On Sat, 14 Dec 2024 23:27:13 +0100, D wrote:

> That's the golden combination I have in my own business. I sell, and my
> partners do the work. They get to focus on technology, and not on
> selling,
> and I do the talking, and enviously look at the great technical work
> they are doing, dreaming of when I was 20 years younger and doing that
> myself.

That's my downfall; I'm too unfiltered to be good at selling.

On Sat, 14 Dec 2024 23:07:43 +0100, D wrote:

> This is also something I tell everyone who wants to start their own
> business. For the love of god, outsource all accounting as quickly as
> possible.

The nice thing about software is accounting is streamlined. Tracking
inventory, appreciation of materials on hand, maintaining a payroll, and
all that stuff is best left to someone with a pocket protector.

On 12/14/24 1:14 AM, rbowman wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Dec 2024 22:20:45 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>> There's also something about 92% accuracy. Eh ?
>> We want 100% accuracy 100% of the time. Wanna fly on a plane
>> structurally calculated with 92%
>> accuracy ?
>
> Considering neural networks tend to be stochastic they should work well
> together :)

"Stochastic" basically means "guessing".

Using such methods, a few times, might be OK for
"getting close".

But there ARE applications where "seems close enough"
is NOT good enough. Planes, spacecraft, bridges, huge
buildings, medical implants - GOTTA refine with the
hard-core/hard-math tools.

I'd suggest a TV series entitled "Engineering Disasters".
Sometimes it's the stupidest mis-calc or oversight that
leads to big flaming news stories ...

On 12/14/24 9:06 PM, rbowman wrote:
> On Sat, 14 Dec 2024 23:16:57 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> Fascinating! Thank you for sharing!
>
> I never saw one but there were also ELF transmitters.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_low_frequency
>
> I think some of the frequencies are still in use but nobody is talking.
> Imagine what it would be like if humans could directly perceive the sea of
> electromagnetic radiation we live in.
>
> One project I turned down was a botanist with a theory that trees
> communicated via electromagnetic waves. The idea hasn't gone away.
>
> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-
> trees-180968084/
>
> There is evidence that EMFs do affect trees though.
>
> https://ehtrust.org/electromagnetic-fields-impact-tree-plant-growth/
>
> Sometimes for the better?
>
> https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14519600-500-forest-grows-tall-on-
> radio-waves/
>
> It reminds me of when RF heat sealers were introduced. The folklore
> suggested that women working around them either became sterile or
> amazingly fecund. Humans love their stories.

I think ELF/SLF/ULF frequencies are still reserved by
the US govt, almost entirely for military use. There
is little else that can penetrate deep ocean. Alas
the DATA RATE is horrific. Also can't have a lot of
people using those bands.

Another submarine technique appears the release of
a cabled radio buoy that can receive at satcom freqs.
Alas if you TRANSMIT from it then an enemy can
easily pinpoint your location. Sub/base comms are
thus almost always one way - orders/codes/status
kinds of stuff.

On Sat, 14 Dec 2024 23:57:52 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> "Stochastic" basically means "guessing".

Pretty much. For example if you're building a classifier you split your
labeled data into two chunks, one for training and one for testing. Rinse
and repeat until the output is good enough. If your image classified
mistakes a black for a gorilla there will be hell to pay.

In the training process some randomness is often introduced on purpose.
The problem is local maxima (or minima depending on how you prefer to
thing). If you picture a three dimensional surface with mountains and
valleys gradient descent tends to get stuck,

For example, assume you're hiking in mountainous terrain and you algorithm
is to always head uphill. Sooner or later you'll find yourself at a place
where all choices are downhill, but it isn't the highest hill around. You
need to roll the dice to get off it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_annealing

There's a nice little animation if you scroll down a bit.

After training you really hope that the result will be deterministic. You
don't want the cat to be alive on one run and dead on the next. Or a dog.

Differentiating cats and dogs is one of the 'hello world' projects in ML.
Sometimes the results aren't what you hoped for. In one sample set the
dogs tended to be photographed outdoors and the cats indoors. Whatever
magic went on in training the result was the 'intelligence' was really
good at sorting outdoor images from indoor ones. It didn't know jack about
dogs and cats.

On 12/14/24 13:55, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 14/12/2024 11:37, Pancho wrote:
>> On 12/14/24 10:31, D wrote:
>>
>>> Just saw this:
>>>
>>> "China to build first-ever thorium molten salt nuclear power station
>>> in Gobi Desert"
>>>
>>> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-06/china-building-thorium-
>>> nuclear- power-station-gobi/104304468
>>>
>>> Will be interesting to see if they will succeed!
>>
>> If you are interested, there is a thorium startup, Copenhagen Atomics,
>> that have put out a couple of good promo videos.
>>
>> The first describes the worlds general energy problem:
>>
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVue7cgmM00>
>>
>> The second details Copenhagen Atomics "Onion Core" thorium molten salt
>> reactor.
>>
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxvBAJn_vc>
>>
>> Obviously it is typical startup hype, but the guy touches on most of
>> the issues. In particular he addresses the fact we need cheap energy,
>> which a lot of the renewable discussions try to cover up. Secondly he
>> discusses non electrical energy use, which many renewable discussions
>> also skip over.
>>
>> As I understand it, molten salt reactors have two main tech problems,
>> corrosion and continuously separating out unwanted fission products.
>
> No fission reactor is perfect. It's engineering, not religion.
>

But, if we are to adopt nuclear for the bulk of our global energy it is
clear that fuel price/availability will be affected, and hence breeder
reactors with their massively improved fuel efficiency will be more
significant.

> Currently the best bet are modern straightforward PWR designs that are
> well understood, shrunk to a size that makes mass factory production
> possible.
>

If we understand the design we might just as well build big ones. Small
mass production is more to get around research and regulation problems
of new systems.

> Once we have avoided the renewable energy catastrophe, *then* its time
> to look at thorium.
>

We should do both. People are scared of building big reactors with long
payback times because it seems likely cheaper systems will be developed
to undercut them. However, I think energy security should be viewed like
military security, the government should pay to give us that security,
just in case.

On Sun, 15 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 14 Dec 2024 23:21:30 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> In the few protestant services I remember from my childhood (my mother
>> was religious, my father not) there was plenty of singing. Afterwars,
>> there would sometimes be coffee and cake.
>
> I don't recall ever going to church with my mother. The whole thing was
> sprung on me at a late date. During Boy Scout Week they made a big deal
> about going to church with your family and I asked the fatal question
> 'What's church?'

We each have our crosses to carry! ;) I remember that my mother thought it
was very important that I should become confirmed at around age 15 or so.
I was against it, but after a lot of poking and prodding and begging in
order to please my grand parents who were religious as well, I finally
agreed to attend. So basically it was like a discussion club with
philosophical themes with a bit of jesus snuck in here and there.

I still remember strongly when we were discussing marriage, and the priest
asked me who I wanted to marry? I said Bill Gates, because he is a
billionaire, and I'd be set for life!

The priest was silent for a few seconds, coughed, and moved on to the next
student.

This was in the happy and innocent pre-woke days. Todays priests wouldn't
even blink, and the swedish church I think allow gay weddings, in
contradiction to their own book, and generally there are some priests who
don't even believe in god, but they like the job and the "philosophy" so
there we are.

Talk about diluting their tradition completely. I have very little respect
for the swedish church. I _do_ respect religions, who stand by their
ancient books and fairytales in stroke woke winds. At least they have some
self-respect. ;)

> To complicate matters my mother had been divorced so my father
> theoretically was excommunicated for marrying her. So they enrolled me in
> the Catholic First Communion class and my father dutifully took me to
> Mass. I would have thought it a raw deal to be dragged out of bed Sunday
> morning while my mother read the papers so she started going to the Dutch
> Reformed church. The communion class did not go well when the nun asked
> me to recite on of the Ten Commandments and realized I didn't even know
> there were Ten Commandments let alone knowing a specific one. 'You're a
> little heathen!' She didn't know how right she was.
>
> One summer they sent me to the Reformed summer bible school to keep me out
> of trouble. That wasn't so bad since the Methodists had a beach and picnic
> area that other churches could use.
>
> The real difference was the Reformed were Calvinists and not much on fun.
> They would have bake sales to raise money. Meanwhile on the other end of
> town the Catholics were running Las Vegas Nights and Bingo. The priest was
> into horses so there was an annual horse show that attracted many people
> on the horse show circuit. The church also had a stable and a horse, Ace
> of Spades.
>
> In my extended family some were Catholics, some were Protestants, and the
> kids tended to be baptized Catholic j.i.c. they might need to produce a
> certificate later in life for a marriage etc. Those who were really
> religious were treated gently, like a nice, but dim-witted cousin.
>
>

On Sun, 15 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 14 Dec 2024 23:18:36 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> Children today are over protected, and this is destroying an entire
>> generation. There are always exceptions, those are what give me hope,
>> but the vast majority are quite sad.
>
> I feel sorry when I see them being loaded into the backseat of a car in
> their escape pods. My preferred location was standing on the passenger
> side floor with my hands on the solid steel dash of the '51 Chevy so I
> could see where we were going. The gray paint of the dash had two hand
> prints where it had been worn down to the red primer. Probably red lead,
> come to think of it.
>
> If bicycle helmets existed I never saw one. Some kids didn't survive for
> one reason or the other but life went on.
>

Yes... bicycle helmets where completely unknown during my childhood as
well. For entertainment we had fireworks, firecrackers (now illegal in
sweden), dismantling old electronic waste to see what's inside, running
around on the streets of central stockholm without supervision, smoke
bombs, the occasional beer sold to minors from where discrete and hidden
small shops.

Being young today sounds so extremely boring in comparison! I do hope (but
do not know) that all of these things still happen, unknown to me, but
something tells me this is not quite the case.

On Sun, 15 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 14 Dec 2024 23:16:57 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> Fascinating! Thank you for sharing!
>
> I never saw one but there were also ELF transmitters.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_low_frequency
>
> I think some of the frequencies are still in use but nobody is talking.
> Imagine what it would be like if humans could directly perceive the sea of
> electromagnetic radiation we live in.
>
> One project I turned down was a botanist with a theory that trees
> communicated via electromagnetic waves. The idea hasn't gone away.
>
> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-
> trees-180968084/
>
> There is evidence that EMFs do affect trees though.
>
> https://ehtrust.org/electromagnetic-fields-impact-tree-plant-growth/
>
> Sometimes for the better?
>
> https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14519600-500-forest-grows-tall-on-
> radio-waves/
>
> It reminds me of when RF heat sealers were introduced. The folklore
> suggested that women working around them either became sterile or
> amazingly fecund. Humans love their stories.

Shouldn't it be quite easy to prove? I mean EMF:s can be measured and
plants can be measured and analyzed?

I've been thinking about if online surveillance and government control
might not force us back to some kind of fidonet-like architecture, run on
cellphone modems, lora radios or over ham-radio bridges.

Latency would be huge, but that never stopped me with my 9600 modem, and
for talking like this, is not a problem. Downloading massive amounts of
data would be painful though.

On Sun, 15 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 14 Dec 2024 23:15:52 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> I always find it interesting, that the cheap rhetorical device of
>> connecting someone with holocaust deniers, passes unnoticed through even
>> the most major and established media houses.
>
> All I will say about that is it took a while to develop the campaign.
>
> The teacher introduced us to linoleum block printing in the 'art' class in
> the late '50s. Swastikas were a popular motif among the male members.
> Today we would all be marched off to re-education camp. Japs weren't
> popular but the Germans had a certain mystique.
>

It still happens from time to time. Didn't one member of the british royal
house dress as a nazi at a masquerade? I also know that a few politicians
here and there from the sweden democrats have been kicked out for having
nazi tattoos that at one time or other were caught on camera.

Then I remember when I was young, I met one guy who was into collecting
Nazi mementos. I wonder how long he would have survived growing up in
todays world. ;)

I also sometimes wonder if he today is a computer security consultant.

On Sun, 15 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 14 Dec 2024 23:27:13 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> That's the golden combination I have in my own business. I sell, and my
>> partners do the work. They get to focus on technology, and not on
>> selling,
>> and I do the talking, and enviously look at the great technical work
>> they are doing, dreaming of when I was 20 years younger and doing that
>> myself.
>
> That's my downfall; I'm too unfiltered to be good at selling.
>

Haha... well, in that case, it's all about finding _the right_ customer.
Some people appreciate the unfiltered communication. =) I have an
acquaintance and we've done business together for close to 10 years, and
there are very little filters there.

The great surprise to us both, was when we found out that we were both on
the right side of the corona wars, so we supported each other a lot
through those times.

So finding quality customers, in my opinion, is much much better than
quantity of customers.

On the other hand, I'm not a billionaire, and perhaps that is the reason
for it. ;)

On Sun, 15 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 14 Dec 2024 23:07:43 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> This is also something I tell everyone who wants to start their own
>> business. For the love of god, outsource all accounting as quickly as
>> possible.
>
> The nice thing about software is accounting is streamlined. Tracking
> inventory, appreciation of materials on hand, maintaining a payroll, and
> all that stuff is best left to someone with a pocket protector.

Yes! And add to that, all the reporting to the tax authorities, the social
security department, and then there's some kind of new EU law that
stipulates I have to send statistics to some government department, I
don't even know which one. That is also handled by the accountant. I feel
that if I were to do that myself, it would take 10-15 hours per month, so
I'll happily (well not happily, but it is worth it) pay 400 EUR to save me
10-15 hours of boring and useless work.

On 15/12/2024 04:57, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
> "seems close enough"
>   is NOT good enough. Planes, spacecraft, bridges, huge
>   buildings, medical implants - GOTTA refine with the
>   hard-core/hard-math tools.

I think you would be aghast at how "seems good enough" guides most
engineering design.

No-one accurately measures every single component that goes into a design.

At best they do a full test on the final product.

There is always room for the black swan unit where all the tolerances
were exactly the wrong way.

In general it is cheaper to simply scrap that one, or if it escapes into
the wild, give the customer a replacement.

The development algorithm of the racing Cosworth V8 was "remove metal
till it breaks, then put that bit back again".

And we can only calculate what we thought of. Some failure modes are
completely unexpected.

Some of the most durable civil engineering was done by Victorian
engineers who were not able to do the calculations. Their conservative
over-enginering resulted in structures that stand good even to day.

Admittedly their failures are long gone :-( (Tay bridge, any one?)

--
"The great thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll
look exactly the same afterwards."

Billy Connolly

On 15/12/2024 10:07, Pancho wrote:
> On 12/14/24 13:55, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> On 14/12/2024 11:37, Pancho wrote:
>>> On 12/14/24 10:31, D wrote:
>>>
>>>> Just saw this:
>>>>
>>>> "China to build first-ever thorium molten salt nuclear power station
>>>> in Gobi Desert"
>>>>
>>>> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-06/china-building-thorium-
>>>> nuclear- power-station-gobi/104304468
>>>>
>>>> Will be interesting to see if they will succeed!
>>>
>>> If you are interested, there is a thorium startup, Copenhagen
>>> Atomics, that have put out a couple of good promo videos.
>>>
>>> The first describes the worlds general energy problem:
>>>
>>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVue7cgmM00>
>>>
>>> The second details Copenhagen Atomics "Onion Core" thorium molten
>>> salt reactor.
>>>
>>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxvBAJn_vc>
>>>
>>> Obviously it is typical startup hype, but the guy touches on most of
>>> the issues. In particular he addresses the fact we need cheap energy,
>>> which a lot of the renewable discussions try to cover up. Secondly he
>>> discusses non electrical energy use, which many renewable discussions
>>> also skip over.
>>>
>>> As I understand it, molten salt reactors have two main tech problems,
>>> corrosion and continuously separating out unwanted fission products.
>>
>> No fission reactor is perfect. It's engineering, not religion.
>>
>
> But, if we are to adopt nuclear for the bulk of our global energy it is
> clear that fuel price/availability will be affected, and hence breeder
> reactors with their massively improved fuel efficiency will be more
> significant.
>

Again that is a qualitative, not a quantitative comment, and is not as
true as you think it is.

Foe example, the cost of the actual raw uranium mined ore in a reactor
(before its been turned into fuel rods) is something like a tenth of a
cent per kWh.

Uranium ore is around $50/lb last time I looked.

Now the Japanese, who prefer not to have to import stuff, did a study on
extracting Uranium from seawater, There are 4 billion tonnes of the
stuff in the sea.

They estimated $200/lb. So worst case £0.004 increase on the final kWh.

Hardly earth shattering.

The uranium cost is to all intents and purpose *completely irrelevant*.

The cost of nuclear electricity is completely dominated by the up front
cost to build the reactor and the interest paid on the money to do that.
High interest rates killed Britain's nuclear construction. And the rise
of anti-nuclear regulations quadrupled the cost and time to build a reactor.

Fast breeders cost even more. They simply are not in the current
climate, cost effective returns on investment

Which is why we are all talking 'SMR' designed to circumvent the
regulations with type approval, so that buoild times and hence capital
costs, go back to where they used to be.

About 1/4 of what they are now.

>> Currently the best bet are modern straightforward PWR designs that are
>> well understood, shrunk to a size that makes mass factory production
>> possible.
>>
>
> If we understand the design we might just as well build big ones. Small
> mass production is more to get around research and regulation problems
> of new systems.
>
Well exactly. Samll reactors are safer and cheaper to install if they
have type approval. No one is trying to optimise uranium efficiency.
Just to get some reactors built is all, before the Greens wreck the country.

And there are other benefits of small reactors. You can build more of
them near to where the energy is needed reducing the cost of high power
transmission lines...yoir grid becomes what it used to be - a
lightweight *balancing* system, not intended for massive power flows.

>> Once we have avoided the renewable energy catastrophe, *then* its time
>> to look at thorium.
>>
>
> We should do both. People are scared of building big reactors with long
> payback times because it seems likely cheaper systems will be developed
> to undercut them. However, I think energy security should be viewed like
> military security, the government should pay to give us that security,
> just in case.

Then you think wrong. Look deeper. People will of course develop all
sorts of reactor tech including thorium - India especially - but there
is simply no shortage of fuel whatsoever in the world at large, In fact
there is enough fore 10,000 years of today's populations all having a
Western lifestyle.

There is no point in diverting any money we might save on renewable
energy cancellation into yet more ego projects of different technologies.

If we don't build out what we can do right now, there wont BE any money
for vanity projects.

Stevenson didn't wait for a steam turbine to get the railways started,
he just modified a two cylinder pumping engine, stuck it on wheels and
was the first-to-market.

It didn't matter how inefficient it was, there was plenty of cheap coal
and no competition.

--
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere,
diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”
― Groucho Marx

On 15/12/2024 10:40, D wrote:
> 've been thinking about if online surveillance and government control
> might not force us back to some kind of fidonet-like architecture, run
> on cellphone modems, lora radios or over ham-radio bridges.
>
> Latency would be huge, but that never stopped me with my 9600 modem, and
> for talking like this, is not a problem. Downloading massive amounts of
> data would be painful though.

Someone will shove some unbreakable encryption on git hub and everyone
will use it.

You avoid meta- analysis by posting an arbitrary number of bytes every
day to the same 'bulletin boards'. Your message is simply padded with
nonsense.

Fellow conspirators can read it, to everyone else its spam..and goes in
their killfile :-)

But the real reason we are not bothered here, is we are simply too small
to be worth noticing. We directly influence no one.

And yet, ideas that are seeded in recondite corners of the internet, do
not always die.

Sometimes you find your thesis reappearing months later in the mainstream.

--
The biggest threat to humanity comes from socialism, which has utterly
diverted our attention away from what really matters to our existential
survival, to indulging in navel gazing and faux moral investigations
into what the world ought to be, whilst we fail utterly to deal with
what it actually is.

On 15/12/2024 10:42, D wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, 15 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 14 Dec 2024 23:15:52 +0100, D wrote:
>>
>>> I always find it interesting, that the cheap rhetorical device of
>>> connecting someone with holocaust deniers, passes unnoticed through even
>>> the most major and established media houses.
>>
>> All I will say about that is it took a while to develop the campaign.
>>
>> The teacher introduced us to linoleum block printing in the 'art'
>> class in
>> the late '50s. Swastikas were a popular motif among the male members.
>> Today we would all be marched off to re-education camp. Japs weren't
>> popular but the Germans had a certain mystique.
>>
>
> It still happens from time to time. Didn't one member of the british
> royal house dress as a nazi at a masquerade? I also know that a few
> politicians here and there from the sweden democrats have been kicked
> out for having nazi tattoos that at one time or other were caught on
> camera.
>
> Then I remember when I was young, I met one guy who was into collecting
> Nazi mementos. I wonder how long he would have survived growing up in
> todays world. ;)
>
I once bought a book.
It purported to be the memoirs of a SS captain IIRC, who fought in
France and Germany, and then joined the French foreign legion to fight
in French Indo-China (Vietnam). He professed to loathe communism and
communists. His tactics were brutal, But effective.

I think I paid a couple of bucks for it in a second-hand book store in
Johannesburg.

I lent it to someone who didn't give it back, so I looked to see if it
was still for sale.
It was, For *hundreds of pounds*, on ebay.

That prompted me to look for other examples of Nazi themed items. This
shit goes for unbelievable sums. People with a lot of money love the
whole Nazi meme. It is and was great theatre. Great logo. Fantastic
marketing. Let's all be supermen and kick the shit out of the [insert
social group you despise most]...who secretly doesn't want to do that?

(I found the book in the bookcase of the person I lent it to, she simply
forgot it, so I took it back)

> I also sometimes wonder if he today is a computer security consultant.

Far more likely he runs an advertising company.

--
"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have
forgotten your aim."

George Santayana

On Sat, 14 Dec 2024, Lars Poulsen wrote:
>> As I young engineer, I was puzzled at how little interest the "hot" code
>> writer had in the slightly bigger picture. They would be happy to fix
>> bugs, but refused to participate in the ECO procedures to release the
>> product updates. I spent some time in customer support, and got an
>> appreciation for what customers needed, distinct from what the
>> programmers would like to tweak. I connected with some of the people
>> running the ERP systems and learning their report generator programs, so
>> that I could do a roll-up of the BOMs affected by a changed part, and of
>> the recent ECOs that affected an assembly that came in for repair.
>>
>> Later, when my former boss and I started a company, he took on
>> marketing, while I did book-keeping. We were both engineers: He was an
>> RF guy, while I was a systems programmer, but in a small business, each
>> job is 3-4 part-time jobs adding up to full time. And it makes for a
>> diversity within the jobs that I find is good for me.

On 2024-12-14, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
> Did you grow it into a big business? How did the experience change from
> the start to where you are now?

Growing big was never a goal.

My business partner and a friend had left a small company that made
sonar systems for the navy and started a radio company when spread
spectrum became a thing. They built it into a 30-people comapny and then
sold off the half that was least interesting to a utility meter company,
and the friend went with it. They did not like the managing part of
business and hired a CEO to do that, tasking him to find another
company to buy the remaining part so they could cash out. Meanwhile that
remaining part grew back to about 35 people. The CEO managed to find a
buyer, but the deal closed right as the dot-com bubble of 2000 burst,
and in the end, we found that they had given the company away. The deal
stated that "essential staff" were kept on as a design center,
guaranteed for at least 2 years, and on the second anniversary of the
closing, they fired us all, stating that because engineering salaries in
California were so much higher than in Calgary, Alberta, it was
unsustainable to maintain a development group in California. Never mind
that the product we had brought in, was the only thing thye ever could
build at a profit. Six months later, they changed their focus from radio
manufacturing to patent litigation, and moved to Toronto.

My boss and I looked out and saw that there were no engineer jobs
available in town; LM Ericsson had just closed their US Internet group
and put 300 Internet engineers on the street. So he asked if I would be
willing to join him in a startup.

From the beginning, the goal was to do something that would fill our
days and feed our families. We have mostly stayed at a headcount of 4.
My tagline is "4 guys in a garage".

5 years ago or so, we looked at the feasibility of "cashing out", but
realized that the value of the company is the knowledge base of the two
of us, so we are stuck with each other until we wind it up, which we he
started to do. We have offered a "last time buy" to our major customers,
and expect to be done in two years or so.

--
Lars Poulsen

On 2024-12-14, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>> Did you grow it into a big business? How did the experience change from
>> the start to where you are now?

On Sat, 14 Dec 2024, Lars Poulsen wrote:
> Growing big was never a goal.
>
> [...]
>
> From the beginning, the goal was to do something that would fill our
> days and feed our families. We have mostly stayed at a headcount of 4.
> My tagline is "4 guys in a garage".
>
> 5 years ago or so, we looked at the feasibility of "cashing out", but
> realized that the value of the company is the knowledge base of the two
> of us, so we are stuck with each other until we wind it up, which we he
> started to do. We have offered a "last time buy" to our major customers,
> and expect to be done in two years or so.

In retrospect, my company is very much like one of my first jobs in
Copenhagen. Two sales engineers had started a boutique shop for custom
interfacing. Importing some lab equipment and building custom interfaces
for PDP-8 and PDP-11 systems. 4 people in a 3rd-floor apartment in the
City.

I have worked for companies of varying sizes, but always been more
satisfied in small groups.

On 12/15/24 11:14, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 15/12/2024 10:07, Pancho wrote:
>> On 12/14/24 13:55, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>> On 14/12/2024 11:37, Pancho wrote:
>>>> On 12/14/24 10:31, D wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Just saw this:
>>>>>
>>>>> "China to build first-ever thorium molten salt nuclear power
>>>>> station in Gobi Desert"
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-06/china-building-thorium-
>>>>> nuclear- power-station-gobi/104304468
>>>>>
>>>>> Will be interesting to see if they will succeed!
>>>>
>>>> If you are interested, there is a thorium startup, Copenhagen
>>>> Atomics, that have put out a couple of good promo videos.
>>>>
>>>> The first describes the worlds general energy problem:
>>>>
>>>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVue7cgmM00>
>>>>
>>>> The second details Copenhagen Atomics "Onion Core" thorium molten
>>>> salt reactor.
>>>>
>>>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxvBAJn_vc>
>>>>
>>>> Obviously it is typical startup hype, but the guy touches on most of
>>>> the issues. In particular he addresses the fact we need cheap
>>>> energy, which a lot of the renewable discussions try to cover up.
>>>> Secondly he discusses non electrical energy use, which many
>>>> renewable discussions also skip over.
>>>>
>>>> As I understand it, molten salt reactors have two main tech
>>>> problems, corrosion and continuously separating out unwanted fission
>>>> products.
>>>
>>> No fission reactor is perfect. It's engineering, not religion.
>>>
>>
>> But, if we are to adopt nuclear for the bulk of our global energy it
>> is clear that fuel price/availability will be affected, and hence
>> breeder reactors with their massively improved fuel efficiency will be
>> more significant.
>>
>
> Again that is a qualitative, not a quantitative comment, and is not as
> true as you think it is.
>
> Foe example, the cost of the actual raw uranium mined ore in a reactor
> (before its been turned into fuel rods) is something like a tenth of a
> cent per kWh.
>
> Uranium ore is around $50/lb last time I looked.
>
> Now the Japanese, who prefer not to have to import stuff, did a study on
> extracting  Uranium from seawater, There are 4 billion tonnes of the
> stuff in the sea.
>
> They estimated $200/lb.  So worst case £0.004 increase on the final kWh.
>

This is not an established technology. It needs to be demonstrated to
work in volume and scale up before we can rely on it.

AIUI, there are doubts about it.

> Hardly earth shattering.
>
> The uranium cost is to all intents and purpose *completely irrelevant*.
>
> The cost of nuclear electricity is completely dominated by the up front
> cost to build the reactor and the interest paid on the money to do that.
> High interest rates killed Britain's nuclear construction. And the rise
> of anti-nuclear regulations quadrupled the cost and time to build a
> reactor.
>
> Fast breeders cost even more. They simply are not in the current
> climate, cost effective returns on investment
>

I understand the current cost of Uranium is low, but for a zero carbon
solution we need a massive global expansion. That will put a very rapid
squeeze on fuel availability, Until things like sea water extraction
have been proven. Fuel availability, i.e. cost is an issue.

Like sea water extraction, breeder reactors are also a solution.
>
> Which is why we are all talking 'SMR' designed to circumvent the
> regulations with type approval, so that buoild times and hence capital
> costs, go back to where they used to be.
>
> About 1/4 of what they are now.
>
>>> Currently the best bet are modern straightforward PWR designs that
>>> are well understood, shrunk to a size that makes mass factory
>>> production possible.
>>>
>>
>> If we understand the design we might just as well build big ones.
>> Small mass production is more to get around research and regulation
>> problems of new systems.
>>
> Well exactly. Samll reactors are safer and cheaper to install if they
> have type approval. No one is trying to optimise uranium efficiency.
> Just to get some reactors built is all, before the Greens wreck the
> country.
>

> And there are other benefits of small reactors. You can build more of
> them near to where the energy is needed reducing the cost of high power
> transmission lines...yoir grid becomes what it used to be - a
> lightweight *balancing* system, not intended for massive power flows.
>

I don't know what near means, 200km isn't that far. In the past we had
at least 3 reactors that close to London. Sizewell is still running.

>
>>> Once we have avoided the renewable energy catastrophe, *then* its
>>> time to look at thorium.
>>>
>>
>> We should do both. People are scared of building big reactors with
>> long payback times because it seems likely cheaper systems will be
>> developed to undercut them. However, I think energy security should be
>> viewed like military security, the government should pay to give us
>> that security, just in case.
>
> Then you think wrong.

I think you misunderstood my intended meaning. I was talking about
building big reactors, existing designs, Hinkley Point C, Sizewell C,
etc. The government should just get on with it. SMRs are just another
excuse for politicians to delay.

> Look deeper. People will of course develop all
> sorts of reactor tech including thorium - India especially - but there
> is simply no shortage of fuel whatsoever in the world at large, In fact
> there is enough fore 10,000 years of today's populations all having a
> Western lifestyle.
>

I understand thorium/molten salt is research, not a current solution,
but, if we hadn't stopped work on breeders 40 years ago...

> There is no point in diverting any money we might save on renewable
> energy cancellation into yet more ego projects of different technologies.
>
> If we don't build out what we can do right now,

Yes, I agree, Sizewell C. If Rolls-Royce can knock out SMRs in the near
future, great, but we shouldn't wait. That's what I mean about needing
to invest in energy security, rather than delay for something which
might be better/cheaper. It was a mistake to reduce energy to pure
economics, while ignoring security of supply.

> there wont BE any money
> for vanity projects.
>
> Stevenson didn't wait for a steam turbine to get the railways started,
> he just modified a two cylinder pumping engine, stuck it on wheels and
> was the first-to-market.
>
> It didn't matter how inefficient it was, there was plenty of cheap coal
> and no competition.
>

I understand uranium is plentiful now, I'm not entirely convinced it
will be plentiful if the entire world transitions to nuclear in the next
30 years. The strongest green, zero carbon strategy, is to make nuclear
cheaper. Which I think is possible.

On 15/12/2024 16:12, Pancho wrote:
> On 12/15/24 11:14, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> On 15/12/2024 10:07, Pancho wrote:
>>> On 12/14/24 13:55, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>> On 14/12/2024 11:37, Pancho wrote:
>>>>> On 12/14/24 10:31, D wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Just saw this:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "China to build first-ever thorium molten salt nuclear power
>>>>>> station in Gobi Desert"
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-06/china-building-thorium-
>>>>>> nuclear- power-station-gobi/104304468
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Will be interesting to see if they will succeed!
>>>>>
>>>>> If you are interested, there is a thorium startup, Copenhagen
>>>>> Atomics, that have put out a couple of good promo videos.
>>>>>
>>>>> The first describes the worlds general energy problem:
>>>>>
>>>>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVue7cgmM00>
>>>>>
>>>>> The second details Copenhagen Atomics "Onion Core" thorium molten
>>>>> salt reactor.
>>>>>
>>>>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxvBAJn_vc>
>>>>>
>>>>> Obviously it is typical startup hype, but the guy touches on most
>>>>> of the issues. In particular he addresses the fact we need cheap
>>>>> energy, which a lot of the renewable discussions try to cover up.
>>>>> Secondly he discusses non electrical energy use, which many
>>>>> renewable discussions also skip over.
>>>>>
>>>>> As I understand it, molten salt reactors have two main tech
>>>>> problems, corrosion and continuously separating out unwanted
>>>>> fission products.
>>>>
>>>> No fission reactor is perfect. It's engineering, not religion.
>>>>
>>>
>>> But, if we are to adopt nuclear for the bulk of our global energy it
>>> is clear that fuel price/availability will be affected, and hence
>>> breeder reactors with their massively improved fuel efficiency will
>>> be more significant.
>>>
>>
>> Again that is a qualitative, not a quantitative comment, and is not as
>> true as you think it is.
>>
>> Foe example, the cost of the actual raw uranium mined ore in a reactor
>> (before its been turned into fuel rods) is something like a tenth of a
>> cent per kWh.
>>
>> Uranium ore is around $50/lb last time I looked.
>>
>> Now the Japanese, who prefer not to have to import stuff, did a study
>> on extracting  Uranium from seawater, There are 4 billion tonnes of
>> the stuff in the sea.
>>
>> They estimated $200/lb.  So worst case £0.004 increase on the final kWh.
>>
>
> This is not an established technology. It needs to be demonstrated to
> work in volume and scale up before we can rely on it.
>
> AIUI, there are doubts about it.

Of course. It was an estimate. But the point is that the price of
nuclear electricity is not sensitive to the price of uranium AT ALL

>
>> Hardly earth shattering.
>>
>> The uranium cost is to all intents and purpose *completely irrelevant*.
>>
>> The cost of nuclear electricity is completely dominated by the up
>> front cost to build the reactor and the interest paid on the money to
>> do that. High interest rates killed Britain's nuclear construction.
>> And the rise of anti-nuclear regulations quadrupled the cost and time
>> to build a reactor.
>>
>> Fast breeders cost even more. They simply are not in the current
>> climate, cost effective returns on investment
>>
>
> I understand the current cost of Uranium is low, but for a zero carbon
> solution we need a massive global expansion. That will put a very rapid
> squeeze on fuel availability, Until things like sea water extraction
> have been proven. Fuel availability, i.e. cost is an issue.

I can assure you that mines are capable of upping production if te price
is rifght.

>
> Like sea water extraction, breeder reactors are also a solution.

But a far far far more expoensive solution.

The first thing you do is start recycling used fuel rods and using MOX.

FAR cheaper than breeders and uses uop similar amounts of waste. All
reactors breed plutonium anyway

>>
>> Which is why we are all talking 'SMR' designed to circumvent the
>> regulations with type approval, so that buoild times and hence capital
>> costs, go back to where they used to be.
>>
>> About 1/4 of what they are now.
>>
>>>> Currently the best bet are modern straightforward PWR designs that
>>>> are well understood, shrunk to a size that makes mass factory
>>>> production possible.
>>>>
>>>
>>> If we understand the design we might just as well build big ones.
>>> Small mass production is more to get around research and regulation
>>> problems of new systems.
>>>
>> Well exactly. Samll reactors are safer and cheaper to install if they
>> have type approval. No one is trying to optimise uranium efficiency.
>> Just to get some reactors built is all, before the Greens wreck the
>> country.
>>
>
>> And there are other benefits of small reactors. You can build more of
>> them near to where the energy is needed reducing the cost of high
>> power transmission lines...yoir grid becomes what it used to be - a
>> lightweight *balancing* system, not intended for massive power flows.
>>
>
> I don't know what near means, 200km isn't that far. In the past we had
> at least 3 reactors that close to London. Sizewell is still running.
>
Near means in an industrial park on the outside edge of town like 10km away

Try costing 100km of 5GW cable...

>>
>>>> Once we have avoided the renewable energy catastrophe, *then* its
>>>> time to look at thorium.
>>>>
>>>
>>> We should do both. People are scared of building big reactors with
>>> long payback times because it seems likely cheaper systems will be
>>> developed to undercut them. However, I think energy security should
>>> be viewed like military security, the government should pay to give
>>> us that security, just in case.
>>
>> Then you think wrong.
>
> I think you misunderstood my intended meaning. I was talking about
> building big reactors, existing designs, Hinkley Point C, Sizewell C,
> etc. The government should just get on with it. SMRs are just another
> excuse for politicians to delay.

I have told you why that wont work,. Regulations have been designed to
not allow it.

>
>> Look deeper. People will of course develop all sorts of reactor tech
>> including thorium - India especially - but there is simply no shortage
>> of fuel whatsoever in the world at large, In fact there is enough fore
>> 10,000 years of today's populations all having a Western lifestyle.
>>
>
> I understand thorium/molten salt is research, not a current solution,
> but, if we hadn't stopped work on breeders 40 years ago...
>

Thorium reactors worked once and so did breeders. They were both
abandoned because PWRs and BWRs were easy and cheap to build and mage
weapons grade plutonium if run for that purpose.

>
>> There is no point in diverting any money we might save on renewable
>> energy cancellation into yet more ego projects of different technologies.
>>
>> If we don't build out what we can do right now,
>
>
> Yes, I agree, Sizewell C. If Rolls-Royce can knock out SMRs in the near
> future, great, but we shouldn't wait. That's what I mean about needing
> to invest in energy security, rather than delay for something which
> might be better/cheaper. It was a mistake to reduce energy to pure
> economics, while ignoring security of supply.
>

Sizewell C will come our at something over £15bn/GW

RR should be able to do the same for £6bn
And sooner than Sizewell C too

>> there wont BE any money for vanity projects.
>>
>> Stevenson didn't wait for a steam turbine to get the railways started,
>> he just modified a two cylinder pumping engine, stuck it on wheels and
>> was the first-to-market.
>>
>> It didn't matter how inefficient it was, there was plenty of cheap
>> coal and no competition.
>>
>
> I understand uranium is plentiful now, I'm not entirely convinced it
> will be plentiful if the entire world transitions to nuclear in the next
> 30 years. The strongest green, zero carbon strategy, is to make nuclear
> cheaper. Which I think is possible.
>

On Sun, 15 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 15/12/2024 10:40, D wrote:
>> 've been thinking about if online surveillance and government control might
>> not force us back to some kind of fidonet-like architecture, run on
>> cellphone modems, lora radios or over ham-radio bridges.
>>
>> Latency would be huge, but that never stopped me with my 9600 modem, and
>> for talking like this, is not a problem. Downloading massive amounts of
>> data would be painful though.
>
> Someone will shove some unbreakable encryption on git hub and everyone will
> use it.

Oh, that would be great. In my dystopian world, cryptography is outlawed,
and ISP:s are only allowed to route requests to white listed sites,
approved by the government (think amazon, your bank etc). All other sites
are prevented from using encryption or blocked.

That leaves steganography, but if I can read it, and you can read it, so
can the government. It will become a game of whack-a-mole.

That's why I always thought a worst case scenario might take us back to
alternative transport means such as modems, lora or ham radio.

> You avoid meta- analysis by posting an arbitrary number of bytes every day to
> the same 'bulletin boards'. Your message is simply padded with nonsense.
>
> Fellow conspirators can read it, to everyone else its spam..and goes in their
> killfile :-)
>
> But the real reason we are not bothered here, is we are simply too small to
> be worth noticing. We directly influence no one.
>
> And yet, ideas that are seeded in recondite corners of the internet, do not
> always die.
>
> Sometimes you find your thesis reappearing months later in the mainstream.

There's much mental gold to be found in the remains of usenet and
mailinglists. And yes, sometimes some of it bubbles up to the "real
world". ;)

On Sun, 15 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 15/12/2024 10:42, D wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Sun, 15 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, 14 Dec 2024 23:15:52 +0100, D wrote:
>>>
>>>> I always find it interesting, that the cheap rhetorical device of
>>>> connecting someone with holocaust deniers, passes unnoticed through even
>>>> the most major and established media houses.
>>>
>>> All I will say about that is it took a while to develop the campaign.
>>>
>>> The teacher introduced us to linoleum block printing in the 'art' class in
>>> the late '50s. Swastikas were a popular motif among the male members.
>>> Today we would all be marched off to re-education camp. Japs weren't
>>> popular but the Germans had a certain mystique.
>>>
>>
>> It still happens from time to time. Didn't one member of the british royal
>> house dress as a nazi at a masquerade? I also know that a few politicians
>> here and there from the sweden democrats have been kicked out for having
>> nazi tattoos that at one time or other were caught on camera.
>>
>> Then I remember when I was young, I met one guy who was into collecting
>> Nazi mementos. I wonder how long he would have survived growing up in
>> todays world. ;)
>>
> I once bought a book.
> It purported to be the memoirs of a SS captain IIRC, who fought in France and
> Germany, and then joined the French foreign legion to fight in French
> Indo-China (Vietnam). He professed to loathe communism and communists. His
> tactics were brutal, But effective.
>
> I think I paid a couple of bucks for it in a second-hand book store in
> Johannesburg.
>
> I lent it to someone who didn't give it back, so I looked to see if it was
> still for sale.
> It was, For *hundreds of pounds*, on ebay.
>
> That prompted me to look for other examples of Nazi themed items. This shit
> goes for unbelievable sums. People with a lot of money love the whole Nazi
> meme. It is and was great theatre. Great logo. Fantastic marketing. Let's all
> be supermen and kick the shit out of the [insert social group you despise
> most]...who secretly doesn't want to do that?
>
>
> (I found the book in the bookcase of the person I lent it to, she simply
> forgot it, so I took it back)

I am not surprised. I have some downloaded movies that are no longer
available online. I also have some used books which I think might command
way higher prices than when I bought them, since no new books on those
themes have been released.

>> I also sometimes wonder if he today is a computer security consultant.
>
> Far more likely he runs an advertising company.

Maybe.

On Sun, 15 Dec 2024, Lars Poulsen wrote:

> On Sat, 14 Dec 2024, Lars Poulsen wrote:
>>> As I young engineer, I was puzzled at how little interest the "hot" code
>>> writer had in the slightly bigger picture. They would be happy to fix
>>> bugs, but refused to participate in the ECO procedures to release the
>>> product updates. I spent some time in customer support, and got an
>>> appreciation for what customers needed, distinct from what the
>>> programmers would like to tweak. I connected with some of the people
>>> running the ERP systems and learning their report generator programs, so
>>> that I could do a roll-up of the BOMs affected by a changed part, and of
>>> the recent ECOs that affected an assembly that came in for repair.
>>>
>>> Later, when my former boss and I started a company, he took on
>>> marketing, while I did book-keeping. We were both engineers: He was an
>>> RF guy, while I was a systems programmer, but in a small business, each
>>> job is 3-4 part-time jobs adding up to full time. And it makes for a
>>> diversity within the jobs that I find is good for me.
>
> On 2024-12-14, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>> Did you grow it into a big business? How did the experience change from
>> the start to where you are now?
>
> Growing big was never a goal.
>
> My business partner and a friend had left a small company that made
> sonar systems for the navy and started a radio company when spread
> spectrum became a thing. They built it into a 30-people comapny and then
> sold off the half that was least interesting to a utility meter company,
> and the friend went with it. They did not like the managing part of
> business and hired a CEO to do that, tasking him to find another
> company to buy the remaining part so they could cash out. Meanwhile that
> remaining part grew back to about 35 people. The CEO managed to find a
> buyer, but the deal closed right as the dot-com bubble of 2000 burst,
> and in the end, we found that they had given the company away. The deal
> stated that "essential staff" were kept on as a design center,
> guaranteed for at least 2 years, and on the second anniversary of the
> closing, they fired us all, stating that because engineering salaries in
> California were so much higher than in Calgary, Alberta, it was
> unsustainable to maintain a development group in California. Never mind
> that the product we had brought in, was the only thing thye ever could
> build at a profit. Six months later, they changed their focus from radio
> manufacturing to patent litigation, and moved to Toronto.
>
> My boss and I looked out and saw that there were no engineer jobs
> available in town; LM Ericsson had just closed their US Internet group
> and put 300 Internet engineers on the street. So he asked if I would be
> willing to join him in a startup.
>
> From the beginning, the goal was to do something that would fill our
> days and feed our families. We have mostly stayed at a headcount of 4.
> My tagline is "4 guys in a garage".
>
> 5 years ago or so, we looked at the feasibility of "cashing out", but
> realized that the value of the company is the knowledge base of the two
> of us, so we are stuck with each other until we wind it up, which we he
> started to do. We have offered a "last time buy" to our major customers,
> and expect to be done in two years or so.
>

Wow, quite a story! But staying that size, and focusing on what you enjoy
doing is a powerful thing!

I always wonder if my company has any value, and if anyone would ever be
interested in acquiring it, but since it is 80% consulting I suspect at
most, it would be some kind of acqui-hire thing, and my colleagues (and I)
would not be interested in having to hang around for 2-3 years just to get
money in the end.

Well, let's see what happen. For the moment we are just enjoying what we
do, so there's no need. Let's see what the future holds. =)

On Sun, 15 Dec 2024, Lars Poulsen wrote:

> On 2024-12-14, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>>> Did you grow it into a big business? How did the experience change from
>>> the start to where you are now?
>
> On Sat, 14 Dec 2024, Lars Poulsen wrote:
>> Growing big was never a goal.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> From the beginning, the goal was to do something that would fill our
>> days and feed our families. We have mostly stayed at a headcount of 4.
>> My tagline is "4 guys in a garage".
>>
>> 5 years ago or so, we looked at the feasibility of "cashing out", but
>> realized that the value of the company is the knowledge base of the two
>> of us, so we are stuck with each other until we wind it up, which we he
>> started to do. We have offered a "last time buy" to our major customers,
>> and expect to be done in two years or so.
>
> In retrospect, my company is very much like one of my first jobs in
> Copenhagen. Two sales engineers had started a boutique shop for custom
> interfacing. Importing some lab equipment and building custom interfaces
> for PDP-8 and PDP-11 systems. 4 people in a 3rd-floor apartment in the
> City.
>
> I have worked for companies of varying sizes, but always been more
> satisfied in small groups.
>

I wonder, given the draconian laws within IT today, if it would be
possible to start a company that builds its own hardware interfaces to
something?

A small part of my business is actually a home delivered "software
interface" to an extremely bad government web site, that is essential to
some of my customers. So instead of them having to spend several hours per
month on that horrible site, they use our software to do their task in
about 3 minutes instead. Everyone happy!

The fun part is that actually the government did think about the option to
do what we did, but their experts came to the conclusion that it was
impossible.

So we make the impossible possible! ;)

On Sun, 15 Dec 2024 11:42:21 +0100, D wrote:

> It still happens from time to time. Didn't one member of the british
> royal house dress as a nazi at a masquerade? I also know that a few
> politicians here and there from the sweden democrats have been kicked
> out for having nazi tattoos that at one time or other were caught on
> camera.

There is a lot of history that some would like to forget. The Norwegians
executed Quisling as their sacrificial lamb and to hear them tell everyone
was in the resistance. France, Sweden, Finland and most other European
countries developed amnesia without the need to shoot anyone although some
rehabilitation might have been necessary. The US wasn't occupied so it was
difficult to 'colloborate'.