Interesting findings on the internet

[Zenith]

Well, well, well. For a while now I have been presuming "the lights will go out", due to any/all of
...........

People claim I'm too pessimistic; I hope they are right. But I've been to IET talks by the engineers responsible for energy supply, and they confidently state the lights will go out. Interesting questions centre on when and why!

Pessimistic or realistic?

We came within a gnat's whisker of having widespread blackouts last winter, which was fairly mild. A 62/63 winter (not off the cards) would certainly have caused severe problems, misery and deaths.

Energy supply is long term but has recently been decided by here today, gone tomorrow, politicians (who seem to do nicely for themselves, and so are insulated from the consequences) and are mainly concerned with virtue signalling. I have the impression that most of them don't have a grasp of maths or physics to the standard of a bare 'O' Level pass, which with a measure of common sense, is all that's needed to get the big picture, and know what's practical and what's obviously hopeless.

I don't believe this forum should be sullied by political discussions which quickly become rancorous. I don't mean politics in the sense of Con/Lab/Green/Reform/Republican/Democrat etc, but in the broader sense of an argument about the way power and wealth is gained and distributed. In that way I believe we are being palmed off with a political and economic settlement we wouldn't agree to as an honest proposition, but is being imposed under a false prospectus by people who are ideologues, or just don't have much of a clue.

[tggzzz]

An 81/82 winter would be bad enough The 47 and 63 winters were extreme, but are extremes more likely with climate change? There's a reasonable change this year will see a strong El Nino, and let's not think about reductions in the AMOC

The, ahem, UK "Great and the Good" are pretty clueless about many things. Formal education has often been a low priority for them; IIRC Queen Elizabeth II didn't go to school. The priority has been to learn about how to retain and use power; after all, education can always be purchased when necessary.

Once I visited a trade show in Germany, and went to the Siemens stand. The salesmen stopped paying close attention to me, and there was a man wandering around the stand, but not looking interested and looking distracted. A few minutes later Helmut Kohl appeared on the stand. My immediate thought was there's no way a UK PM would sully themselves by visiting a trade show

Famous example of "The Two Cultures" was the Phillips Hydraulic Computer (a.k.a. MONIAC or Financephalograph), now on display in the Science Museum.

Economists are as much to blame as the politicians who find it convenient to listen to them. Our working lives have been overshadowed (?blighted?) by the Chicago school of economics since the 1970s. Even if its influence is waning, it isn't clear whether we will ever be able to recover from the effects.

[EC8010]

The priority has been to learn about how to retain and use power; after all, education can always be purchased when necessary.

Well, yes. When I was teaching, we would often discuss what changes should be made to the degree we ran. And in making changes, we had to consider what we were trying to achieve for the graduate at the end of it. We found we always came back to a few basic premises:

Primary school: Reading, writing, 'rithmetic.
Secondary school: Learning and regurgitating; very little analysis.
Tertiary education: Changing the way you think; making you question everything. Giving you the tools to question.

Tertiary education is a waste of time for the over-privileged; they might start questioning whether they deserve their privilege.

I was interested to see the Phillips hydraulic computer.

[tggzzz]

To secondary education, I'd add "learning how to learn". That is, of course, anathema to those who want the masses to simply follow the path chosen for them.

As for QE II, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret were educated at home like many girls from wealthy families at that time speaks for itself - and avoids raising the question of "why?".

As for a hydraulic computer, 40 years ago I recommended against replacing hydraulic logic with a microcomputer. Difficult when the environment involved BASEEFA and ATEX

[tggzzz]

The latest survey to pop into my box is

We would like to ask you some questions about your energy use and how you would respond to hypothetical energy supply disruptions on behalf of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). DESNZ is a government ministerial department responsible for Great Britain energy security, protecting billpayers and reaching net zero.

...
I wish I could infer more about what DESNZ's scenarios, but after stating that my main heating is gas, there were no further questions in the survey.

This fortnight's Private Eye offers some unpleasantly plausible clues...

For those unfamiliar with PE, it has been going since 1960, and acts as a gadfly to everybody and every institution. It specialises in information that many people and companies governments would prefer remained buried[1]. Consequently it has been sued may times, occasionally successfully.

It also publishes counter-opinions, and has the best cartoons, requiring intelligence and a knowledge of current affairs.

Very little PE content is available on the internet, and their internal index of past mis-behaviour is legendary

[1] Famous long running examples include the Lucy Letby scandal, Bristol Children's Hospital scandal, the Post Office scandal, Teeside scandal.

[tggzzz]

Nicely done ephemeral art, whether or not you are a fan of Anne MacCaffrey



From https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy02714pnw8o

[tggzzz]

I normally dislike yootoob videos, but here's an example of a good one: short, video necessary (words insufficient), carefully thought out, posed and narrated with no ums and ahs, repetitions still visible but skipped reduced by skipping frames - and hence short.

Nothing to do with electronics, it is about Nålebinding / Needlebinding, which is something I'd never heard of but is historically important. There are many examples in museums ranging from the middle ages to the neolithic.

A bit of context at https://theconversation.com/three-histo ... -go-277886

[EC8010]

I read the context bit and needlebinding isn't at all what I expected. The article then moved onto lacemaking (you will of course, recall Bertie Wooster shooting his irreproachable Mechelin lace) and straw dolls featured in the Wicker Man.

[AVGresponding]

This popped up in a thread in the other place. Haven't watched it yet myself, but there were plenty of (surprised) positive replies:

Some further information: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 8217301225
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49945-w

[AVGresponding]

Must be one of those days... https://vocabowl-870366514258.us-west1.run.app/

Tests you and estimates the size of your (English) vocabulary

[tggzzz]

This popped up in a thread in the other place. Haven't watched it yet myself, but there were plenty of (surprised) positive replies:
...
Some further information: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 8217301225
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49945-w

Tinnitus masking is a well-known phenomenon; I wonder how this is radically different.

Either way, it won't help me: I could only hear 1/3 of it in one ear. My tinnitus is in the other ear, and is yet to be life threatening

[tautech]

How One British Radio Engineer Intercepted the Secret Launch Frequencies of 60 Nazi V-1 Missiles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFYWpoQWRdI
23 mins

[tggzzz]

How One British Radio Engineer Intercepted the Secret Launch Frequencies of 60 Nazi V-1 Missiles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFYWpoQWRdI
23 mins

Hadn't heard that story before, and I'm not sure of some of the details.

The story I read was that Germans parachuted into the UK were all captured (due to Bletchley Park decrypts), and "turned". They reported false impact sites back to Germany, stating the V1s had overflown London. The Germans accordingly "shortened the fuse", causing the V1s to fall into the Kent countryside.

The story told in the video (with "please contribute to my channel") concerns me in several ways:

• it mentions reports back to Germany, which implies uncaptured Germans operating in/near London
• I don't believe the story about arming the warhead with radio pulses: much simpler and safer to count the flight time, or to ...
• I'm unconvinced about triggering with radio signals; much simpler and safer to have a (small) rotating airscrew on the nose (see image below). The number of revolutions indicates the distance travelled, and cuts the fuel.That matches the folklore that if you heard the buzz stop, you knew there would shortly be an explosion

Plus the images are all AI generated crap. The whole thing would have been much better as a blog post.

[Zenith]

False reports from agents would have been revealed by newspaper accounts from neutral countries. As far as I can tell the impact reports were skewed by not reporting some events.

I find it implausible that a complicated and expensive post launch arming system using VHF would be used, when as you say, it could be done by using the nose propeller count or a timer. The video implied that making the arming transmission when the V1 was in flight and armed, somehow upset the trajectory. It's not obvious why that should be so.

There may be some historical basis to the video but I'm inclined to believe it's more AI fiction.

[tggzzz]

Plucks "Most Secret War" off shelf, opens p532...

Range determined by airscrew cutting off fuel. I don't believe believe the video claim of moving the elevator.

Proposed feeding Germans the correct point of impact for bombs with a longer than average range, coupled with impact time for bombs which fell short.

P533...

Herbert Morrison nixed the proposal on ill-conceived quasi-religious grounds.

P544...

Underling (RV Jones) turned a Nelsonian blind eye until received in writing. Wasn't stated that it was received!

Two months later overran the HQ, found radio transmitters in a few bombs were falling short. But the HQ staff regarded agents as more reliable , and concluded the radio info was wrong! Also found there had been no German reconnaissance flights for 3 years!

[tggzzz]

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/ai- ... or-dummies

"As AI companies get ready to go public and we get a deeper look at their inner workings, it’s only natural to have questions about their finances, like “Do they make money?” and “How?” Here are a few examples to help the average layperson understand the business side of AI...."

I don't understand the taxi example, but the taxi, crematorium, farm, apartment analogies seem too close for comfort.