The technology thread

[Ragey Erasmus]

They're talking about getting rid of road tax as well, which is inevitable and charging by use of road per miles instead. Electric cars atm here not being charged road tax as well as the infrastructure to charge them.

They got rid of road tax years ago (as a cyclist who has had "you don't pay road tax so shouldn't use the roads" said to me far too many times, trust me on this one).

 

[die_mole]

Any networking gurus here? Got fed up with my patchy wifi coverage using the virgin supplied router (printer keeps disconnecting in the garage etc), so looking to set-up a mesh wifi network.

Looking into things the ideal would be a tri-band, wifi6 (ax) system with 2 or 3 transmitters dotted around, but it looks like that sorta set-up will still set me back £300+ which is way too much .

There are options for a little shy of £200 which i'd be prepared to pay for a long term solution. But looks like it's a choice of either tri-band (so a dedicated 5ghz band for the transmitters to communicate with each other) OR WiFi6, not both.

Anyone have any advice on which to ditch?

Any update on this? My mom just bought a mesh system and is expecting great things from it. Had no idea what it was until I heard her talking about it.

 

[Bada-Bing!]

They got rid of road tax years ago (as a cyclist who has had "you don't pay road tax so shouldn't use the roads" said to me far too many times, trust me on this one).

Sounds like they are getting confused with the car tax disc. If so, you would have the last laugh that if they didn't pay it and they would got a letter in the post with a fine or even got their car impounded.

 

[dullonien]

Any update on this? My mom just bought a mesh system and is expecting great things from it. Had no idea what it was until I heard her talking about it.

Not yet. I've not pulled the trigger quite yet. Will update this thread when I do.

 

[dullonien]

Thats why I mentioned China. Besides it seems Norway is far ahead of even Sweden in terms of heat pump usage, so that electricity consumption sleep reference will be largely from a combination of heating buildings and charging cars.

How Norway Popularized an Ultra-Sustainable Heating Method

Norway has by far the most installed heat pumps per capita, a cheap, highly efficient way to keep homes warm -- and carbon footprints small.

reasonstobecheerful.world

The UK may struggle despite it's almost unparalleled wind reserves, but that will be about 95% due political ineptitude (including non-reperesentation of Greens through an undemocratic electoral system) and 5% due to the technological challenges. Other countries are showing it is eminently possible to generate enough electricity for EVs and heat-pumps via renewable and nuclear energy. Countries whose governments are slaves to fossil fuel lobbyists will be at the back of the queue, but they will get there because economics are starting to dictate renewable energy is the most cost effective option.

Once humungous battery farm tech becomes more cost effective we'll be able to manage fluctuations in renewable energy generation and have resilience on the grid. Even the Daily Mail, closely aligned to fossil fuel lobbyists, can sometimes let reality seep through.

Elon Musk's Tesla battery farm has saved South Australia $116 MILLION

Operating via the Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia, the battery has helped to restore stability to the network and lower the costs of running the power grid, according to reports.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Some great discussion here on energy production.

The reality is that until there's a way to store excess energy in the grid, we can't rely solely on renewable energy production (minus nuclear), as there's too much fluctuation in energy production when it comes to wind and solar. Nuclear is the 'easy' solution to fill that void but brings its own long term issues and stigmas.

The national grid has made huge strides in a short space of time though, so the future looks bright.

With regards to storage, I think electric cars and domestic battery tech will help massively as you say Bruce. Using excess energy overnight is key and this ties in perfectly with how the car is used anyway, so there's no impact on the end user. Will people be prepared to invest in domestic batteries though? Cars have become a status symbol, with most prepared to spend £30k+ on a car, meaning expensive battery tech fits in their price range already, but most are reluctant to spend a couple of grand on a new boiler for their house, so we may struggle to get them spending £10k on a bank of batteries.

As I linked previously, I think Hydrogen production will also be the other key part of this - at least for the short/medium term. The gas boilers in our homes will soon switch to Hydrogen, and hydrogen makes more sense for commercial machinery than electric at the moment. It takes lots of electric to produce, so would make sense to utilise any excess in the grid to produce Hydrogen for later use.

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

Any update on this? My mom just bought a mesh system and is expecting great things from it. Had no idea what it was until I heard her talking about it.

Got A mesh system where I live. It was an instant and huge improvement.

 

[Which Tyler]

They got rid of road tax years ago (as a cyclist who has had "you don't pay road tax so shouldn't use the roads" said to me far too many times, trust me on this one).

Got rid of by Churchill wasn't it?

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

Got rid of by Churchill wasn't it?

Can't recall how long ago but it's not existed for a very long time. The tax is on the cars (current explanation is on emissions). Those who love to throw that excuse at cyclists love to ignore electric car owners also aren't required to pay it.

 

[Bada-Bing!]

Tech giants targeted in harmful content crackdown

Sending genuinely harmful communications will become illegal if the bill becomes law.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Bada-Bing!]

Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

A lab in Oxfordshire takes a big step towards harnessing the energy source of the stars.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Amiga500]

Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

A lab in Oxfordshire takes a big step towards harnessing the energy source of the stars.

www.bbc.co.uk

Aye, reading about JET earlier.

But I remember watching all about it on Tomorrows world in the early 90s and fusion being "20 years away"....

Even ITER is only forecast to "just about" breakeven, and doesn't generate 1 Watt of electricity, so we're miles away from where it needs to be.

DEMO is forecast to make some electric, but its not gonna be online until 2050+ (probably 2060+).

Pity the govt wouldn't chuck £30 billion at this rather than utterly waste it on new SSBNs.

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

Aye, reading about JET earlier.

But I remember watching all about it on Tomorrows world in the early 90s and fusion being "20 years away"....

Even ITER is only forecast to "just about" breakeven, and doesn't generate 1 Watt of electricity, so we're miles away from where it needs to be.

DEMO is forecast to make some electric, but its not gonna be online until 2050+ (probably 2060+).

Pity the govt wouldn't chuck £30 billion at this rather than utterly waste it on new SSBNs.

I understand the whole fusions always being 20 years away but it's a shame how some people take that to mean no progress has been made (not suggesting you are). It's a lot of time but the potential is so huge we would be mad not to consider it if it looks like it could feasibly be commercially viable.

 

[dullonien]

My A-level physics teacher was adamant that fusion was 'just around the corner', but that was 20 years ago, and we're still a long way off. I did learn all about fusion, including the formulas and equations, but I remember none of it now!

If ITER can manage to sustain long term stable reaction though, it'd be huge, even if it's just breakeven. Maintaining a 100 million Celsius torus of plasma hovering in 'mid-air' for extended lengths of time doesn't sound easy though!

 

[Bada-Bing!]

Only downside if teams app on Remote Desktop for work still can't access my microphone and camera, so have to switch the Mac OS teams app. Sort it out Microsoft.

Finally found a workaround for sharing screens from remote desk to Teams on Mac OS. It was really simple as well and just involved using dual monitor. Still crazy that Microsoft won't support microphone/camera? access for Teams on Remote Desktop.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

 

[Amiga500]

Mental!

Obviously way too power intensive for being a long term thing... Cost of transactions will kill it.

I think there are 'lighter' alternatives to bitcoin (ethereum?) - but they'll go the same way eventually.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Yeah, there are definitely lighter ones, but even those are still pretty bad - people have been saying "Oh, XYZ will be incredibly efficient in six months, give it time!" but they never do end up being half as good as the sheep keep bleating about

There's an account that crops up every 6 months on twitter where he'd had someone kicking off at him about Ethereum and how it's going green in six months, but that was years ago so he just quote tweets it with "Still nope" every six months

 

[Bada-Bing!]

And HMRC are also getting in on taxing profits from Bitcoin as well.

 

[ncurd]

Also in reality its just a bloody ponzi scheme, tecnologically smart but actually doesn't solve any issues with currency and creates entirely new ones and has no value backing it other than blind faith.

People are making money out of it but it is a bubble and will spectacular pop at some point.



But hey if you work a tech company and say blockchain and crypto some higher up will give you some cash. I've yet to see anyone suggest something actually useful for the concept though.

Other problems, its rife with fraud and theft, you get forks and no one decides which fork is better so you end up with two competing branches and its happened with every system.

Like the emissions stuff is only part of the problem they're just a bad idea that got out of hand.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

People are making money out of it but it is a bubble and will spectacular pop at some point.

Already starting to see it in NFTs,
Prices plummeting on the more popular ones, interest/traffic way down across the eco system
There's still interest in it, and more celebs are shilling it, but it's becoming a smaller bubble