Posts by Dave 126

Re: unlike your typical UK green energy project

> each house on a street needs 40 Amps for their EV charger, 40 Amps for their Heat Pump, and 40 Amps for an electric shower?

Some low hanging fruit here would be to pause the charging of their electric vehicle whilst they shower. Or use the EV battery to run the heat pump. Or shower using water that has been used as a thermal store. Maybe a warmer house will help people spend less time under the hot shower, that they develop a lather then rinse routine.

You're right that these things start out as the playthings of the wealthy. As did the bicycle. There are some challenges for sure, but none that require us to break the laws of physics to solve.

Also, individual actions are largely futile, we need a better grip on how things are organised. Companies employ engineers, accountants, psychologists to persue their goals, goals that aren't properly aligned with ours. ( Indeed, it was a deliberate PR campaign that trained us to believe littering was the fault of people, not Coca Cola or McDonalds.) One, I can't fight that as an individual, Two, it seems a waste of talent not to have them work with us.

Yikes, it looks like I might have to overcome my aversion to committees.

Re: "This is sort of the future of rendering as you know"

>"This is sort of the future of rendering as you know"

Read it again in context Pascal. They didn't say they [Intel] were the future of rendering, but that some sort of ML upscaling [already implemented in one form and another by AMD and Nvidia] was [a part of] the future of rendering.

If you still have your sculptures, some of the photogrammetry applications can be sped up by using an inexpensive line laser (as used on building sites to project a horizontal or (as you will want) and a simple turntable. You place the model on the turntable and project a vertical laser line on it and take a picture. Then you rotate the model incrementally. Clay lends itself to this because of its uniform matte finish... though if you glazed it it might make things trickier for this technique.

As far as I know, the 3D laser scanners that are built into more recent Samsung and Apple phones probably don't have the resolution you require (Samsung's ToF sensor was roughly equivalent to VGA last I looked).

Hedgehog-flavoured crisps, developed by a pub landlord to help raise awareness of the little mammals' being killed on roads. His research consisted of consulting some members of our travelling community - whose traditional means of preparing hedgehog for eating consists of wrapping the dead beastie in thick mud and then placing it on the campfire... when ready, the spines come off with the baked mud. They described to the landlord hedgehog as tasting a "bit like smoky bacon."

I have seen a translation of a 19th century French cookbook with the directions "After skinning and eviscerating the bager, place it in a fast-fowing stream for 48 hours to degrease it..."

Re: The other storage slot ...

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03/explaining-the-mac-studios-removable-ssds-and-why-you-cant-just-swap-them-out/

Re: Not a Language?

> You can say the same about Welsh,

I could, but I couldnt say it *in* Welsh.

Re: Deleting macOS

Search "Linus Torvalds Macbook Air" for his reasons for making said laptop with OSX his main interface when at home. For sure this was years ago, but it does show he was pragmatic ablut such things.

Re: I don't get the problem for the launcher.

I wonder how confident SpaceX are of adapting their descent control software to Mars, whether they feel they already gave enough data or if they would benefit from a dummy run or two? (They appear to learn a lot especially when things go bang)

https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/amd-radeon-pro-ssg-pairs-vega-with-2tb-of-memory/

A large part of the AMD implementation was having faster-than-PCIe hardware interconnects twixt the SSDs and the GPU chip. The SSDs would be seen by the GPU as a slower tier of memory in addition to its RAM. The nVidia solution involves off the shelf hardware with custom software and drivers.

Are both ideas trying to make things faster? Well yeah, thats usually the game!

Apple wouldn't want to chase the games console market because of that market's spikes in demand and unpredictability. Established players Sony and Microsoft are unable meet demand due to silicon supply shortages. Apple doesn't have unlimited TMSC production lines for its silicon, so will stick to its existing product categories.

Re: Funny how all the big guys think they can turn their hardware into a subscription service

>If you think I'll be paying monthly for the right to drive my property I've got a bridge to sell you.

I don't pay monthly for the right to drive my vehicle... I pay my road tax annually!

( I know I'm taking you out of context )

Re: I like the look of it but…

A native renderer runs on whatever OS it is built for on whatever metal. I.e, a renderer built for Linux on x64 hardware with GPUs and relevant drivers. This software receives its instructions and data from a companion application which the user has on their workstation.

Maybe, but would an M1 / Nvidia package attract enough developers to be worth the effort?

Also, a lot of the M1 chip (its not just a CPU) would be redundant in a server, and its GPU would be redundant if mated with a (more powerful) Nvidia GPU.

Re: Apple dumbed down and threw pros under a bus

FireWire was standard on Macs. Originally intended for high-res photo scanners, its later versions made getting video from DV cameras straightforward. It was also ideal for audio interfaces. And, at a time before USB v.2, let you transfer music to the first (Mac only) iPod in a sensible timeframe.

Oh for FS!

Re: Technology from the 1980s?

Seeing an OS/2 boot up splash-screen on the screen of an ATM which contained my only debit card when I was in a foreign city half a world away from home.

The English-speaking tourist police were as nice as pie though. Cash card regained from a branch of the bank which operated the ATM at the bus station.

Re: Funny - when I type 'distro' my Mac autocorrects that to 'distress'. Foreshadowing?

'Distro' is not a valid word in Scrabble either, so it's not just your spell checker.

Re: I'm still trying to understand how Apple failed even to consider this use case

I'm working on the assumption that had anybody wanted to track my movements by means of a small hardware bug in the last decade, they would have had plenty of options. Firstly, designed-to-be sneaky devices, including GPS trackers and radio beacons, and secondly, consumer Bluetooth trackers such as from Tile, Samsung, pet collars, etc.

So, that leads to the questions: Do these Apple AirTags make such illicit tracking more convenient for the bad actor than pre-existing devices?

I'm guessing 'maybe', but only by degrees. Networks that use many people's phones to locate a specific Bluetooth tracker predate Apple's implementation of the same concept. Of course, just the sheer density of iPhones in the wild might be that Apple's virtual network can provide better coverage of Bluetooth trackers than those of Tile, Samsung Trackr, Alibaba etc

Re: Mazda's Infotainment is a pile of garbage

>A decent Bluetooth radio is less than $100; you can spend more if you want, but why bother?

Aftermarket head units are limited in how much current they can draw through the car's fuse box. This limits the output of their amplifiers.

Additionally, the car owner may have got used to Track Skip and Volume controls on the steering wheel.

There are of course aftermarket car stereo setups that are superior to the factory fitted system, but they do require more work and fiddly wiring than just swapping a head unit.

Most adults don't bother if their vehicle shipped with a halfway decent sounding system.

The craft required to get a lander (with robot and rocket) to Mars orbit would have to be much bigger than tje craft required to return the samples.

You might use a flatbed truck to deliver sampling and retrieval kit to site. The actual samples you might bring back by motorcycle, if fuel is at a premium.

Re: Magic Mouse

Twitter adopted the # symbol *because* it wasn't in common use. And because it wasn't used as often as some symbols, keyboards don't usually have a dedicated # key.

On my Windows PC I use a G3 Mac Pro Apple keyboard Keyboard because its nicer than any others I have kicking around... it hasn't caused me any problems far as I recall.

Thanks for playing :)

If an observer saw you walking West after lunch, they would not know whether your *intention* was to walk to the Sun or to walk to the next town - even if you stop at the town to sleep. To the observer your intention is irrelevant. The only difference is in your head.

If you tell the observer that you are walking to the sun, he, being a reasonable sort, won't expect you to get there this afternoon - you are in no danger of misleading him in the medium term. Nor will the observer be surprised if he sees you go North for a bit to reach a river crossing - he'll expect you adapt to the landscape as you find it.

By telling me you are walking to the Sun, you're actually giving me *useful* description of your direction of travel for the forseable future, especially when neither of us knows what lies over the next hill.

(We won't speak about France because we haven't discovered it yet)