Posts by big_D

Yes, I already swapped my power hungry Ryzen 7 PC out for an M1 Mac at the end of last year and I power down my NAS now, when I don't actively need it. We are also looking at saving in other areas as well.

Re: Exceptions for such dual-purpose signs have been arranged.

Germany did run some experiments in small communities a couple of years back, turning the lights out around 22:00 and people walking down a street after that could send an SMS to a number on the lampposts, along with lamppost ID and they would light up for a 5 minute period

Re: Exceptions for such dual-purpose signs have been arranged.

Yes, our council (in north Germany) has been replacing incandescent street lights with LEDs gradually over the last 5-6 years, it would be too expensive to do it all at once, but when different streets reach a certain age, the "heads" are being switched out. It saves them a lot of money, I believe the more they swap, the faster they can swap out the rest, so the replacement age drops each year.

Re: FRA airport is very nearly in compliance with this law....

We usually have around 20°C, but when our daughter visits with our granddaughter, she turns up the thermostat to 22-23°C. That also seems to be fairly standard.

Given that we are already in the 19-20°C bracket and we only heat the rooms we use, I don't think we will be able to save much this winter, so I expect our gas bill will probably double due to the price increases.

Re: Pointless laws are pointless

Given a large proportion of electricity in Germany is powered by gas, and the nuclear power stations are being shut off at the end of the year, it isn't a "someone should do something" rule, it is a critical measure to ensure as much gas as possible can be saved for heating homes or for critical industrial processes, who need it a darned sight more than electronic signage that few people will see, when the shops are closed.

Given the amount of electrical signage - from neon lights to computer powered displays and everything inbetween - yes it should make a difference and every saved cubic meter of gas is a cubic meter of gas that can be diverted to industrial processes or heating homes, instead of idiotic things, like electronic signage in shops that nobody really sees or cares about, when the shop is closed.

Re: FRA airport is very nearly in compliance with this law....

Yes, shutting down the computers is part of the reason for doing this. There will be a huge shortfall in gas this winter, so measures are in place to save as much as possible. As a lot of gas is used on power stations, turning off all unnecessary electronic devices (or unplugging them if they only have a "soft off" an no physical power switch that cuts supply) is a big part of that.

In addition, public buildings will only be heated to 19°C here and the government recommends private homes (at least gas and electricity powered heating) should also be reduced to 19°C, likewise the hot water temperature should be reduced as far as possible (50°C is the hard limit due to Legionnaires Disease, we dropped ours to 52°C to have a safety margin).

Re: Exceptions for such dual-purpose signs have been arranged.

Also, here in Germany, gas prices change during the day, it is usually most expensive between 7 and 9 am and cheapest in the evening, prices can vary by up to 10c a litre (38c a gallon).

Re: Exceptions for such dual-purpose signs have been arranged.

It is gas (natural gas), not petrol, benzine, gasoline or whatever you want to call it.

Russian gas was cheap and used to power the power stations that supplied the electricity grid in large parts of Europe, along with coal, wind, solar and nuclear power. Russia is artificially restricting supplies to Europe (due to oversupply of gas inside Russia, due to throttling what comes to Europe, Russia is allegedly burning 4.34 million cubic metres (117950986.778 cubic feet) of gas every day from a processing station near the Finnish border.

As a result, the gas suppliers in Europe are having to look at alternate sources, such as shipping the gas in from the US, the UAE etc. That involves building terminals for the ships, which don't exist yet, and the cost of the gas is much higher than that supplied by Russia.

As well as the signage, public buildings will only be heated to 19°C (66.2°F) this winter. Spain has gone a step further, air conditioning systems aren't allowed to cool below 26°C (78.8°F), although Germany has far fewer AC users than Spain, so such an order wasn't given here. Private households are also being adviced to heat to 19°C this winter and to turn down the hot water temperature, although you can't go below 50°C (122°F) due to Legionnaires Disease, we have dropped out hot water temperature to 52°C to be on the safe side.

Re: Enter candidate for dead simplest text editor

Why does it need to render Markdown? The whole point of Markdown is that you can see the codes on the screen, like Protext or WordPerfect for DOS did.

If there was a modern version of Protext that ran on Windows and macOS, I'd snap up a copy in a heartbeat.

I had it on my CPC6128, the Amiga and for MS-DOS.

Yes, they had me, until the penultimate paragraph... Electron? No thank you.

And it started off so promising.

Re: I guess it's a cultural thing

Yes, in Germany, at most, it would be Alan S. and Sanjiv A. for example and photos would have the faces blurred out, until the trial is finished and a guilty verdict has been handed down.

Even when there is a manhunt on, often the face in the news is blurred out, or it is shown for the days when the hunt is on, but as soon as the person is apprehended, the face is blurred out again in news reports. The same for victims, real names and faces can't generally be shown.

Really frustrating, when they have a 2 minute report with just a blurred faced on the screen, why show the images at all?

The problem is, the CLOUD Act can do just that. That is the problem.

If the companies hand over the data, they are breaking EU law and will be heavily fined.

If the companies don't hand over the data, they are breaking US law and will be fined and the executives could face prison time.

The companies have to then decide, which is the bigger problem, prison for their executives or a huge fine in the EU, if it comes out?

It was also a problem before the CLOUD Act, with the Patriot Act, the FISA Court and National Security Letters, it was pretty much the same thing, except that the companies were prohibited from mentioning it - they couldn't signify a GDPR breach, because that would be illegal in the US.

It is one of the main reasons why Schrems I and II decisions went against the US and Safe Harbor and Privacy Shield agreements with the EU - that the US totally ignored its responsibilities under the agreements didn't help either, of course.

Re: as a cartoon once said ..

It very much depends on where you live and how you live.

We (Germany) have very strict laws about home office. You have to have a dedicated work space and it needs to be up to health & safety standards. If you don't own a height adjustable desk and office chair, external, height adjustable monitor, and a keyboard & ergonomic mouse (working on a laptop with internal screen & keyboard isn't considered ergonomic for the workplace), then your employer has to provide them for you.

If you don't have a spare bedroom or part of your apartment you can dedicate to a business environment, you can't work from home.

Yes, you can still work on the couch and you can still use the laptop as a laptop, if you want, but the employer has to ensure you have the relevant equipment and space to work ergonomically, otherwise they will be liable for injuries & sickness caused by improper working conditions. If you decide to slouch on the couch and get RSI, that is your problem, as long as the employer has ensured you have a desk, chair, screen, keyboard & mouse available.

If you can't dedicate part of your home as a workspace, you can't work at home (i.e. you can't use your dining room table during the day and clear it away at night).

On the plus side, if you crawl out of bed and fall down the stairs on the way to your home office, that is considered a work accident, under German law. (Test case from 2021)

You can also claim Internet access pro-rata on your tax return (you get the VAT on the days you spent in home office back), instead of cents per kilometre travelled to work.

Re: Warping from home

You still have to pay employee taxes in the jurisdiction they work in, or spend the majority of their time in.

My ex-employer used to hire a big chartered accountant firm to cover my tax return, because I spent more than half the year working abroad. I had to keep a diary of which days were spent in which country.

Incorporating in a tax paradise is one thing, they will save corporate tax, but they'll still need to pay employment taxes, NI, pensions etc. where their workers are based, but, yes, they can pick and choose, where they employ people.

Re: Common sense...

When I moved to Germany, I changed all the plugs on my electrical appliances. My German friends were shocked that I did it myself and didn’t get an electrician in to do it.

For a high-end chip a max of 24 GB of shared memory isn't really enough even if what there is, is very fast and this does help make the chips feel faster than they really are.

The rest of your comment is more or less in line with how I see it, but...

The M2 is the entry level chip, it is the equivalent of the Core i3 of the Apple ecosystem. We have the Pro, Max and Ultra, which are the high end chips. It also depends very much on what you will use the device for.

Most of our desktop PCs still have 4GB RAM and are fast enough - I'd never buy something with only 4GB, I'd consider 8GB the minimum at work, but that is email, excel and remote desktop for most users.

Likewise, if you look at equivalent ultrabooks to the MacBook Air or the base MacBook "Pro", they generally have slower U-class processors and 8 to 16GB RAM, like the HP Spectre series for example.

Re: Lies, damn lies, and benchmarks

Okay, and the local gas company just announced that they are raising their prices a further 117% in August! Time to really tighten the belt!

Actually, video encoding should be much faster, as it has dedicated elements on the die to handle those faster than the CPI or GPU and leaving the CPU & GPU free to do other things.

It very much comes down to the software you use and your workflow, whether the Apple M1/M2 series processors or Intel/AMD processors make more sense. If the software is optimized for M1/M2, it can be a lot faster, especially on Pro/Max/Ultra, if the software can really take advantage of parallel processing.

Recent tests in c't magazine showed that the M1 Ultra ran rings around Intel/AMD desktop chips for certain tasks in DAW (digital audio) and photo and video editing, but if the software wasn't optimised (E.g. Adobe Creative Suite, which is ageing and doesn't take much advantage of parallel processing) and there is no advantage of using the Apple silicon. Serif's suite of graphic tools, on the other hand, scale well and were markedly faster on the Ultra, as well as Logic Pro etc. from Apple.

Re: Lies, damn lies, and benchmarks

Also, the article compared the M2 to the 12th gen P-series processor, which is for powerful, thicker laptops, where heat dissipation and bigger batteries aren't such a problem, admits that the M2 is faster than the U-series for ultrabooks, then says that Apple doesn't have the fastest processor for ultra-thin laptops...

If the article said, that they don't have the most powerful chips for mobile workstations or gamin laptops, fair enough, but they aren't ultra-thin.

Also, for me, power per Watt is important. With electricity prices having doubled in the last 6 months, I'm looking very much at saving power where I can, my Ryzen 1700 desktop was replaced with an M1 Mac this time around, similar performance (for the applications I use), but it uses a fraction of the power that the Ryzen 1700 + nVidia GTX1060ti do.

Re: ARM or Apple?

Yes, but there are hundreds of IoT, mobile and server chips out there with ARM, so it is a valid question.

The single desktop CPU to use it is vulnerable, but are there other chips in other areas (E.g. Apple A-series chips for iPhone, iPad, Watch, Apple TV etc.) that also have this and just haven't been tested?

Re: Shell-shock-trauma (of sorts)

Yep, my first *NIX experience was a DEC VT1000 XTerm connected to a VAX over 10base2.

Great stuff, back then. Dev opened up xeyes, followed mouse around the screen. Opened 2nd xeyes, spooky. Then, "hmm, how many xeyes can you open on the desktop?"

dozens of small xeyes windows later and WHOOOOSH! Mouse moved around quickly... Screen starts to stutter, cries from all over that the network had gone down, then cries from ops, that the VAX had gone down... It hadn't but the xeyes had saturated the network and overloaded the CPU for a short time.

Followed by quickly closing the windows and whistling innocently. :-D

Re: Computing smarts in the cloud

I work in an industry where data in the cloud is a no-no. It has to be behind the firewall - it is states in many contracts that the data can't be online.

Re: 40 hours a week, minumum?

Most places I've worked over the last decade have had time clocks. You check in, you check out for lunch, check back in, check out when you go home. Smokers also have to check out and check back in, when they go for a cigarette.

Travel to customers/suppliers was also done over the clock system - there was a smartphone app for that.

If you built up overtime, you had to take the time off in the following month to ensure it was as close to zero as possible. Management didn't get time clocked, because it was expected that they would work longer hours than the hoi polloi. That was done on a trust basis, but most managers had hundreds of hours on their OT "accounts".