Posts by Robigus 79 posts • joined 12 May 2010
Anecdotal evidence shows that ARM cpus have a much lower power consumption that Intel on the same workload (look at the comparisons with M1 vs i9).
I would have thought that this fact alone is enough to get the data centre flingers positively vibrating with excitement.
I run it in a Docker container on an RPi4 at home and in an X86 VPS - Very effective. The clients for Android/iPhone/Linux and MacOS work well too.
Colleagues inform me that it was trivial on Windows too. Unless looking for particularly arcane use cases, what's not to like?*
* Rhetorical. Don't bother.
About 10 years ago I met with Manchester Police who wanted to see a mapping system I'd written. They told me a similar tale to that of your aquaintance. They indicated areas over a map where the policy was containment, and not to create any kind of crime-vacuum by removing a gang/family/Women's Institute* group.
* I made that up.
As a young spotty Herbert, I and my fellow Herberts would yell “Bagpipes!” when the loading noise changed on the loading screen. At that point, you knew that the monochrome image was about to be coloured. It was competitive. Call it too early and you’d receive a dead arm.
Like biblical numerologists looking for decipherable patterns, I would listen to the loading noise trying to discern the “meaning”.
One pre-pubescent Herbert mimicked the loading screeches and patterns into a cassette recorder to see if he could fool the machine. I recall the sum total was intermittent rolling blue and yellow lines around the screen edge.
Happy naïve days.
I don't have WhatsApp. I do have Signal.
Most of my family now have Signal. Those that don't can text me. Or ring.
Signal works fine on an e foundation phone. Firefox/Signal/Mail Client. That's all I need.
From the conversations I've had about privacy with friends - the general impression I get is that we like to talk about privacy and it's importance, but we are, in fact, prepared to do nothing about it. They'll keep their Facebook stuff (we can all find a reason why we "need" to). This won't change anything, but they're OK with that.
Fair enough. The joke icon was perhaps a too subtle indicator of not entirely pedantic intent.
I was referring to its original meaning (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(Roman_army) ). In a world of righteousness and relativism; anything can mean anything you want it too.
More importantly, other websites report that this laptop runs Linux very well.
You don't even need a Pi to run it; I run it as a docker container on an old Linux PC that acts as a the household file server.
I agree with other's sentiment expressed here that the web is almost unusable without these protections.
Surveillence Capitalism can't be smothered fast enough.
Frankly as it's an open source browser that doesn't belong to one of the unhealthily voyeuristic self-respect euthenising behemoths of a whitened-teeth "connect and share" dystopia, it gets my vote.
As I just wrote that I have visions of Richard Attenborough holding a mask over a victims face in "10 Rillington Place" saying "Just relax, relax. Connect and share, connect and share".
Multi-account containers are excellent.
I need a pint.
With more than 2 on the line, Skype has problems. But it's MS, so work think it must be used.
The new Skype, like WhatsApp, Allo and Facebook Messenger will use Signal's protocol, with Microsoft's added ... er ... magic.
So why not use Signal*? No slurping, open source, non-profit. As recommended by security nerds. Works a treat.
* I know, I know. Power, control, brand, the ability to read everything out of your phone and report to the Mothership etc
We have a 200mb connection, TV's are on Ethernet (non of this wireless nonsense). Before the FA cup final, iPlayer asked if we'd like 4K, which we did.
iPlayer crashed, repeatedly. Mrs. Robigus and I went to pub, other Robigii stayed at home and switched back to 1080p. That was a recent Sony TV, I hope to be offered the option to try it on the Samsung (which is much snappier and agreeable than Android TV on the Sony)
I knew something was afoot; I had a phone call from them last week. Having never spoken to them before, despite being a customer for over 10 years, a "customer something-or-other representative" rang me.
I prophesied to colleagues that "something's up".
I asked why they were ringing and the poor lady on the other end seemed as clueless as I did (after the scripted waffle had been read and I placed some direct questions)
Bad form.
My VM bill has risen 34% in 4 years.
That was pre-Brexit.
They engaged with me on Twitter about it once, injecting weasel-feel-good words here and there until I produced maths. Then they went quiet.
Now Liberty Global have taken control of F1, I shudder to think how much vapid waffle and speculation they can wrap around it, before demanding more money for the privilege.
My son's Medtronic insulin pump had to be explicitly configured to listen to remote instructions for it to be vulnerable.
All of his cohort had remote access turned off by default when setup by the hospital because it was battery thirsty.
Also, the article doesn't mention that pumps are setup with a maximum bolus - another safety feature that prevents little people delivering shit-tons* of insulin.
That's not to say the manufacturers aren't money-first/patient-second yacht-sailing greed-monster tooth-whitened billionaires, but the headline's a bit OTT.
* This is the proper medical terms for large quantities of insulin.
Re: outspoken Torvalds; supplying context reduces headline impact.
Re: GPL violators; I'm with Linus; why not just call out the offenders and let everyone know they're twats? No need for lawyers - the world now knows they're untrustworthy twats.
Publish your emails calling them out.
Karma restored. Cheap too; no need for endless meetings with lawyers and ideological SFC egocentrists.
My EU research project comes to a close next March. We had already been in discussions about further research work with some of our team.
We'd already understood that we are Yesterday's People and involving us would be possibly destabilising, time consuming and, generally, an all round steaming headache.
This email is the first thing I've seen in writing about what's already freely talked about.
Meh. And double Meh.
Moreover our latest EU* project uses PostgreSQL with R and JSON - one simple vagrant file attached to an email flung around the empire has all researchers able to hack and submit.
No licensing problems, no up front costs or eye-watering downstream cavity searches.
* And probably last, I'm told. Perhaps I ought to watch the news and find out why.
Good idea; we could call it the Nordic League : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_League
Cheap shot, sorry.
As a remainer (with much of my work coming from EU funded projects), I'm pragmatic enough to accept that if we're out, things will be different and we'll just get on with it. If we're in, things will be different, but differently.
Having watched the BBC debate last night, I felt somewhat short-changed by the Remain reps who seemed to engage in far more ad-hominem attacks.
Polarisation of these issue doesn't help anyone; entrenchment ensues with it's shortcuts to Godwin's Law made so much more predictable.
Whatever happens, the future isn't what it was going to be, so embrace it and crack on.
Been there sooooo many times, that I gave up too.
"Defender of the Faith" - radicalised religionised friends son? Check*
Work colleague and his friend fisting each other and more? Check.
Friends wife in latexy/gimpy stuff? Check.
One is almost thankful when a colleagues son's computer just has a bit of porn on it. Normal teenager? Check.
Doesn't anyone just collect stamps any more?
* Nice response from Dad: "Little bastard. I'm taking him out for a pint."
Having worked extensively on Sybase, SQL Server and PostGreSQL, on Unix/Linux and Windows environments, I hesitantly welcome this news.
Although the tooling for SQL Server is pretty good, I find that encourages users to engage in the 'click dance' of left click, right click, third item down, go. I consult to a multi-million pound company who had kittens when I wrote a script to move a database and it's logs onto another drive, instead of looking at the familiar SSMS interface that "Is the database".
And there are of course the licensing costs; servers get downgraded to poverty editions whenever possible and functionality removed. Every week, a new business problem is answered by "You can do it in PostGres"
Detaching from the tooling encourages clearer abstract thought that actually addresses the objectives. (That of course can apply to any other Visual Studio-eque "I used the wizard" scenario).
There's a reason that my current big EU project is using PostGreSQL; we need employ noone to be the license monitor and we can sleep at night knowing that our back door won't get kicked in (fnaar) by the license police demanding spurious recompense for some arcane technical reason. That and the JSON/HSTORE datatypes and the Javascript/Python/SQL/R et al stored procs.
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