Wind turbines used to absorb a power surplus?

Mar 18, 2023 Last reply: 3 years ago 893 Replies

To some extent, but not for all that many generations.

"Environmentally induced phenotypes can in this way persist for several generations, due to the transmission of molecular factors that determine how DNA is read and expressed".

Engineering talent isn't a single inheritable trait. It's a lot of different skills, many of which will be heritable, but it's unlikely that you could select a line of good engineers in the same way that you could select a line of fast race-horses, and the particular skills you'd be looking for would probably evolve as engineering developed, so your selected blood would become obseleter ather rapidly

Rubbish.

Really? Bach had a lot of kids and some of them survived and did well in music, but there's no famous modern descendant of Bach.

I think the caste system associated manual labor (which includes manipulating physical objects, even on drawings) with lower classes. So we got a lot of superb Indian theorists and fewer actual product designers. I don't know if that is still the case.

A guy near here has a new Royal Enfield. Is that made in India? It's beautiful in the classic British thumper style.

It's interesting that you don't see the electronics diversity or semiconductor industry in India that you see in China. The Indians do tend to be good at magnetics.

A neighbour here is the worts driver I have ever been driven by. He is or was a Brahmin. I gave up seeing him after my attempts to be kind were accepted as simply his due as a higher caste being than myself. F*ck that.

I had an Indian car mechanic for a while. Utterly superb, would *make* parts from scrap to get old cars going. We used to sit and drink beer together. I miss him.

Welcome to the 21st Century. I'd bet $21 that most U.S. engineering students didn't spend their childhood working on anything besides their video game scores.

Just ask older engineers who have had to work with those fools.

Agreed, but the other big one in the same week to go down had assets in crypto. Trillions have been wiped off the value of crypto in a matter of months and at one time this was purchased with real money. Even with the failure of FTX (valued at 32 billion and then to zero in a few months) it's come to light that that fund managers from more respected companies probably didn't perform any due diligence before investing. You cannot lose when the bubble is expanding but when it bursts...

Yes, I haven't been following that one too closely but it seems the problems may have been there before 2008.

alan_m snipped-for-privacy@admac.myzen.co.uk> wrote

What was fixed at the time was the liquidity crisis.

But we still can't do chips that allow monitoring of where the chip is and have it small enough to be inserted using a hyperdermic and have it self powered for decades.

Not convinced about that. Even with little kids, its obvious which ones have the mechanical and electrical aptitude and interest.

That's overstated with the railways particularly.

Dunno, we currently have a Brahman in another group who is into both the theory and physical product, in his case high tech rail guns. Corse he is a complete nutter who claims to have invented what google does so well, believes that Einstein got it wrong and that the moon landing never happened and was faked.

No idea how good his rail gun is, but our military isnt interested.

I wouldnt bet that.

It's hard to beat chemical explosives for energy density.

It fun, tragic fun, to interview the average EE recent grad. Whiteboard a 10 volt battery and a 9K:1K voltage divider, and ask for the drop across the 1K. Panic.

Or ask them about their senior project. That can be hilarious.

It probably isn't. It's cheaper to teach theory than practice. At one point I noticed that Russians journals were still publishig stuff about valve circuits, and Indian authors were mostly publishing stuff about one and two transistor circuits.

If you can't afford to buy integrated circuits to play with, yo don't have much choice.

<snip>

It's a lot cheaper to buy transformer cores than it is to set up a semiconductor fabrication line.

The FIRE people are extremely good at sawing off the branch they're sitting on. Every time they're rescued they promise they'll never do stupid things again. That lasts a few years if we're lucky.

Just years of making swiss cheese on the book:

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But the bail-out is making regulators incredible (not credible), why bail-out bag holders before bond holders?

Yes. After Independence India chose the Bullet for the Army's motorcycle. As years went on the bikes were assembled in India, but eventually they bought the tooling in the '60s. Over the years the quality improved and they now are using new designs after they bought Harris Performance. In a turnaround the 650cc's are now the best selling bike in the UK.

British Royal Enfield closed in 1970.

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I bought the DVD directly from Jani but it's probably streamed someplace.

350 cc Bullet, a bike to small to exist by American standards. He goes over the Khardung Pass at 17,582 ft. At one point he's pushing the bike because there isn't enough oxygen for it to run. He isn't doing too well either.

Unlike Ewan McGregor's films, there was no support group. He demonstrates the technique for some of the shots. Ride up the pass, prop the camera up, ride down, and ride up again to catch it of film.

They're trying. The government is a little more focused than Biden's attempts. Enough firms are getting nervous about TSMC that they may be able to attract significant investments.

My boss is Indian and an adequate driver as far as I know. I was selling a

400cc Yamaha Seca and he expressed interest. That evaporated when he found out it wasn't an automatic. I breathed a sigh of relief. He's a good boss and I rather he stayed in one piece.

Sadly you're right. I've interviewed several recent CS graduates over the years and wasn't impressed by most. The one who did impress me got her degree for University of Dublin. She completed a real world project keeping track of bicycles.

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Unfortunately she was one that got away.

I'm encouraged by the Maker movement. The public library has an area with

3D printers, laser cutters, scanners and so forth that seems to attract kids. I don't know how successful it will be but they're trying. Doing something real world with a rPi or Arduino is a start.

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