Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "ABC News In-depth" channel.

  1. AEROSPACE ENGINEER HERE: I did my degree in American in the late 80s when Reagan was spending tons of money. Our department was flush with DARPA funding for Reagan's Star Wars. In my final year we had to do 2 or more advanced option classes which we shared with the post graduate students who also had to present conference level papers. One of my classes was in Spacecraft Dynamics which is the single hardest class I ever had. Its all about how you make spacecraft point in space. It sounded real cool when we signed up and then the math started. In that class was the single most mathematically gifted engineer I've ever met. We were all pretty smart but he made us all feel dumb. He was actually able to simulate a solution to making a laser cannon point accurately in space. The problem is that its not like a satellite or the Hubble space telescope which rotate and point very slowly. Shooting down missiles is more like skeet shooting in that its all very rapid recognition, movement and shooting. What really killed off Star Wars 1.0 and this will still hold true today are 2 basic facts. 1) Lasers reflect off shiny surfaces. So all you need to do is make the surface of your missile a mirror finish and lasers become fairly useless. 2) The basic mechanics of shooting at something that accurately at an object that might be 1,000km away or more moving at hypersonic speeds is absurd. People just don't get how big space actually is. Even the space close to the Earth that we call Low Earth Orbit is a massive amount of territory.
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  2. I'm Australian but went to college in America and you have summed it up perfectly. Just as Australia had a recent report that said how the top 10% had done brilliantly over the past 25+ years while the rest of us struggle the Americans had a similar report last September EXCEPT its EVEN WORSE. The American report was done by the Congressional Budget Office, which means its beyond question. If you want I explain the data but in nutshell the Top 10% of America have not only recovered from the GFC, but are now over $30 Trillion better off than they were in 2007. The Middle 40% are finally better off but it took a while and they aren't that far ahead of their 2007 position. The Bottom 50% who lost almost 1/2 their wealth in the GFC, not only haven't recovered but are still a long way behind their 2007 position. That's 165 Million Americans are still behind where they were 15 years ago and another 132 million are barely above water while about 33 million who got bailed out after the GFC they created are booming.
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  3. ENGINEER HERE: There isn't one of these projects that doesn't have some merit and some real payback to us the general population of Australia. The real problem is HOW these projects are planned from the start and that includes the contracts that are rarely negotiated in good faith by either or both the government or the contractors. So for everyone interested here's 4 basic project items and for anyone who has ever done a project and wondered what went wrong simply ask which of these wasn't done well enough. Sorry if some of this is longish but I hope it will explain a number of things and how to NOT have projects go wrong. 1) SPECIFICATION: This is the basic what, why and how. What are we going to build - a bridge, a road, a building, a sports stadium or even a submarine. Why are we building this bridge, road, building, sports stadium or submarine. The what and why don't need much detail. Its can be as simple as, We need this bridge to go over that river because the old bridge needs replacing. BUT the HOW must be detailed and most importantly it must explain what STANDARDS must be met. Most people and especially lawyers don't realise that most engineering standards are NOT required by law or regulation. There's actually very few standards that are required to be met by law and yes this stuns most people. So its incredibly important that every standard that a project needs is absolutely listed and described for its applicable use IN THE CONTRACT(s). The single biggest issue with lawyers and engineering projects is NOT what they put in the contracts but what they leave out. See the comment at the bottom. 2) RESOUCES: In all engineering projects there are 3 main resources - labour, machinery and money. Labour from top to bottom needs to not only be available but also the required skills needed need to be available. This is an area where non-engineering human resource people are utterly hopeless. For all their claims (and I have experience with this issue) they CANNOT tell the difference between an mechanic and mechanical engineer, electrician and an electrical engineer or any other engineering skill set. Machinery is another monster bug for engineers. Its no use planning to rent a 50ton crane when you need to lift a 100ton object AND YES THAT HAPPENS. You have to have people who know their subject plan what they need and when they need it. If you suddenly have to rent things like cranes, digging machines, scaffold,... etc. the people supplying those services can charge whatever they like because they know that holding up a billion dollar project is worse than paying ridiculous money to rent something. Money is the worst thing engineers have to deal with because there's always some clown waving an economics degree like a caveman swinging a club screaming "What's the business case for that?" or "Who's going to pay for that?" In 99.9% of cases the reason why its costing more than planned is because the economics clown interfered back at the planning stage. 3) TECHNICAL VIABLITY: This is something that most engineers hate because it involves Donald Rumsfeld's 3 knowns. There's known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Planning is about having as many known knowns as practical and the best way to have that is CLEAR SPECIFICATIONS. Think about the Apollo program. It had the very simple 2 PART specification. 1 - get a man to the moon and 2 - get him back SAFELY. That was why they could go there 9 times and land 6 times and not lose anyone in the process. The times they lost people were in training accidents where they were less clear about what they were doing and people were rushed and NOT checking properly. 4) COMPLETION DATE which is also called CLOSE OUT: This is possibly the worst thing done in all projects and again goes back to the specifications. If a job is NOT clearly specified then its gets very murky to what it means to be finished. Despite what people might think an unclear completion is music to a contractor because its easy to make a lot of money late in a project. Most of the major items are already in place so its mostly labour or variations and both are more money on top of profit. As we can all see from some of the enquiries into the Big 4 consultancies getting repeat work is what they want more than anything. In an engineering the equivalent to that are the contract variations at the end of a project. The way to avoid that is by (right up front) detailing in the specification: "This is what we want and this is what we mean by being finished." Go check any project you know of and you'll quickly see the problems that happen when one of these things is not done. And a perfect example of bad planning is Snowy 2.0. Yes as an engineer I can emphatically state that it is a project with merit and eventually we the Australian people will benefit from it. HOWEVER when you plan on building a power station you also need to connect it to the power grid. That was NOT done in the initial plans and that's where the biggest cost blowouts are. Plus the contractors KNOW they have us by the short and curlies because what's the point of building Snowy 2.0 if you don't connect it to the grid. It has to be connected so they have us. Its a perfect example of the problem of what's left out of the contract.
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  4. Mate it wasn't the Greenies trying to ban bull bars it was the road safety advocates because of how deadly they are on pedestrians and cyclists. Your forgetting that there's a staggering number of bull bars on Toorak Tractors and other vehicles that have never been outside and will never be outside the metropolitan areas. A lot of people from the country actually need to spend more time in the cities just as much as a lot of city people need to spend more time in the country. I grew up in towns and cities but my mothers family are farmers and I spent a lot of time on farms. Its always staggered me how ignorant BOTH SIDES are of each other.
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  5. Your right John Bolton is not the right person to have commenting on good and sound leadership let alone character.
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  6. I'm Australian but went to college in America (late 80s) on a sports scholarship and I can barely believe what's happened. I love America and the people and especially college sport, but your politics has been out of control for decades. I was even able to see it back in the 80s. I was there during the 87 primary season and remember the Gary Hart scandal which was a so what because everyone knew what Washington was like and that was years before Clinton got blown. Even during the Clinton blow job scandal Newt Gingrich was banging his secretary. I did aerospace engineering but a bunch of my friends were pre-law and they'd drag me into their conversations which gave me an interesting education on the US Constitution. My only real political or legal education was studying Orwell (1984 & Animal Farm) in High School so I'd argue that any nation can fall into a totalitarian dictatorship if it wasn't careful. My friends always argued back that was impossible because of the "System of Checks & Balances." These days I consider the US Constitution one of humanities finest achievements but its NOT perfect and it has one major flaw none of my college friends ever considered. That flaw is in granting so many freedoms allows people with nefarious motives to exploit it. That's where the Heritage Foundation goon plays his part. Heritage like CATO and other Washington Think Tanks isn't just some place where people think its where they plan to get things they want without any consideration of the consequences to others. That's what scares me about American Libertarians. Its not that defending liberty is bad in fact defending liberty is one of the noblest ideas. But American Libertarians demand the liberty to strip other people of their liberties. They are at their core authoritarians who believe there's 2 types of laws. The laws they don't believe apply to them and the laws they believe apply to everyone else.
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  7.  @davespanksalot8413  No actually he's a V chromosome. That's what you get when the Y-chromosome has its lower middle leg cut off and you're just left with a V. Its the genetic equivalent of being castrated and we all know he's only on those shows because he hasn't got any.....
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  8. My fellow Australians lets put this into context. FIRST: America is still 25% of the worlds economy and most of OUR TRADE like all international trade relies on the US Dollar being the worlds reserve currency. Either our deals are done directly in $USD or the currency exchanges rely of $USD. SECOND: We are about to stake the future of our nation's security on America still functioning as a reliable partner. I actually went to college in America and have many American friends. No doubt most American's can be relied upon but we are talking about the guy who sits in the Whitehouse as the world tries to deal with some very serious issues: Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine and China-Taiwan. THIRD: There's the elephant of all elephants stomping through the room, CLIMATE CHANGE. Make no doubt about it climate change will affect the worlds food supply and starving millions make for dangerous times. One of these 2 doesn't care and the other is incapable of doing what's needed. Love America or hate it, doesn't matter as much as knowing the guy in the Whitehouse is RELIABLE and can be counted on to do the right thing under pressure.
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  9.  @aprildawnsunshine4326  Sorry but your mother might have worked on spacecraft but she DID NOT WORK on what I'm talking about. This stuff was only being worked on by 1 person and his professor. As for AI solving the problem the answer is NO and it never will. The real issues with missile defense (as Joe pointed out) are NOT software but the actual mechanics involved with trying hit small objects moving at very high speeds at great distances. I have tried explaining this many times and nobody seems to listen. Its quite frustrating. As for the whole AI thing. Most of it is a giant mirage. Yes LLMs are very impressive and can seem to do some very clever things, but when you look at many of the claims made in recent years there's an awful lot of stuff that's been found to be 100% conjecture with no basis in reality. There's a journalist named Ed Zitron who's actually behaved like a journalist and looked through the hype and looked into the backgrounds of these tech bro billionaires. There's a staggering amount of outright scamming among these guys. They do startups and then hype the crap out of them. Then they sell them off to people who believe the hype and its ended in some pretty bad outcomes. I think we are headed towards the second dot-com bubble burst except this time its going to be worse. A LOT WORSE
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  10. Good that somebody pointed that out. An amazing number of the YouTube and social media brigade are in it to make a living. They all sell merch and they all promote it. In politics they target a particular audience (left, right, whatever) and will say whatever it takes to keep that audience PAYING or via YouTube earning money.
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  11. Its pretty damn simple what Chian is up to and these people in the Pacific have no idea. 1st the Chinese need to feed their people and fishing rights in these small states is their key aim. 2nd the 1.4 billion Chinese get 1 vote in the UN general assembly. These security agreements get them more votes in that assembly. Worse its our fault for letting it get this bad.
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  12. Don't forget Howard in that. And don't forget that both Howard and Blair are lawyers which means they have even less of an excuse than Bush because you'd think they would have taken at least 1 class in International Law.
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  13. Not certain but I think Joe Hilderbrand might have just gone past him in the arrogant self deluded self righteous shite category. "you've all had a turn, time for the grown ups to take over" I'm not certain if that's a joke or the worst take we've had on climate change in the 121years since Svante Arrhenius won the 1903 Nobel Prize for Chemistry when he predicted too much carbon dioxide would be a problem. I think Joe might want to be careful with that attitude before someone beats the crud out him.
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  14. ONLY COMMENT in the list DESERVING a THUMBS DOWN.
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  15. They were not tactical nuclear weapons you clown. They were the biggest bombs that could be built at that time. In both cases the bombs were too large to fit into the B29's normal bomb bay and the planes had to be modified. The only reason they weren't of higher yield was because in those days they couldn't purify the Uranium for one bomb as much as they can now and they couldn't get enough Plutonium for the other bomb.
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  16. I have no idea why anyone is surprised that the planet is swinging back and forth like this. Having more energy in the earth's climate system was always going to cause wild swings. Its like pushing a child harder on a swing they go higher one way then swing back higher the other way.
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  17. I absolutely agree David Speirs is (at times) among the worst of the smuggest arrogant interviewers. I think Noel Pearson has been one of the best among the 1st nations public figures for some time. I remember a few years ago when he openly said that native Australians had to stop seeing modern education and specifically math and science as "white man's stuff" and that education was a human thing.
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  18. ENGINEER HERE: This is reasonably easy to understand and my apologies if this gets longish. Its ANOTHER outcome of what we now call neoliberal economics. The short answer is we need more supply because anyone who ever did an economics course (and I did as an elective) gets told that IF demand is greater than supply then PRICES GO UP. In Australia we have built vast arrays of solar and wind BUT we have not built any new large bulk capacity BUT we have turned of several like Hazelwood in Victoria and Liddell in NSW. The last time Australia built a power station with more than 1,000MW of base load capacity was 1993 when our population was 17.6 million and we are now just over 26 million. For sure Callide C (810 MW) in 2001, Millmerran (852 MW) in 2002 and Kogan Creek (750MW) in 2007 helped but there's another 5.2 million people in the country since Kogan Creek was commissioned. For sure Snowy 2.0 at 2,000MW will help but that's not a base load generator its a storage system. Something else still has to generate that 2,000MW. Bottom line we need to build new major base load power stations in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales and plan on building future major base load power stations in Queensland and Western Australia. To give you an idea of the costs involved the Hinckley Point C nuclear power station with 2 x 1,630 MW units is now expected to cost £35 Billion (about AU$66.5 Billion). So the cost of 1 of those 1,630 MW units is about AU$33.3 Billion each. Based on what power stations have either closed or are going to close through age we'd need 1 or 2 in South Australia, 3 or 4 in Victoria, 4 or 5 in NSW and 1 or 2 in Queensland. In total that's 9 units to produce 14,400 MW up to 13 units producing 20,800 MW. The combined total of Australia's coal fired plants is just over 24,700 MW. That's just to replace lost capacity from power stations just getting too old to keep them running. It has nothing to do with climate change or anything else. That's between AU$300 and AU$433 Billion just to fix the stupidity of the last 25+ years it doesn't account for future population growth and we have some people wanting us to grow to as many as 55 or 65 million. The long answer on how we got here is below. I started informally studying economics because I got so frustrated from clowns waving economics degrees interfering in projects. What I found was that things like Reaganomics and Thatcherism didn't end they morphed in to this thing we now call neoliberalism or Chicago School economics if you're an academic. At its core is the line expressed by Ronald Reagan himself "government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem." In practice it has "the belief" (and its only a belief) "That anything a government does the private sector can do better." Part of that was Milton Freidman's "Greed is good" line because in his view greed drives efficiency because its financially rewarded. Milton also gave us that the free market can and will solve everything because it self corrects. Australians heard a version of this recently when Philip Lowe governor of the RBA said that the housing crisis was just the market correcting itself. Philip Lowe's comment about the housing market SHOULD CONCERN US ALL about the energy market, because part of the neoliberal ideology is that regulators should do as little as possible and let the market self correct. The 2008 GFC told us that's nonsense. It didn't self correct and there were $TRILLIONS in BAIL OUTS. The current housing crisis tells us that's nonsense because its not self correcting. The current inflation driven by supply chain issues and profiteering tells us that's nonsense because its not self correcting. The current energy crisis tells us that's nonsense because its not self correcting. This neoliberal nonsense of self correcting markets just DOES NOT WORK for certain things. Housing and energy being 2 of those things because they take time. It takes months to approve and build a house and longer if its something like a multistory apartment complex. Power stations take years to approve and if they are large scale can take years to build. Education is similar it takes 13 years of primary and secondary education and another 4 doing a degree, cadetship or apprenticeship just to make a functioning adult. There is no business case for spending $2-300,000 dollars on a 5 year old hoping that in 17 years they'll do something. The new nuclear plant the British are building, Hinckley Point C, took 7 years to design and approve. It will take 10 years (at least) to complete and power up with first power around 2028/29. It will take at least 15 years to break even on costs and that's only if its energy is sold at higher rates. There is no viable business case in the "Greed is good" neoliberal model that says you can spend £35 Billion and the break even point is 30+ years in the future. During an engineering consult circa 2016 I discovered that Australia not only hadn't built any new large scale bulk delivery power stations since the late 1990s we haven't even got any proposals on the table to discuss. Snowy Hydro 2.0 might have a 2,000 MW power station but its NOT a generator its a pumped hydro energy STORAGE system. Those 2,000 MW have to be generated somewhere else. This is the basis reality the neoliberals have wrong. There are some things that Governments have to do because they don't need a viable business case for shareholders. CEOs need profits while Governments needs a functioning economy. Governments measure themselves by GDP which is dependent on employment, wages and the effects of things like education and health care. Its complex while a CEO's task is simple we made $X and that gets $Y per share - done. When Governments build power stations the outcome is measured in GDP growth. They don't have to care if it makes just 0.01% profit or even if it loses money. So long as the outcome is GDP growth which can happen when companies can start or expand on cheap energy then so what. More people get employed. More people can buy things that other people make - including houses. So when we privatised our energy sector back in the 1990s we went from a system that was measured as part of GDP growth and designed to create jobs and growth to a system that had but one purpose. Milton Freidman said it in his famous 1970 New York Time essay "There is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits..." If you ask why none of the so called experts in this video have NO ANSWERS its very simple THEY DON'T HAVE ANY. They all come from think tanks (like Tony Woods), lobbyists (like Ben Barnes) OR they are economists, lawyers, business leaders, academics,.... They are all people without any motivation to solve anything. This is something British Rebel Economist Gary Stevenson (here on YT) points out that is WRONG with current economics - too many of the people speaking have no motivation in solving anything. And why don't they dare talk about solutions whether they be hydrogen, solar, wind, nuclear and there's a whole raft of nuclear technologies to discuss.
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  19. That's a fair comment. Even if somethings have gone well for Ukraine, having 8 million people be displaced and your country in ruins isn't a good thing.
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  20. We are not out of ideas we are out of people who will listen to new ideas. We have too many in management who have 1 overriding question to almost everything: How will this get me a bonus? Their next most often asked question is almost as cynical: How will this get me laid?
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  21.  @WhatNotEven  At least I can read a book. And for the record I have read many books since reading Animal Farm. Its what you get from living in a country with a functioning education system,
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  22.  @andrewcoulthard-clark  They're worth listening to occasionally so that you get reminded how bat crap crazy they are and how damn dangerous they are.
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  23. WHY?? What did he say that's so off putting?? Unless you're a bot.
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  24. That's absolutely right. I'm an engineer and without any doubt when you consider the technical functionality the nuclear power option should have always been on the table. Over 10 years ago when the subs were first being mentioned I happened to be working with an American electrician who had been in the US Navy as a nuclear power plant operator on aircraft carriers. He explained a few things. We have wide open deep water territory which is where nuclear subs are simply work better. The only places where diesel electric subs (which are typically smaller) have any advantage is in Littoral waters (close to shore) where its noisy and their size makes them viable. If you actually have a look at the original French deal it was never really viable and made no sense in 2 key areas. Quick note the French Sub offered from DCNS is the Shortfin Barracuda which is the non-nuclear powered version of the Barracuda which the French Navy has. FIRST - The Collins class has basic crew of 42 and the Shortfin Barracuda requires 60. We have only been able to bring a 4th out of 6 Collins into active service because the RAN took a Frigate out of service. The real issue (that's not EVER been discussed) was how did the RAN intend to crew these 12 submarines when they can barely crew 4 now. This is going to be an ever bigger issue with the Brits and Yanks because despite the fact the British Astute and American Virginia class subs being of similar size and purpose to the Barracuda they both have bigger crews (Astute 98, Virginia 135) making them even less viable. SECOND - The actual cost per sub. The French Navy paid just over $2 Billion AUD for their nuclear powered Barracudas and yet DCNS was asking Australia to pay $7.5Billion AUD for each of the non-nuclear powered Shortfin Barracudas. Imagine walking into a car dealer who offers a Renault or Peugeot for $75,000 when YOU KNOW he's selling the same car with the upgraded engine to others for $20,000. Any reasonable person tells the salesman to "** off" and walks out the door. On the diplomatic side - we should have asked DCNS for the price on nuclear powered Barracudas and if they had said anything over $2.5Billion each ($30 Billion all up) we walk. There's no secret to what these subs cost its all available on public platforms like Wikipedia. What has to happen without any doubt is that we (the Australian people) are presented with a plan on how we will train and crew these subs and MOST importantly deal with them at the end of life. Whether its 8 or 12 or some other number in 40 years time we will have a bunch of decommissioned nuclear reactors to deal with. BEFORE WE START THIS we need to know what we are going to do with those reactors.
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  25. Yeah I watched his who press club speech yesterday and to put it simply. He is right about some things but totally full of SHlT on others. His claim we could have and operate 45 Collins class replacements is so breathtakingly IDl0TlC its barely wroth considering. We have 6 Collins class now and only enough submariners for 4. So where do you think the smartest man in Australian politics is going to find all the submariners to crew those 45 subs?
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  26.  @sportsfanivosevic9885  NO I am factoring in how much military contracts blow out over time. You are right - Collins compared to AUKUS looks like a bargain, but Collins compared to other current non-nuclear programs is a dog's breakfast that we should not ever want to do again. As an engineer we should have been having sensible public discussion on this years ago. This is the thing that aggravates me the most in this. All we have are clowns who are pumping their NARRATIVES with no thought to what we actually need. When the Collins replacement first came up circa 2006/07 and they emphatically said we will not go nuclear I was working with an American who was an ex-US Navy nuclear power plant technician and operator. He'd served on Aircraft Carriers, but they still had the same power reactors as the subs. Its just the ACs have 2 and the subs have 1. He EXPLAINED that with Australia's vast ocean areas why diesel-electric was stupid. The biggest factor is the speed nuclear subs can maintain. Subs like the Astute (30kts) are 50% faster than a Collins (20kts) and do not have to slow down each day to breath air. HE ALSO EXPLAINED part of the American design philosophy and that revolved about having very little automation. This is why American subs have huge crews compared to others. The French sub is 60, the British Astute is 98 but the Virginia crew is 138. This is what I find so aggravating, there is no nuance in the public discussion. Its all opinion, narrative, rage, outrage and whatboutisms. I'm lucky in that I once worked with someone who could explain this stuff and I am fortunate to remember it.
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  27. On the crew size (and this really aggravates me) any society only has so many of any sort of person who can do certain things. There's only so many who can be surgeons or dentists or engineers, or AFL/NRL players or Olympic athletes. We only have about 240 submariners (4 x 60 Collins crewman) as in people who will go into subs. Maybe that number can change with better recruitment but do not forget for almost 10 years we only had enough crew to keep 3 Collins active. The incredibly bad reputation the Collins first had might be part of that, but don't forget it took almost 10 years before they could reliably fire a torpedo. That's why as project it needs honest discussions on what went wrong as well as HOW they got past all those issues. I saw a great review of the Collins last year and they went over many of the improvements made over the last 20 years from operating the Collins. One thing mentioned was the time needed on the surface to recharge the batteries had been reduced from several hours to about 1/2 an hour. The main reason that review was made was they are concerned Australia will lose all the knowledge, skills and experience gained from the Collins and that is a very serious topic that needs a proper public discussion.
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  28. That can also be read as "Pander to the whims of an angry mob and you can easily find an audience willing to listen to any absurdity."
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  29. I don't know if you support these clowns or not but you are certainly on the right path. If you are going to target MSN (who are horrible) don't leave out FOX who are just as disgusting when it comes to lies and propaganda. The mainstream media on BOTH SIDES of pumping their opinions as fact for decades. It certainly goes back to before any of us were born.
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  30. I don't know about an award but it should never have dragged out this long. Just like how our government dragged its boots on Australians at Guantanamo its keeps trying to play nice with bullies. Most humans know by about the time they reach 12 years of age that you can't simply negotiate with bullies.
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  31.  @dumcasta9327  Duh - I watch it regularly. In fact if you want tp get a decent assessment of American issues it does it better than almost any American show does. So it does not surprise me the American commenting here don't get it. Plus if you take this interview in isolation from all their other interviews it looks bad, because it was soft. And all that's irrelevant because Jon Baron never gave Bolton even one "rope question" let alone a trap door.
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  32.  @GerardoFrancisco  Thanks. Its something that totally infuriates me and a lot of other engineers. Even in industry we have the same issues. I have worked on several mining and resource projects where the incompetence of senior management was staggering and $$Billions were wasted. Worse - Project management is such a simple thing to do if you plan well. You don't have to plan perfectly you just don't have to ignore things and/or dismiss them as "somebody else's problem." If you haven't watched the 4-corners on the consultants its a MAJOR PART of the problem. They have so utterly infected government, the military and the private sector that it will take decades to clean them out. The only real skill they have is sucking money out of projects.
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  33.  @culturekingsboy6555  In some ways I don't disagree as there are so many engineers who get promoted by sucking up rather than doing the job properly, but you are picking a fight with the wrong engineer. I'll agree any day you like that there are too many engineers who don't know what they are doing and don't have enough practical experience BUT DON'T YOU DARE try and claim that labourers don't screw things up. The amount of stuff I have had to personally pick up tools and fix because some smartass thought they knew better is staggering. In fact there's way too many project mangers who aren't engineers at all making idiotic decisions that people like me have to clean up and I've had to clean up a lot of their SHlT in my time.
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  34. I also have a background in engineer (control systems) and some of the stuff being spruiked by the pro-5G crowd are just idiotic. The stuff about building efficiency is already being done via control systems inside the buildings and via the NBN. 5G wont make a micro-gram of difference. As for the driverless cars that's simply BS. All the major manufacturers sold off their stakes in that technology over recent years once the worked out how much it was going to cost to make it work. Then there's the reality of having a computer powerful enough to run it successfully that would fit in a car. Even Uber gave up on that before this program was first aired. I actually find some of the garbage being spruiked by these people to be incredibly dishonest.
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  35.  @gerryblais6786  That's call "promoting your product." The stupid thing these people do is scream, rant and yell about crazy idiotic stuff when all they simply need to do is ask back - WHY DO WE NEED IT? Who actually needs to be able to download a movie onto their phone in 2 seconds? How does that actually make our society function better? The stupid thing is nobody seems to be asking the practical questions, like - WHY DO WE NEED IT?
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  36. Its a nice idea, but NO. Go and look at the number of people it takes to operate an LA Class (129). On one hand it does look sensible as the USN is about to mothball a couple of them. But we have NOBODY who is trained on operating them. I'm an engineer, I work in industrial control systems and automation. A once worked with an electrician who's first career was in the US Navy as a nuclear power plant operator in aircraft carriers. It was 5 years of training to get qualified and that was on similar gear to what's in an LA Class. We could do it but for about 10 years we'd have to PAY for US Personnel to be on our boats. The other massive issue with the LA Class is they have a very large crew (129). originally the Collins was only 24 then upgraded to 58. The French sub is 60 while the British Astute is 98. The German 214 is only 27. Our real sub problem isn't what we can buy its how many submariners do we have to operate them. Right now we only have enough for 4 of the 6 Collins we have. So at best we could have maybe 2 LA Class or maybe 3 Astutes at a stretch. Navies around the world are having the same problem. NOBODY wants to be stuffed in a tin can and send underwater for 3 or more months with zero contact home. There's a joke in the US Navy. "If you want to get rid of a wife join the submarine corps!"
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  37. Engineer here 1) There's nothing that says AI drones would work at anything. You're simply reading way too much into the RIDICULOUSLY OVER HYPED capabilities of AI. 2) The entire AUKUS program is ridiculous and not because its nuclear. I have supported for almost 20 years that our next submarines should be nuclear. In 2006 I had a technician who was an ex-US Navy nuclear power plant tech/operator who'd worked on aircraft carriers which have exactly the same nuclear reactors as the subs. There'd been some news story on what Australia should have after Collins and he simply crushed the stupidity that Australia should have diesel electric subs with the amount of ocean area we have to patrol. The 2 best reasons AUKUS is ridiculous are: 1) The cost. At $268 Billion for 8 Subs that's $33.5 Billion each over their lifetime. The basic cost of a Virginia class is $5.5 Billion. So where is the other $28 Billion going? No one is even asking that. So I did some research 2 years ago and even building and maintaining all that I could find listed and then multiplying the costs the closest I came to $268 was around $155 Billion. I have discussed this with other engineers and there's at least $100 billion none of us can work out where its going. 2) Crewing the Virginia class Virginia class subs need almost 140 submariners while the Collins requires 60. Australis has struggled with getting enough submariners qualified to operate 4 of the 6 Collins class subs we have. Just to crew 2 Virginia class subs would take MORE THAN the current RAN Submariner corps. Who's going to crew the other 6? An ex-RAN Submarine commander was asked about this on 4-Corners and his answer was: "We'll have to do better." YES that was his answer. Nothing about how. Nothing about training. Nothing about where these people would come from. He had nothing, nada, zip or diddley squat AND THAT'S THE BEST ANSWER SO FAR.
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  38. @ that's a comeback Jimmy Carr would be proud of
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  39.  @dangerzone007  WHY DOESN'T RUSSIA HAVE TO NEGOTIATE?
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  40. Have you seen (ex-Republican) Adam Kinzinger's description of it?
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  41. Eventually one of them is going to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and say the wrong thing and then there is going to be one of the grandest butt kicking's in Australian history. When they get out of hospital there'll be no end of their whinging about it. Eventually there's going to be some blowback from this narcissistic garbage.
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  42. I am an engineer and you are one of the few people I have seen who gets that basic reality. At Liddell in NSW they are replacing a 2,000MW coal fired power station with a 750MW battery. Those batteries are super profitable and pay off in as little as 18 months. But 2,000MW of GENERATING CAPACITY has gone. At full power a 750MW battery pumping out at a rate of 2,000MW is fully drained in less than 23 minutes. As an engineer ITS INFURIATING that so much of the public discussion on energy is presented by incompetent media who keep putting microphones in front of clowns and there are clowns on EVERY SIDE of this. Will that battery at Liddell be worth it? Absolutely, but people need to be properly informed about what it means. It will help buffer the wind and solar systems BUT IT WONT SOLVE THE OVERALL PROBLEM. As engineers we can solve these problems but all the clown brained media hacks, the vested interests, all the charlatans & scumbags out to make a quick $$$, all the self interested twats who just rant about crap and all the rest of the ignorant clowns NEED TO STFU and let us do our jobs.
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  43.  @MatthewSummerton  Great point
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  44. What to you expect they are owned by Murdoch.
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  45.  @kidShibuya  I wouldn't say its over yet, but I'd say its bigger than we think. From the Chinese perspective its certainly convenient to get everyone looking somewhere other that Taiwan.
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  46. Well actually Planet America is in some ways a half-Parody of serious news or did you not here the name of the show is "Planet America." One of the compares has a background in political comedy and was the famous "dressed as Osama at the APEC conference" stunt. The interviewer here is John Baron who's normally very good, but this is easily one of his worst interviews ever. I love the show but hate the fact that every so often they let people off lightly or as in this case simply have someone on that they just shouldn't.
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  47.  @dumcasta9327  I agree, there's a lot of ignorant sepos commenting here. But to be fair interviewing Bolton isn't that smart unless you're going to hit him with a least 1 tough question.
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  48. ENGINEER HERE: It doesn't matter because once the Australian people realise just how badly this disaster has been put together they are going to go nuts. 1) The Virginia-class is simply not suited to Australia's navy. yes the technology is arguably the best there is but the Americans have a different philosophy to other nations. Not only do they build large but they have large crews. The Virginia-class has a basic crew of 140, the Astute is 100 and the French Barracuda is 60 like the Collins-class. The German 212-class which isn't nuclear but is Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) has a crew of 27. Singapore has a variation of the German 212. We don't have enough submariners to crew 2 Virginia-class subs let alone 5. 2) We are being taken to the cleaners on the costs. When you look at what these subs have as delivered (as in what the US, British or French navies pay) then we are being screwed to a level of absurdity that should horrify people. Its not the only Australian Navy Contract that needs to be publicly questioned. - The Arafura-class offshore patrol vessels are more than 10 times the cost of the Armidale-class boats they are replacing. Plus the need 30% more crew and weigh over 5 times as much meaning their operational costs will be much higher. - The Hunter Class Frigates are over 3 times the price the British Navy is paying for the same vessel. There is nothing in the variation or that they are being made in Australia that can justify that. I have actually done a ALTERNATIVE project costing on the submarines. I have 2 Astute-class variations and then 4 AUKUS with 6 German 212s. that would be a sub fleet that would be VERY HARD for Australia to crew. - The nuke boats are all built in England with an Australian work force on site of 6,500. The first 212 would be built in Germany with an Australian workforce of 1,000 and the last 5 built here in Australia. - I have included some borderline outrageous bonuses for the Australian people working on them overseas as a means to getting it done on time and on budget. - I have included costs for port upgrades in both Western and Eastern Australia based on publicly available information. - I have included costs for disposal of the subs after their service using parts of Olympic Dam in South Australia. Why because its already a site with 30% of the World's known Uranium. It can't be contaminated any worse than it already is. I have TIRED to OVER COST things and am still AU$115 Billion *UNDER the lower AU$268 Billion we are being told it will cost Even if I stick a AU$50 Billion contingency on top of all the other contingencies I already have in the project I still can't explain where AU$65 Billion let alone AU$165 Billion is going. MAYBE THIS IS WHY ACTUAL PROJECT DETAILS ARE HARD TO COME BY.
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  49.  @petermcculloch4933  Its very very simple and engineers learn this in their first year. If you lift the temperature of water, even when its below boiling point you increase the evaporation rate and add water vapour to air layer above the water. Its effectively transferring thermal energy into the air. If you do that for the worlds oceans, that's a lot of additional water vapour being pumped into the atmosphere that eventually forms clouds. That's why we can expect MORE rainfall and MORE snowfall. So when we get major storm events (rain, wind, hail or snow) they are more likely to be more severe than normal because there's more water vapor in the atmosphere to come down on our stupid heads.
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  50.  @petermcculloch4933  I've never understood what was hard about it. Higher temperature means more evaporation More evaporation means more clouds More clouds mean more rain and snow. Its just a matter of where it falls. Climate is like pushing a kid on a swing. Normally its just a matter of nudges to keep it going, but if the nudges are just a smidge harder at the right timing then the swing starts going higher and higher. Eventually you either stop or launch the kid into space. I did aerospace engineering and we once had a NASA guy visit who'd done a project to estimate what it would take to make Mars liveable. Basically we can't for a pile of reasons but the best one was that planets don't like being changed unless its very gradual over millions of years. Its just like suddenly pushing that kid on the swing with one enormous push. Sure they'll zoom away as you expect. Maybe it will just keep going and the kid will fly off but then maybe it'll swing back and smash you in the face. Either way wont be a good outcome for you or the kid.
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