* Posts by MachDiamond

8717 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Aug 2012

Need to plug in an EV? BT Group kicks off cabinet update pilot

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: 7kW

"Every single parking space needs to have a charger if we are to go 100% electric."

Why? I don't need to visit a petrol station every day. I fill up my car roughly once a week although business has been slow this winter so I'm going further between fill ups. If an EV has half the range, I might need to plug on twice a week overnight with an EV. That's an average of 30% of spaces needing charging. A household with 3 cars could rotate through who gets to plug in overnight, but there'd be time other than night when people could plug in if they needed to.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: 7kW

"And the ICE cut-off is 2035 for purchase of new cars."

I would not be surprised if that doesn't get pushed out, deleted or there winds up being all sorts of exceptions. Many car models run for 5 or so years between major updates and new designs are in the range of 5 years of lead time so either car companies will have accelerate their schedules, or there may not be much to buy at an affordable price as those manufacturers shift from new production to optimizing for parts sales/service to keep older vehicles on the road much longer. I don't see battery cell prices coming down substantially in the next decade as things are. It's going to be that long before new mines will be authorized to supply the materials needed for battery production and if the margins are greater for grid backup, that will raise the costs for EV's even more.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: 7kW

"planning to be entirely utility-independent by the time I retire."

I'm trying to spend strategically in ways that lower my monthly costs. I have solar heating (DIY) that I'm expanding so the house is warmer, but I already spend very little for heating and that's to warm the bathroom when I shower and the office when I'm not moving around much and it's very cold. The solar PV is up on the garage roof for a yet to be acquired chest freezer. The freezer will let me buy when foods are in season or on offer. I get so frustrated when something like chicken is really cheap and I know my freezer is already stuffed solid. I also like to do a big cook once or twice a week and freeze portions I can reheat meals quickly during the week. I'll be getting some IBC totes for water storage so I'm not getting hit with higher bills during the summer when I have a garden going. If the city changes the water billing, again, it could be cheaper to have water delivered for uses such as the garden. At least the consultant's report (the city is big on paying consultants) is suggesting they triple the service fee and charge for all water used in increments (I think it's by the hundred cubic feet).

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: 7kW

"I'm also reminded of a friend who lives in Ealing who only ever uses Zipcars because it's just too utterly expensive to park or own anything with parking where they live. It's all gated communities and red-routes. There's no way they could charge their own car even if they had one round there - it was nightmare enough just to get to the local supermarket."

I've had friends in place like San Francisco where they were in the same situation. A parking space/garage was in so much demand that it could cost the same as their tiny flat every month. They just had a bike/scooter and borrowed or rented a car when they needed one. You can often get a discount on public transportation passes by the month and pay a premium to have things delivered, but that just adds up to a higher cost of living. Unless you are paid the big money, living in a big city can be silly.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: 7kW

"When I then bought a house, a private driveway was at the top of my list, and I bought one where the main power gubbins are actually in the porch... so it's REALLY easy to wire a charger on the outside of the porch and use it from the driveway.

Sorry, but until literally every streetlamp is a charger (and that has ENORMOUS implications for the cabling further up the system at all levels), you only have private charging to rely on."

I'm the same way. My house has plenty of parking (it's vacant land all around too) and since it's paid off, I have no intention of moving ever again. If I happen to win the lottery, my new bigger and nicer home will have even more off-street parking and places to charge an EV. A charging point already installed is a selling feature where I live now and I expect in the coming years, it will be expected in the same way as hookups for laundry. Owned solar is also a big feature where leased systems or long term purchase contracts are a big detriment to selling a home (just say no).

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: 7kW

"So they certainly weren't ever going to fit a car charger! "

If there is money in it for them, they'd do it. I expect that they've never sat down to work out what sort of return they might get. At some point in the future, not having EV charging will mean a property will be low on the list for long term tenants and they won't be willing to pay average rents. Certainly not top rents.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: 7kW

"places like Tesco's (parking charges if you stay too long),"

If Tesco was smart, they'd rent out those spaces on a nightly basis, say from 8ish until 6-7am. They could do that with a monthly subscription or after a certain time, somebody could park up and purchase an overnight placard at the checkout. Chances are that people would also make a few purchases while there as well so more business. If their car park is mostly empty overnight, it's a way to get some revenue for very little cost. Anybody parking in one of those spaces without permission would be towed (more money in franchise fees from the towing company).

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: 7kW

"By the time they get home at 5-6:30 or later, all the charging slots will have been bagged for the night."

So you advocate adding no charging since it won't be "fair" for everybody? I'd rather see new uses being added for old infrastructure that is already in place. It can be done much faster and for less money (a greater chance it will happen).

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: "comes from renewable energy, we're told"

"Oh, and Scotland has been reported as paying wind farms to NOT produce power because they were producing more than their grid could carry. That's been used as an argument for investment into storage solutions: Why are we paying for people not to produce something? Surely we should only pay for what we use? Anyway, that's just an example of how there are areas where there's notisceable overproduction and what happens - they don't store the excess, they just get paid to stop production."

That's a political problem and, as far as I'm concerned, there should be no payments to not produce anything. The business works or it doesn't otherwise there are going to be herds of clever people gaming the system building things to be able to collect subsidies as their main source of income.

It might be a good thing to remove any payments to wind turbine companies that are overproducing so they explore getting into other businesses that can use power as/when available. I can envision a lot of recycling operations that could be run in the wee hours when there's a forecast for lots of wind and little grid demand. Fire up the CarCrusher 9000 and shred cars while the wind blows. Power could be used to process plant waste by turning over compost heaps and doing other things to output good quality compost. If signals can be sent down the wires to notify customers of really cheap leccy, there could be businesses set up to take advantage rather than turning the turbines off at all.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: "comes from renewable energy, we're told"

"You can "recycle" the plutonium produced by nuclear stations but it makes a terrible mess..."

Ideally, you want a reactor that doesn't produce much Plutonium in the first place.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: "Cost and maintenance are also an issue"

"Far cheaper to just lob a 5G interface in it - they won't require high bandwidth or significant amounts of data at all."

It can be easier for the EV owner to have a cordset that has a data connection contained in it and registered to them for billing. The likelihood is that people using these charging points will be local residents so having said cordset isn't an issue and it might be useful elsewhere if there are standards and billing agreements between power companies. The charging point would only have an outlet that will turn on when accessed with a compatible and approved cordset.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: "Cost and maintenance are also an issue"

"since you're less likely to be ICED."

The fines for ICEing an EV charging space could be on par with parking in a handicapped space and that would curtail some of that problem. Not only does ICEing rob an EV owner looking to charge a way to charge, it prevents the operator of the income from that installation. The local truck/travel stop near me has had it's EV spaces ICEed almost every time I've been there to the point where I think they're off-line now. The placement wasn't thought out very well as those spaces are right next to the store rather than at the end of that parking strip away from the store. I think as time goes on that designers will become more aware of that issue regardless of how convenient it might be to only need to run the power feeds a minimum distance.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: From what I can recall ....

"I suspect they're simply looking at the cabinets as a thing that already occupies a spot on the street, fences may have been built around them. "

They are also a junction point where it would be very simple to lead out a small trench and conduit to the road side where a small post can be placed that has the connection point so there's no stringing cables across the pavement. There are already schemes where the charging lead has a wireless meter contained so an EV owner can have the charges billed to their home electricity account which means there isn't attached leads that can be vandalized and require a service visit.

This isn't meant as a silver bullet to conquer all charging issues, but it is a way to reuse existing infrastructure to add another option. Ideally, all new home builds should be required to have off street parking for at least 2 cars (welcome to the 21st century). The same could be a requirement for a substantial renovation as well given certain conditions. Government should require itself to install charging at public buildings and replace most ICE passenger vehicles and many light trucks with EV's. When you have to go stand in a line to get a form to fill out so you can stand in yet another line, the least they can do is put some miles in your battery.

While the 7kW figure is batted around, it might be better to set the EVSE's to no more than half that. It allows more people to get a charge for a given supply amount and 3.5kW for 10 hours is a 50% top up for many EV's. It might be good to take a 7kW trunk and divide it three ways when three cars are plugged in and increase the rate for cars still charging as some stop drawing power.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: From what I can recall ....

"Of course it would be ideal if there is an infrastructure capable of delivering 50kW+ to every parking spot on a street, and we might eventually get there in 2074, but you have to start somewhere!!"

I disagree with your ideal. 50kW still requires larger conductors (more copper) and there's no point to charging that fast if you are parking up for the night and won't need your car for another 10 hours. At 2.4kW, you can get 24kWh put back in the battery, if you need that much, which is good for 90 miles or so. That's further than most people drive in a day and there's no requirement that your battery is topped all the way up before you can use the car again if you've had a busy day but don't expect to go far the next. There's a point where there is such a thing as "too fast". A 100kW charger next to a restaurant could mean that half way through your meal, you need to go out to move your car to avoid idling fees, but 4 25kW connections serves more people and each user could have plenty of time to enjoy their meal before the car is topped up and costing money for using up the space.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: From what I can recall ....

"Exactly. Because, from the perspective of the poor sod trying to find an affordable means of getting themselves around in parts of the country where the alternatives simply aren't alternatives, they really don't give a flying you know what WHY there are so few/no EVs in their price bracket, they only care that as far as THEIR particular view of the used car market is concerned, it's basically ICE or nothing."

EV's haven't been around for all that long and, at least in the US, the vast majority of them have been very expensive so even at a quarter of their new price, they're still quite expensive. I can find used base model Toyotas and Hondas all day long for a few thousand, but they are often high mileage cars with lots of wear, metallic paint cancer, mystery stains and a smell. While it remains to be seen how long an EV battery pack can live, they tend to fade away where a high mileage combustion engine might just decide it doesn't like its head gasket anymore and there you are on the side of the road with issues and a lot of steam.

America's first private lunar lander suffers 'critical' fuel leak en route to Moon

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Corporations

"So... my last 30 minutes are devoted to mindless tasks"

When I worked for somebody else, I spent the last 30 minutes of the day updating my to-do list and my work journal. I could come in fresh the next day and have notes so I could pick up where I left off much faster. This was especially important if I needed to make some calls bright and early. I can't tell you how much grief I've negated by keeping a work diary (with offsite backups).

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Some data is better than nothing

"The big advantage (at the moment) for SpaceX is that Merlins are used on both first and second stage so economies of scale both for engine manufacture and system integration can be applied."

The Merlin engines are only used on the Falcon rockets. The Raptor is what SpaceX is working on for Starship.

There isn't a huge economy of scale on the Merlin. They aren't making enough of them especially with the reuse. The redundancy is helpful to hedge against mission failure, but ULA has a very good track record with 2-engine vehicles so even the redundancy through having more engines is negligible. Fewer engines means less plumbing, less electronics, less telemetry and so forth. A company I worked for had just changed from 4 engines to a more powerful single engine just before I started with them. They had finally stopped trying to get 4 engines to all work in sync since it was causing so many problems. I haven't worked there for a number of years, but that single engine development test article is still functional with hundreds of flights under its belt as far as I know.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Some data is better than nothing

"Of course you're also "forgetting" that SpaceX have already sent a similar sized mission to the moon on an F9, not even a heavy, and recovered and reused the first stage of that stack."

What mission was that? The F9 mission document doesn't list as much payload as Vulcan just sent as a possibility on the F9 ELV. Peregrine was just one of the payloads on the Vulcan flight.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Some data is better than nothing

"serial #2 has already been built and is even larger."

I'd call that another serial #1. I've always found that it takes the most time to build the first of anything and considerably less time to built the next one since a lot of hurdles have already been cleared.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Some data is better than nothing

It sucks for Astrobotic to have an issue come up that will keep them from a soft landing on the moon, but it looks like they'll get a load of good telemetry back from the "lander". The upside is that it's often much easier to build serial #2.

Beyond the issues with the Peregrine lander, the Vulcan rocket with BE-4 engines performed very well on it's first launch. It didn't even take 12 tanker flights for it to send a payload to the moon. With ~70 missions already on the books, ULA is going to be busy (if they don't go bust). I can't wait to see the Dream Chaser get sent to dock at ISS and come back to land on a runway.

X's 2024 plans include peer-to-peer payments in app push

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Trust them with your money?

"When 90% of the adverts are scams, that hardly inspires confidence."

Most of the ads that get shoved down my throat on YouTube are scams too. This just tells me the ad rates are so low that it's attractive to the scammers that don't want to spend too much money pushing something that is nothing more than land fill with energy wasted to create it.

MachDiamond Silver badge

"I would even question whether it is legal for X to provide a payment service in Australia without an Australian Financial Services licence."

Many/most countries have banking laws that would cover P2P money transfers. Since they'll all be different with nuances to each, it will require a department full of qualified and experienced staff much like all of the content compliance staff that Elon axed only the fines for getting things wrong will be much higher.

Some of the people that worked with Elon early on when he wanted to do pretty much the same thing were concerned about his complete lack of knowledge about the banking industry in general and banking law in particular. I don't see an indication that he's gained the sort of knowledge he'd need to stay clear of prison in numerous countries.

Tesla's latest Autopilot safety patch hits 1.6M Chinese vehicles

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: The funny thing is

"You’ve rightly pointed out the difference between firmware and software, on an IT forum no less! Bravo"

My main point was that the car was completely ready to be sold when it was released. There wasn't the need to go back and fix things later that were left incomplete.

AMD talks up car chips it hopes will join you for a ride some time soon

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Some people do like this up to a point

"I and my family love plugging the phone into the ApplePlay"

Are you entirely sure what sort of data and how much is being shared with the car's manufacturer when you use Apple Car Play? I've got a nice handsfree headset that has very good audio quality (LG). When I talk to somebody that has handsfree via their car, it often sucks and that's down to the nature of trying to make that work. It's not a good acoustic environment and the mic is too far from the person speaking (and omni directional).

I've had an idea of coming up with a way to pull data from new cars that connect to people's phones and offering that as a 'toolkit' for red teams and law enforcement. I've also thought about mucking about with systems to selectively delete data from modern cars for ViPs and government agencies.

X reverses course on headlines in article links, kinda

MachDiamond Silver badge

"why aren't the people who put this money in complaining? "

When Elon tried to get out of the deal, he started trash talking the company and making accusations about it being nothing but bots and lizard overlords. All of that reduced the perception of the company and was a horrible move. The banks and other lenders aren't going to do the same thing as they might wind up having to step in to preserve their investment once the lawyers are deployed and cases filed. They'll want there to be some worth to be getting on with at that point so there's hope of a recovery.

MachDiamond Silver badge

"Worth less than a third. All going to plan. The whole idea of buying it was to destroy it."

If that's the plan, bringing in a Middle Eastern investment company may have been a poor idea. They might take a kinetic approach when they ask why it looks like all of their money has gone done down the waste pipe.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Is It Even Worth That Much?

"Piercing the corporate veil is very difficult with publicly traded companies."

Xitter isn't publicly traded. It's a private corporation with Elon as the majority stockholder.

FCC really, truly won't give SpaceX nearly a billion bucks for Starlink rural broadband

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Obligatory Starlink link

"A couple fs so depending - maybe NSFW"

That was good. The only issue is that 'Elon' is speaking way too coherently in the video compared to how he stutters in real life.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Gotta Love Xitler's Lawyers

" the 1990s fiber under the NJTurnpike may be not worthy of today's networks."

If nobody knows it's there, it will be worthless, but that doesn't mean that it won't be good for something. It might make a great WAN for a city/county or large business with facilities spread out over an entire city. With all of the unused copper on the poles where I live, if a friend and I wanted to lash up a hardwired private network, I don't expect anybody would notice if we 'borrowed' a few pair of wires (no more POTS in town). We wouldn't get break-neck speeds, but maybe enough for some interesting projects.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Gotta Love Xitler's Lawyers

" If we started laying a fiber backbone along the existing Interstate highway system in this country, we'd be well on our way to providing cheap and fast Internet to everyone."

There's a tremendous amount of dark fiber in the US along Interstate highways. Global Crossing was putting it in all over until some clever engineers worked out how to shove more data down each fiber and the other lines thought to be needed became redundant. It's the last mile that's lacking. The town I live in no longer has POTS, but the copper lines are still up on the poles while crews are feeding fiber underground. They could put fiber on the poles in place of the copper while at the same time removing the copper as a way to speed up deployment and worry about moving lines underground until later.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Internet in Brazil was very expensive, until competition.

"but they're intended to provide faster service where there is currently nothing,"

The issue is that there are very few places in the US where there is nothing and those are due to being in a valley where they can't see a sat in GEO. Starlink is just another option. I can think of some better ways they could have hoovered up a ton of internet business in rural areas using other technology.

MachDiamond Silver badge
Meh

Re: Internet in Brazil was very expensive, until competition.

"I am paying the equivalent of 20 USD for 500 mbps /down /month on fiber, but I am in a metropolitan area."

Luxury!

I'm paying $85/month for less. I was going to switch to fiber until the company demanded information that seemed a bit too personal and I declined. Whatever info the cable company has, they already have so I'm screwed there already. I don't want to equip yet another company with more PII than they need just in case I don't pay a $50 bill.

MachDiamond Silver badge

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

"So you're happy for Comcast and Charter splitting that fund down the middle?"

If Comcast and Charter can meet the requirements, they get the money. Starlink wasn't able to show they meet the requirements.

Even as big of a purse as it appears to be, it might not be enough to make it viable to serve those rural areas. In the US there are two other satellite internet providers.

UK government lays out plan to divert people's broken gizmos from landfill

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Missing repair information is needed for the solution

"hot water de-magnifies"

that shouldn't happen. Ceramic magnets, which are the cheapest have a very high Curie temperature and even low temp NdFeB magnets are fine at 80C.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Electrical and Furniture

"Laserdisc as that's typically much higher quality than VHS and doesn't degrade"

Some LaserDiscs suffer from "laser rot". If the edge wasn't completely sealed, the Aluminum layer will oxidize and ruin the disc.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: VHS tapes

"I think VHS is in that unfortunate gap between a second hand market and retro,"

I've got a stack of players and pick up movies I don't have at estate sales all of the time. There are still plenty of old movies that have never made it to DVD or streaming. I think tomorrow will be a movie day as the weather is shite. Once the slow cooker is loaded up and going, I'm free for the day.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Fly tipping

"The authorities had been through all the stuff she had left and found packaging with her address on it."

She should have owned up..... that she put that thing with her address in that pile.

(Alice's Restaurant)

MachDiamond Silver badge

"If the guy on Nextdoor took armchairs, I'd have him take two of those two because they're a nightmare to transport on a car and my local council wants to charge nearly £100 to come get them."

Where I am the trash contractor will pick up large furniture items 2x/year (I think it's twice) for free. The city required that so people wouldn't be fly tipping old sofas and mattresses (mattressi?). The hazardous waste facility is only open one day a month now, but you can take anything you like with you when you leave. I always have small projects and will grab partial cans of paint. Even weird colors can be fine for a first coat. Often times there is a good selection of cleaning products too.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Schematics?

"while you may have a claim for "not reasonably durable", it's not actually enforceable in a court."

You will also need to hire an attorney that specializes in that area of law, pay them up front and hope to win and get awarded at least what the attorney had billed. At £300/hour or more, the bill gets very big very quickly. In fact, it can be cheaper to get a law degree yourself.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: "The issue being addressed is what to do with that cord that has one failed light"

"In the "old" filament days, the lamps plugged in and every Christmas light kit included some spares. Why not do the same?"

The cost to make the LED lamps replaceable would double the cost.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Easy or Expensive?

"That also covers renting furnished property. If a tenant removes the fire safety label, then the landlord finds themselves having to replace the furniture. "

I'd love to see the figures on the hazards. Real, not theoretical. So much H&S is utter crap in the real world. Saving one life isn't justified by filling a landfill with perfectly serviceable manufactured goods.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Easy or Expensive?

"old but still perfectly usable wardrobes and other furniture but nobody wanted it. Yet you hear of people desperate for that stuff."

Timing can be an issue. I give away lots of things that take some time for the right person to spot the listing and phone up. Other times things will be claimed in an hour.

There's a second hand shop in my town that takes in items for free and sells them for very good prices. Their problem is space, especially with clothes. Kid's clothes go really fast since kids grow out of things quickly and parents are looking for bargains. A closet clear out of adult clothes that are decades old don't do so well. I keep an eye out now as I've gotten back into sewing and a plus size something can yield the material for a project. I just found a pair of jeans that were weathered at the same level as a pair of mine that needed some patching. I've also found almost new jeans a size or two bigger that I plan to cut down. I'm clean out of nans at this stage of my life, so I have to take over those chores.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Easy or Expensive?

"I tried to sell then give away a very nice sofa.com sofa after my mum passed away. Still had the tags, was basically immaculate, but ZERO interest. Even when we offered it for free."

Sofas and beds are difficult to get rid of on a third party basis due to concerns about sanitation/allergies. If a mate offers you a sofa they're replacing, you may take them up on it, but a stranger?

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: "financed by the hardware producers rather than the taxpayer"

"I'm not sure a company making XMas lights has a lot of margin to squeeze."

The "company" making the lights (in China, of course) will be formed in September and closed in December/January leaving any recycling assessments unpaid. The next year there will be a new company (same people/factory) trading under a different name for export. Just like the bargain tools with a lifetime guarantee and when you search for the company, the only mention of them online is from other people that have tried and failed to find them to get a replacement.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: disposable vapes

"Why make (refillable) vapes prescription-only? "

It's hard enough to get an appointment with the doctor to begin with.

I vaped to help ween me off ciggies and it worked great. I got a model with a rechargeable battery and would refill the cartridges myself even though they really wanted to sell me new ones every 5 minutes. The fluid put on a cotton swab and lodged under my tongue let me tamp down cravings without going outside for a puff. Getting the patches would need a doctor visit IIRC, or was it the gum? It's the same as having to spend $200 for a doctor visit to get my prescription renewed for migraine meds and they paying the outrageous patent pricing to get the prescription filled. All that happens is the doctor asks if I still get migraines and if they are any more frequent (yes and no) and sends the auth to the pharmacy (who then put it on hold as they can't get insurance to approve it not understanding I don't have insurance and will just pay cash).

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: disposable vapes

"I’ve just bought (clearance) some LED spotlights for my summer house office, but each one is sealed, no replaceable bulbs element."

Not likely that useful anyway. When an LED bulb goes out, I find it's usually the cheapo power supply or the power supply AND the LED and I'm not sure which killed the other.

Many manufacturers drive the LEDs beyond their rating to save a few bob by not putting in another couple to meet the rated lumens on the packaging. They might also be buying the cheapest LED's on offer and not bothering to make any changes to the power supplies that they've also purchased based on price.

Driverless cars swerve traffic tickets in California even if they break the law

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Testing...Decomsissioned Bases?...that was decades ago.

"I dont know how it is in your neck of the woods (assuming you are in the US) but in places like the Bay Area all the decommissioned bases (except for the great Alameda NAS fiasco) were redeveloped decades ago."

Many have be bulldozed flat and redeveloped, but there are still some that haven't. One, maybe two sites are all that is really needed for qualification so something could be found without too much trouble. Since military bases are small cities, they'd be easy to convert to a test track. A company could even use one as a filming location too.

MachDiamond Silver badge

Re: Testing

"So, other colours are ok then? :-)"

I blame the cheap chinese keyboard and the need to ration due the price of coffee going up. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

What the AI copyright fights are truly about: Human labor versus endless machines

MachDiamond Silver badge

"I have produced copyrighted work which I have published"

If you live anywhere that is a signatory to the Berne convention regarding copyright, you have a copyright in any original work from the moment it's set in a fixed media (you've recorded the song, created a musical score, etc). You can't get a copyright for "It was a dark and stormy night....", but you can for a story that starts that way (but not the story line).

SpaceX snaps back at US labor board's complaint, calling it 'unconstitutional'

MachDiamond Silver badge

"The Musk-originated companies really need to clue in to the fact that "I don't like it" doesn't translate to "unconstitutional" by any stretch of the imagination. "

Some spoiled brats yell and stamp their feet because experience has taught them their parents will give in just to shut them up. The same sort of thing goes for people that pull the Sov Citizen crap. It doesn't always work, but it does enough that people will continue to try it. Elon makes outrageous statements in defense of his bad behavior since, thus far, he's been getting away with just about everything. When he isn't given a free pass, the penalty isn't usually a big deal (Twitter was the first big fail).