Posts by Anthidote

IBM says these back-office, network edge Power 10 servers would be sweet for – yes, you guessed it – AI

small large language models

This isn't really even a mistake, but stylistically I just don't like the phrase "small large language models"...

HPE said to be moving in on $13B deal for Juniper Networks

Re: A Bargain

I'm also surprised at the low valuation. Maybe it's just because they were pretty much ubiquitous in my IT career so far.

Looking at their financials though, I guess it makes sense... It just highlights how much hot air and over-valuation there is in the wider sector.

Installed the last ToR and core switches, management switches from Juniper in new DC build

Now to take a nice deep sip of tea...

This is bad, bad news.

I am a fan of FreeBSD. They are heavy users and, I assume, contributors.

Our shop just bought a bunch of their kit. It's pretty decent, cheapish, reliable, no big complaints so far. All of those things will change. This is a competition killer play to force customers to buy their other lines.

The DoJ should block the merger or at least get some consent decrees, but I don't think that's gonna happen. The thing I'm holding out for is HPE's own brute incompetence.

Kubuntu and Lubuntu get desktop upgrades, as optional extras

Thank you very much Liam!

I was wondering about this Kubuntu business, why I wasn't really getting desktop updates in pace with any development. I tried your recs, and it works like a charm!

I am thinking of moving to Tumbleweed as my main driver anyway, since KDE support there is nice.

Soviet-era tech could change the geothermal industry

Re: Even 200°C has applications

No. The point I'm making is that economically viable nuclear fusion power generation has been promised to be "just around the corner" since the early 60s. Just a couple "technical details" to be worked out first.

Re: Even 200°C has applications

Certainly. However, currently, geothermal power generation seems to be a bit less economically viable than using it simply for heating. The lower the temperature, the more tricks you have to employ to move a turbine. There are these "dual systems" where some lower temp steam heats something like propane with a lower boiling point, but you rarely get above low double-digit MW.

The attraction of digging these deeper wells is that the temps would be a lot higher and that the power generation would be a lot more efficient, then the runoff heat could be used for industry, agriculture and to heat homes like you say.

Even 200°C has applications

While replacing every polluting power station would be nice, there are definitely massive advantages to having a well spit out lower temps as well.

I live in Eastern Europe, and we have centralized municipal heating. Usually, this is some co-generation of a waste incinerator+natural gas.

If the natural gas heating could be replaced with geothermal, that would massively shift our energy consumption to sth that's non-carbon. I'm sure e.g. the Finns would be thrilled as well. For them, heating is a massive outlay.

Since the upfront cost would be massive in any case, but the heat generation potential of such a well is presumably unlimited (don't know, just rolling with it) I could imagine cities partnering with chemical plants that need a lot of relatively low temp heat to sell off excess capacity.

Even this would reduce energy consumption quite a lot. Crucially, from a geopolitical standpoint, it would severely threaten the leverage of our big eastern neighbor.

What I'm concerned about is that "the engineering problems still need to be worked out" and the target date is 2026. Nuclear fusion-based electricity generation has been 5 years away for 60 years...

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

The poesy of the absurd

As perhaps one of the most Dadaistic platform companies I think the Microsoft Corporation deserves a poetic moniker. Here are some suggestions:

Forests of Azure

(Smelly) Trolls of Nootka Sound

Soft and Small

Here's a good one for the Chinese data giant you vultures may feast upon:

Terradata Army

Can you download it to me – in an envelope with a stamp?

Re: Not so many years ago...

RFC 1149 - IP over avian carrie

Submitted to the IETF in 1990

If you attempt this please follow the industry standard :D

Postal Automation

I work for the German Post office - yellow van courier service consortium that you used, in the in house group IT division. I'm in *nix operations so obviously the only job I'm automating away really is my own. I know from the devs that I'm talking to that pretty much everything you can imagine is fully automated already except last mile delivery. There are several tricky aspects with last mile. For one it's not a company wide solution. The company delivers packages to some let's say less developed areas where any robot would be abused or stolen along with the contents. Also in terms of labor costs while automating away a German, Dutch or French letter carrier is potentially very profitable. Automating away a Columbian or Senegalese one is extremely unprofitable. There are many other challenges one of which is most customers actually value receiving their mail and packages from a human. I know that seems weird to us, but that's the reality. BTW our helldesk hates French couriers with a passion mostly reserved for war criminals.

Audible hasn't even launched its AI-powered book subtitles and publishers have already fired off a sueball

Maybe I'm an idiot but

Isn't a close captioned audio-book just a you know ... book