zl

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• Commented on Houston: what are the long-term consequences?
  In the short term, I'm surprised at watching a slow-motion trainwreck. The stories on all the major services (NYT, WaPo, BBC) last time I looked wre still focusing on the rescues and human stories. I have not (yet) seen a...
• Commented on Paging Agent 007
  @Pigeon on modern car design We have figured out the basics, so modern car designs are now dominated by non-functional requirements. Crash safety scores; not hurting pedestrians if you hit them; increasing fuel efficiency; quiet cabins; smartphone integration. A lot...
• Commented on Paging Agent 007
  I'm going to suggest that you may be biased by your skill set. Not all of us can maintain or repair cars. And neither can the automotive trade ... The reason that I stopped running old cars and switched over...
• Commented on Paging Agent 007
  Are you sure you couldn't charge on that trip? The UK's charging infrastructure is pretty good (despite the regular complaints). Three years ago, when I seriously evaluated an EV, the only way (for me, for a regular trip) was...
• Commented on Paging Agent 007
  OTOH doing it in 6 years [..] most car owners, who aren't going to be able to stump up some huge sum for a brand new battery car. Let me disagree. An increasing number of people in the UK...
• Commented on Paging Agent 007
  If you can get by with 100 mile range, which is fine for most city and suburban driving in the UK, we're already there with the Nissan Leaf (1.5 tons), the Renault Zoe (1.5 tons) and the BMW i3 (1.2...
• Commented on Paging Agent 007
  @paws4thot, The 2 ton Tesla S ... If you take a Tesla S apart you will see that the body and cabin sit on top of a 30cm deep steel girder chassis. Everything between the front and rear wheels, across...
• Commented on The World of Tomorrow
  All mobile phone networks have to be able to locate all mobile phones in order to route calls and text messages. If they don't know which group of cells you are in ("paging area") your phone won't ring when someone...
• Commented on The World of Tomorrow
  I don't think absolute reduction in power consumed is the driver. The number of data centres is growing, and the power consumption per data centre is unchanged year-to-year (if you believe Amazon's prediction for a constant 25-30MW per data center)...
• Commented on The World of Tomorrow
  @Ioan, The various articles about the IBM 5nm transistor have missed the economic aspect. (It is in Gordon Moore's original paper, but is usually missed out). Making a major change in semiconductor technology, requires a new "fab" - a new...
• Commented on Rejection Letter
  @Pigeon 423 "They've been on a kind of second-tier list for centuries; they weren't very nice when they were the Ottoman Empire and the main thing that changed when they stopped being it was their radius of influence shrinking. "...
• Commented on The sudden eruption of news
  I think this move is about bouncing the doubters and voices of reason in the Conservative Party into supporting May and her chosen hard Brexit, with no ability to ask questions or ask for reasoned debate in the smoke filled...
• Commented on The sudden eruption of news
  @tqft, "If May wins, there is nothing but convention stopping someone from rolling her for 5 years of power?" Correct. After a UK general election, the leader of the party with the majority in Parliament is invited to form a...
• Commented on Reality is broken
  Thank-you, I didn't know about (the scale) of those festivals. The Telegraph says 27M people for Kumbh Mela in 2014. It also looks that the Arbaeen festival held in Iraq annually has over 10M people, despite the ongoing conflict. I...
• Commented on Reality is broken
  "You've ignored the question of the number of extra trains you have to run " No, I just concluded it is not significant. Back of envelope - the typical capacity of a London Underground train is 600-900 (source: TfL). To...
• Commented on Reality is broken
  It is only 2.5% of capacity. Think about any of the stations that serve a major football ground or concert venue. You get up to 50000 people arriving and departing in a short window, and the network copes fine. The...
• Commented on CASE NIGHTMARE BLOND
  I've just noticed a lovely twist for CASE NIGHTMARE BLOND. Boris is not sworn of the Council. [For non-UK readers. When you see the title "Rt Hon" for a British politician, this means they are members of the Privy Council....
• Commented on CASE NIGHTMARE BLOND
  To get back to CASE NIGHTMARE BLOND, perhaps the Eton Wall Game with its centuries old rules, and location, is actually an esoteric ritual for our future leaders. I can't work out if it a way to detect the True...
• Commented on CASE NIGHTMARE BLOND
  SOE/SIS. One of the interesting changes since the turn of the millenium is that intelligence focus has shifted away from the Cold War long term view, back to a much shorter-term operational focus. The contrast beween Cold War era SIS...
• Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
  @outeast, Agree. The House of Lords document is just one of the few things written down by a competent body (in the sense of a body having "competence" or a formal legal interest in the area). But yes it is...
• Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
  There are also a set of opinions, looking in some detail at the legal issues involved, written by both British and foreign lawyers, at the UK Constitutional Law Association's blog. https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/blog/ My takeaway from reading these, is that this fiasco...
• Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
  HOUSE OF LORDS European Union Committee 11th Report of Session 2015–16 The process of withdrawing from the European Union HL Paper 138, 4 May 2016 See "The role of the devolved legislatures in implementing the withdrawal agreement" page 19. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201516/ldselect/ldeucom/138/138.pdf...
• Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
  In contrast to Mr Farage, Alyn Smith, the Scottish MEP, has just given a speech to the European Parliament, pointing out that Scotland, Northern Ireland and London all voted to Remain. His final words "Scotland did not let you down,...
• Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
  @outeast, @ el The House of Lords took evidence on this during their examination of the process of leaving the EU and published the results in May. "The process of withdrawing from the European Union". The most interesting conclusion was...
• Commented on Constitutional crisis ahoy!
  @D.J.P O'Kane (#383), " Dublin was their next target ... Do you have any source" I grew up in Dublin in the 1970s, and I remember seeing Official IRA posters on the streets declaring their objective of a unified marxist...