I can reveal, exclusively, that I was not the guy named in Charles Manson’s will, nor was I Charles Bronson’s best man, I just thought I’d get that out of the way, as I discovered today that a different Charles that I thought had gone to somewhere in southern america to practice his trade of geophyzz berk, has actually been in prison on a manslaughter charge, drove like a twat and lost it in a corner and went backwards into an oncoming vehicle.
Now that that is out of the way, I want to talk first about El Reg’s “On Call” column, it seems to be entirely written and read by first line tech support drones, god knows I spent a few years being “Jim from BT” or Jim from Virgin” or “Jim from Cisco” or “Jim from Microsoft” or “Jim from Juniper”, which often enough meant the guy on the other end of the speakerphone line was in Mumbai, and I covered that high street stuff all the way up to regional backbone NOC’s and military shit and all the rest of it, and yet I have never been able to ever relate to a single fucking “On Call”..
Never, not even fucking once.
I could tell you about the engineer who didn’t make the appointment because he stabbed someone outside on the street, I could tell you about the engineer who took an entire bank offline by mixing up local and HQ IP address ranges which made the entire bank network not trust any other site (some 900 nationally) until it was rectified 12 hours later, I could tell you about the engineer who broke an entire RAID array for a large multinational defence contractor by punching the rack in anger (head crash from the vibes) and I could tell you about the engineer who wrote off his brand new company car with delivery miles on it 30 miles from HQ, and manged to convince everyone it was stolen some weeks later buy attending every job on his motorcycle, and I can tell you quite truthfully that none of them were me… I made precisely zero fuckups at work, a statistic that I could apply to every other engineer in my peer group.
I can tell you that there were a handful of jobs where the very first thing I did after arriving on site and finding what was wrong, I phoned the office and told them “I literally have not touched a thing, I flatly refuse to touch a thing, and if you have the brains you were born with you will flatly refuse to treat this job as a standard breakfix with SLA guarantees, and refuse to send any engineers out unless the client agrees to a ‘whatever it takes, no queries, best efforts’ job, because this is a total fuckup and as I speak to you ‘we’ are 100% excluded from any possible culpability”
I can tell you that there were literally three client sites EVER that had gorgeous organised pristine documented and labelled and properly installed racks.
I can tell you that the basis for 99% of the business is cornering the CFO and telling them they can basically eradicate the IT budget and staff, simply outsource it to a “channel partner” (us) and buy a book of vouchers, when you have an issue, tear out a voucher, we offered a 4 hour SLA.
I can tell you that what happens next is clue less fucks in offices use up a voucher, and I drive 100 miles each way to install a new USB keyboard, literal truth, I shit you not.
Before you know it all your vouchers are used up, so you buy some more… six months down the line you have passed the point of no return.
I can tell you that some sections of BT wholesale were one of the very few business connectivity providers who did NOT use default root credentials for their entire estates of routers, simply because some sections of BT wholesale were one of the very few business connectivity providers who did not outsource everything to mumbai.
But el reg on call… nope, never seen a single one that I can relate to, and this is arguably one of the world’s leading specialist IT / tech sites.
I can tell you that what security there is usually relies on fixed routing, for example you can use a beyond obsolete 837 cisco dsl router on an ATM if the phone line (and circuit numbers etc etc) are fixed and away from the main voice network, the ATM end has a phone line circuit with number, the HQ end has the other end of that phone circuit, and the only way in is to tacacs tunnel in from the HQ end, unless you were me in back of the ATM fixing the router or a G4S or Loomis guy swapping out the cash cassettes in the ATM proper.
BTW everyone talks complete bollocks about how little cash an ATM holds, there are four or five cassettes each the size of a kitchen drawer, and a pile of 100 notes isn’t a pile, it’s just a small wad.
Backs of ATM’s were one of the very few places I would not whip out the smartphone camera to document everything, putty logs were sufficient.
It’s the same thing when it comes to that other el reg staple, the BOFH, it’s not just that I can’t relate to any of it, ever, I don’t know how anyone who *does* work in IT can relate to it, at least above the level of a pissy world genius bar drone.
Which all brings us neatly to rehash previous shit about EV’s and the differences between FUEL and ENERGY.
Years ago I knew the guy, Bill B, who has the export license from Japan for all nissan vehicles, among other shit, I dunno if Bill is still alive and kicking, but he or his daughter are about to see a boost in revenue, because nissan is launching a production variable compression turbo petrol lump in the infiniti range.
They can vary the compression anywhere between 8:1 to 14:1 on the fly, by replacing the conrod with a multilink that doesn’t look a million miles away from something on an old steam beam engine, you move the position of the link to adjust the effective throw of the whole assembly and piston travel by up to 6mm, and you move the link by servo.
Add in variable valve timing and multi port fuel injection, plus the multilink being like a crossbar so the piston only goes straight up and down (no torque or wear applied to cylinder walls) and all of this at only a 10% manufacturing premium over a standard petrol engine, and suddenly you have made up for the marginal at best efficiency differences between a standard IC engine running on FUEL and an EV running on ENERGY.
plus it is all under live computer control, so if you wanted to run on wartime 80 octane cabbage water, you could, and it means you can also trim emissions at will, so it’s death to the toyota hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
Only “shame” I can see in the design is it is a 2000 cc 4 banger, I’d have made it a 750 cc triple with a 120 degree crank, which because engine costs are basically down to boring operations regardless of size means it would be 75% of the price of the 4 banger.
I predict the next iteration has a flywheel that is made of high temperature rare earth magnets to make a multiphase generator / starter…. and no mechanical driven anything, not water pump, nothing, next step after that is servo controlled valves.
Really it is all just a huge fuck you and wake up call for everyone claiming that EV’s are the future, there is NOTHING future about a tesla, it’s all bog standard old established technology with an ipad in place of the instrument cluster… musk’s open source patents are basically worthless, otherwise they wouldn’t be open sourced, and the lock in is the proprietary cell sizes and software.
It is also a huge fuck you and wake up call for everyone claiming (by inference, because the future is electric) that the IC engine is as advanced as it is ever going to be, and even this new nissan VC-T is only scratching the surface of what is to come, ceramic pistons and combustion chambers will make a huge difference, and ceramic pistons and combustion chambers are closer to production than glass batteries or anything else in the EV world.
Lubricants and low friction treatments are not exactly standing still either, and I may well live to see a production IC engine where the “30% of the heat energy in the fuel source” is what goes out the pipe, the other 70% being converted into useful energy.
75% efficiency in an IC engine is theoretically possible, it is just as valid a target as any of the targets touted for EV’s or batteries or supercaps or anything else, in fact technology being what it is, you’re pretty much guaranteed that cross pollination of the application of new technologies means that “3x as good as lion” glass batteries will boost many other technologies just as much as they will boost some future EV.
I’m an engineer, and I cannot think of a technology that is guaranteed to boost ONLY an EV and have a net zero positive effect on everything else, including the IC engined vehicles of the future.
And from a purely engineering perspective any FUEL powered general purpose vehicle that is 75% efficient is going to be *incredibly* hard to beat.
No EV will ever match it on range for example, and unlike the EV, increasing efficiencies in combustion make the refuelling rate in seconds per 100 miles range go down and down and down, while not increasing the actual charge / transfer rate in litres per minute.
The new nissan VC-T engine doesn’t need a new fuel tank, much less and entire new fuel tank technology, either, just a can / bag / box.
Nor is 8:1 to 14:1 the limit for this design of engine, it’s just the limit for this iteration of a production vehicle engine, there is no technical reason it could not go from 6:1 all the way up to 22:1, no point on this production VC-T because current RON 85 pump gas can’t go that high or low.
22:1 plus the turbo might be good for aviation at high altitudes on gas though, or the full range engine might be good for multifuel “if you can set it alight with a gas torch it will run” engines, military style.
I have it on good authority that nissan have development versions of this motor in the lab with other non production tweaks, and they are nudging 50% efficiency under some circumstances.
Of course the other big problem with IC vehicles is the gearbox, torque converter and a new tech CVT will solve that too.
No, the biggest problem Nissan faces is the thing I talked about before, where the Toyota J200 weighs double what the J40 I learned to drive on did, and does stupid 0-60 times to boot, so this VC-T infiniti engine is coming out in the high end performance SUV market segment first.
They should have made it a 750 cc triple with 120 degree crank with flywheel / generator / starter and torque converter CVT and stuck it in a econo-box Sunny / Beetle / Rio style equivalent, 0-60 in 12 seconds, 90 mph top speed, manual windows, and 85 mpg.
They will, one day.
Companies like Volvo (who to be fair have never really been engine manufacturers) will vanish, thanks to their abandoning IC as a policy… along with Tesla and many others.
Don’t get me wrong, electric has a future in transport, but the IC engine is nowhere near dead, and laws that have been changed with a stroke of a pen to make all vehicles sold in the UK electric by 2040 can be changed back by another stroke of the pen.
Mandating shit is easy when you do it and give 22 years advance warning and it does not hurt ANYONE today and all the consequences are 22 years away in 2040 (when I will be in my 80’s so not my problem) so nobody gives a fuck.
IMPLEMENTING IT SUCCESSFULLY is a whole other fucking ball game, but, for government, it is literally not their problem, NOBODY in power today gives a flying fuck what happens in 2040, because it won’t be on their watch, they will all be retired.
Remington (the gun maker) is going the way of Caterpillar, their stock status is basically junk, once a few of these sorts of companies fail (which they will, not being too big to be allowed to fail banks) the political landscape will change overnight.
Chances are by 2025 if you want to buy a commercial EV it will be german, and if you want to buy a EV car it will be chinese or indian, because nobody else will be afloat who is making them.
Or, if you do not live in some benighted dystopic city with local zero emissions laws, you may well be riding around in a ceramic VC-T nissan pulling 50-55% thermal efficiency.
If you’re the sort of person who reads and comments on shit like BOFH and on call, you’ll probably be on universal credit in a work camp.
Rate of change is increasing, not decreasing, only a fucking idiot picks on one metric, say EV’s, and extrapolates from there that everything is going to be good and rosy.
AI is fucking bollocks, but high tech, as seen in the nissan VC-T engine, is getting into EVERYTHING, nothing is too mundane or boring or shitty or niche.
The internet connected toaster is fucking bollocks.
The high tech computer monitored and controlled toilet is a racing certainly.
The AI powered autonomous johnnycab is fucking bollocks.
The high tech computer controlled street sweeper / refuse lorry / line painter / resurfacer / etc is already in development.