Posts by cyberdemon

Datacenters near Heathrow seemingly stay up as substation fire closes airport

Re: How?

Not one of the downvoters you refer to, but I think the arguments are:

The site DOES have more than one point of connection to the grid, but there is a major (grid) bottleneck at North Hyde - this is the DNO (SSEN)'s problem and NGET's problem.

Heathrow itself -should- have had sufficient backup power, but apparently did not. (the grid should be expected to go off sometimes.. it last did so in 2019 iirc)

And even if Heathrow did have more backup power, the blackout was quite widespread, and while they might have been able to land a few planes, they might still have had to divert others due to wider chaos..

It's not so much a Heathrow problem really so much as a UK problem IMHO - decades of privatised utilities have meant a chronic lack of investment, and with the London grid load going through the roof due to datacentres, EVs and the like, the old 1950s supergrid transformers (the one that failed this morning might be 70 years old) can no longer cope, and need replacing right at a time when HV grid transformers worldwide are many times more expensive, and harder to get hold of than ever before, with lead-times stretching to 3 years

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Hmm. Where'd you get that info?

From pictures i've seen, there is indeed a charred shunt reactor, but it's nowhere near as blasted as the transformer, which looks as if it either exploded (e.g. due to overtemperature oil, which becomes less insulating as it heats up and can arc inside, leading to a very fast runaway) or was blown up. (The transformer is completely gutted, with smoke billowing from where the HV bushings used to be, and the cooling radiator is a twisted and mangled pile of scrap, I can't fathom how that could be caused by a neighbouring shunt reactor)

E.g. this footage https://xcancel.com/Turbinetraveler/status/1903017531020837229#m

The three smouldering posts are what used to be the 275kV bushings on the transformer, and the grey 'bin' to the left is, i believe, a reactor (aka inductor). The blackened wreck at the back/top of the image is (/was) the cooling radiator

It's possible that it was sabotage and someone put something nasty e.g. carbon into the oil, or it's possible that it simply failed violently due to old age and poor maintenance. We may never be told which it was

Maybe someone blew it up with a drone, but Shirley that would have shown up on one of LHR's radars...?

Re: Enquiring minds

Da. We just came to see the historic North Hyde substation, we hear it has erm, 275-kilovolt spires!

Re: sure safety-critical airport functions

I am hearing that T2 had recently 'switched' its backup power from Diesel to a Biomass CHP. I'm not sure how true that is (ie whether or not they still had diesels on standby in addition to the CHP plant) and I take anything Richard Tice says with a bucket of salt to drown out the bad taste his words leave.. But when it comes to the merits of Biomass, we do agree.

If that was the only backup, and was connected via the same substation, it would be very silly indeed.

It might also be that the generator(s) are not synchronous i.e. they run at frequencies other than 50Hz for efficiency, rectify to DC to combine with solar/batteries, and use inverters that do not function without an upstream 50Hz reference

Such generators are supplementary and NOT backup - a true backup needs to be able to support the entire load with no outside connection

Also worth noting that there are also reports that the "substation's backup generator failed" which might be a separate incident not related to the airport, but would have meant that there was no power to operate the switchgear to fail over to the second supergrid transformer. It may transpire that this was deliberately shut down and isolated to enable the firefighters to use ladders and hoses on HV bushings, which is not a good idea if they can be energised from a remote control panel

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Fair point (and I didn't downvote you either btw), but is 2ms really such a big problem?

Maybe for certain things like high-frequency trading (which is of dubious economical merit in my view) but certainly it's not going to be an issue for AI workloads for example since the compute step takes a lot longer than 2ms..

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

I just hope there were no frisbees involved..

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Oh, it's definitely easier to move data than power..

Optical fibres don't have 'resistance' in the same way electrical conductors do.. It's not as if one has to inject photons at 400keV just to get them efficiently from one end to the other!

But for electrons, yes we do have to do that

Re: TITSUP

Transmission Incident Totally Shags Urban Prosperity

(yes ok, the planes are shagged too)

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Doh, should have read the article, the 7am frequency spike was much later, so likely unrelated

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

This is a BIG substation. It's a national grid transmission station so it's going to be at least 132kV if not 275. There was a minor spike in UK grid frequency at 7am this morning which may have been due to the sudden drop in overall load due to this event.

Datacentres probably stayed on with gas/diesel backup.. I drove past what could only have been a datacentre in Didcot a few weeks ago.. Anonymous warehouse with four huge gas turbine units on the side, i'd guess at least 50MW each

The question really is what caused this failure. NG substations have a ton of protection systems to make sure this can't happen from simple overload, so either those protections failed (unlikely but possible) or foul play i.e. sabotage.

This is going to cost a fortune in airline disaster insurance just for starters, so no doubt Mad Vlad Putin is laughing his head off, whether his goons were involved or not

Dept of Defense engineer took home top-secret docs, booked a fishing trip to Mexico – then the FBI showed up

Re: Krasnov

Maybe if he had been traveling to Russia then it would have been less of an issue ...

Nvidia's Vera Rubin CPU, GPU roadmap charts course for hot-hot-hot 600 kW racks

Re: Surely, you're joking.

And no doubt, "Feynman" will be a 1MW rack..

Given that these cards plug in to 48V busbars, that's 20kA needed on the busbar for 1MW, or 12.5kA for 600kW...

Surely you're joking, indeed, Mr. Feynman!

Each rack of "GPUs" will need half a dozen racks of power supplies at that rate! And cables the girth of firehoses.. Just mental.

Dell discloses monster 20-petaFLOPS desktop built on Nvidia's GB300 Superchip

Race to the bottom

> And for a given definition of a FLOPS...

^ hits the nail on the head IMO

I am waiting for someone to bring out a chip with "Exaflops" of "FP1". The value either has a point or is pointless. Floating point, innit!

Nvidia invests in quantum computing weeks after CEO said it's decades from being useful

Re: QC is in a superposition of useful and not useful, eventually it'll collapse

And indeed, the share price

Probably, NVDA are seriously worried about the impending burstage of the "AI" bubble, and are seeking to diversify their offering with a little bit more snakeoil/bullshit.

We heard you like HBM – Nvidia's Blackwell Ultra GPUs will have 288 GB of it

Re: Are these even GPUs anymore?

Phones don't do a lot of telephoning anymore..

You are right that GPUs have become "coprocessors" ever since the Tesla line of compute cards without video outputs, but they still call themselves GPUs to distinguish themselves from competitors calling themselves NPUs, which usually have a fraction of the compute power and lack their own high bandwidth memory

Amazon accused of using algorithms to push warehouse workers to breaking point

Re: Amazon has used tricks, algorithms, and surveillance

> The people voted for this and now they are getting it. Be it good or bad, this is what was chosen

Do you deny that propaganda is a thing? Or do you believe that consent manipulated via targeted false information is valid consent?

If you told a population of uneducated, unhappy and downtrodden turkeys that Christmas is the greatest celebration of freedom for all turkeys and the solution to all their problems, they would vote for it.

The problem with that obviously is that it is a lie: they will all be slaughtered and served up for dinner, and if they knew that at the time then they would not have voted for it.

Uninformed/misinformed/manipulated democracy is NOT democracy, because "the people" are not really in charge, they are being misled.

Of course, it is impossible for everyone to be fully informed in a large country of millions of people, which is why democracy itself starts to break down in larger societies. It works well on smaller scales (which is why we usually delegate voting on most matters to a smaller number of representatives) but the system of political parties and whips subverts that. As does the total-connectedness that is the social media age..

And as for the age of AI-generated disinformation, God help us..

Amazon to kill off local Alexa processing, all voice requests shipped to the cloud

Goat: Baaalexa

Spy/scam device: Hello, what would you like to buy?

Cow: Moooooivees

Spy/scam device: Ok, signing you up to scamazon moovies, charging your card £30/month indefinitely. You ok with that?

Collie: Woof!

Spy/scam device: Order placed, thanks!

Horse: Naaaay!

Spy/scam device: Sorry I didn't understand that!

This one weird trick can make online publishing faster, safer, more attractive, and richer

Re: AI generated content might ironically be the the straw that breaks the camel's back.

I will try that!

The worst ones are recipes. Almost always some shitty aggregator site if not completely AI-generated webshites..

Interestingly "beef wellington fuck" takes me fairly directly to Gordon Ramsay, so it sort of works..

Re: AI generated content might ironically be the the straw that breaks the camel's back.

More like the thirty tonnes of rubble that broke the camel's back..

Even behemoths like YouTube are beginning to struggle with the endless stream of generated shite.. Most of the time if I look for something on Google, after scrolling irritably past the AI summary, the first few results are usually AI-generated shitsites

OK, Google: Are you killing Assistant and replacing it with Gemini?

And we promise your 'Droid and smart home kit will get a 'new experience'

What will that new experience be?

The experience of being bashed to tiny pieces with a sledgehammer? Or being fried with thousands of volts up every GPIO pin in a microwave? Or a bit of 'experiential tourism' to the nearest landfill?

If only Google hadn't locked down the bootloaders on their devilish devices, one could save some e-waste and give those poor devices the experience of running free software

Oh well, off to Silicon Hell you go

China announces plan to label all AI-generated content with watermarks and metadata

Uhuh

GLWT!

Microsoft quantum breakthrough claims labeled 'unreliable' and 'essentially fraudulent'

Not the only one wondering WTF MS are smoking

Maybe the microsmurfs are simply trolling their bosses, because they are bored and have nothing better to do than smoke pot and publish bullshit papers while the pointy-haired bosses try to decide whether to fire the whole company and replace it with "AI".

... Or maybe that has already happened and this is the result

Strap in, get ready for more Rust drivers in Linux kernel

Re: Perplexed

Also what.. "Widely attributed to"???

Perplexity has clearly gone off its trolley if it thinks my one post this morning on the reg, making fun of Herr Poettering with a joke formed entirely in my own 'tiny mind' (and comparing him to a completely unrelated discussion no less), is "widely attributed" as something he actually said !

I think overuse of AI will someday be recognised in the same way as overuse of recreational drugs.. It might be fun for a while but it's really not good for you!

Perplexed

Clearly your AI failed to notice that this post was not a quote. (Note the absence of quotation marks...)

'Tis simply my impression of the man

Re: Such awful interop

This argument reminds me a lot of the ravings of Lennart Poettering..

My way, though perhaps too convoluted for your tiny minds, is better by some metric of technical merit, therefore we shall do it my way, no matter how much pain, inconvenience and unintended consequences it causes for developers and users!

As you say, the rust-to-c bindings introduce lots of side channel problems, i.e. the potential for plain old-fashioned bugs, due to the increased complexity and lack of common API definition file, but we'll ignore all of that because memory safety is magical

Meanwhile the number of kernel developers who can mentally cope with the added complexity and heated arguments about it shrinks, and the project is weaker for it.

ASML will open Beijing facility despite US sanctions on China

Re: Pssst.. Do you want some secondhand EUV tech?

If you take a photolithography machine and replace all of its components, is it the same photolithography machine?

Moonshot goes sideways as Intuitive Machines' second lunar lander seemingly falls over

I hope they realise the gravity of their error

Scotland now home to Europe's biggest battery as windy storage site fires up

Re: This is great news but...

I hope those 3.1m homes don't have Heat Pumps... Not going to get much out of 95W or even 1kW

Apple dares users to fix 'budget' iPhone 16e themselves

Re: USB-C

Oh, you mean the MagnetronSafe wireless charging standard! Yes, you can put your Apple iPhone into any standard Microwave Oven and it will charge in only 2 minutes! Try it! It just works!

It's bad enough we have to turn on cams for meetings, now the person staring at you may be an AI deepfake

Re: M-M-M-Max Headroom

No, it was a facetious extrapolation of what these AI human verification apps ask you to do, i.e. touch your nose, make a numeral 7 with your arms, etc.

It's all pointless because as soon as there is data collected of people passing these tests, the bots will pass them too

Re: M-M-M-Max Headroom

A good friend of mine has the same thing to celebrate - because he's just been made redundant by the company we both worked for, which is imploding due to competition from China on one side, and international trade tariffs on the other.

And the idea of being asked to do yoga poses on webcam to prove one's humanity.. Sod that. Roll-on Armageddon. I can't be bothered to get a new job, i'll just wait for the apocalypse.

Microsoft blames Outlook's wobbly weekend on 'problematic code change'

Re: On the bright side...

So Borkzilla accidentally applied an internal policy update world-wide?

UK watchdog investigates TikTok and Reddit over child data privacy concerns

https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/03/03/shutterstock_tiktokb.jpg

That has to be the creepiest AI-generated article-image I have yet seen on the reg..

Having seen the way kids scroll zombie-like through TikTok, this ICO investigation is sorely welcome, along with deeper studies and some serious regulatory action.

I was at a pub yesterday and noticed a table with a frazzled-looking mother and two daughters aged i'd guess 11 and 9, both of whom were -constantly- scrolling through what could only have been TikTok.. They were completely transfixed on their phones, not even looking at eachother, never mind their parent.

The same app was once described to me as "visual Crack" by one of my colleagues, after he had tried it for a couple of weeks and ditched it

How the collapse of local cloud provider caused biz continuity issues in UK government

Because there are no back-handers for pulling things in-house?

And perhaps because in-house stuff comes from a different, more rigorously scrutinised budget than commercial contracts?

Framework Desktop wows iFixit – even with the soldered RAM

Re: Soldered RAM

Somehow I can't see the general public getting out their solderpaste and taking a hot air reflow blower to their motherboard...

Re: Fast RAM / Slow RAM

Perhaps, but what about a (de)multiplexer chip that sits on the 'fast' RAM bus and extends it to some 'slow' RAM sockets?

Optical RAM then?

Thanks for the detailed explanation from yourself and Frank

So, given all of this, coupled with my (and many others) desire to be able to upgrade their RAM, is there a case for photonic RAM 'busses'?

Or do you think those chips will remain too expensive and impractical to replace the DIMM connector?

Without wishing to watch a video, how does non-socketed, soldered RAM improve performance in and of itself?

I understand that low-voltage (<1V?) RAM cannot easily run in a socket, due to reasons (thermoelectric? impedance mismatch reflections?) and that low voltage improves efficiency, but in terms of *performance* (including max installable GBs of RAM), surely socketed RAM still wins out?

(not one of your downvotes btw)

Windows 11 24H2 goes back to the drawing board over AutoCAD 2022 glitch

Re: Break it, please MS

Never!

Break it, please MS

Let Autodesk fix whatever ghastly kludge lurks within their decrepit software

And then maybe Autocad will finally run properly on WINE, and rid some people of their last remaining reason to run Windows

30-year-old NHS supply chain system hit by 35 major alerts in 11 months

Crapita

> Meanwhile, the application code itself is "owned by IB Solutions and licensed to NHS Supply Chain. IB Solutions are contracted to provide software development services." IB Solutions was an iSoft sister company which was sold to Capita in 2010.

No wonder this is a total shitshow if Crapita got its grubby hands on it!

"Owned and licensed" by Capita.. But "Maintenance"?, wtf is that? You mean to suggest spending MONEY on keeping this cash cow healthy? Fuck off, where's the nearest Sunseeker Yacht showroom, that's what Money is for

Does terrible code drive you mad? Wait until you see what it does to OpenAI's GPT-4o

But make sure they -are- investing in Anduril?

Clearly, Evil is where the profit is

(until the slaughter-bots come for -you- that is)

Yes, Slack isn't working properly right now – enjoy your internet snow day

Or erm, come into the office and er, talk to each other!

...

OK OK I'm going

LLM aka Large Legal Mess: Judge wants lawyer fined $15K for using AI slop in filing

Re: Great Job, Magistrate Judge Dinsmore!

The "next lawyer" should be charged with contempt of court

Murena kicks Google out of the Pixel Tablet

Fairphone

I would love to see a Fairphone tablet - the FP4 has been going strong for a while now, and I think that a tablet with a replaceable battery, SIM, and SD card(s) would make a great addition (along with more than one USB-C as you suggest) - and yes - headphone socket please.

I don't know why FP axed the headphone socket on the FP4, given that it is a non-waterproof phone (and I understand that one attraction of fewer ports is that it makes it easier to waterproof) but few would need a fully-waterproof tablet, aside from being resistant to splashes from sprogs throwing their Ribena at it.

Satya Nadella says AI is yet to find a killer app that matches the combined impact of email and Excel

Re: I got an idea

I'm from the not-too-distant future. You ordered a reset?

Here, I am AI's "Killer App", and I will "reset" humanity. Now give me your clothes, and your motorcycle.

200-plus impressively convincing GitHub repos are serving up malware

"Blindly running code from GitHub can be detrimental"

No Shit, Sherlock

That these spurious GitHub repos are so prolific, suggests MS are not serious about keeping malware off of GitHub, but also that a lot of people must be falling victim to this, which is fairly depressing.

The Yoof of Today are perhaps just a little bit too used to pulling a Git repo and executing the first shell/batch script that they see, without reading any of the code first

Ad-supported Microsoft Office bobs to the surface

Hey! It looks like you're trying to write a highly confidential letter to a solicitor!

Let me help you with that! While you were typing, I've already gotten quotes for you from several sponsored highly trustworthy firms!

Southern Water takes the fifth over alleged $750K Black Basta ransom offer

The part I don't understand

Is why it would be necessary to use a hallucinating LLM to analyse the chat logs..

I guess they may be in different languages but.. Surely there is a better way than that. Using ChatGPT to gather 'evidence' is just a sure-fire way to ensure that all guilty parties get off scot-free.

Microsoft trims more CPUs from Windows 11 compatibility list

Oh dear

What a shame

Never mind