nomadpete

My cynical suspicion is the same reason that Australian infrastructure always lags behind the needs of the populace. There are no votes in infrastructure that won't be finished before the next election. Combine that with the desperate attempts to avoid the opposition labelling it "overspending", and winning the next election. This applies to highways, railways, public transport, hospitals, power and water. etc, etc. Maybe also, the public has learned to expect that even after all these years of practice, governments still can't write a decent contract that doesn't allow for endless cost blowouts.

But the current non space bargain basement things are dropping a lot more than a crowbar. The disposable shahed can carry a 90kg thermobaric explosive. War is evil, but once one starts, how the heck can it be stopped without all the killing and destruction?

I remind you that the Brisbane pumped hydo has been running for about 45 years. it has two turbines capable of 600Mw with online ability in seconds. Maintenance costs are a fraction of other generator types as there are no burners, fuel delivery or storage, no waste or boilers or turbines. There must be plenty of other locations suitable for more plant like this. I suspect that Snowy was more of a political than sensible decision.

Some anti war programmes do not use weapons that hurt people. Here is one cheap defence strategy. According to Euromaiden Pess: Italy's Senate is writing a law to guarantee Ukraine a supply of old fishing nets — one of its most practical defenses against Russian drone attacks. I do wonder how they plan to hold these net up?

Something relevant to: ----- UKRAINE ! ------ At last someone in Hungary is supporting Ukraine. Hope they really mean it. Headline reads: 'We cannot ask any country to give up its territory,' Magyar says on Ukraine. https://www.euronews.com/2026/04/13/we-cannot-ask-any-country-to-give-up-its-territory-magyar-says-on-ukraine

BTW, Back in 1968 my apprenticeship was called, "Technician-In-Training". Which made us a whole class of new TITs.

So, it has come to pass. Back in 1968, I was an apprentice TIT. One of a hole bunch of TITs. We watched in awe as our instructor held aloft a beautiful object about the size of an A4 page. It was a maze of fine golden wires in a matrix of tiny ferrite toroid rings. "This" he proclaimed, "is a matrix memory. It holds a thousand bits of data for a computer. It was made last year and today is obsolete. At the present rate of development, in a few years we will see computers so smart that they can develop their own programmes!" So I have seen the original Matrix. It took a bit longer for it all to happen, but it has come to pass. OME, never fear, all those redundant coders will soon be free from enslavement.

Did it start with the number 42, then work back from that?

It works the same way as a steam engine centrifugal governor. Original credit to Mr James Watt. Someone later added bevrl gears at the bottom and repatented it as the Cogswell governor. Now someone took it's balls away and make it out of plastic and bent tin.

I was going to post this pic in another thread that was discussing Vance. But didn't want to get into trouble for being off topic.

Technology is posing a serious challenge to the megalithic Merdok empire. I stumbled across something new (to me). “Pink slime” journalism. It is named after a meat byproduct and describes outlets that publish poor quality reports that appear to be local news. ProPublica, CJR, Margaret Sullivan (then at the Post), Jane Mayer, and many others have written urgently about the dangers of pink slime, but it’s still not a widely-known term. Seems there are thousands of pink slime fake news websites in the U.S. More than there are local news outlets. Pink slime content overwhelmingly has a conservative partisan slant. Most of the known major pink slime networks are funded by right-wing dark money groups and billionaires. I notice that sometimes when I websearch a suspect news item, I sometimes get copy-&-paste repeats on a news outlet that I didn't know existed.

Just about every thread has drifts about 'The Media.' So I thought we should have a thread just for News, Etc.

Engine block is best because it bypasses the cable from negative battery to starter motor.

Sorry about that. Thread drift is my specialty. I promise I'll stick to one depressing thought at a time.....

Yeah, but you knew what was needed for your work. The average joe goes down to Super cheepie and buys jumper cables labelled 300 amps but they lack copper in the middle. They are not suitable for carrying starting current. Chinese amps aren't as big as Australian ones.