Posts by Jason Bloomberg

Re: Ok... I have to ask

Exactly that. Why design a board when you can buy someone else's and take advantage of their economies of scale?

If it's just a case of writing an app and running it on a bought in board which runs Android or Linux, so long as it makes a profit, job done.

All of the 'dementia clocks' I have seen appear to be repurposed digital picture frames running alternative firmware. I even found one with multiple USB, SD, HDMI, audio and AV sockets, IR sensors and stereo speakers. All doing nothing of course.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Re: Idiots

I happened to stumble across this Mark II product a month or so ago and it seemed to be a Raspberry Pi, perhaps 4B, a touch screen, nice case, and not sure what else. Seemed an entirely reasonable offering except for the staggeringly high cost.

I hate patent trolls as much as the next man but am not convinced they can be blamed for its demise.

Edit : https://github.com/MycroftAI/hardware-mycroft-mark-II/tree/master/mark-II-Rpi-devkit

Re: Read this yesterday

I really do sympathise with the guy, but he needs to walk away and start making some real money.. he doesn't owe those companies anything. So it'll break? That's on them.

It's depressing isn't it. I do wonder how many have thrown in the towel and given up on trying to improve the world with "fuck it, I'm out", have had no choice but to do so.

Re: Enough with the conspiracy theories...

To be honest, I understood their decision then and I'd understand it again now.

If I were Cloudfare and had a customer effectively DDoSing the service I'd probably pull the plug on them until the issue is sorted; the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or something like that.

Where things seem to have fallen below expectations is in liaising with the customer and Cloudfare having perhaps not known what had been done to mitigate the issue until the customer started bitching.

So, all-in, a case of the engineer having done the right thing, but not having checked with the higher-ups that it's the right thing to do first.

Re: Who on earth buys an Apple Watch?

her main use is viewing notifications for texts etc. when she doesn't have her phone in hand

That and being able to tell the time would be the main use for me but I'm not going to spend more than a couple of tenners on such a thing. I would like a watch which could pop-up reminders but I'm not convinced it would be better than the watch I have which does its job for many years before needing a battery replacement.

Re: Only if China pushes hard

The main driving force behind RISC-V is China's need to wean itself off dependence ...

It's not just China doing that but India too, and others who wish to have 'sovereignty', not be beholden to Uncle Sam's diktats and whims as self-proclaimed global policeman.

It was utter stupidity of Trump to try and isolate and disadvantage China. It is utter stupidity for Biden to continue on the same path. All it's done is give China and others their wake-up call and provoked a response which will ultimately disadvantage the US long-term.

Re: Weird argument

you are obviously a moral vacuum.

And you are obviously a complete wanker if we are descending to that level.

But as long as we agree that if you try to release your Cure for Cancer as open-source software, you’re going to f*ing jail for the rest of your life, and good people will piss on your grave, we’re all good here.

No, I don't agree with that. You are talking out your arse.

Re: The security costs will kill the concept

The radioactive contamination will be restricted to the immediate area, and this can be cleaned up, but at considerable expense,

Though, rather than see it cleaned up, I would expect to be seeing endless government ministers trying to convince us "it's just like winter flu" as they convince us "living with fallout" is just fine and dandy, as they have with covid.

I would have loved to have added a Joke Icon, but ...

Re: "Experts predict..."

Are these "experts" using the same playbook that predicted total chaos in the UK if we didn't immediately lock down last Christmas? And when we didn't, and there was just a mild wave ...

According to the government data I was logging there were 8,100 covid deaths in Jan 2022 compared to 4,720 in Dec 2021.

I guess "mild wave" is in the eye of the beholder but I don't consider the experts to have been wrong nor have anything to apologise for. One reason things weren't as bad as they could have been was because people heeded advice of the experts, imposed self-lockdown, kept themselves safe, avoided becoming part of that wave.

Re: Foresight is a wonderful thing

My official USITT DMX512 specs show the original as 1986 and later as 1990. The revision was to extend the 'Mark after Break' pulse from 4us to no less than 8us which made it easier to generate and receive using microcontrollers of the time without needing external hardware logic.

Re: How odd

That answer is better than you will get from a science journalist, a philosophy professor or even most computer science PhDs.

Probably. From what I have seen, answers are a mash-up of what everyone has had to say, presented in a form which isn't easy to attribute to any particular source or sources.

It is impressive and I'm not fundamentally opposed to what it's doing. But given it's plagiarising many to form a more comprehensive or extensive answer than exists elsewhere doesn't make me feel more comfortable with it.

I would feel better if it provided references and acknowledgements to where it was getting its knowledge from

Re: I was on Mastodon as it ahppened

"We hired a policeman and it's going really great" wasn't the best announcement they could have made.

I'm a Brit so 'ex-cop and surveillance' instantly brought to mind hiding cameras in plant pots to nab the bad guys. And "hurrah for that; someone's got to do it", and I wasn't much fussed.

But that's a rose-tinted view. He may well be a Good Cop, but there are plenty who aren't, as many have found out, especially certain members of Britain's communities, and those who have ended up on mortuary slabs for no good reason.

And it's even worse in America, so its not surprising some were triggered by the announcement. In truth I can't blame them, even though they are perceiving things from a different perspective than I and other Brits would.

From an American perspective it seems it would be easy to read it as "We have employed a cop who uses our kit to spy on people. Fuck yeah".

The real failing is in how the outraged were responded to. This is probably going to become a text book case of how not to respond to people you have inadvertently triggered. It's not the first time Raspberry Pi has responded in such a manner - Element 14's forum in the early days had a not insignificant number of members who had been banned from the Pi forum because their attitudes weren't appreciated - but this may be the most consequential.

I imagine Liz Upton, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Raspberry Pi Limited - "if you see our company producing anything with words, pictures or video in it, my sticky fingers have had some involvement." - is rather busy this morning dealing with what's happening, the shit storm that's been provoked.

Re: Tips?

My British ‘you gift the mailman at Xmas…. Seriously WHY!!’ was not particularly appreciated.

I have never received a satisfactory answer to "why?" - only outrage at daring to ask and for challenging the tradition or practice.

I am not sure anyone could convince me tipping workers is anything but a means to address an otherwise morally repugnant situation which I am therefore obliged not to support nor indulge in.

When I do tip workers it is not so much to benefit them but to avoid criticism from those who believe I must.

I would probably also keep my thoughts to myself if I were worried by forum downvotes.

Re: Get yer finest blockchains here...

Didn't he volunteer-promise himself to be "dead in a ditch" Johnson?

Re: Opinions versus facts (actual, imaginary, and half-truths)

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30110-7/fulltext

An early study with a very small sample size but 86%.

That is the number of deaths in that instance. But there appears to be no evidence they died because of being ventilated, would have survived if they hadn't been, or had been ventilated without good cause.

Sometimes people are so far gone that no amount of treatment will save them. As the detailed report notes most subjected to ventilation, invasive and non-invasive, were "critically ill", older patients, with most having "organ function damage".

At the time there were few, if any, alternatives available other than to not treat patients.

Medical staff who would act to deliberately harm a patient, who will indulge in invasive or extreme intervention except as a last resort and with best intent, are thankfully few and far between.

Re: I forrsee it'll only be a short time before ...

I wonder how much longer the US and the UK can bang on about security before people see it for what it truly is - stopping China from surpassing the US in terms of economic "power"

Quite some time I imagine as most people will accept whatever propaganda gets fed to them by those running the witch-hunt, the media who support them, and the echo chamber they get their fake news from.

There are plenty of people who aren't gullible sheeple but it never fails to amaze me how many are. I don't see that changing any time soon.

Re: Big red "cause a massive problem" button

In my experience their functionality is not so much "emergency stop" as "cut the power", but their naming remains the same.

Usually used to prevent further sparks and smoke, or to save people doing the 50Hz dance.

Re: Watching the watcher

When I was involved in security, before mobiles were a thing, we used to have 'key stations' which guards doing their rounds would need to activate.

We were the 'guards watching the guards', but purely for their own safety to ensure there hadn't been a 'man down' we didn't know about. But yes, it enforced doing their job, protected the company and guards against accusations of not doing their job, and there was shit to pay if they weren't keying-in when and where they were expected to but there was leeway

So it's not a new thing, but the underlying motivation for doing it can vary.

Re: regulations do not authorize the use of free software when paid software is available

Paying for something usually creates some entitlement and obligation to be listened to rather than dismissed with a simple "you didn't pay for anything so you're not entitled to anything".

A more entertaining tale to tell would be the one about an engineer in our ''R&D Lab who was tasked with checking a prototype lighting dimmer product was working as expected.

Instructions: Disconnect power, daisy chain the triacs, connect mains live, connect to mains neutral through a light bulb, set faders to zero, turn on, move the faders up, check bulb comes on.

Set-up done, power turned on, faders move up. World's Largest Bang (TM), lights go out, silence descends across the building, I was off my chair and under the desk like a ferret in a war zone, wondering WTF and what damage had been done behind me.

Thankfully engineer intact, albeit 'surprised', and no damage done except to the triacs whose tops had blown off. Turns out the whole lot was accidentally wired as a live to neutral short waiting to happen, the light bulb not in circuit.

Power back on. Cups of tea all round. "Shit happens" the most severe recrimination. "Power through local circuit breaker" and other safety advice added to instructions. And we all lived happily ever after.

Re: caused Musk to ban "impersonators."

It's a mash-up of monikers and usernames. An imagined search could easily turn up stuff which makes it hard to tell what's real or invented:

Chicago Police @chicagopolice : It's our annual outreach programme this weekend

Chicago Police @chicagopd [verified] : Pleased to welcome David Duke to the CPD community

Chicago Police @real_chicagopolice [verified] : Supt. Aherm to discuss CPD failures tonight

Chicago Police @chicago_police [verified] : Record black kill rate this month

Chicago Police @chicago_cpd [verified] : CPD backs Trump for 2024

Re: Historically

True, for now. I imagine it's much easier to build a plane then start replacing imported parts with home-grown variants, much like I'll use other people's libraries to get an app working before I start coding my own replacements for those.

Even if they have to use inferior or sub-standard parts, strip it to the bare bones, they will have something which can fly which is better than having nothing.

China won't become self-sufficient overnight but they are moving towards it incrementally.

Re: Power steering

My first car was a VW Polo ... God it was hard work

I could have done with that knowledge some time back.

I got loaned one while my own car was in for servicing. Turning onto the road as I pulled out I found myself pulling on the steering wheel like I was wrestling King Kong to the ground while exclaiming "fuck, fuck, fuck" as on-coming cars in the other lane were racing towards me.

No other car I owned without power-steering was ever as heavy on the steering as that.

Re: Resolution of 100ppi is decent, but it's not that good.

100ppi makes each pixel 0.254mm. I'm not sure my eyes have ever been that good and they've not got better with age.

Scrolling LED displays, departure boards and the like, are perfectly good at 5ppi. Typical text LCD displays are about 40ppi. It's all about use case.

Re: Example

I've been talking to colleagues to get to the root of the issue, but it was just one on one talking.

That seems to have been the problem. Could a virtual meeting of all parties have solved the issue as a physical meeting did?

I don't know. It seems to me you have demonstrated meetings can be better than one-on-one but have not proven that meetings need to be physical rather than virtual.

I am not convinced 'work from home doesn't work' based on just a few specific cases.

Being able to vote in the UK is taken as evidence of having a democracy which allows the so-called democratic system we have to persist. We focus on making voting easier, increasing turnout, to that end - who wins is only of secondary concern.

That's not so in America, and our recent governments have been trying to move us in that direction.