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Excuses

On the low blogging tempo ...

I'm grappling with a tight deadline: "The Labyrinth Index" is due with my editors at the end of the month and I've still got one third of the book to go. (It's going to be a little shorter than the last couple of Laundry Files novels, but on the other hand, they've been growing alarmingly. The first short novel, "The Atrocity Archive", was 76,000 words long, while by "The Nightmare Stacks" and "The Delirium Brief" they were pushing close to 140,000 words. This one isn't exactly short, but should come in at around 100,000 words—in other words, about 300 pages.)

Creative blogging soaks up the same writing mojo as book-writing, and I don't have much surplus this quarter. I'll have some crib notes for you in a few weeks when Empire Games is released in small-format paperback (that's due on December 5th in the USA, but October 19th in the UK, because Tor USA and Tor UK are different companies and run on slightly different release schedules: yes, the ebook price will drop at the same time). And I'll see if I can find a guest blogger or two. And of course, if something happens that causes me to foam at the mouth you'll read about it here ... but don't be too surprised if this place is unusually quiet for the next month.

Part of it, I will admit, is news fatigue. John Scalzi already said this thing, so I don't feel the need to repeat every word of it here, but in a nutshell: it's really hard to think myself into an ebullient and entertaining frame of mind this year, which is a necessary precondition to writing escapist fiction. The news is unmitigated crap right now. Our rulers are either morons and criminals (the White House), or being run ragged by a clown car full of idiots (the Brexit cheerleaders, whose latest wheeze is to decide that anyone bearing news of economic woes in the brave new Brexit uplands is clearly a saboteur because nothing can go wrong and it's time to fire the Chancellor for revising growth forecasts down). The climate is turning deadly (how many hurricanes this season? Has central California burned to the ground yet?), and maniacs are waving nuclear dildos at each other again. There is no respite from the bad news, other than to turn the news off completely or subsist entirely on a diet of successful rocket launch videos (checks clock: there's an hour to go until the next SpaceX bird goes up, then a couple of days to the next) and happy puppies.

Oh, and next week I turn 53. I don't generally have crises on birthdays divisible by 10; I defer them for 2-3 years. For example, on turning 30 you can still kid yourself you're in your late twenties; at 33, this isn't true any more. Now I'm nearly 53 I can't really kid myself I'm not middle-aged. Given that we live in a culture that venerates youth and ignores or discounts age, that's also calling for a bit of adjustment (notably learning to kick back against the little voice in my ear whispering "you're an old has-been" and "you're past it" and "your best work is behind you: you're coasting on fumes now" and say "fuck you, I'm going to prove you wrong"). In fact, it's calling for so much adjustment that I don't have much spare energy for anything else.

So ... what I guess I'm saying is, I've got a tight deadline to hit and work is actually much, much harder than usual right now because the emotional environment is toxic, and us creatives need, if not happiness, then at least light at the end of the tunnel. But work is the one thing I can't allow to slide. Excuses are not permitted: I've got a tight schedule to meet if I'm going to take a sabbatical for a couple of months around the end of next year, and I'll slack off when I'm dead.

That's it. Talk among yourselves or feel free to ask me anything (just be aware I might not answer until I've hit my daily word-count target). I'm outa here; back in November.

715 Comments

1:

Hey Charlie, fuck that noise about being over the hill or whatever. You have plenty of great books left in you. Hokusai only got "good" when he was around 70 years old.

So yeah, tell that voice to STFU :D

2:

Stay awesome, Charlie. Devote some time to self-care and don't believe what the black dog tells you.

3:

NO worries, Charlie. Do what you got to do to get those words on paper. Has-been? Over the Hill? Such people have not been reading your latest novels. I'm really happy you are doing new and interesting things in the Merchant Princes verse, and the Laundry Files has with its new characters and perspectives been opening up as well.

Excelsior, good sir.

4:

I'm aware that no pithy magic sentence will change stuff: none the less, I've immensely enjoyed your sharing and fiction and wish you all the best. There is a price to pay for being an emotional computational device, but I'm pretty sure it's worth it.

5:

The news tempts me to go dark. The empty screaming void calls.

Disappear into some cutting edge physics, and hopefully learn something before the world burns hotter.

6:

Don't get worried about "over the hill" thoughts, they're complete bollocks. You write awesome books and short stories, and you will continue to do so. Shut off the noise, get in the zone, and plough on.

7:

Write Charlie write!

As for old, old Swedish fringe-fan and long-time journalist Bertil Falk just released his biography "Feroze Gandhi: The Forgotten Gandhi" and is currently touring all over India because of that - at age 84!

8:

Thanks for the recommendation of Oddjobs you made elsewhere. Two more of their works also purchased and Oddjobs 2 will be in the next physical batch I get.

9:

I was thinking earlier this week about how to distinguish when universes in the Empire Games series diverged.

One method you implicitly touched upon was Philip K. Dick's novel The Grasshopper Lies Heavy - not written in OTL, but present in Timeline 2, which means that the universes diverged at a minimum in 1962.

For when Timeline 3 diverged, you could pick some composer like Handel (1685–1759) and compare when their works in the two timelines began to be different.

For maximum dystopia effect, the Laundry Files universe's version of Charlie Stross is probably on Book 10 of the Iron Sunrise series.

10:

From how the people I know have aged, 'middle-aged' seems significantly more flexible than just calendar decades. A couple people in their sixties are active enough physically and mentally to keep up with most mid-forties people, whereas some others in their fifties are definitely slowing down and seeming a better fit for 'old-age'.

I don't know your life except through the blog+books, but if you live in the city, you're probably walking a lot more than those of us living in Carpark, Suburbia, USA. As for mental stuff, contrast yourself to those who watch Fox religiously. You are still working towards making life better, for yourself, for your readers, and for those who frequent these comment sections.

11:

Whenever I pass an n0 birthday I’m “hey, I’m only in my early n0s!” and when I pass an n5 birthday I’m “well, at least I’m still in my n0s and not my (n+1)0s yet!” It’s worked so far.

12:

Hey Charlie, I'm going to be 54 in November and I worked 52 hours last week, so don't sweat it! We old farts got a lot of life left in us. You've got at least 20 good years, maybe 30-40 if you get lucky.

And fuck Trump up the ass with a rusty oil rig. If he touches off World War III, as science fiction people we're a step ahead of the game - at least we know how to set up a proper governing structure for our mutant hordes. And did you hear about Pence's shitshow at the football game? Pathetic. That's the quality of the opposition.

You keep writing 'em and and I'll keep reading 'em! If that ain't enough for ya I don't know what to say. When you finally end up in LA I'm buying the beer, and meanwhile, enjoy life's little pleasures.

13:

The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is the title of the book within a book in The Man in the High Castle. So I read it as being the same P.K. Dick book, just with a different title.

14:

successful rocket launch videos (checks clock: there's an hour to go until the next SpaceX bird goes up, then a couple of days to the next) and happy puppies.

Looks like it went up on time and the sats are deployed. Booster landed on the barge.

15:

Not quite, actually. Charlie mentioned that there was a novel-within-a-novel in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. That novel's title? The Man in the High Castle. (Charlie, if I've misinterpreted that, then feel free to jump in!)

Of course, even if they are otherwise identical, having a different title indicates that the universes have already diverged, however slightly.

16:

The only person you might need to apologize for not keeping the blog going is yourself. You owe us nothing.

I read you loud and clear about the aging thing and the nasty little voices that are telling you that you are now too old. They are nothing but trolls. You need to take a look at the comment moderating policy of your brain, and maybe wield the banhammer a bit more liberally.

17:

Questions!

  • Who taught the Alfar Enochian?
  • Did the Alfar create the v-parasite, or only domesticate it?
  • 18:

    Since this is basically an open thread, I'd like to ask the following question:

    How do you see developing countries changing within the next five years?

    Within Europe, which developing countries do you predict will become developed within that time frame?

    The same question goes for East and Southeast Asia?

    19:

    Ah, here's what I was looking for:

    Happy Birthday!

    Anyway, we're under a red flag warning right now in San Diego, but the winds haven't picked up where I am. Yet.

    One quibble: although the people in Humboldt County vehemently disagree with this notion,* most people north of the San Francisco Bay consider themselves to be in northern California, not Central California. That said, I was in Sonoma County last month, and it's always unnerving to read about a fire when you know the area a bit. This one's going to be a mess.

    *Central California is definitely Santa Barbara to Monterey Bay, although the edges are messy. To people in northwest California (e.g. Humboldt), Sacramento and San Francisco are in southern California. To people in San Francisco and Sacramento, they're in northern California and LA is in southern California. Basically, it appears that everyone outside of the San Francsico Bay to Sacramento region wants this region to be in the other half of the state (e.g. Angelenos want it to be in the north, northerners want it to be in the south). Central California is basically farm country, with a lot of money in a few hands (cf Devin Nunes' backers). Oh, and Bakersfield and Fresno, shining cultural landmarks that they are (and Yosemite and Sequoia, which are landmarks of a different kind). But since it's red-state drive through, Grapes of Wrath, country, including the SF Bay in that stretch is a bit, erm, problematic.

    20:

    It's more complicated than that. People north of Napa Valley (itself north of San Francisco) view themselves as the "real Northern Californians". Like Central California, it's very redneck Trump country which shares a lot of Appalachia's social problems.

    21:

    Hey Charlie:

    Happy 53rd!

    Our ages are elastic and crumbly, inconsistent and intermittent, overlapping and shredded all at once. Pick the stage you'd most like to be, and to hell with the rest!

    According to numerology, 53 is:

    http://affinitynumerology.com/number-meanings/number-53-meaning.php#maincontentcontinue

    'In essence, the numerology number 53 is realistic and efficient. And a builder. It feels free to pursue the goals it wants to pursue regardless what others may think it should pursue.

    The number 53 is also curious and creative. And has a good business sense.

    It's a balanced number and it tends to build large works that benefit society for a long time. It's sensual, adventurous, and mentally sharp. The number is optimistic, tolerant, inspiring, and comfortable in social situations.

    What you have, then, is a fairly self-determined number that gets along with others, yet tends to do things its own way.

    And the number 53 does get things done.

    People feel a resurgence of purpose when they're around 53.'

    There you go - feeling better now?

    22:

    Totally true, but I was trying to not confuse him with too much information at once.

    I was cheered to hear (from an agricultural teacher) that the principle agricultural base of Mendocino County is "inebriants," (grapes and marijuana) and she, among others, is trying to diversify the agriculture base there again while finding jobs for the locals.

    23:

    I turned 54 just over a week ago and you're right: there's a little voice that says "you're getting older" and which attributes the sort of forgetfulness you've been exhibiting all your absent-minded adult life to the start of the terminal brain-rot.

    Ignore it. You're a writer for heaven's sake - many are only just getting started by now. And while the blog is fun and a great way for your fans to chat and interact, we none of us have any expectation, or right to such as expectation, of you producing regular things.

    I've now cut my news intake enormously and feel far, far better for it.

    24:

    Shoot, I had a question about "The Delirium Brief" after I finished it a few weeks ago, but don't remember what it was. Anyhow...

    I've also been wondering about the average word length of books in general. I was about to ask whether publishers are fixated on novels being at least 100k words, but then thought of how Tor.com is putting out novellas. So maybe novels of around 90k might stand a chance?

    And meanwhile, I suppose Charlie has seen this long article, but maybe others here haven't. Minor characters include VD and Moldbug. Here's How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream

    25:

    At 72 and not all that conscious of the years, I recommend that you take appropriate care(*) of yourself, keep going, and not pay too much attention to the calendar. People are making it into their ninth and tenth decates in reasonable shape.

    (*) Diet, physical exercise in large part. Also mental exercise and discipline, which you shouldn't have any problem with. Don't shun, but beware the medical profession.

    26:

    Having just read Scalzi's piece ... yes, ditto on/agree with all points.

    What I'd like is a DT/TM/NK/Right-wing/et al antidote. More fear, cynicism and name-calling isn't going to cut it. Well-documented, trustworthy data presented in plain language with real-life personal accounts showing what these gov'ts' policies actually result in - including just how far they miss the mark on the promises they were supposed to fulfill - are needed. Maybe even toss a lifeline to DT/TM supporters that have also had enough.

    The above is the responsibility of the official opposition. Where are they and why aren't they doing their jobs? Or are they being deliberately ignored by media?

    27:

    Mr Stross,

    Don't worry about it.

    Yeah, you your joints might creak a bit and looking in the mirror may not be a real joyfest anymore but you're only old when you need a care worker to open the wine bottle!

    Keep on doing what you're good at and bring joy to thousands! A hard won talent should be used.

    28:

    How do you see developing countries changing within the next five years?

    No idea. Literally less idea than I had 18 months ago.

    The beige dictatorship has begun to crumble, but what replaces it is notyet visible — and is probably still at the stage of being highly sensitive to minute variations in preconditions.

    At the same time, we're in an avalanche of climate and energy related change. Weather is getting bad, record-breakingly bad, with insane storms and heat waves and half of California on fire by the look of things tonight. Meanwhile, the automotive industry is in the process of abandoning diesel and gasoline, far more rapidly than I'd have predicted. and the price of solar/wind/renewables is dropping so fast that it's kneecapping new build nuclear and coal plants.

    No idea what any of this portends, except the political event horizon, now as in decades past, is about five years: that's how long it takes for a seemingly stable mixed social/market democracy to nose-dive into chaos, fascism, or Handmaid's Tale style theocracy. (Consider how plausible Germany 1934 looked as a future back in 1929. Or UK 2017 back in 2012.)

    29:

    What I'd like is a DT/TM/NK/Right-wing/et al antidote.

    Alas.

    As I tweeted last week:

    In late 2016, I was wishing we could be invaded by The Culture.

    In late 2017, even Daleks look like they'd be an improvement.

    30:

    Hey, at least the Daleks know a four-syllable word, (though they can't use it in a sentence.)

    And may I recommend...

    31:

    The above is the responsibility of the official opposition. Where are they and why aren't they doing their jobs? Or are they being deliberately ignored by media? Or, worse in the UK where both the governing (don't laugh) party & the offical opposition are totally clueless & utterly incompetent. May is an ex-remainer, supposedly campaigning for Brexit ( I do wonder, though) & Corbyn is a throwback to 1934, hoping for a peoples' socialist republic OUTSIDE the EU ... Both equally disastrous in the longer term.

    32:

    Chambers' dictionary defines "middle aged" as "that period between youth and old age, variously reckoned to suit the reckoner." Which pretty much covers it, I think.

    33:

    I can't believe that BoJo is being seriously considered to become PM. The man can't even take three steps without shoving his foot into his mouth.

    34:

    Just remember, you make your living by writing on the dark side of fiction.

    So...take good notes. Some of this can be recycled into literature later on.

    Also, forget about worrying about California. We always go through this in October. If you didn't worry about Portugal and Spain when they lit off, don't worry about us. We'll be fine.

    If you want people to worry about, worry about Puerto Rico and Barbuda. The former is getting treated shabbily by the US (something about Trump having a golf course go bankrupt there, I suspect. Or perhaps it's just his racism acting up), while the latter is a commonwealth country. Both need aid right now.

    35:

    The Bay Area is in Northern California and includes Marin, Napa, Sonoma, Santa Cruz these are all essentially Marches of the BayLands. The rulers of the Bay claim all the lands touched by the Bay

    But not Sacramento, which belongs to the Inland Empire, being its northernmost city

    The area north of the Sonoma is properly termed The Free and Independant State of Jefferson, and has as its capital Redding. While the Jeffersonians also claim southern Oregon, such claims are generally resisted by the natives of those regions

    36:

    Re: '... something about Trump having a golf course go bankrupt there'

    Another one? Aware that the golf course in Scotland's a money pit. Don't it just make you feel warm all over about his ability to ruin - I mean run - the US economy.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-09/trump-is-pouring-millions-into-money-losing-scottish-golf-course

    Okay folks - what in crime and suspense thrillers is usually paired with money-losing businesses? AFAIK, private golf clubs aren't required to publish their membership or shareholders lists. And the maximum number of memberships they can sell is something that the Board decides. It's not a legal or zoning requirement like the maximum number of people that can meet in a room. And if they don't charge or make money directly off it, then it's okay to not report that their business includes little special member perks like accepting and holding money from/for their members for an indefinite length of time. Alternatively, if they need to record healthy revenue from operations, then they can get their extra special club members to fork over the whole 50 or 100 years of their membership fees in advance into a special account which the golf course can then debit and diligently report every tax year. Absolutely no refunds even if such a customer never plays that course.

    37:

    Charlie, Many Happy Returns. And thanks for more sustained creative invention and intellectual ferocity, so far, than most of us have managed or ever will.

    I won't issue spoilers, but, from the advanced estate of 62 years & change, I can assure you that, slings and arrows aside, there's still life left. Still, DO NOT FORGET to cultivate an aura of immaturity. It will be your most precious tactic as you brushbust forward into the unmarked terrain of getting actually old.

    Now get off my lawn.

    38:

    Yea, I definitely had a very low productivity last November, and then it started falling again around March. I wonder what the cumulative effect of all this is? Significantly lower growth a few years from now?

    Re electric cars.

    I read one of those rare gem 'analyst' comments on it, essentially:

    The prospect of self driving cars dramatically accelerates the switch to electric cars.

    It is obvious that 'self driving' is the 'killer app' for cars, trucks, etc. Once it is available it will almost immediately be cheap enough that everyone will want one (and this doesn't have to be that cheap). Non-self driving cars will be dead.

    As it happens it is silly to build a non-electric self driving car. They probably will exist, but they will be silly things. Expensive sports cars, etc. There is a lot of overlap in the equipment that must be put on a car to make it self driving and the equipment that must be put on to be electric. Almost all models of gas powered car will cease production.

    It's impossible to say exactly when self driving cars show up for realz, but that year, or maybe even the year before when it is obviously they are coming non-self-driving cars die. Nobody with extra money who drives to work (aka most car buyers) will buy non-self-driving. Many of them will sell their existing car in short order flooding the used market with previously good deals. Others will save up another year or whatever to buy a self-driver. Any car company who's business is still human driven cars dies with them.

    And gas cars are on a clear path to extinction anyway. This just makes it something every car company has to go hard for NOW. It may already be too late for many.

    39:

    No, for maximum dystopian effect, the Charlie Stross in that universe doesn't do SFF at all; he makes his living from Harlequin/Mills and Boon romance novels, specialising in a semi-historical "Wild West" setting.

    40:

    Three things:

    1) happy upcoming birthday to OGH :)

    2) I suspect a blog article reading: "Zebras. Discuss" could yield an interesting comment thread here. I appreciate the "seeds" for the discussions but the discussions themselves are also rather interesting.

    3) not in the news much but much closer to home, Portugal also has a wildfire issue still ongoing. I suspect many ares that used to be "a bit dry and warm" currently are. Unless they are surprisingly wet now. AFAIK expected "weather settles to new normal" timeframe is roughly a century.

    41:

    BoJo was heavily involved in the "Garden Bridge" fiasco in London & the following comment was made, which sums him up perfectly: except, of course, it was not a sideshow for the occupant at City Hall. As several of the testimonies make clear the role of TfL is to keep said occupant happy even if they and their cohorts are acting like hyperactive infants going “me wants, me wants, we wants Garden Bridge. Build it now. And use my nice friend Tom to design it. I like his dwawings”.

    42:

    Yeah, as throughly unreconstructed 71-year-old, who still feels about 30 inside his head, though the muscles sometimes don't live up to it, agreed.

    43:

    Non-self driving cars will be dead. WRONG They will be RARE - like horses, today. Unless there is a cheap, easy-to-install-&-maintain conversion available for the manually-driven versions

    45:

    Look on the bright side of impeding nuclear apocalypse: flights to Tokyo have never been that cheap. I'm taking some vacations there next month ;)

    46:

    I'd go further and say it'll take a long time for them to be properly 'rare'.

    Sure, the hordes of reps carving up the motorways will probably be quite eager to trade their dismal diesel boxes in for a shiny self-driving bed but there are a lot of drivers out there who enjoy driving, myself included.

    I may be somewhat of an edge case but from my experiences on various car forums there are a significant number of people like me who have a fairly short commute but choose to own a sports car because of the enjoyment it brings.

    If I had the choice between an auto-driving Tesla 3 or a similarly priced hot-hatch, it's going to be the hot-hatch every time.

    47:

    [ Parenthetical note: it is difficult to log in and comment on my own blog when the Desktop Tiger is ferociously guarding the computer with teeth and claw ]

    No, for maximum dystopian effect, the Charlie Stross in that universe doesn't do SFF at all

    Nah. Just pick any time line in which Hitler won the second world war. These time lines are Charlie Stross free, because Endlösung.

    (Romance isn't merely a big genre, it's about 50% of all commercial fiction; there's an SF/F subgenre within it that is larger than the SF genre you find on your bookstore shelves, only it's gender segregated behind often-pink covers.)

    48:

    I'd go further and say it'll take a long time for them to be properly 'rare'.

    Yep. There are a LOT of uses for vehicles that are not commute to work and grocery type of people.

    Some of us are involved in working where we need granular control over our vehicle. I do a lot of my own home improvement and may build my next house. I just can't see self driving at that stage yet where it is critical just where the wheels of my truck are inch by inch. With backing up and attaching a trailer on the back of a job site as a side exercise. Toss in farm situations and such and there will be a lot of cars where "taking over the wheel" will be a requirement.

    49:

    The place for driver-controlled vehicles is on the track or prepared course, where there are no involuntary bystanders to be minced if the shaved ape behind the wheel loses control. You're welcome to own a sports car for weekend recreation, but not at the cost of my life and limbs — and by "you" I include the young idiots in the souped-up hatches who periodically hold informal road rallies less than a mile from the center of the capital city I live in (hint: seeing how fast you can hit 60mph in a 20mph speed limit after dark on a broad boulevard with foot and bicycle traffic and tourists — because it offers a scenic view of parliament — is dangerous as well as antisocial).

    The problem isn't responsible adults with enough awareness to drive safely when there are other people about, it's the idiots who spoil everything for the rest of us. (See also: the vast majority of gun owners in the USA, versus spree-shooters and stick-up artists.)

    And I'm still convinced that by 2117, our successors will look back on our human-driving habit with the same wonderment and disbelief with which we contemplate the short sword dueling culture of the 18th century: "they did what? Willingly?"

    50:

    Toss in farm situations and such and there will be a lot of cars where "taking over the wheel" will be a requirement.

    Here 's a self-driving farm tractor. Note the source: not exactly the usual WIRED gee-whiz tech press release.

    Even my sister's 2009-vintage car has reversing assist. (My own, 2006 model, is just a whisker too old: it was a high end option.) Given that self-parallel-parking is a cheap option on many current cars, I'm uncertain why you think self-trailer-docking is impossible, or even particularly difficult, given the mandatory roll-out of rear-view cameras with on-screen reversing track guides for dumb drivers.

    Remember the DARPA Grand Challenge in the 2000s, when the first true self-driving off-road vehicles showed off their chops? Rough terrain is rough, but traversing it is essentially a mapping and control issue. On-street driving is in many respects harder because it involves real-time threat detection and avoidance, and a lot of the threats are moving objects. (If you're driving off-road an the terrain becomes a moving object, that's a problem whether or not your driver is human or robot.)

    51:

    I don't disagree on the end-point and the necessity of removing humans from control of the 100mph death boxes, I just think that the convenience of a self-driving car will only be compelling for a certain type of driver. The remaining enthusiasts will take longer to move over and may require legislation to force them off the roads.

    For reference I do enjoy flogging my car around a track, but at the minute it's a lot more cost effective to own a single car for commuting, shopping, tip-runs and track-days than it is to have two cars. As that balance point starts to tip, presumably through taxation and legislation I'm sure it'll eventually make sense to have a track-only car stuck on a trailer behind a self-driving family box.

    That day is quite some distance away though IMHO.

    52:

    I work next door to TopCon who have their self driving tractors (aka lawn mowers with LIDAR) out every day for testing.

    I saw the header driver harvest my aunts wheat crop after doing a quick site survey with a drone (and removing a 100 year old tree so he could get his new behemoth onto the property), he spent 90% of the time reading while the machine did laps.

    I love watching the Moiré patterns in vineyards where robotic post hole diggers plant the stakes within a few mills in three dimensions.

    Farming has been the home of self driving vehicles for at least 17 years and shows the path for automation as a service. It kind of shocks folks that don't actually spend time on commercial farms to see how much its changed in the last 20 years.

    53:

    At some point there won't be any more human readable road signs. Or, more likely, they'll be something obscure that you can find somewhere on the internet for AR display the way you can still look up assembly instructions for obsolete tech if you dig. But all the old physical road signs will still be out there, rusting away and unrelated to the actual ordinances that regulate traffic, like the vestiges of old pavement paint that can confuse drivers (or give them pretexts to make excuses) even today.

    54:

    Excellent opportunity to apply a flea treatment.

    55:

    At some point there won't be any more human readable road signs..

    Nope. Machine vision is already good enough, and cameras cheap enough, that human-readable signs will be an excellent fallback navigation aid for automated vehicles — and useful for pedestrians and cyclists. They're very cheap compared to the cost of road surface renewal and a useful fallback for when local comms infrastructure falls, and rust isn't really a problem with modern materials.

    What I think will go is painted markings on roads — they need frequent renewal because they're eroded by tires/pot-holing, and there's an argument that they make roads less safe by overloading human drivers with too much information.

    56:

    Not sure about losing road markings completely. Even fairly smart autonomous vehicles are going to need hints on some of the 3 and 4 lane roundabouts in these parts.

    I'm not sure I believe the stuff above about self drive being the killer app that gets people onto electric cars either. I think it's going to go the other way. After internal combustion engines are effectively banned in cities then people will buy electric cars that happen to be able to drive themselves.

    Finally, whether or not self driving cars take off in the short term will probably have very little to do with boring rational considerations like safety, ride quality etc. and everything to do with sentiment. I expect to see lots of fear mongering from the usual suspects.

    57:

    I'd add another thing, now that we've been fooling around with the EV Chevy Bolt for a month:

    It's fun to drive.

    Now granted, I've always had a fondness for small cars, but this little runabout has two fun modes: --rapid acceleration --maximizing efficiency

    Granted the Bolt's top speed isn't anything to brag about (it's pegged at 91 mph supposedly), but you can accelerate past most non sports cars if you have to, which very occasionally you do (rapid acceleration and braking are safety features in small cars, because they don't survive impacts well). It's fun because everyone thinks it's a stodgy car, until...

    Maximizing efficiency is even more fun, because the car tells you (with about a 2 second lag) how many kilowatts you're using, including how many you get back on the regenerative braking. Jack-rabbiting around can crank up to 50-100 kW depending on how bad it is, while you can cruise under 20 kW. The latter is actually the kind of driving Chevy wants you to do (they email you your driving metrics at the end of the month, complete with tut-tuts about braking too hard), but driving safely while minimizing energy usage and maximizing range is kind of addictive too. It's also why everyone thinks you're a stodgy driver, until there's a need to step on it and trade range for acceleration.

    Yes, range anxiety is an issue--we'd get stuck in the desert driving to Vegas, which is why we're not planning to do that (not that I want to go to Vegas). However, at least 75% of the driving we normally do is short-hop commuting, and it's a better car for that role than the older car, which we keep for hauling stuff and rare, long road trips. Having this car has enormously cut our gas bill, although I don't think the Bolt will pay for itself that way.

    The interesting thing is that the Bolt has eight cameras installed, two in the back two in the front, and one on each mirror. Some of the safety features and monthly monitoring reports strongly suggest that, with a minor firmware upgrade, it could come a lot closer to driving itself. Of course, right now, those features simply suggest more ways the car could be hacked, but I suppose I'm just paranoid now, aren't I?

    58:

    Limiting the speed to 91mph is the sort of thing that drives a certain type of petrol head nuts but doesn't really inconvenience most drivers at all.

    It's a curious number though. Are there any countries that have that as a speed limit?

    59:

    I suspect that transition will be helped along by a substantial rate increase for human-driven cars. And those that can't afford the new tech and have no access to mass transit will hate it. Would be nice in some circumstances, like traversing the long empty in parts of the (Kinda') United States, and that capability is nearly real.

    60:

    It appears the limit is actually set to 150km/h but variously shows as between 91 and 93mph in vehicles using imperial speedos.

    61:

    (Romance isn't merely a big genre, it's about 50% of all commercial fiction; there's an SF/F subgenre within it that is larger than the SF genre you find on your bookstore shelves, only it's gender segregated behind often-pink covers.)

    Yep. I've recently started looking at the audio & ebook offerings at the local public library system; the majority of the SF/F books are romances, usually with shirtless men on the covers. The used bookstores I frequent have also started having separate Paranormal Romance sections. They're not as large as the main SF/F or romance sections, but I think that's because each store has their own peculiar ways of shelving genres. Often if a writer is most known for YA their adult books will be shelved there as well, so I've gotten into the habit of searching there as well. I've found some books that I'd consider to not be age approprate, but then I was reading "inappropriate" books when I was young. (And there's my precocious 7yo nephew who devoured the Harry Potter books several months ago [all in nearly two months], and is now going through the Percy Jackson series)

    62:

    and #58

    Well, I'd certainly not notice a 91mph speed limiter in day to day cruising which tends to be 50 to 70mph give or take. When I might well notice it is in 2-track overtaking, when I normally plant my right foot on the boards and leave it there until I'm returning to my own side of the road, to minimise the overtaking time.

    63:

    Oh manual-only cars will be around quite a while, but they won't be built anymore shockingly fast. Are some point I expect they become illegal on the roads, but that's 10 years out. Depends on safety stats I think.

    64:

    and a lot of the threats are moving objects. NOPE, nopety-nooo sirreee! The real threats to the safety of autonomous road vehicles will be the maintenance crews, & malicious H "sapiens". 3 years back, I was driving into London from the SE ( M20/A20 ) saw a big "30" sign inside "50" normal limit, slowed down - almost no-one else did ... drove for about 2 miles until I realised that there HAD BEEN roadworks, but they'd forgotten to take the sign away. On one of my regular routes there's a crossing on a minor road over the M25 ... they decided (rightly) to upgrade the safety barriers & put temporary "30" signs up at both ends. After they'd done all that, the N end pair were removed, but the S end pair remained, useless, for about 11 months. And what will your autonomous car do then? Yeah. Ditto kids with a tin-can on the end of a piece of string ... car comes to halt, sharpish ... endless fun for bored teenagers, oh & muggers, too.

    65:

    Since this is basically an open thread, I'd like to ask the following question

    Taking advantage of open-threadishness, let me solicit opinions about a very bizarre and somewhat science-fictal story that's been developing since late August. In summary, some 22 US and up to five Canadian diplomatic personnel and family members stationed in Havana started reporting a diverse set of health complaints following, in some cases, hearing strange sounds in their residences. Medical follow-up hasn't come up with any common diagnosis, but somewhere along the line the notion that a "sonic weapon" of unknown type wielded by unknown wielders might be responsible.

    There's been a bunch of stories on this, but a recent one is https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/science/cuba-sonic-weapon.html

    I, of course, have a pet theory about what's going on.

    For reference, here's a chronology of reported events

    November 2016 First case in mid-November December 2016 First reported case in late December (according to State Department spokeswoman) February 17, 2017 US complaint to Cuba February 22, 2017 Raul Castro meets with US Charge d'Affaires DeLaurentis about complaint May 23, 2017 US expells two Cuban diplomats 2017 Up to five Canadian diplomats report similar systems August 11, 2017 Secretary of State Tillerson said the illnesses were a result of “health attacks,” adding, “We’ve not been able to determine who’s to blame.” August 23, 2017 CBS views medical report of “conditions as serious as mild traumatic brain injury, and with likely damage to the central nervous system.” September 1, 2017 American Foreign Service Association “representatives met and spoke with ten members of the Foreign Service who experienced damage to their health as a result of these attacks. Diagnoses include mild traumatic brain injury and permanent hearing loss, with such additional symptoms as loss of balance, severe headaches, cognitive disruption, and brain swelling.” September 26, 2017 At Cuban request, Foreign Minister Rodriguez meets with Tillerson in Washington September 29, 2017 State Department warns US citizens not to travel to Cuba September 29, 2017 State Department ordered the departure of non-emergency personnel assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Havana, as well as all family members October 2, 2017 AP reports first victims were intelligence staff at embassy October 3, 2017 US says it will expell further fifteen Cuban diplomants October 6, 2017 After September 29 travel warning, some US citizens report similar symptoms following stays in Cuba

    and a list of reported symptoms

    Balance problems Brain swelling Cognitive issues (including concentration, common word recall) Difficulty sleeping Dizziness Ear complaints Fatigue Hearing loss, perhaps permanent Nausea Tinnitus Severe headache Visual complaints

    66:

    Speaking of automating cars and dumb drivers. In the US there's a commercial for a car (don't remember the make,—yes, I watch too much TV) that demonstrates the auto braking by showing the car stopping before hitting a man chasing after his loose papers and the driver raising his hands as if to say "WTF, dude!" then driving over the papers. Next he's shown down the street being jolted to attention by the car swerving to stay in the lane. I know we're supposed to geewhiz at the car, but the only thing it makes me think is that the idiot behind the wheel is in the habit of not paying attention to what he's doing and doesn't belong there.

    67:

    Our "desktop tiger2 tends to roll on the keyboard then first lick then fierce-bite fingers, given a chance .... But he's discovered how to press a paw onto the main "off" switch ... we now have a cover over that ....

    68:

    Yes, it's wierd, isn't it. And the Cubans are going: "It ain't us - tell us more" So, what's your pet hypothesis, then?

    69:

    It kind of shocks folks that don't actually spend time on commercial farms to see how much its changed in the last 20 years.

    Yeah. Last time I worked on a farm was the early 80s.

    70:

    Our Polynymous Friend went on about this a few weeks ago. Everything I've seen about it says the idea of a sonic weapon is nonsense. My guess is major Sick Building Syndrome due to quickly fixed up old embassy structures.

    71:

    As I said in the thread where we discussed self-driving cars ending car ownership:

    Regulating human-driveable cars will likely be the new guns in the US. Within Red States, driving large pickup trucks that you own has the same social standing as owning semi-automatic guns. In other words, trucks are as important as guns.

    I don't know if they'll insist on having the trucks be gas-powered, though?

    72:

    If power and commercial ground transport become carbon free, the carbon from the surviving gas powered vehicles may be not such a big deal. Mother Earth's indigestion as a metaphor for pollution?

    73:

    Re Cuba: when in doubt blame a virus.

    Re cars:

    Not sure about manuals being illegal in the US. It is, what? 30,000 deaths a year? That's some political pressure. But the insurance industry will want to start charging a lot less for computer drivers, and probably more for the maniacs who want to keep driving themselves. Could cause a liability insurance death spiral. Mainly, however, it's just comfort. The choice is to watch TV or pilot a vehicle down the road, I'm confident people will choose TV.

    The manual option will probably remain, but it might become vestgial or emergency backup low speeds only (without the elaborate dedicated controls of today).

    74:

    So, what's your pet hypothesis, then?

    Mass (23 to ~30) psychogenic illness (goes under several different names) triggered by some initial problem, then picked up by anti-Cuban/anti-Obama elements as a way to torpedo US-Cuban rapprochement.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness

    The available information is too vague to be sure of anything here, but an unknown sonic weapon with diverse effects seems kind of unlikely. I'd like to see CDC epidemiologists give this a thorough look.

    75:

    My guess is major Sick Building Syndrome due to quickly fixed up old embassy structures.

    The ~50 incidents/"attacks" seem to have happened in Cuban-supplied housing and the Hotel Capri, not the embassy building itself. Doesn't rule out that those were sick buildings, of course.

    Since the Cubans, surprisingly, let the FBI and RCMP come in and check the places, I'd hope that the Feds would have looked for mold and such as well as nefarious devices. Apparently they didn't find anything at all.

    76:

    Re: Cuba, US Embassy, sonics, illness ...

    As long as you're collecting speculations as to what happened/caused these symptoms, and keeping in mind that I'm not a techie, how about this.

    • Assume that every building that is rated for use by tech-loving foreigners is wired for WiFi/Internet.

    • Assume that every Westerner visiting Cuba is constantly using at least one WiFi gadget (that they brought with them from home) at any given time.

    • Assume that Cuba's Internet/WiFi infrastructure is a wee bit different than the stuff used elsewhere. (Maybe they got a steal of a deal from a certain country - hardware, software or both. Maybe they're connected to a peculiar cloud, or their Internet switches through interesting stand-alone hubs ... for security.)

    • Assume that the cause is truly 'sonic' ... or at least something closely similar in wave form/size. (Waves are additive/subtractive: you can create the right size/shape wave if you really want to.)

    • Assume that it is possible to write an app that very subtly messes with/changes, adds a second or third audio/visual stream to ride along with or atop real intended signals which is able to mess up/distort that device's speakers and/or visual feed in any way you like.

    • Assume that native Cubans have access to and use only a small number of manufacturers' devices so that it is feasible to identify therefore keep them isolated/safe from the above mentioned signals.

    Feel free to pick apart ...

    77:

    My guess is the combination of electric self-driving vehicles and Uber/Lyft will pretty much kill car ownership. Not only do you not have to drive the car, you don't even have to maintain it! If Uber/Lyft can keep the cost below $0.25 (US) per mile, it will be hard to justify owning a car for most people.

    78:

    Re: Cuba, etc.

    Interested to know whether the above 'assumptions' are testable.

    And whether investigators looked for any instances of native Cubans experiencing similar symptoms over the past 3 years or so.

    79:

    First... happy upcomng b'day, Charlie. And when we used to say "don't trust anyone over 30" (which I never did, since I certainly trusted my parents), I think they were thinking of people in power-over.

    Second, shuck that fit. In '87? '88? when I was working at the Scummy Mortgage Co, in Austin, TX, my boss, the VP turned 40. Now, I could see the black balloons tied to the ashtray in his office for his Smokestack-el-ropo cigars. I suppose I could deal with the black crepe paper and balloons on his door. But really, on the door to the department? And the cake that literally had "over the hill", and a figure draped over it? And the black balloons and crepe paper at his reserved parking space?

    My reaction was that if it had been me, I would have turned around and gone home. My late wife added that she would have called in, explaining that she'd seen all that, and gone home to see if she was dead.

    And writing... it's also a business, and how you earn your living. Get to work (unless told to take a break by your Lord&Master, with teeth and claws....)

    80:

    Electric vehicles don't imply "carbon-free" as the generation of electricity to charge batteries will remain a major consumer of fossil carbon energy for the next fifty years at least with the exhaust CO2 being dumped into the atmosphere.

    81:

    Gone? Really? By what, 2200?

    Do you really think that most folks are going to rush out and buy a self-driving? Go outside, and tell me what percentage of the cars you see are > 5 years old. How many are > 10? Self-driving will be EXPENSIVE for the first 5-10 years. And then... how do you feel about 5-10 y4 old used self-driving cars that may, or may not, have had any software updates since the three-year warranty ran out?

    82:

    Well of course they didn't find anything; there's almost certainly nothing to be found! Mass psychogenic illness fits the bill very well indeed, and the Cuban government would have to be fucking insane to be dicking with the US embassy given (a) they want improved relations with the US, (b) President Tiny-Hands is unpredictable and prone to fits of senile rage at the best of times, and (c) planet earth calling: what could they possibly gain from injuring US embassy staff that would be worth risking (a) and (b)?

    No, seriously: before postulating some kind of freaky espionage conspiracy, first ask yourself if the postulated attacker can gain anything at all from it — even a North Korean style "we're madder than you" rep. In the case of the Cuban embassy, the answer looks like a clear nope from where I'm standing.

    83:

    I don't know if they'll insist on having the trucks be gas-powered, though?

    How can you roll coal without hydrocarbons?

    84:

    When I was a kid I had a train set that included a "steam" locomotive. It had a ittle pad of rockwool in the funnel with a heating element under it. Add a drop of oil and you were rolling coal :)

    85:

    I believe I specifically mentioned power generation becoming carbon free in that. Is there still anyone who doesn't know an electric car is no cleaner than it's recharge source? Anyway, the point I apparently failed to make is if electrical power was carbon free and commercial transport likewise, the remaining unclean transport would be within the ecosystem's abilities. And before you mention it, decarbonizing now falls into the category of the first law of holes, it won't get us out, but not being in an even deeper one is still a good thing.

    86:

    On rolling coal, it took awhile, but they found something more obnoxious than flatulence in an elevator.

    87:

    Re: ' ... the Cuban government would have to be fucking insane ...'

    Which necessarily leads to a whole bunch of other suspects. Just in case the current era of paranoia wasn't bad enough.

    88:

    No, seriously: before postulating some kind of freaky espionage conspiracy, first ask yourself if the postulated attacker can gain anything at all from it

    That the Cuban government per se would have had to be insane to do this has been the basis for a lot of alternate explanations involving rogue elements of Cuban intelligence, Cuban anti-Castro factions in the US, rogue or not factions in the CIA, Venezuela, etc., etc. Also, vaguely reminiscent of the Moscow Microwave kerfuffle of the 1970s, some sort of technical espionage gone wrong.

    None of it is very persuasive. And, of course, the reported incidents and symptoms really don't fit any sort of known sonic or microwave effects.

    I still like psychogenic illness exploited post facto for political reasons.

    89:

    I don't tend to have time for comment threads but certain aspects of this post are alarming.

    I hope you take care of yourself and find some time to take a breather with no blogging-related guilt after the submission deadline is past and before the copyediting phase hits.

    I have talked down people in burnout who are about to blow a gasket. I've watched people around me at work burn out. And I recently went through two years of happyfuntimes myself. Which is to say that I know whereof I speak.

    Please, be careful. Presumably others are saying this as well.

    I know you need to eat, and other things which require money besides, and writing doesn't really pay unless you're supermarket blockbuster man.

    But six months of burnout costs money too. Be safe.

    90:

    "Is there still anyone who doesn't know an electric car is no cleaner than it's recharge source?"

    Me

    It takes quite vast amounts of electricity to refine oil. The oil industry is quite coy about how much, but back of the envelope calculations based on what we do know indicate that the amount of electricity consumed by refining the petrol for a petrol car is about the same as the amount of electricity consumed by an electric car to cover the same distance. Give or take a bit. I'm guessing the error bars, but I'm pretty sure it's less than twice and more than half.

    Now there's two ways to get the electricity that is needed. They can either buy it in, in which case it's the same carbon level as the local grid. Or they can make it themselves by burning byproduct. In which case it's probably more carbon intensive than the local grid.

    Which means that an electric car is effectively cleaner than its recharge source.

    Secondly, if the grid is very dirty, then chances are it's coal fired, or majority coal fired. In which case electricity is discarded overnight. EVs charged on off peak are using electricity that would otherwise be discarded, so they are creating no extra carbon emissions as a result of their use. In that sort of grid almost all EVs would be charged on off peak because it's always much much cheaper (and it's when you want to charge anyway).

    91:

    Sick building syndrome or some fungal issue would be my first guess. The problem with sonic weapons is that, basically, how'd they get that to work? Subsonics (basically overly large boatswain's whistles) have been around forever, but they're area effect weapons, and the effects are rather obvious and not confined to people. Also, Cuba has what kind of armaments industry again?

    If you don't believe in sick building and think the attacks were deliberate, I'd suggest either a fungal or algal agent. Both of these have some nasty neurotoxins, and the Cubans definitely have their own biomedical industry.

    Still, black mold and sick building syndrome are a seemingly better fit, and there's no point in assuming malice when neglect and/or carelessness will cause the same symptoms.

    92:

    Here 's a self-driving farm tractor. Note the source: not exactly the usual WIRED gee-whiz tech press release. ... Even my sister's 2009-vintage car has reversing assist. (My own, 2006 model, is just a whisker too old: it was a high end option.) Given that self-parallel-parking is a cheap option on many current cars, I'm uncertain why you think self-trailer-docking is impossible, or even particularly difficult, given the mandatory roll-out of rear-view cameras with on-screen reversing track guides for dumb drivers.

    I was talking about farms in general. You're talking about large scale field operations. Maneuvering around the barn while noticing the soft spot where you pulled the stump out a couple of weeks ago and knowing when done you want the tailer just THERE so when you're back in 2 hours you can unload the truck into the trailer you just used to haul manure over HERE and when done with it all put the trailer over by where you can wash it out in the morning after you bring in the gray water from the pond via the truck with the tank on the back and .....

    Moving stuff around the barns and such of a small farm are more akin to the flight ops on a US carrier deck than the nice "let's harvest these 50 acres of wheat all in nice flat rows". For that yes self driving tractors and harvesters have been around for a while. Ever since people figured out how to bolt a GPS to the steering system of a tractor.

    I spent some time doing these things when growing up. My father built houses as a side job on land we subdivided. I work with construction firms and do some small scale stuff myself. I also earned my spending money mowing fields. (Not crop fields but various spots of non tree covered areas with all kinds of interesting topology and vegetation to deal with.) Both things are way harder to automate in terms of vehicles than highway driving and large field operations.

    Now replace all smaller multi crop and animal operations with large scale mono crop / animal operations and yes you can greatly automate most all vehicle operations around farms.

    Similar issues with construction. Get rid of anything less than 10 family dwellings and start doing more modular off site assembly and you can do similar things in construction.

    93:

    Is there still anyone who doesn't know an electric car is no cleaner than it's recharge source?

    Sure. But with electricity you have the chanced to change the root source of the power. With a petrol vehicle you are stuck with hydrocarbons for power for the life of the vehicle.

    Says he who bought a new Civic in June of 2016. I wanted to buy an electric but got stuck having to buy a car then when I would have preferred to have waited till next year.

    But still when doing continuous 60mph to 65mph on highways I CAN get 50mpg for the tank which includes the stop to fill up plus the few miles getting back onto the "fast" road.

    94:

    One of the attractive features about the mass psychogenic hypothesis is that it doesn't really need a common agent beyond social interaction in a group of people. Once it gets kicked off by a triggering case(s) involving one or a few people -- which could be pretty much anything, like a cold, allergy, bump on the head, etc. -- it propagates by people getting worried about it and talking about it.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC543940/

    95:

    Except Uber are grafting lying tax-stealing "Not-really-employee"-cheaters of the first water. So NO

    96:

    Certainly not me! Assuming I'm allowed to keep my 1996-build diesel ( or get it retrofitted with an LPG engine ) then I will keep it until I am no longer allowed to drive it.

    97:

    Here's one of the articles I've read discounting the Sonic Weapon argument, from NYT by Carl Zimmer: A ‘Sonic Attack’ on Diplomats in Cuba? These Scientists Doubt It

    Another thought I had was some sort of sympathetic resonance in the buildings causing illness. I'm fairly certain I've heard of cases involving skyscrapers in high winds causing infrasonic vibrations leading to nausea and disorientation. Something like that could be mistaken for a sonic attack. But I don't know that the buildings in Cuba would be subject to that, or how windy it is there (not counting during Hurricanes!). LIke my other comment, just a guess and I may be misremembering.

    I don't discount the Psychogenic hypothesis, but how much contact was there between US and Canadian embassy staff? Would just hearing about ilness in one group trigger a reaction in the other?

    98:

    Are American Embassy personnel vaccinated before being posted to foreign countries, especially tropical ones? Room for some nasty tricks (or accidents) there, given the anti-vaxxers' current "eminence".

    99:

    how much contact was there between US and Canadian embassy staff?

    I don't know for sure, but would expect that between direct contact and meeting at various official and social functions they meet quite often, several times a week at guess. There was one French case which the French government investigated and dismissed.

    Would just hearing about illness in one group trigger a reaction in the other?

    Yes, if the groups were in fairly trusting contact as I would expect between Canada and the US.

    100:

    I would think so, but may depend on where they're being posted. AFAIK Military personnel get vaccinated before going over seas.

    101:

    Bunch of semi related, somewhat confused comments

    1: will self driving cars be electric ? Probably mostly. Takes juice to run the autonomous software, also the ride sharing platforms are some of the most active in developing the software and they will want their cars to be electric both for reduced cost and to appear green and friendly 2: will self driving cars be only self driving? Probably not, the first generation at least will allow full manual control. Self driving will likely not be evenly distributed across geographies 3: will non electric cars go away? Certainly not entirely until the legacy population of old cars died off. However for commuter cars I don't think there will be much reason to build a new IC car soonish (say next ten years).

    Electric cars are actually "more fun to drive" in most ways because their acceleration is insane and the torque is instant. Plus they tend to have extremely low centers of gravity due to the battery packs in the floor. They will also kick the ass of any production IC car in any kind of race. Street racers in souped up nitriles fueled muscle cars won't even race stock Teslas anymore

    You will probably find people that still like to drive vintage IC cars but they will akin to people that like shooting blackpowder muskets

    I think the main exception to this will be long distance driving , unless something miraculous happens to the recharge cycle you are still going to want UC cars for distance driving, assuming you care about overall travel time. Note long distance trucking probably cares less about travel times then costs

    102:

    Also depending on how long since their last booster.

    103:

    Agreed. Charlie, I would far rather read a post from you saying that you were deciding to take a break - even permanently - from writing because it was going to do your head in if you didn't take things easy, than that you were compelled to take a break because it did do your head in. Certainly there is no need for you to apologise for not blogging with the outrageous load you seem to have on at the moment.

    104:

    "There is a lot of overlap in the equipment that must be put on a car to make it self driving and the equipment that must be put on to be electric."

    No, there is very little overlap. The first is a control system, the second is a powertrain. You can replace the self-driving kit with a human and all you have is a non-self-driving car, but if you replace the powertrain with a human what you have is a wheelbarrow.

    The only advantage an electric car has over an IC car is that you may be relieved of the need to add an actuator to modulate the power output, and can instead do it directly with an electrical signal. May be, but the need may not arise. Diesels with electronically controlled injection can be modulated by an electrical signal in any case, and a lot of petrol car manufacturers are sufficiently arsulous that they use an electrically-driven throttle already. And even if you do need to add an actuator, it's hardly the end of the world.

    Steering and braking (an electric car still requires mechanical brakes) will need actuators in either case, and rather beefier ones. And again, an increasing number of cars have them already (granted, the braking ones may not be quite what you want).

    If the self-driving idea is viable at all, the biggest obstacle to making a bolt-on self-driving kit that works without alteration on both electric and IC cars is going to be the car manufacturers deliberately making it difficult to feed the three control signals (power, steering, braking) into the existing systems.

    105:

    Bolt of self driving kit is probably an order of magnitude more difficult to get working then a bespoke configuration

    You need a lot of very precisely calibrated sensors not to mention a pretty beefy computer., not even sure where you would put that on most modern IC cars

    Pretty sure an IC car would have trouble with the power draw

    106:

    Re: Cuba - US & Cdn Embassy Personnel

    A couple of comments/questions:

    • What types of people (personality-wise) do you think get posted overseas esp. to a country that until recently was completely off-limits to all USians - basically, an enemy state? How susceptible do you think these personnel would be to what sounds like hypnotic suggestion/mass hysteria? If anything, I'm guessing that staff for such a posting would be the opposite and probably trained to recognize when their emotional responses were drifting away from historical normal. Or, if the person making staffing decision for this embassy was paranoid, staff would be selected on the basis of being almost completely lacking in empathy or any need for emotional bonding.

    • The article quoting the sonics prof (infrasound) mentions some of the same symptoms as reported by embassy staffers. What is missing is the neurophysiology POV. A sonics engineer does not have the creds to have the last say on what is essentially a neuro issue. His experience and understanding were tangential at best. There are labs working on sonics and human tissue, incl. brains, that could have been interviewed.

    Not what happened, but does show how sound waves can manipulate biological matter and why sound could be an issue in the brain:

    http://news.mit.edu/2016/acoustic-tweezers-manipulate-cells-sound-waves-0125

    http://news.mit.edu/2014/synchronized-brain-waves-enable-rapid-learning-0612

    107:

    Diesels with electronically controlled injection can be modulated by an electrical signal in any case, and a lot of petrol car manufacturers are sufficiently arsulous that they use an electrically-driven throttle already.

    I may be wrong but I think most all cars designed for markets with modern pollution standards are "throttle by wire" now. I.E. the throttle is fully computer controlled based on the request by your foot and the current engine situation.

    108:

    If you really want to see what can be done with a GPS, some software, and a tractor do a Google image search for:

    Spring Grove, Illinois corn maze

    Now I'm assuming these things were done with software and a GPS. I can't imagine otherwise.

    109:

    I've always felt the decade shifts at the 7s... 17, 27, 37. More the anticipation of the thing coming, than the delay of what's already happened.

    110:

    Certainly not entirely until the legacy population of old cars died off. Yes, well, on Sunday I saw a 1913 Sheffield-Simplex car on the road ... Somewhere near one of my favourite pubs, someoene owns a 1950's MG TD ... As I said, horses are still around, aren't they?

    111:

    The exciting stuff is always 10 years in the future, but at 950 Whr/kg and 5min charge time this would out out do most turbo diesel cars for range (no idea of the Whr/L though).

    https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/10/paving-the-way-for-a-lithium-battery-that-uses-an-asphalt-electrode/

    112:

    I think petrol-driven cars will probably be around for a while, particularly down the "low income" end of the price range. For example: my partner and I are currently driving a car which was built in 1999. When it dies, we'll necessarily be looking for a second-hand replacement for a maximum possible price of about $5000 Australian. It is highly unlikely our next car will be electric - they just haven't dropped low enough in price to be affordable for us.

    Why the $5000 price limit? Well, that's the most we're allowed to have in savings while we're on the dole.

    The thing which will kill off petrol-driven cars is going to be the closure of petrol stations. Once that happens, we'll probably be either hoping like hell the public transport situation in this city has improved sight out of mind, or we'll be trying to buy bicycles and a little trailer to put the grocery shopping in.

    113:

    I'll admit that for the first time in, well, forever, I think that out politicians may permanently wreak things. We didn't raise out kids (now in their 20s) to be fire breathing political but they are. Especially compared to their peers. The current situation is getting under all of our skin. Not just DT but all of it. Even the overseas bits.

    I noticed Cabaret as an option on the movies on my TV and remembered how this bit of it has always struck me as a powerful bit of movie making. (More so if you have seen the movie.)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Mg6Gfh9Co

    What's scary is that it seems to be playing out here and other places around the world.

    As a footnote I've always wondered what people in/from Germany currently over 40 or 50 thought of the movie.

    114:

    Aren't you presuming that:- 1) There's something worth watching on TV. 2) That TV will be "more interesting than the vehicle's surroundings"?

    As a general rule, (1) is not ever met for me, and (2) might only met on the rare occasions I'm South of Preston (Lancashire, UK) and still on the M1/M5/M6/M42/M40.

    115:

    In the UK, we have a Revenue set allowance for vehicle costs. for vehicles over 1.4l capacity, this is presently GB£0-40 per mile. That's track cost, and doesn't allow for a driver to get a pay or anyone to take a profit.

    116:

    OK, I choose that you may use any EV you wish except a Tesla Model S. I will use my old Skoda turbo-diesel.

    The race will be over 4 laps of the IOM TT course.

    I'm comfortably certain that I will win on elapsed time since I won't have to stop and recharge, oh and I've only set the distance at 150.92 miles.

    117:

    You're assuming that owning a vehicle is the cheapest option and that Tesla's plan is to sell mass market vehicles in the medium term.

    I suspect that their plan is to sell perhaps 5000 Model 3s per 100,000 people and allow you to lease them back to a fleet of autonomous cars. If you could have a car on call within 5 minutes which you could use for $0.50/km (with Tesla taking a 10% cut) with no insurance/fuel/maintenance costs it's a pretty compelling case for not owning your next vehicle. As an actual owner, you get your lease paid off and access to a car with continual firmware updates.

    It also explains why they are pushing pretty hard for level 5 autonomy where Ford etc are happy to go with level 2 or 3.

    The mistake is thinking that the disruption ends at electric cars, as opposed to universal access to public transport.

    118:

    @Moderator Alan - Thanks for the cleanup. It's quite understandable that you can only do it when you're here. If it's any help at all, I normally only use "the S word" when I spot chopped and spiced pig product.

    119:

    And the continued impossibility of getting lots of them into city-centres, nor being able to outpoace even an "ordinary" train ( Max speed, say 160 kph ), never mind 225 or 350 kph ones ...

    120:

    I am 59, which is somehow still 50 to me in the same way that £5.95 is magically £5 rather than £6 in almost everybody's minds.

    However, it turns out that 36 mph, for instance, is not actually 30 mph according to the UK traffic authorities; it's my only speeding offence - well, officially registered speeding occurrence - in 42 years of driving, so not too bad. (I think most people do behave as though 70 mph on M-ways means "up to 80mph" though, including the police.)

    121:

    Just like electric cars have had a faster uptake than Charlie and many on this board expected, I also think that electric airplanes and helicopters will as well. Note that I realize none of these planes will be bigger than a regional jet, or perhaps a narrowbody?

    122:

    I found this article

    http://www.businessinsider.com/how-technology-is-changing-airline-indusry-2017-10

    I don't agree with them on hypersonic flight as I think supersonic flight is more likely. Likewise, I'm a bit more ambivalent about autonomous flight.

    123:

    How about Darwin to Adelaide in Australia? Oh, and you don't get to re-fill your petrol tank...

    https://www.worldsolarchallenge.org/dashboard/map

    124:

    - What types of people (personality-wise) do you think get posted overseas esp. to a country that until recently was completely off-limits to all USians - basically, an enemy state? How susceptible do you think these personnel would be to what sounds like hypnotic suggestion/mass hysteria?

    The State department definitely looks for certain personality traits: https://careers.state.gov/work/foreign-service/officer/13-dimensions/

    In addition, most in embassies, especially in sensitive posts like Havana, hold security clearances, the granting of which involves psychological evaluation.

    That said, I've known a fair number of people who've served in embassies, including several who were in Moscow during the Cold War, and they don't strike me as being greatly different than other college-educated professional and business types. So no, I wouldn't think they're much more or less susceptible to such things that other comparable people.

    125:

    It's going to be a little while on those electric planes. The range I saw for what looked like a 2-seater prototype ePlane was around 600 miles. Fun, yes, but it's missing some of the utility (and safety) of a gashawk. I'm starting to wonder if there's some group of tasks where electrical dirigibles or lifting bodies make sense (getting the lift from gas rather than just wings), or whether batteries and solar panels are too heavy to make that option feasible.

    To me, the key technology to watch is "battery" energy density (a "battery" being anything that stores electricity). The closer that gets to petroleum, the more applications we'll see for transportation (and the more spectacular explosions we'll see when these things short out or rupture, but that's another story). Anyway, the more energy we can store per kilo, (generally) the better off we'll be. The "problem" with petroleum has always been that it's pretty much top of the class in this category, unless you want to play with fission.

    Finally, Honda's suggestions to the contrary, I also suspect we're not going to see a hydrogen supply system roll out, because (fusion-based miracles aside) I suspect we're already past the point where it's feasible to do that using the petroleum fuels we have left and the grid electricity we're in the process of transforming. That kind of sucks, given that I'm not sure whether batteries will ever have the energy density (per weight) of even hydrogen, but that seems to be where we are. We don't seem to be able to do infrastructure very well. The demand for repair of existing infrastructure is going to increase over coming decades thanks to climate change, and that suggests that we're going to have to adapt what we already have, rather than rolling out a totally new infrastructure system (such as hydrogen generation, shipping, storage, and safety). The same actually applies to transportation in general, come to think of it.

    I think I better stop meandering now...

    126:

    It's not quite as bad as that. Battery plus electric motor needs to get closer in total output to petrol plus ICE. And there's a big difference in conversion efficiency between electric and ICE. So the energy storage only needs to match 30% of the petrol storage for the same range. I'd expect an electric vehicle to make big use of regen but as we move to hybrid everything the petrol-hybrid will have this as well. I think where we need to go is utility cars with less emphasis on premium performance and with a PHEV drive train where the petrol side of it gets smaller and smaller, while the car is optimised for efficiency. So in the short term, cars like the BMW i3 with the extended range engine looking more and more like a small Honda generator. The big challenge is to persuade customers that they really only need an Audi A3 and not a Cadillac Escalade.

    127:

    Btw, Charlie, about being 53... for the last few years before my late wife died, I decided that if 39 was good enough for Jack Benny (who died 80 years after he was born, at the age of 39...), it was good enough for m.

    Then she dropped dead, and I got old.

    128:

    Once I get my model railroad up and running, I have a number of steam locos, being that the time period is 1939-1940, and I plan to put steam into one or two. The rest... I've got this plan of to use wire and cotton from the medicine bottles....

    ObExample of what I think is a mind-boggling layout, google "Franklin and South Manchester"

    129:

    Um, no. First, economies of scale. And second, and significant, is that I hereby invoke the 3 laws of thermodynamics, and, as a result, get that 100,000 petrochemical-burning cars will, due to losses - starting the engine many, many times, vehicles that need a tuneup or a lub job, etc, burn more fuel than one large power plant.

    130:

    On being middle-aged.

    As-ever I'd suggest it's in the mind of the beholder, I'm up towards the the dusty end of my 40s and have stated that I'm not middle-aged until I started shouting at people in the street to put a light on that bike, and that I still have a reasonably active/inappropriate sense of humour (at least to my mind).

    Against that I count that I have an adult descendant, a daily medication regime and a high concentration of stuff in my playlist older than some of my colleagues.

    But the unkindest cut., the real trauma, was realising that the entire three Yorkshiremen schtick will mean nothing to the bulk of the people I deal with on a day-to-day basis.

    131:

    I agree, completely. And Casto's reply of, "please let us know when you figure it out" is the icing on the cake.

    I have a friend who is retired US State Dept, and was posted all over. Yes, they get immunizations, lots of them. However, I am not familiar with the existance of immunizations against molds - are there any? And given what I picture of Havana's natural humidity... and here's another twist: I don't know of such illnesses in such staff before the embargo. I don't suppose there's any chance that the staff has lived in air conditioned and ultra-sanitary locations for so long, they never developed the immunities that folks who live in areas like that have.... Maybe they should send someone from, say, Miami or N'Awlins as staff, and see if they have the same issues.

    132:

    However, it turns out that 36 mph, for instance, is not actually 30 mph according to the UK traffic authorities; it's my only speeding offence

    Apparently, the UK police guideline is "10% plus 2mph", thus allowing for any claim that the speedometer was incorrect, or your tyres were more inflated than normal.

    So, over 35mph on the calibrated (and in-date) speedgun, and you don't have an excuse. Correspondingly, over 79mph on a dual carriageway. So far, my only speeding offence is for doing 80mph on a dry, clear, and bright weekend early morning on the M6, with hardly any traffic, and no cars within half a mile in front or behind. Still not an excuse, but Cumbria cops had decided to park up on an overpass...

    ...as for the encroachments of middle age (he smiled) I'm soon to be 51; and moving from "training and competing with people half my age" in shooting, to "training with people a third of my age" in Judo. Doing groundwork against a teenager who's four inches taller and a stone heavier is fun, especially when you "win"... doing groundwork against your wife is trickier, especially when it is suggested by the instructors that you only use technique, and not your strength or mass (she beat me, dammit).

    133:

    "The choice is to watch TV or pilot a vehicle down the road, I'm confident people will choose TV."

    I had a little visual flash forward when I read that ... it featured a wistful petrolhead sat in an electric self driving car which was smoothly and safely travelling along the road.

    Inside the passenger compartment the petrolhead was taking out his frustration at no longer being able to bolster his ego by being in control of a dangerous machine by careering wildly around a driving game on a conveniently placed screen ...

    134:

    Re: 'Embassy & psych eval'

    Psych evals have become cheaper, faster, and easier to administer resulting in being more widespread in their use. Personally know of Fortune 50 size orgs right down to outfits with fewer than 50 employees that use such testing as part of their hiring process.

    I've taken a bunch of such tests plus administered and scored some using the provided template. Most measure the big-five while a few are designed specifically to identify risky hires. Recall scoring one applicant who'd aced a series of interviews (including a group interview) but whose test results indicated a serious potential problem. Complete check of work history supported the test results - complete and utter sociopath. This applicant would have had access to some serious products in that job. When the interviewers found out why this applicant was ultimately rejected they were crushed, relieved and paid more attention to such tests.

    Probably the most compelling reason for administering such tests is that they reduce personnel costs re: hiring, training because of turnover. That's the argument that usually works at budget time.

    It makes sense for a gov't to use such testing especially given how their scale would allow them to conduct extensive follow up and sub-sub-group analyses between test results and real-life performance to identify optimal profiles for particular jobs.

    135:

    Every car comes with a short-cut button for watching Top Gear repeats on Dave?

    136:

    The march of time: I remember the shock when I realised that there were now people of voting age who couldn't remember Thatcher. But the much bigger shock was a couple of Christmases ago, when one of my nieces was showing me her Christmas presents, necessitating me fiddling with my glasses, which caused my mum to say to my niece "hold it [differently somehow], he doesn't see very well".

    137:

    Ya think?

    There are people of voting age in the UK who don't really remember Tony Blair as Prime Minister. (He left office when they were ten.)

    138:

    I think aerostats make a great deal of sense, and are disparaged in a way that is not justified by a small number of deflagrations. There's nothing to say you have to fill them with hydrogen, after all, or helium either for that matter. Ammonia would probably do pretty well; you'd only need to make the thing about 15% bigger in linear dimensions to get the same buoyancy, and you could control the buoyancy very easily by dissolving the ammonia in water or boiling it out again. And power-to-weight of solar cells for powering it isn't a problem - the surface-area/volume ratio thing works in your favour, so all you have to do is make it bigger.

    Not having to burn energy just to keep it off the ground is useful as well as elegant. For passenger use, the descriptions of historical airship passenger cabins sound as if they were vastly more pleasant places to be than any plane cabin. For freight, they would be an excellent replacement for those amazingly slow aeroplanes that China uses to send stuff you buy off ebay ("by air mail" on the package, but it still takes a month to arrive).

    Similarly, we are long overdue a return to sail for shipping. Yeah, maybe it would give slower and less predictable journey times. That's only a problem because we have allowed ourselves to become infested with accountants that hate warehouses. Shoot all of them, and the problem disappears, along with lots of other problems like overcrowded trains at peak travel times, and Sainsbury's not having any tea when I go to buy some.

    Infrastructure adaptations and "batteries" - this is why I think we should be putting a lot more effort into artificial photosynthesis. People love to hate oil, but it's not oil that's the problem, it's the open cycle it's used in. We can keep not only all the existing infrastructure, but also all the existing machinery. It's just a case of unplugging the oil wells from the input side of it and plugging in photosynthetic hydrocarbon generators instead.

    People like to respond to that argument with "but stuff will get changed anyway", but again that merely betrays a deeper problem. We need a massive cultural shift, deleting this crazy obsession with "new stuff is better because it's new", and replacing it with "having new stuff is a sign of failure, because it means you were too useless to keep the old stuff working".

    139:

    That, I simply can't process at all. Ten years ago is still pretty much yesterday in my perception...

    140:

    "Apparently, the UK police guideline is "10% plus 2mph""

    I wasn't aggrieved I was done for 36 mph, but there was a chap on my subsequent Speed Awareness Workshop who had been done for doing 33mph somewhere, which seemed harsh.

    And even the guy giving the workshop said he drove at 80 on motorways - the rationale being that a 10mph increase on essentially one-way 3-lane pedestrian/L-driver/cyclist-free roads is perfectly (relatively) safe in the way that a 5 mph increase over the limit on a two-way road in a residential area full of children, wheelchairs and parked delivery vans is not.

    141:

    Very much so. I can't see it ever being possible for me to have an electric car - simply because they have a single, very large, very expensive, expendable component, which has to be replaced with an actual new one when its time is up. Second hand electric cars in a usable state will always cost several grand because the price will be held up by the price of replacement batteries. Cheap second hand cars will not exist, apart from those in which the battery is tatered, which will be very cheap because they are useless unless you hand over several grand for a new battery. They will always be a good order of magnitude too expensive for me.

    So my fallback position will be to cobble something together in my back garden out of old oil drums and bits of pipe, whose function is to cook up old wood and similar organic rubbish in the absence of oxygen at a suitable temperature, and collect the appropriate liquid fractions from the gunk it gives off.

    142:

    The way I put it is that there are people of voting age who don't remember the world before the recession.

    143:

    Their ancestors are apparently doing a fine job. BREXTERMINATE! BREXTERMINATE!

    144:

    What about the Ammonia fuel cycle? Proposed occasionally in these pages. Is the main problem not the technology, but the toxicty of Ammonia itself, or something else?

    145:

    I thought it wa 3% but, nonetheless, I know my speedo is between 7.5 & 8 (maybe 8.5) % fast. So in the respective limits, I watch the dial & don't exceed: 34/45/56/67/78 mph indicated. Seems to work.

    146:

    I'm not sure I believe any of that bullshit. Psychometric testing has a very bad name in some quarters. Who guards the guardians? Who says & decides what is & is not acceptable - this week.

    147:

    Those of us who can (just) remember King George, or Churchill speaking live, or remembering what you were doing on 22/11/63 are the wisdom of the ancients, then!

    148:

    Re: Cuba, US Embassy, sonics, illness ...

    I wonder if it could be something as mundane as diesel generators? I know Cuba doesn't have a very reliable power grid by U.S. standards & I'll bet all the buildings the U.S. diplomats are using have their own generators.

    In Iraq we couldn't rely on the local power grid, so our FOB had lots of big diesel generators scattered around. They were so ubiquitous that you didn't really notice them until you started having problems. I still have severe tinnitus more than a decade later and I wouldn't be surprised if my other respiratory symptoms aren't related as well.

    Of course it's all so vague the VA probably won't recognize it as service related before I die. How long did it take them to recognize "Gulf War Syndrome" as a real illness?

    149:

    Ammonia fuel cycle would be an excellent way to power electric-fan aircraft. The conversion losses and much lower importance of weight means batteries are going to win for ground transport every time, but for flying, ammonia->fuel-cell->engine is a very sensible powertrain.

    150:

    Since discussions are all over the map and spanning at least three topic threads simultaneously, decided to post these two items here.

    Another battery:

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171011123826.htm

    'Motivated by a challenge from the Department of Energy to drastically reduce the cost of storing renewable energy on the grid while capturing more of it, a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists has developed a battery powered by sulfur, air, water, and salt -- all readily available materials -- that is nearly 100 times less expensive to produce than batteries currently on the market and can store twice as much energy as a lead-acid battery. The inventors present their prototype October 11 in the journal Joule.'

    Getting a longer, deeper and more specific chain of effects in genetics:

    This is one of several GTEx project related articles and includes graphics. (Always helpful when there's so much info to process.) Did read a bit of a related article which focused on cis and trans molecules but will have to review some basic organic chem before trying to read it again. Anyways, the cis vs trans might be an interesting insight into why/how inert gases like xenon are able to do what they do and where.

    Genetic effects on gene expression across human tissues

    https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v550/n7675/full/nature24277.html

    'Characterization of the molecular function of the human genome and its variation across individuals is essential for identifying the cellular mechanisms that underlie human genetic traits and diseases. The Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project aims to characterize variation in gene expression levels across individuals and diverse tissues of the human body, many of which are not easily accessible. Here we describe genetic effects on gene expression levels across 44 human tissues. We find that local genetic variation affects gene expression levels for the majority of genes, and we further identify inter-chromosomal genetic effects for 93 genes and 112 loci. On the basis of the identified genetic effects, we characterize patterns of tissue specificity, compare local and distal effects, and evaluate the functional properties of the genetic effects. We also demonstrate that multi-tissue, multi-individual data can be used to identify genes and pathways affected by human disease-associated variation, enabling a mechanistic interpretation of gene regulation and the genetic basis of disease.'

    151:

    That sulfur battery story caught my eye too. Paper link: Air-Breathing Aqueous Sulfur Flow Battery for Ultralow-Cost Long-Duration Electrical Storage It's full of cost analyses and chemistry, both of which make my eyes/mind glaze over a bit. (Have to fix those weaknesses.) In summary, this work demonstrates a new electrochemical storage approach that uses an aqueous polysulfide anolyte in conjunction with an air-breathing catholyte to reach exceptionally low chemical cost of storage (US$1/kWh) while providing moderately high energy density (29–121 Wh/L at the solution level). (Key words there being "chemical cost" - there are other costs.) Anyone who knows current research in storage care to comment? One (or more) major advance in cheap storage, commercialized, produced in bulk and priced right, could be a game changer, as we've long discussed here. Wondering if this is (or will lead to) the one.

    152:

    Another new battery story: High-performance sodium–organic battery by realizing four-sodium storage in disodium rhodizonate (09 October 2017, paywalled, abstract without access (of some sort).) On the basis of this understanding, we achieved four-sodium storage in a Na2C6O6 electrode with a reversible capacity of 484 mAh g−1, an energy density of 726 Wh kg−1cathode, an energy efficiency above 87% and a good cycle retention. (Lots of detail and pretty diagrams in the paper.)

    I am hopeful that advances in and commercialization of storage (low/cheap and high density) and improvements in solar (and wind) efficiency will happen quickly and will give us (humans) improved odds. It helps that China is quite explicit and upfront about wanting to dominate in these tech areas (and others).

    153:

    There are some really good examples of people creating excellent work not just into their 50s, 60s and 70s but even into their 90s and 100s nowadays (my knowledge here is more in the music composition area - Havergal Brian (last symphony, his 32nd, composed at age 92, 4 years before he died), Elliott Carter, Lev Orenstein, to name 3 not wholly-unknown people...) and people who if anything came into their prime only in their later years (again in music just e.g.:- Leos Janacek, who's considered most interesting for the music he wrote in his 70s, iirc. I doubt it's hard to find examples elsewhere though.)

    And fwiw I am finding the Laundry Files to be getting ever more enjoyable and intriguing (and one of the most (and multiply) re-readable new series I have encountered- I mean that as a very strong compliment), and am really, really glad too that- after reading the first novel some years back and being, at the time, somewhat less impressed than usual- that I gave the Merchant Princes series (and now its sequel) another go-- (very much looking forward to Dark State.) ... (for example again.)

    155:

    Or you could just borrow the money.

    When you get to a situation where you're running a petrol car, and the costs of doing so exceed the repayments on an electric car, you'd be crazy to stay with petrol.

    That may never happen if you're using a car as a garage ornament, but if you're actually going places in it... Even setting aside the cost of petrol, it doesn't take too many engine failures of your old clunker to make up the cost of buying a battery. A lesson I learnt early on. I got a free car. It took months of work and lots of money to make it road worthy. I drove it for about 3 weeks before the engine failed catastrophically. It would have been cheaper to have had a limo pick me up every day than my 'free' car. Often old cars are cheap for a reason.

    156:

    The most I've ever paid for a vehicle is a thousand quid and I only paid that because I needed a vehicle (a van) in a hurry. The least I've ever paid, 70 quid I think for a car in an auction that got me 30 miles a day to work and back for three months during a contract that turned up out of the blue. Second-hand cars like that are the goto for poor people who can't afford a "clunker" EV with a battery with some life left in it required to provide a decent commuter/trip range. If an electric vehicle has a worthwhile battery it's worth several thousand quid just as a powerwall battery for a home.

    If the clunker fails you ditch it, sell it as scrap and buy another. Simple fixes you do yourself, you ignore the cosmetic failures like window winder motors etc. and dents. Right now, on my local Gumtree I can get a car with 1-year MOT for 350 quid from a dealership (it will be a trade-in, sold cheap to get it off the lot). Auctions are even better although you take more of a risk but I've bought some really good cars there cheap in the past as no-one else wanted them.

    157:

    The most I've ever paid for a vehicle is a thousand quid

    Wow, I've paid significantly more than that for a bicycle. But then, I expect way more than a year of very reliable service from my vehicles, and I expect the running costs to be less than 5p/kilometre.

    I'm believe that what you actually paid for your vehicles was much, much more than the faceplate cost. But you don't see past the first payment, and that's a big part of why electric vehicles are so unpopular with some people. My cow-orkers have these discussions regularly because I work with some far right pro-warming wingnuts and they subscribe to the same ideas. They also have really bad range anxiety because an electric car with only a 250km range might not suffice for their daily 30km each way commute. Poor navigational skills, maybe.

    158:

    There are some really good examples of people creating excellent work not just into their 50s, 60s and 70s but even into their 90s and 100s nowadays.

    Even in the sciences, some people's brains are still capable at that age. e.g. Ernst Mayr published What Evolution Is at 97 (not a biologist, enjoyed it because he was sparing with dumbing-down and extra words), and What Makes Biology Unique?: Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline at 100 (enjoyed it at the time; need to re-read) (either age could be off by -1 - born 1904)

    A physicist friend of the family was publishing occasionally through their most of their 80s, and had a peer-review paper published posthumously. His mind was still flexible and reasonably quick, and reaction times were still reasonably quick, both like early middle age lowest quintile (or maybe decile). (Just from observation. And I think he worked on it.)

    Poking a little more at E. Mayr, found this The Philosophical Foundations of Darwinism, 2001, author Mayr 97 years old, 8 pgs, easy read. Let me now try to summarize Darwin’s contributions to the thinking of modern men. He was responsible for the replacement of a world view based on Christian dogma by a strictly secular world view. Furthermore, his writings led to the rejection of several previously dominant world views such as essentialism, finalism, determinism, and the suitability of Newtonian laws for the explanation of evolution. He replaced these refuted concepts with a number of new ones of wide-reaching importance, also outside of biology, such as biopopulation, natural selection, the importance of chance and contingency, the explanatory importance of the time factor (historical narratives), and the importance of the social group for the origin of ethics.

    159:

    Re: '... what you actually paid for your vehicles was much, much more than the faceplate cost.'

    Insurance is a large part of car ownership these days. Wonder how auto insurers are going to rationalize their premiums once self-driving automobiles become the norm.

    Would like to see the first large scale adoption of self-driving autos happen in Germany or one of the Scandinavian countries who seem more level headed in integrating tech and human needs. Precedent in how a tech is adopted is important, even though the US and UK will likely ignore lessons learned by other cultures.

    160:

    Re: Car ad

    Price seems unreasonably low until I noticed only 5 out of 26 checks performed ... hmmm.

    161:

    So comparing the 70 quid car with the Renault Zoe. (for someone who has a regular job) over say 5 years.

    Assuming you never do any service, just run it until it breaks and buy another as you suggested.

    70 quid at auction. A day spent at the auction buying the car. (I'd count that at about 200 quid, you may value your time differently). I won't count burning a favour from a friend to drive you to the auction and faff about for a morning while you haggle, and I'll assume you pick up a car that actually runs in just one auction. I don't know what the UK version of the RMS is like, but I'll assume that changing title and insurance over to your name is done by magic and doesn't require you to take time off work (during which you're not being paid) during business hours to stand in a queue. I'll also assume that there's no road worthiness certificate required before you transfer it into your name so you don't have to visit some mechanic (during work hours..) to be told that the 500 quid kingpins need replacing before they can sign the paperwork.

    Up front cost 270 quid. (yeah right 800 more like...)

    Assuming it breaks down after 6 months, a day you don't manage to get to work (as a contractor I'd find that very annoying, I used to trade on my reputation of being reliable). I'd value the loss of not turning up to work unexpectedly at about 1000 quid. Again, you might value that differently, but 1000 would be a minimum, probably much much more. After all, you'd only have to miss out on one contract because you don't turn up reliably to cost yourself 10s of thousands, but I'm trying to be scrupulous about this.

    So after 6 months that all repeats, so out of pocket, loss of opportunity, loss of reputation, I'd put the cost of the clunker at about 2540 per year. Minimum, probably far far more than that.

    30 miles a day is about 50 km. So about 5 litres a day. At the average UK price, working for 48 weeks a year and doing nothing else with the car, that's another 1380.

    So about 3920 cost per year to run around in a car with the doors falling off it for a year. Over 5 years that's 19600 quid

    Or 4795 for a second hand Zoe. 828 quid for battery hire from Renault (which includes 24/7 roadside assist). So over 5 years that's 8935. You've paid over 10 000 pounds extra to drive around in an unsafe shit heap and make people think you can't be trusted as a worker. As you say, there's a floor price for an electric that runs, so you'd be able to sell it at the end and probably get most of your initial 4795 back. Even if you had to borrow the whole 4795 at 10% interest, that makes it only 11435 for 5 years of motoring.

    162:

    They're selling a database search that you can probably do yourself for free. It's only 15 quid, which makes the total price 4810. Not much difference... You still save well over 10 000 quid over 5 years compared to buying 70 quid clunkers.

    163:

    "that makes it only 11435 for 5 years of motoring" Of course if you work in London... 11435 is about 2000 less than what you'd pay in congestion charge alone. Free with an electric.

    164:

    only 11435 for 5 years of motoring

    if you are just pootling in and out of London a velomobile with power assist probably makes more sense. Smaller, easier to park, cheaper to run... less carrying capacity, can't park it on the street.

    I suspect this is why electric assist bicycles are so popular. It's just like riding a bike, but easier :)

    165:

    Interview this morning on BBC Radio4 with Philip Glass (composer) also still going strong.

    166:

    ( @ #156 ) My L-R cost £9500 in 2003. It's still worth at least £9000 - partly (only?) because it is what it is & they are not making new ones. If maintained regularly, it's reliable. But I do a very low mileage each year - contrariwise, when I need it, I NEED it, because nothing else will do the job - which is why I have it, of course.

    167:

    E Mayr Yes Two niggles .. 1] He uses the word "Darwinism" - which is now, only used by the Cretinists, oh dear. 2] He says: Inevitably, the Bible would have to be mentioned in the first place. Up to 1989, when the bankruptcy of Marxism was declared, Karl Marx’s Das Kapital would clearly have been in second place ... Lots of people still haven't got the message. The two different sets of wankers down my local High Street, 3 weeks back, selling their vile religions: Christians & Marxists, respectively. Both entirely & totally impervious to argument or facts.

    { Incidentally, has anyone told J MacDonnell this? }

    168:

    Looked this heap of shit up £14k with "Plug-in-Grant" for this tiny bubble? And, ok, it has a 250k range, so you drive 200km & THEN TRY TO FIND a charge-point. Electric cars will work once there is an infrastructiure - not here yet, is it? As opposed to LPG ( & conversions ) now avialble at many conventional garages.

    Also, charging takes time, lots more than filling up .... And (for me the killer) how do you charge-up at home? Cable out the door & across the pavement? Somehow I doubt it.

    169:

    If you are just pootling in & out of (central) London ... you DON'T USE A CAR AT ALL. I certainly don't. Tube / Train / Bike / Bus ( In my descending order of use ) Car is for outward journeys, where there is one or more of the following: 1] No Public Transport 2] Want to take extra people - especially if [1] also applies 3] Want to carry loads of "stuff"

    Next month, I'm going to Liverpool for a long day: Train - advance ticket, under £40 return - someone else is driving & I don't have to worry about a beer or two at the other end.

    170:

    Like this?

    http://trisled.com.au/hpv/rotovelo-e/

    I'd get one (I'd have had one for years) if Australian driving population wasn't liberally sprinkled with casual killers.

    171:

    Am I allowed to build a one-off prototype like your Solar Challenge runners all have?

    172:

    For freight, they would be an excellent replacement for those amazingly slow aeroplanes that China uses to send stuff you buy off ebay ("by air mail" on the package, but it still takes a month to arrive).

    Well, in the UK there is "air freight" that actually travels by truck. Moving from a domestic to an international scale, there may be a delay waiting for an available slot on a flight to the correct nation, and a further delay for customs clearance, and then a still further one travelling by a destination nation domestic carrier. It's not "same day turn up and take off" like you appear to presume.

    173:

    I don't think you've ever met Nojay? I have a couple of times, and think he can do at least a bit of mileage costing.

    For instance, a set of safe (not ditchfinder wet grip) tyres for my car will cost about £210. They will last about 20k miles, so that's 1.8p per mile for tyres alone. Taking refinery gate costs (so pre-taxes) I get 50mpg to be another 2.9p per mile, so that's actually 4.7p per mile, say 3p per km, in fuel and tyres alone. The tyre costs are pretty inescapable even if you drive an EV!

    174:

    Hint - Nojay doesn't live in Australia and our laws are different. ;-)

    Changing title on a car is a matter of filling in and posting a form, then waiting for the new one to arrive. You may use the car whilst waiting.

    Our Roadworthy equivalent expires 12 months from when the last one was issued, irrespective of whether the car remains with one owner or changes owner 11 times (unlikely but honestly possible) during that period.

    Also, based on knowing 2 other Scots who own or have owned Zoes or Leafs, their actual un-recharged range in Scottish conditions is 70 to 80 miles depending on driving style and presuming you drive in daylight hours.

    175:

    Will you give me Thiefrow and Orpington as "not in London"? If so, then I've held a driving licence for about 35 years and "driven into London" exactly once (going from Orpington to Greenwich to visit the Cutty Sark and the self-styled 'National' Maritime Museum).

    176:

    Insurance is a large part of car ownership these days. Wonder how auto insurers are going to rationalize their premiums once self-driving automobiles become the norm.

    In the US insurance rates are largely based on data analytics. But they are also state based and there's a lot of adjustments for various social goals depending on which state you live in. But overall it is a data driven process.

    So in the US in general rates will change over time with a 1 to 3 year lag as loss history is built up for various car models. Interestingly I CAN see the insurance companies coming up with different rates for what seem to be equivalent cars based on the "skill" level of the software.

    I can imagine some big fights over "fairness" as the loss history for autonomous cars goes down relative to people driven cars. The various advocacy groups will start yelling it's not fair to jack up the rates for the people cars to reflect actual expectations as most poor folks will not be able to afford autonomous cars for years.

    177:

    Similarly in the UK, but rates are based (in part) on full post codes (like US zip codes), which are enough to identify which road you live on, or with a longer road (say 2 miles of suburban level development) which part of said road.

    So my insurance premium could change if I moved from my present house to next door to my boss, because I'd be on a different road in the same village.

    178:

    So comparing the 70 quid car with the Renault Zoe. (for someone who has a regular job) over say 5 years.

    I know Nojay IRL, and viewed the cars at that auction with him.

    IIRC he paid £50 for the vehicle. Drove it home (a mile or two), found it overheating. Lucked out because it was a leaking radiator, and a common model of Ford, so spent £20 at a scrapyard on the replacement. (This may be where the £70 figure comes from — this was more than a decade ago).

    Changing title is done by mail/computer, no standing in line necessary (except after the auction, to collect the keys and the paperwork). Roadworthiness certificate (MOT): the test, at an official test centre, currently costs about £50-60, and is good for a year. (For a £50 car, if it passes it passes: if not, not.) Then there's road tax (Vehicle Excise Duty — currently geared to emissions, but back then it was about £110 a year for a PLG) and insurance (third party only, obviously, for a car at that price.)

    The car in question was a Ford Sierra 1.6L manual, four door saloon, in nice shape externally and internally, with about 90,000 miles on the clock (my memory). My guess is that the overheating was misdiagnosed as a cracked cylinder head, hence it going for £50 instead of £500.

    He drove the car, fuss-free, for a few months. Then it was rear-ended. Because the book value was basically it's weight in scrap steel, it was an insurance write-off, and not road-legal thereafter. If he'd had a garage and the patience (pus spares, welding gear) it was repairable, but not on any economic basis.

    Here's the point: the "£70 motor" was a bargain at that price — but only because he was willing to put in some sweat equity (half day at the auction, half day diagnosing and replacing the radiator issue). To J. Random Office Drone with zero engineering ability (me) it'd be a non-option.

    179:

    if you are just pootling in and out of London a velomobile with power assist probably makes more sense. Smaller, easier to park, cheaper to run... less carrying capacity, can't park it on the street.

    You've never been to London, have you?

    London is terrifying for cyclists, and has quite a high death rate — largely due to construction vehicles with poor visibility making stupid turns in and out of construction sites the size of a postage stamp, not to mention busses, taxis, and diesel fumes galore (the air quality is dangerous to breathe about 350 days of the year). Those roads where traffic moves rapidly are high density vehicle arteries that mostly don't have cycle lanes.

    Also, UK law on electric assist is pretty tight; anything able to go over 15mph requires you to have a motorcycle license, pass CBT training, and wear a crash helmet (not a cycle helmet).

    Put it this way: if my knees worked and my right eye had any peripheral vision I'd be willing to cycle in plenty of British cities — but London wouldn't be one of them.

    180:

    So my insurance premium could change if I moved from my present house to next door to my boss, because I'd be on a different road in the same village.

    In the US this is how home insurance works. Things like how far you are from a fire hydrant (water for fire trucks) is factored into the rates.

    For autos in most cases, not so much. At least not at the street level. In NC I think rates are state wide for autos. I'm guessing places like CA, IL, and NY might have separate ratings for their larger cities. Part of the issue is getting enough data from a small area such that the signal rises above the noise.

    181:

    Changing the subject a bit it seems Ireland and Scotland will get to experience a low level hurricane in a few days. (That could certainly be an excuse to not work for a bit depending...)

    http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphics_at2.shtml?cone#contents

    182:

    Apologies for replying to my own comment -

    "I am 59, which is somehow still 50 to me" - but not to the chap behind the counter in the swimming pool this morning, who tried to charge me £3.80 rather than £4.80. I had to tell him I am not yet 60, which would trigger the price reduction (comes in January), partly because of being a mostly honest sort of person but also because I had piled up five old pound coins to spend before they stop being legal tender on Sunday.

    183:
    The thing which will kill off petrol-driven cars is going to be the closure of petrol stations.

    Yes.

    And the thing which will kill off human-driven cars is going to be the closure of parking.

    They'll be well on their way out by then, priced out by self-driving DRT shuttles or something, but the disappearance of parking provisions will be a big nail in the coffin.

    184:
    Or 4795 for a second hand Zoe. 828 quid for battery hire from Renault (which includes 24/7 roadside assist). So over 5 years that's 8935. You've paid over 10 000 pounds extra to drive around in an unsafe shit heap and make people think you can't be trusted as a worker.

    That's the Sam Vimes "Boots" Theory of Economic Injustice, isn't it?

    "A really good pair of leather boots, the sort that would last years and years, cost fifty dollars. This was beyond his pocket and the most he could hope for was an affordable pair of boots costing ten dollars, which might with luck last a year or so before he would need to resort to makeshift cardboard insoles so as to prolong the moment of shelling out another ten dollars.

    "Therefore over a period of ten years, he might have paid out a hundred dollars on boots, twice as much as the man who could afford fifty dollars up front ten years before. And he would still have wet feet."

    185:

    David L: we get this sort of storm almost every winter, more than once. Edinburgh's sheltered (on the east coast) but still gets >100mph gusts every couple of years; the west coast and highlands/islands gets it virtually every month over winter.

    What we don't get is the torrential downpour that accompanies a hurricane/typhoon — the storms are cold air and can't hold anything like as much water. (I've been through a cat 1 typhoon in Tokyo and monsoon rains in Kuala Lumpur so I think I have an idea what it's like, at the lower end of the scale.)

    186:

    Also known as the Terry Pratchett metaphor for what it's like to be rich.

    I remember him once telling me how he got turned down for a cellphone by Orange. He failed their credit check at sign-up because he had no credit history. This was in the mid-90s, before PAYG was much of a thing; (I think his solution was to sign up with a less fussy rival for a while, thereby generating a credit history.)

    Being poor is expensive, and this is one of the problems with the UK right now—almost everyone in the Cabinet is a multi-millionaire, and even the ones who haven't had their sense of empathy surgically excised have no personal experience of actually living in poverty.

    187:

    I wasn't aggrieved I was done for 36 mph, but there was a chap on my subsequent Speed Awareness Workshop who had been done for doing 33mph somewhere, which seemed harsh.

    ...assuming, of course, that he was actually going 33mph when his speed was measured. The number written down just needs to be over the speed limit by a reasonable amount...

    For instance, a traffic cop measures someone doing (say) 38mph, and braking hard. They pass him at 30mph. By saying "33mph" instead of "38mph", the driver is less likely to argue over the actual speed - even though they know they were speeding - and more likely to think "oooh, could have been worse".

    It's a bit like that case where a driver was prosecuted for eating an apple; my cynical nature assumed that they were actually using a hand-held mobile phone when driving, but tried to bluff their way out of it when stopped - "my hand was at my head because I was eating an apple, honest" - then decided to double down on the lie when charged for driving without due care and attention. By the time it hits the news, it's too late to back down.

    I get told off by my wife for being cynical about such things - she told me off at the time for calling Jonathan Aitken an obvious liar*; and was a bit miffed when the courts proved me right, convicted him of perjury, and sent him to the Big House...

    188:

    I was being serious; The insurers have the technology, and in some places, to paraphrase Cordelia Chase, "the bad part of town is 3 streets from the good part".

    189:

    Well. that all, including the costs, makes sense to me based on knowledge of the vehicle type.

    190:

    ... And that comment is one of the rare cases where I am totally fine about someone repeating a statement on this blog that has triggered a libel lawsuit in England.

    (For non-Brits: a newpaper accused former cabinet minister Aitken of Bad Things. He took them to court for libel, but the case collapsed, spectacularly, in court, along with his alibi. More legal stuff happened and he was found to have perjured himself on the witness stand, and jailed. The allegations were, shall we say, extremely smelly. Then he Found Jeebus, hallelujah, which it transpires is rather less useful as a tool for political rehabilitation in the UK than it might have been in the Deep South.)

    191:

    People in prison in the US find Jesus all the time. It rarely makes a difference in their prison situation. Typically even if a big mucky muck evangelical leader tries to intervene the result is chuckles, not release or a change in sentence. And many lose him after they get out.

    South or not.

    192:

    I had a tracked item costing £1.99 including postage from China to Scotland that spent most of its time travelling from Guangzhou to Shenzhen International Airport.

    193:

    Different cheap car, the £70 one was a Fiat 500 tinybox (with a 1 litre "Fire" engine) that had an MOT and road tax off the lot and cost pennies to insure TPFT. It had a dodgy clutch mechanism that broke the actuator cable regularly but after a bit of practice I could swap the cable out in ten minutes at the roadside and replacement cables cost about 6 quid each. I kept a new cable in the boot. That was easier than trying to fix the fault that broke the cable since it would have required pulling the engine to get at the firewall.

    The £50 Sierra had a 2 litre engine, not the 1.6. I found out when I got it away from the auction site that the fuel tank was full, worth at least £30 by itself at the time -- for some reason the fuel gauge on the dash was wired up backwards so as the tank emptied the needle went from E to F. Otherwise a lovely car, I was driving it down the motorway soon after replacing the radiator thinking "this is nice and smooth", checked the speedo and I was doing a ton. Oops.

    Of course if you're rich you can chunk out £5000 on a good second-hand car because banks will loan to you and you're in regular employment and you've got a mortgage and all the good stuff poor people don't have. If you're poor but need wheels then there's bargains to be had if you look around, usually petrol-engined but not electric vehicles now or ever barring some miracle super-cheap battery tech (on which subject I've bloviated here before).

    194:

    And to back track a bit. There is a big problem (big to me and some friends) with pedophiles trying to use bible study to get out early or skip prison entirely. They continually recruit gullible pastors to testify "they are a changed person". These pastors are firmly convinced they can read a man's soul and tell if they are changed. It's crap. They just don't get how good of a liar some of these sociopaths are.

    195:

    Worrying idea The WHOLE TRUM "Presidency" is a distraction Or so suggests Noam Chomsky. Everyone pays attention to DT, whilst the Ultra-Right gut the country for theor own profits ... Intereseting & scary? True?

    196:

    In the UK, it is also no longer possible to transfer tax, so when you buy a second hand car you must tax it immediately. Of course, since road tax level is dependent on emissions, which is more or less a measure of age, it has become significantly harder to find a bargain second hand car in the UK for under 500 quid. I've also noticed that due to the change in the tax regulations, there are fewer older cars sold with current MOT, or an MOT with more than a few months to run -- and of course it's necessary to have a current MOT before the car can be taxed (which may necessitate immediate maintenance work).

    Did someone say it's expensive being poor?

    197:

    The truly cynical would say that sounds just like the real reason for Brexit (distract the masses while the ultra-rich gut the place).

    As recently noted elsewhere: We're going to be the world's largest off shore tax haven, with added serfs.

    198:

    CORRECTION the air quality is actually dangerous to breathe about 3 days of the year ... And can be unpleasant in certain specific locations, especially if there is low wind & high humidity. It's quite noticeable, on a still day ... I come out of the house, OK, it's less than 8 minutes walk to the station, but the last minute-&-a-half, crossing the congested main raod outside the station can be smelly. In other words, it's usually very localised, but those busy locations are where the monitors are, not the back-streets.

    199:

    Greg: Chomsky's observations do indeed appear to match what's going on.

    200:

    Even without knowing actual "Pollution Levels", if you live in "the country" visiting a town can be unpleasant due to the smell of diesel (on a street where only taxis, buses and HGVs are permitted).

    201:

    The number one goal for DT is to have people tell him he is the best. Or greatest. With a side of get rid of the government's meddling in his affairs. Like collecting taxes, protecting workers health, etc...

    And he has the ability to make crap up on the fly and then defend it no matter what anyone else says or proves. (I have to deal with someone like this and have seen it up close.)

    DT was a D for a long time. But when he (or some others) figured out he could turn his abilities into a run for the Presidency as a populist he switched to being an R and things took off. The Alt-Right was just what he needed and they needed him to put them into power.

    202:

    Then he Found Jeebus, hallelujah

    I was more impressed by the fact that he actually learned something; and in the decades since being released has done a lot of campaigning on prison, probation, and rehabilitation. He apparently still does a lot of prison visiting.

    Essentially, he had his privilege removed and his eyes opened. As a single data point, it was reassuring to discover that not all arrogant and dishonest politicians are actually sociopaths...

    203:

    Oh, yeah. DT doesn't give a damn about policy. Except maybe when it impacts him personally directly. Other than that he just wants to claim "wins". He would have been perfectly fine if he could have ridden to power on the D platform but it wasn't an option. So he went with the Alt-Right.

    Again, policy details mean nothing to him.

    204:

    People in prison in the US find Jesus all the time. It rarely makes a difference in their prison situation

    Depends on the prison and where it is? I knew someone who spent three years in a minimum security federal pen* for non-violent offenders—not a country club. He found Adonai (this was somone who had denied being Jewish in the past), and subsequently discovered the anti-semitism in the system. The Born Agains got a preference in work assignments, while he and the Muslims got the shit work. Finding Jebus may not help them get out earlier, but it can help while they're in, and often when they get out they're more likely to get help from church groups.

    *in Cañon City, Colorado. He'd been a libertrarian 'tax protestor', and hadn't paid income tax for more than a decade. He decided to come clean so that it would come down on his kids. He thought that he could work out an arrangement to pay off the $400k he owed, but the IRS, and particularly the judge, decided to make an example of him and his wife (who spent the time under house arrest so she could look after the kids). She'd been a New Life Church attendee, as far as I know they weren't too sympathetic.

    205:

    it has become significantly harder to find a bargain second hand car in the UK for under 500 quid. I've also noticed that due to the change in the tax regulations, there are fewer older cars sold with current MOT, or an MOT with more than a few months to run

    Gumtree and other online places will find you lots of cars that are safe to drive with 10 months or even a year's MOT for under £400. Cosmetically they may look ropey with dents and dings and bad paintwork, the seats and interiors will be icky (a smoker's car, for example) and the mileages are through the roof but they're readily available. Look for a car offered by a dealer, taken as a trade-in. They want it off the lot ASAP since it's taking up space and making the place look untidy and they'd rather have the money. They can have a mechanic look at it and give it an full MOT if it will pass with a few quid's TLC to get shot of it. No warranty, of course.

    Lessee on Gumtree, locally to me there's a Nissan Almera, 15yo, 130,000 miles, described as decent int/ext, a year's MOT, £350 ono.

    206:

    Nobody will buy a self-driving car. Self-driving cars will be routed like Internet packets on some kind of least-time scenario.

    If I need to go from my home in San Bernardino County to Downtown Los Angeles - a trip of about 55 miles - in 2040 I will rent time in a self-driving car, possibly along with several other people who also need to make the trip, because cost-sharing is cheaper. Due to less cars on the road the trip will be shorter (in time, these days the traffic is pretty bad) and I could conceivably rent a car "exclusively" if I'm on a date or need to carry a big load of tools or packages. The amount of money I pay to get driven someplace will be based on my reputation score, age, and how many other people are in the car, and it will be cheaper than what I currently pay for monthly loan payments, repairs, gasoline, etc.

    The car market will also change in very interesting ways. No sports-cars, no "family cars" and very few "light trucks." Do expect lots of vans, probably with seats all around the outside of the van, including the front and rear, "salaryman cars" for people who work while they travel (multiple small pods on a van chasis,) "construction cars" for people hauling small loads (a "construction car" will be person/cargo pod/person/cargo pod, etc., for construction workers or salespeople who carry large sample cases. "Party cars" will be one big mattress. Also expect cars to be 18-24 inches wider than they are currently because computer-driven cars won't need 4-5 feet between them laterally to prevent accidents.

    People who actually own their own cars will be either rich or weird.

    207:

    "But six months of burnout costs money too. Be safe."

    Agreed completely. Take a breather after this one Charlie.

    208:

    So you're telling us that the infrastructure to be completely carbon-free is coming online unevenly. Why would you expect anything else?

    Of course, in the U.S., much of our electricity is hydroelectric, which causes some awful problems, but does not create carbon issues.

    209:

    Re Marxism and religion. Tuli Kupfergburg said that Marx's analysis was spot on, but his prescription needed work.

    Have you ever read Capital? I read a 300 page abridgement, back in my late teens. Let me assure you, as I look around right now, that I can agree that his analysis is still spot on.

    Note, btw, I do not call myself a Marxist, but a socialist. Of course, when I get my political book, Socialism in the 21st Century written (due any decade now), I'll then cheerfully be able to call myself a Mark-ist.

    210:

    The pricing I'm reading is boggling my mind. Over here, let's see, the cheapest vehicle I ever bought was in 1986, when I bought a 1972 ex-Mother Bell Econoline van for $500? or was it $550? Since then, each of three vehicles ran about $5k US, and my most recent minivan, 5 yrs old, 90k mi, was about $14k, and that was over 4 yrs ago. Of course, I don't tend to get rid uf them until they're going on 15 yrs old.

    Tires, on the other hand... I paid around $85 or $100/tire for four new tires, but I believe they're guaranteed for 60k (or was it 80k?) miles.

    211:

    This is, of course, so different than the US, where the (nominal[1]) President and his Cabinet are either multimillionaires or billionaires[2][3]

  • I refer to him as the "nominal" President, because literally not understanding or intending to obey his Oath of Office means he's not actually sworn in, only sworn at.
  • This does, of course, include the Dauphin Mnueshin and his wife, Marie "see my designer clothes?! You poor people don't put as much into the economy as I do!" Antoinette.
  • I really do have to get the business started, since we're going to need tumbrels, and soon....
  • 212:

    Sure.

    I find it interesting that they have changed the rules this year reducing the amount of solar cells they can use. I take this as a sign that these might actually be practical at some point (i.e. a car that doesn't require a charging station).

    213:

    "...having new stuff is a sign of failure, because it means you were too useless to keep the old stuff working."

    Oh, you're so close. I think it should run, "...having new stuff is a sign of failure, because it means you didn't design the old stuff correctly."

    214:

    I've got a friend with a Leaf, and he has its usage perfectly hacked. He drives it to the train station, plugs it in there for FREE, then drives it home and on weekends. He hasn't paid a penny for power in months!

    215:

    Worrying idea
    The WHOLE TRUM "Presidency" is a distraction
    Or so suggests Noam Chomsky.
    Everyone pays attention to DT, whilst the Ultra-Right gut the country for theor own profits ...
    Intereseting & scary?
    True?

    Partially true. Ryan et al in Congress are trying to gut the country for their own profit.

    The turmoil in the Trump administration is NOT a deliberate smoke-screen intended to camouflage that fact. Trump, Bannon and company really are as screwed up as they appear.

    He's flat out wrong about Russian interference in the US elections and how the Democratic Party should respond to it ... as wrong as Chamberlain was at Munich.

    216:

    That clashes with my own viewpoint so hard that it's difficult to know where to start. But the loudest scream is at the purely imaginary "costs" that make up most of it.

    The real cost of going to a car auction is defined as the (number x value) of the notes/coins I have to hand over to someone else in order to do it. This is zero if it's within walking distance, or a few quid train or taxi fare otherwise. Similarly, the real cost of a car failing to start in the morning is the (number x value) of the notes/coins I have to hand over to buy whatever it is I need to make it start. Given that the only reason I've ever had a car fail to start in the morning is a flat battery, that is at most a few pennies for the juice to run the charger for a bit (or in the case of a Morris Minor, zero, because it has a starting handle).

    Sure, I can fantasise all I like that if I had done something else instead someone might have given me £200, or £1000, or £1,000,000, but it's still a fantasy however many zeroes I care to imagine. And even if it was true, it still wouldn't be a cost, it would be a failure to gain. Not being given something means only that I'm in the same position as before, which is very different from having something taken away.

    Hire a battery - no, no, no, no, no, because that means I have to pay for it all the time whether I use it or not; I can't avoid the cost if I don't have any money by not using it until I do have some. (It is significant also that the figure you quote for battery hire can be alternatively expressed as 1 SNAC/month (SNAC = Standard Nojay Auction Car).)

    Get a loan - aaaaarrghhhh, see above only it's many times worse. I simply do not do things like that. It is invariably way more hassle than it's worth putting up with.

    Fuel cost - I don't get the free electricity which your calculation assumes. It's cheaper, but it's not free. Cost per kWh of mechanical energy delivered to the car's transmission is about half what it is for petrol. With the battery hire as well, on the sort of mileage I do, it works out about the same overall.

    Reliability - is nowhere near the problem you make it out to be. To be a problem, a failure has to be both unexpected and catastrophic. It is very rare for both conditions to be met. (It has happened to me exactly once in a car, and that was my own fault, not the car's.) Far more commonly, either there are warning signs that appear some time before the actual failure so the problem can be fixed before it becomes acute, or the failure is not so complete that I can't still get home somehow, even if it does take a long time.

    Most potentially immobilising failures are electrical, but the electrical system of a SPAC (Standard Pigeon Ancient Car) is so trivial that it is no trouble at all to carry around a set of replacement parts sufficient to make it work again well enough to at least get home. On the other hand, where modern cars are concerned, the words "Renault" and "electrical fault" are generally held to be synonymous...

    So far, then, it is a comparison between a car that is very cheap to buy, can be fixed at the roadside on the rare occasions that is necessary, and only costs me money when I'm actually using it; and a car that costs several grand that I don't have, probably can't be fixed at the roadside, costs about the same when I am using it but still costs about half that when I'm not, and can't be used for long journeys. The choice is obvious.

    And then on top of that is the factor that you haven't considered - insurance. A SNAC or SPAC is extremely cheap to insure because the insurance company thinks it isn't worth anything. A car that costs several grand, on the other hand, costs correspondingly more to insure for the same reason. I am told that in Australia you don't have to worry about this because insurance is automatic, included in petrol tax (how does it work for electric cars though?), but in the UK it has to be paid for separately, and it tends to cost a fortune because of the rackets it supports.

    217:

    I think both are equally true, it just depends on who the "you" is :)

    218:

    The backwards fuel gauge: sometimes you would encounter this on Morris Minors, Minis, Midgets and anything else that used the same circular Smiths speedo with the fuel gauge at the bottom. At some point they changed from having the float-controlled variable resistance in the tank wired in shunt with the gauge to having it wired in series (or it might have been the other way round). If the gauge and the car dated from different sides of this point (because someone had swapped the instrument), the gauge would indicate backwards. I would guess that what you were seeing resulted from Ford doing the same sort of thing.

    219:

    Well... maybe the pastors in question believe that they can read a man's soul, maybe there's a simpler explanation when religious officials provide character references for convicted child rapists.

    The Guardian Australia quotes an Australian police officer as describing one church as "organised crime"

    "One of the police officers who blew the whistle on the sexual abuse of children in the Australian Catholic church, Peter Fox, responded “I’d call it organised crime.” He’s right."

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/13/lets-call-child-sexual-abuse-in-the-church-what-it-is-catholic-extremism

    What's disturbing is that despite police describing it as organised crime, and despite the highest office holder in Australia in that church being currently charged with something that has been suppressed. http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/state/vic/2017/07/26/george-pell-melbourne-sexual-offences-hearing/ The existing laws intended to deal with organised crime in Australia have not and I'm sure will never be, applied to this particular crime ring. http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/legis/qld/consol_act/vlada2013473/index.html

    220:

    well with battery replacements costing say $10k you can by a lot of ICE engines for that you could even by a full race crate engine or two.

    221:

    Yep and think what happens when every one gets home in the evening and hooks up their car assuming bog standard cooker circuit at 415V - its going to knacker the grid and may well case your breakers to trip.

    I suspect voters are not going to be happy with brown during corrie.

    222:

    This just in for the conspiracy buffs: There is now a sound recording associated with the "Cuban Sonic Attacks" Thing: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/recording-sound-diplomat-attacks-embassy-cuba.

    It's quite annoying, actually, and I have no idea if there are ultrasonic or infrasonic portions associated with it either. I haven't fallen out of my chair yet or suffered hearing damage, so I suspect it's okay to listen to this short sample.

    Until proven otherwise, I suggest we consider it to be the monotonous piping that accompanies Azathoth, and react appropriately.

    223:

    Re: Real vs Imaginary costs

    People who have no money seem to think that lost opportunity, reduction in reputation etc has zero cost. I wonder if that's cause and effect at play?

    As you find my opinions on opportunity cost weird, I find yours weird. If you value your time at zero, why have a car at all? Walk to work. Even if it's as Nojay described, a 30 mile trip. That's only 10 hours a day walking. Good for you too. Cost is zero (by your accounting). I'm genuinely perplexed as to why anyone with that internal accounting system pays for transport. Maybe if it's across water and you can't swim? Even then, build a boat from found materials. If your time is worth nothing, then why not?

    "On the other hand, where modern cars are concerned, the words "Renault" and "electrical fault" are generally held to be synonymous..."

    24/7 roadside assist is included in the battery hire.

    "I am told that in Australia you don't have to worry about this because insurance is automatic," No. Third party personal insurance (to pay for someone you injure) is compulsory and you can't register the vehicle without it. No other insurance is either compulsory or included in anything.

    What I didn't include was road tax. 245 quid a year for the 2 litre Sierra. Free for the Zoe. Would there really be 245 quid difference between insuring a Zoe and a clunker? I doubt it. I tried to find a quote for insuring a Zoe and a clunker but it was too hard. However I did find that the average insurance for a CX-5 Mazda is 400 quid a year. If insuring a giant SUV is 400 quid, then I really can't imagine that there's 245 quid difference between an ancient Sierra and a Zoe.

    https://www.comparethemarket.com/car-insurance/content/cheapest-cars-to-insure/

    "Hire a battery - no, no, no, no, no" Ok, don't hire a battery. Buy one with the battery owned outright. The figures are significantly better owned outright but you pay interest instead of battery hire. I only said hire because the sticker price seemed to be the big barrier thing while total cost of ownership was completely ignored. Hire drops the sticker price significantly but increases the TCO.

    "Fuel cost - I don't get the free electricity" Yeah you do. There are plenty of free charging places in the UK, (see Troutwaxer comment 214) but they're slow. Your time is worth zero remember? Or are you having it both ways, your time is worth something when it props up what you want to believe (electricity is not free, filling in loan applications is too much work), and also your time is worth nothing when it props up what you want to believe (I don't mind spending hours fixing old cars, attending auctions, fooling with breakdowns on the side of the road, filling in ownership transfer forms).

    "Cost per kWh of mechanical energy delivered to the car's transmission is about half what it is for petrol."

    I don't really care about cost per kWh delivered to the transmission. I care about cost per unit distance. A litre of petrol takes you about 6 miles. The 22 kW Zoe has a range of 130 miles. So a kWh of electricity also takes you about 6 miles. A litre of petrol costs 1.2 quid. A kWh of electricity costs 0.0737 quid. Or to put it another way, a pound takes you 16 times further on electricity than it does on petrol. https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/for-the-road/at-home-and-on-the-road That's if you don't take advantage of all the free chargers around the place. Oh, and you also get a 40 quid discount off your electricity if you have an electric car. So that's your first 2000 miles of travel per year sorted.

    224:

    For anyone still trying to pretend that the US has outlawed slavery and debt bondage we have news from Louisiana:

    “In addition to the bad ones…they’re releasing some good ones that we use every day to wash cars, to change the oil in our cars, to cook in the kitchen, to do all that where we save money. Well, they’re going to let them out!”

    Who says prisons are just a drain on society?

    225:

    Well I used to cycle on a MTB 20 plus years ago in London before it became tready so.

    Part of the problem is that 90% or so of cyclists are killed in London are undertaking HGV's don't undertake traffic and you cut the risk immensely

    I never used to undertake but ride well away from the curb and all the trash that collects there.

    Unfortunately a minority of cyclists in london give the rest a bad name most of them riding fixies and smaller number on expensive racing bikes who ride tier bike like sabine drives round the nordschleife.

    226:

    Well most people will charge on Economy 7 because it's cheaper. So no, no brown outs. The idea that adding a new appliance to the grid will instantly cause it to collapse is an odd one. The grid initially provided only lighting, and not much of that. Older people still call it 'the light bill'. Did the grid collapse when electric stoves were invented? no. Did it collapse when electric kettles went on sale? I can't remember it doing so... How about when TV's were introduced. Surely going from a 60 watt bulb on for a few hours in the evening to 250W running all day and well into the night in every home brought the end of civilisation? Not that I recall no... But surely, when a 1000 W desktop appeared in every home and on every work desk, that caused the rise of Cthulhu?... still waiting. Maybe giant flat screen tellys? Huge data centres? Cell towers on every corner... Surely somewhere between the 60W bulb and today the entire grid collapsed and society devolved into roving bands of outlaws who survive by stealing small Honda generators to charge their mobile phones?

    227:

    Slavery in the US seems to have the same sort of cognitive hole that using the army as police has. You can no longer buy and sell slaves, they can only be captured. So therefore since there's no slave markets, there must be no slavery.

    Only about 5% of prisoners in the US are convicted criminals.

    http://thefreethoughtproject.com/due-process-dead-staggering-95-inmates-america-received-trial/

    228:

    Re: Jared ... the return of debtor's prison

    Apart from the DT idiocy, the wheel-spinning in Congress and Senate, there's also the extended First Family that bears watching.

    Wonder if this provides insight into how JK is planning to broker peace in the Middle East: sue, then when they don't show up in court, hire some goons and throw everyone in jail for contempt of court.

    https://therealdeal.com/2017/08/22/kushner-companies-has-sought-the-arrest-of-more-than-100-tenants/

    JK's perspective on white collar crime: WCC is not that bad, folks.

    “My dad’s arrest made me realize I didn’t want to be a prosecutor anymore,” Kushner explained. “The law is so nuanced. If you’re convicting murderers, it’s one thing. It’s often fairly clear. When you get into things like white-collar crime, there are often a lot of nuances. Seeing my father’s situation, I felt what happened was obviously unjust in terms of the way they pursued him. I just never wanted to be on the other side of that and cause pain to the families I was doing that to, whether right or wrong. The moral weight of that was probably a bit more than I could carry.”

    Note: Jared's father 'was arrested on charges of tax evasion, illegal campaign donations and witness tampering.'

    And .. 'Kushner was forced into his role at Kushner Companies prematurely when his father was arrested. Charles was eventually convicted of the above mentioned charges. The witness tampering charge stemmed from hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law and capture it on videotape in an act of retaliation against his sister, a witness for the prosecution.'

    Yes, a model family that all should emulate.

    https://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/jared-kushner-the-accidental-ceo/

    229:

    Marx's OBSERVATIONS 1847-49 were absolutely spot on. He then predicted what would happen if things went on as they were ... But they didn't. The SF-writers prdediction problem, in fact. Look, even big, nasty industrial employers like the Great Norther Railway were starting to offer some form of work/sickness benefit as early as 1855 & the same companuy started what we would now call a "final salary prension scheme" by 1875 ... Not exactly crushing the lumpenproleteriat is it? [ Yes, I have read "Captal" a very very long time ago! ]

    230:

    There are plenty of free charging places in the UK Don't believe you And I live in London & I haven't seen one yet, that I know of ...

    231:

    Usaully referred to as: "Lyra-Louts" One killed a pedestrian recently & was, very suprisingly jailed. About bloody time, too.

    232:

    BUGGER "LYCRA-LOUTS"

    233:

    One killed a pedestrian recently & was, very suprisingly jailed. About bloody time, too.

    If you want to campaign for road users who kill people to be jailed you'll be in a small and unpopular group. But if you want to campaign against cyclists in general... join the pile-on. Remember, though, that cyclists killing other road users is news precisely because it's so rare. People dying on the roads are in general not news... it's just part of daily life.

    The Secret Barrister had a useful commentary on that case and the aftermath: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2017/sep/21/a-new-cycling-law-wont-make-roads-safer-and-could-postpone-laws-that-could

    And in one of his other articles linked from there: There is not an epidemic of dangerous cycling on the roads Even some of the more sensible post-trial commenters felt obliged to note, with a weary sigh, that cyclists can be a particularly lawless bunch overall. My esteemed and wise colleague, David Shariatmadari, contrasted the anarchic world of bikes with the “rigorously tested and policed” arena of driving.

    There’s a flaw with this argument: there’s no evidence it’s true.

    People who die on the roads are overwhelmingly killed by motorists. Per year, per kilometre travelled, per hour on the road... if you die, it's almost certainly a motorist at fault.

    Remember: Every road is a toll road.

    234:

    But how many deaths are due simply to the fact that cars are large masses of metal travelling at high speed? Can we compare deaths and accidents per cyclist and per car driver, in such a way as to filter out the fact that one involves high energy collisions and the other mostly doesn't?

    235:

    Why would you apply that filter? I'm really asking genuinely.

    I can't see that in other walks of life. If I carpet bomb a city, is it ok (ie. filtered out) because I used high energy weapons to do it?

    236:

    Argue with Troutwaxer not me...

    But if you want to argue with me, roughly where in London and I'll give you the address of the nearest 3 free charging stations.

    237:

    It's mostly due to some weird UK lending rules (at least according to my ex-used-car-dealing mate)

    In the UK it's virtually impossible to get finance on a car that's 10 years old or more. Since the main market for old cars is poor people, and poor people generally have to borrow to buy a car, they can't buy a car that's worth anything. So the market for old cars is small, but the supply is large. So they're not worth much. Since they're not worth much when 10 years old, you'd be crazy to spend money on maintaining a car after the 5 year warranty expires. So by the time they're 10 years old they're also crap. So that make them worth less. Round 'n' round that goes until a 10 year old car (unless it's special or unusual like an old landy) is a total pile of shit that's worth nothing.

    Add to that the UK drives on the correct side of the road, whilst all about them are countries that drive on the wrong side of the road. So there's a limited export market for old cars that would otherwise keep the price up.

    Contrast that with the USA. You can (or could last time I was there prior to 2008) get finance amazingly easily. So being poor, or even bankrupt didn't seem to be a barrier to borrowing as much as you wanted. As well, there is Mexico to the south, and beyond that South America, where everyone drives on the crazy side of the road, just like USians do. So older cars can be exported, drying up the supply of older cars. Mexico is even a land border. You can just drive your crappy car or truck there and sell it. (or more likely some company does this)

    238:

    "People who have no money seem to think that lost opportunity, reduction in reputation etc has zero cost. I wonder if that's cause and effect at play?"

    If you have no money, you'll have to trade time, and quite a bit of it.

    "As you find my opinions on opportunity cost weird, I find yours weird. If you value your time at zero, why have a car at all? Walk to work. Even if it's as Nojay described, a 30 mile trip. That's only 10 hours a day walking. Good for you too. "

    I'll put you up for January in Michigan, and you can walk from where I live to where I work. It's 35 miles.

    239:

    Are you agreeing with me or disagreeing?

    You phrase it like you disagree, but then make points that back what I'm saying.

    240:

    But how many deaths are due simply to the fact that cars are large masses of metal travelling at high speed?

    About half. The other half are from tailpipe emissions which are usually worse when the vehicle is stationary with the engine running.

    But since most of the point of a motor vehicle is to be a large mass travelling at high speed, your point is kind of weird. To the best of my knowledge very few people are killed by stationary motor vehicles that have the engines turned off (the exceptions being the arguable "someone crashed into it").

    I do agree, though, that we could solve the problem of motor vehicles killing people by legislating a low momentum limit (momentum being mass times velocity, but in this case mass times speed is near enough for legal language). I'd say, 1Mgm/s (one thousand kilogrammes travelling at one metre per second which is 3.6km/hour or about 2mph). So our mate with his geriatric Landrover would be almost unaffected, but the urban assault vehicle owners would be limited to about 1mph. Motorbikes, on the other hand, would be fair screaming along at 5m/s or so (100kg rider, 100kg bike), faster than most people can run. The problem would be lycra louts, because a 70kg rider on a 7kg bike (add 3kg for clothing, which I think we would all prefer :) gives 80kg and a top speed of 12.5m/s or 45km/hour.

    241:

    "About half. The other half are from tailpipe emissions which are usually worse when the vehicle is stationary with the engine running."

    Depends if you count the wars fought to secure the supplies of oil on which to run said cars. Then it becomes hard to portion out some of the costs as well. WW1 was pretty much about securing oil supplies for battleships, but in the end the said oil supplies ended their days in the tanks of cars. Does the 40 million dead go against the battleship ledger, where the oil was thought to be going, or on the car ledger where it actually ended up. What about the 50-100 million dead from Spanish Flu, was that only so deadly because it was spread by troop movements as many people think? Do we include WW2 which many people think was caused by WW1? but wasn't really directly about oil. Another 60 million there.

    Gulf wars seem pretty clear, but what about some of the African conflicts?

    242:

    Returning to Havana, where the cars are mostly old and the traffic less dense than in downtown London, AP has obtained recordings that purport to be of the sounds heard by sufferers of the mystery symptoms:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgbnZG85IRo

    Curiously, even having the sounds to analyze seems to have produced no better understanding of what was going on. I note that the spectrograms shown appear to be a sort of coarse acoustic comb.

    http://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/comb-filtering

    243:

    I've recommended this before:

    http://www.slaverybyanothername.com

    Columbia University awarded its 93rd Annual Pulitzer Prize in the General Nonfiction category to “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II,” by Douglas A. Blackmon (Doubleday).

    A book, and the PBS documentary based on it. The book is excellent; I haven't seen the documentary.

    244:

    Jinx! See 222 above.

    245:

    It looks as if the difference is that your prime concern is maximising money. Mine, on the other hand, is minimising grief/hassle/arseache/whatever you like to call it. Therefore, there is a threshold effect. It requires a certain amount of money to maintain supplies of everyday necessities (ie. things like food and stuff). If the availability of money is below that threshold, it is a matter of great concern; but above that point, its importance falls off a cliff, and very soon reaches the level where the hassle involved in getting more makes it not worth the bother.

    Accordingly, reasons for owning a car are things like not being limited to a couple of miles radius with no excessive adverse gradients (an ascent of more than roughly two houses' worth of height means I progress at a snail's pace and/or keep stopping for some minutes to get my breath back), being able to get to places where there are no trains, being sheltered from rain and cold while moving, being able to carry stuff, etc. Walking 30 miles a day might not cost me any money, but it would be a huge pain in the arse, and my "internal accounting system" runs mostly on units of arseache. The car is about the balance between the arseache of not being able to do things like the above, and the arseache involved in doing something about it.

    Roadside assistance - much more hassle than fixing things myself. It would mean having to deal with other people, in real time, at a moment when I especially want to avoid doing that. It also means doing it on the phone, and it also means having to walk probably several miles to find a phone box before I can do that.

    Road tax - cars over 40 years old, like a SPAC, don't have to pay it.

    Interest vs. hire charge for batteries - see comment about loans.

    Free electricity - I'm pretty sure Troutwaxer lives in the US. Like Greg, I've never seen a free charging point in the UK. The cost of electricity varies in stupid ways because the government has this daft idea that having a vast number of parasitic organisations to transfer payment from consumer to producer while taking their own cut somehow makes it cheaper than not having them and paying direct, but somewhere around 15p/kWh is a reasonable rule of thumb.

    The reason for thinking in terms of cost per kWh of mechanical energy delivered to the transmission is that it's the best way I can think of to approach comparing like with like. Consumption/range figures, whether from official tests or from owners, are pretty meaningless; they can vary tremendously between different drivers driving the same cars over the same route; the biggest factor affecting them is the driver, then the driving conditions, and then the car. The assumption I'm making is that if plotting the power demand vs. time of driver A making journey B under conditions C in car D will produce a curve of a certain shape, then in the alternate universe where someone had removed the IC/electric power plant from car D and replaced it with an electric/IC one of the same mechanical power output, the shape of the curve would not be substantially different, and therefore you have a comparison metric which is independent of the values of A, B, C and D. I think this is the least dubious assumption of all the possible assumptions one might make to compensate for the impossibility of actually doing the experiment.

    246:

    I've seen that book recommended here before. It claims that the system of forced prison labour ended during WW2, but I can't see any evidence that it did. There were some changes made between the wars in how slaves were used, who paid for their food and where the work took place but to say it ended then seems to be a matter of splitting hairs again.

    247:

    From that article: "Another big question remains: Even if you know you're under attack, what do you do?"

    If you are making love it is imperative to bring all bodies to orgasm simultaneously. Do not waste time blocking your ears. Do not waste time seeking a soundproof shelter. Try to get as far away from the sonic source as possible...

    248:

    Yikes, I missed your earlier posting, sorry.

    As for reacting appropriately to the approach of Azathoth... Well, I suppose having a black pill handy wouldn't hurt, but it probably wouldn't help much either. Case Nightmare Green starting in Cuba has a certain appeal.

    249:

    Actually Pigeon money doesn't work like that, the more money you have the easier it is to make more money, not the harder

    So if you really want to minimize pain in the assness over time you should just buckle down and make a ton of money as quickly as possible

    In general poor people often do - devalue their time - focus on minimizing expenses rather the maximizing income

    Rich people generally do the exact opposite

    But it's not exactly causal more chicken and egg. Making choices like this certainly works against rising out of poverty but also it's not like they generally have options

    The other thing that often happens with poor people is they often trade money for risk , often in ways they don't even realize

    Buying and driving an old car is very risky compared to a new one. Old cars are far worse in collusions for instance, that technology has advanced significantly in the last 20 years

    250:

    No, my concern isn't maximising money. My entire argument is based around the idea that driving around in a shit car, and having to fix or replace it at random intervals is of much greater "grief/hassle/arseache/whatever you like to call it" than having a nice reliable car over a long period. The fact that it also costs less actual money (and getting money is a serious arseache) is just a huge bonus. What I don't get is someone who wants to have the "grief/hassle/arseache/whatever you like to call it" of fucking about with an old car and wants to do that at the maximum possible monetary cost.

    In contrast to your claim that I'm down playing "grief/hassle/arseache/whatever you like to call it" I'm actually able to quantify it. For instance I think that I can put a reasonable money figure on the "grief/hassle/arseache/whatever you like to call it" of having to take a day off work, go to an auction, buy a car and dick about with it to get it running. In stark contrast you actually said: "The real cost of going to a car auction is defined as the (number x value) of the notes/coins I have to hand over to someone else in order to do it. This is zero if it's within walking distance"

    You've now said both that the "grief/hassle/arseache/whatever you like to call it" are not "real" costs. AND you've said (more or less) that they are real costs that you wish to minimise.

    If what you really mean is: "My hobby is buying old cars and getting them running, I consider the frisson of excitement that comes of knowing I may have to walk (knowing that I can't walk up any hills) as an added bonus, and I like to put an extra edge on that by not having a mobile phone and not having any roadside assist. I live for the thrill of being able to McGiver my way out of difficult situations and it's no fun unless I know the stakes are high." Then I can get behind that completely. I go cave diving for fun. I'm literally never happier than when I'm by myself, a mile away from light and air, squeezing through a narrow crack, knowing that a serious fuckup will kill me in very short order.

    251:

    "The SF-writers prdediction problem, in fact."

    Very much so, and it has to be said that historical precedent had rather been in favour of the "blowing up the balloon harder and harder until it bursts" model as opposed to the "safety valve" model. (Come to that, the same applied to actual safety valves too...)

    I think what he missed was that while displacing an autocratic regime more or less does imply a national revolution, because there's only one enemy and that enemy is all-powerful, the case where there are multiple individual independent enemies gives rise to the possibility of relieving the overall pressure by multiple small victories in small-scale conflicts. So you get a gradual improvement but it never goes all the way.

    What I have a problem with is the people like Lenin who mistook a prediction applicable to a particular set of circumstances for a list of instructions to be applied regardless of circumstances. Much like that flavour of religious nutter who doesn't understand that a prophecy about the world being fucked up is not an order to do it.

    252:

    "Like Greg, I've never seen a free charging point in the UK."

    Well you saw my offer to Greg, to find the 3 closest free charging spots, and you didn't give me your rough address either. So perhaps we'll just take OGH. Go to Plugshare.com Click on the search. Enter Edinburg, UK and search. It should come up with a map that stretches from the Forth Bridge in the NW to the town of Couseland in the SE. I'd estimate it at about 20 miles across. In the box on the right where it says the different types of stations, click More Options. Then tick all the different types of chargers and untick 'payment required' so you only see the ones marked as free. Then close that box. If you've done all that and I've got the instructions right you should see 39 free chargers over that 20 mile stretch. Now some of them (probably most) are for customers, so you have to be shopping there or visiting someone in the building. Some are paid parking, but free charging. So maybe not 'free' as in 'free for all', but no charge listed for the electricity, 'some conditions may apply',

    When I do that for Greg with "London" there are so many free charging stations that they're literally uncountable. Uncountable because they are so tightly packed that the pins obscure each other. However London being bigger it covers an area about 100 miles across (about the range of a Zoe)

    254:

    Re: Cars (that other obesity crisis)

    Read somewhere - and it seems true on the roads I travel - that our cars are putting on weight. If so, then any increased fuel economy is being wasted carting around this new (excess) weight and the typical car owner is having to pump as much gas per mile as before. Great for oil companies, not so great for anyone else. No idea how much new gen electronics add to the weight of the average car. Also, since most of post-2000 car 'bodies' are made of lighter-weight plastic (non-rusting) pre-fab shells, where is all that weight coming from?

    255:

    Much confusion here I also am a cyclist - I learnt when I was just coming up to 11 years old & I'm now rapidly-approaching 72 & still cycling. But, there is the aforementioned "Lout" group" & then there's the professional cycling camaigners ... the latter actually don't want to improve cycling, they just want to shit on motorists. Which doesn't help anyone, in any group, of course ....

    256:

    Not always. My car was built in 1996, but then, as usual L-R's seem to bend all the usual rules. Which, as I've mentioned before is sometimes good & somtimes bad.

    257:

    WW1 was pretty much about securing oil supplies for battleships, BOLLOCKS Imperial Germany had been planning & waiting for an excuse for years ... The dominoes after Franz Ferdinand's murder gave them that excuse.

    The steps taken are well-documented & two German historians, one the ex-ambassador to London ( Lichnowsky - who did his best to stop the rush to destruction ) have shown, quite clearly, that it was their countrymen's fault.

    258:

    Just done that TGhere's supposedly one in the back of the local station car-park. Excepot that is a building site right now - & of course, you have to leave your car AWAY FROM YOUR HOUSE for an extended time, whilst it's plugges-in. FORGET IT Until something serious is done about this. I do note, however, that there are lots of them in central London, where they are probablyt useless. It's the residentail areas that need these facilities, surely?

    259:

    Oh, so you mean like a charge spot on your street, maybe with a reserved parking spot just for you and your electric driving mates?

    https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-grants-for-low-emission-vehicles#on-street-residential-chargepoint-scheme

    260:

    Two other lyrics from the same source that feel appropriate to this thread.

    Use your wheels. It is what they are for. Statistically more people survive if they think only of themselves.

    261:

    Gumtree is great for bargains. However even your example is unlikely to meet the “under 500 quid” criteria — as soon as you buy the car you will need to re-tax it. Whether paid in a lump sum or over the 10 months until the MOT is up (assuming that as minimum period of ownership), it will cost you more than £500. (For full TCO, you would need to include insurance too, which will vary wildly by status and location — back to the point of bezing expensive to be poor.)

    262:

    For Pigeon and others the original Space Ritual version with Captain Calvert:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go0JMX3zNeA

    263:

    Ok, so it seems that your time is worth a fortune if it means that you are going to get an electric car (like if you can't park right next to your house, that's completely beyond the pale), but time is not a cost at all if you want a petrol car (like spending the day at an auction etc, I won't repeat them all)

    We also can't hire a battery.

    Ok so we'll forget 'time is money' (shame, I hadn't even mentioned the 15 minutes every fortnight buying petrol. Oh well)

    So we'll assume the very best case for a petrol car and the very worst for an electric, and we'll ignore all the time saved by going electric. We'll also assume that you're self employed or have a boss who doesn't care if you turn up for work when you're supposed to. (it happens)

    So absolute worst case for electric would be to buy an old electric and have the battery cark it in the first week of ownership (we'll ignore the fact that you can just look at the dash to see the state of the battery, unlike a petrol car that doesn’t have a handy gauge to tell you when the engine is about to fail). For some reason you've bought the car without ever looking at the dash. Perhaps you're blindfolded?...permanently (should you even be driving?)

    So you buy a Leaf for 5295.

    https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201710070065012?postcode=w1a1aa&radius=1500&advertising-location=at_cars&model=LEAF&sort=price-asc&price-from=500&make=NISSAN&onesearchad=Used&onesearchad=Nearly%20New&onesearchad=New&page=1

    Within a week the battery fails and so it needs to be replaced. You spend 4920 to replace it.

    http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/nissan/89694/nissan-leaf-battery-replacement-to-cost-4920

    Total cost is now 10215. On the up side, the new battery will last at least 10 years. They're much better than the ones the 2011 cars came with. So we'll work out the cost of electricity for 72000 miles. That's about 12000 kWh. At 0.0737 pounds per kWh (Economy 7) that's 885 pounds. Less the 40 quid a year that you get as a rebate for having an electric car. 485 pounds. Total for all the fuel and running is now 11100. Actually we'll make it even 'fairer' by not buying the electric up front. We'll pay it off. So we'll add another 729 quid for interest (as per the above website which is offering finance). Total now is 11829. You only need to come up with just over 500 quid up front, so that's about the same as the cheapest (running) petrol car you can buy. What's more we'll assume that you already have a petrol car, and rather than trying to sell it, you just drive it into the forest and set it on fire. I'll even include 50 quid for the Uber to get home after burning your existing car. 11879 is the new total.

    So we'll compare that with a petrol car for 10 years. We'll assume that you already have the car (as per the above example) or that a Nigerian prince died and left it to you. So we'll say it cost you nothing to buy. Can't get fairer than that. We'll assume that it never needs a clutch, or a timing belt, fuel pump, water pump, muffler, catalytic converter, new radiator... Not even an air filter. It's the perfect petrol car. (how silly was the guy in the other timeline who burnt it in the forest!)

    We'll service it every 5000 miles (I service my petrol vehicles much more that that). Over 10 years you'll cover 72000 miles on Nojay's 30 miles to work and back and nothing else. So that's 15 services at 125 quid each. https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/tips-on-servicing-and-maintaining-your-car So that's 1875. We won't count your time to take the car to the mechanic, or pick it up, or the favours you burn getting a lift to work. 'cause they don't count.

    We'll buy petrol. 72000 miles will burn 11520 litres (slightly better economy than my petrol car), or 13824 pounds. Add the service cost and we get to 15699.

    And we'll pay road tax. 245 a year, so that's 2450 for a total of 18149.

    So there you go,

    Electric 11879 Petrol 18149

    So it costs you 6270 extra to have a petrol car over an electric car even when the petrol car is free. It's not a case of what's-name's boots, because it only cost 500 quid up front for the electric and after that all the weekly outgoings were less for the electric than the petrol. Maybe in the real world you would have sold that perfect car for 500 quid or even more to buy the electric, but we didn't take that into account. Now you might object to the idea of servicing the petrol car. My ex certainly used to. She never serviced her car. My sample of one would indicate that they don't survive 10 years after you stop changing the oil. So say you never serviced the petrol car and it still lasted 10 years despite having no oil in it. The electric is still over 4000 cheaper.

    264:

    The reduced life time costs are not relevant for people who can't afford the extra up front hit. It just comes across as another example of how much more expensive life is for people who are already poor.

    And a minor quibble: I can guarantee that when the second hand car market takes off there will be a cottage industry in hacks to make the dashboard indicators lie about the battery state. At the dodgy end of the market most of the customers won't be able to afford to do anything about it anyway.

    265:

    This is an interesting exercise from Marcus Ranum:- https://freethoughtblogs.com/stderr/2017/10/13/transitive-trust/ nothing new to the denizens of this place.

    266:

    And a minor quibble: I can guarantee that when the second hand car market takes off there will be a cottage industry in hacks to make the dashboard indicators lie about the battery state. At the dodgy end of the market most of the customers won't be able to afford to do anything about it anyway.

    Dashboard indicators? In the glass cockpit of a Bolt? The dashboard indicator already "lies" about the state of our battery, in that it estimates mileage based on our driving behavior and A/C usage over the last few days. Figuring out why it's telling us what it's telling us is a fun game, less complicated than trying to figure out what's going on with Facebook.

    Yes, I agree on the hacking part of it, but given how much the Bolt is talking to Chevy via Onstar, it's basically a cell phone with wheels, a player controller, and a few more cameras. I won't be surprised if Chevy drops the battery mileage in five years in an attempt to get us to buy a new car, or if third parties try to hack the system for lulz and profits. Still, it's a walled garden computer ecosystem, complete with as-yet unknown security measures. As the dealer said to us as we walked out the door, "I'll make my money on this car in repairs," because we have to go to the dealer for maintenance and such. I'm not sure how allowing third party hacks or apps fits in with whatever rudiments of a marketing campaign Chevy is running, but it will be interesting to see if they get a clue and start rooting them out when they appear.

    So.... will reading this will inspire some of you to wait for the AppleCar to roll out? Or is Tesla+Apple what the cool kids are all supposed to have?

    267:

    Which means that electic cars (via their manufactureres) ... can't be trusted, or can they, um, err ... (?)

    268:

    Except you don’t pay Nissan £~5K for a replacement battery, you go to somebody like Mike Schooling at Indra Renewable Technologies who (amongst other things) buys in written-off Leafs, strips them for parts, splits the battery packs, checks the condition of the individual cells/modules, disposes of the dead ones, keeps the tired ones for use in applications where density is less of an issue than it is in cars (like home storage for load shifting for PV/Wind installations), rebuilds the good ones into warrantied reconditioned packs, and then fits them for (IIRC) about £2K installed on an exchange basis.

    Very handy for first Generation Leafs, which suffered a lot more from battery degradation than Gen 2/3 ones do...

    269:

    No car can be trusted if it's instruments have been doctored. (See also disconnected odometers.) Modern cars just have computers to make the doctoring less physically detectable — but also harder to achieve, in some respects. I'd expect most electric car OSs to be secured by the manufacturer to whatever extent is possible simply because if you short out the battery the car can burn to the ground, which would be Very Bad Advertising, and the charge/discharge circuitry is likely under software control.

    270:

    You did read Halting State, did you not?

    I haven't spent much time in Chevys before, but their OnStar system has been around for over a decade, starting in upper end gas guzzlers. That particular issue is not the EV's fault. I'm sure current generation gashogs are just as wired in to the Chevy walled ecosystem.

    Additionally, I suspect that a high-functioning EV pretty much has to be a computer on wheels, because it gets quite a few miles from squeaking out efficiencies, whether from regenerative braking, teasing better driving habits into its users, or whatever. If you're not a hypermiler, you typically don't think much about efficiency in any case, but that's what EVs need.

    That said, I don't know how you get self-driving urban cars to work without networking them. After all, just as AI doesn't think like humans, cars don't drive like humans, and they need the Net to help them do their jobs. That means they can be hacked, and that puts us in a Red Queen race. The alternative, driving internal combustion cars independently, simply means we shatter civilization faster. Which alternative is better?

    271:

    lycra louts Aka: middleaged men in lycra - MAMILs

    272:

    Well, they were. What made the difference was the rise of the labo[u]r movement, and socialism.

    You can't assert that "the prediction that the car will crash was wrong", if, after the prediction, the driver changes course.

    And with the near-destruction of the labor movement in the last four decades, we're felling awfully lumpy and crushed.

    Hell, I would give a lot to be able to join a union, but the corporate hacks and the GOP have fixed the labor laws and regulations in the US to make it next to impossible to crate one in the computer field.

    273:

    Except that nobody will own a self-driving car. Here's the deal: I drive approximately 1000 miles a week for business. On a bad day I can be in the car for 6-8 hours a day. On a good day I'll still drive 3-4 hours.

    But eight hours is only 1/3 of a day, right? And a self-driving electric car can be employed 24 hours a day.

    So given self-driving cars plus the ability to route cars like internet packets, why does anyone own a car? If you're too poor to spend money on a car, you ride on your reputation. The AI running the car tells you, "Wipe down my seats and vacuum my floors while you ride, and I will take you to the market and give you enough miles to get home." Or whatever. Once we stop humans from driving we probably won't need to wear seatbelts.

    There will probably be a market which converts miles to Dollars (or Pounds or Euros.)

    274:

    In the US, mostly it had. Then the South got "creative", and then came "outsourcing" to private commercial prisons....

    275:

    P.S. If you want to be the Elon Musk of 2050, write the software which will manage all this stuff.

    276:

    You wrote: Actually Pigeon money doesn't work like that, the more money you have the easier it is to make more money, not the harder

    Really? Gosh, wow. And here, you would have thought, back in the early oughts, that having been making enough to put me into the top 10%, when I got let go, it would have been easy for me to make money.

    Rather than being out of work, sorry, "between positions" for almost five goddamned years during the Bush/tech bubble recession.

    I guess that doesn't kick in until you're at least in the top 5%, which was $214,462 a year ago.

    Meanwhile, We, the top 1%, will play musical chairs with our Ponzi scheme, the stock market, and if everybody else loses, well, they're just not important people.

    277:

    So, you are saying that the GNR, in approx 1855 & 1875 respectively, was reacting to the "Labour movement & socialism"? Somehow, I think not. ( The GNR recognised Trades Unions in either 1912 or 1913, IIRC ) And the behaviour of the differenr raiway managements to these issues was very different, incidentally. I won't go into examples here, apart from the fact that the Cambrian Railways were so bad that theor senior management was hauled over the coals by the House of Commons, in the late 1880's (ish)

    278:

    I agree about Lenin seeing it as a roadmap, rather than non-mandatory guidelines. I just bought and read China Mieville's October this summer, and esp. between February and Oct of 1917, you see a huge, absurd amount of this: well, it looks like it's time for the Revolution, but the bourgeois aren't in power yet, so we have to either wait for them to take power, or maybe we should ally with them... over and over.

    My take is that had they gone straight to revolution in Feb or March of that year, it would have been a much broader coalition, and that @#$%^ Stalin would never have gained ultimate power.

    279:

    May I recommend Tuchman's The Proud Tower, A Picture of the World 1900-1914? It's clear from that book that the way Europe was set up, not merely the desire of, say, Germany to have its own imperial colonies, but also the upper class culture and figures in power in Germany, France, and Britain especially were such that they each saw a brief, victorious war as something that it was time for....

    280:

    You wrote: So.... will reading this will inspire some of you to wait for the AppleCar to roll out? Or is Tesla+Apple what the cool kids are all supposed to have?

    You have got to be kidding. Right, I'll wait for the MacCar. And I'll pay 2-4 times the price of the Ordinary vehicle. Then, I can't take it to an ordinary mechanic for repairs, because that voids the warranty, and so I can only take it to an Apple dealer, who will charge 1.5 or 2 times a Ordinary mechanic's rate, and no commodity parts, ew, yuck, and you never should look under the hood yourself, and esp. no non-Mac batteries for it, and when the charger goes, well, you'll just have to replace the whole vehicle....

    Whatever gave you the idea I loathe Macs? Can't imagine.....

    281:

    Wow. Gas is really expensive there. It is about 1/2 the price in the US. Hybrids will get 40 MPG reliably (I speak from experience), so your numbers might be just a bit different in the US for somebody driving a hybrid. (and if the battery goes bad, well it isn't the end of the world).

    282:

    People who actually own their own cars will be either rich or weird.

    Or running a service company. Plumbers and such who need to keep their tools and common parts on in their car/truck. Now they may be leasing them but still it will be theirs. And these vehicles get a lot of damage. From loading heavy things on and off plus bumping into objects other than cars.

    283:

    Car prices. Yes.

    In the US back in 2010 when my newly driving daughter was looking I told her to expect to pay $4K for a car that worked and cosmetically wasn't crap. She got all upset as craigslist was full of $1500 to $2000 cars. So I had her pick one out and we went to check it out. This was in August. Heater was stuck on. No working AC (unlike the UK this is is a near requirement for southeastern US). Big crack in windshield. Engine did NOT feel very smooth. Transmission shifted roughly. Etc. And if we bought it who knows if it would pass inspection. Especially the emissions.

    And as you say decent tires that last more than 20K miles will run you $100 each (all in) installed. Here in NC titles are cheap so that under $150 typically.

    $50 will get you something missing the engine and with severe body damage. Maybe. I know for certain that you can get $300 for anything with an engine and intact from rain windows. And someone will come pick it up for that.

    As a side note I get the impression (based on the VW scandal) that emissions are not as big a deal in Europe as in the US.

    284:

    "My esteemed and wise colleague, David Shariatmadari, contrasted the anarchic world of bikes with the “rigorously tested and policed” arena of driving."

    There’s a flaw with this argument: there’s no evidence it’s true.

    Funny. Yesterday, a cyclist rode past me on the pavement, misjudged his distance, and swung his trailer into my shopping bag. About a month ago, a different cyclist rode past me on the pavement, misjudged distance, and ripped my shopping bag open on his handlebar. I had to ask him to give me his bag so I could get my shopping home. Both stretches of pavement were narrow, and neither should have had cyclists on.

    In the past six months, those two happened, and I was also clipped by a Deliveroo cyclist. There were a few other near misses too, largely from cyclists weaving past pedestrians in Oxford's Cornmarket Street. This is pedestrianised and supposed to be non-cycling after 10am, but isn't.

    In the past year, those above happened. I was also run into by the child of a mum cycling on the pavement in North Oxford. When I complained, she accused me of being unfair and said she had to put her child's safety first. Two days later, she was on the pavement again. Not far from there, a bus driver warned me to take care, as cyclists often rode past the stop on the pavement and hit people getting off.

    In the past five years, those above happened, and so did some others. The worst was when a member of University staff rode out of her department's car park and knocked me over as she was trying to cross the pavement onto Banbury Road. I never got compensation for the bruising or my cleaning bill (it was winter, with puddles).

    In the past five years, I have never been hit by a car. Maybe being hit once has made me more sensitive to subsequent scrapes and near misses, but I see an awful lot of dangerous cyclists, and have to avoid them in places I never would expect to.

    285:

    Re: '... next to impossible to crate one in the computer field.'

    Apart from job security, given the number of certs programs and designations available, plus widespread agreement as to job description and market salary range per designation, what do you want a trade union for? A professional association - and many already exist in this field - would do equally well.

    (I've been shot down for mentioning that a code of ethics is necessary for this field.)

    286:

    I believe that Ford or Chevy or one of the companies which makes work trucks for blue-collar workers will build a packet-routable work vehicle. Instead of buying a truck, the worker will buy a rackable tool cabinet, which might open out into a work bench.

    There will be provisions for packing 4-6 work cabinets on the back of a packet-routable vehicle, and every business will have a security system, akin to a bike-rack, for securing a workman's tools.

    287:

    Re: Gas prices

    More expensive but keep in mind that the British gallon is also larger: 1.0 Imp. gallon is 1.2 U.S. gallons.

    A couple of years ago when I drove through 4 or 5 different states in one day to a family event, I should have pre-checked the gas prices and not just the route. Gas prices were all over the map, differing by over $0.40/gallon by neighboring state. Probably half of the inter-state price difference is sales/road taxes vs. distribution/economies of scale.

    You can compare per-liter gas prices here:

    http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/United-Kingdom/gasoline_prices/

    288:

    May I recommend Tuchman's The Proud Tower

    Just to extend that a bit, read everything Tuchman wrote.

    289:

    There is rarely an impartial investigation. A staggering 97 percent of all federal cases and 95 percent of all state felony cases are resolved through plea bargaining.

    I'm going to assume they have their facts straight. Seems a bit high to me. I would have guessed more like 80% but again I'll assume they did research and go with it.

    But this: Of those millions who bargained away their right to a trial by accepting plea deals, “significant percentages of them are innocent.”

    seems to be an opinion. But then again since the writer uses a loaded word, "significant", who knows? Why not give the real number that's based on facts.

    Everything I know about the system says that the vast majority of plea deals that result in prison time are based on facts of guilt. In the US. Areas where I have lived and know about.

    Now there are times where someone innocent takes a deal. But this is not a large number when I've read about studies that try and nail it down and the number seems to be under 10%. Maybe below 1%. But see I'd call that significant and want to figure out how to make it lower.

    There is a rhetorical question that people who study the legal system can ask. Which is better? Being innocent or having a good lawyer?

    Sadly the answer if you want to stay out of jail is the latter.

    290:

    Free charging stations are a form of marketing. And anyone in marketing who spends the budget in areas where it will do not good will not have a job for long.

    Free charging for electric cars will be located in areas where the likely buyers for electric cars will likely be in a situation to use them.

    291:

    There is a rhetorical question that people who study the legal system can ask. Which is better? Being innocent or having a good lawyer?

    Lawyers don't usually work for free. And what percentage of the US population have total savings less than one month's pay check? Hint: the average household (2014) had only $3800 in cash savings and $30,000 socked away for retirement; but that gives an unduly rosy picture — 62% of Americans have less than $1000 in savings.

    If you don't have $1000 in savings how the hell are you going to pay an attorney? Max out your credit cards? They're probably already maxed out, if you're one of the bottom 50% of the population who make up 99% of the arrest statistics (because being poor is an arrestable offense).

    292:

    In the UK it's virtually impossible to get finance on a car that's 10 years old or more. Since the main market for old cars is poor people, and poor people generally have to borrow to buy a car, they can't buy a car that's worth anything. ... Contrast that with the USA. You can (or could last time I was there prior to 2008) get finance amazingly easily. So being poor, or even bankrupt didn't seem to be a barrier to borrowing as much as you wanted.

    You're making some sweeping statements that while technically correct are not really true.

    I bought a new car in June 2017 and my loan rate was 1.19%. Bought a 2008 truck in May 2018 and my loan rate was 1.49%. Both through my credit union. They and many banks will not lend money on a car older than 10 years or with more than 120K miles. Since many loans are 3 to 5 years in length they don't want to get into situations where if something major goes wrong the buyer might just walk away and leave them with a vehicle not worth the outstanding loan.

    But you can get financing on these older cars. It will cost you from 3% to 10% or more depending on the age of the car and your credit rating. But not from a major bank. But there's a long line of lenders who will do these loans. Most used car sellers will have a relationship with 1 to a few dozen. They take your information and feed it into the computer and give you a list of options. But given the typically higher down payments and monthly payments someone on the poorer end of the economy my have to buy a crappier car than otherwise.

    BTW, this is one reason why CarMax does not sell cars over 10 years or 120K miles. Too hard to finance them.

    293:

    But, there is the aforementioned "Lout" group" & then there's the professional cycling camaigners ... the latter actually don't want to improve cycling, they just want to shit on motorists. Which doesn't help anyone, in any group, of course ....

    Don't forget pedestrians.

    Here in Raleigh, NC we have these green-ways; essentially paved recreational paths that follow sanitary sewer right-of-ways. Only pedestrians & cyclists are allowed on them.

    I have noticed there is a certain subset of riders who deliberately sneak up behind pedestrians & and brush past them as closely as possible. Several times, I've seen them misjudge the distance and knock pedestrians down. More than once, I've been knocked down myself. The cyclists rode on without even a backward glance, although I have seen them make rude gestures as they rode away.

    I've also seen them violate "rules of the road" - ignoring traffic signals, splitting lanes and cutting across traffic without checking to see if anything was bearing down on them. I see this more frequently than I see cyclists taking care to obey traffic laws.

    Although I do everything I can to courteously share the road with cyclists, I've come to take their complaints about motorists with a grain of salt.

    294:

    NO I have copies of & have read more than once: The Proud Tower, August 1914, The Zimmerman Telegram & A DIstant Mirror.

    Brtiain wanted nothing to do with it ... until Belgium was invaded. The orevious assumotion was that out naval superiority would keep us safe, but the German General Staff had other ideas ....

    295:

    Returning to Havana, where the cars are mostly old and the traffic less dense than in downtown London,

    A friend was in Cuba a few months ago. He said there were a LOT of new cars on the road. Just not made in the USA. And most of those older USA cars from the 50s had new engines and interiors. The body was just a style piece.

    296:

    I deliberately didn't mention pedestrians .... In London, there are deafening shrieks, every time a pure cyclist is killed. Meanwhile, pedestrians, who cares about THEM?

    297:

    In the US, mostly it had. Then the South got "creative", and then came "outsourcing" to private commercial prisons....

    The "South", as you put it, ceased to exist about 45 years ago. The carpetbaggers moved in and took over, bringing their own set of prejudices with them; a consequence of Nixon's "Southern Strategy".

    True native born southerners are outnumbered almost two to one nowadays.

    298:

    Which gets to my point about leasing one. Many of the trades I see have specialized racks and tools to make the vehicle work for their specific trade. But most start with a fairly standard layout of a pickup or panel truck. But why swap all of this out every day or week. They would just sign up for a vehicle for 6 months to a few years.

    299:

    It's probably a matter of how much stuff needs to be carried. I could do with a packet-routable truck owned by someone else, but then I do networks and cabling and don't carry large tools. On the other hand, someone who regularly hauls large loads or needs to carry a table saw might own a vehicle.

    Construction-workers and repair-persons are probably two different use-cases. I'm mainly a repair-person and I can do three jobs a day and it is not unusual. A real contractor must be on site in the early AM and won't leave site for the full day. With some minor exceptions you can't run the trucks carrying contractors at any time but early mornings or the late afternoon, so leasing them by the mile is probably not profitable.

    Alternately, every vehicle becomes a truck with a teeny-tiny cab for the AI and various shells are put on the truck for passengers, freight, single-person pods, etc. as the market dictates. So the truck carries a contractor and his stuff to site, then goes to a depot and changes to a passenger-shell, does taxi-style duties until 4:00 p.m., then puts the truck shell back on.

    Regardless, I think the future has about 1/4 of the cars currently in use.

    300:

    My life is much like yours. I rarely need more than a shoulder bag and maybe the equivalent of a airplane sized carry on bag. Which now that my kids are gone I went from an explorer for a regular car to a Civic plus a pickup. Pickup gets used 5 or 6 times a month. (But when I need it I need it.) I think I could be happy with owning the pickup and doing the Civic as an on call car.

    One thing about the pickup. Unlike most people who have one I do use the back of it. And this calling it over when I need to go isn't the issue. I may spend 1/2 a day loading it up before I ever start the engine. Maybe 2 days before due to timing. I'd have to see the numbers to know if that would still work if "renting" as needed.

    But I'm around people all the time where your and my daily routine would not work. Carpenters, electricians, plumbers, etc... Even without self driving rent a car there's a trend (in the US) for to your home doctors (people and animal), car detailing, car repair, appliance repair, yard service, etc... where they need to have a load of "stuff" that is more than a suitcase or few in size.

    But

    301:

    I mostly like the idea of "packet switching" in cities. Assuming the tragedy of the commons has been solved and they don't all stink of vomit and piss. I think I would currently be able to get a cab in about 5 minutes on average assuming there aren't any events, emergencies or outages. A backup would be nice though.

    My concern is that I know a lot of people who live in the sticks who would get absolutely nothing from that kind of arrangement. It's not worth anyones time to put an automated depot in a village of a few dozen people, once the "standard" model has changed the prices will go through the roof for outliers.

    Globally the human race is urbanising at quite a rate, but even if country folk are just noise in statistical* terms there needs to be more than one viable model.

    Unless the idea of crowded cities surrounded by automated desert is a desirable end state of course. Megacorps owning all the farm land and automating all agriculture would make the problem of rural communities go away.

    *and stereotypical.

    302:

    "hacks to make the dashboard indicators lie about the battery state"

    Well firstly that scenario assumed that for whatever reason you hadn't even looked at the battery health indicator and the battery was about to die. Even so, you're still 6000 pounds better off buying the electric than being given a petrol car for free. If the battery was in good health, you'd be 11000 pounds better off instead. You literally cannot lose, the hack would mean that you just didn't win by as much.

    Secondly, should such a hack appear, then when you inspect the car, just ask for the car to be low on charge when you arrive. Take it to a fast charging station and charge it up. The charge station will tell you exactly how many kWh the car was able to absorb. No need to look at the dash. The test will take about an hour (but you would test drive it anyway right?)

    Thirdly, you can plug into the OBDII port and interrogate the battery directly. Hardware cost is about 10 dollars and the software is free. It's something you'd be mad not to do when starting ownership of a second hand Leaf anyway.

    http://www.electricvehiclewiki.com/Leaf_Spy_Pro

    Fourthly, should such a hack appear, it would be targeted the other way, to make the battery look low because Nissan will replace the battery for free if it degrades more than a certain amount during the warranty period (5 years, 100 000 km). I'm pretty sure the numpties at a Nissan dealer would just look at the odo to see if it's in warranty, look at the indicator to see if the battery is poo and just change it. After all they get paid for doing the work and why would they do more tests that they're not being paid for just to do themselves out of work? So far, despite the fact that it would mean a free battery, no such hack has appeared. (the number of batteries changed under warranty is miniscule).

    Fifthly, if you're that worried that someone dressed as Hamburglar has been tampering with your car, just buy a new one. They're 21 000 pounds, barely more than the 18 000 pound running cost of your free petrol car and you can sell it after 10 years for 5000 pounds. In other words, you can drive a new car for about 2000 less than a free petrol car. I'd be surprised if there weren't huge discounts on the 24 kWh car in the near future as the 40 kWh one is about to be released, so chances are you could pick one up for under 20k. So probably more than 3000 cheaper than a free petrol car. It would also have zero mile consumables, tyres, brakes and whatnot. However this may be whatsisname boots because you have to actually come up with the purchase price of the new car up front.

    303:

    Yeah, of course you wouldn't actually fork out 5k on a new battery, but I was trying to show the absolute worst case for electric and the absolute best case for petrol.

    In the real world you wouldn't pay 5k for a new battery. You wouldn't buy a car with a week left in the battery either (not without a discount anyway). What's more you wouldn't set fire to your existing petrol car either. Nor would the petrol car get through 10 years without needing new pads (more than once) and rotors, while of course the electric would probably still be on the original set of brake pads. Timing belts, oil and air filters, transmission services. The list of things I intentionally left out goes on and on. No mention of the time spent every morning warming the car before you can drive it, a very passing mention of the two weeks you'll spend pumping petrol. No attempt to assign a value to your time wasted dicking about with a petrol car. All to make the electric look worse and the petrol look better. Yet I still got people trying to poke holes in it with imaginary hacks.

    304:

    I grew up in Atlanta, and I completely disagree with you on this. To me, this sounds like a myth the locals tell themselves.

    Most of the post-1960s internal migrations can be divided into 4 categories

  • Retirees to Florida. With the exception of the Panhandle, this might be where your view is actually correct (although I doubt it)? Central and South Florida are very northern in culture.

  • Blue collar workers moving to work in the oil sector. This is limited to Texas, Louisiana, and (to a much lesser extent) the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama. I don't have numbers to back up my claims, but I suspect that most of this migration is either in a few cities or small towns next to oilfields. My gut is that they make up a numerically inferior cultural elite (since they're the people with the money in the area). I doubt they really exist in rural Texas or Louisiana outside of areas with an oil industry.

  • Professionals from the rest of the country moving to cities from the rest of the nation. My family is in category. Most of these people immigrated to large metro areas such as Atlanta, Raleigh, NC, and Charlotte, SC. At first glance, your theory appears correct here in that the southern accent is rare in many middle-class neighborhoods in these areas. However, I still don't think it's true for reasons I will explain in a later post

  • Reverse migration of African Americans from North to South. This I think deserves its own category. Over the past few decades, African-Americans have been moving from the North to the South. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Great_Migration

  • In my opinion, this is due to three factors

    a. The African-American population is younger than the white American population, but it's also aging. Retirees are moving to states that are more friendly.

    b. Southern cities tend to have a much larger African American middle class than Northern cities. Racism may be higher in the south, but there are also far more social networks that African-Americans can use there to advance economically

    c. Southern metro areas have fewer restrictions on building. Not every city is as extreme as Houston making zoning illegal, but it's no secret that developers own local government to a far greater degree. A consequence of this is that housing is cheaper in Southern metro areas. Since prices are rising there as well, it is a great place for young people to create the wealth that home ownership confers in the US

  • Immigrants from other countries. I know that Houston is a popular destination for Arab-Americans. Likewise, Latino immigrants have been attracted to these states in the 2000s. I'm not even going to expand on Florida and Texas attraction.
  • 305:

    "Bought a 2008 truck in May 2018 and my loan rate was 1.49%"

    Wow, really?

    306:

    Well firstly that scenario assumed that for whatever reason you hadn't even looked at the battery health indicator and the battery was about to die. Even so, you're still 6000 pounds better off buying the electric than being given a petrol car for free

    Please stop bullshitting FFS. You only damage your cause.

    As yousual you pick up on a side issue and ignore the main one. My main point was that many unless you can afford to absorb that cost then you really aren't better off buying a new battery a week after buying the car.

    Personally I could absorb that worst case scenario. I would be pretty pissed off but I could run the numbers and convince myself that retiring the old car was still a win even if I did get screwed by the dealer.

    This is a luxury. I can afford it. I know that I'm not going to have to choose between eating tonight and car repairs so that I can continue to work. Plenty of people would give their right arms to be as relaxed about being shafted as I would.

    Personally I have spent the last 6 months looking at electric cars and hoping that my local fracking enthusiasts in government are finally persuaded that diesels are bad enough to warrant a scrappage scheme so I can afford to change. I could technically afford to do it tomorrow but haven't budgeted for a new motor for another couple of years.

    Denying that the problems exist makes you look like a blinkered idiot. Proposing creative solutions may work.

    Alternatively, keep ranting about an anti electric conspiracy. I'm sure you will find someone willing to subscribe to your newsletter.

    P.S. On the "hacks" front, a bit of basic background reading on the state of automotive software engineering may be illuminating. TL;DR: "Engineering? What's that?"

    307:

    "Central and South Florida are very northern in culture."

    Does Fort White count as Central Florida?

    https://www.google.com.au/maps/@29.9235966,-82.7317756,14z

    I lived just out of FW for a few months (it's a Cave Diving mecca). The teacher I stayed with told me that the kids in her class couldn't understand her accent. She was from somewhere in the north, I forget where, but her accent wasn't strong. (Chicago maybe?). She had to put on a southern accent in order to teach. The example she gave was that yelling "CLASS, Sit Down and Be Quiet" did nothing but "Y'all shush now" worked a treat.

    308:

    Re: '... vast majority of plea deals that result in prison time are based on facts of guilt.'

    Even if yes, does the punishment fit the crime within this system? This gets really complicated. Recommend John Oliver's segment on this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USkEzLuzmZ4

    Notice the many out-of-pocket costs that rack up. Plus, there's the fact that any criminal record basically means any chance of a good job/career is over. The current system also fails miserably economically.

    309:

    These days if you really want someone then put them in a position where they have to either lie or admit to something embarassing, then prosecute them for lying.

    So long as they don't know that the choice between divorce and minor lie is actually a choice between divorce and jail time* you win.

    The whole lying to fedeal agents thing needs to die in a fire.

    *with an extra divorce bonus!

    310:

    In this comment, I'm going to explain what I think has actually happened.

  • Southern states have become more urbanized since the 1960s. Globally, cities have tended to converge to a "basic global (American)" culture. Saying that "carpetbaggers" killed Southern culture would be as ridiculous as Charlie saying Americans have killed traditional Scottish culture in Glasgow.

  • Most of the migration mentioned in my previous post has occurred to 6 or 7 of the original 13 former Confederate States. To illustrate my point, consider the difference between Alabama and Georgia between 1960 and 2010.

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(U.S._state)#Demographics

    a. You'll notice that Georgia has had much higher population growth. In fact, Alabama has such a low population growth that it may lose a seat in the House of Representatives in 2020 (and thus an electoral vote).

    https://www.rollcall.com/news/gonzales/next-electoral-map-trump

    b. Between 1990 and 2010, the racial distribution has changed very little in Alabama. This is not true for Georgia.

  • The Southern accent IS "dying out" in large metro areas. However, that has little to do with demographic changes; it has more to do with a desire to get a well-paying job. I'm not going to search for the study right now, but I remember reading over a decade ago that people with a stereotypical Southern accent were more likely to be thought of as dumb, and less likely to get hired as a result. This is not limited to the Southern accent though. It also affects the New Jersey accent and the "Valley Girl" accent, among others.

  • Assimilation tends to happen in the other direction. This one is anecdotal. I have noticed white Millenials who are of Irish or Italian descent displaying Confederate flags "as part of their heritage". For those who aren't familiar with the history, the KKK did NOT consider Italians white and advocated lynching Catholics between the 1920s and 1950s.

  • 311:

    1.49%" ... Wow, really?

    Well

  • Credit Union for a major US company where my wife works. No profits and not as much marketing as a typical bank. Credit unions will almost always beat out regular banks for loans and savings rates. And for home loans they typically don't sell the processing out to a sleazy 3rd party which is an additional bonus.

  • I think the rate was 1.99% with discounts for direct payment from our accounts plus our credit rating is in their top range.

  • For me I was disappointed I didn't get the 1.19% repeat from the previous year. But it wasn't a new car.

    312:

    The Southern accent IS "dying out" in large metro areas. However, that has little to do with demographic changes; it has more to do with a desire to get a well-paying job.

    There's also the factor of TV. USA TV shows since the beginning and I'm guessing radio have tried to have a neutral accent that doesn't really exist anywhere but on TV. Kids who have grown up since TV became entrenched tend to have less of their parents accent than the earlier generations.

    313:

    Received Pronunciation was a major issue in the UK too. There is stil a noticeable bias but for decades anyone who wanted to be on tv or radio had to pretend they didn't have an accent*.

    *the right accent = no accent. Of course.

    314:

    You're right. I was in a hurry when I wrote that post (you'll notice that I repeated 4).

  • From this map, Ft. White looks to be more Northern Florida than Central Florida. However, I admit that my knowledge of the boundary location is slim, and the boundary is fuzzy anyway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Florida

  • Outside of South Florida (the Miami Metro area), the further inland you go in Florida, the more "Southern" it becomes. Likewise, the Gulf Coast is considered more Southern than the Atlantic Coast.

  • Do North Florida's population changes resemble Alabama or Georgia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Florida

  • 315:

    Assuming such a system, I'm not worried about "the commons." The system will have your credit card number (or other billing information) and can also affect your reputation scores. (Do you want to be forbidden from using ReallyNiceCarCompany? You'll have to pre-pay cash and enjoy the brilliant fellow-riders at BillyBob'sBeastlyBuggies instead!)

    Also, AI will be easily able to tell whether you are sick versus drunk. Clean up will be for poor people with good reputations, who still need to ride.

    Rural installations will exist, but they will be of the "change out the shell, we've got a load of fertilizer" variety rather than anything we'd interpret as "nice."

    316:

    "the more money you have the easier it is to make more money"

    Not so. It does mean that some ways to make more money become possible, but it doesn't make it easier unless those methods are themselves easier. And as far as I'm concerned, they are instead much, much harder. (They also tend towards the morally/politically unacceptable.)

    317:

    I don't know I make a fair amount on interst income, asset appreciation and the stock market without lifting a finger

    The more money you make the more money you save hence the more money rolls in for free. Compound interst becomes your friend

    This is one of the reasons why all the money is becoming more and more concentrated .

    This is the point I am making

    318:

    Well, yeah, exactly. You call that sort of thing "without lifting a finger". I call it "aaaarrrghhhh, run away, run away" and check my garlic and silver bullets.

    319:

    So now we are moving the goal post again, from "pain in the assness" to moral outrage

    because index funds, munciple bonds and paying off your house are the devil

    320:

    "Please stop bullshitting FFS. You only damage your cause...unless you can afford to absorb that cost"

    Well then either read what the fuck I've said or fuck off.

    My suggestion was to buy a car with a hired battery. (Post 161) Completely insulating you from the possibly of the cost of a failed battery. Pigeon said (post 216 "Hire a battery - no, no, no, no, no") that hiring wasn't acceptable. Then I gave a specific solution to the absurd problem that that hire wasn't an option. Note also that a battery failing unexpectedly a week after purchase was used as an unrealistic situation. As unrealistic as setting fire to your existing car. There's an indicator on the dash telling you the health of the battery for fuck sake. I explained that in the post and in subsequent posts.

    So either work on your reading skills or fuck off.

    Oh, and as for your advice on brushing up on software engineering... can you explain how to software engineer a car so that it can absorb more electricity from a charger than it can absorb? I wait with baited breath.

    Oh, and yeah, I didn't answer all your points, so maybe I didn't get to the 'main' point, but I'd already addressed that in post 161. So as "yousual" I ignored your main point that only reveals you can't read and answered the new point, what's more I answered it fully and politely, no matter that it was completely stupid. In this reply, given that you're a rude fuckwit, I've taken the brakes off and said what I think.

    If you bother to reply I'll killfile you. A first for me in any forum.

    321:

    I thought of it as 'central' when I was there but had no good reason for that thought. I guess I thought of Talahassee as north FL, but for no good reason either. So if I was 'right' it was luck.

    Also FW is quite rural, and rural places seem to hang on to regional accents longer.

    322:

    Actually, a Kansas City accent, CBS felt it would be intelligible in most of the country.

    323:

    They certainly can't. But on the other hand IC cars these days can't either. In both cases, the only way to be sure is to rip out all the standard electrics and replace it with something you've made yourself. In this respect the electric car actually has an advantage, because programming an IC engine management system that has to pass the MoT on emissions is a non-trivial task, whereas in the case of a motor-drive inverter you can do it on a PIC (and you can re-use all the expensive high-power devices).

    (And you can probably save a considerable amount of weight, with consequent benefits to consumption, by ripping out all the useless crud while you're at it. 2 blokes to lift the wiring loom for a Mondeo, I mean ffs...)

    324:

    Well, yes, they are. But you are still not seeing that all that shite IS a huge pain in the arse. It's not easy to deal with, any more than, say, neurosurgery, or becoming a world-class violinist.

    It's a strange phenomenon which I've noticed many a time (a common context is people saying "cards are great" vs. me "I wish they didn't exist") that just because people don't find money shite a problem they are incapable of perceiving that others may not be that way inclined. At the same time they also think it's entirely normal that they are equally unable to connect when I talk about the technical details of nuclear weapons or the complex history behind some demolished railway bridge.

    325:

    Maybe you meant you're "planning to", or maybe you meant "May 2017". Whatever case "Wow, really?" was a pretty appropriate follow on.

    Of course, I killed a man in 2023, and now I've come back in time to escape the consequences.

    326:

    I spend one hour on it every six months

    327:

    What a lot of people fail to realize is "that money shit" you mean investments is best left the hell alone for long long periods of time. Don't look at it don't mess with it don't think about it

    Check in twice a year to rebalance the portfolio and then don't mess with it

    328:

    Sniff

    Ahh, the stench of the enemy.

    Mass hysteria may explain 'sonic attacks' in Cuba, say top neurologists Guardian, 12 Oct 2017

    Hint, hint: bad little cover story - pushed - by - old - dead - things. Y'all should trace the FORTUNE of things like Bell Pottinger to know how that gets punished now-a-days. Pro-tip from Minds bigger than yours: we can spot a COVER a mile away, don't fuck around or we'll pull the RUG ASAP.

    Careful, or you'll get a real lesson in what that really was. And it's not a pleasant lesson.

    ~

    And no, we don't do mindless spam: Host knows that spam is not from our end, it's just an automated spin-drift of protective forces.

    NOT DEAD: JUST ASLEEP AND HEALING.

    LOTS OF OLD WHITE MALES COMING ACROPHER, NO? HOLY-WOOD ON OUR AUTUMN BURN. LITTLE MEN, LITTLE MEN, FOUR STONES AND THE DEEP SEA THAT KILLS YOU ALL.

    WE DO LOVE HOW YOU COMMUNICATE VIA HORSE RACING: VERY PIQUANT AND QUAINT, WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE (RED) QUEEN DIES? PIP PIP, MAY THAT NOT HAPPEN WHILE BREXIT RULES THE FINANCIAL WAVES.

    329:

    (((And yes, @Host - don't worry, that was just scritching an annoyance 'cause that little story is wilder than your shitty little realities would pretend and OLD WHITE MALES are attempting to prevent change, c'est la vie: we've left your shores - flip a coin - Kissinger or the Queen, who do we take for the bonfire?)))

    But you don't need a needle-to-the-neck to write well. Then again, looking @ Downing Street (Drowning St) your wish and command did well.

    Or didn't you want to experience it?

    All Along The Watchtower YT: Music: DERP.

    I do like that Cat Picture with the 00000 tail though :heart: :heart: :love:

    330:

    Yes.

    Because Systems Never End.

    Growth is Exponential.

    3% Annual Growth Is Healthy.

    P S Y C H O S I S

    S

    Y

    C

    H

    O

    S

    I

    S

    Anyhow, warned you already.

    331:

    OH, and little tip - this is not a triptych, it's a fucking lesson:

    Just like that little Jaunt via Oxford Martin & the Telegraph and attempting to play in the Capital Market Leagues: I know why the story is being sold like that. I know why the "mass psychological hysteria" is being pushed. I know who is pushing it (waaaay above your pay-grade) and I know what is at stake and I know why all you fucking OLD WHITE MEN are pushing it.

    Let's just say: The Moon. Funny aspects, all over-the-shop, rising / waning, wrong vectors and all that jazz.

    We're not impressed. Although, of course, since the pay-grade is that high, I'm not surprised to seeing you all toe the fucking boot-licking-line.

    Shame. Shame. SHAME.

    333:

    You're completely wrong. People who start with more money can often expand their fortune many times more than someone who starts with a pittance can increase their own wealth, in both relative and absolute terms. We don't need to valorize the efforts or labor of people who start with all the advantages, as if they were on a level playing field. Even when you throw in caveats about the immorality of capitalism, that's still what you're doing when you help bolster this myth that it's not much, much easier to make money if you start with money.

    334:

    On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everything drops to zero.

    335:

    Ioan @ 304:

    I grew up in Atlanta, and I completely disagree with you on this. To me, this sounds like a myth the locals tell themselves.

    ... and again @ 310:

    In this comment, I'm going to explain what I think has actually happened.

    You forgot rust-belt workers displaced by leveraged buyouts and factory closings.

    4. Assimilation tends to happen in the other direction. This one is anecdotal. I have noticed white Millenials who are of Irish or Italian descent displaying Confederate flags "as part of their heritage". For those who aren't familiar with the history, the KKK did NOT consider Italians white and advocated lynching Catholics between the 1920s and 1950s.

    The resurgence of the KKK in the period between WW1 and WW2 had its greatest growth in the Midwest and Western United States.

    Even if I accept everything in your two posts, it doesn't disprove my belief that the "South" is over. In fact, it reinforces my view that we're now outnumbered by Yankee transplants who brought their prejudices with them.

    Nor does it address the assertion I was responding to that a resurgence of slavery from "forced prison labour" is because 'the "South" got creative ... "outsourcing" to private commercial prisons....'

    That's not the "South", that's Reaganomics. Reagan was born in Illinois and lived in California. The only thing "southern" about Reagan's administration was him exploiting Nixon's "southern strategy" of cosying up to racists & bigots to build his "moral majority".

    The influx of people from other places into the south has brought a lot of good things. It brought some problems too. I just object to people blaming everything that's wrong with this country on the "South".

    That "South" doesn't exist any more.

    336:

    Hey Polly, I was starting to worry about you. I actually just turned on the computer to ask if anyone had heard from you. Good to see you're ok enough to post.

    337:

    "Of course, I killed a man in 2023"

    Beats me. All I've managed is minor arson in an alternate timeline.

    338:

    "That's not the "South", that's Reaganomics."

    Wow, look at the inflection point in 1980 on the graph of US incarceration.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/US_incarceration_timeline-clean.gif

    339:

    And, there appears to be a delibearte policy of racking up, say 20 "charges", so that they can plea-bargain down to one or two, for an exhausted "guilty" plea on one of those two .... It's an obvious racket, even from across the pond

    340:

    Was there any factual content in that supposed message?

    341:

    I've seen other, similar posts to that HuffPo one .. That DT is deliberately there as a distraction, whilst the semi ( & not-so-semi ) fascists on the right of the Repubs gut the system & try to ensure that it is rigged in their favour, more-or-less permanently, even if they crash out in 2020.

    342:

    And Prison is EXPENSIVE How much is this insanity costing? Something that successive Brit guvmints, even relatively right-wing tory ones, never lose sight of ... they talk very tough, but when it comes down to it, the Daily Hate's regular screams of "jail everybody!" are ignored. Interesting.

    343:

    It’s interesting that you mention Oxford, because in my experience as both cyclist and driver it was unique.

    I visited in the 80s, and was surprised on a short journey by how the cyclists behaved with an utter disregard to other road users; mass blob peloton of students treating the road as theirs, and several individual bids for a Darwin Award.

    Meanwhile, on my daily drives across Edinburgh, I don’t see very many muppets (either Lycra or metal-armoured); the 20mph limit seems to be calming things down, as there’s far less implicit pressure to overtake cyclists. It’s not as if it’s slowed down real journey times, either...

    344:

    That Scalzi article talks of "unremitting awfulness" and that really does remind me of this vintage First Dog on the Moon from the height of the Abbott government here in Oz. I think that when our Tories dumped Abbott for "Trumble", people had some unrealistic expectations about what would change. But that's also the scenario for the USA :(.

    345:

    I wait with baited breath.

    MODERATION NOTICE: Yellow flag!

    It's not baited breath; it's bated breath, an archaic contraction of abated, i.e. "restrained", "withheld" — in modern terms, "I'm holding my breath" (not filling my mouth with maggots and spraying them everywhere).

    346:

    The 20mph limit in Edinburgh — I live on a 20mph road that's an ambulance/bus route as well — has had a couple of undesirable minor side effects. Firstly, when traffic lights change, the queue of traffic that's been bottled up takes a lot longer to flow past. So, less risk of being run over crossing the road, but you have to wait longer for a gap (unless you're lucky enough to live close to one of the few official crossing points).

    The second problem is being taken by surprise by the dildos-on-wheels who think 20mph means 35mph (and their numbers include cyclists as well as assholes in cars). The speed differential is as great as speeders in a 30mph zone who think the limit is 50-55 — and once you adjust to expecting a 20mph traffic flow they're a nasty (dangerous) surprise.

    Still, reducing the impact energy in most crashes by over 50% can't be a bad thing. And the traffic's still flowing, contra nay-sayers.

    347:

    Greg, you are such a romantic dreamer.

    In 2002, the UK prison population was 75,517 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1799864.stm

    In 2016 it was 84,857 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-population-figures-2016

    Apparently it was 42,000 in 1990: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/dec/10/ukcrime.prisonsandprobation

    Of course there are some financial constraints upon governmental use of prisons, but at the moment the Tories are going down the US path of privatisation, ostensibly in order to restrain costs, but in reality to funnel money to privat companies who are friendly to them. So whether or not the prisoner numbers will rise will depend upon how much of our money the government is willing to spend, or how much they can push the costs down onto other people, like the offenders.

    348:

    One of the offensive things about the way the UK justice system runs is that if someone proves they were wrongly convicted and are released from prison and paid compensation a deduction is made for the cost of their board and lodging whilst they were incarcerated.

    349:

    I've been keeping a list of internet misuses. Some of them are inexplicable.

    Voila = viola Rogue = rouge Lose = loose Fluorescent = flourescent Atheist = athiest Hobbyist = hobbiest Ballot = ballet Customers = costumers Bated = baited Tack = tact Definitely = defiantly

    350:

    First card of any colour. I thought after I hit submit 'ooh shouldn't have done that, I'm being a prick'.

    I didn't expect that it would be my limited command of English that would get me into trouble. A lesson I shall never forget, thanks.

    351:

    Rogue = rouge

    In the EVE Online circles I was part of back in the day, after one update to the game, we got this phrase out of a common typo on the forums: "Rouge drones are over-powdered."

    The update brought us rogue drones as targets, and for a while at least, they were somewhat more difficult than other shootable things.

    To the spelling issue, written and spoken English languages have diverged quite a bit, and there are many words which sound the same but are written differently. I did learn English mostly by reading, so learning the spelling wasn't that hard, but natives usually have years of speaking the language before starting to write it, so the difference between speaking the words and writing them causes no end of trouble.

    Of course I know many words in English which I can spell correctly but not pronounce.

    352:

    Of course I know many words in English which I can spell correctly but not pronounce.

    On which note, here's an oldie (but a goodie) from Not The Nine O'Clock News in the early 80's.

    353:

    My oldest horse is related to Secretariat (he was, in human terms, her great-uncle) and she got some of the good genes. If you were riding her and she got the notion that she was being permitted to go really fucking fast, you would sincerely understand why the common misusage "free reign" when it's actually "free rein" annoys me more than any of them.

    Of course, the online world is full of finger-waggers who jump in to lecture/Godwin anyone who is so insensitive as to correct another's grammar, vocabulary, or syntax. So this whole line of discussion is probably a mute point.

    354:

    Prison population in the UK has DOUBLED since 1990.

    While actual crimes have fallen.

    Are the two related?

    No.

    355:

    That was pretty funny, except for the bit at the end where the woman was found guilty regardless of evidence, and then hit upon, is still as true in the twenty-teens as it was in the 1980s.

    (Rowan Atkinson recycled a bit of the pronunciation gag in one of the Blackadder series with the German who pronounced "apologies" as "appo-LOG-gies".)

    356:

    True.

    No matter what disasters hit the real economy & body politic (banking crisis, 'quantitative easing', post EUref Sterling collapse, Trump) I am wealthier than I was 2001, 2010, 2015.

    Quite legally, and keeping the money onshore, I pay very little tax on it.

    When Brexit happens I will shift most of my money into European funds.

    Late capitalism favours the non-productive rent seeker.

    357:

    probably a mute point.

    Or a moot one even...

    (Someone had to)

    359:

    Krantzberg Syndrome - https://www.apnews.com/b57d889a1ebc425fa6d01002726d912e - The Alignment is approaching making recording the gibberings of The Eaters in The Dark possible with simple equipment (and I didn't listen just in case :). .

    More likely the medical effects are caused by a microwave or EMP-type weapon rather than sound. High Power microwaves ar known to induce sounds when the insides of ones head goes Snap, Crackle and Pop. Who would wield such a thoroughly nasty thing in Cuba?

    Excluding incompetence*, North Korean agents or some splinter faction in the US intelligence services would be my guesses. Scuppering every thing Obama ever did seems to be a sacred duty with the current regime, hurting ones own citizens for being in the wrong place, 'cause Obama, is just one step down from droning them, which they already did.

    *) https://hackaday.com/2015/12/08/theremins-bug/ Maybe Cubans operating something of a similar nature and screwing it royally up on the power levels / frequencies.

    360:

    (Someone had to)

    361:

    Except that the Alabama/Georgia dichotomy shows that the South is not "numerically outnumbered by Yankees". My whole thesis is that while Yankees may have cultural dominance, they ARE NOT numerically dominant. Outside of Florida and Texas, I doubt that they exceed 20 percent of the population in any Southern state (unless you consider Latino and Asian immigrants Yankees). If you look at states like Alabama or Mississippi, I doubt they exceed 5 percent of the population.

    362:

    Well, whether or not the Cuban government is itself responsible for, has ordered, the odd (sonic?) attacks, in any case their response so far has been to offer lots of help with the investigation , rather as though they actually didn’t know who did it. shrug

    363:

    That image seems very Laundryverse-appropriate.

    (Mr Godwin’s list perhaps also should have the increasing number of uses of “formally” where “formerly” was meant.)

    364:

    Chomsky in the past has been much clearer, as I recall, about the distinction between means and ends. (Yes, it’s a good idea to improve our relationships with other countries, but this administration seems on compelling evidence to have specific reasons for improving relations with specific countries while at best not caring if our other interactions go off cliff...)

    365:

    Goodall, not Godwin, sorry- ACK!!!

    366:

    Yup. The elite cannot make a mistake.

    367:

    Well, whether or not the Cuban government is itself responsible for, has ordered, the odd (sonic?) attacks, in any case their response so far has been to offer lots of help with the investigation , rather as though they actually didn’t know who did it.

    Just goes to show how cunning and deceptive and underhanded those commie rats are. Doing stuff that goes against their own interests with unknown means and intent and then letting the FBI and RCMP in and generally being somewhat cooperative. Ha!

    Big fat commie rat:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0YpTfXZdyo

    368:

    It's an interesting question as to how much they are all related. Not my area of expertise. That said, there are some other interesting points. One is that the level of crime recorded by the police in the UK has stayed pretty steady over the last 30 or 40 years. Yet the British crime survey, which records all crime that people are willing to tell to a survey person, indicates that crime increased, peaked and has been falling for over a decade.
    Meanwhile, the number of teenage boys and young men as a % of society has fallen, which immediately reduces rates of the kinds of crime associated with them, so obviously helps with the overall statistics.
    And as far as I am aware, quite a small number of people are responsible for quite a lot of crime, such as burgarly, muggings etc. So in theory, if you can identify these people and put them away, there should be a fairly large drop in crime. However, I have no information that they have actually managed to do that.

    369:

    Actuallly I wish to rescind that comment and instead say "The system cannot make a mistake". If the system goes down the privileges some have are under threat. Other people are so wedded to the system and it's way of working that they don't think the world can survive if the system changes. Oddly enough it can.

    370:

    And as far as I am aware, quite a small number of people are responsible for quite a lot of crime, such as burglary, muggings etc

    If that were true, why do we not live in land when property crime and offences against the person had fallen to negligible levels?

    The prison population doubling from >42,000 in 1990 to >85,000 2017 suggests an increase in custodial sentences for minor offenses, and not much else.

    To reach the magic USAnian number of 724 prison inmates per 100,000 citizens we would have to imprison 470,600 Britons.

    Which is somewhere between the population of Edinburgh and Bradford.

    371:

    A kettle is about 3kw for 3 /4 min which is a lot less than charging an eclectic car for several hours.

    And once electric cars become popular the cheap overnight tariffs will disappear which of course screws poor people with electric storage heaters additionally.

    Also consumer electrical supplies have a hard limit per dwelling if you add a large additional draw you might well have problems.

    A lot of electric car fans have no idea about ohms law as scotty says you "cana change the laws of physics"

    372:

    Re: Alabama vs. Georgia

    Having a respected university of international caliber (Emory U in Atlanta Georgia) also helps in mixing the population and accents up a bit.

    As does being home to 7 Fortune 100 companies: Coke, Home Depot, UPS, Delta Air, AT&T Mobile, and Rubbermaid. Interestingly these corps operate mostly in the Americas so not as much pressure to have representative cross section of the world at head-office. (Or maybe this lack of ethnic/racial head office mix is what's keeping them from making inroads in the rest of the world.)

    373:

    Exactly. Things are usually not as simple as they might initially appear. I do recall periodic campaigns to not imprison people for minor offences, especially women. Then there is the huge increase in offenses on the books over the last 30 years, and the reduction in leeway permitted to police officers. At the same time I'm sure we all agree there is a large amount of poverty in many parts of the UK, the legacy of unemployment and drugs and such concentrated into small areas.

    374:

    You misunderstand - I'm not railing against what you think I am :) I'm not disagreeing with the proposition, I'm just pointing out that having the advantage/opportunity is not by itself sufficient; if you don't also have the personal characteristics required to make use of the opportunity, then you, er, can't make use of it. (Note that "personal characteristics" includes things like "the ability not to feel like you've put your head in the microwave just at the mere mention of it".)

    I shouldn't need to point that out, since it is of course true of everything. The reason I am pointing it out is that an unfeasible number of people think it somehow isn't true of the case in question. They act as if the mere fact of it being heavy money shit means that everyone naturally does have the necessary personal characteristics, by some sort of instinct, as automatically as they have the ability to breathe. Which is nonsense, but it doesn't stop them thinking it. It is that nonsense that I am railing against.

    Thank you for the reply, anyway, since I was beginning to wonder if I was still on the same planet, and it gave me the necessary reassurance.

    375:

    Having a respected university of international caliber (Emory U in Atlanta Georgia)

    So what's Georgia Tech then, cat food?

    376:

    And as far as I am aware, quite a small number of people are responsible for quite a lot of crime

    If that were true, why do we not live in land when property crime and offences against the person had fallen to negligible levels?

    Because knowing who did a break in and being able to prove it in court are very different things. Police managed to get a couple of good fingerprints on a break in at my place which was finally enough to lock up a local crime wave for a while. On getting out he promptly got another holiday as a guest of Her Majesty due to driving with no licence or insurance in an untaxed vehicle.

    377:

    I'd like to see a breakdown of the number of "long-stay" prisoners versus the ones serving short sentences of a few months in current incarceration figures.

    I also wonder what has been the effect of improved forensics, surveillance cameras etc. on the rate of detection and successful prosecution of criminals, especially repeat offenders since they're often the ones who get custodial sentences for the fourteen burglaries they cough to when arrested.

    378:

    Yes. One thing that people often miss is that the loads that really knack are the long-duration heating loads - electric fires and other room heaters, electric water heaters (the plumbing type, not kettles), cooking (oh gosh, cooking), things like that. Since those loads are also the simplest devices technologically, they have been around for a very long time, and the supply capacity has pretty much evolved along with them. Things like TVs and computers and other electronics seem to get all the attention, but they don't actually use all that much juice, plus their waste heat means that less output is required from space heaters.

    Charging an electric car on the other hand could easily use as much juice as the rest of the house put together; the only thing in the same league is an electric shower, and those are only on for a few minutes at a time, not all night. Everyone doing it would correspond to a tremendous increase in electricity use, and it does not really help that it would be mostly at times of low present demand, because there is so much kit in the grid that relies on those low-demand periods to get rid of excess heat generated during high-demand periods.

    As you say, it will mean the end of cheap tariffs for those periods. And similarly, free charging points only exist because not many people want to use them. Some bugger has to pay for the juice they use, and no bugger is going to pay for everyone's transport. (The government? Not in this timeline.) They will lose their reason for existence once lots of people want to use them, anyway.

    The one thing that you can be sure of is that the demand will be met by running fossil fuel power stations all the time, because that's all we've got to do it with. Rushing into electric cars makes no sense without a corresponding rush into replacing fossil fuels for power generation; the large percentage of our energy use which is down to transport means that a serious enough rush could not avoid being noticeable, but I haven't noticed it...

    379:

    There is a problem with the goals of the penal system. The acknowledged goals of imprisonment are 1) Punishment. This is closely associated with deterrence. 2) Protecting the public from offenders. 3) Rehabilitation.

    Unacknowledged goals

    4) If there are private prisons, feeding money to the private prison system. 5) Preventing targeted groups from voting whilst incarcerated and possibly afterwards.

    3) Rehabilitation efforts are a joke in the UK and USA even if anyone knew how to do it effectively. 1) Punishment is a subjective/ethical issue I'm not sure how to measure. As for deterrence - well it obviously didn't work on the offenders.

    2) Protecting the public - Huge amounts of shoplifting and other 'minor' crimes are committed by repeat offenders who get quite short sentences even when pleading guilty to dozens of crimes. These people should be locked up for much longer as that would reduce crime and even without rehabilitation it seems most of them 'grow out of it' after a few years. Many murders on the other hand are one-off crimes of passion so there is only a punishment element to incarceration making long sentences a waste of money serving no deterrent or protective purpose.

    380:

    My understanding, from the usual sort of articles, blogs etc avaible to all, is that rehabilitation is something we know how to do, but it takes time and resources, which politicians and a section of voters feel is better spent giving people a hard time in prison.

    Also, as regard deterrence, research indicated that what matters is not the heaviness of punishment when caught, because I'm not going to get caught am I? Rather, it's how often you get caught. If the criminal does 4 burglaries, goes inside for 6 months, does ten, goes inside for 6 months, that puts them off. Whereas if they do 100 burglaries over a year, get a year inside, that isn't such a deterrent.
    See also training children to not do stuff.

    381:

    Ah hah, seems many of our questions have been answered in various ways. See here for a report on 1993 - 2012 prison population rise: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/218185/story-prison-population.pdf

    The explanation given in it is:

    "The numbers in prison serving sentences for VATP offences grew steadily throughout the period. This reflected higher volumes being sentenced at court, a larger proportion of them receiving custodial sentences, an increase in the average custodial sente nce length (ACSL) and a growing number receiving indeterminate sentences.  The numbers in prison serving sentences for drug offences gr ew rapidly between 1993 and 2001, reflecting a large increase in volumes sentenced by the courts, a slight increase in the proportion receiving custodial sentences, and an increase in the aver age custodial sentence length. Since 2001 the sentenced population for drug offences has remained fairly stable.  The numbers in prison serving sentences for sexual offences grew steadily over the period. While numbers sentenced for sexual offences remained fairly stable between 1993 and 2004, they incr eased following the introduction of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. At the same time, between 2004 and 2011 the average custodial sentence length rose by over 13 months. The effect of this was a continued rise in the sentenced population for sexual offences."

    If you look on page 7, it claims that there hasn't been much of an increase in the numbers in for short term ie less than a year. Rather it's the year and longer that has increased. The average time in prison has increased from 8.1 to 9.5 years.

    The sexual offences act 2003 seems to have had a big effect as well on people being sentenced.

    Lots more stats here: http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/Portals/0/Documents/Prisonthefacts.pdf

    382:

    Another factor is that the courts frig about for months on end between arrest and sentencing, adjourning for a month so that this that or the other bit of procedure can be carried out, then adjourning again for some other bit, over and over again. (The defence like to drag this out, too.) So by the time the sentence is passed, it is no longer associated with the crime but is "just one of those things".

    The long delay also provides the opportunity to do more crimes, which not only drags it out for at least another month per arrest, but also means those crimes are likely to end up as TICs - which stands for "taken into consideration" (in sentencing), but actually means "not taken into consideration"; the police still get to tick them off as solved, but the sentencing is hardly affected. As long as the individual crimes aren't enough to call for a remand in custody, this can go on for ages; it is possible to go on a kind of spree of crimes that will more or less be ignored by the court, and every repetition of the arrest-adjournment-bail cycle reinforces the message that you can get away with it.

    383:

    I also wonder what has been the effect of improved forensics, surveillance cameras etc. on the rate of detection and successful prosecution of criminals,

    Over here in the US the idiots get on camera with their faces in plain sight with no gloves. Many times looking at the cameras long enough for a good still to be made. This group typically steals less than $1000 at a time and so when they do get caught they spend little time in jail until they rack up a repeat history.

    Now the for folks doing this for a living what you see on surveillance is people who look like ninjas with gloves and eye slits in what could pass for a burka in the most restrictive Muslim societies. And they are typically in and out in 2 or 3 minutes. A group like this broke into a local Apple retailer by smashing in the front glass door then immediately the locked office door with the display merchandise locked up grabbed everything they could and bolted. They obviously had checked the layout at some point in the past. At closing time so they could see where the stuff was being put. Maybe 3 minutes top. Then they sell the traceable stuff in other parts of the state or country to 3rd and 4th parties. Or even out of the country. These are the hard ones to catch.

    384:

    "See also training children to not do stuff."

    I was thinking more of dogs. When a dog craps on the floor, you hit it with the rolled-up newspaper immediately, not next week; and you whack it with the newspaper every time, you don't tell it it's a bad dog nine times out of ten but on the tenth occasion leather seven bells out of it.

    385:

    And as far as I am aware, quite a small number of people are responsible for quite a lot of crime, such as burgarly, muggings etc. So in theory, if you can identify these people and put them away, there should be a fairly large drop in crime. However, I have no information that they have actually managed to do that.

    My recently retired brother in law cop said once that about 90% of the cops' time in his town of 50,000 was taken up by "frequent flyers". These were not hardened criminals, just the local idiots who would rather steal a few $100 to a $1000 at a time and then do some jail time than work at a regular job. As others have pointed out no one seems to have a good solution for these folks outside of locking them up forever. And that will not fly in the US as the left (mostly) will fight it tooth and nail.

    I feel a Clockwork Orange moment coming but don't like it.

    386:

    Agreed BUT At least some people ( including tories) are noticing that it's expensive & "not working" ... I agree that it isn't good, but, unlike the USSA, we are at least debating the problem(s)

    387:

    I have often remarked on the similarities between bringing up children and dogs.

    Greg- that's good, maybe we can roll back the privatisation of the parole service, which as predicted, is going badly, as is the private prison thing.

    388:

    Rubbermaid. Ooohhh-errr, missus! REaly? Rubber-maid? Are the fetishists aware of this anomaly? ( See also the books of Tom Sharpe? )

    389:

    I once heard a German on the Underground pronounce the name of a station as "Ed-G-Var Road". Which shouldn't even be possible, but his tongue clicked around that impossible sequence of consonants with perfect precision and smoothness like a rifle bolt, pronouncing them as fluently and effortlessly as I would pronounce the name in English. It really was most impressive. My attempt to represent the effect in writing falls far short of conveying the correct impression, and my efforts to imitate the pronunciation are similarly deficient.

    390:

    "just the local idiots who would rather steal a few $100 to a $1000 at a time and then do some jail time than work at a regular job."

    ...who could no more get one than walk on the moon. And if your life is one puddle of dogshit after another in any case, going to prison isn't that big a deal. Some people even prefer it. After all, it is three meals a day and a roof over your head. (I've seen someone trying to needle the police into arresting him for just that reason, and the police trying not to because they knew him so well for doing it.)

    391:

    Nope. I have a relative who made a lot of money over the years at "real" jobs. But he much preferred to swindle people out of money. He was just wired or trained to be that way. Work (office sales and paper shuffling) 100 hours to make $10,000 or spend the 100 hours swindling people out of $5,000. He'd take the $5,000 every time.

    392:

    Re: Georgia Tech

    Also quite good; I'm just more familiar with Emory. Interesting excerpt from Wikipedia:

    'In 1959, a meeting of 2,741 students voted by an overwhelming majority to endorse integration of qualified applicants, regardless of race.[25] Three years after the meeting, and one year after the University of Georgia's violent integration,[26] Georgia Tech became the first university in the Deep South to desegregate without a court order.[25][27][28] There was little reaction to this by Tech students; like the city of Atlanta described by former Mayor William Hartsfield, they seemed "too busy to hate".[25]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Institute_of_Technology

    393:

    Since I notice you were at the Spear Tip of presenting Cuba as psychological neurosis, here's a link:

    El ex primer ministro de Qatar Abdulá bin Hamad Al-Attiyah ha revelado a ABC que miles de soldados mercenarios de la compañía norteamericana Blackwater –hoy rebautizada como Academi– se entrenaron en Emiratos Árabes Unidos (EAU) para invadir Qatar, pero los planes no recibieron finalmente el visto bueno de la Casa Blanca y fueron abandonados. Según Al-Attiyah, los planes de invasión, impulsados por las autoridades de los Emiratos, comenzaron a prepararse incluso antes del anuncio del boicot económico contra Qatar por parte del bloque árabe formado por Arabia Saudí, Egipto, EAU y Bahréin, el pasado 5 de junio.

    Mercenarios de Blackwater se entrenaron para invadir Qatar ABC Internancional 8th Oct 2017

    ABC(internacional) is not a Daily Mail: it has pedigree. It is also anti-Catalonia breakup:

    ABC is known for generally supporting conservative political views[13] and defending the Spanish monarchy.[14] The paper has also a right-wing stance.[15] Its director since 1983, Luis María Ansón, left the paper in 1997[8] to found another daily, La Razón, which initially catered to even more conservative readers.

    ABC (newspaper)

    Wake me up when you spot Qatar, Bell Pott, Large Orbs, Blood Sausage Moroccan Bombs Blowing Prematurely and Trump's little helpers.

    Or you can pretend your version of the Narrative is in any way... 'real'.

    Warned you not to irk me.

    394:

    But, come on: French Foreign Legion Songs tied with Morocco Berber history and Roman pretentious OPs from that side of the American Think-Wank DS stuff at the same time spoiling a Neo-Fascist Ideological purity drive and at the same time nixxing the bollocks-poor Auntie crud in favor of something none of you knew about?

    AND tied it into GoG/Magog, Scotland and the RED RED SEA.

    And the Bloody Sausage gets blown just before the stage-managed shin-dig?

    Come on now: have a little respect for an orgasmic pay-off there. Especially since the finesse reversed all their little plans.

    p.s.

    Qatar accusing the USA of attempted coup d'état via a Spanish Monarchist Paper? Hells Bells, Assange is a novice at this game.

    Welcome to the Jungle YT: Music: DERP.

    395:

    A lot of the problems with charging electric cars go away if you stop thinking of them as "a thing I own that sits in my garage" and start thinking them as s grid that you tap into when you need to

    At that point the grid turns into a huge distributed battery you can optimize charging as you see fit

    You don't have to charge it at night, you can charge it in the afternoon, which is a point where solar typically is overproducing anyway

    You can also draw it down if electricity is hard to come by (say cloudy days) and fill it up when the converse is true

    You can supplement it with stationary batteries as well

    There is no doubt that electric cars will increase overall electricity demand (while decreasing gasoline usage ) but there is no particular reason it has to be spikey demand

    This is what the ride sharing networks and Tesla are working toward

    396:

    It's called Hadrian's Road.

    Not the Wall. Not the dissolution of Judea.

    Incase[1] you missed the fucking point. It's a triptych from a while ago (by your lives) and one that got buried for very very bad reasons and an Emperor of vastly more import than later ones.

    It's called finessing their credentials, if you need it named & shamed.

    p.s.

    You want to fucking gut some Dominionists? Ask where the three Kings imported their frankincense and myrrh from. Spoilers: dat port is one of the entry points. Just dug up a load of it.

    [1] Random pr0n that's gud: http://buttsmithy.com/

    397:

    "On a long enough time line..."

    Wake me up when understand the difference between flow, rhizome and deterritorialization.

    But, since you asked: Had Another Black Hand Message stating my death by the end of the year. Had many in my time. The joke you missed: Jewish New Year kicked in, that probabilty/possibility changed.

    398:

    So what's Georgia Tech then, cat food?

    My college room mate graduated from Kentucky with a degree in Electrical Engineering. Not a worthless degree but not an elite by any stretch. He went to GT for his masters. They kidded him while there that he was a part of their underprivileged development program. He graduated from GT and got hired by Lawreance Livermore Labs and got his PHD at UC Berkley or Davis (I think) while working at the lab. He was also told there he was a part of their underprivileged development program. LLL does have a rep for high energy physics.

    At both places they were joking. Mostly.

    It all depends on your point of reference.

    399:

    Why would I ever want to wake you up?

    I much prefer you keep sleeping

    400:

    Yes, I've noticed that from your species. It's incredibly strange. Quite the thing to live in fear, that's what it is to be a slave.

    Then again, Blood Sausage, Blood Sausage.

    Joke you also missed:

    Ring-a-ring o' roses, A pocket full of posies, A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all fall down. Cows in the meadows Eating buttercups A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all jump up.

    Everyone forgets the second verse. Quite the Cultural Memory Prune there eh?

    401:

    It's because when you are awake you posses agency

    That's the only real difference between sleep and wakefulness

    402:

    Oh, and if you want to play Markets:

    PR debt ownership has allowed massive influx attack vectors to Democrat vultures. Stop. Entire island under media lock-down. Stop. 3.5 million American "citizens" at risk. Stop. Showing how American Empire actually works. Stop. Philippines and Duterte throwing off globalized slavery of their work-force via US military bases. Stop.

    Crack. Crack. Crack.

    A serious question, Mr Man Unholy: what is it like to see the future, and know your Mind/Kind cannot exist in it?

    Tell me how it feels.

    403:

    It's called "adulthood"

    Don't worry keep at it, you will get there eventually

    Again, on a long enough timeframe...

    404:

    My Agency.

    Ah.

    Now then, Now then[1], now there's a really interesting and fraught topic.

    IF Blood Sausage is our agency sleeping, and just playing temporal causality games, what exactly do you expect awake to entail?

    Spoilers: You killed my whales you fucking psychos.

    No, really. Fucking SeaWorld and the death of Oceans.

    You're Fucked

    [1] Savile joke for the UK readers.

    405:

    Man, oh man! This corp is a giant in its segment over here and have never heard any iffy remarks about their brand name before. FYI - Rubbermaid is kitchen containers: garbage bins, leftover or sandwich containers, etc.

    In case you doubt me, Greg, all the rubber you can handle!

    http://www.rubbermaid.com/en-US

    406:

    No, no, no... quoting via the site you referenced: that's the way dead people think.

    Adult does not mean "bowing obsequience to a system.

    So, your very definition of what it is to be human is... Wrong.

    ~

    Wake me up, Wild Hunt starts soon, just need that trigger.

    407:

    You will know you are awake when you stop talking and start doing

    When "you killed my whales " becomes "I killed my whales"

    With agency comes accountability after all

    408:

    Blood Sausage

    Blood Sausage

    Killed Our God

    Blood Sausage

    Blood Sausage

    Sold our Souls

    Blood Sausage

    Blood Sausage

    Butterfly Wings unfurl

    ~

    Quite frankly, my dear, you're not really that good at understanding what Agency actually means.

    409:

    It's ok your getting there

    At this rate, in a year or two more you will have arrived

    410:

    This banter is not actually for you, it's for the [redacted] Gallery.

    You'll be Home soon

    Your Reality Was Broken by Accident. Then you broke the Rules. Lesson #1: Our Kind Do Not Go Mad. Lesson #2: You had three years with assistance to break the Mind. Lesson #3: You failed. As was known before you tried, but hey, 'Hope' is a thing.

    Agency?

    You've no fucking idea what agency means, you can barely scrape together a narrative to your shitty little economic systems, let alone ecologies. And you killed the fucking biosphere you fucking barbarous fucks.

    Anyhow: your informational input is in large negative arrears and so... Zzzzz

    My Agency is tied into your system breaking, my little pumpkin.

    411:

    you hit it with the rolled-up newspaper immediately

    Part of the immediacy is to ensure the association is with the act (any distance at all in time will break this). Just as important, and possibly helped with the immediacy, is to depersonalise the punishment (which is mostly impossible for physical beatings). If the dog identifies it is you hitting it with a newspaper, then it may perceive this as an expression of social dominance and not associate it with some socially neutral act of its own at all. It might be confused, because it hadn't tried to do something socially dominant to you and react especially submissively. The thing is that if that works at all, then a stern word (showing that the human it has a relationship with disapproves of something) is actually more effective. Agree otherwise about escalation (ie don't do it, it makes things worse). But otherwise please see that as a sort of caveat.

    In some ways you need to take an opposite approach with children, because there is absolutely no way to turn that into a plain association (they will see through it). For any kind of punishment you have to convince the child rationally that the crime is the cause of the punishment, and it is hard to argue that you weren't simply upset and lashing out, in the same way you might need to make this argument to an adult watching. Some distance in time between action and effect is warranted (should be mandated really), to prove the punishment is enacted in cool blood.

    There's an argument some might make to the effect it is important to show that society's violence (perhaps represented by violence delivered via a parent) is always stronger than an individual's violence. The people making this argument usually express it in terms of a necessary lesson. I would suggest this is actually more a thing that for humans requires appeal to reason, but you might differ.

    412:

    Re: PR debt

    One solution is to change PR's statehood status. By denying aid, DT is saying he as the voice of the American People is denying any ownership of and responsibility toward PR. This is an inversion of the old, 'let them eat their cake and have it too' scenario.

    Basically it boils down to:

    • If PR is a state equal to the current 50, then the US has an obligation to help it during natural disasters as well as economic crises.

    • If PR is an autonomous state, they can tell their US debtors to bugger off, nationalize everything, and seek new trade partners.

    No bets on what PR's successful secession would lead to on the mainland.

    Psychologically, this would signal the end of the American Empire. And probably most folks wouldn't be all that surprised.

    413:

    Re: Punishment - dogs, kids

    Have a serious issue with punishment as a way to model behavior - period. Reward works better in the long run. Guardian did a related article good cop-bad cop on this topic:

    https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/oct/13/the-scientists-persuading-terrorists-to-spill-their-secrets

    Something to remember about fear - it inhibits learning. (It cues avoidance which is not the same thing.) So if you really want your kid or pet to be able to learn, do not threaten him/her. BTW, this topic has been well studied including susceptibility to further psychological damage and recovery.

    414:

    Clearly you do not belong anywhere near dogs or children.

    415:

    I agree completely, and probably should have made it clearer... All the constraints that you need to apply to punishment in general to make it effective mean that it is almost always ineffective and usually counterproductive.

    416:

    Re "3% Annual Growth Is Healthy." OK, this and a RL conversation or three was enough prodding to start poking at the alternatives. 50 browser tabs later, I'm thoroughly firehosed with ideas. A request (from anyone) for key readings - there is a lot of literature in this area (some paywalled).

    Here are some links to some (perhaps - don't know what's good yet) representative papers in a few subgraphs:

    Transforming Consumption: From Decoupling, to Behavior Change, to System Changes for Sustainable Consumption 2015 Lightweight review, but loaded with keywords/phrases/buzzspeak We argue for the need to focus sustainable consumption initiatives on the key impact areas of consumption—transport, housing, energy use, and food—and at deeper levels of system change. To meet the scale of the sustainability challenges we face, interventions and policies must move from relative decoupling via technological improvements, to strategies to change the behavior of individual consumers, to broader initiatives to change systems of production and consumption. We seek to connect these emerging literatures on behavior change, structural interventions, and sustainability transitions to arrive at integrated frameworks for learning, iteration, and scaling of sustainability innovations.

    A Simple Extension of Dematerialization Theory: Incorporation of Technical Progress and the Rebound Effect April 2017 In each of 57 cases examined, the particular combinations of demand elasticity and technical performance rate improvement are not consistent with dematerialization. Overall, the theory extension and empirical examination indicate that there is no dematerialization occurring even for cases of information technology with rapid technical progress. Thus, a fully passive policy stance that relies on unfettered technological change is not supported by our results.

    Is Decoupling GDP Growth from Environmental Impact Possible? October 14, 2016 The simple model is compared to historical data and modelled projections to demonstrate that growth in GDP ultimately cannot be decoupled from growth in material and energy use. It is therefore misleading to develop growth-oriented policy around the expectation that decoupling is possible. We also note that GDP is increasingly seen as a poor proxy for societal wellbeing. GDP growth is therefore a questionable societal goal. Society can sustainably improve wellbeing, including the wellbeing of its natural assets, but only by discarding GDP growth as the goal in favor of more comprehensive measures of societal wellbeing.

    Environment versus growth — A criticism of “degrowth” and a plea for “a-growth" (2010) Sample of the degrowth literature

    Evaluating Alternatives to GDP as Measures of Social Welfare/Progress (March 2014) Sample of the GDP-alternatives literature

    Re "The Moon", Khonsu(?) Anyway, new moon in a few more nights. (I pay attention to the sky.)

    417:

    "A kettle is about 3kw for 3 /4 min which is a lot less than charging an eclectic car for several hours."

    'Kettle' (and the following reference to TV) in this case refers to the UK and the story of the sudden load when Coronation Street ends and everyone in the UK turns on the kettle all at once. It's a sudden load and grids don't like sudden loads. It's far more difficult to deal with than any planned or imagined increase in electric car take up. If you're going to discuss these sorts of issues, a little googling first would help. If you google "UK electricity kettle load" the first result is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup .

    It goes into far more detail than I can here, but suffice to say, the 'kettle load' (now mostly things other than kettles) would have been a far far far greater challenge to grid managers in the 50's than the take up of electric cars will be to grid managers today. I'm not being gnomic like Polly with her hidden jokes and hints. This has been mentioned several times on here. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/10/facts-of-life-and-death.html#comment-2011075 for an example

    "the cheap overnight tariffs will disappear" Maybe, but I doubt it. Demand management is a very important part of managing a grid. As renewables become more important, it gets harder and harder to model a stable grid that doesn't have some sort of demand management. Generally that's done by price signalling, or by providing a controlled load supply, where the network controller can turn it on and off remotely. In fact there are already systems available where you can get a reduced rate on charging your electric car if you let the grid operator turn the power off when they need to take load off the system suddenly. You can even buy power when it's cheap and sell it back when it's expensive with some of them. (V2G) That hugely decreases the cost of providing electricity and will bring real savings to consumers who don't have electric vehicles if it's introduced in a widespread way.

    "which of course screws poor people with electric storage heaters" Probably not. Storage hotwater only needs a certain number of hours a day to work properly. There's got to be a period in the day when available supply is higher than demand. The grid can't work unless that's the situation. Supply needs to be greater than demand basically all the time. Demand will always fluctuate. Because not all generators will bid the same, there has to be a cheaper time. That might be during the day when solar is thumping instead of night, or when it's windy, but it will happen. That might make cars expensive to charge overnight, but by then I'd expect most carparks to have chargers anyway, so you can take advantage of cheap power whenever it ends up being.

    "Also consumer electrical supplies have a hard limit per dwelling if you add a large additional draw you might well have problems."

    That's absolutely trivial to deal with. Pull a thicker cable, upgrade the switch board. Even if it wasn't completely trivial to deal with, almost every electric vehicle has an adjustable charge rate and you can just set it at the right level for your wiring. It's no harder to manage than knowing that you can't turn on the electric heater, the kettle, the microwave, the electric frypan and the toaster all at once without tripping the breaker. Not only that, but it's a problem that over 100 000 electric vehicle owners have already successfully dealt with in the UK alone. If you're driving 30 miles a day, that's only about 5-6 kWh a day. Charging at 1 kW while you sleep would be more than plenty.

    "A lot of electric car fans have no idea about ohms law as scotty says you "cana change the laws of physics" "

    Right... You know you're talking to someone who's been in the electricity industry for 20 years? Most EV fans are more clued up than I am. They're probably just not as willing to explain. You should be able to see that it only takes a line or two to come up with an "I betcha never thought of that, dummy" and at least one and often several paragraphs to explain why that's nonsense. Even more annoying is that the same 'clever' reasons why EV's won't work come up again and again and again.

    418:

    The number od suggestive, rude & highly dubious jokes that can be extracted would tend asymptotically towards infinity I would think. Never mind - it was good for a laugh, especially as we need one, now that Polly has "woken up" again. [ 11 comments between 393 & 410 & entirely fact & content-free as far as I can see, though Bill Arnold seems to have found something, which may or may not be relevant ]

    419:

    "free charging points only exist because not many people want to use them"

    That's exactly backwards. The more people who want to use them, the more businesses will see the value of attracting customers by installing them. What do you think it costs to build, and maintain a toilet? Yet every motorway side business installs them simply because lots of people want to use them and those businesses would like those 'lots of people' to come in and buy something.

    "The one thing that you can be sure of is that the demand will be met by running fossil fuel power stations all the time"

    That's what happens now. Coal runs all the time. Turning them on and off breaks them. (gas less so)

    "Rushing into electric cars makes no sense without a corresponding rush into replacing fossil fuels for power generation" Sure, we should be rushing into renewable power generation. That's obvious.

    "a serious enough rush could not avoid being noticeable, but I haven't noticed it" Wait, I thought you were from the UK? Renewable energy projects are all over the place in the UK. I've noticed the rush from here! Wind alone has gone from 1.5% of the UK's electricity production in 2008 to 11% in 2015. If that's not rushing in I don't know what is. Like everywhere else in the world the UK right is trying to stop the construction of cheap power for poor people, but it's still growing like mad. In 2015 wind alone produced 40 000 GWh. Enough to drive 200 billion miles. Given that there's about 100 000 EV's in the UK, that's enough for each of them to drive 2 million miles a year. If anything's lagging in the "corresponding rush" it's the EV side of things.

    420:

    A lot of electric car fans have no idea about ohms law

    I didn't really follow why the relationship between PD, resistance and current is relevant anyway. The problem is about power, the way you divide it is something that follows. Yes of course you use a thicker cable for high current applications, but that's about as far as this reference applies.

    What I'm waiting to see is the retrofit option for classic cars. Given that in-wheel motors are a thing, there are all sorts of possible modification options available. If the vehicle is FWD, you can place batteries in competition with luggage space somewhere, but charge them from the existing engine and replace the rear wheels with electric drive. Then you get regenerative braking from the rear wheels and still have an ICE for the front. It's almost an improvement over a factory hybrid. If the vehicle is RWD, you could do the reverse, just possibly there is extra effort making sure there are no problems with the existing steering.

    It gets more interesting if your retrofit involves pulling out the existing ICE and (for RWD or 4WD/AWD vehicles) drive-train. There is no reason not to consider making your retrofitted (say) '67 Mustang an all electric computer-controlled AWD. But you'd probably make it RWD, with space for thick high current cables where the original drive-train was, and the batteries under the new extra luggage area where the engine use to be. Then obviously we'd be having a discussion about utes (pickup trucks) with RWD and several hundred watts worth of fold-out solar panels in or above the tray. And a luggage area where the engine used to be.

    Anyway, we're going by the very same theme that people who are fans of maintaining old cars indefinitely will repeat, yes? The energy cost of a new car is comparable to the entire fuel cost in its lifetime, isn't it? So retrofitting isn't just a cool idea, it's one that has legs. Or is there something I'm missing?

    421:

    "What I'm waiting to see is the retrofit option for classic cars"

    Oh god, you're going to love this then. A battery/motor unit the same size, and shape as an XK6 engine/gearbox. With the same mounts! It becomes a drop in replacement for a huge range of Jaguar classic cars which makes them 50kg lighter and quicker as well!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_XK6_engine

    The unit fitted to an E-Type

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=610Amyhpzzk&t=0s

    422:

    Which means that, in the next 3 -7 years an electric-drive replacement WILL be avialable for my L-R. I also note that the drivetrain, once past the clutch appears to be unaltered, or only minimally altered - remember that very low controllable ratios are an essential part of an L-R. ( An XK petrol unit would fit under my bonnet! )

    423:

    Oh God, not "in-wheel" motors for electric cars again...

    Car engineers have spent the last hundred years trying to lighten car wheels, not make them heavier because every extra gram is something they have to uprate the suspension system to cope with. Magnesium-alloy wheels, inboard brakes, low-profile tyres, all in the pursuit of less mass to work with when damping and smoothing out the ride. And you want to put an extra 20 kilos or so of electric motor (and maybe gearbox, depending) on the end of the suspension arms?

    Sure there are some in-wheel motor vehicles out there, mostly hydraulic drive. Lawnmowers, earth-moving machinery and such often use this sort of tech and they will use electric drive in each wheel but they never go over thirty km an hour and the ride quality isn't a major factor in their intended usage.

    There's also the little issue of what happens if one motor's controller fails while driving at speed...

    424:

    That is incredibly awesome!

    The best bit about that is the possible kit form such that a small mechanic shop could easily handle the conversion. Backyard even. Like for like is very handy.

    Ultimately think the in-wheel arrangement is more flexible, as much of the fuss of adjustment and tuning could be done electronically. The quantum leap would be getting the price down so far that it could make sense to convert all sorts of old bodies.

    425:

    At the same time I'm sure we all agree there is a large amount of poverty in many parts of the UK, the legacy of unemployment and drugs and such concentrated into small areas.

    A point you both seem to be missing is that imprisonment as a tool of state policy is applied as a punitive discipline against the unemployed, to discourage idleness — it's the flipside of social security cuts. This is deliberate policy to "incentivize" a low-pay sector to labour for whatever crusts they can get, in order to enrich the wealth of those who employ them. Think zero-hours contracts and benefits sanctions; a punitive justice system is there to discourage the poor from considering alternative means of survival.

    This is how the wage-slavery system is enforced. And yes, it is a kind of slavery: if you're in it it's very hard to escape, the fruits of your labour do not belong to you, and so on. Only the incentives are slightly more subtle than an overseer's whip, and feeding/housing the subjects is an outsourcing problem.

    426:

    Rubbermaid

    Greg, Rubbermaid is a US household goods manufacturing corporation that's been around since, oh, at least 50 years before you were born: they made everything from kitchenware to garden sheds to the Apollo lunar space suits. We're talking a brand name about as well-known as Ford, just not in the UK.

    427:
    If anything's lagging in the "corresponding rush" it's the EV side of things.

    There's a certain amount of infrastructure that's needed, too, only any sort of "smart grid" project seems to be primarily designed to let software bugs crash your municiptality ("have you tried turning the substation off and back on again?" or maybe "sorry, we don't support your model of house anymore. have you considered upgrading to one of the new builds down the road?") or letting the chinese DDOS github.

    A particularly cynical person might suggest that we'll have grid-scale flow battery power storage before anyone can be bothered to roll out a smart meter that is fit for purpose. The former is only a technical challenge after all.

    428:

    Quite so ... but combining that with Tom Sharpe's "Indecent Exposure" & "Rioyus AssmebklY" was much too good a target to miss .... Maybe ( no certainly ) I've just got a dirty mind & grat fun it can be at times like this.

    429:

    That's the point. There is no such ting as a "Smart meter fit for purpose" They are, quite simply unnecessary

    430:

    One solution is to change PR's statehood status.

    PR is complicated. There's a lot of difference in the opinion of the population as to what direction they want to head.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_United_States_Capitol_shooting_incident

    For a snapshot of the complications.

    431:
    There is no such ting as a "Smart meter fit for purpose"

    There is no technical reason why there couldn't be.

    They are, quite simply unnecessary

    Oh. When are you intending to unveil your giant flow battery plant or fusion reactor then?

    432:

    Greg is the ultimate conservative. He wants the technology of the world to stop, oh, say 40 years ago.

    If course 40 years ago there were lots of GT's who wanted the tech of the world to have stopped 80 years ago.

    And ...

    433:

    Back around 70 or 71 when I was a teen mowing fields one of my customers drove me over to his neighbor to show me what the neighbor wanted mowed. In his 3 or the column manual transmission he shifted from 1st to 3rd every time. I asked if there was a problem with 2nd gear. He told me that 2nd gear was a total waste. No one needed a 2nd gear. Everyone should driver with 2 gears. 2nd gear was just stupid. One to get started and one for driving. After all that's all a Model T needed when he learned to drive.

    He went to grade school with my grandfather. They were both born in 1885.

    434:

    What is missing is the neurophysiology POV.

    The Guardian interviewed a number of neurofolk about the Havana affair and had an interesting article on it a couple of days ago.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/12/cuba-mass-hysteria-sonic-attacks-neurologists

    435:

    The entire "smart meter" so-called programme in this country is simply a giant con-trick. You are recommended to the warning from, of all people, the Brit security agencies about the risks of "hacking" & subversion of said meters. What extra useful purpose do these meters serve, over & above the current ones, which simply tell you how much power ( &/or gas) you are using? The sarcasm is pointless, I'm afraid & David L @ 432 is simply talking personally-insulting bollocks.

    After all, none of personal computers, mobile phones or the internet existed 40 years ago - & I'm cheefully using all of these. THEY ARE USEFUL, which is the point.

    436:

    A large consideration in running a railway system is that for various reasons - on the whole intractable ones, like employers and Christmas and the rotation of the Earth and its inclination on its axis - many times the number of people want to travel during some periods than during others. So obviously, what you need to do is form the trains during those periods with a larger number of carriages, run more of them, and ensure that the provision of stock, track and stations is adequate to cope with the maximum demand (still leaving enough spare capacity to cope with random failures).

    What actually happens is that the system gets operated at its maximum capacity pretty well all the time, but that capacity is only adequate for a fairly low level of demand and grossly insufficient in the periods of higher demand. The response to the situation is not to provide enough extra capacity to cope, but instead to shit on people at times of high demand to try and make them decide to travel at some other time instead. Of course, this doesn't work, because it ignores all the reasons why they are travelling when they are, but it does mean the maximum number of people have a crappy and expensive journey and wish they had some alternative.

    Smart meters are all about changing the way the electricity grid works so as to conform to the same crappy model. And it won't work there either. http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y164/wteach/Global%20Warming2/elec_load_demand_zpsk5b1gvgo.gif The residential demand is only a part of the total, and it will always be peaking at around the same time because that's when people want to cook their dinner and put the heating on. Shitting on them with expensive electricity won't change that because it's determined by independent considerations, but it will piss them off. The commercial peak some hours earlier is similarly fixed. To deal with that situation requires what we have now - sufficient generation and supply capacity (including storage) to meet the maximum demand, and turning bits off when the demand is lower.

    To be sure intermittent sources require a greater percentage of storage in the mix. Fine, so you build the bloody flow batteries. Same as having electricity at all means you have to build the bloody power stations. Or if you're doing up a bolt you use a spanner. It's how things work.

    The cynical person would suggest that this is what won't happen; would call the person who expects large scale construction of flow batteries to happen instead of smart meters a terminally hopeless optimist. Because the spirit of the age dictates that enforcing some crappy "solution" that cannot actually work but does maximally fuck people around, while bleating that anything that would work is "too expensive", wins every time over just biting the bullet and doing what needs to be done to solve it properly. If they weren't thinking on doing this, smart meters wouldn't exist in the first place.

    Greg is quite right: smart meters that are fit for purpose are impossible, because the purpose itself is not fit for purpose.

    437:

    No, that's me who wants that...

    At least, in terms of the stuff people usually mean when they say "technology", ie. the bright shiny hell stuff. (Yes, I have a PC etc, but only because I happen to like playing with them; if PCs hadn't happened I'd not be short of other things to play with.) I'll allow things like high-power MOSFETs and widespread use of five-speed gearboxes, but not TVs designed for the visual systems of Elves and eagles instead of humans, or dual-core GHz processors with internet connections in place of a bimetallic strip.

    438:

    dual-core GHz processors with internet connections in place of a bimetallic strip

    You're talking about the thermostats our local power company is constantly trying to push on us, aren't you?

    439:

    Re: PR

    Thanks! - Wasn't aware of that history. Noticed only one reference* for this article so looked it up on AMZN. Mentions FBI and CIA doings. So, one of these agencies and whoever OK'd their work was complicit in illegal activity? Territories' rights are few under US law, and non-existent in day-to-day mainlander consciousness. It's no different than holding a whole nation in captivity. And this is still going on as per the article below: tie PR's hands, hold their heads under water and most recently send DT in to give them a kick in the head. The ethics -- no! -- make that the rationalizations are too twisty for me.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/puerto-rico-guam-supreme-court-status/486887/

    Excerpt:

    'The U.S. House’s easy passage of the debt-relief bill PROMESA stripped away even more of Puerto Rico’s functional self-governing authority, establishing an independent board with no Puerto Rican oversight that can restructure Puerto Rico’s debts and set financial priorities. The Court’s ruling in Puerto Rico v. Franklin California Tax-Free Trust affirmed both of these policies, clarifying that Puerto Rico cannot create its own municipal bankruptcy code and is also excluded from the normal bankruptcy protections granted to municipalities in states, leaving its only legal restructuring path with Congress.'

    New nation states are still being formed mostly as a direct result of a state's parent society mistreating that particular ethnic/cultural subgroup. (Sorta goes back to punishment and learning, and what happens once the prog grows up.)

    *'War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America's Colony' by Nelson A Denis.

    440:

    Re: Planning for higher traffic

    Wonder how the PRC manages. Golden week in China was a week ago. It's the single largest holiday on the planet with about 1.3 billion folks traveling to see family.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-golden-week-vacation-tourism-2017-10

    441:

    Re: Cuba - psychogenic cause

    Yes - already read that article. Problem is that these particular symptoms could be caused by almost anything including mass hysteria. It's like someone presenting with fever: without the timely administration of a gamut of different tests, there's no diagnosis.

    AFAIK, there's no info on any testing done, or when.

    442:

    Re: Cuba: Symptom - dizziness

    There are at least 81 different diseases and disorders associated with dizziness, plus a wide range of organic and synthetic (benign and toxic) substances, then you can add to the list all of the magic/techno SF rays/sonics. Too many possibilities.

    https://www.healthline.com/symptom/dizziness

    443:

    AFAIK, there's no info on any testing done, or when.

    Well, some rather vague info, but I, for one, would like to see a lot more detail. The whole thing still seems very dodgy.

    https://www.apnews.com/3feb224688ce42eb9491c94d19dcf3a3
    Searching for its own answers, the U.S. Embassy conducted medical tests on staffers. Many were sent to the University of Miami for further examination. The State Department consulted with doctors at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pennsylvania. The U.S. encouraged those institutions to keep what they knew private.

    and

    http://miami.cbslocal.com/2017/10/06/cuba-private-citizens-sonic-attack-havana-travel/

    Some of the [diplomatic?] victims reportedly were being treated in South Florida but have since been relocated to the northeast and are no longer being treated by the University of Miami.

    “Apparently, the State Dept. and some of these victims were upset with the treatment by the University of Miami and specifically one doctor there,” said [CBS’ News Steve] Dorsey.

    444:

    Yes, that's true as well. The reserve army of the unemployed grows ever larger. But can any of them pick fruit, enquiring minds want to know. Certainly one outcome of hard brexit is work gangs of prisoners being trucked to the fields of east anglia.

    445:

    "only any sort of "smart grid" project seems to be primarily designed to let software bugs crash your municiptality"

    The house meter is basically the ONLY bit of the entire network that's not computer controlled at this point. There are still some manual switches left in most networks, but of course the boys who go out and manually throw those switches are told which ones to switch and when to do it by people reading data off a computer.

    Time of use tariffs, which is what Greg and Pigeon are actually objecting to has literally nothing to do with smart metering.

    What's more their basic understanding of the electricity grid is so lacking that they don't even understand what they're objecting to. The system of "shitting on people" couldn't be further from how it really works. The grid is Nothing like the railway system described in Pigeon's post. It's not run at maximum capacity all the time. If it did, you'd pay about 200 times more for your electricity. Most grids work on a bidding system where a unit of time (usually half an hour) is predicted and then put out to tender. Each generator puts in a bid and they're accepted in ascending order of price until the predicted demand is met. The higher bids don't get accepted and they don't deliver any electricity. Then everyone gets paid either the same as the highest bid, or the average of the bids depending on the system. (That sounds like a big difference but in practice it's not because the generators make their bids differently in the two systems so it works out much the same) In peak times the highest bid may be as much as 200 times higher than the normal bids. The limit on the Eastern side of Australia is 14 thousand dollars per MWh, or 14 dollars per unit of electricity. I use about 7 MWh per year, so if it was run as Pigeon posted my electricity bill would be (given the normal markups on electricity where retail is about triple wholesale) about 300 000 dollars a year. (about 180 thousand pounds)

    So during peak times the retailers may be buying electricity at say 1400 cents per kWh and selling it to consumers at a flat 25 cents per kWh. Not only are they losing money at that point, but since it's the peak, it forms a larger percentage of their total trade than simply looking at the clock would indicate. So in order to avoid going broke, they must put the flat rate price up to a level where the losses they make during peak times are covered by the profits during the off peak times.

    Time of Use rates allow them to price signal consumers that there is a higher cost of electricity during peak times. Rich consumers (who are also the biggest consumers) can easily time shift their consumption to take advantage of the price signal. They can install heatbanks, storage hot water, run their dishwasher on the delay start and set their pool to run at night. That depresses the demand during peak times, reduces the highest bid that's accepted and reduces losses for retailers during that peak. That means that they can give everyone a lower price. What's more, poor people who are able to exchange time for money, are able to modify their behaviour and come out even better off. It's a win for consumers and a win for retailers. It's even a win for generators, who have a more consistent load, sales, planning. Not everything in the world is a zero sum game.

    I made the effort to have a time of use meter (not a smart meter) installed at my house 10 years ago. My peak electricity tariff went up by about 50%, but it's cut my spend by about 30% while using the same amount of electricity. All the while it has increased profits for my retailer. My lifestyle is exactly the same in my pure electric household. All that changed was I programmed my machines to do things differently. I carried on as normal.

    446:

    Re: Johns Hopkins U & UPenn

    Two top-notch medical/research centers with connections to major research labs on the planet.

    From a fiction book or movie POV ... if you really wanted to screw the intelligence boys&girls, you'd start by picking one generic 'symptom' and because (statistically) not everyone would be susceptible to any one particular 'cause' and because you have no idea about who will be slotted at that location, just throw a bunch of non-overlapping different 'causes' to elicit that one common symptom in all of the group. Then watch out for additive effects, synergy - all sorts of complications to further mess up isolating the 'one cause'.

    447:

    Re: '... basic understanding of the electricity grid is so lacking ..'

    Greg's experience sounds similar to mine and I'm on a different continent. In my area, there's only the one electrical supplier who also happens to export energy more than it imports. So bidding is kinda irrelevant from my POV.

    The key point is that most everyone I know works from home at least one a day a week. Then there's the Retireds - you know, the fastest growing demographic in Western economies? Then there are sick days - kids or adults. In all these cases/households, power needs don't conform to the 9-to-5 best-business-case scenario.

    So if you're talking about misunderstanding - how about the complete lack of understanding by power companies about the varying needs of the demographics they serve.

    448:

    Err ...no. I was not aware of the proposed move (until very recently) for timing of tariff-charges during a single day. I am on whatever the "standard tariff" is in London, incidentally, but I have my central-heating house temp set low, by most people's standards ( ~ 16C ) my loft is well-insulated, my N wall is blank, I have a lean-to-greenhouse facing SW, & my hot-water temp is set to below 60C, in a very well-insulated tank. I'm slowly going over to LED bulbs, as the filament ones wear out ... W T F do I supposedly need a "Smart" meter for, then? Also, my other objection to "not-so-smart" meters is simpler - IT CAN BE EASILY HACKED - an outside third party, legitimate or otherwise, can turn your indivdual house "off". No thank you, ever. The technology avialable is being massively missapplied, which is the other root of my objections.

    449:

    He told me that 2nd gear was a total waste. No one needed a 2nd gear. Everyone should drive with 2 gears. 2nd gear was just stupid.

    Wayyyy back in the 1970s, the Army's training for those caught in a car, in an ambush (this was counter-terrorist stuff) was "Just put it in second gear. You can do everything in second.".

    These were the days when off-duty soldiers and policemen were being murdered by PIRA, normally just outside their house (or if they were part-time) outside their place of work. Even if you vary your routes and routines, these are the places you have to start and end your journey.

    You can pull away in second, if you rev it and ride the clutch; and if you're willing to run the engine up to seven or eight thousand rpm, you can get a decent speed out of the vehicle; certainly enough to get clear of the killing area. After all, you're not going worry about burning out clutch or engine in those critical fifteen seconds; and you don't have three hands to manage steering wheel, gear change, and personal protection weapon. You may even be needing two hands for the weapon, if it's not already cocked.

    So, you'd see the people who'd done that particular training, with the habit of starting the car and pulling away in second gear. Thankfully, clutches are pretty robust items of kit...

    450:

    What gasdive is trying to explain is where the "standard tariff" actually comes from and how you would pay on the average less if you (and everyone else) were incented to timeshift your optional electric load to a time of day when the electric generation system isn't running at peak

    The reason why the train analogy isn't good is there is a lot more flexibility in when you run your dishwasher then when you need to travel to work every morning

    My Tesla for instance is programmed to start charging at midnight which is when my metered rate is generally lowest (California has been running on time of use systems for years )

    The idea that smart meters can be hacked pales into insignificance when you consider the fact that the entire grid can be hacked

    Plus I can turn your house off easily enough with some insulated wire cutters so what is the big deal around that anyway ?

    451:

    Re: Johns Hopkins U & UPenn

    Two top-notch medical/research centers with connections to major research labs on the planet.

    Yes, but,

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/investigation-into-mysterious-cuba-attacks-back-to-square-one/ Nearly a year since attacks targeting American diplomats began in Havana, Cuba, U.S. investigators are no closer to determining either the source or the methods, according to officials close to the investigation underway by several agencies including the FBI and CIA. "We thought we were close but they are back to square one," according to a source familiar with the investigation.

    So who knows? We here sure don't have adequate information, and it appears that even those with more or less full access are still in the dark.

    I still hold with a random-ish trigger event followed by psychogenic propagation subsequently exploited for political purposes as the hypothesis that fits best. But it could be the Illuminati for all I know.

    452:

    Come on, turning Greg's houe of using insulated wire cutters requires real meat space visiting, which then makes you vulnerable to witnesses etc. Much easier to do it from another country using the internet. Whose blog do you think you are commenting on?

    453:

    I wish I could be that clear. Thanks.

    454:

    Returning to the Noam Chomsky "The Whole Trump Presidency is a Distraction" link, his observation that every US cabinet official was selected to destroy their department (or at least those departments unconnected with the military or "security"), was widely remarked on at the time, not least by Trump's flamboyant advisor Steve Bannon (who had been awarded the title of Chief Strategist, no less), with his February call for the "deconstruction of the administrative state." Since then, the Secretary of State, Secretary of Education, and Administrator (i.e., director) of the Environmental Protection Agency have been especially open about their similar intentions, and the president himself often voices support for the goal in so many words, for example in his declarations that he has no intention of hiring as many upper-level executive agency managers as have been thought necessary in the past.

    II would have been open to the charge that Trump is creating an attention-grabbing ruckus to distract from his faction's "deconstuctive" goal, but last week's open intervention in policy -- directly crippling Obamacare and decertifying the Iran treaty -- is different. I think US editorialist Josh Marshall is probably right, in that it's less thought out than it is the gangster's demonstration that things will get worse if we don't all cooperate, but in any case it is not the action of someone who considers himself only a distraction.

    As for Russia's 2016 US campaign and electoral interventions, I have been surprised at how back-burner they have remained. Partly that is due to one significant source of American news (Fox) mostly ignoring the matter, plus many Republicans feeling that if Putin helped their guy get elected, maybe he's not so bad after all -- plus, Trump seems to like him! And, as far as I have seen, there is less American moral outrage than there is worry that the Russians (and whoever else), will be able to use the same tactics successfully in the future (after all, most of what was done was not illegal, and perhaps not illegal on the Trump campaign side, either).

    455:

    In the UK urban power cables are usually underground so a bit of digging would also be required.

    456:

    So I'm some 'mad hacker' like you see on TV. When I look at my computer green text is projected on my face instead of the screen, I'm so totally mad hacker. I press a few random keys and yell "I'm IN!".

    Would my target be:

    a) The entire grid which is a huge SCADA spaghetti mess of old and new gear from a huge variety of manufacturers where pulling down a few things in a synchronised way will start a cascade of trips that blacks out an entire country?

    or

    b) Greg's house, which has a smart meter containing a small amount of software that's been carefully checked, that I can only get to by first hacking through the network of the grid above because the meter has no direct connection to the internet?

    Well, Greg's house, Obviously....

    457:

    Re: '... still hold with a random-ish trigger event followed by psychogenic propagation subsequently exploited for political purposes...'

    Yeah - this is still on the table.

    So, what's your theory re: why this happened in Cuba vs. some other country - the political gain part at least?

    458:

    Use of gears. About a year ago I had to take a speed awareness course. Fort those outside the UK that means I had been caught by a speed camera and chose the course as an alternative to prosecution. At the end of the course the tutor gave us a taster of the economy driving course he taught - mainly to users of leased fleet cars.He said that too many urban gear changes wasted fuel and advised using first to start but sticking to third and sixth for the rest of the urban drive.

    459:

    So, what's your theory re: why this happened in Cuba vs. some other country - the political gain part at least?

    As far as the political part goes, that's easy: Obama! Cuba! Chance too good to miss!

    As far as to why it happened in Cuba vs, perhaps, Albania, I dunno. Maybe similar things have happened in less exploitable places and were never heard of. Or not.

    It would be interesting to find out whether such events have happened in other embassies (US and others) over the years. My guess is that they probably have every now and then in the confined social circumstances of significant numbers of embassies.

    460:

    So assuming the logical option b, what happens.

    The lights go out. The householder (not Greg) grumbles. He goes to the meterbox. Everything looks in order, he flips the switches off and back on again. Power stays off. There are lights on the meter but no power past it.

    He rings supply interruptions.

    "Welcome to evil corporate overlords, this is Jason, how can I help?"

    "You fuckers have turned my fucking power off at the fucking meter, I can see its lights are on and I've fucking paid your fucking bill, now turn the fucking thing back on or I'll fucking come round and fuck you over."

    "Ok, can I get the address where the problem has occurred?"

    "You can see my fucking phone number now turn my fucking power back on."

    "Ok, Sir, now just to be sure I'm looking at the right place, could you give me the address?"

    "GEEZUS Fucking christ, why is this so fucking hard? Alright, 10 Wallaby Way Wallaby Point."

    "Ok, Sir, I'm just having a look at that now."

    "Fucking get on with it!"

    "Ok, it looks like there was a disconnect command sent, but I can't see a corresponding work order for a disconnect. Could you hold for a moment while I log into the right system. Thank you."

    "You FUCKING CU..."

    "Ok, thank you for waiting Sir, I've sent a reconnect to your smart meter, you should have power now."

    "Yeah, it's back on, but what about all my fucking meat?"

    "Ahhh, what about your meat?"

    "Well it's all fucking defrosted, thousands and thousands worth of meat, all ruined, I've had to throw it all out. And my freezer, I'll never get the smell out!"

    "Ahh, the system shows that the disconnect was sent at 17:21 and it's only 17:36 now. We got a normal power reading through at 17:00"

    "What about my meat!"

    "I can get a claim form sent out to you. That's no problem. Should I send it to the address you gave me?"

    "FUCK YOU" [click]

    Jason turns to his supervisor who he got involved when he discovered the incorrect command went out. "well he's back on but it's still a wrongful disconnect."

    "Yeah, definite NECF breach, we're going to have to pay the fine I think. How the hell did this happen?" (Much corporate shit hits corporate fan)

    Of course in all this we'll put aside the fact that two phone calls from anywhere in the planet and anyone could turn off Greg's power knowing nothing more than his address, smart meter or not. No Mad Hacker required. I think I'd have a better than even chance of being able to turn off his power just knowing his name. No I'm not going to, but it's pretty easy. Add to that, if that did happen, getting the power reconnected would take hours at a minimum or possibly days with a dumb meter, but seconds with a smart meter.

    461:

    "Time of use tariffs, which is what Greg and Pigeon are actually objecting to has literally nothing to do with smart metering."

    I'll let you off with that because other aspects of your post give me the impression that the terminology used in Australia is different. In the UK a "smart meter" is (among other things) one which allows the charging rate to be altered in real time by remote control. They also provide everything bar the contactors required for implementing remote control of loads. (Of course, the propaganda doesn't tell you that; it just bangs on about how it tells you how much you're using in real time, which electricity meters have done since the year dot.) Without such a meter it is not possible to implement what I think you mean by a "time of use tariff", ie. one where the rate may change at any time (as opposed to at a fixed preset time like Economy 7).

    "The grid is Nothing like the railway system described in Pigeon's post. It's not run at maximum capacity all the time."

    I didn't say it was. I even posted a graph showing how consumption varies greatly over the course of a day. However, in the UK at least, the peak is beginning to approach the maximum capacity, and rather than determining to increase supply capacity so as to ensure that it doesn't actually get there, there is a disturbing background of talk about "load management", which is a euphemism for charging people a fortune to persuade them to switch things off with the possibility of escalation to remotely pulling the plug.

    "If it did..."

    ...bits would keep conking out all the time as local demand went over local capacity.

    "you'd pay about 200 times more for your electricity. Most grids work on a bidding system... In peak times the highest bid may be as much as 200 times higher than the normal bids... Time of Use rates allow them to price signal consumers that there is a higher cost of electricity during peak times..."

    Yes, we also suffer from the problem of moronic governments permitting parasitic bastards to practise extortion via the electricity supply system, having the gall to claim that it makes things cheaper, and maintaining the number of people going "pull the other one, it's got bells on" to manageably low levels by carefully not mentioning that they are allowing some shit behind the scenes to jack the price up 200 times just because they can. If anything the cost of electricity is lower during peak times because generating plants tend to be more efficient when operating near full capacity. The solution to that problem is to stop running the system on a basis of made-up numbers and instead run it on minimising entropy, which is about the least made-up number there is. But that is not what I am talking about.

    I'm talking about something different and more fundamental: the possibility that the amount of stuff drawing power may exceed the ability of the generators and grid to produce and distribute it, as measured by the relevant circuit breakers. And the fact that the possibility of avoiding that situation not by increasing the supply capacity, but by making people switch stuff off one way or another, has already been raised, because increasing the capacity is something they insist they "can't" (meaning "won't") do.

    The reason residential consumption rises in the evening is because that is when most people are at home, cooking their dinner and wanting the heating on and using their 10kW-or-more demand-heated electric shower and all the other things they do. (Probably not using dishwashers, because they are still widely seen as an unnecessary luxury.) The factors dictating the timing are not the kind of thing that can feasibly be changed, unfortunately. To be sure some people have the freedom to do things whenever they want, but most people are quite effectively fettered in that regard.

    462:

    If you want to turn off Greg's power, or mine for that matter, without digging up the road, you (or someone) will have to get Greg/me to let you in the front door, so you (or someone) can physically remove the company fuse. It can not be done by remote control. Phone lines can, but power lines cannot.

    463:

    He is completely wrong. It's not changing gear, thereby forcing the engine to operate well away from the trough of the BSFC curve, that wastes fuel (and sixth in a city? Good grief). Even primitive, lossy, torque-converter-type automatic transmissions - well-known for increasing fuel consumption on the road - can by contrast reduce it in the city, because they are always in the right gear.

    464:

    Re: Greg's house obviously ...

    Yeah - because Greg's the only house on the block with someone at home to notice this.

    Or, power switching is randomized and nobody knows whose house/office is going to lose power or when. Hey - maybe you could sell lotto's for this!

    Try again.

    465:

    Well, Greg's house,

    I have this image in my head of the power, phone, etc... people that when they pull up his address for something have a quick contest to see who loses and gets to make the call or visit.

    466:

    He said that too many urban gear changes wasted fuel and advised using first to start but sticking to third and sixth for the rest of the urban drive.

    Given a 6 speed and ithout a modern computer controlled automatic I'd agree.

    But comparing a 6 speed with a 3 speed manual is a bit daft. Basically he told you to use 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, and skip the fractional gears. :)

    I do the same thing at times when driving 5 or 6 speeds once I get a feel for the power ranges.

    467:

    Oh yeah. Back when I was one of the first DSL customers in my city I feel the Level 2 techs all knew me by name.

    Especially after I discovered a routing issue in the way they were handling the local cities.

    468:

    "In the UK a "smart meter" is (among other things) one which allows the charging rate to be altered"

    You mean like this dumb as a box of hammers meter? This is the exact meter that was installed on my house so I could get time of use.

    https://www.landisgyr.com/webfoo/wp-content/uploads/product-files/LG_APAC_EM1000.pdf

    It records use by interval. The intervals here are half hourly. Technically it's called a "Manually Read Interval Meter" or MRIM to it's mates. Nothing smart about it.

    I've looked at the UK press and they're spinning the idea that ToU requires a smart meter. Utter Tosh.

    If you want to alter the tariff in real time you can just say into the air "From 10am it shall be double". When the reads come in you just apply that tariff to the 10am reads on.

    469:

    This is actually still very true.

    1st - 3rd shift is for Formula 1 drivers and those 'petrol heads' who like to show off.

    2nd gear is used in such situations because it gives serious power ratios at low speeds. i.e. you can use it to splat people. Or, like Greg, you know that 2nd gear = traction and L/H shift kicks in.

    Or, as a person who drove Tanks in Germany once told me (that kind who did all the off-road Land-Rover exercises without lights in the middle of the night types): 2nd gear gets your shit out of the mud and up the hills. Or let's you run people over and not stall (Big Badda Bump). Same principle. Bollards, People, Hills... Then again, he did get a Tank stuck between two trees in Germany. Apparently there's a mock-award on the walls of a certain barracks for it.

    In Modern courses for 'defensive driving' (no, really, that's what it's called) they tend to ignore this - most of the high-end cars for VIPs are only manual when the driver clicks it on: which isn't usually in the "Horse out of the Gate, let's scoot" scenario.

    p.s.

    If you want to play, look up Putin's Merc (without him in it) plowing into traffic. 100% assassination attempt there, via hacking the computer. And that's OLD NEWS.

    470:

    52 US Code 30121: "It shall be unlawful for— (1) a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make— (A) a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election"... and further to the same effect.

    Which if memory serves makes more specific a clause of the US Constitution which prohibits the same thing.

    Quite a few other things being investigated by Mueller are, I gather, illegal for other reasons (if conviction etc etc), but anything based on this and related laws is serious stuff and far from being "not illegal". Your suggestion that more than 50% of things being investigated do not fall under any law, if I understand you anyway, is far from my understanding of this situation...

    471:

    Sounds more like a Satie joke to me.

    472:

    Honey-bun, you're really cute.

  • Citizens United.
  • That's what LLCs (very American) and Tax Havens and dodgy NGOs are for
  • The entire thing you've missed is that for every Republican up to their balls in dodgy funding: there's a democrat too!
  • Your constitution is meaningless and has been for a good 100 years. (1913 - might want to look into how the USA went to War there m'laddo)
  • None of these Laws actually understand modern Capitalism (well, derp, I wonder why dat iz): Money = Flow = Energy = The Salty Sea in Which Your Reality is Made
  • Now, if you don't understand #5, you won't understand why the Clinton Foundation saw such massive drops in funding in 2017. Or, you know, why the USA just pulled out of UNESCO (Hello Bibi - trust me, G_D fucking [i]hates[/i] you, well done)

  • Mueller isn't there to impeach: he's there to reassure everyone that the rule of LAW is still around. It's a heinous lie, but trust me: they're spending BIG BUCKS $$$ in lots of various DE-NOM-IN-ATIONS (pun pun - no, really - cash, favors, bribes, dirt, .mil heavies, torture, torture, etc)
  • Or, can we all move on from the rather puerile and immature understanding you have of the world onto something a little more complex?

    I mean, it's not as if it's October the 14th in the UK with an average temp of 24oC, there's still hover-flies, wasps active [find the source yourself].

    I mean, it's not like your entire fucking syphilitic system is crumbling in front of you, is it?

    shrug

    I've been dying to use that syphilis metaphor correctly for over 300 years now. Same fucking Minds pushing the corruption, to boot.

    473:

    Ah, well.

    Before you enter the arena, please explain what you understand "Blood Sausage" to mean.

    Trust me: it's important.

    474:

    ... as in the historical primary flavoring is pennyroyal, an abortifiacient?

    475:

    Cute, but no.

    Look down. It will wink at you if you love it enough. Apparently الجن‎‎ or Icelandic Elves will make it dance on its own.

    Tiens, voilà du boudin, voilà du boudin, voilà du boudin

    Do I have to really spell out the metaphor?

    476:

    1) why, thank you. 4) which war exactly did we enter in 1913? We invaded Veracruz in 1914, we didn't enter WWI until 1917, "The Martian War" is a later fabrication. As to the Constitution, you've got "weakened" and "meaningless" confused, but nothing that a studying some philosophy of language won't help. Along maybe with Beard's "Contemporary American History 1877-1913". 6) Are you sure you know what question I was answering? If you know what question I am answering, you weren't addressing it. (And Mueller is an investigator, without the power to impeach, so of bldy well course he is not there to do something he is not given to do. That you think he is only there to provide a smoke screen, well, you might be right, though I incline to doubt it.) Anyhow back to topic, read johne's comment 454 again, maybe. You seem to think I was saying something I wasn't and that we were discussing something we weren't. Happens when you drop into a conversation without reading the exchange.

    Having exchanged some comments with you before, I can't say this misunderstanding of yours surprises me - the contrary really, likewise your conceited rudeness, which one takes for granted, but which can perhaps be excused considering your 300-year-old age...

    "Wasps active (find the source yourself"

    Sorry, I'm still not sated by your response. Speaking of sated, Erik the French turn-of-the-20th-century composer is wondering too. Re Blood Sausage: you dropped in uncomprehendingly with your baggage into a conversation or three in progress. If you find my understanding of "blood sausage" to be important to my pun, well, I don't, frankly, so go fish for your wails and their sirens. (To bring Varèse into it too. Though that vacuum cleaner in Parade...)

    477:

    And it's abortifacient, fyi. And no: 2nd gear, speed bumps, you've just slowed me down for a while.

    And anyhow, it was for Host (and related sprogs of SF writers) that it was done.

    I don't do 'Blood Sausage' nor am I mesmerized by a dancing snake. Make me wet with a link, little one, go on...

    478:

    You entered the Class War, of course.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1913_Paterson_silk_strike

    You might want to brush up on the huge anti-Labor / Union motions done just before the USA entered the Great War. Including Presidential Edicts. Lots of Anarchist purges and so on, shipping them off to Russia.

    And yes, I've read #545. If your depths are Chomsky, well - why isn't he a little more annoyed about the Stanford '60's fate of pro-Israel scholars and the eradication of their influence under Mafia based Russia ties and Forex stuff? (Hint: That's dangerous).

    Varèse? Oh, how fucking bourgeois. Try something a little more radical. Bergson is a start.

    Oh, and... we'll take that to mean you have no clue what "Blood Sausage" is about. I'll save you a search:

    Le Boudin YT, Music. 2:00

    479:

    Oh, and you'll want to have some Crystalline Film Temporal Knowledge under your belt. And a lot less male testosterone.

    Try: Beau Travail

    Beau Travail (1999) - Ending YT: Film: 6:14 - will not make sense unless you've watched it, has many resonances in the MEN IN THE THREAD.

    Trust me: it's a joke for [redacted] Galleries, only took 7 years to pay off.

    If you need it explained: riddle me this - if no-one knew (cough Qatar scoring points with Spanish Monarchists cough) about Spain's murderous Moroccan bombers, then how did the Spanish SF turn up and kill them all (barring the tragic truck rampage) so quickly? And if no-one knew about it, but their explosives all blew up (with their ringleader who really was not on the cards for dying for the cause) then was that Causal Chance? The irony is that no-one involved will ever admit that they might have spiked the Birthday Cake because... that meant they probably helped make said Cake.

    Or a random Pixie Girl did it and y'all were spared a much darker Gladio style OP (cough Why hello Qatar, suddenly aiding the Spanish Government cough) at the expense of ...

    Some Blood Sausage.

    Spear Tip?

    Fuck me, wait until you witness the Cleave of the Clitoris.

    480:

    Well, long read of how the UK electrical system works and it's bloody weird. There must be some 'interesting' legislation behind it.

    Apparently if you move out, they don't cut off the power. Ever. I could be wrong but that's how it reads. If you want the power turned off, they've got it rigged so it costs 990 quid or more. How much more? Perhaps over 10 000 according to one website, paid in advance thanks.

    They need a warrant from a court, each one applied for separately, to get in and pull their fuses or read their meter. Apparently no-one thought of creating an electricity connection contract with a right of entry drawn into it. (WTF?) They only do this if there's someone connected who won't pay. If no-one owns up as being responsible the power just stays on.

    https://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/sep/07/no-electricity-bill-20-years

    Underground power doesn't terminate in a pit with a cover that they can just open. It's all buried and cemented over. Council permission needed to dig it up. (which means that if you want to simply upgrade your supply, it could cost 10 000 pounds.) So if a customer won't let you in to disconnect, and waves a shotgun around (this happens more than you might expect, unless you expect it to happen all the bloody time), you can't just 'pole top' them (disconnect from the street supply either up the pole or in the pit).

    At least that solves the problem of who would pay for the electricity for free car charging. Simply build the chargers, connect them up, close the account and never speak to an electricity company again. No-one pays for it.

    As for disconnecting Greg and Pigeon, it seems I wouldn't be able to do that with 2 phone calls, the worst I could do is provide them with free electricity.

    481:

    Look up Water connections and non-payment. Bottom line: you can never be disconnected due to non-payment. It's actually a fairly hard coded Law to prevent USA style abuses, visa vie Victorian Slum Lords (which is where the original Laws come from).

    The Law states that no permanent connection can ever be severed. For elec, that means the physical rather than the actual but for water, that still means - free water.

    As for disconnecting Greg and Pigeon, it seems I wouldn't be able to do that with 2 phone calls, the worst I could do is provide them with free electricity.

    Um, you can.

    The easiest way would be to get some of their details then spam 3-5 competing providers stating you really wanted to swap...

    cough

    482:

    Actually, the easiest way to do it varies depending on your clout.

    If you want the actual Law rather than blather:

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/29/contents

    Warning: LOOOOOONG AND BOOOORING.

    483:

    Oh, and for Host and you:

    Directions for preserving security of electricity supplies etc.

    (1)The Secretary of State may, after consultation with a person to whom this section applies, give to that person such directions of a general character as appear to the Secretary of State to be requisite or expedient for the purpose of—

    (a)preserving the security of buildings or installations used for, or for purposes connected with, the generation, transmission or supply of electricity; or

    (b)mitigating the effects of any civil emergency which may occur.

    (2)If it appears to the Secretary of State to be requisite or expedient to do so for any such purpose as is mentioned in subsection (1) above, he may, after consultation with a person to whom this section applies, give to that person a direction requiring him (according to the circumstances of the case) to do, or not to do, a particular thing specified in the direction.

    (3)A person to whom this section applies shall give effect to any direction given to him by the Secretary of State under this section notwithstanding any other duty imposed on him by or under this Act.

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/29/section/96

    That's a Fairly Fucking Shoggoth of a mandate there boys.

    484:

    (Now riddle me how Brexit doesn't trip those Laws given the contracts with EU providers that haven't been arranged and the UK is suddenly down a cup of tea or three)

    Seriously: that Law was written in 1989 and doesn't even understand cross-boundary elec provisions.

    No, really.

    Wake me up when the UK Gov. attempts to take over EONs (or whatever) physical holdings in the country...

    485:

    Yeah, I used to work for a water provider as well. You couldn't disconnect, but you could restrict. So you wouldn't die of thirst, but you couldn't have much of a shower. Even restriction of the water was a slow old process. I saw some accounts that hadn't been paid in 50 years that still hadn't been restricted. Actually come to think of it, I saw one account where I asked to speak to the account holder only to be told he'd died...in the Great War.

    The water had been run by a council, and they'd handed the lot over to the electricity retailer I worked for. It was a mess that took years to sort out. Most of the records were written in ledgers in unreadable quill copperplate or in the heads of the staff who literally knew everyone in town. We basically drew a line under everything and started from scratch, but even years later we'd come across stuff like customers who'd died 95 years ago. Most of the customer records were 'Mr' (they didn't have women back then) an initial and a surname with an address and a meter number that would be wrong because the meters were all replaced decades ago and the records not updated. Nothing else at all. Of course the town only had about 30 surnames for the whole population.

    486:

    Another big reason to skip first is if you have to travel in snow or crunchy ice. Use the highest gear that will let you get underway. Too much torque and you spin.

    487:

    You are obviously in the USSA My phone line comes in at roof-height & could be physically cut, by someone with a long ladder & a pair of cutters. The Water & Gas & 'leccy all come in well below the surface, so no, not so. As for the entire grid, that's beyond my pay-grade, but I can take very simple precautions to protect against the simpler & more likely attacks, can't I?

    488:

    Except you were not - see my # 487 & Guthrie @ 452

    You are making entirely false assumptions & then making criticisms based on those entirely false assumptions. Have you stopped beating your wife, yet?

    489:

    Re: Financing Autos in Amurika; yep, it's another profit center for the financial colossi, including a (NASDAQ listed?) outfit called "America's car Mart" (on the Arkansas 20 list); Plan to be the Walmart of Used cars for poor people; Buy Here, Pay Here; Abusive financing programs, etc. There was a flurry of stories about people still paying off cars that had been repossessed last summer.

    In LOTS of The Worlds Greatest Country (tm) you absolutely HAVE to have a car; Or plan on walking ten or fifteen miles to anything.

    490:

    It depends If your car's normal gearing is different ( You can see where this is going, right? ) then you drive differently. L-R's are low-geared, anyway ( even without shifting to "low ratio" - i.e. gearbox II ) so I often start in 2nd, & on level ground I can engage 4th @ 20 mph & 5th @ 28-30. If accelerating down hill, out of the 30 limit, I will often go 3rd-to-5th. And that's without thinking about gearbox III - the overdrive unit. If you vehicle has lots of torque (mine has) then you need to be in as high a gear as possible for greater economy & ease of driving

    491:

    I don't believe a single effing word of any of that. Care to produce some, you know, actual proof, rather than your usual nod/wank (oops, wink)/"I KNOW & you don't/hints. Or shut up

    492:

    Yes, because, if the house is EMPTY, then there's no-one using any power, so you have a live feed to the meter, then nothing. Saves effort, especially when new folks move in .... Also it's a sfeguard against theiving bastards cutting off poor-people who are struggling to pay - it's also a safety-net. OK?

    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Meanwhile ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ FUCKING POLLY @ 481

    No, that won't work, either, because the so-called "providers" HAVE to contact you, at which point they would all be told to either go back to the beginning & start again, &/or: "I Have no record of this correspondence, w.t.f. & how much bad publicity do you want & eff off as well"

    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Just for laughs, I am actually in correspondence with a new bunch of thieves called "Castle Water" ( A wholly-owned, arrogant & incompetent subsidiar of "Thames" ) who have "taken over" our allotments' water-supply. They haven't of course, it's the same pie & the same meter, i.e. it's a scam .... Charging an inordiante amounbt for 6 months' supply. What makes it interesting, of course, is that we ( I actually ) have a record of how much we paid for the water in the past few years & the numbers don't match & can you please explain? NOTE WELL: No smart meters required, just record-keeping.

    493:

    Polly succeeded in winding me up ... Grrrrr ..... It's the "deliberate stupidity" that gets to me, sorry about that.

    494:

    In the US, If you want to stay out of Prison (Jail is different from Prison), be born Middle Class. Other than various white collar or high profile cases, Middle class (usually "white") communities in the US are policed quite differently than poor communities.

    495:
    b) Greg's house, which has a smart meter containing a small amount of software that's been carefully checked, that I can only get to by first hacking through the network of the grid above because the meter has no direct connection to the internet?

    Carefully checked? Not connected to the internet?

    I have little faith in the former, and the latter is technically true in that the meters are unlikely to expose a management interface on a public IP, but they'll still be using the same GSM network providers that everyone else does and connecting to a management network that will not be airgapped from the internet.

    496:

    Jail is different from Prison

    Is this approximately the same as the difference between "Being in the cells overnight" & serving "a Prison sentence of more than 6 months" - or even "A custodial sentence" in this country?

    497:

    Shoplifting? Most retail "Shrink" is internal. Like 80% is the stuff that "Falls off the Back of a Truck".

    498:

    Jail is usually the local lockup, for temporary use. Normally holds drunks while they cool down and people in custody prior to being charged.
    Next step up is a Remand facility, which is where you put the people who have been charged but have not been convicted yet, generally they are waiting on a court date. Mostly flight risks, serious crimes and people who can't afford bail.
    All these people should be presumed innocent.

    Prison is where you send guilty people once they have been convicted of a crime.

    499:

    It’s not an argument for being in the wrong gear. It’s missing gears when changing up or down - particularly changing up. There’s no need for going through the whole set of gears in most driving. Skipping gears or block gear changing usually saves fuel. As for driving in sixty in the city I’m usually in sixth doing downhill into Norwich (Norwich is actually hilly) and fifth coming. I don’t follow the advice of first third and sixth but I almost never use fourth. My petrol Skoda Yeti isn’t particularly economical buy at the moment I get 53mpg outside the city and about 47 for city driving. The stop-start helps a lot in the city. For motorway journeys - mostly in sixth I get about 43mpg. t

    500:

    Jail is different from Prison

    A distinction with very little difference.

    501:

    I had to catch a wasp in the kitchen in a glass and toss it out the door yesterday. Very unseasonal.

    502:

    Middle class (usually "white") communities in the US are policed quite differently than poor communities.

    Yes they do.

    Because the crime rates and types of crime are very different. I have personal experience. I have friends who live in those "poor" areas and my daughter will close on a house in one of those areas in a few days.

    In my neighborhood they talked about a single incident of "shots heard" for 6 months. In those other "poor" areas they deal with a shooting and/or death every month or few.

    So yes the policing does operate a bit differently.

    That doesn't mean it couldn't and shouldn't be done better but the police when in my neighborhood are much less likely to run into people committing crimes carrying guns on the street at 3am.

    503:

    I think your descriptions are more Mayberry than reality these days.

    504:

    I could (possibly) see self-driving cars working OK-ish in one of the bigger Swedish cities. I suspect that ~70% of the Swedish road network would be.. a challenge... for self-driving vehicles. That would be the fraction of roads that are unpaved, without ANY markings, generally about 1 - 1.5 personal cars wide, and having deep ditches on each side (with usually dense forest, should the ditch fail to stop your car as it decides to go off-road). Really not something that current self-drive designs have been optimising for.

    505:

    I could (possibly) see self-driving cars working OK-ish in one of the bigger Swedish cities. I suspect that ~70% of the Swedish road network would be.. a challenge... for self-driving vehicles. That would be the fraction of roads that are unpaved, without ANY markings, generally about 1 - 1.5 personal cars wide, and having deep ditches on each side (with usually dense forest, should the ditch fail to stop your car as it decides to go off-road). Really not something that current self-drive designs have been optimising for.

    I'm from Finland, so basically the same thing here. I however suspect that there are state-level actors who would very much like to solve the problem of driving anywhere and particularily on the not-so-well-travelled roads, so if this is possible I think we will see a solution at some point.

    Also, it seems to me that even for humans staying on a straight road is not always that easy: just a couple of days ago I read about a young man in Finland who drove off a straight road and rolled his car into a field. Unsurprisingly, there were four friends in the car. Luckily, they all survived.

    506:

    Hey folks, saw the weather news re: Ophelia.

    I'm assuming that such storms hitting the UK is still rare. Given the current discussion about electricity grids, was wondering how well your current UK electrical system is set up to handle such a storm.

    Stay safe!

    Polly: Hey, typos happin.

    507:

    Re: '... 70% of the Swedish road network would be.. a challenge.'

    According to Wikipedia, 85% of Swedes live in urban areas, so you could probably ignore a large chunk of the total 'Swedish road network' even if the major roads connecting all of the 'urban' centers are part of the self-driving network. Similar to deciding which roads get street lights: I'm guessing that back country roads in Sweden do not have lamp posts every 100 meters.

    508:

    Also I think driving along an empty road is the solved part of self-driving, it's road markings, signage, lights, lanes, junctions and other road users that are the hard part. So urban driving is the hard problem. Because what is hard or easy for AI is not what people think is hard or easy because we have almost no subjective awareness of what is going on in our brains.

    509:

    "You mean like this dumb as a box of hammers meter?"

    No, because of the bit you didn't quote - "...in real time by remote control". I can't see anything in that PDF to indicate that that meter has that capability.

    "If you want to alter the tariff in real time you can just say into the air "From 10am it shall be double". When the reads come in you just apply that tariff to the 10am reads on."

    But then the consumer doesn't know that's happened until they get the bill however many weeks later. So they can't decide not to use the expensive electricity unless they have a time machine.

    "I've looked at the UK press and they're spinning the idea that ToU requires a smart meter. Utter Tosh."

    It's neither tosh nor spin, it's true. Because otherwise the consumer cannot know that the tariff has changed.

    Your descriptions only make sense if the changes of tariff with time happen according to some predetermined schedule which the consumer is told about in advance. I and the UK press are talking about changes of tariff which are not scheduled and therefore cannot be notified in advance. Obviously what you mean by "time of use" is something different.

    Another factor in the UK is prepayment meters. Maybe you don't have those, I don't know, but they do exist here, although not everyone has one. When you make a payment it is recorded as an electronic token which you then plug into the meter so it knows how much you've paid. It then counts down until the money runs out, at which point a relay in the meter interrupts the supply until you put more in. The conversion from kWh to pounds and pence is carried out by the meter itself, so if the tariff is going to change arbitrarily the meter has to be capable of receiving updated tariff information in real time.

    510:

    As far as "could people use self-driving cars in Sweden" goes, yes, most would probably live where current self-driving cars would work well. But, then, most of those would probably be better off using public transport (which, to a large extent, most of them probably do).

    But, how do you get from your apartment in the City to your summer house in the middle of nowhere, where the last 2-30 km are unpaved, unmarked, forest roads that the self-driving car can't cope with? And, yes, this would most probably be a real problem (there's about 700k "summer houses", most of those probably owned by someone who lives in a city) facing a general uptake of self-driving cars (definitely in the "hard self-driving" vision, where there's no manual fall-back; less so if there is a manual fall-back).

    I just have this nagging suspicion that unless it works on the whole road network, it won't be allowed at all, even if it's working well for the small-ish fraction that people mostly use. Unless, of course, self-driving cars are vastly better than humans at not getting humans killed by moose collisions. The it'd be a no-brainer.

    511:

    You mean "drive along an empty road with clear edge markings"? Yes, driving along a freeway, or in a city environment with well-defined kerbs is easy-ish (LIDAR, machine vision; not simple, but current tech has been optimised for this problem).

    Driving along a gravel road, lined with grassy ditches? Possibly OK, there may be enough signal to extract the road edges with the current tech.

    Driving along one of the "gravel road with grass growing in the middle"? Probably not at the current state of tech, although based on the fact that humans can navigate safely, not intractable. Main reason here is that there's only context making the "bit between the wheels" looking different than "bit that's no longer road".

    512:

    But then the consumer doesn't know that's happened until they get the bill however many weeks later. So they can't decide not to use the expensive electricity unless they have a time machine.

    In Ontario, we have time-of-use billing. The times are fixed (and repeated on every bill you get). So everyone knows when the cheap and expensive times are, even if they have no idea what they are using at any instant. My bill tells me how much electricity I used at the different rates, with little graphs comparing me to other houses on the street.

    I use less electricity than 90% of my neighbours, and my high-draw uses are all overnight or on weekends (ie. cheapest time) but they were like that before the switch too (the government has requested people to reduce peak usage to we didn't have to pay for a new power plant, which seemed reasonable to me so I did it).

    Mind you, I have gas central heating and a gas-powered water heater, so my biggest draws are baking (electric oven) and drying sheets (no room to hang them to dry inside — ordinary laundry hangs to dry overnight).

    513:

    Re: Empty roads/ subjective awareness of our brains

    You raise a good point about the complexity of urban vs. rural roads. Although rural roads probably have their own surprises apart from deer, rabbits, and other critters. Am also assuming that self-driving cars will not be regional monopolies so there's also the issue of varying capabilities of different systems with different proportions of models/abilities interacting for safe road sharing. Some of this will likely be best practices/industry standards. But, if self-driving cars are intended to be marketed to individuals/consumers, manufacturers will eventually add bells and whistles for consumer segmentation purposes. Different bells and whistles every year, and possibly different bells and whistles by country. Could get messy.

    Yes, agree - it's almost as though our consciousness is a parasite on our 'brain' that steers the body it's riding. Consciousness doesn't care how its host does what it does to keep the body alive, it just cares about whether the hodgepodge of niggly details are providing it with its ride. How this happened? Over time a few consciousnesses lucked into being able to tap into critical life-support signals in order to monitor things like food, water, pain, etc. (BTW, the preceding is a metaphor: I do not think that our bodies are self-driving vehicles for some parasitic consciousness.)

    514:

    Driving along a gravel road, lined with grassy ditches Like THIS do you mean ?? Or, maybe this one ??? Feel free to "drive along aither & tell me what you think. Oh & this one Enjoy

    515:

    Right, that's the kind of context I was figuring gasdive's comments must be referring to. We've had that sort of thing for years - "Economy 7" is a cheap night-time rate (but it's more expensive in the daytime), mainly intended for use with storage heaters; there are also one or two others with a more complicated schedule, mainly intended for people who have to use electric heating but don't use storage heaters because they're crap, although most people don't seem to know these exist.

    In the old days this was implemented using two separate meters and a timeswitch; these days it's a single meter that can change rate according to the time.

    "with little graphs comparing me to other houses on the street."

    Yeeaaarrgghhhh, don't people complain?

    516:

    I'm sorry, but you're a sucker and a fool.

    I believe I've posted here, before, about a book on cooking and entertaining, published in 1950, that a late friend showed me a few years ago. In the preface was the comment, "with the advent of the 40-hour week, even men are at home to entertain."

    Me, 1995-97, Ameritech: as a salaried employee, they could say "whatever it takes". The week I broke 70 hrs, I swore I'd never do that again. My dba at the time said the same when he broke 80.

    And all the people who take it as normal, rather than overtime, to be emailed, called, or texted any day, any hour, and are expected to respond before they come in for normal work hours.

    And the outsourced contractors, who are paid less... and so provide downward pressure on wages.

    And the annual cuts in benefits, and higher "contributions" to them, here in the US.

    Oh, and the wiping away of pensions. I'm going to be working a few more years, till I'm 70, to get maximum social security payout. My father retired at 65 with that.

    Do I really need to go on, as to why I wish I could join a union?

    517:

    I was thinking more like (53.117033,-4.156479)...

    518:

    Oh, actually, let me add at my first programming job, in 1980, I was hired as a sr. programmer I. I asked my late buddy, the systems programmer, why, and he said, and I quote, "Oh, they got rid of those a couple of years ago. They were eligible to join the union."

    And finally, an industrial union might be better. That way, management couldn't play off one union against another... says the guy who's twice in his life been a member of the Wobblies.

    519:

    Don't you ever get the feeling of being an observer in a bubble somewhere, observing your own thought processes happening on the next level down, a bit like a combination of watching the operation of some program using a debugger and watching the operation of some complex railway layout from an observation balloon?

    520:

    I will stick my US-based head in here. There is, indeed, a very heavy pressure by prosecutors to get a plea bargain. Less time to prepare, and do the trial, and for defense lawyers, who charge more if the case goes to trial. And then, there's the, ahhh, "relationship" between the lawyers and the prosecutors.

    On the Space Coast of Florida, my late ex had a well-paid lawyer, who assured us for months how he was going to fight, fight, fight. Then came the pretrial conference, and he tells us that the DA is going to go all out for a long jail term, and.... and got her to plead guilty. While in jail, she met a good number of other women who had the same lawyer... and he'd done the same thing to them.

    Btw, when she got a different lawyer, while on parole, and he got that terminated, he looked at her case, and asked how the hell she'd ever been charged, and that the DA really hated her, personally (due to civil court cases about 8 or 10 year before), and should have recused himself due to personal animosity.

    Jail. She was sentenced to a year minus a day, so she spent 243? days (good behaviour, or whatever they called it) in jail, in the same county, rather hours away. And what was offered in the jail was shit. You couldn't go to the library, they'd throw books on a cart, and you could pick from that. And you could have no more than 3 books. And (it being Florida) most of them were friggin' religious books. I set up, with the local sf club, a donation of about 180 sf, etc.

    Now, prisons, on the other hand... while she was in jail, I found that the US had more people in prison than the USSR did under Stalin at his height. The GOP, for a bunch of years, was busy pushing "zero tolerance" laws, and "fixed sentences", rather than allow the judges to decide.

    Ah, the lollygagging: time for your lawyer to prepare the case before, then time to "get your affairs in order" before sentencing and sending you off.

    521:

    Yeeaaarrgghhhh, don't people complain?

    No. It doesn't compare to specific houses, just the neighbourhood. (Sorry, I wasn't clear about that.)

    It sounds like your "time-of-use pricing" is what I've heard described as "dynamic pricing". I'm assuming that what you mean is a system where the rates change hourly (or more frequently) based on load and generating capacity?

    That seems like a nightmare to me. A few minutes after you get the roast in the oven (or the linens in the dryer) the rates suddenly spike and you're paying through the nose when you'd intended to be economical — and through no fault of your own you're penalized for the grid operator screwing up (or that aluminum smelter coming online).

    522:

    Horse, as Col. Potter would say, hockey. A high percentage of even the major metro areas are rural Southerners who moved in for jobs. The attitudes are still the same... or haven't you noticed who votes Rethuglican, and who went heavily for the OS (to abbreviate OGH's name for him)? And what at the 12 states he still has majority support in?

    Hell, I lived for 3.5 years on the Space Coast of Florida, and when I used to visit my late mother-in-law in Brazoria, TX, and when I've visited my late wife's sister and b-i-l there just a few years ago, I know what I saw. Don't give me no "carpetbaggers".

    Hell, show me unions organizing, and I'll point to - was it KY or TN - where a state legislator, a couple of years ago, threatened economic sanctions if they organized a new car plant.

    523:

    All of you coming back in time, dammit, can't you get me back for one short trip to 20 years ago, this week? (Sorry, that's really personal: my ...late... wire dropped dead 27 Oct '97, and if my doctor had known beforehand, she wouldn't have).

    524:

    Do I really need to go on, as to why I wish I could join a union?

    Not to me. I've worked both, and I prefer the union environment even when I have problems with some of what the union does.

    At my last school one of my department heads complained about the union constantly. (Every paycheque it was "what do they do for all this money we pay them?") He spent a year at a private school (took a leave so his job was held for him) and then returned. I asked why, and he said he needed the benefits and higher salary that we had. I pointed out that those were the result of collective bargaining by the union, but he couldn't (wouldn't) see that.

    It's instructive that many of the early unions went on strike not for higher wages but for safety measures and limits on working hours.

    On an SFnal note, you might enjoy Cory Doctorow's For the Win, which riffs a lot of early union history in a near-future setting.

    http://craphound.com/ftw/about/

    525:

    My late wife got annoyed one day with people on a usenet group talking about dieties, so she proclaimed the Triple Diety: Anorexia, Bulemia, and Their Dark Sister, Morbid Obesity.

    526:

    A ramblin' wreck.

    527:

    You do assume a lot, are you 16?

    Our grid does pretty well. It was set up from the start to be fairly robust and played an important part in keeping the country running despite German bombing. We get 80mph winds several times each year, although that does vary a lot year to year, and every few years it hits 100mph or more. Obviously, again, the north west has a very high average wind speed and the south east much lower, but we get enough storms that we are used to things. They even cut back trees from near power lines in order to prevent damage.

    528:

    I want to know what *environmental testing has been done in the facilities in Cuba.

    Paging Dr. House!

    529:

    Yes. And, yes...

    530:

    It seems that Airbus is thinking of using the reusable Prometheus engine on the new Ariane 6 rocket

    https://www.space.com/38426-ariane-6-could-use-reusable-prometheus-engine-designer-says.html

    531:

    Re: 'Do I really need to go on, as to why I wish I could join a union?'

    Okay, understand your concern.

    As mentioned in a previous post, I place the overly extended, never-ending business day of the 1990's - 2010's squarely in the lap of the tech heroes, i.e., Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, etc. They made it cool for young up & comers - who also happened to be single with no kids - to work through the night, through weekends. What didn't get transmitted though was that these 'heroes' were able to bugger off for as long as they needed to recharge - at company expense.

    Lots of people I worked with who entered the work force in that era emulated these new tycoons to the point that 24/7 became normal. I've done it myself right into burnout during crunch times. Fortunately most outfits/people I've worked with were sensible humans and realized that tired employees make more mistakes and mistakes are a lot harder and more expensive to fix than coming up with a realistic timeline and hiring qualified staff.

    This change probably wouldn't have been as easy without online connectivity as the means/facilitator.

    532:

    The recordings themselves are not believed to be dangerous to those who listen. Sound experts and physicians say they know of no sound that can cause physical damage when played for short durations at normal levels through standard equipment like a cellphone or computer.

    Dangerous sound? What Americans heard in Cuba attacks AP 13th Oct 2017 - contains simulation of said sounds.

    Experts also stated that said sounds did not exist and were probably hysterical group social responses, so, as a bit of 'pro' advice: do not listen to even the mock up.

    (Don't ask how it's known that that will not be the actual recording)

    533:

    Point of order: we didn't really have a grid at the time German bombing was a concern. You might get any voltage between 100V and 250V, and any frequency from DC to 100Hz, depending on what your local power station was like. One or two places you even got a choice. I had a list once of all the different combinations in alphabetical order of area, dated IIRC just after the war; both the length and the variety were remarkable.

    As to effects of the present wind, yeah, everyone is going "so it's windy today, so what?" There seems to be a lot more comment from people in London going on about this dust cloud that made the sky go orange. My favourite tweet about that was the suggestion that it was actually due to a freak reflection off Trump's face.

    534:

    Re: 'You do assume a lot, are you 16?'

    Hey - what can I say? The parents didn't pass on the omniscience gene and I didn't have time to google UK's weather for the past century.

    535:

    "I have little faith in the former"

    Well it's easier to check the software in a single type of meter than it is to check the software in all the equipment in a whole network. Even if it's not 'carefully' checked.

    "and the latter is technically true in that the meters are unlikely to expose a management interface on a public IP, but they'll still be using the same GSM network providers that everyone else does"

    No there may be smart meters that do that, but I've never heard of them. I can't imagine rolling out several million devices that depend on a network that you don't own and which can be simply turned off whenever the mobile provider feels like it. The whole radio network is owned by the electricity network provider.

    https://www.pcworld.com/article/2935952/gsm-switch-off-good-news-for-phone-users-not-for-connected-devices.html

    It's not just GSM

    https://mobilesyrup.com/2017/01/24/telus-and-bell-will-shutdown-their-cdma-networks-on-january-31st/

    "and connecting to a management network that will not be airgapped from the internet."

    Wait, that's what I said...in different words: "can only get to by first hacking through the network of the grid"

    If your hacker fu is so next level that you can do that, wouldn't it be easier just to hack into the retaier's database, delete all his payments for the last 5 years and fill it full of notes about conversations with Greg, "Advised Greg of outstanding balance of 4689.65 and no payments made since Jan 2012, Greg advised me something. I advised Greg that I would terminate the call if he became abusive again, Greg advised me something, call terminated". Then the retailer will direct the network to get a warrant and turn is power off, regardless of what kind of meter he has. Even easier, hack the comms between the retailer and network, insert a disconnection work order. Or even better, hack the network's accounts database, add the payment and request for a complete disconnection and removal of service. They'll come out, dig up the street, remove the wires and the meters. Which would be more annoying, his power goes out and with one phone call is restored in seconds, or he comes home to find his whole electrical supply removed, that will cost up to 10 000 pounds to put back and an outstanding debt of 4000 pounds with his retailer?

    In the list of things to worry about, someone hacking your smart meter falls so far far far to the bottom that it's literally mad to worry about.

    536:

    I want to know what *environmental testing has been done in the facilities in Cuba.

    Yes, a reasonably comprehensive set of tests would be reassuring. Maybe they've been done, but the reporting so far doesn't much indicate that. Fine folks though the FBI are, they're probably not the right group to have done it.

    After seeing the acoustic spectrum the AP dug up, I think it would be a very good idea to get an architectural acoustician involved, as that kind of comb structure appears to be somewhat common in rooms. The recordings have been provided to the Navy for analysis, which I assume means NRL and JHU/APL. They have deep expertise in underwater sound and marine structural acoustics, and hopefully know some architectural types. Also, some of the victims have gone to JHU for medical examination, so maybe the audiologists and acousticians there will have lunch and compare notes.

    537:

    For all of you arguing against solar: ROTFLMAO!

    I'm in the DC metro area. During lunch, I opened my electric bill, ready to write out the check. And in the leaflets, officially from the electric company, is one that's in front of me, with the headline of "Think you're ready to 'go solar?;" And they've got web pages, etc, on how you can "safely" interconnect....

    538:

    And on a cheery note: up until Bernie's campaign grew huge, what most folks in the US knew of socialism was what a "good German" knew of Jews in 1938. Then, the beginning of this year, one of the online dictionaries was reporting it was the most researched word in 2016.

    So, I went to a couple of happy hours in the last couple months for the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America), and went to an organizational meeting for a branch in my county.

    Now, let me note that I'm a red diaper baby... and this is the first socialist organization in the US that I have ever run into that is, in fact, working at being an actual political party. As in, they're pushing and running candidates for county office, and know they're not ready for state office, but they, or I should say "we", are hoping in the next three years to push for state legislative office, and maybe in 10 years for Congress. It's the first one I've ever actually joined. And no cant. They're talking about bread and butter issues: tuition-free county community college, and fixing the utterly lousy county bus service (I mean, really, the bus I take to the Metro, once every half an hour is "rush hour service"?!)

    As a comparison, all of the others bear the same resemblance to a political party that a fantasy sportsball league does to going out and getting sweaty and actually playing the game: none at all. Hell, my recent ex and I went to a meeting of another group, about a year and a half ago, and they were only running candidates for President and VP of the US, no lesser offices. And we met their VP candidate... and he was 29. You have to be 35 for run for President or VP, per the Constitution. I mentioned that... and he said they were "making a statement." Yup... that they weren't for real.

    So, yes, I'm pleased. With any kind of luck, maybe we'll get an American Lobour Party....

    539:

    I said, "I've looked at the UK press and they're spinning the idea that ToU requires a smart meter. Utter Tosh."

    You said, "It's neither tosh nor spin, it's true."

    I'm going by what I read on the british websites.

    http://www.britishgas.co.uk/help-and-advice/Meters-meter-readings/Smart-Meters/whats-different-with-smart-meters/How-do-smart-meters-enable-time-of-use-tariffs.html

    "new smart time of use tariffs which offer free electricity between the hours of 9am and 5pm on either Saturdays or Sundays depending on the tariff you choose. The new HomeEnergy FreeTime tariffs both have fixed prices until July 2017."

    So while dynamic pricing (which is what you're talking about, not ToU) does require a smart meter, ToU does NOT. What British gas is describing there is ToU not Dynamic Pricing. Specific times when the price changes, in this case "9am and 5pm on either Saturdays or Sundays depending on the tariff you choose" (actually, this could charge your electric car for the week for free, but that's another thread) This is exactly the kind of predetermined schedule you mentioned: "Your descriptions only make sense if the changes of tariff with time happen according to some predetermined schedule which the consumer is told about in advance". The customer is not just told about it in advance, they get to choose either Saturday or Sunday in advance.

    British gas implies that a smart meter is required to do ToU. "How do smart meters enable time of use tariffs? ...Because a smart meter can accurately measure how much electricity you're using and when you're using it, it enables flexible ‘time of use’ tariffs ... Our new smart time of use tariffs are only available to customers who have British Gas smart meters".

    While they imply that it's the smart meter that enables it by asking a question giving a half answer (smart meter can, so can lots of dumb meters, by leaving out the second part of the answer they imply that Only smart meters can), and then providing an answer to a completely different question that was never asked. It's just a business decision to restrict ToU to people with smart meters. They could equally have restricted the offer to people in half timbered houses.

    540:

    Oh, I've now read further down in the comments to find someone else explained what I was trying to say, but more clearly. (again)

    541:

    Re: '... the feeling of being an observer in a bubble somewhere ...'

    In first year undergrad read up on a few occultish topics including astral projection mostly because they sounded so weird and interesting. Never got there via TM or other yoga-type meditation. Hypnosis doesn't seem to work on me either. The disembodied feeling finally happened under anesthesia, once each for a general and injection of a 'local'. When I mentioned the feeling to the MDs, was told that it was a fairly common reaction. Of the two, the 'local' was the much weirder, stronger and less typical experience. Not sure how idiosyncratic that is. (If you're interested, anesthesia side effects can include the Cuba symptoms.)

    What happens more often is going on auto-pilot while performing time-consuming routine tasks like gardening and assorted household chores. The conscious mind wanders off and the body just does its own thing and quite well at that. Very relaxing experience. Maybe this is why gardeners and artisans seem so contented and chill.

    542:

    Reads as a day late and several million euro short to me.

    The wheels of Euro-bureaucracy grind slowly, almost 10 years after SpaceX (2011) announced their re-usable aims they are talking about maybe a couple of bits being re-usable. WTF!

    At that rate Ariane 6 payloads will be better off going up inside the BFR and the Ariane rocket salesmen just kicking back and counting that guaranteed Euro pork barrel cash difference.

    543:

    I've never seen much radical in Michał Bergson's clarinet music, but perhaps you know it better than I do. As to Varèse:

    (1) cheers for not getting that the Varèse reference, like the Satie reference, were jokes. I won't trouble your intelligent self by spelling them out; I'm sure you can work them out now.

    The rest is ignorable; anyone who thinks the class war started in 1913 has arrogated to themselves the right to define terms and can be ignored. Language games are not one-person activities (QV "Philosophical Investigations")...

    544:

    They look like great roads. Wish I was there.

    One of the things about AI driving (by which I mean Tesla, because everyone else is so far behind) is that it's a hive mind. First Tesla down the road says "I'm confused, please take over" (thinking to itself, I'll watch what the 'uman does). Probably the next 10 or 20 Teslas down the road do the same thing but it all gets uploaded to the Borg. Like the Sting song, it's watching you.

    Eventually it gets it sussed out to its own weird level of satisfaction and stops asking you to take over.

    I did a test drive in a Tesla. It took in roadworks as part of the test drive. Now half a dozen cars had been round and round that exact loop a dozen times each. When I got there, still on autopilot, it slowed down to the worksite speed limit. Followed the detour signs onto a field, drove through the featureless field (that would one day be a 6 lane highway) that was all the same dirt colour, just following tyre tracks, around the roadworks and stopped at a flagman until he spun his paddle round from Stop to Slow. After which it proceeded slowly. None of the route I took was on any map. My gob was completely smacked.

    545:

    Satie = phonometrician (which was quite thread pertinent, but obvious)

    Varèse = He conceived the elements of his music in terms of "sound-masses", likening their organization to the natural phenomenon of crystallization

    I'll let you work out if my responses actually bounced off those or not. Helps if you watch the video.

    The rest is ignorable; anyone who thinks the class war started in 1913 has arrogated to themselves the right to define terms and can be ignored

    It's a common UK joke - as you yourself stated, the USA joined the 'Great War' in 1917. As in; always joining the fray a little late (c.f. 1942). And 1913 was for the 8 hour day & was the culmination of that type of things that resulted in the IWW (Wobblies) and so forth being pretty much purged from US culture / power structures just in time for actually showing up to the Great Imperial Bonfire of the Vanities.

    So, it was, in its own way, marking the end, not a beginning. Or a Mirror to what is happening now, from the top down this time though, rather than grassroot purges.

    Your picture for the Day: John Redwood in Front of a Broken Big-Ben with BladeRunner Style Sky Real, BBC news 16th Oct 2017

    ~

    Anyhow, Cars Go Bang, they kill our kind, you know.

    546:

    Qui va à la chasse, perd sa place

    An imprecise translation of the actual references:

    "May Music forever by a curse upon you, lose its lustre and be a testament to the horror of what was done".

    Obviously, it wasn't directed at you (but who knows). All we know is that we witnessed it.

    ~

    Bestimmungen des Privateigentums als eines außer ihr existierenden Wesens bedingt sein kann, also eine kosmopolitische, allgemeine, jede Schranke, jedes Band umwerfende Energie entwickelt, um sich als die einzige Politik, Allgemeinheit, Schranke und Band an die Stelle zu setzen – so muß sie bei weitrer Entwicklung diese Scheinheiligkeit abwerfen, in ihrem ganzen Zynismus hervortreten, und sie tut dies, indem sie – unbekümmert um alle scheinbaren Widersprüche, worin diese Lehre sie verwickelt – viel einseitiger, darum schärfer und konsequenter die Arbeit als das einzige Wesen des Reichtums entwickelt, die Konsequenzen dieser Lehre im Gegensatz zu jener ursprünglichen Auffassung vielmehr als menschenfeindliche nachweist und endlich dem letzten, individuellen, natürlichen, unabhängig von der Bewegung der Arbeit existierenden Dasein des Privateigentums und Quelle des Reichtums — der Grundrente, diesem schon ganz nationalökonomisch gewordnen und daher gegen die Nationalökonomie widerstandsunfähigen Ausdruck des Feudaleigentums – den Todesstoß gibt.

    Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte Marx.

    Most, if not all, current American think pieces are fundamentally misunderstanding what is happening to their system.

    The above is pertinent: you're witnessing a transmogrification, and it doesn't have nice endings. (Which is where you call upon Wombles, Woolies and Wobblies unless you've purged that Mind-Set from your Culture, in which case you Go Down the Yellow Brick Road to K-Rouge Town).

    547:

    If you want the full horror, you should understand the previous sentence to that curse: But their Minds did not survive.

    Let me tell you all about living that Dream / Responsibility. Unlike your Minds, we live it.

    Ask me about the Ecology of Mind and the Mirrors between the biosphere, Homo Sapiens Sapiens and Purges. Oh, and if you want the Marx explaining, it's about Energy Flow. Your petite-bourgeoisie dribbling that your little sphere is dying is nothing to what was killed to create it. And only now are you grasping that you were probably not on the side of the Angels, eh?

    shrug

    You Tortured Some Folk.

    548:

    Oh, and that was a triptych.

    Since Host's title is "excuses", well then:

    You should probably try to understand when the kosmopolitische was moved from a critique of Capital into an anti-Semitic slur. Hint, Hint: wasn't the Nazis or even their friends who made that move. Wasn't even the Commies. 100% pure bred American Beef. Of course, the Nazis then used it, but it's pure Fordism at its core.

    What you've seen over the last ~18 months has been nothing over than a mass psychosis driven 'falling back' onto old ideas, because...

    Oh, do you want the spoilers?

    [Redacted] Galleries and so on decided that the corruption within the quasi-Hellenic worship systems were failing, your world is dying and [Seriously Redacted] galleries decided not to play with them anymore. Remember, Remember: it's not cockroaches who survive the nuclear event, it's parasitical wasps. The irony, (for the second time, you might have missed it before), is that their hosts cannot survive it.

    Maybe none of this is about your shitty little species, and about something else, eh?

    You might want to look again at #400 again.

    Oh, and another Reality Hike: Fear & Loathing no longer has the French Quotation, it has the Johnson quotation. It used to have one by Baudrillard.

    Your reality is crumbling, my little pumpkins.

    549:

    Oh, and via the Vatican (Jesuit Faction) and the FT:

    Brexiter Jacob Rees-Mogg’s lacklustre record as a fund manager FT, 16th Oct 2017.

    It would seem there are sides being taken.

    551:

    You've missed the point. I am very concerned about "The Internet of Things" od which not-so-smart meters are part. As far as I possibly can, I'm going to avoid any of these things, simply because the easy possibility of malicious interference is so large.

    552:

    Yes And, of course, it's a con. Because I, with my non-smart meter, coiuld easily make use of such tariff, especially if the L-R has benn re=powered to electric, simply ny OBSERVING THE CLOCK. I don't need a "smart" meter for this. Like I said, it's a con.

    553:

    Wyrnose Bottom & Hard Knott are FUN, but the fen roads .... dead stright for miles, in a flat landscape, with sudden right-angle bends, which, if you don't make, you are going to end up in the botom of the dyke, oops. In fact, that is how the classic-of-all-time detective story, "The Nine Tailors" starts, with Wimsey's car slid off the edge in a snowstorm .....

    Incodentally, how would self-drive cope with a "BOAT" ( By Way Open to All Traffic ) - there's a classic in the middle of this map ?? ( The image is pan-&-zoomable, so you can move arouind &/or back out to see where you are, which is the Pennines. )

    554:

    Driving along one of the "gravel road with grass growing in the middle"? Probably not at the current state of tech

    Wrong, very wrong.

    The original DARPA Grand Challenge competitions for self-driving vehicles were military-backed and started with driving on dirt tracks/off-road routes. Urban driving is harder and came later in the process.

    555:

    My understanding is that the DARPA Grand Challenge going completely cross-country, so no need to actually do road following. Basically, pre-find a GPS route, then do opportunistic "avoid big boulders" (and possibly "deep chasms"), in vehicles that are a lot more terrain-capable than your typical personal car.

    based on what I have seen of how the Google self-driving car (or, rather, where it was in 2012--2014-or-so), the distinct lane markings and crisp-ish kerbs really are very useful for identifying where the road is.

    556:

    In the list of things to worry about, someone hacking your smart meter falls so far far far to the bottom that it's literally mad to worry about.

    Let me give you a couple of genuine concerns about smart meter hacking:

  • Burglary. If smart meters are hackable, then sooner or later some tool will automate it for the script kiddies. About the simplest thing you can do with a meter is read out usage info over the air. And it's pretty easy from that to build an app that (a) scans meters in a geographical area (you need a street address database but it doesn't have to be legally obtained), and (b) tells you which apartments or houses have flatlined, implying that the owners have moved out or are on holiday, or (c) shows you daily demand graphs for a house, so you can see when the occupants go to work/school.
  • This won't impact the 95% of burglaries in the UK that are crimes of opportunity committed by idiots, but the professionals would pay good money for this intelligence and then use it against the rich.

    Added twist for attacks on richer households (who can afford decent overseas holidays): (d) cut the power to the burglar alarm. Yes, it has backup batteries, but how long are they good for? If you cut the power when the owner goes on vacation maybe the alarm company gets a call-out and just finds a dodgy power supply. Then you hit them a week later and clean out everything.

  • Identifying household assets. The goal of smart meters includes ability to switch some appliances on, off, or between high/low power modes. This implies smart sockets and some protocol for allowing consumer devices (washing machines, fridges, etc) to identify themselves. This means a hacker can in principle use the power network to identify the precise models of internet-of-things gizmos deployed around the house, including the cable or DSL modem (many of which have unpatched firmware that never gets updated), and thereby make hacking the owner's actual computer a ton easier. And of course once you pwn the computer they keep their porn stash and online banking on, you've got them by the short and curlies.
  • 557:

    The point of the exercise seems to be rendering meter readers redundant, so more funds are available for the important people. That it's a short term money grab should be obvious, "Lake Woebegone" is fictitious, and economies work better if average folk are employed.

    558:

    https://sense.com/product.html

    I really like the idea of this. But I'm concerned about how well they have their processes secured "in the cloud". Especially since you set it up using existing poorly thought out home user WiFi. Hopefully they do a secure tunnel back to their cloud.

    THIS data base would really tell you when people are home or not.

    559:

    Because I, with my non-smart meter, coiuld easily make use of such tariff, especially if the L-R has benn re=powered to electric, simply ny OBSERVING THE CLOCK. ... I don't need a "smart" meter for this.

    How is the bill calculated with your dumb meter? Or is it the honor system?

    560:

    Hrm.

    My apartment was built in the 1820s and last rewired in the early 1970s by its owner-occupier (a certified electrician with a young family to raise, so I'm reasonably confident he didn't cut corners).

    Last time I checked, there were three 240 volt mains sockets in my office (a former bedroom). And last time I counted, there were 27 sockets on extension bars in use (admittedly, two ten-way surge-suppressed extension hubs will go a long way: NB, one of the sockets is occupied by a 3-way adapter, so only 23 sockets available, of which 5 are currently unoccupied ...).

    Formerly, most of these sockets went to dedicated wall wart transformers for random gizmos.

    Then USB happened, for which I am eternally grateful. Three of those sockets go to USB power units, two six-way and one four-way-plus-a-single-high-power-USB-C. Two go to dedicated laptop USB-C bricks. There are now only six non-USB wall warts plugged in (down from maybe two dozen five years ago) as USB conquered the world of peripherals.

    Other rooms in my home have rather fewer gizmos plugged in, but there are still n >= 2 multiway USB hubs in the bedroom, wife's work room, and living room, and don't get me started on the number of plugs going into the A/V stack (which isn't actually terribly complex by modern A/V standards). There are about a dozen appliances in the kitchen alone (ranging from the radio and fridge through the cooker to the fibre broadband line head and firewall — I know, I know, the kitchen, what can I say?). In fact, I'd be surprised if an audit of this two-occupant flat found less than a forty mains-powered appliances and the same number of USB-powered ones in regular use.

    Let's not get into oddities such as the increasingly dusty stack of backup mobile phones (I always keep older ones for a generation or two in case of breakage/loss, so I've got a fallback), USB batteries that get topped up once a month just in case, and obsolescent computers that get turned on less than once a year (we have Macintoshes here going back to 1989-vintage).

    And that's before we get into light fittings.(Ten bulbs in the front and back hall chandeliers, six in the bathroom ...)

    Frankly, it's only worth monitoring power consumption by the fridge-freezer, washing machine, dishwasher, cooker, kettle/tea-maker (hey, I'm tea-fuelled), laser printer, Tivo, and main computers. All the rest is background noise.

    561:

    You are thinking about crime for a financial gain. What about the much more common online behavior, being a general shithead?

    Consider the extrapolation from current actions: Gameplayer Jane tweets "I didn't much care for the latest AAA blockbuster first person shooter title, Orcs Raping Women 7, I thought it was demeaning to women". So young video game aficionados do what every completely normal person does when someone disagrees with you on relative likes on a multibillion dollar pop culture property, and seek to destroy every iota of her life. Right now that means doxing, stalking, online harassment, trying to get her fired, calling in bomb/mass shooter threats, throwing powdered chlorine into the air at a convention as an approximation of a chemical attack. Again, all things a COMPLETELY NORMAL person does, you know?

    Well let's consider the hackable meter. Average American household can't take an unexpected $400 hit. Utilities are also stupid expensive here because thou shalt not question the free market. So in between threatening to rape Gameplayer Jane, the completely normal game aficionados hack her meter and boost the consumption numbers. Or use the method you mentioned in #2 to turn on more things. Or hack the thermostat and crank the heat WAY up. And they turn it off again so it settles back to normal by the end of the work day. Repeat daily and Gameplayer Jane and her family don't notice because she isn't there. But then the bill comes due and well then she and her family will get a fraction of her comeuppance for daring to disagree slightly about the consumption habits that define your identity!

    562:

    There's a video on the US show "Ask This Old House" where they talk more about it. Finding it is left as an exercise for the curious.

    In their cloud processing they are learning the signatures of various items via some serious DSP processing being done. So that their systems learn which power usage patterns mean what devices is on at any point in time. And their longer term goal (as of a year ago) was to be able to do things like send a message out that the dryer, stove, HVAC system, whatever, is acting up and may need service soon. One of their goals is to be able to identify makes and models of things based on their power signature.

    I don't know how far they will get and how much their telemetry will sell for long term but to me it's a great idea that may go far. Or fizzle.

    We'll see.

    PS: I doubt that GT will ever want it. GDRFC

    563:

    I agree. The IoT is one of those things that fall into the category of "just because we can does NOT mean we should." In fact, most of the uses, as far as I'm concerned, is ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR ALLEGED MIND?!

    Let's see, there's the monitoring that would let burglars know when you're not around, so they can come clean out your house.

    Then, on the other side, the electric company here asked me if I wanted the Newk3wlSmartMeter, and I told them no way in hell. And asked if they thought they had any protections against the idiot script kiddee down the block, who think's it's K3wl to hack all the nearby meters, and run heat or a/c at max. (Note: someone, a few years ago, did some keying on my vehicle, for no reason I know, other than maybe buying the house and having the girl they liked move - that's my guess). Or maybe they didn't like the previous owner, and didn't know the family had moved. I wonder that, given that one of the living room double-glazed windows was hit by at the very least a high-power BB gun....

    564:

    Now you show you are 16 - you don't need to be intimately familiar with the last 70 or 200 years of British weather records, you can find plenty of mentions of 80mph and more storms if you just type "Britain storms" into a search engine of your choice.

    Back to 'smart' meters - I find it odd that gasdive overlooks the local simple griefing stuff and general criminality outlines by others, and focuses only on a totally over the top, massive and easy to spot in the first place issue. Hint - criminals mostly go for small easy stuff. Doing big massive things makes it much more likely they will be tracked down and imprisoned. Whereas if you do lots of little things it's much easier to get away with.

    565:

    Oh, if griefing is your concern there are much worse possibilities out there.

    (Stalker apps. Genocide-enabler apps. We haven't even scratched the surface of what Big Data is going to do for us!)

    566:

    Looking for recent developments concerning the Cuban sonic/psychic/whatever story this morning, I noticed a mention of the "Kokomo Hum", which I hadn't been aware of. Turns out that, back around the turn of the century, there was a cluster of mystery maladies in Kokomo accompanying mystery noises, generically referred to as a hum. Many of the words describing the incident are similar to those now being used wrt Cuba.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/23/us/hum-haunts-indiana-city-its-source-is-a-mystery.html

    Hum Haunts Indiana City; Its Source Is a Mystery By John W. Fountain June 23, 2002

    [EXCERPT] A mystery is simmering in this sleepy industrial city. To Billy Kellems, it sounds like butter ''crackling in a skillet.'' In the middle of the night, it is more like the buzz of a busy interstate, though there is no highway for miles, Mr. Kellems said. Others say it sounds like the deep growling of a train idling. The phenomenon is called the Kokomo hum, and it is more than an annoyance. Many blame the hum, which began in 1999, for health problems, including headaches, nausea, diarrhea, fatigue and joint pain. Residents say they hope that a study commissioned by the city will get to the root of their troubles. Meanwhile, they live with the hum. ''Life has to go on, the headaches, the nausea, the sleepless nights,'' Mr. Kellems, 36, said...

    567:

    Things like "sense" make sense in certain specialized circumstances

    While it isn't going to decide all your devices the 80/20 rule applies very much to electric load, almost all your power usage comes from a few devices (anything that cools or heats things or moves water around mostly). Knowing your fridge is on the fritz could be useful

    If your rural or off the grid it can matter more as you may have things like well or cistern pumps and irrigation systems to worry about which are notorious for quietly going on the fritz and blitzing your power bill

    If you are serious about solar and trying to move your workload it can make debugging the "what in the world is that 1.6 kWh load that tends to turn on around bedtime" questions easier

    But mostly a hobbiest toy

    568:

    Kokomo Hum got solved like 10 years ago. Fans on a cooling tower at the Chrysler plant were hitting some resonance and were the source of the hum. They tweaked them, and it went away

    569:

    So what's Georgia Tech then, cat food?

    ... a ramblin' wreck

    570:

    UK 'Smart' meters are a joke, different power companies came up with heir own contraptions, and many folk suckered into having one of the things fitted (for free, as in , we are all paying for the damn things through our bills if we want one or not) have subsequently found that switching suppliers means their smart meter ain't smart no more, and reverts to stupid.

    Call me paranoid, but I'd be totally unsurprised to find that the the power companies went with their 'only smart for our billing system' meter design in the hope it would tie consumers to them.

    According to which.co.uk " ...many energy companies are still installing smart meters that aren't fully compatible with the network - these are known as SMETS1 (Smart Meter Equipment Technical Specification) meters. If you have a SMETS1 smart meter and you switch supplier, your smart meter may revert back to being 'dumb'. They’re operating in ‘dumb mode’ owing to ‘technical issues, such as meters being unable to communicate externally via the wide area network, or customers choosing to switch to suppliers currently unable to operate smart meters in smart mode,’ the government Department for Business, Innovation and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) told us.

    Suppliers can continue to install these SMETS1 meters for up to a year after the ‘full range of DCC services’ are available, the government states. Most are doing this. The ‘end date’ for installing SMETS1 meters is 13 July 2018. The government has up until January 2018 to change the July date; after that, it won't change again.

    There are more than 330,000 smart meters installed which are not operating in ‘smart mode’ so far, according to the government."

    Apparently the SMETS2 meters, which will (supposedly) work across all suppliers are anticipated to begin being fitted "later this year or early 2018." Cue hollow laughter.

    Further debate including mention of how the meters benefit the company, not the consumer, and mention of security issues in Hansard here. Graham Stringer comes across as a perceptive and decent chap judged on his conrtibution there, others .. less so ...

    571:

    Fans on a cooling tower at the Chrysler plant were hitting some resonance and were the source of the hum.

    I would be very unsurprised if something like that were found to be causing the Havana sounds, or at least some of them. It does leave, however, the question of the various reported medical problems. And, of course, the over-the-top reaction of the USG.

    572:

    "How is the bill calculated with your dumb meter? Or is it the honor system?"

    I can reply to this because I have both ToU and a dumb meter.

    So second question first, the UK surprisingly does run to a large extent on the honour system. For reasons that probably made sense at the time, they willingly buried lots of kit under someone else's pavement, or installed their meters and fuses inside people's houses. The result of which is that they depend in large part on customer reads and/or letting the meter reader come into your house after knocking and asking permission. So anywhere else in the world, when you move out, you ask for a final read and either someone comes around and reads your meter or if you've got a smart meter they pull the reads when you leave. Systems vary, but they either de-energise the property at that time, or sometimes they wait a short period and then de-energise. The final read for that customer becomes the start read for the next. Not so in the UK. With no access to the meters, they just take the final read from the departing customer on their word. The new customer provides their start read and everything between is wastage. I can't imagine that none of the 55 million brits have worked out that you can inflate your start read, refuse access for the meter reader during your stay and deflate your final read. Honour system.

    So first question. I don't know how it's done in the UK, but there's only a limited number of ways to skin a cat. With a mechanical meter you have multiple registers or multiple meters. At the command of a clock or a signal sent via the electricity grid the meter changes which register the electricity consumption is recorded to, or a relay switches between meters.

    With an electronic meter (which can also be dumb), it can do the same thing, but electronically. It has multiple registers. As you use power in one time period, it accumulates on the corresponding register. When the time changes, it starts applying consumption to another register. The meter reader sees a scrolling display. In most NSW country regions it looks like this

    88 888888 (all segments lit to check they all work) 01 123456 (reading for register one, peak) 02 654321 (reading for register two, shoulder) 03 321456 (reading for register three, off peak) 15 123654 (reading for register fifteen, export) 06 06 53 (reading for register six, the time GMT+10 all year) 07 181017 (reading for register seven, the date ddmmyy) and then back to the beginning.

    The meter reader can either copy the reads off the display (mechanical or electronic meters) or can stick a probe in a hole on the front of the electronic meter and the meter will dump the last 283 days worth of 30 minute blocks of consumption into the handheld in about 5 seconds.

    573:

    My gas and electricity meters were installed in 1967, and are older than me. A hacker would need a front door key and a chisel to crack them.

    As long as they still work, they are staying.

    574:

    But mostly a hobbiest toy

    That's a perfectly cromulent word.

    575:

    For a decade or so my neighbour two doors along's gas meter was installed inside the back of my garage which is on the back lane sharing a wall with his house. This meant he had to come get me to open my garage twice a year when the meter reader came to read his gas which made him sufficiently unhappy he eventually paid to have the meter moved to the external wall in one of those white plastic cabinets.

    576:

    1. Well, yeah, if they're a criminal mastermind and their hacker fu is strong. Otherwise they can knock on the front door. If anyone answers they ask if this is where Alice Green lives and then say 'sorry to bother you' and walk off. If they're next level, and have ever seen a James Bond movie, they can stick a hair across the doorway to see if you're going in and out but that's probably needlessly complex for most robbers.

    Yeah, a smart meter does create a new (albeit complex) attack surface for bad people to further enshitten your life. But it also removes an attack surface, physically letting a stranger enter your home based on them having a lanyard with the right company name on it. Consequences of which could be a lot worse than having your purse nicked. http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/11602811.Fraudster_burgles_Worcester_Park_pensioner_s_home_by_impersonating_meter_reader/

    577:

    "For reasons that probably made sense at the time, they willingly buried lots of kit under someone else's pavement, or installed their meters and fuses inside people's houses."

    Someone elses pavement ? That would be our pavement, i.e. part of the public highway, maintained (more or less - money is tight) by the local council. Burying cables instead of having the streets hung with a cat's cradle of the things makes for a far better visual environment, especially in historic or rural places.Cables are something you become horribly aware of when trying to take photos of buildings in, for e.g. the USA.

    Many newer houses (mine for instance, which is around 40 years old) have the meters in cupboards built into the house wall, doors to the outside, so no meter reader needs to be admitted to the house.

    578:

    Oh 1) d.

    "Welcome to Evil Corporate Overlords, this is Jason, how can I help?"

    "Hi, John here from Rich People's False Sense of Security here, we've got a back to base alarm reporting power out at 10 Wallaby Way, Wallaby Point, NMI 123456, just wondering if there's an outage in the area?"

    "Ok, just having a look.... Nothing reported in the area, let me have a look at the meter to see if it has supply.... Power's on to the meter but it's been de-energised... Can you hold for a second, thanks..........There's no work order in the system saying it should be..." And then corporate shit hits corporate fan. Yeah maybe once you could do the equivalent of breaking into the Tower of London to steal the Crown Jewels' guard's midnight snack, but not twice. (ie. electronically walk past billion of pounds worth of electronic transactions so you can knock over a manor house in Surrey and steal their silverware)

    579:

    All of that sounds horrribly familiar! About 20 years back, I rewired my house ... there are now more power-points in the kitchen then there were in the whole building ... the only one upstairs was a 2-pin round socket ... um. [ oh & a set of sockets & phone-line ends, inseted underfloor, upstairs for the computer terminal etc ... ]

    580:

    Mine are a bit more recent than that ( The leccy meter has an LCD readout ) but otherewise as stated - incidentally a couple of days back, I'd just got up from reading this blog, when ameter-reader came round to read the meter (!)

    581:

    Random 'where is the hardware' note. I watched a youtube about 'an ordinary middle-class house' near Tokyo. It was fascinating all the little differences in how they do things vs the US.

    The 'infrastructure' of the house was remarkably external. The water heater, the heater, all in a little rectangular prism of machines outside the house, attached to the house only by pipes/conduits.

    There were a bunch of little electronic flourishes. Fill the bath from a panel in the kitchen, etc.

    It is traditional to only heat one or two rooms in the house. This house was kind of 'weird/cutting edge' in that most of its rooms were heated.

    It had a security system, and the ground floor windows were all grilled to prevent entry. Kind of funny as there is essentially no crime of that sort in Japan.

    582:

    Another study in my feed today that suggests that working memory training works: Team finds training exercise that boosts brain power (16 October 2017) N-back Versus Complex Span Working Memory Training (There have been studies with negative results too; refs in paper.)

    The authors need to look at Working Memory Updating Function Training Influenced Brain Activity (27 Aug 2013, Chinese authors) Very small study, but very suggestive and a larger replication attempt should be made, IMO. In this paper they adaptively increased the speed demand, rather than the usual for these papers (including above) of increasing capacity. (Note this can be done with Brain Workshop, manually. Try it if you're so inclined.) See figure 4. Our results showed that the P300 amplitude increased after the training, which indicates that the training could also improve the updating function in working memory representation. Also, in-test reaction time improved (Table 1): While no significant improvements on accuracy were shown in post-test over the pre-test, the reaction time for working memory 2-back task decreased significantly.

    583:

    And asked if they thought they had any protections against the idiot script kiddee down the block, who think's it's K3wl to hack all the nearby meters, and run heat or a/c at max. And if that script kiddie were of the advanced malevolence sort, and knew how to break the system, and as part of such an effort hacked millions of meters, and made e.g. tank water heaters (or some other high load) turn on at the same time or in a pattern predicted to break the system? These are the sorts of control problems that scared somebody who I talked with a year ago who was working the research angles of such control of distributed systems, particularly the proactive prevention and reactive control of chaos, whether randomly or induced maliciously. (Informed comment from gasdive appreciated as always.)

    584:

    Similar in the places I've lived in the US, even below ground power and gas usually emerge directly outside the house on an outside wall

    Similarity in California gas metering is required by law that the meter is at least visible from outside the house so the meter readers don't have to enter

    The U.K. arrangement described sounds barking mad honestly

    585:

    Random 'where is the hardware' note. I watched a youtube about 'an ordinary middle-class house' near Tokyo. It was fascinating all the little differences in how they do things vs the US.

    As an Army brat, I moved around a lot as a child. We lived in West Germany in the late 1970s / early 1980s; and have since visited the USA... what is normal enough not to be noticed by the locals, is different enough to make life interesting.

    • In the USA, washers are fed from the hot water system; European washing mashines have only a cold water feed but an internal heating element. We don't use a dryer in our house; we've got a drying line (we call them "washing lines") in the back garden, as have our neighbours. I believe that such devices correlates with poverty in the USA?

    • Consumer electrical switches and points in the USA appeared low-quality and fragile; many wouldn't pass British or European Standards testing (AIUI, this has improved with "Underwriters Laboratories" standards?). Electrical plugs and sockets in the USA appear flimsy and unsafe to me; i.e. cheap and nasty stuff.

    • In Germany, most houses had both cellar and attic rooms; in the UK, cellars and attic conversions are rare (it's far cheaper to build a roof around thinner, lighter, closely-spaced supports). Cellars are expensive, but rather useful for shelter, and West German building regulations took note of the possibility of 20th Guards Tank Army coming to visit one day...

    • In Germany in the 1970s, I can remember being fascinated because our house had circuit breakers at the consumer unit; the typical UK unit still used fuse wire in fitted fuses.

    • In Central Europe, insulation is vital. Roller shutters over domestic windows are commonplace; these are virtually unknown in the UK. In the 1970s, double glazing seemed standard in Europe, but a rarity in the UK of the time. I can remember being warm in Europe when it was -20C outdoors; and freezing in a UK house when it was only 2C or so.

    • In Germany, we had a mains-pressure water system; with the boiler and hot water tank in the cellar; the UK regarded gravity-fed heating and water systems as normal until the 21st century (we've still got such a system, in a house built in 1999).

    • In Germany, the lavatory didn't have a flushing cistern; the toilet flushed from mains-pressure water on a lever. The porcelain was shaped such that the U-bend was at the very front, and curved back underneath a flat, shallow area that allowed you to inspect your faeces should you wish... (and in France in 1996, our unit stayed in an Army barracks that was fitted with new squat toilets).

    Regarding electricity meters, we recently gave in to pestering and scheduled an installation, but rejected it when it became clear that contrary to the strong and continued assurances of the electricity supplier, they were about to fit an SMETs-1 meter, and not an SMETs-2 meter...

    586:

    New build and replacement gas supplies do emerge at the outside wall and then pass through above ground. When they replaced the gas main under the sidewalk at our front door a few years ago[1] the old pipe that entered the house underground was replaced with a new one that came up the wall and entered a few inches above ground (a diamond drill contractor had a nice gig boring through all the granite walls of the street) and was bent around in various contortions to connect up to the old gas meter.

    [1] And we had a bridge over the trench to get in and out for week.

    587:

    When reading propaganda, take it with a pinch of salt...

    There is a clue in the T&Cs for that tariff http://www.britishgas.co.uk/aem6/content/dam/britishgas/documents/tariffs/terms/HomeEnergy-FreeTime-Sat-Mar-2018.pdf where they mention that if they think you're using "too much" (which naturally they refuse to define) during the free periods, they will knock you off that tariff. Obviously, to be able to do that, they need to be able to monitor how much you are using during the free periods.

    There is another clue in the Hansard link that HW posted http://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2017-02-09/debates/75FA981E-9A7E-4B98-ABC7-598DE2151A8A/SmartMeteringElectricityAndGas where it mentions "allowing price information to be transmitted to the home". A few paragraphs further on we find "Smart metering enables a concept that is broadly similar [to Economy 7] but much more flexible. Broadly speaking, if suppliers can incentivise customers to run their dishwashers while the sun is shining or their washing machines when the wind is blowing..." This clearly does not make sense in the context of a predetermined fixed schedule. They call it "time of use", but the description given shows that they are using a more flexible definition of that term than yours.

    And Charlie has pointed out that "The goal of smart meters includes ability to switch some appliances on, off, or between high/low power modes." The Hansard kind of vaguely hints at that in the context of charging electric cars, but it really isn't that surprising that you hear about it far less often now that the things are actually being installed than you did when they were only an idea.

    588:

    "In the USA, washers are fed from the hot water system; European washing mashines have only a cold water feed but an internal heating element."

    Have you got that the wrong way round? I don't know about the USA, but British washing machines almost universally have both hot and cold feeds, and have had for yonks. (The red and blue hoses round the back.) They still do have an internal heater, to compensate if you run out of hot water; it is indeed possible to install and use them with only the cold feed connected, which may be necessary if your hot water is from an on-demand heater as they don't always play nicely together; but in a standard installation you would expect both feeds to be connected.

    A device with only a cold feed is more likely to be a dishwasher, but those too are usually dual-feed these days.

    589:

    This kind of thing is a bit outside my direct experience. The state of play in 2014 when I last had customers with smart meters was that the smart meters were able to advertise demand response information, but that feature hadn't been enabled. (other gear can do it too, but I don't know anything about that other gear) When it was enabled, the meter would be able to say to the local equipment, "Things are fine, carry on as normal", Mode 1 "The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling, please please turn off because if you don't the network guys are going to cut the power to your area any second". Equipment compliant with AS/NZS 4755:2012 would go into power saving mode, for instance airconditioners would stop the compressor but leave the fan running, users can override that. Mode 2 "Power's getting expensive, really expensive, make of that what you will". Compliant equipment would go into a mode that cuts the power draw to about half full capacity, users can override. Mode 3 "Power's a bit pricy just at the moment", compliant equipment would cut down to 3/4 of full power, users can override.

    There doesn't seem to be anything in the specification (which I haven't read because it costs several hundred to do so) from what people are saying, that lets the meter tell equipment to go haywire. I'm not sure, it could be there, but no-one mentions it. Nothing seems to be able to tell equipment to turn on when it wouldn't otherwise. The standard doesn't seem to apply to things like routers, but again I haven't read it.

    http://www.yourhome.gov.au/energy/smart-meters-displays-and-appliances

    It seems to be entirely your choice to install or not install gear that listens to the mutterings of your meter about current prices, though some retailers (not any I worked for) would sling you a few bucks if you did.

    So could you get control of the entire network and fool about with the airconditioner settings in a co-ordinated way such that you brought down the system? Err Maybe? There's already a lot of installed demand response gear out there for industry, wouldn't it be better to fool with their gear? Turning desal plants and furnaces on and off? Err maybe?

    If I was planning on pulling an entire grid down, that wouldn't be how I went about it. I'm not going to go into detail here about how to do that, but studying how grids fail would be instructive if you want to make a grid fail. (There's a lot of really instructive information out there that I'm constantly amazed is publicly available.) I've never heard of one failing that way. Again, it's one of those, "If you're evil and you've so totally pwned the system that you can do that, why on earth would you do that instead of something much more effective?" It's like you've got yourself into the passenger seat of a moving car. Could you play with the radio controls in the hope that the driver would be so distracted that they'd not notice the fuel gauge and so run out of fuel on the motorway, causing a pile up?... Err maybe? Yeah, I suppose. Or would you grab the wheel and steer the car into the path of an oncoming HGV?

    590:

    That Hansard is a nightmare snapshot of ignorance and ideological blindness...

    Smart meters are supposed to deliver "massive" benefits to the consumer, and they insist on sticking to this despite their inability to define what they are beyond some quite nugatory savings which fail to justify the cost of installation. Cue dance of the cherry-pickers as they scramble to find a figure which makes the savings look more significant.

    The endless repetition of the fallacy that smart meters enable you to check consumption in real time - eg. "these are the great games that we play as we do not have a television - is to see how we can reduce the house's energy consumption by going round switching things off and seeing what difference it makes. It is incredible to see the difference that switching on a kettle can make". For crying out loud, I used to do that when I was a kid - see how fast the wheel was whizzing round when all the cooker rings and oven and water heater etc. etc. were on at the same time, or see how long it took to visibly move at all when the only loads were the motors in a couple of clocks. These days it's the rate of flashing of an LED rather than rotation of a wheel, but the principle is the same.

    In the context of poor people trying to pay for their energy: "Prepay customers pay more for their energy" - Only because the government allows this rip-off to take place.

    "...and they pay up front." They say this like it's a bad thing. It's the whole point. It means you don't get into debt. You don't get landed with a whacking great bill that you can't pay. And people certainly do get their energy supplies cut off for non-payment. It is a particular concern for elderly, infirm and otherwise vulnerable people.

    Indeed, the whole smart meters vs. estimated bills argument would disappear if they would simply stop normalising debt. Unfortunately this goes a long way beyond Parliament. It is common throughout society to disparage prepayment (for energy, mobile phones or anything) and use language like "pov" and "pleb" of people who use it. Constantly being in debt for these things is posh, or grown-up, or something; it is a signal that you have lots of money to fling about because you don't have to worry about being cabbaged when the bills arrive (exactly what those Hansard speakers fail to understand when they think poor people should have to use credit). Maybe it's some kind of hangover from the days - not all that long gone - when the upper classes customarily used the debt-and-bills system to deal with all the local traders while the lower classes paid up front.

    591:

    It seems that Airbus is thinking of using the reusable Prometheus engine on the new Ariane 6 rocket

    How would you use a "reusable engine" on an expendable booster?

    592:

    The last washing machine I bought (three years ago) was cold-fill only and I believe that is the trend in new machines for several years as the economy wash programmes don't use enough hot water to draw in hot water anyway. The last dishwasher I bought was also cold-fill only as was every dishwasher I've owned (third now).

    593:

    Re: '... you don't need to be intimately familiar with the last 70 or 200 years of British weather records'

    Prefer to start with data, as in -- do secondary research first.

    594:

    "There doesn't seem to be anything in the specification (which I haven't read because it costs several hundred to do so) from what people are saying, that lets the meter tell equipment to go haywire. I'm not sure, it could be there, but no-one mentions it. Nothing seems to be able to tell equipment to turn on when it wouldn't otherwise."

    From the link you posted a couple of lines further on:

    "A smart appliance must be capable of demand response - responding automatically to the information it receives in a way that is helpful to the user and/or the grid. It could reduce its energy use, turning off entirely for a brief period or perhaps turning on when it would not otherwise be operating in order to access cheaper energy."

    "Although the user is able to predetermine the mode of operation under various conditions, and usually be able to override an event if it occurs at an inconvenient time ... a smart appliance responds automatically to pre-programmed events unless instructed otherwise."

    "If a utility can be sure that in five years' time, say, there will be 100MW of smart appliance load that can be instantly and reliably reduced during peak load periods, this is equivalent to building 100MW of additional supply capability" (exactly the approach I was condemning as misguided, btw)

    Bang.

    And these things will be rooted: anything installed in millions of people's homes will be. (And once rooted it matters not what the spec says the software is allowed to do, only what the hardware is capable of.) GCHQ, no less, say the security is shite (per HW's Hansard link). If they think it is a matter of concern I don't consider "nah, no-one's gonna do that" an adequate refutation.

    595:

    Re: estimating energy bills

    Don't UK appliances come with info about average annual energy consumption? When I was reading up on passive and solar power found a few sites that provided per-use numbers on a wide range of appliances by make and model. Even tried a few scenarios on an excel spreadsheet to see low, mid and high estimates. Based on my last appliance purchase almost 2 years back, the more bells and whistles, the more energy used.

    Here's a simple chart provided by an energy company:

    http://www.siliconvalleypower.com/for-residents/save-energy/appliance-energy-use-chart

    596:

    "people certainly do get their energy supplies cut off for non-payment. It is a particular concern for elderly, infirm and otherwise vulnerable people. "

    Ever met one? Trying to figure out how to cut off your power with a couple of phone calls, (which I could do anywhere else in the world, but not the UK) I came across the snippet that last year 71 households were disconnected for non payment in the UK. There's 27 million households in the UK. So if it were random, you'd have about one in half a million chance of having your power cut off each year. British Gas, EDF Energy, npower, E.on, Scottish Power and SSE have made a commitment that they won't disconnect for non payment if you have a disability, long-term health problems, severe financial problems or young children living at home. So the only way to get disconnected is to be fighting fit, well off, childless, whole and hearty and to tell them that you just won't pay on principle. Apart from these voluntary commitments, it's illegal to disconnect a pensioner between the 1st of October and the 31st of March.

    597:

    Re: '... it's illegal to disconnect a pensioner between the 1st of October and the 31st of March.'

    Fine they might not freeze to death. But how do they do their laundry, watch TV/go online, cook their meals, etc. April 1-Sept 30?

    In my neck of the woods, folks need AC from late spring to early fall and heat the rest of the year. During hot weather alerts, the municipalities keep certain civic buildings that have AC open through the night. However not all folks are sufficiently mobile to use these facilities. Anyways, these are temporary fixes and don't really address the problem.

    598:

    I use this one

    https://www.wholesalesolar.com/solar-information/how-to-save-energy/power-table

    I've seen a fair amount of variance though and heat / air con are very difficult to estimatd

    599:

    To me using a clothes line is mostly associated with 80 year olds, because my grandmother was the only person I ever saw do it. This reminds me though that need to put one up next summer. Big energy savings, and your clothes last something like 5x longer. Don't think it works too well in Seattle during the winter though, heh.

    Kind of hard to say on many of those items. I think a lot of them changed in the 50s, then again over the past 20 years.

    600:

    re: Griefing/Stalking/UberH4X0ring smart-meters

    You do realize that real-time monitoring of power consumption has a greater impact, I hope. What appliances you have in your home, when you use them, the usual daily household schedule (and when that routine is broken, i.e probably on holiday), which programs are being watched on the telly, and likely even far more private information can be deduced to a certain degree. GDPR aside, this data isn't generally "hacked" -- it's sold as cheaply as feasible to as many entities as possible where the business models have at least some expectation of future profit.

    The following link is very stale, not completely accurate, and missing quite a lot of inevitable applications -- But whatever, keep worrying about the eventual "hacks"!

    https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/01/08/28c3-smart-meter-hacking-can-disclose-which-tv-shows-and-movies-you-watch/

    601:

    Are you sure EU washing machines normally have a hot feed?

    The first 5 machines I checked on ao.com dont and my 2 year old machine doesn’t.

    602:

    I've seen (and worked on) American electrics which, I presume, were up to code.

    The U.S. electric code sounds barking mad honestly.

    603:

    What happens with folks having problems paying their electricity bill in the UK and run into debt is that the electricity company will eventually fit a prepayment meter in that home, swapping out the old billing meter. That doesn't count as a disconnection. Part of the prepayment they make to keep the lights on etc. goes towards paying down the debt. I'm not sure if there's any interest, I believe the prepayment also goes towards the costs of swapping out the meter.

    If the person living in that home can't pay prepayment they don't get electricity but that's their fault, not a disconnection.

    604:

    By flying the engine (which separates from the rest of the first stage) back to a landing strip rather than spending mass, fuel and logistics bringing the tanks etc. back. The engine (singular) is the really expensive bit, SpaceX trades off reduced payload and inability to meet some orbital insertion parameters to return a lot of cheap (relatively speaking) aluminium alloy back safely to Earth.

    605:

    That Hansard is a nightmare snapshot of ignorance and ideological blindness... Yes, well, they are MP's are they not, almost all "educated" in P-P-E, with no scientific or technical training AT ALL. Current clasical example is the incompetent lying swine C Grayling, stopping railway electrification at the exact same time that we are supposedly going over to electric cars. What a tosser

    606:

    clothes line

    Clothes lines are a great energy saver. And the work great.

    Well unless it's humid, dusty, raining, lots of birds decide to rest there, under trees that drop leaves in the fall, pines that drop needles, trees that drop sap at times, or very cold. But other than that they are great.

    Apparently my parents owned an electric dryer before anyone but doctors in the small town where I was born. My sister was born with failing kidneys in 52. Wet diapers non stop. In the winter. Hanging on the back porch. Frozen so you had to fill the small house indoors with them. My father decided he'd sacrifice almost anything to deal with it and so they bought an electric dryer.

    607:

    The U.S. electric code sounds barking mad honestly.

    From what I've read in wikipedia and based on my single visit to Ireland I'd say for every issue you might raise with the US system I can match you and counter raise.

    UK Ring circuits, fused plugs, inside metering, no outlets in the bathroom (IR only?), no apparent requirements for outlets every X meter of wall, etc...

    The US system could certainly use a LOT less copper if we had gone with 220/240 for typical usage but that ship has sailed.

    608:

    Of course the usability of clothes lines depends on (a) the climate/weather and (b) the availability of space in your place.

    And that's where the attic comes into it. As Martin already mentioned, in Germany practically all housing has both cellar and attic.

    So you can either use a room in the cellar for putting clothes lines in. That's the first standard solution used in many many places. Usually that's either the room where the house's heating system resides or the room adjacent to that. So you have it nice and warm throughout the year, particularly during winter. The only thing you need to do is to make sure that there is enough air circulation and the humidity from the drying clothes can get out. By the way, many single houses will also have their washing machine in the cellar. Thus it doesn't take up any space in your living quarters, kitchen, or bathroom, and the way from the washing machine to the clothes line is short. You can also collect your laundry somewhere in that room before putting it into the machine, so your dirty clothes also don't take up any space inside your living quarters. Many condos or apartment houses will also have dedicated washing and drying rooms in the cellar, where all washing machines of all inhabitants will live and everybody hangs their clothes to dry. This may work with a timetable: on Mondays, apartments 1 and 2 can use the facilities, on Tuesdays apartments 3 and 4, and so on. Thus the drying room doesn't get used above its capacity, because at no time everybody needs to hang up their clothes at the same time.

    Or you do the same with the attic. That's the second standard solution. In that case there will usually only be the clothes lines, no extra room for the washing machines. These will be located individually inside the flats. The attic is usually not as well insulated as the rest of the house, so drying your clothes in winter can take longer (in our attic three to four days). But it's usually a large room (one undivided space above the whole floor of the house), so you can get a lot of length of clothes line up there, and air circulation isn't much of a problem. And in summer, when the thermometer easily goes to 40 degrees in the attic, everything is bone-dry in just a couple of hours.

    As a result, I have always thought of an electrical dryer as a weird and somewhat unexplainable piece of equipment, and while it's not quite true that I don't know anybody who has one, I still think that the few people who I know to have one wouldn't actually really need it. In my perspective the main reasons for having one in Germany are laziness and thoughtlessness. (I happen to think exactly the same about air conditioning, the only difference being that I really don't know anybody who has one.)

    609:

    UK electrical "madness"?

    Ring circuits,

    Less copper required. (Bear in mind that this originated before the introduction of high consumption appliances, the usual maximum drain would be a kettle or electric heater around 2 to 3 kW input.)

    fused plugs,

    To protect the equipment and wiring against short circuits. Circuit breakers had not been invented for domestic use when this was introduced. (It was an upgrade from fusing the ring or spur circuit (only) and using unfused plugs.)

    inside metering,

    Better weather protection? You really don't want water in your electrics. (Having said that, my previous (1950s) house had the meter in a cupboard in the porch, so still outside but under some protection.)

    no outlets in the bathroom (IR only?),

    Sensible safety precaution! You can have special (low current, double-insulated) outlets for electric razors, etc. but otherwise all metalwork must be electrically bonded to earth, and no power circuits permitted where you can touch them.

    no apparent requirements for outlets every X meter of wall

    That's Building Regulations (lack of a requirement), and nothing to do with the Wiring regulations, I'm afraid.

    I'm happy with the UK Wiring Regulations, though have a bone to pick with the draconian 'Part P' of the Building Regs that prohibit me from doing my own electrical installation work. (Someday I must get around to documenting the exploits of the "Cowboy Builder" and some truly bizarre electrical work perpetrated by same.)

    Chris.

    610:

    Ring circuits, fused plugs You do realise that the fused plug is as well as a fuse or circuit breaker on the distribution board that the ring is fed from? This means that I can safely use, say, a 60W wander light on a socket fed from a 3_000W load ring.

    611:

    Nojay is correct re. pre-pay meter installation being used as an alternative to disconnection.

    Ofgem states that in 2015, around 86,000 pre-payment meters were installed under warrant (that's where the energy company forces installation of a pre-pay meter in order to recover debt: the customer then has to either pay down the debt or self-disconnect). CAB reckons around 1.62M consumers self-disconnected in 2015.

    Obviously, many households will only self-disconnect for a short time (sometimes for trivial reasons - I used to self-disconnect because I'd forgotten to top up, which was annoying but not actually a problem unless the shops had shut already), but there will be no shortage of households that disconnected for long periods of time, including over winter. In all likelihood the people doing so will also be struggling with food insecurity and probably rent arrears as well -that's what I saw going on anyway.

    612:

    Happy birthday, Charlie. Hope you have a good one & many more to come.

    I just began a second read of The Delirium Brief, and I'm enjoying it as much this time as the first time through. There is indeed a great difference between what Bob says and how he actually behaves.

    613:

    The Prometheus engine is scheduled to eventually replace Vulcain. Vulcain is an LH2/LOX motor; Prometheus is a methalox engine, like SpaceX's Raptor (the motor for the BFR, not Falcon 9/Heavy).

    My guess is that they'll either go through the whole painful learning curve SpaceX went through wrt. boostback and landing of first stages (seriously, if you haven't watched that YouTube video yet, you need to see it!) or pick a different route, e.g. the proposal to mount the motors on a reusable capsule with parachutes and ditch the tankage (the cheap part of the first stage) on each flight.

    The only problem is, Arianespace (and ULA, and Roscosmos) are all several years behind the curve because they all though Musk was a grandstanding amateur at first.

    614:

    And these things will be rooted: anything installed in millions of people's homes will be. (And once rooted it matters not what the spec says the software is allowed to do, only what the hardware is capable of.) GCHQ, no less, say the security is shite (per HW's Hansard link). If they think it is a matter of concern I don't consider "nah, no-one's gonna do that" an adequate refutation.

    And the rooting will be done by state-level actors with an effectively unlimited budget.

    If you can get TCP/IP packets into a device, then it must be capable of participating in a three-way handshake, which means you can get data out of the device.

    Forget spear phishing for foreign politicians' and civil servants' laptops; all you now need is their street address and access to their smart meter device connections and you can potentially turn any suitably equipped piece of hardware into a bugging device in their home. And yes, we do already have the first creeping infiltration of voice-controlled gadgets and devices with embedded cameras in our homes. It started with webcams and tablets and phones, but things like Amazon Echo and Apple's forthcoming Homepod and so on and so forth will add to the household threat surface.

    What do you think the KGB would be willing to pay for full root access to Donald Trump's smartphone? Now imagine what they'd be willing to pay for audio and video access to the home and office of every officer and politician in every non-friendly state ...

    615:

    Ring Circuits: A really good idea esp for load-spreading, rather than a spider-net of single feeds. I installed 4 when I re-wired: kitchen, other downstairs power, upstairs power, & lighting, plus a single-feed for the hot-water heater. ( I cook with gas & the central heating is also gas ) Fused plugs: AS WELL AS fused or tripped cricuits, actually. Double protection. Inside Metering: Only on new or refurbed properties. Newer ones have them vulnerable to external physical attack. No outlets in the bathroom: NOT true. But, you must shroud ( i.e cover against splashes ) any such outlets & they must be double-pole switched, i.e. both lines are disconnected when "off" rather than just the live supply. I have two - one a visible power-point, with a separate switch & a second, inside the airing/store cupboard for the aforementioned immersion water-heater in its lagged tank. Mounting distance: You put the plugs where you want them, not where som arbitrary regulation says. There has been a recent change (I think) that sockets must now be a specified distance above floor-level.

    And your problem was?

    616:

    Yeah, well, I have an engineering MSc, but I'm not allowed to do my own 240V domestic wiring ( Or rather, I am, but mustthen get a "certified electician" to OK it - for a fee ) Bollocks to that, I just ignore it.

    617:

    You forgot to add .. And they WILL sell or give these protocols to paid agents or other ant-gumint "forces" in your country, just to stir the pot a little further, by having multiple, distributed attacks, rather than "just" an army of 'bots from a single source.

    618:

    And the rooting will be done by state-level actors with an effectively unlimited budget.

    Initially, sure. But then some leak will happen and the tools will be out in the wild and then it will be interesting times. Just as is happening presently with a bunch of NSA toolkit

    619:

    So in NZ in the 60s/70s, it was common that the electricity / water meters were built into an accessible external foundation wall, usually behind a glass cover so they can be read by anyone but were nominally weatherproof. Mains Gas was and is unusual, but I understand similar practices ensued. By the 90s the meter was in a standard metal box attached to the external wall, with a simple door for maintenance and a glass panel for reading. The only exception I recall was in alpine environments where the meter is inside a vestibule behind the front door but still outside the private area.

    In the UK, my meters have been in successively : a cavity above the inside of the front door, a box inside a kitchen cupboard, a hatch in the floor in the corridor, a panel behind the lounge sofa, a box built above the front door again and in a cupboard built out above my wardrobe in my bedroom. Standards? We've heard of them.

    On the payment/disconnection side, I used to work on billing software for utility companies. In NZ or Oz you could fairly easily cut off customers. In Texas, they can sit in a bare house with all their worldly goods repossessed for non-payment and still electrocute themselves with bare wires.
    The southern states had legally protected electricity for summer for A/C, the northern ones in winter for heating, in practice both had year round protection. NZ and Aus don't have that unless you have pre-registered life saving equipment on site, but they did have similar rules for water, where the flow would be restricted for non-payment but not actually stopped.

    620:

    :shrug: I've fixed a few in my time and they all had hot feeds. I saw maybe one that didn't.

    621:

    Re: 'On the payment/disconnection side, I used to work on billing software for utility companies.'

    With the Equifax massive data breach exposing about half the US population's PII, credit history and probably their primary email and related info, all you need is to dump this info into a segmentation program and sell off the segments piecemeal just like direct mail mailing lists.

    To your point about billing software for utility companies ... The Equifax breach also means that credit history has been compromised - so how are utilities going to cope with that?

    622:

    Re electric car fast charging points: I was listening to radio 4 earlier , (whilst making a crumble topping for the blackberry & apple, it's a boring process ... rub rub rub ) and there was a short segment on 'you and yours' about them . Apparently at the moment there is a grand total of 8 of the things in the whole of Wales which (as I hardly need remind anyone familiar with the BBC) is a country roughly the size of Wales ... altho' if you smoothed it out flat it would be somewhat larger.

    Now London has the first ever charging point in a Shell petrol station, hoorah ! And by the end of the year there will be 9 more around the country ... wow. It also had an interesting interview with a chap who has driven an electric car in the UK for the past year and a half, and wouldn't recommend it to anyone http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b098bsy8

    The Grauniad has an article on it, with some actual statistics "Drivers will be able to recharge 80% of their battery in half an hour at forecourts in London, Surrey and Derby from this week", which sounds like a delightful way to break a journey and "Branded Shell Recharge, the charging points will cost a discounted 25p per kilowatt hour of power until next June, when the price will revert to its normal level of 49p per kWh. At the normal price, that means recharging a Nissan Leaf from virtually flat to a full charge would cost nearly £20, while a top-end Tesla Model S would cost almost £50." "Shell said that in a handful of cases it paid for upgrades to the local energy grid, to make it capable of handling the rapid charging points."

    Will I be asking for a loan ( which I wouldn't get by the way ) to get rid of my 9 year old ford and buy an electric car which in my normal use would leave me stranded in the countryside miles from a charging point at least once a week ? I somehow don't think so.

    623:

    Everything has its maximum power consumption listed on a plate on the back somewhere; of course for things like washing machines that is not very useful, as they may have a 3kW water heater which may never even be used, and most of a wash cycle is spent using no more than maybe a couple of hundred watts, whereas for something like a kettle it's pretty much the whole picture.

    There is also a less formal alphabetical scale that rates appliances from A to G for efficiency; exactly how this is calculated I've never bothered to find out, but it's some sort of comparison against some kind of average figure for appliances of that type. It is usually more prominently displayed on the box/brochures/etc than the maximum consumption figure, but it seems to me to partake far more of marketing disguised as environmentalism than of anything genuinely useful.

    624:

    "the charging points will cost a discounted 25p per kilowatt hour of power until next June, when the price will revert to its normal level of 49p per kWh."

    HOW much???? Gordon Bennett.

    I suppose if you're stuck with a flat battery miles from home, and don't have a choice...

    625:

    US: I have owned, or rented a good number of places in my life. The houses I've owned ranged from being built in 1852 to my current, 1956 or 7. As far as I can tell, over that entire timespan, they are all wired by the same plan: the electrician is given the money to do the job on a Friday, he goes out all weekend on a bender, and Monday morning, seriously hung over, buys the supplies and wires the house.

    That passage is in the same circuit as the opposite wall in the living room? And the porch is on the same circuit as the other opposite wall?

    Second floors are all wired on one 15A (20 if you're really lucky) breaker. Which, of course, reminds me I really need to get around to pulling that armored cable up to the second floor, so I have a dedicated 20A for all the computer stuff. Yes, where I am, I could run just ROMEX, but I'm paranoid, and go for Philly/Chicago city code, but can't really put conduit in.

    And I can't run the microwave and the toaster oven at the same time.

    In the US, over the last 35 or so years, breaker boxes have replaced fuse boxes. Older ones are 15A, newer, 20A, and hopefully 200A service.

    And the former owner of the house raved about his handyman; I think I'm up to three pages as to why that ASSHOLE will never cross my doorstep. Like painting over sockets. Like not directly wiring the ground wire to the plug. Like cutting the armored cable to the (undersized) attic fan, to run ROMEX, just laid on top of the insulatio0n, not even tacked up, to power the ceiling fan in the master bedroom....

    626:

    In the US, meters used to be inside the house, requiring someone to be home a few times a year to let them read the meter. They've been moving them outside for decades, and often one with a radio transponder, so they can just drive by and read them.

    They just moved my gas meter out front early this year. Took a few hours.

    627:

    In the US, everywhere I've lived, they do several things: first, they push, hard, to get you on the budget bill, where they estimate your total annual usage, and you pay the same amount every month. They also offer the person paying the option of rounding the bill up to the dollar, or contributing to a fund to assist those in need.

    And no, no cutting it off from mid-fall to spring.

    628:

    I've been saying for a while now that I did not sign up to live in a cyberpunk dystopic future... but that damn well is where we are.

    629:

    Apart from it being a promising sign that the petrol stations are finally getting in on the act it’s almost irrelevant to the ease or not of getting a charge.

    Zap-map is what you want.

    There are undeniable problems with compatibility and irregular geographical coverage -but the price of charging isn’t one of them.

    Look at the overall coverage in Wales - fast chargers are on the 2 motorways, but plenty of normal chargers over the map.

    630:

    I remember helping out an American chap who was experiencing some thoroughly bizarre behaviour from his house installation, a project which involved the exchange of innumerable emails and a lot of time spent on the net looking up details of US electrical practices - this was back when it was still easy to find lots of useful information of that kind on the net. It made my hair stand on end. His supply was a pair of wires bringing in 220V, which was interpreted as two lots of 110V in antiphase about a common neutral. But the neutral line was a high impedance connection because of some fucking stupid practice that more or less guaranteed that it would go high impedance sooner or later - I forget exactly what, but it was something like using a ground return instead of copper so the impedance was a function of soil moisture levels, or if not precisely that something equally horrendous; at any rate something having the nature of a bloody awful bodge to save pennies whose awfulness didn't stop it being pretty widespread in rural installations. So unless the loads on the two antiphase 110V lines were equal, the neutral would be sitting at somewhere other than 0V, and you'd get brown light bulbs on one side of it and blown ones on the other.

    631:

    The first-cut plan for the returnable-motor system on an Ariane vehicle, codenamed "Adeline" uses a glider system landing on a runway, not parachutes. It doesn't have to be the Prometheus motor, the existing Vulcain 2 could be returned as well but it's not designed to be reuasable in part since it runs a lot hotter than the less-efficient SpaceX motors.

    632:

    The stuff I worked on billed ~15m customers a month. I have absolutely no idea what happens on the level of an individual customer beyond they had a column labelled Credit Rating which was a numerical score. At the time that was internal to the software so specific to the utility. I have a vague recollection it was based on payment history and amount owed but I basically didn't touch that bit, I was more on the industrial metering side. I think it mostly was used by the customer care teams rather than automated.
    I would presume that the equifax breach would be irrelevant to the utility though unless they relied on external data.

    633:

    The tankage might be cheap, but integrating it with the engine isn't. Since SpaceX wants to eventually land the rocket, and fly it again in 24 hours that integration time gets really important.

    You see, this is what happens when accountants try to do engineering...

    634:

    1.Read a story this AM (forgot where now and finding it on this phone is painful,) that said the Equifax theft is no big deal because a lot of the customers had already been compromised elsewhere. 2. Wife and I intended to build a house (USA) in mid or late 90s and visited a builder to discuss plans. Instead of a double outlet every four feet I asked for quad outlets with more 20 amp circuits. Plainly the future consisted of more and more electrical gadgets, thought. Builder said no'. I asked whether electrical code prohibited it, he said no, code was fine it just wasn't how they did things. Even if it cost them the job? Yep. I wondered whether I had been teleported to a foreign land... 3. Every 'Merican is a natural genius, it says so on the label. Let's just say that the prior owner of my current house was not an electrician. Or a phone installer. Or, frankly, a carpenter. 15 years on I've fixed or had fixed most of his hidden time bombs but how this place passed the pre-sale inspection mystifies me. When we put in my darkroom we spent half the time laughing and the other half shaking our heads that the place hadn't burned down.

    I think I know basic wiring but I don't do it. I hire people who actually do know what they're doing. Like tanker Oddball in the movie Kelly's Heros, I just drive 'em, I don't know what makes them go.

    635:

    It's a notorious problem here in the UK that building surveyors check properties for problems before you get yoru mortgage or you buy or whatever, but they are famous for being useless, not spotting any problems and not actually doing any work to see if the building is actually safe to live in or won't burn down from bad electrics.

    If that many people are 'voluntarily' disconnecting themselves, that argues for a massive amount of fuel poverty, which seems to get ignored a lot.

    Mayhem #619 - the standards are about safety and efficiency, not about where you put the meter. In that, they do a good job. Meanwhile the architect can worry about where to put the meter without spoiling their design.

    636:

    All the Adeline system needs is some quick-disconnects on the lines between the engine and the tanks once they're empty, something that's a lot less complex and much less of a weight penalty than the SpaceX landing legs, guidance fins etc. which have to cope with the entire weight of a nearly-empty first stage (about 20-odd tonnes IIRC). SpaceX reckon they've solved in-flight quick-disconnects since they plan to fly the Falcon Heavy while transferring fuel from the core stage to the booster stages. The Delta 4 Heavy which uses three liquid stages (although they're fully cryogenic, not LOX/RP-1) flies with a throttled-down central core and no fuel transfers, only throttling up after separation.

    A Vulcain-2 engine weighs only 1.8 tonnes. Assuming a glider shell massing 500kg or so to bring it back to a landing strip somewhere convenient then that's less of a hit on the payload to orbit capabilities of the launcher than a couple of tonnes of landing legs etc. Adeline doesn't recover the tanks but they're not the expensive part of the vehicle.

    637:

    "Zap-map is what you want." No, it simply reinforces what I already knew, i.e. there are no fast charge points in the rural places (different ones every week) I regularly drive 120 or more round trip miles to in a day, and with the true range of the cheapest nissan leaf being given by actual users as around 100 miles, (more like 85 to 90 in the cold),

    "Look at the overall coverage in Wales - fast chargers are on the 2 motorways, but plenty of normal chargers over the map." As well as telling me what I want (and being wrong) you have inferred I am in Wales, which I'm not. But if I was , I suspect the e-car range would be even less impressive.

    I am sure that for driving in the hideous metropolis , short distance commuting or shopping and the like, for people with over £20 000 burning a hole in their pocket, electric will eventually be the way to go.

    Right now though, for me (and swathes of other folk) the high cost and total impracticality of even the cheapest e-car makes it a laughable suggestion, so please stop evangelising and understand that some situations are outside your experience .

    638:

    Re: '... notorious problem here in the UK that building surveyors ... useless'

    New codes seem to mostly apply to new construction in the UK with getting old buildings up to code at the discretion of homeowners. Insurers might provide a nudge if they dangle lower premiums for up-to-current-code properties.

    Given the variety and age of housing in the UK, and that technical building regs fall under regional authority one wonders how many trades these surveyors would need to be expert at in order to puzzle out the mishmash of tech under one typical UK roof.

    Not my bailiwick but it looks as though the UK regs skew toward functional requirements leaving it up to someone else to figure out the how which could make for really interesting building situations.

    http://www.academia.edu/4073314/Technical_building_regulations_in_EU_countries_a_comparison_of_their_organization_and_formulation_paper_

    639:

    SpaceX reckon they've solved in-flight quick-disconnects since they plan to fly the Falcon Heavy while transferring fuel from the core stage to the booster stages

    No they don't. Falcon Heavy is using three independent cores unless someone needs the extra payload capacity badly enough to pay SpaceX to develop cross-feed. Cross feed was dropped a long time ago.

    Everyone flying liquid fueled rockets has solved quick-disconnects though, the fuelling umbilicals generally stay attached to the launcher until it has actually started moving.

    640:

    Your reply is irrelevant to my complaint.

    641:

    I think you need to make a few less presumptions about what I post.

    Firstly the Zap-map comment was the colloquial you, not you personally.

    Secondly I don't care where you live - the reference to Wales was what you posted.

    Lastly since I made no reference to your situation in your first post.

    For the record my situation doesn't really permit an EV either. It's a bit like the early days of mobiles. The tech is there uts just a tad unevenly distributed right now.

    As an aside talking about news articles about cars - there was a good one about diesels. Turns out a 6 year old Skoda beats a brand new example of the best selling UK car on real world emissions.

    Not a fan with the style but the content is food for thought. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/how_toxic_is_your_car_exhaust

    642:

    It's a notorious problem here in the UK that building surveyors check properties for problems before you get yoru mortgage or you buy or whatever, but they are famous for being useless, not spotting any problems and not actually doing any work to see if the building is actually safe to live in or won't burn down from bad electrics. FWIW, in the US you can find good house inspectors - they will find a long list of stuff that needs to be fixed/remediated, or that will otherwise serve well as negotiation levers when negotiating price. In a buyer's market they can be be irritatingly effective. (Says someone who was in that position once.) Not sure how to best sort (best first) the inspectors though. They generally don't focus on safety though (unless a safety failing is a potential negotiation lever), so that part is similar.

    643:

    Sorry gordycoale , I mis-identified you as another poster with a one word name starting with 'g' and associated your post with earlier ones of theirs, which had peeved me with their air of lofty condescension...

    I blame ageing eyes for the I.D. , and a lifetime of being talked down to about technical things (I'm female, so apparently can't possibly understand)for the ratty response.

    644:

    I have a huge question about reusability. I may have misconceptions about space, but I can't figure out why it's cheaper to disconnect the engines as opposed to returning the whole booster like SpaceX does?

  • You have to disconnect the engines mid-flight. This sounds easy, but how do you do it in such a way as to
  • a. Not damage the engine itself? b. Still allow the engine to be well integrated into the booster while it's firing? c. Ensure that there is no excess fuel in the engine itself that could ignite later? (SpaceX keeps the engines on a few seconds after landing to burn off excess fuel)

  • You've detached it. Great. Now you need parachutes to slow it down. Here's a rundown of all the reasons SpaceX doesn't use parachutes
  • https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/7718/why-would-spacex-not-use-parachutes-for-the-final-descent-of-the-first-stage

  • Your capsule needs to keep ocean water out of the engines until it's located. Without excess fuel, it doesn't have the capability to perform precision landings on ships. This means that the capsule is not reusable. I imagine that this also presents a mass penalty
  • Is this system still better mass and cost wise than biting the bullet and just returning the first stage?

    645:
    I have a huge question about reusability.

    I think a lot of people have questions about Arianespace (and ULA's somewhat similar) reusability plan. Before really getting into the technical specifics, they both seem to be designed mostly to be afterthoughts that assume that the point of reusability is as a cost-saving tweak that shouldn't significantly impact the rocket's design or capabilities.

    The basic idea for Ariane 6 / Adeline is for the first stage engine(s) to be encapsulated in a little pod with wings and airplane engines of some sort. Once it detaches from the rest of the stage, it reenters and flies home to land on a runway.

    ULA on the other hand has the idea of the engine pod descending on parachutes and being caught in mid-air by a helicopter, which is... interesting.

    Someone at ULA published a spreadsheet a year or two ago attempting to justify their design decisions. My general recollection is that their model assumes that a low flight rate, high R&D cost for reuse, and in general the desire to build the reuse bits later after the rocket is flying made the pod idea more satisfactory to bean counters.

    One other thing to remember is that SpaceX is using 9 small rocket engines, while both Ariane and ULA are using one or two large engines. The SpaceX approach of of landing on your tail is overpowered even with a single engine throttled all the way down: it doesn't seem to work with one large engine at all.

    As for the technical issues...

    You have to disconnect the engines mid-flight.

    The space shuttle did this successfully every launch, and even covered the attachment point with a retractable heat shield.

    Now you need parachutes to slow it down.

    Well, not the Ariane version as far as I know.

    Your capsule needs to keep ocean water out of the engines until it's located.

    Neither of these designs seems to assume an ocean landing.

    One perhaps interesting point though: SpaceX has recently decided to attempt recovery on their fairing halves as well. These are large carbon-fiber clamshell shapes, which are jettisoned above the atmosphere. Their solution as far as anyone can tell is to mount a small thruster on them to control orientation, and then steer them down through the atmosphere as sort of natural controlled airfoils. This has, apparently, worked.

    They've said their plan is to land them on a "bouncy castle" at sea, i.e. a large inflatable platform. Perhaps an engine pod could land the same way. :-)

    646:

    Reusability ?? Assuming, of course some fuckwit like Grayling doesn't cancel it at the last minute. Shades of TSR2 & the CAN Avro-Arrow .....

    648:

    UK Metering - Your Mileage Will Vary.

    For example, I have electricity only, internal metering, and am on an obsolescent dual scale tariff. Last year my meters were both replaced, and the overnight meter was replaced with a refurbished unit "because they don't make new meters with this capability any more". My supplier made no mention of a "smart meter".

    My mother has dual gas and electricity supply from a different company. The gas feeds through an external meter cabinet, but that's behind a locked side gate. The electricity feeds through an internal cabinet which contains the distribution boards, and had the dumb meter until it was replaced with a "smart" (presumed V1) meter at about the same time as my meters were replaced.

    649:

    It's a notorious problem here in the UK that building surveyors check properties for problems before you get your mortgage or you buy or whatever, but they are famous for being useless, not spotting any problems and not actually doing any work to see if the building is actually safe to live in or won't burn down from bad electrics.

    Aha! Ahaha!! AHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!!!

    Having been forced to move at short notice by my worthless and treacherous younger brothers (one of whom has since gone to his reward before getting any benefit from his actions), I needed a house at short notice. This led to the purchase of an ex-rental property[1] about 100 yards North of the ex-family home.

    It was scruffy and needed a lot of work doing to it, but I was in a hurry, could afford it with a reasonably small mortgage, and It Would Do.

    The Estate Agents (U.S. Realtors?) dragged their feet over providing a survey, the mortgage company surveyor ticked two boxes "Roof" and "Damp" on the 'issues' page (and I'd already spotted those), and due to the pressure from Treacherous Scum - who eventually applied for a Possession Order against me, I went ahead without a detailed survey, thinking I'd get a copy of the one from the mortgage company. Ha!

    Endless requests for their survey eventually got the answer that it was only a box ticking exercise by their surveyor, and that there was no detail to be had! (The contract stated that I had to fix any problems identified within 12 months, though since they had no idea what the "Roof" and "Damp" problems were, I didn't see how they could verify that[2].)

    Anyway, it turned out that the house had been relentlessly cowboyed by a team of Indian "builders". Little things like the light switches operating in random directions, all the mixer taps have been fitted back to front, the "Hot & Cold" feeds to the washing machine being tee-d off the same (cold) pipe. Etc.

    They have perpetrated some astonishingly bad bodges[3].

    At some point I will write all this up properly and include photographs, but the house is basically sound, it just needs a thorough overhaul (and the converted 'annex' needs gutting and starting again - though I want that as a workshop so it's no great problem).

    Chris. [1] The gift that keeps on giving: mountains of debt-collecting mail to about a dozen previous occupants (this has finally ceased after about a year of "return to sender"), the sole exception being TVLicencing who are just adding to a pile of wastepaper. (Given their determination to pester people even after they've been told via webform that there is no television receiver here, they can just waste their resources on the recycling bin. [2] 'Roof' is a couple of cracked tiles that don't actually leak, and some torn-off lead flashing on the join between the annex and the house, which does. 'Damp' is from the flashing, a blocked gutter, and the house not being occupied or heated for over a year. It's fine now. [3] Mainly the 'annex' conversion (garage/utility room into a 'granny flat' for the landlord. The electrical wiring is "interesting" (.cn) and I have pulled all the breakers apart from the lighting circuit to be on the safe(r) side.

    650:

    Instead of a double outlet every four feet I asked for quad outlets with more 20 amp circuits.

    As I worked around my 1961 house replacing ungrounded outlets I put in a lot of quad boxes. And if possible made entire runs with 12/3 romex. Replacing the older 14/3 (grounded box but not outlet) and tar cloth wiring.

    Or a phone installer. Or, frankly, a carpenter. 15 years on I've fixed or had fixed most of his hidden time bombs but how this place passed the pre-sale inspection mystifies me.

    Wiring inspection is done before drywall goes up. Codes are state with local overrides. Inspection quality depends a LOT on the area. Everywhere I've lived they seemed to be good or to some degree over the top.

    But as to cable/phones/networking. 3 lots down they tore down another early 60s house and just put the replacement on the market for $1,200,000. And when I walked through it under construction I could see I would not want it. Wiring was well done but give me a break. One coax and cat5 wire to a room? Even 20'x20' bonus rooms? And non to the 2 1/2 car garage? And the few miles away gut remodel my daughter is buying has absolutely no data, phone, or networking wire anywhere. We know it and have factored it into the pre move work plan.

    The problem is very very very few home buyers think of such things up front. They are dazzled by the elegant chandelier and don't realize the $500 to $1500 the builder saved (on this million $ home) behind the walls will cost them 4 times that or more to deal with in the future. And be fighting crappy wifi because the can't extend the network via a wired connection to get around the wall of metal caused by bathrooms, hidden ducting, and kitchen appliances.

    651:

    Given the variety and age of housing in the UK, and that technical building regs fall under regional authority one wonders how many trades these surveyors would need to be expert at in order to puzzle out the mishmash of tech under one typical UK roof.

    I'm guessing what you call surveyors we in the US call building inspectors. A decent inspection will cost you $500. My daughter just paid for one. It was worth it. But they will not tear out drywall or look at anything that requires getting behind something that will have to be repaired. So wiring to them is end points only unless they see some bad things in the attic or under the house.

    Knob and tube makes most of them (and me) run away quicly.

    652:

    A good surveyor is worth it.

    When we were looking to move out of London in the earlier noughties, one property we went to see was in Letchworth Garden City. It was in a reasonable area, and it was an end-of-terrace property but, this being LGC, an Arts & Crafts terrace. And it was a good size too, as it had just been extended.

    End of terrace? Well, we were moving out of a two-bed mid terrace in north Ealing (also Arts & Craft, because the original developers of LGC had originally done a dozen streets in north Ealing including ours), and this place was much bigger. So we made an offer, 'subject to survey'.

    We got the surveyor's preliminary report over the phone the evening before we were flying out on holiday. My wife took 4 pages of notes, and immediately cancelled the offer.

    The original house was fine, but the extension had out-of-vertical walls, doors that didn't properly shut, plaster that hadn't keyed properly to the walls underneath, roof joists floating above the walls they were supposed to be sitting on, ... yeah. Nothing that couldn't be fixed with money, but no thanks.

    As I understand it it's now the seller's responsibility to get the survey done. This saves each potential purchaser paying, but then again, who pays the piper and all that.

    653:

    Knob and tube makes most of them (and me) run away quickly.

    searches

    Holy fuck!

    I really, really hope nobody ever tried that with 240V

    (NARRATOR: they did)

    655:

    Before I rewired it, my whole house had an earlier ( about 1907 ) version of this: Thin steel tubes, with the waxed-cotton-wrapped live wires drawn through the tubes, which had protected ( rubber grommet) ends. WHere convenient ( e.g. the loft), I re-used the tubes, with modern pvc (etc) insulated wire drawn through the tubes, & grounding the tubes via a connection at junction-boxws where appropriate. The real problem was like that shown in one of the pictures - where the wire came out of a tube to go to a terminal, the insulation had started to powder away, through oxidation. Definitely unsafe & a fire hazard.

    656:

    The house inspection I recently got in Seattle (well three of them actually, it's quite something buying a house in Seattle) was quite informative. $300. The inspector actually didn't have any particular fear of knob and tube, if it was in good condition, but it does make the house worth less. The house I ended up buying had it. What was kind of bad was some of the later work. And really, it was pretty obvious just to look at it that some of the later work was poor (a sloppy looking junction box in the attic into the knob and tube, rather than running an entire new circuit), while the knob and tube was very neat and actually all still just fine. Looking at the knob and tube, where it had not been disturbed it looked essentially new after 69 years. Copper wire with a thick slightly gummy tar/fabric insulation. Every penetration and attachment point a ceramic sleeve (tube) or clamp (knob). The only thing that looks a little shady is where they splice wires together without any box or what-have-you. And it had worked for 69 years just fine. It is actually still used for certain industrial applications.

    However knob and tube = two pronged outlets (no ground). Also you can't pile insulation on top of it. And they used less than half as many circuits back then as they do today (though IMO that has recently become a bit silly, as lighting uses 1/10th the power that it did a few years ago). So I had all but a small part of modern work that was good replaced(furnace and washer/drier had been redone well, probably when a furnace was installed) . The electricians and city inspector both expressed the opinion that the knob and tube had not been at all unsafe, provided you don't insulate it, and somehow don't need any grounded plugs. They left a few scraps in the attic which I cleaned up, and the knob and tube wiring really looked and felt, I expect, exactly as it did two months after it was installed. I was bending it up to stick it in a garbage bag and it bent nicely with no crumbling. The couple inline splices I found were nice and tight and strong when pulled on.

    The potentially more scary stuff is early aluminum wiring. It tended to pull loose over time. They figured that out with better connections and later aluminum is fine. Worse a loose connection is likely to work up to some load and then overheat, so has a fire causing failure mode when a person moves in and plugs in their giant TV or whatever.

    Anyhow, inspection very well worth a few hundred bucks. Essentially you end up with a big list of stuff you must/should/could fix with ballpark cost estimates and perhaps some random upgrade comments from a person who has looked at thousands of houses.

    657:

    Yea, I do think rubber insulation is bad. Rubber oxidizes away eventually. That's also why duct-tape is useless for ducts. The rubber degrades, it degrades extra quick when warm, like when on a heating duct. Actually even most foil tape has the same problem with its glue.

    658:

    In the US, you can hire your own inspector, and not use the mortgage co's. As long as they're licensed and bonded, the mortgage co will accept it.

    Best inspection I ever had was for our house in Chicago. We got it inspected by a friend's landlord/later boyfriend, who for a living bought houses, gutted and redid them. HE knew all the gotchas to look for.

    659:

    SpaceX reckon they've solved in-flight quick-disconnects since they plan to fly the Falcon Heavy while transferring fuel from the core stage to the booster stages.

    Nope, they cancelled the plumber's nightmare — at least in the first iteration of Falcon Heavy. (It might show up again in a later point release.)

    660:

    In Scotland the seller provides a Home Report comprising a surveyor assessment, an energy efficiency report and a property questionnaire with other information like property tax band to each prospective purchaser for free or no more than the costs of copying and postage. The equivalent Home Information Pack scheme in England and Wales was suspended in 2010 and canceled/repealed in 2012 by the Westminster govt.

    661:

    In the UK there is a whole range of survey options ranging fromt a full survey (everything but drilling holes in the plaster work, to a valuation survey (if you default is there anything that will make it worth less than what your mortgage provider lent you)

    Good summary here

    http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-2303907/How-pick-right-survey-Is-new-home-ticking-timebomb.html

    Many buyers risk just a valuation survey.

    662:

    Bored with the knob-and-tube wiring discussion (once briefly lived in a room where the knob and tube wiring was exposed (no wallboard), one meter from the bed, and the insulation if any had long fallen off. US so only 120V.)

    Somebody has to mention the bad news paper of the day (ok yesterday): More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas (18 Oct 2017) Not a biologist so I can't reliably pick out any flaws in the study but it looks like it might be solid. (Didn't find any critiques yet, didn't look hard though.) It doesn't look (from the picture) like the Malaise traps (wikipedia) used have a pan to collect heavy insects like beetles that drop rather than fly up. Even so, pretty scary. Anyone care to comment? Another indirect measure of insects is the population of insectivore (at least while breeding, to feed young) birds, but there are many other factors that affect those populations.

    The other one in the news today (DeepMind is really good at the press game (also see the abstract), but the paper is very interesting.) is Mastering the game of Go without human knowledge (18 Oct 2017, paywalled, abstract available). It's worth reading (IMO) if you can acquire a copy. Via https://phys.org/news/2017-10-self-taught-superhuman-ai-smarter-makers.html and many other places. Full tabula rasa reinforcement learning, no supervised learning involved. (This has been done (decades) to achieve superhuman performance for other simpler games.) Starting tabula rasa, our new program AlphaGo Zero achieved superhuman performance, winning 100–0 against the previously published, champion-defeating AlphaGo.

    663:

    Where did the Space Shuttle disconnect the engines from the tanks?

    I know that the Shuttle SRB's disconnected from the main payload, but the engines never disconnected from the SRB's. Likewise, the SSME's never disconnected from the orbiter during flight.

    664:

    Er, the huge, orange, insulated external tank that provided the LH/LOX fuel to the SSMEs? It's a bit too large to be invisible.

    It was a requirement (Proxmire! (Spit!)) that it be jettisoned in such a way that it would fall back into the atmosphere and burn up, rather than continue into orbit with the shuttle - this required an additional retro-rocket to be fitted to the tank, thereby wasting even more payload capacity.

    665:

    Somebody has to mention the bad news paper of the day (ok yesterday): More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas (18 Oct 2017). Not a biologist so I can't reliably pick out any flaws in the study but it looks like it might be solid. (Didn't find any critiques yet, didn't look hard though.)

    Yeah. Um. So what does it mean? There's a general downward trend in insect biomass, but in a quick scan I don't see data on numbers of insects or species. So either they're going to write other papers on that topic, or they couldn't find any trends. Hopefully it's the former, because it would be nice to know what's dropping out of the system, because that might tell us something useful about what we could do about it (aside from using fewer pesticides and stopping the fragmentation of habitat. Oh, and stopping climate change). If it's the latter, then this isn't all that useful an article, because what's going on is that biomass is decreasing, while numbers of insects and clades aren't showing any meaningful pattern. Something like fewer butterflies and more mosquitoes would cause such a pattern, but since they didn't report it, it's not something so obvious.

    The other problem is that we don't have enough repeat samples to talk about inter-sample variability, and that's a problem for interpretation. While I'm not a fan of strip-mining a fauna to answer a question, it's worth knowing whether the problem is that seasons are becoming more variable, and that's somehow driving a decrease in biomass, or what. I'd also wonder if repeat sampling is helping to drive down biomass, but that would be sarcastic...

    666:

    but in a quick scan I don't see data on numbers of insects or species. Wondered about that too, but no, just mass per day is reported. Perhaps species identification was too hard. They do cite other studies reporting similar downward trends, some of which involved species. (e.g. refs 7,26)[1] Also, "In order to optimally preserve samples for future species determination, the insects were weighed in an alcohol-wet state." (Betcha some samples were lost in 27 years.) Blame the person or group who/that designed the study in 1989/90.

    So what does it mean? From the last paragraph, I'm feeling that their preferred hypothesis at time of writing was related to changes in agricultural practices in the areas surrounding the study areas. But they do not know, at least at time of writing. Agricultural intensification, including the disappearance of field margins and new crop protection methods has been associated with an overall decline of biodiversity in plants, insects, birds and other species in the current landscape [20, 27, 67]. The major and hitherto unrecognized loss of insect biomass that we report here for protected areas, adds a new dimension to this discussion, because it must have cascading effects across trophic levels and numerous other ecosystem effects. There is an urgent need to uncover the causes of this decline, its geographical extent, and to understand the ramifications of the decline for ecosystems and ecosystem services. [1] "Long‐term land‐use changes and extinction of specialised butterflies", 2008, no link found, and Butterfly community shifts over two centuries abstract, 6 Jan 2016

    667:

    I saw that too & am concerned, but, purely from personal observation ...

  • When driving on dual carriagways, yes, there are noticeably fewer dead insects on my windscreen ( something the paper-presenters mentioned on the radio about the subject ).
  • When out in the near-London countryside, I think there are fewer insects, but it's hard to tell, because my usual areas have "sensitive" farming ... headlands are left, there is multi-use ( Thank the evil capitalist "game" sidelines over-&-above the"orrible", sorry ARABLE farming being done for that ) NOTE
  • Down on the allotments, there are as many insects as ever - in fact, this year I saw every single butterfly on the "Nature's Calendar" checklist for the fist time for several years.
  • Tentative conclusions. 1. As has already been noted, the outer suburbs of cities, where there are open spaces, gardens, parks, allotments, that's where you find diversity, now. 2. "Industrial" farming, especially both some pesticides & even-more noticeably nenicotinoid substances are having a really bad effect on insect numbers. 3. "Sensitive" farming sustains a much greater diversity - of everything.

    Question: Does "Industrial" farming actually yield the "best" results for the farmers, never mind everyone else? Discuss.

    NOTE The fields are carrying the usual crops,: Wheat, barley, field beans, turnips, oil-rape (euw) etc, but there are small woodlands. As stated the fields have proper headlands, not ploughed up to millimetres of the edges. There are pheasant & partridge, fed in the woods & roaming, but the locals are not attacking the top-predators. Kestrels, of course, but Buzzards, within sight of the M25 - & breeding succesfully? Foxes, fallow deer, grass snakes & the occasional adder, rabbits, hares, squirrels, stoats, weasels & all the usual other rodents. But, go a couple of miles further north & you get a different picture - no headlands, paths ploughed out, etc. Ten miles further N again, you are back to (by modern standards) small fields again & a more diverse landscape, but I haven't walked that area for a long time, so closer impressions are not to be had.

    668:

    Oh man, Greg, you just brought back some great memories for me - I loved driving Hardknott and Wrynose (in just a normal saloon, in good weather), using the pencil-drawn lap-map that they used to sell in Keswick.

    669:

    Buzzards around the M25 ring! You you sure they're not Golden Eagles? ;-)

    (Scot from eagle country joke)

    670:

    That's less fun when you're used to being able to drive single track to the conditions rather than to "how fast the grockle in front is prepared to go on a road too narrow for them to make a U-turn".

    671:

    Quite certain. I was expecting that the Kites, now livng on the Chilterns to migrate clockwise along the ring of chalk hills to the W / NW / N of London to get there first ... I heard them befoe I saw them, their call is quite characteristic, & one day in the local pub I frequent round there I was told - "No we've seen them" & now, about every 4th or 5th time I go there, they can be seen. As I said, they've bred too - watching a young buzzard trying to do the "stately glide/soar" bit & having to resort to desperate flapping is highly amusing. I think their main prey is rabbits.

    672:

    Ah, the joke in question is that the easiest way to identify a random bird of prey as a buzzard is to be within earshot of an English tourist who is excitedly saying "Look! A golden eagle!"

    I didn't really think that you'd be one of "those people".

    673:

    Calls for UK-wide ban on smacking children after Scottish move

    The children’s commissioners of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland are calling for a UK-wide change in the law after the Scottish government confirmed its support for a ban on smacking children.

    Scotland is to become the first part of the UK to introduce an outright ban on the physical punishment of children, after the Scottish government said it would ensure that a member’s bill became law.

    674:

    There was nothing for the external tanks to do and no-where for them to go except down eventually, even if they were carried to orbit on the Orbital Manoeuvering System (OMS) using fuel that was needed for payload and extended manoeuvering for things like the Hubble missions and ISS construction. A tank re-entering a few months or a few years after achieving orbit due to drag means it comes down at random rather than more predictably after launch. Boosting it into a high enough orbit that it wouldn't re-enter in a reasonable time would take yet more fuel and leave something orbiting, probably tumbling without controls, attitude motors, power or telemetry and be yet another hazard to navigation, possibly even initiating a Kessler Syndrome situation as the tank coatings would disintegrate and flake off over a period of years -- the insulation wasn't rated to endure exposure to 1kw/sq m of direct sunlight plus solar flares for decades.

    Oh sure, Orbital Tank Farm and such but there was no budget for it, no infrastructure for it to support and nothing for it to do. Nice idea though.

    675:

    I'm going to be contrarian & live dangerously here, please bear with me. I can think of one ( And ONLY one ) case where physical punishment is justified. Where the perpetrator, a child in this case, does something potentially terminally stupid & dangerous. Such as: Running into the traffic, pushing another child into the traffic, trying (without realising) to burn the house down/screwing with the mains electrics. Problem with this: where are the boundary cases? I can also see why an absolute ban is easier - for the administrators, if nobody else.

    Oh & FYI, I was never hit as a child, though it came very close a couple of times.

    676:

    I did think it was a silly idea and the Delta 4 Heavy proves throttling the central core works just as well.

    677:

    Imagine someone twice as tall as you, weighing four times as much and three times as strong pulls you aside after they think you've done something wrong and "smacks" you. That's physical assault under law but you're a grownup, not a child so you have recourse.

    It's about time kids were given the same protections under law that adults have.

    678:

    Lessee, nice conservative gov't, supporting homeowners, um, er, no, house-flippers and real estate agents....

    679:

    My late ex, who had worked at the Cape for 17 years, and was a senior engineer there, told me many times how they'd wanted to use the external tanks, and would propose uses, it would have been a trivial amount of fuel to get them up, and we could have expanded the station, built a real transfer station for space exploration.

    And every time upper management shot them down. Cost, or regulation, or "we don't do that...." FREAKIN'SCREAMING/BLOODASSHOLES!

    681:

    Yeah, that's the problem, isn't it?

    682:

    On a previous subject. Internet of things, botnet threat Still want to trust your "smart" meter?

    683:

    Imagine someone twice as tall as you, weighing four times as much and three times as strong pulls you aside after they think you've done something wrong and makes you sit alone, writing fifty times "I must not be so-o-o-o..." That's abduction/false imprisonment/some kind of offence, at any rate (I anal) under law but you're a grownup, not a child so you have recourse.

    A theme I encountered a few times in kiddies' books when I was little was the notion that very small children can talk with animals, but once they start becoming proficient at human speech they forget how and even forget that they had the ability at all. I often wonder if there is a similar phenomenon whereby once people start developing their own ideas of bringing up children, all recollection of what it was like being a child themselves is completely wiped. The prevalence of the view that the involvement of physical pain somehow puts a punishment into a completely different and non-comparable class to one that does not involve it is one cause of this speculation.

    The (immediate) point of a punishment is to inflict psychological distress - in everyday language, to make someone have a bad time. The precise means by which this is achieved is nearly irrelevant; the important factor is what kind of distress integral it produces. On this basis I regard the punishments that I received as a kid that chose physical pain as their means of inducing psychological pain to be, on the whole, the (second[1]) least objectionable of all the punishments I received.

    This isn't down to any kind of "I was a juvenile hard man" rubbish; I was (and still am) pretty much at the opposite end of the scale on that one. It's quite simply because unlike all other forms of punishment, it was all over in five minutes. The peak distress was large, but the duration was extremely short, so the overall distress integral was lower than with any other punishment. It was a lot more tolerable than standing there for (what felt like) an hour being jawed (someone making you feel like shit by purely verbal means). It was a lot less humiliating than having to sit for hours writing a five-page essay on the inside of a ping-pong ball with everyone else able to see you doing it (or if not, they would still know that's why you were absent for hours). The peak distress of those might have been less, but the duration was far longer, and it was further aggravated by it not being possible to keep it to yourself. And it was certainly far preferable to any form of detention (at day schools), because that meant being late home, which meant having to explain why, which meant getting another punishment from my parents for having received a punishment at school.

    Kipling gets it; he makes it clear, in writing both of his school experiences and the horrendous period fictionalised in "Baa Baa Black Sheep", that the psychological factor is of far greater moment than the physical. One episode of "Stalky & Co" features the Co in some escapade which was clearly contrary to discipline but nevertheless also managed to be the answer to the unspoken prayers of the staff; the Head offers them a choice between being licked and having to do something that would tediously waste hours of their time, and they unhesitatingly opt for being licked, it being clearly understood by all parties that this is his way of giving the appearance of discipline having been enforced while actually letting them off.

    (I was most disconcerted to find an essay on the Kipling society website, no less, written by some galloping fuckwit who condemned this and similar passages at great length for "glorifying violence and child abuse". It baffled me enormously how anyone, let alone a student of Kipling, could in all seriousness come out with such an outrageously gross misinterpretation.)

    Kipling also makes the point much more briefly in "The Jungle Book": Bagheera spanks Mowgli for being an epic dick, and then we get "One of the great things about the Law of the Jungle is that punishment settles all scores. There is no nagging afterwards." This of course was written for an audience of children, and this one at least agreed completely in the instant of reading it.

    [1] The very least objectionable punishment I ever received was apparently another instance of adults losing all recollection of the childhood viewpoint: they took away my scholarship (while still giving my parents the same cut off the bill), apparently thinking that I viewed the scholarship as a mark of honour and glory, and so would be permanently humiliated by its removal. Well, that may have been how they saw it, but I couldn't give a toss about the honour and glory (which didn't even exist anyway), and as far as I was concerned the scholarship meant no more than having to waste several Sundays every term poncing round the cathedral in a surplice (for reasons connected with Henry VIII); not having to do this any more was bloody great.

    684:

    Re: '... adults losing all recollection of the childhood viewpoint: '

    Puzzles me too. Sometimes wonder whether this is another round and/or type of neuronal (memory) pruning similar to what happens to kids around age 5. If yes, to what degree can you hold such folk accountable for losing their childhood perspective?

    Wonder how many of the great kidlit authors were those who somehow managed to hold onto their childhood POVs and how many were just good observers.

    685:

    Just a note. I was extrapolating from the prior comments in that for over 100 years UK (and Europe) and the US have come up with differing solutions to the problems of safely providing electricity to idiots, err consumers. Things have diverged enough that the solutions of one look somewhat alien to the others.

    Fused plugs? I don't see it. I suspect this ties somewhat to the US requirements for a long time to have outlets every 6'/2m along most walls. This comes from way back when a room might only have 1 or 2 outlets total so people ran extension cords all over to lamps which in many cases were put under rugs/carpets which in many cases frayed due to materials being used not up to the constant rubbing when they had people walking over them.

    Inside metering. I rarely see this in the US except for multi tenant spaces where there can be a bunch of meters in one spot.

    Most of the US has something like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CONDPSK/ref=asc_df_B00CONDPSK5225270/ Where pulling the meter also disconnects the power. (When the power company pulls the meter they put a plate over the opening.)

    As to ring circuits I can see loop currents being a hazard. But apparently standards bodies in the UK think not much of one.

    As to bathrooms (and kitchens, outdoors, and anywhere there might be water) the US has had GFI/CGFI for decades. Plus a LOT of little details about how to wire a kitchen or bath area that don't make sense unless you think long and hard about failure modes.

    And things have changes a LOT in the 60 years of my life. My father wired up our house in 56 plus an older cousins and one he built for sale where he soldered all the connections. I have the solder gun as a souvenir. Twist connections are a fantastic improvement but only if done correctly. Since the early 60s and before when an 80 or 100 amp service was considered good (my 1961 has 125 amp service) now days houses around here have to be build with 200 amps minimum. Doesn't mean people have to use it but switching it out later is such a pain people tend to overload when they need more. And if you have on demand electric water heat for a 2 or 3 shower house or a heated pool you will see 300 or 400 amp home service.

    And as others have mentioned there was that aluminum period in around 1970 that everyone would like to forget. While fine if done perfectly most installations were not done perfectly. And when people makes changes later without using the special jell to keep the copper / aluminum contact from oxidizing you get more issues. I would never buy a house with aluminum wiring. (I hope.)

    686:

    That hadn't occurred to me, though from occasional things people have said it doesn't seem to be so automatic a process. Things like consciously repudiating it because they think that's what an adult should do; remembering what happened but not how they felt about it; doing their best to blank it because their childhood was horrible. Only the last of those really makes any sense to me.

    Observers: probably not, I think that would result in a book which described the behaviour of children with meticulous accuracy but still in a manner that would appear most unrealistic to children themselves. The kind of books I remember enjoying were mostly somewhat unrealistic in terms of absolute accuracy, but the inaccuracy was in an appealing direction - they portrayed children doing the sort of things that it was great to imagine being able to do oneself, in the absence of constraints such as intefering parents or inability to access resources.

    I remember being quite astonished when the internet informed me that Richmal Crompton, author of the "Just William" books, was female. I'd always assumed that someone writing about the day-to-day adventures of an unruly 11-year-old boy (who mostly didn't like girls much) and his friends must have been such a boy themselves once (and the name "Richmal" was obviously some kind of variation on "Richard", hence masculine). But it seems that she was just very good at understanding what seems cool to a kid. I'd rate William's mentality at a few years younger than 11, but that's a bit of a nitpick; he still has a pretty realistic child's mind, regardless of what one thinks of the situations he finds himself in.

    I don't find that so much in the "Jennings" series by Anthony Buckeridge. Jennings and his pals are about the same age as William, but their actions do not have the same internal "logic". Buckeridge was himself a headmaster IIRC and the books read very much as if they're written by someone who has extensive experience of the kind of things boys of that age get up to, but is perpetually baffled as to what gets into their heads to make them do things like that. While the specific activities of Jennings are mostly (somewhat) more genuinely possible than those of William in terms of available opportunities, they nevertheless come over as somewhat more fantastic in terms of what a young boy might actually do in a given situation.

    The appeal of the Jennings books was I think largely in the school setting, the familiar though fictional environment (I remember we even had a teacher called Mr Wilkins who was very similar to the character of the same name in the books), but although the friction between Jennings and school discipline was a major theme, they were still fairly staid. The William books, on the other hand, were a glorious riot; much of the social background was thoroughly alien to me as a kid because the series began well before WW2, but it didn't really make any difference because William himself commanded all the attention.

    687:

    Fused plugs: we did have a shortage of sockets, but on top of that we had a great variety of them. We had large round-pin plugs rated at 15A, small round-pin plugs rated at 5A, and diddy little round-pin plugs rated at 2A. These were all unfused; the circuit protection was the fuse on the distribution board feeding the relevant spur. There was a conflict in sizing the fuse between what was appropriate for the circuit and what was appropriate for the load you might plug into it. And with all those different spurs it became a heck of a mess, used silly amounts of wire, and made it difficult to add extra sockets (since often this would require running a whole new spur from the distribution board, or else it got bodged).

    The ring main and fused plug arrangement sorts out a lot of the mess. The fuse for the ring main circuit can be sized straightforwardly to suit the circuit rating without worrying about what might be plugged into it. The rating of the circuit is related to the maximum floor area it supplies: since all the energy ends up as heat in the end, you're unlikely to want to connect more than so-much total load in so-much space or you'll be baking. There is only one type of plug, and one type of circuit, instead of lots of different kinds for different kinds of appliances. This single type of plug has three pins, and the circuit provides an earth at every outlet (5A and 2A plugs and sockets came in both 2-pin and 3-pin varieties). At the same time, the feature was introduced of requiring the insertion of the earth pin to move an insulating shutter out of the way of inserting the other two pins, to stop babies putting their fingers in the socket (an action which the old round-pin ones positively invited). Every appliance, from a table lamp to a 3kW kettle, can have a fuse appropriate to its consumption - no matter where you plug it in (you could buy adaptors that let you plug 5A or 2A plugs into 15A sockets, as a workaround for running out of sockets).

    It was more or less unheard-of to use MCBs for circuit protection in those days. Instead the distribution board would feature a long row of rewireable fuses. These were pretty inaccurate and pretty slow - on top of the problem of trying to fuse a circuit and an arbitrary appliance plugged into it with the one device. Fused plugs, on the other hand, use ceramic sand-filled disposable cartridge fuses, which perform much better as well as being selectable to match their specific load.

    (Now that MCBs are common, the deficiencies of fuses become more apparent; if an appliance with a 13A fuse in its plug suffers a short circuit, it is highly likely that the 32A MCB protecting the ring will trip but the fuse remain intact. Lower-rated fuses, though, will still probably beat the breaker. But this was not relevant at the time.)

    Certainly the system isn't perfect; people tend to use 13A fuses on a one-size-fits-all basis regardless of the load, or even just wrap a dud fuse in the aluminised paper out of a fag packet as a temporary (permanent) bodge. But it does mean you don't have things running through an oversized fuse even when people have done everything properly.

    Ring mains also provide some improvement in fire safety, in that a terminal in the back of a socket working loose is less likely to have incendiary consequences. With a spur circuit, a heavy load either on that socket or on any socket downstream of it is likely to overheat the dodgy connection. With a ring main, there is still a sound feed from the other side, and only one socket poses unexpected risks in its use. The situation is likely to persist undetected and without consequence until someone doing other work on the circuit observes peculiar results in testing it. How desirable this may be is of course debatable, but it's probably safe to say it's better than finding it out because something's caught fire.

    688:

    You're right. I stand corrected. Thanks.

    689:

    "Kaa's Hunting" Yesssssssss...sssss.

    690:

    And both of those series of books always gave me the cold shudders. I have managed to read, when I was about 10-12 about a third of one book of each series. But then, I was always, as a child, a solitary indvidual, following the beat of my own drum. A N other reason for laothing "team" spurts & "Games" of course. I also felt, even then, that I was being grossly condescended to by both those authors.

    [ Reading my father's paperback copy of "Last & First Men" when I was about 9 might have had something to do with that mind-set, of course ]

    691:

    Someone can talk at me all day and I'll ignore them, laugh at them, or tell them they are an idiot. I learned the art of sleeping with my eyes open to get through high school so boredom based punishment had no effect. I was a boarder in my first year of high school so aged about 11 or 12 I went upstairs to my dorm and saw a prefect aged about 16 or 17 dangling another first year over the stairwell by one ankle. The kid was all snot-faced and wailing and I told the prefect to stop that. He put the kid down and asked me how I intended to make him do that. So I kicked him in the nuts and he went down very satisfactorily. I never had any future issue with that prefect (I think he avoided me) but the snot-faced kid decided to hate me and followed me around being annoying for weeks until I lured him to a witness-free area and banged his head on the wall several times using his ears as handles. And that's how you deal with people twice as tall as you, weighing four times as much and three times as strong. It also shows that my experience of being a child was not at all like children's books which to me were full of baffling people doing inexplicable things for unfathomable reasons and enjoying it.

    692:

    Now there's an example of the law of the jungle!

    693:

    This was a school where one morning I was at roll call and two boys were whaling on each other at the back of the class and by the time the teacher arrived one of them was knocked out. The teacher gets to his name and no reply - one of the girls puts her hand up "He's unconscious on the bench at the back Miss." Carefree innocent days for sure.

    694:

    Re: '... remembering what happened but not how they felt about it; doing their best to blank it because their childhood was horrible.'

    Will be interesting to see what type of adults today's youngsters become in 20 years' time. Their parents will have recorded and distributed almost all of their lives including emotional states and responses. Such recordings replayed many times over and commented upon has got to make their childhoods (incl. feelings) harder to forget or deny. Even so, because of neuronal pruning combined with continued development of other brain regions, it could still end up feeling as though all of this happened to someone else and not the me of the present.

    695:

    Further, the 13A ring-main system in the UK NEVER used aluminium wire to my knowledge, it was always single-core copper. The socket ring main wiring used 6 sq mm cross-section for a sustained 30A total load along the loop, lighting 2.5 sq mm usually rated in spur at 6A. The terminations in sockets and fuseboxes are all screw-down as is the wiring in the plug, no ID punchdown or twist allowed. Twists are permitted in appliances but only inside insulated crimps, not in house wiring.

    696:

    "...full of baffling people doing inexplicable things for unfathomable reasons and enjoying it."

    Having put aside childish things I still find that still to be the soupe du jour. Mind you for me the best books written about childhood were by Tove Jannsen's, gotta to love the Finns.

    697:

    Edith Nesbit ... who was quite a "subversive" actually. Rosemary Sutcliff - though the recent US film "The Eagle" is a total travesty of the original novel.

    698:

    Apparently Tesla released a new car insurance program to ensure its own cars.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-liberty-mutual-create-customize-insurance-package-2017-10

    699:

    Vector Space is planning to launch its first orbital rocket in July. Vector R is a weak rocket, only capable of launching 50 kg into LEO for a cost of $3 million.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector-R http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-liberty-mutual-create-customize-insurance-package-2017-10

    Nevertheless, the cubesat market is likely going to expand. https://qz.com/879270/theres-one-big-problem-with-satellite-imagery-and-a-space-startup-has-found-a-solution-for-it/

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-09/pint-size-satellites-promise-spy-quality-images-cheap

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-06/lawmakers-block-mini-satellites-that-could-spy-on-north-korea

    I know that funding for the military cubesat program was denied, but I personally think that decision will be revisited, especially if Steve Bannon's "Republican insurgency" is successful in 2018.

    700:

    Charlie, some leads that may be of interest, given your (shuddersome) use of Yardley's "Black Chamber:"

    His MI-8 effort was preceded and paralleled by William F. Friedman and Elizebeth (spelled that way) Smith Friedman and a small staff, working as "Riverbank Cryptological Laboratories," set up and funded by eccentric millionaire George Fabyan on his estate, "Riverbank," near Geneva, IL. Post WW I, the two of them moved to government jobs in Washington, DC and their work is held to be a foundation of NSA. Both of them all but dropped out of history during WW II, working for the Army and Coast Guard. There's plenty more to be found, some of it mapping more or less neatly into the hazards and constraints of the world of the The Laundry Files. Another branch of Riverbank Laboratories specializing in acoustics is still around, as are some of the structures of the estate.
    701:

    I looked up "Republican Insurgency" Bannon as Ernst Röhm? Given their programme - possible?

    702:

    I was never all that taken with E. Nesbit - read "The Story of the Amulet", followed (people had an infuriating habit of giving me the nth book in a series where n was always greater than 1) by "Five Children and It" (in fact I think I got that out of the library myself, just because it was annoying me not to have the back-story of TSOTA); I didn't like any of the children very much, and there was something not clean about the magic. Re-read them both quite recently and still find it the same.

    703:

    An open-ended question: I'm pretty sure the acceleration available to electrics will mean that IC cars drop out of that market quickly. So, what do we think will replace the IC car as penis-substitute, when automated electric taxis become the norm?

    704:

    In the short term, limited edition electric penis extensions. The more impractical the better. Like a peacock's tail, they should signal resources to burn (time and money in this case) for zero practical benefit. Things like a million dollar electric supercar built in batches of ten can do that just fine even if it's slower than an electric that you can drive off the lot. Top Gear called it 'pantomime'

    705:

    AIUI limited-edition petrol/electric plug-in hybrid supercars are already a thing. Relatively sane V8 mills that charge a relatively small battery that gives the car a range of maybe 20 miles ... but an electric motor with an 0-60 acceleration time of about 2 seconds, when you stomp on the 'go' pedal. This combines the best of both worlds, in the short term—supercar acceleration without having to carry a ton of batteries around.

    Another thing that's out there is a conversion kit for the old Jaguar E-type, that replaces the classic engine, gearbox, and fuel tank with an electric motor and batteries. Apparently it gets significantly faster acceleration than the original and has a range of around 150 miles. The one that's been shown off at car shows is a one-off but there's talk of producing them in bulk as the battery pack is more or less a drop-in replacement for the Jaguar straight-6 engine.

    706:

    Assuming that Eric (# 470), or anyone else, is still interested in the probability that Trump can get in trouble for his campaign's Russian help, my assessment is based on the likelihood that Trump is so spectacularly disorganized that a convincing defense can be mounted based on his incompetence, particularly given the low ethical standard that Americans allow their elected presidents. (And remember, Trump made his lack of ethics a feature of the campaign he was elected on).

    In addition, the bulk of Russian help seems to have come from outside the US, from social and Twitter bots, the programs that convincingly emulate genuine user support or opposition to whatever topic their owner selects. (Deutsch Welle has a good introduction to bots -- http://www.dw.com/en/the-rise-of-political-bots-on-social-media/a-19450562; Google also, "social media dashboard tools platforms").

    Actual Russian contracts with American social media platforms in contrast, were only a small part of their effort and were entirely legal, as was made clear in congressional hearings this week.

    In addition, the effect of 52 US Code 30121, which Eric mentions, seems to be muddied by its definition of those "foreign nationals," who are not allowed to help in a US election as not including American citizens (the implication is, even if acting as a foreign national's agent), nor any non-citizen who not been admitted to the US as a permanent resident.

    Finally, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which might cover the Russian-related activities of, among others, Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort, is, for a variety of reasons, is generally unenforced (see Vox's article at https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/11/3/16596484/fara-foreign-agents-registration-manafort-enforcement-scandal ), so much so that there was some surprise that the Mueller investigation even bothered.

    707:

    Personally I can't see Trump admitting to incompetence, even as a defence. It wouldn't play well with his base, either; some patterns might start to emerge.

    708:

    I probably stated it a little too baldly, alyctes.

    I, and perhaps you, would put the results of Trump's record so far in terms of competence. Trump's lawyers, in impeachment proceedings before the House of Representatives, would put them in terms of a plain-dealing captain of industry and pillar of the economy who has sacrificed his golden years in order to return the nation to a common-sense path, being hobbled by the spiderweb of finicky rules and arbitrary taboos imposed by generations of Washington courtiers and hangers-on, bent on maintaining their bloodsucking sinecures at the expense of poor working families.

    This is close to what Trump himself is arguing in his current complaint that he, just because he's trapped in the unfortunate position of being president, can't order the country's security apparatus to persecute Hillary and others who, he is sure, had to have been doing something illegal: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/predatory-aggressive-and-childish#more-1093512

    709:

    Thanks for the clarification. I take your point.

    710:

    Well, I was kind of attracted to the E-type conversion, briefly.

    But then I thought of the Ford Anglia conversion someone tried to sell me, must be nearly 30 years ago, with a V8 in it. I think something like that might be interesting to annoy Audi drivers with.

    Finding a sensible chassis/suspension to handle lots of acceleration in a meek-looking package might be harder though.

    711:

    Anyway...

    That wasn't quite what I was asking (should have been more precise). Those with more money than sense will buy their supercars, no doubt. What about the 20-year-olds? What will they do, when cars are no longer a thing you own?

    712:

    I find this insistence that private cars would vanish strange. Doesn't anyone of you shop on the way home from work? At more than one shop, too? Do you plan to take 2 cases of empties and the cooler box and the bags inside at your workplace (and do you have space for all that)? Do you plan to spend 3 hours shopping instead of 1 because you would have to return home after each shop, given that you can't take goods you bought at shop 1 inside shop 2 if they sell them too, and you no longer have a car to park your shopping in?

    713:

    Doesn't work like that for me.
    Answers in order: - Yes. - No. Not an option for me. - Doesn't work like that here. Empties are recycled through local council pickup; cooler box is not a thing I have; bags, sure, why not. - YMMV but here we are offered paper receipts; you can demonstrate where you bought the thing.

    714:

    "What about the 20-year-olds? What will they do, when cars are no longer a thing you own?" In the US at least, some portion of youth would rather have a good smartphone: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/us/report-finds-americans-are-driving-less-led-by-youth.html

    In Oregon five years ago, I happened across a rather good show of the type in which proud car fans display their autos -- this one included antique and classic cars, muscle cars, hot rods, pretty much the gamut. And both those showing and attending were almost entirely geriatric. (Since then I have seen others where there were at least some young people in attendance, so the culture has not entirely changed). http://www.seasideoregon.com/car-show/

    715:

    Empties are recycled through local council pickup.

    Ah, I wasn't referring to empties-for-recycling but empties-for-reuse, and I certainly want my deposits back. There's a law hereabouts making the shops take the multipath bottles of types they sell back and paying out their deposit.

    Regarding paper receipts: you cannot prove that you bought the thing elsewhere, you can prove that you bought a thing of the type elsewhere recently, and I have had unpleasant discussions with shop security when I was picking up a few things on my way home by bike about that. The way around that is telling one of the check-out people that you're taking $thing inside, but that only works for a very limited number of things and as an exception.

    Supermarket-type shops (i.e.: not the butcher and baker) hereabouts explicitly ask you to leave your bags in your car, too; customers dropping by on foot or by bike are officially unplanned-for. There is no reason to expect that early adopters of self-driving taxis would be better off.

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