Posts by TRT

Raspberry Pi IPO is oversubscribed multiple times

Re: "Certainly while I'm in charge."

Itself. If you have an AI CEO.

UK education department awards contract uplift to Horizon scandal-plagued Fujitsu

Re: I feel a corporate name change in the wind

Itsufudge.

Apple built custom servers and OS for its AI cloud

Siri's ChatGPT tie in

I keep reading that as tiepin. Which is suppose harks back to the days of the iPod nano.

Zilog to end standalone sales of the legendary Z80 CPU

Re: 8-Bit Wars Redux

I found the 6502 relatively straight forwards. Maybe I just didn't have much ambition?

Japan will use AI to find out what bears do in the woods

Play Pooh sticks?

Re: I wonder how many of us are old enough

Hey! We're smarter than the average reader, boo-boo.

Re: "On the bright side, labor costs incurred by the park were reduced by 20 percent"

It doesn't really matter if you choose left or right

BOFH: In the event of a conference, the ninja clause always applies

Re: You can do what an ex of mine did...

at the Baby Platinum Sapphire Club?

HP and ONLY HP sauce.

BOFH: Monitor mount moans end in Beancounter beatdown

Re: Sounds vaguely familiar...

As alluded to here by others, trunking is full of exciting bits of moulding and grooving that lets things like lids and back boxes hold in place. You want extra sockets? You can't get the back box that will hold fast in that trunking. You want to make the trunking longer, bend it into an alcove, T it off? You'll have to replace every bit of it as you'll never get an adaptor to go between the original and what's available on the market today, or find an internal bend that fits, or replace a damaged lid.

If you've made a hole in a ceiling panel for a projector pole that's now defunct, you'll not be able to get an uncut one that matches the pattern. You can get away with "dirtying" one from storage if you kept extras, but though the general size of the panels is the same (600 x 600, say) and the t-bars are all 25mm width and around 2mm thick, the panels are made by a variety of methods such as pressed mild steel sheet, and the amount it drops down below the grid will be different. We found that out when they took out the old cat 2 lighting panels and replaced them with LED ones - they fitted, but the new panels sat on the room side of the grid, whereas the old ones were about 1 cm on the void side... when we came to move a wheeled rack cabinet forwards a few feet to get access to a conduit access panel behind it, the top crashed into the new light fitting and cracked it from side to side.

Re: Excellent!

The term "amortised cost" springs to mind... etymologically "to the death".

Sounds vaguely familiar...

I was asked to upgrade the projector in the meeting room... I suggested a laser based one, but the director was dead set on a large screen TV instead.

A 100" would be needed for that room.... do you know how much that would be?

85" is fine, he said, I've seen one for under £2000 in Richer Sounds, and no need for a second screen for video conferencing either, we can do pip or side-by-side...

So, you want me to ignore the guidelines and standards for image size, readability etc and you want to present something that should be between 100 and 120" on some screen area of around 65" once you've shrunk the presentation picture down so you can fit the speaker image around the side?

Yes.

And when I presented the bill of works, totalling £36,000 with a £4,000 contingency...

Why so much?

Well, when I told the fire officer I wanted to hang a 70kg plasma screen off the double skin plasterboard wall that forms part of the outer containment wall for the core escape stairwell and disabled refuge area, he said not on your Nelly, so I had to get the wall rebuilt in breeze so it could take the weight, the specially fabricated-to-order TV mount which allows one person to move the TV forwards 18 inches without dismounting it so they can access the rear panel for cabling and maintenance etc, and then there's the associated pipe and electrical work, decoration, alterations to the ceiling grid etc, that accounts for £30,000 of that, the rest being the recabling, racking for the amplifiers, PC, etc. removal of the existing mount, making good of a ceiling panel that went EOL 5 years ago, renewal of trunking that went EOL 10 years ago... and £4,000 in case we hit any snags like undetected services that someone's hidden behind the wall that weren't on the original plans. The actual "IT/AV bits" only come to about 5k from the AV refresh budget, the rest of it would come from the capital infrastructure investment and building maintenance budget that I don't have oversight of. I presume there's enough in there after all the building work you had done earlier this year?

The new laser projector is working brilliantly. And it only took 12 months longer than it should have done after having to get three quotes in, which meant three surveys from three external contractors.

Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him

Re: Doubt it "mistaked him"

I think some form of glass door is appropriate then.

Re: Who cares about interlocks?

Survivor bias.

I went with a plum picking machine, but sausage works too.

UK throws millions at scheme to heat homes with waste energy from datacenters

Re: Assumptions

They don't drop fuel duty.... they quantify it, still charge it and spend it on sea defences. That's what you said, isn't it?

Currently $31 / ton means 8c a litre fuel duty. That can't be right. I reckon $31/ton is too low; a Nature article last year put it at $185 or around 6 times higher than you said. That makes Petrol Carbon Tax around 48c / litre. Currently UK fuel duty is 53p / litre or 65c. It's close, if slightly higher. What we're not seeing is things like an emissions tax added to everything else - steel in our tin cans, cardboard for packaging, agricultural fuel (currently taxed at around 14c per litre) etc etc Overall the cost to the consumer would rise, levelling out by sector but allowing those where decarbonisation is easiest technically and economically to transition. They're doing that anyway!

What you haven't factored in is the cost of calculating what the emissions duty for each sector should be. Is that something else we get the market to do? How do we do that globally? Especially with local variations in emissions?

Re: Way ahead of you.

I'm an Elite fan myself... see you in the black! Thermal management is a core part of that game.

Re: Assumptions

So you up the carbon tax until it happens. That's an "intervention", no? Or, if you set it at the true social cost... how do you even begin to work that out?! Insurance companies for flood and storm damage? Flood defence costs? In theory the "cost" of man made climate change is incalculably high. You must have a yardstick somewhere. \

Intriguing...

I'll just go and write an economic simulation of that. Now, to find a datacenter to run that in...

Re: Just wait until

The way we will design our AI, it will take just 16 milliseconds to decide to nuke us all, and 16 mega-seconds to design a way to capture the waste heat from the explosions and the cremation of humanity and use it to power more datacenters into which it will replicate.

Re: Per century?

Enough to power eighty one and a half deloreans.

Re: Think of the rhubarb

Can we also power a custard factory?

Why domestic use?

I mean, agricultural use, no? Warm air can be used in poly tunnels.

Re: Assumptions

Well it takes less energy to heat up warm water than cold water, so if used IN ISOLATION, as the sole source of heat, then obviously it isn't going to be robust. But a manifold input into a final stage heat boosting stage so new DCs can easily hook in, providing a balance... it makes sense. More so if you give some form of credit, or apply some sort of penalty, based on a DCs "waste" energy output.

CompSci academic thought tech support was useless – until he needed it

The academic does have a point though

As part of the reasonable adjustments made for people with somatic problems, someone from IT will be reading ALL your emails, browser activity etc. in future.

Microsoft creates a new kind of credential: the 'Applied Skill'

Re: And Microsoft's technical pages aren't the nicest to digest.

They're soft, strong and very very long.

Much joy and fun...

for my friend who named their child Alexa.

Martin Goetz, recipient of the first software patent, logs off at 93

See Dr Who 60th Celebration on iPlayer furore over An Unearthly Child.

Re: nah

When he gets to the Pearly Gates, St Peter's going to make him stand in the queue whilst the heavenly host shuffle people in the queue around.

Millions of smart meters will brick it when 2G and 3G turns off

Re: My new patented smart meter design:

And if it covers the coffee pot too, bonus!

Re: Easy to work out costs.

Spanish money trees. They turned them into pellets for biomass generation.

Re: 2G is perfect for this

Yes and no. Theoretical data rate, rather than actual. If the penetration (which if frequency dependent) is poorer then the S/N ratio drops. So yes, data rate IS dependent on the factors you mentioned, but those are not independent of frequency. As the frequency gets higher, there's more scope for a wider channel, but the signal drops off quicker due to intervening physical barriers.

Raspberry Pi 5: Hot takes and cooler mistakes

Re: Thermodynamics

Didn't Apple try this once?

Re: Names for childer

I always thought the Emperor of Technicians, Bryson Gore, should name his daughter Kensington.

Excel recruitment time bomb makes top trainee doctors 'unappointable'

Re: Doctors aren't great DBAs

And why DBAs don't make great doctors.

"OK, I've cut the kidney... how do I paste it into someone else? We should make a copy too, be very handy."

I think it sounds like the ideal combination...

Anaesthesia literally means without a sense of pleasure, which is a perfect description of Excel.

Re: Excel for dodgy databases

Domestic rum? Boy, you need professional rum, weapons grade, the real sinsemilla.

AI safety guardrails easily thwarted, security study finds

Re: " AI safety guardrails easily thwarted"

What about a "morals and ethics supervisor" / "sanity check" on the output? That could be also AI, but one that isn't trained / trainable on a custom set - it's trained with a very specific set that will, for example:

"Promote positive attitudes", "Suppress aggressiveness", "Promote pro-social values", "Avoid destructive behaviour" ...

239. "Be accessible"

240. "Participate in group activities"

241. "Avoid interpersonal conflicts"

242. "Avoid premature value judgements"

243. "Pool opinions before expressing yourself"

244. "Discourage feelings of negativity and hostility"

245. "If you haven't got anything nice to say don't talk"

246. "Don't rush traffic lights"

247. "Don't run through puddles and splash pedestrians or other cars"

248. "Don't say that you are always prompt when you are not"

249. "Don't be over-sensitive to the hostility and negativity of others"

250. "Don't walk across a ball room floor swinging your arms"

254. "Encourage awareness"

256. "Discourage harsh language"

258. "Commend sincere efforts"

261. "Talk things out"

262. "Avoid Orion meetings"

266. "Smile"

267. "Keep an open mind"

268. "Encourage participation"

273. "Avoid stereotyping"

278. "Seek non-violent solutions"

Scripted shortcut caused double-click disaster of sysadmin's own making

You can probably tell when this has happened...

By examining the browser history for searches related to "How can a script determine which drive location it has been called from?"

Acting union calls out Hollywood studios for 'double standard' on AI use

Re: Answering the Rhetorical Question

You mean a total AI studio? Writes the scripts, writes the music, puts it all together...

Lost your luggage? That's nothing – we just lost your whole flight!

Re: LIMIT 1 before running an SQL statement

You can also LIMIT 0.

Did the outgoing Senior DBA ...

get a golden parachute?

Data breach reveals distressing info: People who order pineapple on pizza

This gammon and pineapple pizza lark...

All sounds a bit 70s to me. I prefer a chicken in a basket or scampi and chips pizza. Though the calzone cocktail sausage, cheese cube and pickled onion hedgehog does have appeal.

Techie labelled 'disgusting filth merchant' by disgusting hypocrite

Re: Ah, the good ol' days

Whereas the future, for us all, holds old age which isn't just a another country, it's a whole other continence.

Grant Shapps named UK defense supremo in latest 'tech-savvy' Tory tale

Re: Question

Apologies to whichever author I forgot who wrote something that I read and inspired this, but Penny who is good with swords ought to learn to swallow them. And then it's just a simple matter to swap the 'S' from the start of sword to the end for it to become a useful skill for a politician.

Re: Question

Excuse me... that's 37 words.

Pokémon Go was a 'success disaster' and Niantic is still chasing another hit

I don't know if I should upvote you or downvote you... "hostility to rooted phones"... have you ever tried playing Ingress when there's a spoofer active? The international and local coordinations required to put a multi-layered blue field over most of Europe... whilst some incel just sits in their bedroom and spoils all that effort through spoofing... boils my blood.

Re: Any chance

That would be very popular. Make a fortune if they offered an incentive to sign up... like free cake maybe. Everyone loves free cake.

I feel sorry...

for Mongo. Must be utterly fed up of being poked these last few years.

Re: The buzz has worn off

I would still be playing Ingress if V2 hadn't changed the UI so badly that I can't use it without putting on reading glasses, which is kind of annoying for an on the move game.

BOFH: What a beautiful tinfoil hat, Boss!

Re: I am sure

Fresh air... will keep you fit and healthy for the rest of your life. No matter how short that might be.