There's surely some heavy duty urban driving. And in city driving the human drivers will probably intervene often when they don't really have to. OTOH, Pittsburgh's nightmarish topography will likely result in a fair amount of expressway-like driving. That's pretty easy and should result in few to no interventions for miles. It's not like driving in Manhattan, San Francisco, or (the mind boggles) Boston.
That looks to be the same design as the much larger and seriously underperforming Ivanpah solar facility in California. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Because Queensland is not very windy. It is located in the horse latitudes [wikipedia.org], known for becalming ships. However, it has plenty of sunshine."
I'm sure you're right. Plus solar most places has the advantage that a string of days without much sun is likely to be cool and rainy and crops won't need irrigation. And yes I'm familiar with coastal California's seemingly endless late spring-early summer marine layer. That's why I said "most".
Trouble is that pumped storage requires moving large amounts of water through substantial vertical distances. My cocktail napkin here says that you need to pump a cubic meter of water (That's a metric ton) up about 100 meters (328 feet) to store 1 kwHr of electricity. And that's assuming 100% efficiency in pumping and subsequent generation. And even when you have water and vertical, finding a place to put the upper reservoir can be very difficult. Much of the Australian interior doesn't have either a lot of water or a lot of vertical to work with.
BTW, pumped storage facilities tend to be major engineering projects with prices appropriate to a major engineering project. Hundreds of millions of USD. They need to be used a lot (daily would be good) in order to cover the up front investment.
"Er, they're growing sugar, can't they process some to ethanol and fuel their own pumps?"
Good thought. Brazil makes ethanol from sugar refining waste and it is alleged to be a lot less of a economic fiasco than the ill considered US corn ethanol program. The latter turns out (as was predicted at the time it was proposed) to be an elaborate way to turn fossil fuels used for plowing, irrigation, and distillation into roughly energy equivalent amounts a not especially desirable liquid fuel that can't be used full strength in most existing engines
"Can you make a biodiesel from sugar?"
Not easily and not economically. Better to grow some crop that yields an oil that can be used in a diesel engine with little or no processing. Or so I'm told anyway.
Trouble is that it's unlimited clean energy 30% of the time. Without vast amounts of cheap storage -- which looks to be 20-40 years away, overdependence on wind and solar power doesn't work very well. South Australia is fast becoming a poster child for why one should not let ideolouges -- right or left -- engineer stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Eastern Queensland is tropical. Think Florida with hills. They grow the sugar cane in the river valleys near the coast (or at least they used to). LOTS of water in the Summer rainy season, not so much in their Winter.
And rightly so, the circumference of the Earth had been known since Eratosthenes computed it in 240 BC. If America hadn't gotten in the way, Columbus journey to the orient would almost certainly have been a dismal failure.
I'm sure Elon will you that he can build a hyperloop system that'll be safer, cheaper, and much faster than California's hypothetical high speed rail system. It'd likely be faster. And maybe as safe. Cheaper? I'm guessing not, but who the hell knows?
"The forces involved with the hyperloop are really quite insane and the possibility of an accident is very, very high."
We do build ships that draw 10 or 15 meters without the hull collapsing (As long as they don't run into a rock). And submarines. And the pipes used in big hydroelectric dams are often subjected to much greater (albeit high pressure on the inside, not outside) pressure differentials. So the tubes are probably doable.
OTOH, what happens if the tube develops a crease because of an earthquake or supports washing out or some such. I have to believe that a transport capsule grazing a bent tube wall at many hundreds of km/hr are likely going to resemble those of a surface vehicle trying to go under a bridge with insufficient clearance while traveling at speed.
There will surely be accidents. The question is -- how many?
I think he might be saying that the underlying wasm "engine" is capable of doing really good stuff but the product built on top of it is mediocre at best?
Once you get things more or less right, perhaps you ought to quit "improving" them. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Microsoft needs a new version of Word and Excel with incompatible file formats and a new constellation of annoying bugs every three or four years for business reasons. But do the users? Not that I can see.
Emacs is a remarkable accomplishment. And it's easy to see how the handful of folks who can memorize the bizarre key bindings and innumerable conventions and navigate the buffers efficiently could love it and find it to be enormously satisfying and productive environment. But it's not something most of us can use, much less use effectively. A road better not taken I think.
I agree. Unless/Until we build a parallel internet for banking and serious infrastructure stuff, the proper replacement for Javascript is no scripting at all. The notion that anonymous folks somewhere in the world can ship us arbitrary computer programs to run on our machines without creating a massive security issue is really quite bizarre. But scripting is sandboxed and therefore perfectly safe? Right. And free markets with no regulation will make us all wealthy beyond belief.
There are a handful of sites -- e.g. Google Maps -- where the benefits of scripting clearly outweigh the risks. And I don't have any problem with turning on scripting for those sites. But mostly, script seems to be used by lazy/incompetent/demented web designers (is there a difference?) to implement annoying "features" or even to do stuff that could equally well be done (probably better) with html/css.
"I agree, we need standardized testing to actually license the software and hardware."
Maybe. I don't think the Silicon Valley folks understand how liability works. If they start killing foiks and destroying property, they're going to find out that license agreements are a dubious protection from predatory lawyers. Auto company programmers understand liability, but I think they have even less understanding of the complexity of a fully autonomous vehicle system than the kids working along El Camino Real do.
It's conceivable that the industry might police itself after a few dozen multimillion dollar verdicts against it.
But maybe not. The folks in the valley are nothing if not arrogant.
And not that testing and certification is a bad idea. (Although the procedural issues of how to do it appear less than straightforward.)
"No, it's because freight containers come in two standard sizes, with road trucks being sized accordingly."
Some ARE like that. Some aren't Surely, you don't think that Walmart truck up ahead of you on a rural state highway is delivering 1300 34 inch flat screen TVs to the Walmart in North Hellandgone, Idaho.
At least you're giving some thought to the subject. I think you are wrong about autonomous taxis, but not because they don't make sense. The problem is that to navigate the surface streets, parking lots, and driveways where taxis travel, you're going to need to sense a very wide variety of things including non-standard road signage, parades, snow, traffic signals directly between the vehicle and the sun, construction zones... That's going to entail following 50,000 rules or, for all you and I know, maybe 50 million, rules. The hardware may be doable today. Getting a VERY large number of rules right is going to take many years I think. I'm thinking a couple of decades if we want to minimize the collateral damage.
Long distance trucks on express ways OTOH operate in a far less demanding domain. If all else fails, they can simply creep over to the breakdown lane, park and send a text message (via satphone, not all areas of US interstates have cell phone coverage) to the dispatcher. "TRUCK 5498B HERE. CAN'T SEE ROAD. PARKED AT 43.83750, -72.59216. SEND HELP. DIAGNOSTICS FOLLOW... ". Lot's of problems there also. Toll booths, weather, etc. But MANY fewer than a taxi faces.
"Expecting even a trained human to take over with only a few seconds (or less) leeway is crazy"
Let me see if if I have this straight. An autonomous car is doing something nutty, like following the vehicle ahead of it into a gas station at excessive speed? And you think the way to handle that situation is to trust the car?
Serious answer: You probably can't load the batteries in the cargo hold of a Qantas jet on a regularly scheduled flight. But 100 MWh is a LOT of batteries. More than one aircraft's worth I should think,. You can no doubt lease a cargo aircraft to move them. Insurance will be a bit pricey and the flight crew will likely want combat pay. But I think the transport is doable.
Figuring out how to hook the battery into the South Australian grid and manage its charge and discharge in 100 days might be a bigger issue. I don't think the hardware (or software) to do that is an off the shelf item.
It's also not clear that 100Mwh is anywhere near enough storage to stabilize the SA grid with its very large amount of not all that predictable wind resource.. Peak demand looks to be a bit over 3Gw. What happens if, as has happened in the past, Victoria shuts down the 460MW Heywood interconnect due to excessive demand from SA? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... )
OTOH, an additional 100Mwh of dispatchable storage sure wouldn't hurt.
"Fewer" has been replaced by "Less". This was done several years ago by an otherwise undocumented change pushed to all users of the English language. Apparently you are using an obsolete version of the language that has been hacked to avoid mandatory updates. No more English language support for you, mate.
Probably you shouldn't trust the OS or the window manager to protect anything. Not that they won't try. But if we have learned anything, it is that the population of vulnerabilities in virtually all software and hardware is very large. Fixing the known problems will take years. Fixing all the problems much longer. Moreover, "they" probably don't need to know our passwords. Any website viewed, or email opened, or application acquired and run can potentially download a nasty that will escalate its privileges and take over the computer. They don't need no steenking passwords to get at our treasures. Moreover, in the case of financial stuff, the bank or whatever itself can be hacked.
Really, there's literally no place to hide. We're all likely going to be hacked sooner or later. If we haven't been already.
Perhaps it's time to stop pretending that passwords, ACLs, user privileging etc can keep us all safe. They really can't. Instead, perhaps we should focus on balancing usability against opening our affairs to all in sundry, and in keeping stuff we don't want hacked (ballots for example) on paper or other non-digital media.
"You *do* understand that the radioactive material in your precious "stockpiles" decays within decades? Right?"
Sadly, not right I think. Yes the Tritium in thermonuclear weapons has a fairly short half life of 12 years. But unfortunately, the fissionable components U-235, Pu-237 have half lives of 700 million years and 28,000 years respectively.
Slashdot Mirror
There's surely some heavy duty urban driving. And in city driving the human drivers will probably intervene often when they don't really have to. OTOH, Pittsburgh's nightmarish topography will likely result in a fair amount of expressway-like driving. That's pretty easy and should result in few to no interventions for miles. It's not like driving in Manhattan, San Francisco, or (the mind boggles) Boston.
That looks to be the same design as the much larger and seriously underperforming Ivanpah solar facility in California. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Because Queensland is not very windy. It is located in the horse latitudes [wikipedia.org], known for becalming ships. However, it has plenty of sunshine."
I'm sure you're right. Plus solar most places has the advantage that a string of days without much sun is likely to be cool and rainy and crops won't need irrigation. And yes I'm familiar with coastal California's seemingly endless late spring-early summer marine layer. That's why I said "most".
Trouble is that pumped storage requires moving large amounts of water through substantial vertical distances. My cocktail napkin here says that you need to pump a cubic meter of water (That's a metric ton) up about 100 meters (328 feet) to store 1 kwHr of electricity. And that's assuming 100% efficiency in pumping and subsequent generation. And even when you have water and vertical, finding a place to put the upper reservoir can be very difficult. Much of the Australian interior doesn't have either a lot of water or a lot of vertical to work with.
BTW, pumped storage facilities tend to be major engineering projects with prices appropriate to a major engineering project. Hundreds of millions of USD. They need to be used a lot (daily would be good) in order to cover the up front investment.
"Er, they're growing sugar, can't they process some to ethanol and fuel their own pumps?"
Good thought. Brazil makes ethanol from sugar refining waste and it is alleged to be a lot less of a economic fiasco than the ill considered US corn ethanol program. The latter turns out (as was predicted at the time it was proposed) to be an elaborate way to turn fossil fuels used for plowing, irrigation, and distillation into roughly energy equivalent amounts a not especially desirable liquid fuel that can't be used full strength in most existing engines
"Can you make a biodiesel from sugar?"
Not easily and not economically. Better to grow some crop that yields an oil that can be used in a diesel engine with little or no processing. Or so I'm told anyway.
Trouble is that it's unlimited clean energy 30% of the time. Without vast amounts of cheap storage -- which looks to be 20-40 years away, overdependence on wind and solar power doesn't work very well. South Australia is fast becoming a poster child for why one should not let ideolouges -- right or left -- engineer stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Eastern Queensland is tropical. Think Florida with hills. They grow the sugar cane in the river valleys near the coast (or at least they used to). LOTS of water in the Summer rainy season, not so much in their Winter.
"They laughed at Columbus"
And rightly so, the circumference of the Earth had been known since Eratosthenes computed it in 240 BC. If America hadn't gotten in the way, Columbus journey to the orient would almost certainly have been a dismal failure.
I'm sure Elon will you that he can build a hyperloop system that'll be safer, cheaper, and much faster than California's hypothetical high speed rail system. It'd likely be faster. And maybe as safe. Cheaper? I'm guessing not, but who the hell knows?
"The forces involved with the hyperloop are really quite insane and the possibility of an accident is very, very high."
We do build ships that draw 10 or 15 meters without the hull collapsing (As long as they don't run into a rock). And submarines. And the pipes used in big hydroelectric dams are often subjected to much greater (albeit high pressure on the inside, not outside) pressure differentials. So the tubes are probably doable.
OTOH, what happens if the tube develops a crease because of an earthquake or supports washing out or some such. I have to believe that a transport capsule grazing a bent tube wall at many hundreds of km/hr are likely going to resemble those of a surface vehicle trying to go under a bridge with insufficient clearance while traveling at speed.
There will surely be accidents. The question is -- how many?
Good question.
I think he might be saying that the underlying wasm "engine" is capable of doing really good stuff but the product built on top of it is mediocre at best?
"Looks like someone doesn't understand how computers work."
True, but maybe you can cure your ignorance by taking a class or something.
Once you get things more or less right, perhaps you ought to quit "improving" them. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Microsoft needs a new version of Word and Excel with incompatible file formats and a new constellation of annoying bugs every three or four years for business reasons. But do the users? Not that I can see.
"Seriously, you're not Emacs."
Emacs is a remarkable accomplishment. And it's easy to see how the handful of folks who can memorize the bizarre key bindings and innumerable conventions and navigate the buffers efficiently could love it and find it to be enormously satisfying and productive environment. But it's not something most of us can use, much less use effectively. A road better not taken I think.
I agree. Unless/Until we build a parallel internet for banking and serious infrastructure stuff, the proper replacement for Javascript is no scripting at all. The notion that anonymous folks somewhere in the world can ship us arbitrary computer programs to run on our machines without creating a massive security issue is really quite bizarre. But scripting is sandboxed and therefore perfectly safe? Right. And free markets with no regulation will make us all wealthy beyond belief.
There are a handful of sites -- e.g. Google Maps -- where the benefits of scripting clearly outweigh the risks. And I don't have any problem with turning on scripting for those sites. But mostly, script seems to be used by lazy/incompetent/demented web designers (is there a difference?) to implement annoying "features" or even to do stuff that could equally well be done (probably better) with html/css.
"I agree, we need standardized testing to actually license the software and hardware."
Maybe. I don't think the Silicon Valley folks understand how liability works. If they start killing foiks and destroying property, they're going to find out that license agreements are a dubious protection from predatory lawyers. Auto company programmers understand liability, but I think they have even less understanding of the complexity of a fully autonomous vehicle system than the kids working along El Camino Real do.
It's conceivable that the industry might police itself after a few dozen multimillion dollar verdicts against it.
But maybe not. The folks in the valley are nothing if not arrogant.
And not that testing and certification is a bad idea. (Although the procedural issues of how to do it appear less than straightforward.)
"No, it's because freight containers come in two standard sizes, with road trucks being sized accordingly."
Some ARE like that. Some aren't Surely, you don't think that Walmart truck up ahead of you on a rural state highway is delivering 1300 34 inch flat screen TVs to the Walmart in North Hellandgone, Idaho.
At least you're giving some thought to the subject. I think you are wrong about autonomous taxis, but not because they don't make sense. The problem is that to navigate the surface streets, parking lots, and driveways where taxis travel, you're going to need to sense a very wide variety of things including non-standard road signage, parades, snow, traffic signals directly between the vehicle and the sun, construction zones ... That's going to entail following 50,000 rules or, for all you and I know, maybe 50 million, rules. The hardware may be doable today. Getting a VERY large number of rules right is going to take many years I think. I'm thinking a couple of decades if we want to minimize the collateral damage.
Long distance trucks on express ways OTOH operate in a far less demanding domain. If all else fails, they can simply creep over to the breakdown lane, park and send a text message (via satphone, not all areas of US interstates have cell phone coverage) to the dispatcher. "TRUCK 5498B HERE. CAN'T SEE ROAD. PARKED AT 43.83750, -72.59216. SEND HELP. DIAGNOSTICS FOLLOW ... ". Lot's of problems there also. Toll booths, weather, etc. But MANY fewer than a taxi faces.
"So if a vehicle carrying packages runs over a pedestrian that's ok?"
Hey, this is America. If we allow people to take precedence over commerce, we will lose the freedoms our forefathers fought for. Right?
"Expecting even a trained human to take over with only a few seconds (or less) leeway is crazy"
Let me see if if I have this straight. An autonomous car is doing something nutty, like following the vehicle ahead of it into a gas station at excessive speed? And you think the way to handle that situation is to trust the car?
Serious answer: You probably can't load the batteries in the cargo hold of a Qantas jet on a regularly scheduled flight. But 100 MWh is a LOT of batteries. More than one aircraft's worth I should think,. You can no doubt lease a cargo aircraft to move them. Insurance will be a bit pricey and the flight crew will likely want combat pay. But I think the transport is doable.
Figuring out how to hook the battery into the South Australian grid and manage its charge and discharge in 100 days might be a bigger issue. I don't think the hardware (or software) to do that is an off the shelf item.
It's also not clear that 100Mwh is anywhere near enough storage to stabilize the SA grid with its very large amount of not all that predictable wind resource.. Peak demand looks to be a bit over 3Gw. What happens if, as has happened in the past, Victoria shuts down the 460MW Heywood interconnect due to excessive demand from SA? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... )
OTOH, an additional 100Mwh of dispatchable storage sure wouldn't hurt.
"Fewer" has been replaced by "Less". This was done several years ago by an otherwise undocumented change pushed to all users of the English language. Apparently you are using an obsolete version of the language that has been hacked to avoid mandatory updates. No more English language support for you, mate.
Probably you shouldn't trust the OS or the window manager to protect anything. Not that they won't try. But if we have learned anything, it is that the population of vulnerabilities in virtually all software and hardware is very large. Fixing the known problems will take years. Fixing all the problems much longer. Moreover, "they" probably don't need to know our passwords. Any website viewed, or email opened, or application acquired and run can potentially download a nasty that will escalate its privileges and take over the computer. They don't need no steenking passwords to get at our treasures. Moreover, in the case of financial stuff, the bank or whatever itself can be hacked.
Really, there's literally no place to hide. We're all likely going to be hacked sooner or later. If we haven't been already.
Perhaps it's time to stop pretending that passwords, ACLs, user privileging etc can keep us all safe. They really can't. Instead, perhaps we should focus on balancing usability against opening our affairs to all in sundry, and in keeping stuff we don't want hacked (ballots for example) on paper or other non-digital media.
"... to be able to grow tomatoes."
Sure, why not? Just turn up the heat a bit. Heat? You weren't planning to grow potatoes at an average temperature of -50C I should hope.
"You *do* understand that the radioactive material in your precious "stockpiles" decays within decades? Right?"
Sadly, not right I think. Yes the Tritium in thermonuclear weapons has a fairly short half life of 12 years. But unfortunately, the fissionable components U-235, Pu-237 have half lives of 700 million years and 28,000 years respectively.