Posts by Roland6

Re: Yes, improved threading is needed...

It’s one of the reasons why you don’t want more than 16 cores on a laptop/desktop and want to run a licensed copy of Windows Server either on the hardware or as a VM

Re: Too pessimistic

I see what was sold 40 years back as a percussion drill is now called an SDS drill.

Cat6 a is a marked improvement over Cat6 particularly for PoE applications, with little per 100m reel price difference. Only issue is Cat6a is markedly heavier, stiffer and harder/more fiddly to terminate correctly. But the toolset required for small domestic installs isn’t particularly expensive.

Re: Too pessimistic - Not always

Sometimes at the bulk level house builders purchase stuff at, it is cheaper to use the expensive stuff everywhere rather than have to deal with using two different boards. Also contractors tend to be on a piece rate, so there are times when they will use whatever is to hand so that they can finish a house on time.

Re: Too pessimistic

>” I just did an ipfail continuous test for a walk round the house”

I found it is useful to follow this up with a streaming test like a HD music video to an iPad, the eyes and ears are really good at detecting glitches. The other good thing about this test is that you can get users to do it and report back. The only tricky part is confirming the iPad is switching APs ( with a PC you can run a script that reports the MAC address of the AP it is associated with).

Re: Too pessimistic

You need a percussion drill - cuts through engineering bricks as if they were made out of cheese.

But that’s the benefit!

Having WiFi that doesn’t go through walls to any great extent means less neighbour to neighbour interference, the question is whether the WiFi drops out less due to it no longer constantly channel hopping.

Having WiFi that doesn’t go through walls means people need a “mesh”/WiFi repeater offering, step up the ISP with their “Complete WiFi disc” etc. product.

Re: Blackout

Trouble is that sat. phone also needs a generator.

Recent experience which several people on here have alluded to are situations where power is out for days and weeks. Part of the problem is that they are rare compared to outages of an hour or so. Hence a decision has to be just how much do you prepare for some of these events and what should your coping strategy be.

Neither is the water network pressured by water towers.

We have lost water several times because of a sub station in a neighbouring town (6 miles away) failing or having its grid connection disrupted.

Re: "they will have devices like sensors with that level of compute"

Consumer space is all about build to a consumer friendly price point, so naturally cheap cooling, insufficient and slow memory, crippled CPU’s, slow SSD/HDD…

Suggest taking a look at the AMD Ryzen 5 and 7 processor families, but then these are mainly used on business machines.

However, would agree for sustained operation at 4.7 GHz across all 8 physical cores of a Ryzen 7, cooling needs to be taken seriously.

Re: I'll be sticking with petrol (or diesel) for my next car.

I suspect you are referring to the EV version of the 2Cv and not your typical Chelsea tractor EV…

Not seen an informed debunking of the figures given out by Volvo or Mercedes, but then not much detail behind the figures given out has been released to do a proper assessment.

Re: I'll be sticking with petrol (or diesel) for my next car.

> So about 20 chargers for each pump.

Expect for the typical motorway service area where more customers will be doing a top up charge for that ratio to be more like 50+ for each pump.

Re: I'll be sticking with petrol (or diesel) for my next car.

>” Lithium metals and carbonates are getting more expensive.”

Part of that is due to there having been a glut of lithium. The ore extractors started to ramp up production in anticipation of EV demand, which did happen when forecasted, so there has been a period where ore has been cheap. Now with increased production we are starting to see demand catch-up with supply, from a report I read a few years back the expectation was that lithium supply would actually dictate EV production levels. Obviously, a big hope is that before 2030 there is a sufficient supply of “dead” batteries (and economic and energy efficient way to recycle) to ease the pressure on lithium ore supply.

Re: I'll be sticking with petrol (or diesel) for my next car.

> You don't pay to have lead-acid batteries taken away, do you?

Yet…

Years back I could take the battery to a scrap yard and get paid, now the expectation is I take it to the recycling centre and receive no direct payment, if I let one of the fast fit places swap the battery they will typically add a “disposal” charge.

Re: I'll be sticking with petrol (or diesel) for my next car.

And There are a couple of pieces of EV FUD in your response.

>modular batteries

A battery might be made out of modules, but none of the battery packs I’ve seen have been designed for easy “local garage” module swap out, unlike replacing piston rings. I suggest from experience the replacement of both battery modules and piston rings can be simple or depending on other factors a big job with a big ticket price. I expect in a few years the norm for EVs will be complete battery replacement, with module replacement being performed in specialised factories and definitely not something to be done on the owners drive at the weekend by a couple of amateur/hobby mechanics.

>wear

My ICE has done 200k miles (it does circa 35k per annum) without engine rebuild, I still average circa 45 miles per gallon and 500+ miles per tankful, okay it likes a tipple of oil now (1 litre per 20k miles). So to me if it were to only handle half a tank of fuel and so go 250 miles between refills, it would cause problems; although given the vehicles age and known degradation in EV batteries being able to do 100 miles between refills would be considered good.

> When your diesel Kia has a worn-out engine it will be scrap value.

Given how much of an EVs value is in the battery, much the same can be said of EVs. Having a high annual mileage, I have tended to keep my cars until they are scrap, the reason for scrapping the cars hasn’t been the engine but everything else wearing out; doing £2,000+ worth of work on a car with 250k miles compared to buying a newer version with only 50k miles for £2,000…

I expect similar will apply to EVs, your 2023 state-of-the-art EV will look a poor choice against a 2030 Mainstream EV.

>"move the emissions from my tail pipe to a gas fired power station."

Yes the primary driver for EVs has been tail pipe emissions. The trouble is whilst much is possible to make our power stations more environment friendly, we’ve been very slow in doing any of them, preferring greenwash to action. We also need to take account of the distribution infrastructure upgrade that will be necessary to support large scale EV usage.

> the last point is the big one.

There is plenty of evidence that an ICE vehicle will last 20 years, EV’s give it few generations… However, the big problem for current versions of both is the IT equipment which will be pushed to last 10 years. Which means the costs of production are a larger part of total energy consumption, which given we need to massively reduce emissions in the next 10 years gives us a problem…

Personally, I think governments want EVs to maintain their premium price to encourage less car usage, without having to directly confront people, because a 1-to-1 replacement of ICE vehicles with EV’s isn’t going to give the multiple step change in emissions we are needing to achieve by 2030…

Re: Dafuq?

>” users of standalone Office are also shown various MS365 ads and nag screens.”

Not noticed this connection, Office 2019 applications open just fine, not had O365 ads. But then I do uninstall all the pre installed 365 stuff before installing Office.

Okay use the web help and it seems MS have killed all the links so you tend to get taken to MS’s Office 365 sales page rather than an actual help article.

Windows 11 does nag more than W10 if you are signed in with a non-MS account and haven’t logged into MS. But then other software nags: AV software keeps popping up wanting you to subscribe to their VPN service or password manager.

The big irritation is all the ad eeds both directly in Windows and via the browsers default start screen.

The Speedtest.net results need to be taken with a large pinch of salt - they only represent a particular subset of Speedtest results and thus are not representative of the wider population's experience.

I'm also wary of reading too much into the results as insufficient information is provided to give any real background context to the headline figure.

Disagree, they were using Google Maps...

Yes it does have some route navigation functionality, however, it is in the same category as using the OS Maps in the UK or Rand McNally maps in the US ie. its a map and having a person giving directions off the map without looking out the windscreen.

If, however they were using Waze, a navigation app owned by Google and uses Google Maps data, that would be a different matter.

Re: So answer this.

After 9/11 I was in New England using a current Rand McNally Map, the map showed a crossroads and the main road we were travelling along continuing straight ahead...

We went straight ahead and on the other side of the cross road the tarmac stopped and was replaced by bare cinders, after a couple of miles the tarmac resumed..

Re: Welcome to the new corporate Register

This “ownership” of published works is quite interesting.

I’ve often found academics have published a paper in some journal which others will formally reference, however, they will present cut down versions at various conferences and symposiums, plus retain a lightly revised version of the (formally) published paper on their university website. Hence with a little web searching and understanding of the different ways English phrasing can be used to title each version slightly differently but actually say the same thing, it is possible to read the findings and gain sufficient to apply, but if you want the full data because you wish to replicate and prove/disprove the papers findings you obviously need the full published paper.

Re: Surrender the domain names

I note the domains aren’t US controlled, so beyond the reach of US courts….

Re: I use it as a preview service

Nationwide Student account has an interesting perk - free membership of an online textbook library.

According to my students it is useful, but it doesn’t fully replace the uni. Library or need to purchase some core books.

Perhaps the publishers contesting this case need to take the lead of iTunes, Netflix, etc. and deliver to market a student friendly subscription course book library service. If they were particularly “creative” they would call it “Bookshelf” or “Encarta” and get Microsoft to offer it as a component of M365…

Re: We've seen this before

Yet Ukraine prefers to source its drones from China rather than the US…

Re: Ah, I see

The change in building regulations for new builds only came into effect in June 2022. Like all things, it only applies to developments commenced after this date, but expect much wiggle room: if initial plans for 5,000 homes were submitted prior to this date, it is not clear whether detailed planning for releases of homes within this outline plan are new build or simply a continuation of an existing build given the infrastructure sign off would have happened prior to the June date…

Re: another idea

So has Huawei submitted (US) patent applications for its 7nm chip production….

Would not be surprised; one of the little reported facts about the Wuhan lab some claim was the source of CoViD, was that it’s research partner was a US university…

Re: I thought the ban is because of national security

I suggest it goes back further, McCarthy being one example and Salem another…

You could almost say it is deeply embedded in the (white) American psychi…

Re: "posh motor maker BMW"

The badge and the price tag, plus the BMW “Mondeo” had less usable boot capacity than the Ford Volvo V70 based Mondeo estate.

I think Ford’s take over of Volvo, followed by them having the Volvo engineers upgrade the quality of Ford production lines, was a really good move.

Re: Moving House

All sounds great until the monthly payslip suddenly stops…

Re: Let me put it this way

>” How would you feel if you discovered the instructions for the dealer to perform the "upgrade"…”

Depends on when I found this out.

If it was before I had a dealer do the upgrade then realising I could do it myself - joy

If however it was after the dealer did the upgrade - p*ssed off..

Re: don't forget

For it be a nudge to other drivers, the Tesla really needs to activate the hazard lights, so other drivers are warned the Tesla driver/autopilot is being inattentive.

Re: don't forget

>” Some left-handed design engineer (No, not me!) designed a test rig so that it was nigh on impossible for a right-hander to avoid setting an invalid and destructive switch combination”

As a lefty! It amazes me how many assumptions about handedness people make.(*)

I remember my partner as part of her psychology studies doing some textbook test involved the use of scissors, I substituted the assumed right handed scissors with my left handed scissors… the test authors had not realised scissors were handed. I suspect even today there are psychology students running the same test unaware of the fundamental flaw in its design.

My current bugbear is cntl-alt-del , designed to require two hands, because the majority have two hands, however, if for various reason your only functional hand is you left hand… the problem is even more of a challenge to those who either have small hands or were previously right handed…

(*)This is often a hidden benefit of playing golf left-handed as many courses are designed to be hard for right handlers….