Interesting Links for 19-07-2017

[andrewducker]

How Google Glass became a success

(tags: google glass Technology )

Openreach mulls full fibre rollout for 10 million in UK

Gosh. That took a whole four months from being made separate from BT.
(tags: internet uk )

Every Place We Used to Think Was a Planet (Until We Knew Better)

(tags: planets space language )

It’s always windy somewhere: Balancing renewable energy in Europe

(tags: Europe windpower renewables )

The Dark Side of the Moon lands at Dynamic Earth

I really want to see this. Anyone else in Edinburgh fancy joining me?
(tags: music edinburgh festival )

Fusion energy pushed back beyond 2050

(tags: fusion nuclearpower )

I'm really cheered by the responses to this rant about the evils of a female Doctor

(tags: drwho women )

All charges for paying by card to be banned

A quick dig discovered that banks are only allowed to charge 0.2% fees to process the charge, so making the businesses just include that in their prices seems reasonable.
(tags: payment money uk )

Rick And Morty Creators On Season 3, Delays, And The April Fools' Premiere

(tags: tv animation )

For one week these women recorded all the times they were objectified sexually

(tags: psychology research women society sex )

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

The comments on the wind article are an interesting mix of people supplying useful information and people not really knowing enough to justify their access to a keyboard.

For example

"Is there any way those countries could co-operate to build the grid? They will never get it done."

"Um, yes, the EU's massive project to increase grid interconnection across the whole continent. Here are lots of links to the details of all of it."

Anyhow - we are going to spend the next 30 years building interconnectors I reckon - which is a bit awkward because I don't see them becoming cheaper in the same way as wind turbines, solar panels and batteries. We've been making power cables for a long time and unless we discover room tempreture superconductors that we can deploy in the next 10-15 years I don't see a radical breakthrough in material technology helping with the cables and sub-stations.

But also NB the trials of floating offshore wind turbines in Scotland by Statoil.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/27/hywind-project-scotland-worlds-first-floating-windfarm-norway

If successful it opens up lots of space in the Med and West of Shetland for offshore wind. Perhaps the Black Sea too.

It's good to see that fusion remains only 40 years away, for a while I was getting worried that it was going to move to being only 20 years away in the near future. I do genuinly wonder what market fusion reactors are going to be sold in to in 2050 given that, if I am right about renewables, by 2050 we'll be building little else but solar panels and windfarms and it will be cheaper than ever and if I'm wrong we'll have had to build all the fission reactors we can afford.

[danieldwilliam]

Perhaps we should arrange a charity single to save Ian Levine.

[andrewducker]

I hadn't encountered his charity single before.

I've now read the Wikipedia entry.

I'm terrified to actually listen to it.

[danieldwilliam]

It's going to be the new theme tune once it's been sampled by the KLF.

[theandrewhickey]

It's worse than you're imagining. Far worse. There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything we believe in. They must be fought.

[matgb]

What Andrew said.

I was made to listen to it by housemate. I still haven't forgiven him.

It’s always windy somewhere:

[jack]

It's always *calm* somewhere ;)

All charges for paying by card to be banned

[jack]

I remember timeplease saying, the fees for depositing *cash* were non-trivial, but somehow most business owners accepted those as inevitable, but resented card charges.

I got the impression *some* card fees were actually non-trivial, especially for small transactions. But OTOH, others are basically just a surcharge, with the only non-card way of paying incredibly inconvenient...

Re: All charges for paying by card to be banned

[cesy]

Yeah, I also thought some fees were a lot higher than that, e.g. for Amex.

[drplokta]

I think the maximum processing charge is 0.3% for credit cards, as opposed to debit cards. But should still be absorbable.

[andrewducker]

Yup, you're right. I thought it was the same for both - my misreading.

[calimac]

On a topic similar to that of obsolete definitions of "planet," I was charmed to find a 1930s edition of the Rubber Bible (the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics formerly issued by the Chemical Rubber Co.) that listed the neutron as a chemical element with the atomic number of zero.

[andrewducker]

Which works as a definition. (At least to me, with my low level understanding of Chemistry). But I can understand why not everyone would agree :-)