Ian

If you're testing positive, the test is picking up the antibodies that you have, so you've been exposed to the virus . Nothing to do with COVID it's a common infection. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) antibodies are a group of tests that are ordered to help diagnose a current, recent, or past EBV infection. EBV is a member of the herpes virus family. Passed through the saliva, the virus causes an infection that is very common.

Yes I used to sail cats and was wondering if anyone would be pedantic enough to call some of the high speed records 😉 How about "In the majority of situations, powered craft will be significantly faster than wind and solar craft". This allows for world speed records on water, air, ice and land. You missed the wind powered dynamic soaring speeds of 548 miles an hour on a very good day.

The energy flux of sunlight reaching the surface is about 1kW per m2 and assuming that you have 20% solar panels that about 200W/m2 Compare this will a 200kW subaru WRX and you can see that there's an issue. A car moving at 100km/h requires about 20kW on flat ground so you need an area of about 100m2 ie 10x10m to cruise on flat ground, at midday.... It might be a bit difficult to fit in the garage. If you had a local battery with 90% (so make the panel 120m2 and less than optimal charging times) charging efficiency you need to park for an hour at ok generation times (9am-3pm) for every hours travel. Most houses with solar don't have panels of this area or mounted at optimal angles. But over a number of days house solar will charge a car. Solar and wind are diffuse, that's why sailing boats are slow compared to motor boats.

I think that the Government should have done the "Australia Card" properly as a smartcard and collapsed medicare, banking, drivers licences, pilots licences, building access, computing credentials and ASIC cards back into it. I recently had to sign up to the ATOs mygovid as a company director as yet another form of identity but I can't make it subordinate to my mygov identity. A central Gov id could have been voluntary allowing those who want to carry 50 different things around the option of doing so.

What you've identified is not the issue with not vaccinating. I fully support people right not to vaccinate be it on the basis of a conspiracy theory, it being banned by the pixes at the bottom of the garden or on good scientific evidence. However I don't support those people being able to participate in functions where they pose a risk to others such as healthcare, teaching, policing and interacting with the public on such things as RPT when there is a heightened risk of transmission as their belief system is putting others in danger. If the belief is based on good scientific evidence eventually logic will prevail however if it is because of the first two reasons, basically you're out of luck. Read the story on Typhoid Mary to understand the risk a carrier can pose to others. I still find the final solution somewhat harsh but the reality was that it achieved a greater good as some estimates put the number of deaths caused by her at 50.

Seriously what Australia needs is both, it's not an either or thing. Solar power is cheap up to a certain percentage of your grid, especially when you have consumers who only care about cheap power not intermittency. Think of a swimming point with a salt water chlorinator as long as you get about X hours per couple of days you're sweet. However when you're wringing the neck of a process which needs 24x7 power to provide a return on capital its a different story. Think of aluminium refining or ammonia generation or even H2 generation of course you'll buy cheap solar power when it's available however you need a low cost continuous power solution to fall back on. Fossil Gas or Hydrogen is neither cheap not carbon neutral, neither is battery power of scale that you'll need. Of course you could say well just turn off the refining during the night or dunkelflaute periods however unfortunately many of these components are damaged by cycling processes. And also you're not generating the return on capital of the equipment when it's off so from a business perspective it stinks. It will take at about 10 years to bring nuclear generation online assuming broad based cross bench support and consensus politics unless of course small modular reactors turn out to be economic however By the way that generator is powered by biodiesel rather than fossil fuel so its powered by newly captured carbon new sunlight not dinosaur sunlight. But is does give some some indication of the footprint difference required for a solar-battery-storage solution which would be the size of a couple of a number of tennis courts compared to a bathroom size footprint. Getting off fossil fuels will be very hard and if done poorly expensive.

I'm not so sure, my take is the guy is simply a clown and thought he could make a quick buck. Until he was caught he was boasting about how clever his scam was. Not much different from a someone pretending that they're a doctor, policeman or engineer. It's not a simple case of bending a few rules, he was actively recruiting work that he knew he was unqualified to offer without the correct training or permits.

Creating areas for plugging in cars is not an enormously difficult piece of infrastructure work. If you really want to run a cable from your house you can already buy simple footpath safe covers which are approved in Australia, they're used in the building industry already. The whole henny penny issue of "not enough charging points" is lets face it, pretty easy to solve and is only required for inner city areas without offstreet parking which isn't the majority of Australian car owners. City planners want residents of high density housing to catch public transport. The extra generating capacity and load on the grid is a much more difficult, especially given the fact that fossil fuels are being progressively phased out. Cars tend to be at home during the evenings and at work during the day when solar is generating cheap power. Given that solar and wind often generate more power than the grid is absorbing, are you going to pay people to charge their cars during these peak times to take power off the grid? If so who's going to pay? Services and infrastructure will adapt, often in an unexpected manner and often to the chagrin of city planners and Governments. A good example of adaptation is the creation of the suburbs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suburb historically these were created by better transport options and now 70% of Australians live in the suburbs. Given that most people tend to like to live in a house houses compared to apartments this trend will accelerate now that many workers have demonstrated the ability to work remotely as the requirement to commute has evaporated for this set of workers. Property developers and city planners have been actively marketing the concept of "liveable cities", with convenient local shops, high density housing and mass public transport, prizes are given for the "best cities" which demonstrate "high density" services however these are sponsored by vested interests. Large active marketing budgets trick people into buying into this concept, as the profit margins are better on apartment blocks, and it allows Governments have large centralised service centres such as industrial hospitals. However given the choice people pick free-standing homes, views and larger living areas. Economically this preference is easy to demonstrate, the percentage of high income earners living in apartments is significantly lower than the general population. The whole e-working concept will create a second wave of urbanisation as knowledge workers can now live further from their "work offices".

Road rage at petrol station. https://www.9news.com.au/national/knife-pulled-out-during-petrol-station-confrontation/5c3153d2-6f53-4323-bd3c-13f8a56541ac Rage at airport https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4183992/Air-passengers-fight-queue-jumping-row.html Rage at resturant https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mum-broke-womans-elbow-punched-8860869 Yes, people don't like to queue, and you'd expect with a significant increase in vehicles that as charging point patronage increases. However the situation is Australia is significantly different in Australia, where garages are commonplace so changing can occur at home. For instance you probably have a garage and if you bought an BEV you'd also get a charger installed at home. Most people will do the same.

You may be able to leverage an openCL Kalman filter on an embedded platform using an onboard GPU. I've got a multicore embedded AMD Ryzen board somewhere with fairly powerful integrated GPU somewhere that would probably be overkill but OpenCL provides an abstraction between CPU and GPU which is good for this type of operation

Out of curiosity what language and library have you written this in and how computationally expensive is it?

One thing that I can say about the Chinese economy is that they make a lot of stuff. The Australian economy appears to be based on digging stuff up, growing stuff, moving it around and housing. Housing doesn't actually produce anything except debt and yet we have a tax system which prioritises it. The only thing which weighs against the Chinese is their Government which in the long term will be unable to manage the complexity of their economy efficiently

The issue in the near term isn't reserves its pollution and its impact on climate. If we get another la nina next year that should raise a few eyebrows we might see some talk of a locked in la nina.

I think that the reason why is that hybrids are a bit of a camel, both electric and ICE so essentially they have higher build costs and maintenance costs. Going 100% electrical appear to be cheaper and more economical in terms of both upfront and ongoing costs. I watched this a while ago and it made me do an about face on my views on nuclear. The presenter is a bit of bit of a green tree hugger type and was involved significantly in solar and wind projects. In this he digs into the out some interesting facts and it made me realise it was an area I didn't know much about.

Hi Turbs, I agree that maintenance remains a significant factor with all vehicles, even my pushbike requires regular work. Personally I think that BEVs suck in many way compared to the convenience of liquid fuels and ICE however times are a changing. However if someone cracks the solar fuel cell which efficiently makes butanol or other liquid fuel all bets are off. I think that Toyota will struggle for the same reason that numerous companies went under when the line shaft went out of fashion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_shaft It took 30 or so years after electrical engines became commonly available before people realised that electrical engines enabled the factory layout to be tailored to the workflow rather than the other way around. Numerous companies didn't grasp the significance of the change and sank. When you look at Tesla compared to a Toyota BEV the comparisons from a technology point of view are stark. Toyota remains a car company, buying technology components from third parties whereas the Tesla is an integrated whole and software and electronic are seen as core to the vehicle and done in house. When you sit in a Toyota you can see how the modular discrete electronics and associated software have come in a box and are plugged in. Many people might think that this is a subtle distinction however I think that overcoming this divide will be a decade or more struggle for Toyota. My gut feeling is that Toyota reliability engineering and build quality far exceed what Tesla can do however I still think that this philosophical divide will crush them. It's not that they can't adapt, from a management perspective they don't want to.

Maybe they bet the farm on making fuel cell and hydrogen powered vehicles and the world has moved to BEV now they're reluctantly playing catch up. Maybe it's the fact that BEVs appear more competitive and cheaper than hydrid vehicles and have lower emissions. Maybe its because a number of their largest markets have set zero emission targets by 2030 and it doesn't align with their strategy. https://thedriven.io/2021/12/15/toyota-joins-electric-race-with-16-new-bevs-and-massive-boost-to-sales-target/ Half their investment funds are still going towards hybrid vehicles and they're actively lobbying Government not to set zero emission targets. Australia is a tiny market which is well behind the curve in terms of transition to low emission vehicles which is a legacy of a Government which couldn't see the writing on the wall. It's the same team that thought WA's reservation system for gas was a dumb idea, and for decades I voted for those clowns, more fool me. Australia's a bit an ICE dumping ground at the moment and the lead times on BEV's are up around the 12 month mark.

Luckily I don't work in your industry however the demand is pretty good where I am. 😉 And the article you posted appears to back up what I stated, or possibly I expected people to be able to extrapolate high level concept into ongoing costs. But here are a few points from the article. The reason why an EV vehicles fluids last is that the environment is less polluting and corrosive. The structure is simpler because things like the drive train is simpler.

Pretty much agree with everything said and the sentiment behind it. My son has been a big fan of EV's for years and I've gently teased him about my vehicles and their less than planet loving ways, however I can see the writing on the wall and ordered an EV for my wife. When my car is a few more years older I suspect it too will be replaced with an EV. From a numbers and morality perspective its becoming more difficult to justify not doing it. The story with planes is more nuanced however in the final analysis we need to target net zero emissions.

There are actually real differences in the two types of vehicles which makes EV's more reliable. The type of load and how power is delivered. Think of the maintenance schedule of a turbofan engine compared to a reciprocating engine. Yes both require maintenance however turbines have longer service intervals, higher lifetimes and lower failures. Similarly EV's components can be expected to have higher lifetimes The other difference is where you put the engines, the only option for a large ICE is a single power plant centrally located. EVs can put the engine close to where power is needed so the drive chain is much shorter and less failure prone as there are fewer torsional and harmonic issues to deal with. Think of a truck bunnyhopping due to poorly applied power. Another difference is the environment, ICE are high temperature chemical plants with corrosive gasses so you need to design around this environment. Yes bearings still fail in EVs but a significant number of bearing failures are due to contaminants and seal failure in hostile environments in ICE. Yet another one which is ignored is the fact that electric engines can start under load. This removes an extremely stressful operation from their operating process.

Ethanol works pretty well in Brazil for a variety of purposes. The question is can you planes run on it?

The "lightweight tanks" haven't taken care of the storage problem. The tanks are still huge for their energy capacity, hydrogen is leaks easily and incredibly explosive and flamable. It ignites with air with only a 4% mixture. It possesses the highest NFPA rating of 4 which compares to 3 for Gasoline and 2 for Jet fuel and diesel. Imagine the difference between gasoline and diesel, then think of the next level up and you have hydrogen. Read the following and you start to understand why hydrogen is unlikely to be handled by service stations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_safety The Japanese are keen on the hydrogen economy however I suspect that it is largely dead before is has begun it is both expensive and difficult. The rest of the world has gone battery electrical for vehicles leaving Toyota's position increasingly exposed and at odds with the rest of the industry. https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/15/toyotas-team-japan-aims-to-save-internal-combustion-engine-from-extinction/ https://seekingalpha.com/article/4514310-toyota-stock-complacent-as-electrification-of-transport-picks-up There isn't a ship in the world that can ship liquid hydrogen so people have proposed to convert it to ammonia. CSIRO producted the following graphic in relation to the efficiency of ammonia as a fuel (and it was a pro ammonia paper). Note that the graphs indicate "best case" scenarios. Where the bar changes colour is the probable operating efficiencies. From the link about the paper which is a pro ammonia site. At the outset, we must acknowledge the paper’s title: “Ammonia as a Renewable Energy Transportation Media.” The authors are quite clear that, relative to making ammonia, using renewable electricity directly “would clearly be far more efficient” given the distribution losses of only “less than 10%” in most electrical grids. https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/articles/round-trip-efficiency-of-ammonia-as-a-renewable-energy-transportation-media/ Hydrogen for steel might make sense however you'd need to use if where you made it for it to be economical as Hydrogen is too difficult to ship. Also you need a good supply of de-mineralised water and I think that osmotic separation can't provide the necessary purity so you need to spend more energy on a flash vaporisation process. Hydrogen for steel makes the most sense when you make enough hydrogen during the day and consume it as night on site. There will be huge efforts to make electrolytic steel win the day, it's about 30% more energy efficient and allows the use of cheaper ores and is far more space efficient. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-industry/green-steel-without-green-hydrogen-can-it-work Places like Korea which have a significant nuclear capability want a direct electrical process for ore refining. Nuclear provides a high capacity factor power source which can meet electrolytic production constant power requirements allowing them to keep importing iron ore.

Onetrack you might have to suck it up in a couple of years if they make you start paying for your pollution. Generally there are people who embrace change, people who don't really care and can be nudged and then there's the group of recalcitrants for whom change is very upsetting, who eventually have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the new environment. On the bright side we appear to be moving pretty slowly down this path so you might get to play the "out of my cold dead hands" routine for a while yet. 🙂 The only reason that FF cars are cheap to run is the fact that they pollute without paying for the mess. If you have to pay for carbon capture, not so cheap. Batteries have been getting cheaper however the rate of this decline is slowing, when you need to replace your batteries in 10 years or so time, the costs would be essentially a fraction of their present day costs so hopefully not too bad for a present gen car. From https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/the-story-of-cheaper-batteries-from-smartphones-to-teslas/

But if mandates appear that require net zero what fuels are available. Obviously the petrol and diesel don't fit this requirement. There are a lot of clever people hoping that hydrogen works however it's such a difficult fuel and expensive to boot.

So the biofuels, ethanol and bio-diesel both give you green brownie points. But ethanol impacts on range. https://www.flightglobal.com/corn-to-run-can-ethanol-be-used-as-a-clean-alternative/71449.article Are there any other manufactured fuels which are carbon neutral. Lots of hype around hydrogen but its difficult to store and refuelling would dangerous.

I get that more real estate is needed if everyone charges at a power station. My point was that significantly less space is needed because 95% of people will charge at home. The exceptions are going to be around period of peak demand, ie public holidays, rental changeover etc. Interestingly these aren't going to be in cities. They'll be in regional areas. The 7.2 kWh is generally considered a home charger not what you'd see in a commercial charging site. You might find this at a hotel where you leave the vehicle overnight but not at site offering vehicle "refueling" services. It's a bit like saying that your refuelling time in a car is the time taken to pump fuel from multiple jerry cans with a hand pump. Yes I've done it but its not a likely scenario. From the graphic the cost is 1.2M over 3 years in fuel, are you saying that batteries are less cost effective for metro? Simply because fuel is a smaller part of overall costs in metro. Couldn't you simply rightsize for metro by having smaller battery packs? With the removable batter packs, what ratio is required between the truck and batteries to maintain capacity or is this a piece of string question. A couple of large solar farms in the right spot along highways could cater to the demand? The difficult thing for government is going to be the loss in fuel taxes. At some point they're going to have to charge by the km or similar.