a job done. I bill by the job, not the hour as doing time billing means I penalize myself for being efficient. It also means that over time as I get more experience, I make less than a noob just figuring things out.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Wouldn't suprise me

"Just so you know.... there's no such thing as redundancy pay in the US."

It's not an automatic and universal thing, but there are regulations that apply to large employers. Elon regularly runs into this sort of thing and a little bit of searching will show a few handfuls of employee/employer lawsuits. You would certainly never want to agree to binding arbitration at a Musky company. Large companies that reduce their workforce by a certain percentage can be liable to pay those people for a period of time. The footnotes to that would be pages long.

What can also happen in the US is a fine for sacking somebody without due course. It can be very expensive to fire an employee for one infraction of the rules or even several if they aren't given a warning first.

Rice isn't nice for drying your iPhone, according to Apple

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Refrigeration

"The driest place in your home is your fridge. So give your damp gadget an overnight chill. Seriously."

That does work fine after a good rinse in distilled water if the device was drenched in something else. The other comment about condensation being a problem really isn't a problem. Just let the device warm back up slowly by wrapping it up in something like a tea towel or removing it from the fridge on a cold evening.

One of my earliest electronics jobs was repairing audio electronics. All manner of drinks wind up going down the back of guitar amps and being splashed all over the place. No matter how many times they are told, people will continue to set their beverages on electronics. The biggest problem was not cleaning up as soon as possible and letting whatever the drink was dry. Once it got to sticky, that was it for the controls and many fizzy drinks can contain phosphoric acid, fruit juices can contain citric acid, etc. Acid and Copper don't like each other but a PCB and distilled water get on just fine (disconnected from the mains, of course).

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Maybe isopropyl alcohol ?

"Or just shut the thing in a box with a small peltier dehumidifier ?"

A fridge works very well.

GlobalFoundries scores $1.5B in Uncle Sam's semiconductor subsidy bonanza

MachDiamond Silver badge

Drop meet bucket

Given the cost to build a leading edge fab, the US fund of free money for big companies is woefully inadequate. The issue has been companies needing State Department approval to sell leading edge silicon products to anybody other then the US government. If the US wants an electronics industry, the easiest way to the goal is look at why it isn't profitable for companies to locate in the US.

DEF CON is canceled! No, really this time – but the show will go on

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Casino cancelled

"For a global and technical attendees going to a casino for a conference was weird."

Cesar's has good conference space, food, drinks, rooms, etc. Nobody needs leave the building for anything if they don't want to. Alexis Park was a good place before the conference got too big. There used to be a Pho place just a block away that was awesome. The convention center has a food court, but it's as bad as the food you find at Disneyland or a Six Flags. They make it a few days in advance, reheat it in a microwave and then stick it under a heat lamp to cool down to unpleasantly warm. I swear they save money by not hooking up CO2 tanks to the drinks dispenser. If you like flat cola, LVCC is your place to be. CES is not too bad as the turnover on concessions is much bigger so the food seems to be fresher. I'm going to a show there in March so I'll see how well they do with a show about the size of DEFcon.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Voting Machines don't get Hacked

"The problem with conspiracy theories is when you get idiots that have never been involved with the process think they know what is going on in the "CCTV footage""

The footage was posted online and it was very obvious that the staff had been dismissed for the day and the time stamp showed a late hour. There should have been nobody in the facility and all ballot boxes should have been locked in the secure areas. Conspiracy theory? If it is a misinterpretation of the CCTV, it still showed people in the facility after-hours doing things that looked dodgy when the building should have been empty and locked. IIRC, there was another facility where the CCTV was turned off overnight so there was no record at all which was also not part of policy.

I haven't been involved in vote counting but had a friend that worked at a voting machine company writing software and his hints were rather ominous about odd goings on. He had no trust in electronic voting. His worry was violating the NDA's they made everybody sign. Apparently, they were rather frightening and unsmiling people in short haircuts and suits watched them sign those papers very attentively.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Voting Machines don't get Hacked

""It would also help if the CCTV didn't show a few people pulling boxes out from under tables" So where are they supposed to be stored?"

At the time, the counting facility was supposed to be closed and locked since the staff had been dismissed for the day. It wasn't a matter of where things were stored, but that activities were recorded showing odd behavior. Generally, the ballot boxes would be taken from one fenced area where they were stacked on pallets to the counting floor and across to another fenced area where counted ballots were stacked on pallets. At no point would ballot boxes be put under tables for any reason. It's set up that way for the human monitors to watch and for CCTV to record.

Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

MachDiamond Silver badge

"is if they can have an 800km range with 10 minute recharge time"

If you've burned through a middle of the road EV battery, you are going to need more than 10 minutes to visit the loo, get food and wipe the windscreen. Hyundai/Kia have models that will charge from 10-80% in 18 minutes on a suitable charger. Let's say you are a pretty fast sprinter and make it back with a bag of food and an empty bladder in less time, how often will this scenario happen? If getting from A to B as fast as possible is the key thing, why are you driving? Yes, flying is the whole effing day so perhaps driving 500 miles is better value for money but, again, how often does this happen?

My logs show an ICEV trip stop for gas and comfort is ~20 minutes. A stop with a meal is ~45 minutes. YMMV, but those should be in the ballpark. At 20yo, you can go 4 hours between loo visits. A few decades later that interval shortens.... by at least half. Here's a place where men and women can be quite different as well and throw everything out of the window when there are more than 2 people in the car and/or there are children. The trick is to be able to aim for stops that have charging and take meals in places that have the highest power chargers whenever possible given how fast your EV will charge.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: re: Don't make many (preferably no) long trips.

"Why would anyone (with a actual gas tank) plan gas stops? There are gas stations everywhere and they are more or less similar to each other. Just refill a bit before you run out. Simple."

I think you missed my bit about gas stations off the interstate highways often closing around sunset. Why plan? Do you want to pull up with a near empty tank and have to sleep in the car until the station opens in the morning? I'm not making this up. I have a trip planned where I was finding stations closed at night.

SAP hits brakes on Tesla company car deal

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Why does a software company need company cars?

"Ever heard of trains or maybe the more efficient Zoom ?"

Trains can be very efficient for some trips, but if you have a day of visiting customers, you won't be able to see very many given the timetable and usual delays. For the cost of taxis to get from the station to a customer location and back, it might be cheaper to drive. For field service, there is no zoom and time is of the essence. Depending on the system, down time can be monstrously expensive. If the technician needs to haul tools and spares or a whole new box, that's not very fun on a commuter train. My boot is pretty full since there's no telling what I might need and getting a job done in one visit looks much better to the customer that has their arms crossed, their lips pursed and a foot tapping that's hovering over you.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: But wait, what?

"Doesn’t Herr Muskenfuhrer know more about manufacturing than anyone else alive?"

So he says.

Gwynne was saying that SpaceX was going to be offering point to point rocket travel within a decade about 6 years ago. With only four years to go and no SpaceX rocket on the horizon that can carry 100 people, I don't see that happening either. No $7mn Falcon launches. No FSD. No Roadster 2.0. No Robotaxi. No production on the Semi. Neuralink fitted a chip in a human's head, but no word on how well that's worked out that's hit the main stream media. Somehow I don't expect that the test subject is communicating over wifi or playing Doom in their head.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Are they kidding?

"Actually assembling cars is not complex. It’s what most of their workforce are employed to do…..but it isn’t where actual value is."

Once the car is at the production stage, it's easiER, but getting there isn't and every maker is looking for those little improvements at every stage of the process. The idea is to make the car assembly as simple as possible so the level of skill on the line is as low as it's reasonable to get.

Tesla did start out with some car making experience with Ian Wright, but he bailed as soon as Elon came into the company. Martin and Marc were not car guys and they knew it which is why they sourced a chassis from Lotus and much of the drivetrain was derived from AC Propulsion work. I see it as being cost effective for them to have seen where it was important to put their money. Yes, doing their own chassis would have been cheaper in volume, but it would have meant bringing in a shed load more talent, money and finding the time to do all of that work before they could bring out a product. Outsourcing was a good way to jump start the company.

Many of the land speed record holders don't have much 0-100kmh work as they'll use a pusher car to get them up to speed. They only concentrate on the going really really fast parts.

Air Canada must pay damages after chatbot lies to grieving passenger about discount

MachDiamond Silver badge

Chatbot for the loss.

The airline would have been better off by directing the person to go to the web site and search using the term "bereavement tickets". If the bot was on the web site, it could have presented the link to that page with both the verbose legalese and a plain English/French (being Canuckistan) translation about how to qualify for that discount. There's little value in having the bot formulate it's own response when the official one is ready to hand.

Personally, I'd want the discount up front rather than paying full fare right away and then having to beg for the rebate which could take months in the best case.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Chatbot vs Human

" Thank you. Now can you confirm for me the post code for your office at....I have it written down wrong. I have it as...etc."

In my experience, when asked to "verify" a piece of information, they are actually asking me to provide that information to them. I tell them they need to go first and they don't seem to understand the issue since most Oxygen thieves will happily hand people all of their PII just for the asking. I have to patiently explain that confirming information is the process where they tell me the information they have and I tell them if it's correct or not.