Posts by LucreLout

Re: Hmmm

The WHO don't exactly agree with you.

From your link:

"5 SEPTEMBER 2005 | GENEVA - A total of up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) accident nearly 20 years ago, an international team of more than 100 scientists has concluded."

I have concluded I COULD eventually die from sexual exhaustion occasioned by a three way with Taylor Swift and Kylie Minogue. That doesn't mean it WILL happen.

Their own numbers put the death toll at fewer than 50 people to date - you can expect most of those to be the poor first responders. How many decades ago was Chernobyl now? Peanut allergies have probably killed more Belarussions, AIDS too, and suicide certainly.

The fact is that the risk to the general populace from nuclear power is extremely low. More people have probably died due to premature respiratory illness in Xian in China (home of the terracota warriors) than will have died due to nuclear power globally in the history of nuclear power. Coal fired power being the main cause of pollution in Xian; the locals all come out when it rains at night as its the only way to see the stars.

Re: Hmmm

'Either we move to a pay per mile scheme for all vehicles - in which case how does that get retrofit to older cars '

On older cars it's pretty much handled by fuel duty. You drive further, you pay more. Sure some cars are more efficient than others but then they're just being penalised less for being less environmentally harmful.

Yes, but if only new cars are fitted with the satellite tracking and old cars are assumed to remain petrol based, thus excused from tracking, then people will logically modify their hybrids to have larger battery packs and thus avoid the private transportation tax, be it fuel tax or pay per mile.

Mixing whatever the schemes are will produce unexpected and undesirable results.

Re: No second hand market

You'll find that the subsidies get phased out over the next few years; as the numbers of EVs increase the shortfall on taxation from VED and fuel duties will see to that.

How do you see that being implemented? I'm not disagreeing, but in one of my heavily downvoted posts I queried this very idea. Absent pay per mile satellite tracking, which is expensive to retrofit to existing vehicles and has privacy issues, or maybe road tolling, I'm not clear how this could work?

I have serious doubts any government would charge the price per unit required to equate an electric car charging with a petrol car being drive on the household supply. People wanting to read at night, or with electric heating might be expected to balk at the cost.

I've considered options ranging from road tolls, through tracking, to increasing electricity prices etc and I can't figure out a workable solution to the problem.... even taxing the vehicle at first purchase won't work, because nobody would buy one and existing EVs would become near priceless.

Re: Case study

you can't move for mommy cretins doing le mans starts in Porsche Cayennes & X5s driven by people who think lane discipline is a boy band and double declutching is something to do with a handbag.

Le Mans is a 24 hour race. If you want an analogy with fast starts, you're better off thinking about Santa Pod.

Double declutching is all but irrelevant now thanks to synchro gearboxes and twin plate clutches. Point of fact, in most modern cars it'll just slow you down.

If people don't know how to cross a road or judge a cars road speed they shouldn't be out on their own. Kids should be trained - we were - and I don't know any of my generation who'd be more interested in their smartphone than the Audi that's about to turn their brains into a jackson pollack.

I quite agree.

However, I don't think that their parents failure and stupidity in not teaching small children how to cross a road reasonably result in a death sentence for the child. The parent, sure, have at it.

The average driver is, frankly, of an shockingly low level of capability, and that's when they're paying attention. I can't change that, but I am at least trying to teach my kids basic road safety. I do wish they'd bring back the Stop Look Listen infomercials on CBBC/CBeebies etc.... It's not like the next episode of Peppa Pig is of earth shattering importance.

Re: Case study

Then you've got the crappy range, the fall out on crime and driver safety (especially women) -

Sorry, I'm genuinely not following why women would face more driver safety issues. Please could you expand on this?

There is absolutely nothing that warrants using an electric vehicle over all the other possible options - but oddly enough the people selling them haven't told you that have they?

My daily driver is professionally modified to increase power output (and insured on that basis, thanks) such that I can mostly be sure to out accelerate anyone near me when the lights change or I exit a bend. I find it helpful in avoiding the mistakes of the average driver.

Cars that can out accelerate a modern electric car up to the speed limit are usually quite a bit more expensive to buy and in all cases currently (politics) more expensive to fuel.

Those that have read my posts know I don't believe in MMGW (sorry folks) and I'm not exactly terrified when the price of petrol rises, but electric cars are a viable petrolhead alternative today. They're not a panacea, and widespread adoption does require several challenges to be understood, solved, and delivered. But lets not pretend there's "...nothing warrants using an electric vehicle..." because enjoyment of driving fast makes them worth consideration for some people.

Right now I'm wondering how fast I could make a Robinhood go if I converted that with a bunch of washing machine motors.... Might be fun on a track day.

Re: So go hybrid

But that would produce politically unwelcome distributional effects (like low energy users having much higher average electricity costs), and that's why it is done the way it is.

True, but I wonder what would be politically undesireable about clean (as in non-carbon) energy being unmetred - everyone gets the same standing charge and you just use as much or as little as you like. Sort of how water used to be before the drive for meters?

Re: Fag packet calculation time...

Cars should come with solar panel outer surfaces.

That'll be great until some local scrote decides to key it or old Mrs Miggins wallops it while parking. Might be rather expensive to replace the panelling.

Re: Fag packet calculation time...

I must be missing something , the average cars petrol storage capacity is about 400kw hours worth of energy and a standard photo voltaic array will give 4kw in bright sun so assuming 10 hours sun- that is 40kw hours-ie we need 10 days of bright sun for 1 charge

ICE ends up generating lots of noise, heat etc that isn't useful as motion, as well as incurring lots of transmission losses; The engine power output at the fly wheel and power output measured at the road wheel are always significantly different. Its not uncommon for a 4wd transmission to shed 30% of power between flywheel and roadwheel.

Leccy cars have much lower transmission losses, generating fewer by products in smaller volumes. Its the conversion of energy in storage into motion that makes the gap you think you're emissing IMHO.

Re: Nice ROE

To the Tesla Crowd, Elon Musk does walk on water on a daily basis and is in their opinion, the new Messiah.

No, I'm quite sure he's a massive bellend and I'm not even sure he can swim. But he does make the fastest electric production cars. He's closer to doing so at a scale where I'll be able to afford one that could actually replace my current & next planned vehicle at a price I could afford to pay.

If the battery fade is as low as my colleague with a Tesla S assures me it is, then I could see myself in the market for a second hand Model 3 at about 15-20k. It might take a few years before it happens, but if you'd asked me 3 years ago about going electric I'd have thought you were insane.

Yes, there are problems with electric generation and distribution. And yes I'd personally like to see us go nuclear rather than continue waiting for renewables to deliver a workable alternative when we already have a replacement for coal & gas. But we're at the beginning of the end of the oil age, and its nothing to do with settling for less - when the time comes, I won't have an electric car because I'll be forced to, or because the oil ran out; I'll have one because I'll want one. And I never thought I'd say that!

Re: I'd love a Tesla model S with a V8 instead of the electric drive.

And in the real world teslas seems to be among the slowest cars on the road.

My usual trips are well within the battery range of a Tesla, any of them. How often do you drive more than 250 miles without stopping? Unless you're under 40 years old, and don't have small kids, it won't be often :)

My daily driver is quick enough to blow most others I meet into the weeds, thus I avoid a lot of accidents at roundabout exits by having entered and exited before the typical driver gets half way around and uses the wrong lane for the wrong exit. Any Tesla equivalent electric car will blast past my car so fast I won't be able to blink - at least until we get to the top half of the speedo, which would be almost never on British roads. The new roadster should do 0-60 in less than 2 seconds - faster than super car territory - you're into hypercar performance.

A model 3 should do 0-60 in sub 5 seconds. To beat that with a petrol engine you'd usually need about 350-400 BHP at a guess. That's a power output well beyond the average ICE road car. Yes, you can buy a faster car for the money a model 3 will cost, but keeping it fuelled will likely be rather expensive by comparisson.

Twin electric motors allow 4 wheel drive to put the power down without incurring normal transmission losses. Battery distribution allows you to position the weight to deliver optimal handling, rather than having a heavy lump of metal at one end adversely affecting handling at speed.

There's no reason for an electric car to be going slowly - a hybrid maybe if they're ekeing out the battery charge, but full electric has all the torque available immediately - a feat even a supercharged engine cannot come close to matching.

In case its not clear, Tesla can/will be substitutable for a.n.other leccy motor. Whatever the pros and cons of electric cars, performance isn't a problem anymore.

Re: Hmmm

But this is nothing new. After all, the first EV's were around a hundred years ago, and the problems are well understood.. By engineers, if not politicians.

Either we solve the problem as a country or we cancel the ban on new ICE from 2040. Hydrogen won't have the time to build an infrastructure, and if people are forced to drive hybrids, then they will be plugging them in overnight.

I'll happily have a V8 instead of a 'Leccy, but not if the government persist with taxing the arse out of one and subsidising uptake of the other. That would seem stupid. Which brings us back to the problem - we can't subsidise leccy if we can't cope with demand, but without subsidy, take up will be limited or nonexistant.

Subsidy, for the above purposes, can be taken as the tax on petrol that is not applied for electric cars. Either we move to a pay per mile scheme for all vehicles - in which case how does that get retrofit to older cars and what of the privacy concerns - or we'd have to remove tax on petrol, which will make the green lobby explode in a fit of champagne socialist rage and leave the chancellor needing to cut 1/8th of his spending.

So, what do we do? Going nuclear and upgrading leccy infrastructure seems like thhe only viable alternative, and that means starting today with a lot more generative capacity, putting an end to windmill and solar panel development - if you've paid squillions for umpteen new nuke plants, you are going to run them to end of life. I'm not sure that's a sellable idea of the future either. So what is?

Re: Worst argument ever

Oh I bet you can also rent an hitman with USD

I'm pretty sure that's actually a lot harder to achieve than most people think, whether you use USD, or Crypto.

Sure, you can probably find a crack addict who'll kill someone for a few hundred bucks, but they'll probably also tell the police all about you when they get caught. An actual professional hitman is probably a very rare thing indeed. Most people will end up renting an undercover FBI agent, or similar.

Re: A historian writes...

And in a hundred years our great-grand-children can look at them, see how bad great-grandma's handwriting was, and marvel at great-grandpa being a Jedi Knight!

Way before that ever happens, some civil servant type will have left the document on a train/pub/hookers nightstand.

The main advantage of digital that I see is that it removes one leg of incomoeptence from our overssers. On the other hand, remind me again when lessons will actually be learned about keeping our digital data secure too?

Re: It doesn't take a flashy report with pretty graphs...

or the 'widening gap between rich and poor' in which case there's apparent exploitation going on

The problem people parroting on about this gap between rich and poor don't understand is that it is absolutely inevitable, and also totally irrelevant.

Why is it inevitable? Ok, try these simple facts for size.

A full time job (40 hour week) will earn, at minimum wage levels, 40x7.83x52 = £16,286 gross. After tax that amounts to £14,354. For now we'll ignore the public sector as that produces massive distortions which I'll return to later.

The FTSE 100 yields 3.9% Yes, there are higher yields available, and I'm going to ignore capital gains because we're talking for the moment about income. Anyone with £417,600 invested in the ftse would be generating passive income greater than the post tax income of the minimum wage worker.

That sounds like a lot, however, the average ft salary is £27,600, or £22,047 after tax.£7,693 difference. The FTSE has grown about 5.4% per year over the past 20 years, excluding dividends. So combined about 9.3% per annum. A quick calculation shows it would take 19 years 11 months to hit the target where an average income worker could replicate passively the entire post tax income of the minimum wage worker. The average working lifetime is somewhat longer than that. Thus, it is inevitable that incomes will diverge.

Ok, they diverge, so why is that not a bad thing?

Lets take the worlds richest men. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, and Carlos Slim. Does the size, speed, oppulence of their third yacht have any real world impact upon me at all? No, none whatsoever. The only adverse effect it can produce is envy, which is an undesireable trait and a character flaw in those choosing that path.

Does it matter if David BEckham has 20 Ferraris, 1, or none? Not to me. It won't impact me at all.

Does it matter if Linus Torvalds is a millionaire? Nope - I could not care less. His wealth has no impact upon me at all.

I've never been able to understand why socialists get so obsessed to the point of dsitraction by other peoples money. It's none of their concern, or business.

You mentioned the public sector Lout. Well, yes, I did. The actual cost of relicating a public sector pension in payment using money purchase pension pots is very close to 50% of salary. Thus, an average public sector worker is already socking away more than enough wealth to surpass our minimum wage Joe, even if they treat their whole income as coke 7 hookers money. every single penny of it. 25% of people in work are in a public sector role, thus we have a baked in inescapable inequality of income due to pension accrual.

Income inequality is, as I said, inevitable and wholly irrelevant to the real world.

Re: Our missing productivity was shifted to China

Which relies heavilly on defning "all" to exclude the brown people the East India Company exploited, all the Africans who were the product being sold, all the Irish who conveniently starved to death, all the native Americans who were not using their land properly....... and so on.

You've not thought this through, have you?

Slavery is nothing to do with capitalism. African tribes had been enslaving each other for hundreds of years before ever they saw a westerner, let alone a capitalist. Living standards in all capitalist african nations were far higher than they were prior to capitalism and far lower now they've become demented socialism inspired dictatorships.

The Irish starved dut to over reliance on a single crop, and failure to forsee potato blight as a thing.

Re: It doesn't take a flashy report with pretty graphs...

I put it this way. It's 12 people stuck in the middle of the desert with only one bottle of water. No matter how you try to solve it, it won't end well.

Socialism will save the day. They'll all just vote themselves a bigger share of someone elses water.

Oh, wait.....

Re: Our missing productivity was shifted to China

<iI think you missed the pertinent bit of my post which was the 'neo-liberal' bit; unfettered capitalism is as much a failure as an unfettered command economy.</i>

I didn't miss it; its just that you're talking nonsense. F-.

The market needs regulation, or eventually, all the cash ends up being controlled by a monopoly.

And yet for hundreds of years, before ever regulators were conjured up out of some committee, the cash was not controleld by a monompoly. You can;t just make stuff up and ignore a thousand years of capitalism.

You also appear to be confusing economics with politics when you contrast capitalism (an economic construct) with socialism (a political one)

No confusion on my part, but you seem not to understand the connection between the two. Socialism is an economic system as much as it is a political one - all socialist paradises fail for the same reason - they go broke.

and are wilfully ignoring the very successful European socialist countries (such as Finland and Denmark) where the standard of living is much higher that that which most in the UK and US enjoy.

Quack quack oops. You just listed two capitalist countries. Denmark is NOT socialist, nor is Finland.

You've also confused yourself regarding standard of living which is not higher in Denmark than the UK and certainly not the USA. For example, the average Dane can't afford to drive very far because cars of obscenely expensive to own and run. Cheap as chips here.

Seriously, if you want to have a debate you're going to have to learn some facts and let them inform you of an opinion. You can't just show up, make up some guff that fits your world view, and expect the rest of us to take it as fact. It isn't. Must try harder.

Re: Well, there's your problem!

I also know of a software company where an old friend was the ONLY coder; all the others were 'managers' and had much higher wages.

Ultimately this is the root of the problem.

Management isn't a particularly difficult skill, yet every line manager I know expects to be paid more money than anyone under them in a hierarchy. Its a fundamentally flawed perspective.

If your job entails mostly working in Outlook, PowerPoint, and Project, then you are not adding anything like as much value to your business than someone working mostly in Visual Studio, IntelliJ, or PyCharm. Other tools exist, but you get the drift.

We need to turn the pay pyramid on its head - If all you do is manage a team of coders then you need to earn less than those coders. If you manage a team of beancounters then the same applies. Management isn't difficult, most people can do it comparably as well as their current line management hierarchy. We need to start recognising those who do the work, rather than presenting it as their output to their manager, and so on up the hierarchy.

One UK bank I worked at had 18 different managers between me and the CEO. None of them had clue #1 about what I actually did, or how to do it. As a result, they simply weren't adding any value to the output - if we'd cut out say the lowest 15 of them, literally nothing would change other than their need to acquire some real skills and get a real job.

Re: Our missing productivity was shifted to China

It probably tells us something about how right-wing the failed project of neo-liberal capitalism has become

And yet, the whole world over, Capitalism has time and again prove throughout all of human history to be the only system that increases living standards for all; while Socialism & Communism have impoverished all their nations and sent millions to an early death.

Capitalism isn't perfect, but it is closer than every other system ever devised by anyone.

Re: Waste of money.

Which leads to the question, how would you tell if a turd found on a London street was actually from a werewolf*? And who'd be brave enough to confront the culprit?

On a London street it isn't the werewolves you need to worry about; it's the local yoot. 15 fatal stabbings so far this year and zero werewolf attacks. But apparently the tried and trusted way of making sure people don't carry weapons (widespread, and fequent stop & search) is still to be resisted.

Re: Codejunky...

England/Britain is not exceptional, it is just another middling sized country, relatively very wealthy, but with significant internal problems of social justice.

It's the 5th or 6th (depending on point in the cycle) economy in the world. That on its own is pretty exceptional. It had the greatest empire the world will ever know - that too is exceptional (and either good/bad depending on your own perspective). It has the global centre for finance, which again is completely exceptional.

Sorry, but we're more than our square mileage and population graph. We just are. Historically, as well as today, we're punching well above our weight globally. For better or worse we've had a greater impact on the world than almost any other nation in history.

Social justice problems are, in comparison to the rest of the world, largely illusory or ideological. We have free health care, free housing (if needed), free money (if needed), free childcare, free education, free transport/telly/prescriptions/money for the elderly, and we have one of the consistently highest rated justice systems in the world. The rest of the world has poverty, real poverty, rather than some arbitrary relative measure. Some of it has war. Some of it has famine. Some of it is French ;-)

We're not perfect, but we as close to it as almost any other nation on earth. Just by virtue of being British you have won lifes lottery. There are so many worse places to be born, and so few better.

Okay, but the quid pro quo is we we keep "workplaces" out of politics; i.e. no corporate funding of political parties and lobbyists.

Congratualtions you just bankrupted the labour party. Unions are, after all, just corporations. For member, read customer. For dues, read price. I'll readily agree that is not how they portray themselves, but that's just marketing.

Re: Animal Farm

I have a vague recollection of a live-action film version from the 80s maybe. Based on the recollection I won't be googling for more details from work though

1999 - Allegedly Prompted by the sucess of 'Babe' - Even more divergent from the book than the 1954 animated version though...

Rumour has it that may not be the film the original author was thinking about... it was a little more.... adult/gross/possibly illegal. Allegedly.

Good to see the register is unbiased, the actual quote was....

Quite. While El Reg was always left leaning, it's lately swung so far to the left its in danger of competing with the Groan. I'm increasingly wondering why they're pushing this anti-Damore agenda based upon things they're fully well aware that he didn't actually say.

Agree with what Damore said, or disagree with it; either way is fine if you use facts. Deliberate misrepresentation of what was said in order to argue against it, is I believe, known as a strawman. Knock it on the head Reg. you're better than that..... or at least you were once.

Re: What could possibly...?

And I'm sure some toerag will still manage to relieve me of my dosh

Yes, but he would prefer that instead of calling him a toerag you simply referred to him as the tax man.

Re: As far as I am concerned

almost all the use cases are creepy - the genie however is out of the bottle...

For same gender triplets, twins etc that ship sailed the day they were born. Theres already someone that looks & sounds like them, knows all their "secret" financial info - DOB, Moms maiden name etc.

Re: Infrastructure

M25 - planned in the 60's, built in the very early 70s.

M18 - built 1967 so 50+ years ago.

M60 - opened in 1960 as the M62, renumbering it doesn't make it new.

M6 - built in 1958 so 50+ years ago.

The key here, is we don't have any planned new motorways, so there won't be any before the M25s 50 year time horizon expires. Your defence amounts to 40+ years isn't 50 even though it will be. Well, erm, how many more people are here now than 50 years ago? 10 million more, and with many families now owning multiple cars. That's between 10 and say 20 million more vehicles with nothing new to drive on.

The point stands - we need more roads and we haven't built any new ones for as close as makes no difference 50 years.