Posts by Steve Todd

Re: "What more could you want?"

Erm, if you haven’t read the article then the review is of a Ryzen 4600U based machine with integrated VEGA graphics. Full AMD stack, not an Intel or nVidia part in sight.

Given that there’s very little out there that makes use of all that RAM, and software houses are going to write code such that it fits on current mid to high end hardware, then ONLY 10GB isn’t going to be a problem.

The only reason the 2080 had 11GB is because it was a multiple of the memory bus width. The faster GDDR6 in this uses a narrower memory bus, but still gets more throughput because of the newer memory type.

Um, yes. Throwing away 9 rocket engines after only one use is kind of expensive. The Falcon 9 has been tweaked to require the minimum amount of refurb work as well as to land after launch.

The old space shuttle required a huge amount of work between launches and so much was replaced that it wasn’t a practical proposition. The F9 can be turned around in (from memory) 6 weeks and at a low enough cost that SpaceX offer a discount for using a previously flown model. It’s also cheap enough for SpaceX to loft 10 batches of Starlink satellites themselves (so far), while providing cheap ride shares to their partners at the same time.

Re: "retired in 1971"

A quick check shows that the original launch was to an elliptical orbit with apogee of approximately 150,000km and a perigee of 280km. Not that easy to work the numbers out for time to decay.

Modern missions are expected to include a plan to either expend fuel to burn up, or move to a graveyard orbit out of the way when their useful life is over.

Re: Poor Countries?

More expensive than mobile BB? Only if you think in terms of 1 or a couple of users for a base station. One base station coupled to a wifi Hotspot could provide for a whole village. Also there are large lumps of the US where even 3G isn’t available, how much have the US companies spent on rolling out their service so far?

Re: Cynical

By “Fairly Recent” you do realise that means from about 2012 to 2015 (depending on the model in question)? Between 5 and 8 years old isn’t recent in the Wintel space either.

Re: "People nowadays have no idea how sensitive electronics used to be."

4 or more layer circuit boards with dedicated ground and power layers also helps a lot.

Debit cards are charged as a flat fee. Credit cards charge a percentage of the transaction. From the consumer point of view they aren’t the same though. Purchases by credit card become the CC companies liability if there’s a problem (if, for example, you book a holiday and pay via credit card then the company going bust or there being a similar problem, it becomes the credit card companies problem and they have to refund you), debit cards are like paying cash, and the problem is yours.

The example here was that Epic tried to sneak in a major change as a slipstream update. The idea that minor updates don’t need the same scrutiny is thus disproved.

The other point you seem to have missed is that it’s Apple’s platform, which they are entitled to make a profit from. Epic don’t charge for their games and make their money via in app purchases. If Epic take that in house then where’s Apple’s share comming from?

I’ve managed to land a Rallye 110ST and turn off onto the taxiway In less than 50 feet, so yes it’s doable, but you need an aircraft designed for short field work.

Re: Apple should launch this for the public.

Yes, the terrorists choice of champions is ANFO, Ammonia Nitrate (a common fertiliser) mixed with fuel oil, which incidentally was used by the US as the biggest non-nuclear bomb in history for a blast effect test (see https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/35418/this-was-the-largest-conventional-explosion-america-ever-set-off)

Re: There’s a quote:

That was a heck of a sale, the original list on that lot was north of $4500.

Actually I started with BASIC on a UNIVAC 1110, then MS BASiC on a PET, 6502 Assembler, moved over to Z80 systems, learned Pascal under CPM, added FORTRAN 77 on Boroughs machines, since when I’ve made my way through a stack of languages and currently make a living from C#, SQL and a handful of supporting languages. I’ve no problem with whatever route people came to the field via, I just object to them talking a particular system down without understanding how it compared in context (some machines failed because they sucked compared to the competition. Some succeeded even though they sucked because of software support on them. Some failed even though they were good compared to the competition because the software support was poor).

The Apple II was early to the game, had good software and hardware support, and was competitively priced. For those reasons it deserves some respect.

Re: even before PFY

Ah, the days before a machine needed an active fan even for idling.

Intel were worried about cooling a CPU that drew 15W at full chat. These days a desktop PC will draw anything between about 65W and 135W and will pretty much fall over instantly if the heat sink is dislodged (stopped fans will take them a little longer).

Given that

Android outsells iOS in the mobile phone space by around 4:1 then its hard to make a case that Apple have a monopoly in other than iOS systems.

What got MS into trouble was that they had a monopoly in PC operating systems (roughly 90% of the market), and they tried to leverage that to force themselves into other markets (like browsers for example, with the much reviled Internet Explorer versions upto (from memory) 6).

Given that one of their USPs is that they do curate the App Store then it’s not wildly unreasonable that they do wield control over it and enforce restrictions on what may or may not be published.

Many moons ago

the Polytechnic which owned the Univac 1110 that my 6th form had time shared access to was struggling with performance, so they bought an upgrade. The engineer turned up expecting to move some jumpers, thus enabling the extra capacity, only to find that someone had already done it. No more performance available.

IIRC they ended up replacing it with a cluster of Prime mini computers.

Re: Global Internet

The ISP in use has nothing to do with complying with EU rules. The fact that Amazon/Facebook/Google etc do business in the EU is what gives the EU courts power over them.

Re: Shame you have no grasp of the physics involved

Slight brain fart, that should be GaAs, not GeAs, otherwise all stands as is.

Re: Good

So they are entitled then. It’s only by agreement of the governed over how much.

The problem here is that Ireland is part of a bigger union (just like the US states are part of a union), and they also have to follow EU rules when deciding tax numbers (there is, for example, a minimum rate of VAT that may be charged, and once levied on a good or service it may not be removed).

Re: Transformer

Yes, Switch Mode PSUs have a small, high frequency transformer in them. Because the source AC voltage is first rectified to DC, then converted to a high frequency square wave, the transformer can be much smaller than the usual 50/60Hz mains transformers of linear PSUs, and you don’t get as much loss from the primary side (mostly due to core eddy currents and resistance of the many turns of wire needed for a 50/60Hz model). Because there is feedback from the output stage to the chopper circuit (that produces the square waves) there is little to no input to this transformer when there is no load on the output.

No, I don’t understand why people are downvoting you either. It seems they don’t understand the (common) technology, but aren’t prepared to put their mouth where their voting finger is by explaining why they think you are wrong.

Re: 3550U

How about because the 3000 series mobile Ryzen CPUs weren’t very competitive, being beaten fairly noticeably by the Intel range at time of launch. The 4000 series are a lot faster, beating Intel’s refreshed lineup in most test, and using less power into the bargain.

The price that is being asked isn’t that of a bargain basement device, and as such you’d expect reasonable performance compared to similar devices in the price range.