Posts by Stork

Re: So Musk has blood on his hands

FSD _may_ be better in motorway conditions with decent markings and no snow. But until it can cope with Copenhagen or Amsterdam it’s not FSD.

It appears to be difficult to make FSD trains, and much less complex environment.

Re: Expose

How about the holy ghostwriter?

Re: Expose

Perhaps i have not thought deeply enough about it, but so far I have not come up with good reasons why Scientology or Pastafarianism should not be afforded the same privileges as e.g. the Catholic Church.

All are based on unprovable claims and both the first and the last have histories of making money by dubious means.

Re: Not holding my breath

You fairly much have that in Basel, if you include public transport and bicycles.

Re: Well forget the second accident

I must also say that I find it a curious decision to take half of them off the road. Are they a problem or not?

Depending on country, some banks issue bonds with maturities matching the mortgages. That way the maturity problem is passed on.

In Denmark the link is even more direct: when you take out a mortgage (up to 80% of assessed property value), bonds are issued and you pay the interest of the day for the next 20 or 30 years, plus 0.5-0.9% to cover admin and defaults.

Obviously there are more details, but the bonds are AAA and have not defaulted since creation in the late 18th century.

Re: Election Integrity

It is a paradox of democracy. How do you deal with groups whose aim is to abolish or ignore it? Germany had it with Baader-Meinhof, Algeria with islamists. Do you tolerate the intolerant?

To me it is quite understandable that the framers of the German constitution wanted to avoid a repeat of the end of the Weimar Republic.

Re: Election Integrity

If you consider the last hundred years or so of German history, it may not surprise you that German law (constitution I think) takes a dim view of organisations that attempt to change the democratic order. There are authorities (Verfassungsschutz/Verfassungsgericht) tasked with checking what organisations are up to.

They have looked at various organisations left and right in the past as is their legal duty, do you have any indication it’s not what has happened here?

Re: Election Integrity

Downvoted for the lawfare comment. I have lived in Denmark, Germany, Britain, Switzerland and Portugal and did not see lawfare to be a major part of the electoral process in those places.

Re: Election Integrity

In a lot of those places you also more or less automatically get on the electoral register, and can expect to vote without long queues.

Re: Sigh..

Sounded like those systems had not reached Larnarkshire yet.

Re: 4 cents?

Portugal here. I think we pay about €0.20 in daytime (including VAT), half that at night.

We also have photovoltaics, so the worst period is early evening, 18-22.

I am sure the body heat is negligible compared to heat transfer though walls and roofs.

Even more so if thermal insulation is as poor as what I got impression of in American house remodelling programs.

Re: I'd give it a chance...

Last year I did some estimates for photovoltaic with and without battery for the Algarve.

Payback without batteries just over four years, but payback for adding a battery was about 20 years.

This is essentially all on savings, we would receive just over €130/years for feed in.

As it happened, the supplier offered interest free payments over five years, but only installed a year late; that is, they have not quite finished as they were short of a widget to measure the feed in and have not started sending me invoices yet.

Chaotic, but the electricity bill is lower by about the predicted amount.

Re: Balmuda toaster

Not necessarily, there’s also flat bed toasters

Re: How about 112 and Advanced Mobile Location?

From a mobile you can, near borders you often get a better signal from the other side, in particular if a river forms the border.

Re: How about 112 and Advanced Mobile Location?

All very nice.

Ten years ago or so, we needed an ambulance for a guest. Our street had no name (as U2 sang, common in rural Portugal) and the responders no GPS, so the solution was to meet them at the main road.

We’ve since moved and now have a street name, but no number as that implies mail delivery at the house. Progress, though.

Anyway, I wonder what happens if you call emergency services and is on a network in a neighbouring country?

Re: Unique keys

You are right, they are quite transparent and not regarded as secret.

Still, identity theft didn’t use to be a big issue, I guess some or other system would object fairly quickly.

It probably helps that it is a high trust, low power distance society.

Re: Proof if needed

Also known as “anti-personnel “

Re: Unique keys

Denmark, and I suspect the other Scandinavian countries, sorted that many decades ago.

Your true identity is your social security number which you need for any interaction with officialdom, banks or employers. It is also Big Brother’s wet dream, but admittedly practical in everyday life.

Is anyone there? And do they rely on ascii emojis?