stoneman24

It did seem odd, I usually buy used cars around 10K and 18 months old. But after getting friends and recommendations for EVs and a decent trade in to offset the 18K a little and some savings and finance, I went for the Kona. Won’t go back.

I used to have a diesel Renault Clio, thankfully I don’t have it anymore at the current £2 per litre for diesel.

On the commute into Edinburgh today, there’s plenty of newer cars than mine and quite a few EVs, so some people are buying them.

In the uk, there can be good deals on used EVs. My Hyundai Kona EV (64kWh) (2022 plate) was £18K for a 18 month old car with 9K miles on the clock and lots of options. It does about 280 miles on a charge and I do have the advantage of cheap home charging (8p per kWh) so it’s under a £5 for my weekly commute.

A big step up from my old Ford fiesta, just look for the deals

Thanks for the extra information. I do remember the series being repeated broadcast but only I saw the occasional episode.

Recently, I got the box set from a charity shop, struggled with the misogynistic imagery and attitudes just watching the first couple of episodes. I put the box set on the shelf.

Perhaps, I need to try again to watch for the character development. Especially as my wife recently dyed her hair purple. My younger self would have stunned at that and my grey hair.

Me too, still surviving on 12 mini. Issue a new mini and you’ll have my money the minute that the shop opens.

Well, there’s a book from my past. Got the book to see if I could find a clever way to get high speed, low displacement and high torque from small motors without huge gearing.

The side project was dropped as life got in the way, but I really enjoyed looking at all the different mechanisms.

I stand corrected and educated.

Perhaps Low Cost Of Electricity?

To paraphrase Monty Python “supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony" (or authority based on a self declaration)

In the age of ai, where you can flood the zone with easily generated content, even a democratic society might struggle to maintain an stable sense of shared reality and history

I think the main idea for starship is fully reusable ( which falcon 9 isn’t) and much larger capacity (both volume and mass). Driving down the cost of getting mass to orbit.

I googled and got the following costs per kg to orbit Falcon approx $3000 / kg Starship (early) $600 / kg Starship (target) $ 100 / kg

If they can achieve the target, it’s transformative. The Chinese will follow the lead and be available for some commercial customers but the majority of the market will be SpaceX.

There’s also “the ruum” by Arthur Porges[0]. We got as part of English class in high school, a long time ago.

Try not to read the Wikipedia as it might spoil the short story, there’s the pdf available on the web somewhere

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ruum

Not sure but one section of the book relates to the establishment of a polity where compute was the underpinnings of the society.

Given the current build out of compute in the real world, there is discussion / speculation about the effects of the rush to an economy heavily based on AI and the costs / benefits of that end state society.

If AI isn’t an bubble based on grift and hype that fizzles out

An interesting science fiction book is Neptune's Brood by Charles Stross. A major structural core of the book is how different colonies trade and the finance models across interstellar distances.

How does a colony finance the initial voyage and investment. It raises the concept of slow money ( 1 slow dollar is the economic output of a professional people for 40 years irc) and fast money for day to day use.

I still have my iPhone mini 12, in the desperate hope that it can last until Apple have another outbreak of common sense and decide that a mini iPhone has a place in the market.

Battery is starting to fade during the day, despite minimal use.

I think replaceable batteries should be mandatory and 10 years of security updates. In these times, phones are really expensive (however you pay for them) and we shouldn’t stand for planned obsolescence in any form.

I wonder how it evolved into the modern British slang of “git”. To quote Wikipedia [0]

“modern British English slang, a git (/ɡɪt/) is a term of insult used to describe someone—usually a man—who is considered stupid, incompetent, annoying, unpleasant, or silly.“.

And “ Git is a popular open-source software for version control created by Linus Torvalds. Torvalds jokingly named it "git" after the slang term, later defining it as "the stupid content tracker".”

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(slang)

The author Terry Pratchett had some of best error messages in his Discworld novels. The Hex computer could produce the following

++?????++ Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start.

+++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++

+++Whoops! Here comes the cheese! +++

And that’s before we look at whether the participants form a quorate group (sufficient people are present to make a valid choice).

Then we could consider whether all participants have the same voting power. My son has a strong vote on what to paint his room but much less on where to go on holiday.

Need to consider whether the votes could be hidden and revealed at the end to avoid intimidation.

For me, not so much a decrease in quality but more of an evolution as the landscape of sentient beings expands. The paired covids in the last book, were a great addition.

Don’t normally buy a hard cover or kindle (I like the paperback) but I may do that for book 4 “Children of Strife”

If the wells have been throttled back or stopped. There can be issues when production is reduced (or even worse stopped), restarting & resuming the previous production rates can be very difficult and time consuming. There’s a lot of complex multi-phase physics that can prevent the restart. Sometimes wells, just don’t restart.

I hope that you are right and we are just filling the storage tanks and waiting for the straits to re-open, so the hit to the market is minimised.

Iran do seem to be losing but that doesn’t mean the US is winning. The US needs to get the oil/gas moving through the straits and on the market, otherwise there will be big hit at the gas pumps and other economic factors.

We did the poem in secondary school as well. While we didn’t have the acting skills of your teacher, we deconstructed and reviewed each line and it really had a powerful impact on the class. The tortured helplessness of the dying soldier was a lasting memory.

Later, I thought that the job of a soldier wasn’t to die for their country but to make someone else die for theirs. Perhaps that more cynical view was influenced by the poem and the other war poets that we covered.

Just reacting to the headline (not a telegraph reader). While initially the idea of energy security and base load power is attractive, having worked (as a contractor, long ago) on a nuclear power station simulator for a uk energy company, I came away with the idea that keeping the station running effectively (with maintenance and upgrades) was very difficult and expensive.

it also feels like a big security target when the uk is worried about both traditional enemies, the dependencies on other countries and companies. (See the worry about Chinese tech in our telecoms infrastructure.

Perhaps investing in multiple distributed facilities capable of grid level storage (of renewable energy, wind, solar) would be a much better investment for the country.

Maybe I am being unfair in comparison of old systems with the huge drop in costs of wind and solar. And while developments are happening in large scale storage are happening, it’s not quite a settled solution yet.

If you can get a cheap electric overnight home charging tariff in the UK, then the electric cost is lower. Mid week, I charged 43kWh for the cost of £3.04 (7p per kWh). My home charger does 7kwh in a hour. Usual mileage is about 4 miles per kWh (typical rush hour drive into Edinburgh). That should give me about 170 miles of range.

Scaling it to 400 miles (400 miles at 4 miles per kWh is 100 kWh which at 7p each is about £7. Pretty much an order of magnitude better than your estimate. I admit home charging is the best arrangement and I am fortunate to have it. I did a holiday trip to the highlands and used public/hotel chargers which were closer to your numbers but also much faster (up to 150kWh per hour capacity).

I think that even discounting hydrogen engineering difficulties, the infrastructure for electric is pretty much in place and the race of the technologies is over.

I suppose butterflies would do for volatile storage but you really need long term memory, such as twig and clay tablet.

What was good enough for the Sumerian’s is good enough for me.

Thanks for reminding me, I last saw some of those when visiting Harris in the Outer Hebrides. “The Hearach” malt is pretty good.

While an interesting history, the actual truth is that the haggis is a small mammal which lives in the highlands. While they can be hunted (from St Andrews Day to Burns night), most commercially available haggis is farmed.

There is no truth to the rumour that they have 2 legs longer on the left side to easily run around the steep hills. Or that the males and females have different long legs so that they run around the hills in different directions and therefore meet.

I wonder if the executives have realised this

If I remember correctly, the visa free travel (esta) asks about arrests as part of the information. Even if you were never charged, never trialled, declared innocent at trial. I would imagine that this would include a uk police caution as well. For all matters, even if under uk law, these are minor and spent (no longer needed to be declared within the uk).

Just mention the UK, but I am sure that other countries have thier own procedures but the US wants all the details for thier own examination.

There was recently a crisis in older publicly constructed buildings in the UK that were built [0].The aerated concrete had a limited lifespan especially if it was damaged and had contact with water.

Lots of people looking for compensation and claiming mis-representation.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-66669239

A Merry Christmas to everyone !

Do you if there has been any work how lasers affect other animals and insects?

Am I being catastrophically pessimistic to think that in addition to swatting insects as it moves forward, the cars lidar is blinding insects in a several hundred meter path ?

I’m very optimistic about automated cars being better than most humans but wonder about side effects.

My dilemma as a student in Glasgow (a long time) at the start of term when I had some money, Fish supper or deep fried Pizza & chips. With the mandatory bottle of Irn Bru.

Delicious but excessive consumption would certainly reduce your life expectancy.