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Comment Re:user error (Score 1) 710

You must be unusual. I cycled an hour to work today (and it's not flat, it's hilly where I live, and today is unusually warm). I'm not even in particularly great shape at the moment so I'm having to work harder than usual on the bike. It's over 80 degrees in our definitely NOT climate controlled office, and I did not sweat for hours afterwards.

Comment Re:Track-train dynamics (Score 2) 195

You miss out one innovation - Talgo rolling stock. The company by that name in the Basque country (Spain) developed a lightweight, low CofG articulated train that could efficiently run at high speeds (Talgo is an anacronym - Tren Articulado Ligero Goicoechea Oriol - Lightweight Articulated Train by Golcechea Oriol). The current Talgo designed high speed units run up to 320km/h (just over 190 mph) and have an entirely passive tilting mechanism. The wheelsets are connected via the roof of each vehicle so the car will naturally lean into a corner without requiring the complex electronic controls that dogged the British APT experiment (incidentally the APT technology ended up being sold to the Italians who now use it in the Pendolino trains)

Comment Re:And? (Score 1) 195

The thing is the jet train - now I appreciate the effort and it is pretty cool - wasn't a train at all, it was just a light locomotive. The Mallard record was done with a train. It wasn't just a light loco, there were other vehicles coupled to the Mallard when it did the 125mph run.

Comment Re:Youtube Comments (Score 4, Insightful) 238

The whole problem is UX designers exist. I don't want a user experience. If a user interface is giving me an experience, it's getting in the way of what I want to do. User interfaces should melt into the background and explicitly NOT give me an experience. I should barely notice the user interface.

We need to get rid of UX designers and replace them with competent UI designers instead.

Comment Re:Microsoft is wasting people's time (Score 1) 346

Not any more. I use my laptop for gaming (I plug it in when I get home). It gets 4 hours battery life when away from the charger, and is too thin to have an optical drive. You've not needed to buy a monstrous Alienware do game for a long time now. Sure there might be one or two games that will not run well enough, but fortunately they aren't the games I'm interested in.

Comment Re:user error (Score 2) 710

This. I've noted that most people care more about their hair looking nice than frugal energy use. Some people who live within comfortable cycling distance of their job for example are all excited about the energy they can save when the next innovation that's only 20 years away in solar panel technology makes roof solar panels cheaper. However, they can save the same amount of energy today by riding into work twice a week on average - but they say "it'll mess up my hair" or some such excuse.

So really the only solution will be technology because people don't even want to make minor lifestyle changes.

The other thing is from an individual point of view you can live off the grid in a tent but it won't make any difference. Even if your whole country starts living in a tent off the grid it won't make a big change. So why live in extreme discomfort when it won't make any difference, anyway? Instead we need to accept that people will not modify their habits and do something like perhaps cut military spending a smidgeon and direct it into a Manhattan-project style push for better technology for generating power and for using it more efficiently.

Comment Things to solve (Score 1) 753

There are still some things to solve for the cashless society.

1. Electronic transactions are still far too expensive. Every shop I go into to get (say) my lunch have a minimum amount you have to spend before you can use your debit card (or you have to pay a surcharge). My lunch always falls below this value so I must use cash. Things like vending machines too. Until it's cheap enough to use something like a debit card to buy an item costing 60p, then you'll still need cash.
2. Security. Debit/credit cards are too insecure, and the burden of making them secure is on the merchant in the form of PCI-DSS. It means if you're a small business taking debit/credit might not be an option. The burger van in the car park for instance, it's still impractical for him to take electronic transactions due to the equipment requirements and PCI-DSS.
3. Very hard to settle private debts. For instance if I hire a builder for a small job, he now has to give me all his bank details if I'm to do an electronic transfer. It's about 100 times easier to give him cash.

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