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Sadly, this is as much as a reflection of society as it is of the media. If society didn't watch it, the media wouldn't produce it. Of course, if that is all the media publishes, it leaves people with only a choice not to watch and do something else.. and as creatures of comfort or convenience, people will probably take the idle path.

Of course, no AI or other software can change the odds of winning. But I would argue odds and probability are statistically two different things. The lotto is a totally random selection of 6 or so numbers from 45 (depending which lottery it is you are playing). That gives 1 in 14m-ish odds. We'll leave the system entries out. If you buy a ticket - you have exactly 1 in 14m-ish chances of winning. That is the odds regardless. Assuming you have randomly selected the numbers or say used a child's birthday week in, week out, you are likely to have the same probability as odds. But if you use some sort of historical simulation - especially something like a path-dependent Monte Carlo simulation which assumes randomness in the probability chain, you may detect certain patterns of numbers which come up more often than others. The more data sampling points you have, the more likely these patterns will repeat. However, below a certain threshold, the simulation is meaningless, and you would have to introduce variables into your simulation that you thought were material - that could be simply the combinations of numbers, slight imperfections in the balls that result in certain balls being in the scooping place more often relative to others, the order in which the balls are selected may also change that, the humidity even, etc etc. The point is, with enough historical data, you won't need to observe all those other minutiae factors as the patterns will tell their own story... And you may find, it can better predict the numbers likely to be drawn... and although your odds are exactly the same because it is a totally random draw, your probability of striking it lucky may increase. Of course, because the draw is totally random, it is not fool proof.. But it may say something like, for each number, if it is drawn first, this is the likely set of drawn numbers, and if the number drawn second is x, this is the likely set of following drawn numbers, etc.

The Odds are very much stacked against you. The HOPE you might win keeps you buying tickets. Without a ticket you won't ever win.. How much of the take that is Paid out%, gives you an indication of how fast you will lose your money. Gambling is a Big drain on any society. People you would think would never succumb to it, lose everything quite commonly. It's EVIL. Nev

More money and more delay. A new route is sorely needed, but the Minns government stopped the planned construction of a tunnel which would replace Victoria Pass. Gotta get those Metro trains built! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQq8QRbAOOI There is a diversion in place, but it is a narrow road and earlier this week was closed due to an collision. If I decide to go the Sydney, I am going to take a longer route coming into the north of the Metropolitan Area. According to Google Maps it would take me an extra hour to get to where I want to go on the southern side of Sydney

The Mt Victoria section is going to need some $$'s spent on it. Nev

I fully understand all that. He did well. Nev

Yes. Each carriage on one of those trains would carry one container which would be one less truck on the road. It would reduce the number of trucks on the inland road route between Melbourne and Brisbane, but not so much on tthe Sydney-Brisbane or Sydney-Melbourne road routes. They did say that they would establish a transfer station at Parkes to link with the rail to Sydney, but I don't know if that railroad could bear the weight being carried. There is still a great deal of local road heavy haulage going on along that inland route.

Yeah. Not a word of praise for the people who risked injury to carry out the seach, and the effort needed to retrieve the body. I thought the the Police officer controlled his emothions pretty well. He seemed to be empathetic to the fact that the woman had died, and how the parents felt. But he really showed self-control when these hacks kept pushing the mistaken message line. You have to remember also that he wasn't at the command centre, so he was dealing with relayed information and most likely had never been in the area himself. I'm not just sticking up for him because I remember working with him when he was a fresh-faced Constable. I lost track of him thirty-odd years ago.

They just want a headline. A lot of them are rude and disgraceful.. Nev

Related to addressing climate change, as well as reducing pollution, and reducing reliance on foreign fuel sources (i.e. still on topic).... Wouldn't the inland rail project reduce transport's contribution to global warming?

I know, but it was funny.

I did rip this off Farcebook (while looking for a cheap and cheerless runabout before getting the next car)

Think 'keeping warm'.

A great number, that one. The main riff is based on John Lee Hooker's Boogie Chillen. I must admit I prefer ZZ Top's use of it if I had to choose between the two.

The sad news today was that an 18 year-old young woman who had been missing in bushland southwest of Sydney was found today, deceased. Police participated in a meeting with members of the Press. It appears that all the Press could focus on, and seek to blame Police for, was a report that a message had been passed to her parents that she had been found alive. However, within eight minutes that error had been corrected and the parents given the sad news. The members of the Press, who struck me as being young, posed questions that seemed to be aimed at making the police look incompetent. The senior officer who was speaking to them obviously did not have every minute fact, since the deceased had been found in wild country. I know that country as it was part of my patrol when I was a policeman. It is what some call 'tiger country'. Dense bush, steep cliffs. If any of you has flown west of Camden, or come in on the Bindook locator, you will know how bad the country is. Searchers, who were SES, Police, Army and volunteers were using handheld radios for communication. Ther would have been no 'line of sight' from down in that steep country to the Command centre above. Mobile phones would have been useless. Nevertheless, these budding journalists, none of whom were likely to have any knowledge of the terrrain searchers were working in, kept plugging away with a line of quesioning that seemed to have only one object - to make out that police incompetence had cause undue distress to the parents. This would have been held in the afternoon since the deceased was located about 11.30am. The Police officer tried to give as much information as was available, but I doubt if by that time he had to details that the Press might have been seeking. The deceased is in such an inaccessible location that recovering her might recuire her to be carried out as an air lift does not seem safe. I noticed that the evening news broadcasts concentrated on that incorrect information. Here is the report of the meeting.

Cooking up at home

That's why the ARENA research advises going for the low hanging fruit - small trucks. These are rarely far from base and do lots of short trips so could recharge at night. They said electrifying 30,000 - 50,000 would save a billion (or more) litres of diesel annually.

When you do, some of your questions might be answered. I thought the information in the video was straight-shootin' (unbiased).

Not quite that simple.

Yes.. they are.. In terms of thread drift, I meant not changing it solely to a discussion about Tesla.

Why did I write that? Calling in at home

I must have been to busy working and studying to Know Much about Pop Stars. I know nothing about all these People. Nev

Surely EVs are a big Part of the climate change debate? Nev

Back to climate change and combating it.. I haven't looked at the video yet, but as I understand, replacing the tanks with batteries and the ICE engine with motors, we are looking at c. 677 kms with a fully loaded truck. I did a google search and a Kenworth loaded to 44000lbs (number sticks in my head for some reason) will have a range of 1200 - 1800 miles - so around 2,000 to 2,800 kms give or take. I doubt any truck driver would do that in a day, but then I thought road trains loaded to their max weight after which AI told me it was 1,400 - 2,400 kms. I am guessing a truck with a single driver only will not do much more than 677kms in a day. But without changing stations, it would be interesting to see how long it would take for those big batteries to recharge sufficiently. Over here, the smaller commercial fleet is electrifying rapidly. This will put pressure on the grid, but will have to drive renewables to help.

At the risk of thread drift, they may be, but the used EV market is, at best, immature still. Also, I guess the used market is a measure of what has been, not what is coming. And, although not a fan boy, I like Teslas.. My point is that Tesla's engineering - once pioneering - seems to have been well overtaken. Yes, the Chinese have the state subsidies Tesla doesn't directly get (and probably indirectly reduced significantly since Musk's spat with Chump), but even in the innovation stakes, Tesla seems to be falling behind.. The Cyberfluck was a vanity project gone massively wrong., so let's discount that one. But, they have been at EV trucks for years and it looks like they have yet to crack that one. Their EV car offerings don't seem to have moved that much, and their quality control (at least in the USA plant) is apparently still woeful. And we shoudl remember, Tesla is a single company, not some institutionalised dev and research centre. Of course, they are a single company that is multi-faceted facing a whole industry (or number of industries). and I should have contextualised my observation to the EV market rather than everything Tesla does.. And maybe that is part of the problem for Tesla (not including Spacex in that).. They are in so many pies, will they be tha jack of all and master off none. So, I asked Chat where they stood against their competitors for innovation. There were too many categories to take a screen shot, so here is Chat's analysis (lazy, I know): AI Driving (autonomous I guess): Strongest commercially scalable but competitors have better proven tech Robotaxi/Cybercab: Middle of the range AI hardware: Most vertically scalable - ahead of the pack Batteries; Middle of the range on technology (still leading commercial position). Fast charging: Has been overtaken - Now at the lower end of the pack. Note, that could be commercially - Chat didn't say, so lets say it is in the middle of the pack now technically Charging Ecosystem (I am guessing this is the commercial bit): Ahead of the game with over 80k installations Grid batteries: Still ahead of the game Commercial humanoid robots: Potential there; behind the pack for deployment. Solar home energy - Still ahead of the pack. This was the prompt I used: "what are teslas latest technology innovations and how do they compare to the competition" So overall, they are they are still technically innovative - yes.