Interesting Links for 15-08-2017

[andrewducker]

Lovefilm By Post DVD rental service to close

I have some sympathy for people living in low bandwidth areas. But mostly I think we should be cabling them up too.
(tags: DVD streaming movies technology )

Parked electric cars are earning (absolutely tiny amounts of) money balancing the grid in Denmark

(tags: electricity cars denmark )

The International Conference on J.R.R. Tolkien's Invented Languages

(tags: Tolkien language )

An evolutionary biologist dismantles the Google Diversity Memo

(tags: google diversity gender brain evolution )

Charlottesville White Supremacists Begin to Lose Jobs, Web Hosting Platforms

(tags: racism jobs )

Trump talking about what great genes he has. Particularly the German ones...

(tags: genes politics race usa )

Amazon's Good Omens Miniseries Will Star Michael Sheen and David Tennant

(tags: neilgaiman terrypratchett tv davidtennant )

Denying a dying patient access to their vaper is the height of puritan cruelty

(tags: nicotine death OhForFucksSake )

People who are 'fat but fit' face 26% higher risk of heart disease

(tags: fat health heart )

Comments

<3 Film

[bugshaw]

I had just been reviewing my subscriptions and decided to keep LoveFilm, for many of the reasons in the article - lots of obscure stuff that's hard to buy, not available to stream, with subtitle options, director commentaries etc. So I'm sorry they've decided to close it.

[drplokta]

€130 per vehicle per year is not what I'd call an "absolutely tiny" amount; it's quite a useful sum. I assumed you were talking about something on the order of €5 per year or less until I read the article.

[andrewducker]

They were parked statically all day though. And while that might be fine for your car (until it's replaced by a self-driving taxi) it's not really what vans do normally.

I assume that electric vans also tend to have bigger batteries than electric cars. So the amount you'd make from plugging your car in during the day would be less there.

I do wonder whether £10/month is enough of an incentive for people to plug their cars in to a special charging point during the day. Of course, if standard charging points did this, then £120/year would probably be enough to at least pay for such things, and with scale it might be worthwhile.

[movingfinger]

That's terrible about the DVD service. I have two streaming services and I've been thinking about subscribing to a DVD delivery one too because streaming usually does not have what I want on it. Our library has DVDs, but not a very good selection.

[jack]

What everyone else said about lovefilm: I'd rather have a streaming service, but last time I checked, the obvious ones cost more for a rental and had a smaller selection. Hopefully that doesn't persist!

[armiphlage]

With respect to cabling everybody ... I can't say much, since we're building parts for them, but in 2019 there will be a cheap, low-cost option available for everyone between the Artic and Antarctic circles. Not helpful to the Inuit and more northerly first Nations, but otherwise rural people will be quite happy.

[andrewducker]

Cheap _and_ lost-cost?

I assume also somewhat-high-latency, due to bouncing all of the signals off of stratospheric balloons?

[armiphlage]

Price point is $30 US per month per subscriber for unlimited high-speed usage. Latency is moderate, with a 250 - 450 km line-of-sight path to the first transceiver. Transceiver hardware is NOT tested or rated using the usual means for its environment, but is just COTS, using a massively redundant array of cheap, tiny devices instead of fewer reliable (and expensive) devices. The trick is being able to fit an enormous number of tiny devices into a single delivery truck.

And not vapourware, since our factory is starting to churn out modules for the tranceviers.

[andrewducker]

Interesting!

I shall look forward to it hitting release, or at least publicity, so I can see what they're up to.

(If there are any press releases then point me in that direction at andrew@ducker.org.uk)

[armiphlage]

Hardware built by my team is currently in orbit.

https://thenextweb.com/podium/2019/08/24/bezos-and-musks-satellite-internet-could-save-americans-30b-a-year/

[armiphlage]

Aaaand they just went under.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/oneweb-goes-bankrupt-wont-challenge-spacex-in-satellite-broadband-race/

[armiphlage]

Ignoring the issue of allowing someone in hospice care to vape, the issue of not being able to move people to the commode or use a bed pan is a solved one. "Cholera beds" are designed to support patients comfortably while allowing them to relieve themselves into a sub-bed container.

Failing that, there are absorbent pads that you can slide underneath a person; we used them with my father. I am shocked that a hospice would not already have them in stock.

I personally would find either method more dignified than the current method they are using.

http://www.discobed.com/cots/cholera-bed/