Posts by theModge 324 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Nov 2011
We've got a decent sized compute cluster (called Bear). When it's latest iteration was built they used it to heat some buildings on campus. There's already quite a lot of CPH powering bits of campus, but this was located on the other side of the (ever expanding) campus and I believe heats some of the student accommodation
It's got so bad that I'm even thinking of buying Microchip (Atmel) parts or NXP.
My current employer is using Microchip parts, I'm sorry to report that they too are as scarce as rocking horse poo. Probably you can get a chip from them, but one that's pin compatible with our design? Not easy. One that has the same pinout and all the features we need? even harder.
Having listened to a description of the mirror: so huge it has to go up folded into segments, then unfurl it self in space, I can understand why very extensive testing was necessary. It seems the sunshade is just as complex, it's apparently tennis court sized when it's deployed! No way to imagine that's going to be a simple bit of engineering.
The Tax Payers Alliance, famous primarily for not wanting to say who funds them and being based at 55 Tufton Street, along with a number of right wing think tanks.
The problem with ethercon is that someone will inevitably need to plug it into a non ethercon hole, take the metal barrel off and then proceed break the plastic bit.
...Actually that hasn't happened to me for a while, since when I last worked with ethercon they could afford decent kit at both ends of the cable, but when I started out there was all to much of it.
Tunnels and bridges are expensive, but this is a very long twitter thread on why electrifying them beats coasting: https://twitter.com/25kV/status/1187817155385090048
Basically: making coasting work safely and reliably is a pain in the arse which lands up costing as much as electrifying the section.
Using batteries for discontinuous electrification is also under active consideration and a test train which does exactly that ran for a while. One example is: https://www.railway-technology.com/projects/independently-powered-electric-multiple-unit-ipemu-essex/
Hydrogen is rather covered by the original article, but the applications for which it's being considered are much more "discontinuous electrification" and not really actually looking to replace OLE at all, despite the wording of the article. OLE is always better, but historically in this country we a)built lines before it was an idea then b) didn't spend the money adding it, so now adding it will be very expensive and disruptive. It's a good idea though.
The inside of the carriage is dominated by Fuel Cells, tanks and a massive battery pack to smooth out spikes in demand. They picked this class of loco, because it had a handy power bus that wasn't a million miles from the voltage kicked out by the fuel cell if I recall correctly.
The target is 2021 for getting that lot under the body where diesel tanks etc reside.
Source: I'm in the same research group, but haven't worked on it.
Genuine question - what is the difference between a dialect and a language?
I believe that's the matter of serious debate amongst "proper" academic linguists. I've a nasty feeling the definition I know, which is was if they're mutual intelligible it's a dialect, otherwise it's a language is considered dated and wrong now. An English speaker can, with only time being exposed to it, probably get there head round scots and vice versa. The same is certainly not true of gaelic. Thus scots could be a dialect and gaelic a language.
There's a surprising amount of money in essay writing; people who will pay £100s for an essay because they can't do it themselves could easily pay money for well graded course work to copy. Turnitin might well catch them, but that's very much not the seller's problem.
That's not what this is though; it's alumni data; just boring CRM stuff that can be used for fraud etc.
It depends heavily where you are what service you get with virgin media. Partially I'm told it's a function of their odd network topology in particular if you're former telewest or NTL. Another factor though is how over-subscribed your area is: they get no where near their advertised speed in south birmingham (where I am), but they're pretty good elsewhere
wpf performance issues
The few projects I've used WPF on have actually performed very well - if you do as much as possible in XAML it offloads it to the graphics card for you nicely. The other thing I really enjoyed was using it for a touch screen project - it's very well optimised there.
Line of Business stuff almost always seems to be presented via web browser these days. I confess I'd rather it wasn't, thus leaving control of how it's presented to the developer, but it does have obvious advantages when it comes to working across platforms.
Yes. It's the management not the staff that win from pay being private. I loose nothing from my colleges knowing what I earn.
That's the nice thing about working in big "state-ish" places that use pay scales - I know pretty much when everyone around me earns in any case. It's only the highest levels that are by negionation, and you know for sure they're off the top of the scale, at the very least.
Not discussing pay only helps the company, never the employee. Thus I too always open. It's worth considering that if you have a "special deal" much better than everyone else's and you're not allowed to discuss it "lest you make them jealous" it's not impossible they've been told much the same...
I just want big butt....
And you can't lie?
Seriously, I'm with those who like tactile feedback.
In a different world, in which I used to work, this also applies to stage lighting control consoles. Touch screens are fine for functions you don't have to find in the dark, nor on a given beat, but some things need a button or (ideally motorised) fader.
They just turn that off to prevent the annoying beeping
Wiki has it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Wootton_Bassett_SPAD_incident
(Sweary blog post: http://pigeonsnest.co.uk/stuff/crapstuff/tangmere-wootton-bassett-spad-rail-morons.html)
And no, a VPN is not an option (because China is already known to bork unsanctioned VPNs and other encrypted connections)?
They try, but the number of Chinese students here in the UK running VPNs for their friends back home would suggest that they're ineffective in cracking down on them. From my colleges who travel it seems that something like your employers corporate VPN will work, even if say nordVPN is blocked. Not that this is a reliable bias for demonstrating your product if it requires a connection to your server at home, but if you're selling to anyone government owned in China you may well find there's a requirement to host your service locally anyway.
well....if any publicity is good publicity you could argue that declaring your product to be unhackable was akin to free pen-testing.
I mean I'm not sure I'd like to be famous as the "The person who makes shite software" but if I was planning on say, changing my name and emigrating it might work.
I don't know; you could do better than that with a bit of marketing:
1. Get Samples
2. Look at origin post mark.
If American, tell them they're Irish with a dash of Native American. I swear pretending they're Irish is the American national hobby and a touch of Native American makes you seem interesting and special.
Northern UK? Tell them they're Vikings
Southern UK? Tell them they're related to the Plantagenet royal line
I'm sure there's some others I could offend with a bit of research.
3. Look at surnames. If they give you an obvious clue, make it up on those grounds
4. Still be more accurate than the existing players
5. Give all the money to company directors and declare bankruptcy before people sue you for fraud.
Firstly from times when I work with only "slightly" tech people it seems VPNs are a fairly well known solution for general piracy, so there's no reason why they wouldn't think to put them to use for porn. As this is rolled out I imagine the knowledge only spread; soon every child in the playground will be using their mates dad's VPN for their porn needs (because what 14 year old can afford a decent VPN?).
Combine this with the prevalence of Tor for the procurement of all ones black market pharmaceutical needs (again, even amongst by people who work far from the tech sector) and soon every last one of us will look like a terrorist as far as GCHQ is concerned. So many of their potential employees will have used one or both of these things it will be literally impossible for them to recruit enough people to do the spying.
I guarantee there's enough on your PC to steal your identity, lock stock and barrel.
Of course, but whilst I'm not secure against nation state level actors who can e.g. get into the supply chain for my motherboard (who is?) I do take the sort of everyday precautions necessary to exist in this day and age, to the extent that it's possible to be secure whilst relying on the million different 3rd parties that comprise a modern computing environment.
I'd rather be spied on by the foreigners. They are less likely to just wander into my home and arrest me and throw me into jail on trumped up charges.
That would be my preference too.
I however have a far stronger defence: realistically there's absolutely sod-all of interest on my computer. I do research, but unless more effective data integration for your trains is a matter of national security I'm quite safe. Granted cyber attacks on national infrastructure are a thing, but my work would not be a good jumping off point for that.
We can also ignore the fact that a lot of the good quality foreign IT labour has already moved to a better paying locale due to good quality IT experience being in short supply almost everywhere.
The weak pound makes Britain a less attractive place to come deploy your IT skills.
Random anecdotal case study: My Czech friend. He can earn almost as much at home as he does here, but in Czechia he can live like a king whilst so doing; the £35kish he was on here goes a lot further there.
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