Ayy
https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/98so7e/videocardz_zotac_geforce_rtx_2080_ti_amp_edition/
Posts by Dick Emery
841 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Feb 2008
Nvidia shrugs off crypto-mining crash, touts live ray-tracing GPUs, etc
Total WIPOut: IT chief finds his own job advertised
Europe dumps 300,000 UK-owned .EU domains into the Brexit bin
Sysadmin wiped two servers, left the country to escape the shame
Tuesday 27th March 2018 11:29 GMT
Re: Incremental backups?
I used to sys admin for a small company amd found out when their RAID5 failed that the incrementals had been corrupting slowly bit by bit for some time. Bad data in. Bad data out. That was a very sweaty evening rebuilding the array I can tell you. Did I get any thanks for it? Don't make me laugh.
Uber breaks self-driving car record: First robo-ride to kill a pedestrian
Monday 19th March 2018 23:44 GMT
This is my take on what might have happened
Based on this photo.
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4370667,-111.9430321,3a,75y,125.63h,59.39t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ss_YmQlzA3ace0P2LVk4wwA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
I think what might have happened is the cyclist was passing where the lane turns right and was alongside the car. The car being so close to the side of the cyclist either did not detect the cyclist or did not react in time to a sudden change in the cyclists direction. If the former it may have turned into the right hand land thus running over the cyclist. If the latter then the AI may not have been able to react quickly enough. This can happen if there was a human driver too. It's just the law of nature and physics.
Linus Torvalds passed a kidney stone and then squeezed out Linux 4.13
Monday 4th September 2017 11:26 GMT
I'm a stoner
I get them frequently. I have had a few operations in the past. The worse part is having to have a ureteric stent inserted and left there for several weeks before they decide to do anything about the stones. Just a few months back I had a really bad case of stones in both kidneys and ureters. Had two stents inserted and several agonizing weeks (and much passing of blood) later had the stones zapped by lasers (Pew! Pew!).
I would not wish it on my worst enemy.
Sorry Nanny, e-cigs have 'no serious side-effects' – researchers
Sunday 18th September 2016 10:47 GMT
First post had it right all along
Everything stated above is only a subtext to the initial first posters reply. The powers that be in both government and BT&P are shit scared that their revenue stream is suddenly going to dry up. When everything is said and done it comes down to one thing and one thing only.
Money.
Windows 10 Anniversary Update completely borks USB webcams. Yay.
Wales gives anti-vaping Blockleiters a Big Red Panic Button
Tuesday 14th June 2016 14:11 GMT
All of this is a smoke screen
(Or should that be vape screen?)
The government(s) are looking for ways to tax it. If they can show some kind of unhealthy association then it gives them more leverage to impose a tax. I know it sounds tin foil hat(ish) but I suspect big tobacco is also leaning on big gov via the special handshake network.
Thai bloke battles jumbo python in toilet todger thriller
One ad-free day: Three UK to block adverts across network in June
HTC 10: Flagship goes full Google – but the hardware's top notch
Humans get 'aroused' fondling robots in their private areas – study
Now you can easily see if a site's HTTP headers are insecure, beams dev
Tuesday 26th January 2016 16:18 GMT
My bank website sucks?
I just tried it on www.santander.co.uk and it brings up a number of issues.
Missing headers for:
Strict-Transport-Security
Content-Security-Policy
Public-Key-Pins
X-Frame-Options
X-XSS-Protection
X-Content-Type-Options
I'm not sure how that effects my actual login though.
Oh and it's scoring is 'R'? WTF does that mean?
Five reasons why the Google tax deal is imploding
Dixons Carphone to shut down 134 shops
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Star Wars Special Editions
Cabling horrors unplugged: Reg readers reveal worst nightmares
Tuesday 26th January 2016 15:41 GMT
Cables that go nowhere
I used to admin a office in London and had racks that were pretty much inaccessible. They were partially hidden behind lots of clutter and what you could get to was a knotty mess. Many of these cables actually went nowhere because the prior admin could not be bothered to unplug one when not used anymore. They all went underneath the flooring and were unlabelled. Trying to trace a fault or changing a desk location was a nightmare. There were also ethernet hubs dotted around the offices which made it double difficult.
Windows 10: What's coming in 2016?
Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens offers a new hope for the franchise
Friday 18th December 2015 05:28 GMT
It's good but not great
I won't go into spoilers but what I found was it was a rehash with a few new bits cobbled on.
However.
This is probably a good thing. JJ is playing safe here. Even the soundtrack contains all the original motifs and not many memorable scoring (There is no dual of the fates here).
He had two things to juggle here. One was to try and appeal to the nostalgia crowd (meaning dads). The other is to appeal to a younger audience. Especially the kids who are more forgiving of simple plot lines and heavy CGi use. Disney also is on the merchandising trail obviously.
If he had gone too far away from the originals it might have upset the boat of at least one group and had an impact on both (dads not interested in feeding their kids merch).
There are lots of convenient plot devices to keep the kids interest and lots of 'Look at this old object/person from the original trilogy' to trigger the oldies.
Also logical science has been thrown out with the bath water. Pretty much like the originals. It's a space opera after all.
Even with this. Don't forget we now have a slightly more sophisticated audience (even if they dumb down the movies in terms of plot). Making something that is *all* old school mechanical effects will not wash.
This also helps newcomers get to know some of the old Star Wars universe (while retconning the prequels somewhat). Especially those who may have been living in a cave or are too young to have seen the first round of movies. I am sure the next movie will be more expansive and go in a slightly different direction. I doubt it will be a repeat of ESB.
As a fan I also will give it 7/10. It does what it needs to do in order to satisfy a larger more varied audience in more PC times. If it pandered *just* to the Star Wars fan it might get a 9/10 but leave some of the audience bemused and not as big a money spinner.
Are you the keymaster? Alternatives in a LogMeIn/LastPass universe
Samsung Gear VR is good. So good 2016 could be year virtual reality finally makes it
Bitcoin inventor Satoshi 'outed' as Aussie, then raided by cops – but not over BTC
Aircraft laser strikes hit new record with 20 incidents in one night
TalkTalk attack: 'No legal obligation to encrypt customer bank details', says chief
Laid-off IT workers: You want free on-demand service for what now?
Friday 23rd October 2015 11:20 GMT 
Humans fail too often
Let's face it. Humans are fallible. Even if you could get that certain programmer back to help with some code, it might be he has forgotten most of it (and it's foibles) and not be of any help. They may even be dead (Good luck raising them from the grave).
In the future I expect to see more automated AI type systems that handle the coding side for you. Entrusting important long term solutions to fleshy meat bags is a lost battle.
Caption this: WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg
Volkswagen enlarges emissions scandal probe: 'Millions' more cars may have cheated
Friday 23rd October 2015 10:15 GMT
Was it intentional though?
I'm still trying to get my head around this. Did VW really intend to 'cheat' the system? Or was it a 'feature' used to make the cars low emission when used in built up areas? From my understanding (I Own a Ford Fiesta Zetec Diesel BTW) the cars throw out all the nasty soot the most when over a certain rev count. That is intended only to happen when out on the motorway for instance where there is little if any pedestrian footfall (Unlucky if you live close to a motorway but still). When running low revs most of the time in built up areas the system falls to a low emission mode?
It's all rather puzzling.
BTW do you think we will see a large increase in vehicle licensing for diesels in the near future? I can see a lot of savings on diesels going out of the window (after buying my somewhat overpriced diesel I believe any savings were probably lost anyhow over the course of time).
It seems to me like the entire diesel fiasco was nothing but smoke and mirrors in the end and I should have just stuck with the devil I know.
WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg
Doctor Who's The Girl Who Died ships in nasty Vikings floating atop a time-bending tidal wave
Sunday 18th October 2015 00:33 GMT 
Terrible episode
After the last 2 x 2 part'ers, this was a slap in the face for the more serious Who fans amongst us. I am used to the comedic moments/ramblings but they took it to new heights in this episode. Doctor Who is not a fucking comedy (although many will say it is actually but it's not intentional)!
Throwing in the Benny Hill theme whilst threatening to use interstellar social media to bully the aliens with was the last straw.
This has turned into Reddit/Twitter appeasing nonsense where every moment of the show is about rhubarb rubbing showing how 'clever' they can be with plot arcs.
Don't get me wrong. I still watch and enjoy the show when it is written coherently and as a quirky science fiction 'fun' family show. But it really pushes some aspects too far sometimes. Lexx did dark sci-fi comedy better and Red Dwarf just did outright comedy a LOT better. The writers keep switching from sad to humorous with gay abandon barely giving any time to actually allow it to sink in or associate any emotional context to the characters (and with that infernal soundtrack intruding LOUDLY every minute DROWNING out the fast paced dialogue it needed subtitles enabled to understand what the hell was being said).
The show is full of some great idea's ruined by idiotic script writers. I shall still be here for next weeks episode though as I have nothing better to do on a Saturday night.
WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg
Sysadmin ignores 25 THOUSAND patches, among other sins
Monday 24th August 2015 21:25 GMT
So many companies are running on a razors edge
I remember one small company (although the name evades me after so many years an such a short period I worked there so is probably a good thing) as an admin. They had a NT box where all the networked PC's data was held. It was connected via a switch that could not handle the load and a shit load of ethernet cables with no labels in such a knotted mess it was impossible to trace which cable went where. They went under the floor to various rooms in the building (No nicely placed wall sockets). They also went to hubs (also under the floor) where they got split to various PC's which users complained were 'slow' (Hmm. I wonder why that could have been).
The NT box held a ton of porn (mostly saved by management I might add) and the server was running low on space on the RAID array (I deleted it all and then had to deal with management in my ear about doing so. I kid you not). The backups were made to tape in the most erratic manner. None were tested and the labeling was a nightmare. I spent a VERY frustrating evening one day trying to rebuild the array after one of the hard disks died with the 'concern' that the backups might not work if it could not be rebuilt (or another disk died during the rebuild). They had an ancient database system that was 'proprietary' and coded by someone who had long retired and the temp IT guy they had been using only knew small parts of the system. I was made 'redundant' once I got totally fedup with the mess and went to management with my diagnosis that the company was about to go tits up if I was not allowed to spend some decent cash on fixing it.
I wonder if they are still in business. Actually no I don't.
Still safe as houses: More CCTV for the masses
Budget UHD TVs arrive – but were the 4Kasts worth listening to?
Saturday 15th August 2015 13:54 GMT
I will wait for a while
The things I am waiting for.
'Flat' OLED displays to become affordable and for them to work out the kinks (Like uniformity, endurance and lag). Samsung are reported to be getting back into the race. I personally was hoping that Panasonic would get into OLED. Even if they use LG's panels. No sign yet though.
HDR and high bit depth displays (I think one guy on the Value Electronic HDTV shootout said that displays need to go to 16bit or even higher to make full use of HDR.
HDMI 2.2 or newer on ALL ports (Same for video cards).
I'll mention lag again because it is very important for gaming. Currently LG's OLED TV's have *HUGE* input lag due to the processing.
Better smooth motion algorithms (I still see ghosting around moving objects if you set it too strong. Also full 1080P/4K pixel motion resolution only seems to come when you enable interpolation even at it's lowest settings).
Support for high refresh rates. 4K needs 120/144Hz.
CONTENT! CONTENT! CONTENT!
Oh and The Hobbit at 48FPS? NEVER!!! Basically the BluRay alliance did not put it in their spec.
There are too many compromises for me right now. Personally I am waiting for that operaiton to become common that puts new lenses in my eyes (giving you super human clear vision apparently) that was recently reported on so I can get rid of my thick spectacles to actually appreciate any of this.
The roots go deep: Kill Adobe Flash, kill it everywhere, bod says
Tuesday 21st July 2015 15:38 GMT
Flash Bang Wallop What a Picture!
I really don't understand why Flash cannot be run in a sandbox from now on. There are TONS of creative things made from Flash (animations and interactive games etc). For them to be wiped out overnight because they want to ban Flash means the loss of a large chunk of our online creative culture and heritage. If it's such a security risk just sandbox that sucker!
The insidious danger of the lone wolf control freak sysadmin
Wednesday 17th June 2015 18:08 GMT
Re: Lone Wolf..
It matters not if the co-workers are less competent. What matters most is that the 'competent' new employee works within the team as a team player. That means that if they feel the others are not pulling their weight they let them know and give valid reasons. This may lead to some friction but it has to be put across to the team that it's for the benefit of all. It's not a selfish thing to want to do well. But being a lone wolf is harmful to all and a selfish act.
Wednesday 17th June 2015 18:04 GMT
Re: Sounds like...
Le troll.
I have nothing against people trying to get ahead within a company. I have everything against people who do it at the expense of everybody else. Including the well being of said company.
Hard workers are a boon. But they are - usually - only working so hard for one person. Themselves.
Wednesday 17th June 2015 18:01 GMT
I worked for a company whereby much of their data entry was made on software designed by someone who had retired years ago. They had a consultant working for them as their IT guy but he was not permanent staff. He only knew bits and pieces about the systems. I got the job as permanent IT admin through him and he showed me the ropes. It became quite clear that I was in over my head. Although I struggled through I ended up leaving after a year due to health reasons (the stress was crazy). They had a backup system that was untested (I tested it and found it did not work after a RAID drive died and I spent an entire evening trying to fix it with no overtime. More fool me!). The entire company was balanced on a knife edge and just before I left I sat in with their head honchos and rather generously told all of this. After that they were left to their own devices. I did a few years later look up the company to see if they were still in business. They were not (at least not under their previous name).
Disk is dead, screeches Violin – and here's how it might happen
Wednesday 17th June 2015 17:47 GMT
This will kill X blah blah blah!
The times we have seen people screaming the death knell of HDD as a storage medium. It's almost become a meme.
The truth is spinning media has a long history. It's a 'known' medium despite changes to the manufacturing processes to increase density,reliability and speed.
Flash on the other hand has only been with us a short while in comparison. When you look ahead as a company and look at what it will cost to create new fabs for what is still a relatively expensive medium, with a possibly short period to capitalize on it before something else comes along and wipes it out, I can understand some CEO's hesitance.
In order for a product to be successful it's not just about all the things we as consumers (including data centers et al) look for in a storage medium. It's about how much return on their initial investment over time they need to make to maximize profits.
If they plow billions into new Flash and only a couple of years down the line some competitor (notice I did not use 'someone' because as we all know inventors and start ups don't always come to fruition) invents some cheaper alternative that does the same or better. Then they are stuffed (or will at least make a loss).
For myself I am hopeful of technologies like Memristor. My biggest concerns are:-
1. Ability to recover data after the drive dies or write cycles have expired (Tests have shown that few if any SSD's allow you to easily recover the data. They should theoretically go into read only mode. But an endurance test done on several brands shows that they pretty much just die and not allow you to access the partitions at all!).
2. The ability of the device to erase data beyond recovery. Privacy concerns seem to indicate that although it is more difficult to recover data from Flash devices (especially after it has died). The data is actually harder to destroy completely than a simple 'erase' cycle over a hard disk byte value due to over provisioning/garbage collections etc.
Yes endurance, longevity, speed, reliability and cost are important but without the above two I find myself distrusting the technology for anything other than the operating system and applications. Especially with recent problems like those experienced on the Samsung EVO range (I have a Pro 256GB SDD so it's not so much of a problem although I do notice a speed decrease the more I fill it which I did not realize would be an issue on flash memory).
Welcome to the FUTURE: Maine cops pay Bitcoin ransom to end office hostage drama
Tuesday 14th April 2015 22:21 GMT
Why do people still have access...
Why do companies still allow access to the main server network anyhow? Surely user access should be in VM's with limited access to run exe's outside on live server data (maybe sandbox the users from the data)? I think this is another case of Microsoft methodology of running the OS on every system (I use Windows exclusively BTW before you accuse me of being a *nix know it all). Companies with important data and especially government and law enforcement really need to rethink how they allow their users to access data and work on their backup strategies. Educating users on protective measures just isn't enough. People will continue to make mistakes.
Conservative manifesto: 5G, 'near universal' broadband and free mobes for PC Dixon
Our 4King benders are so ace we're going full OLED, says LG
Wednesday 25th March 2015 16:07 GMT
LG's biggest problem
LG's biggest problem is with their processing. Motion on LG's is just not up to Samsung and Sony's. They lack black frame insertion or 'BFI' (Google it) which means they can look jittery especially on high action material. Their smooth motion algorithms are not quite as good as Sony's either. I read somewhere that BFI is not possible on current OLED tech. Also LG has a bad track record on calibration. Many experts find it very hard to calibrate LG OLED sets. I am hopeful Panasonic will bring their expertise in video processing and calibration to the table in order to fix these issues.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
