* Posts by werdsmith

7122 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Feb 2011

Computers cost money. We only make them more expensive by trying to manage them ourselves

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Free to get locked in?

The railways works close to where I grew up, at one time had its own power station and made its own electricity whilst supplying some to the town. I wonder how they felt when they gave up power generation to a power station dozens of miles away.

UK intel chief says MI6 must outsource innovation – and James Bond's in-house 'Q' is nonsense

werdsmith Silver badge

Of course the boss would deny the capability of their in house design. As MRD said. However, my radio amateur friends who were trained and worked their life at a certain government communication research facility do seem to have some other-worldly tech skills.

Want to buy your own piece of the Pi? No 'urgency' says Upton of the listing rumours

werdsmith Silver badge

I've really enjoyed joining in the whole Pi story since the anticipation and waiting in 2011, up to today's evolved Pis, it's been amazing. Getting free Zeros on the magazine cover, going to 4 cores etc. I'm realistic, I know this is the natural lifecycle that businesses go through but I'm sad that it might be lost to corporatism. There is no precedent for anything like this ending well for us end users. That natural lifecycle usually ends in burnout.

IF this happens, I keep my fingers crossed for a breakaway spin-off company to keep the true spirit of Pi alive.

Project Union: Microsoft releases Windows App SDK 1.0, developers try to puzzle it out

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: So, win32 API

That's a reasonable description of VS Code, which I believe is an Electron application.

Chat among yourselves: New EU law may force the big IM platforms to open up

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Define "interoperable"

So how do you feel about Vodafone, O2, 3 and EE only allowing calls on their own networks? I mean if your friends had Vodafone SIM and you were on EE?

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: XMPP?

but I would have no issue with a requirement for the industry to create interoperability in a way that works for them.

"a way that works for them" would probably mean a way that allows them to extract more private information. So need to take care that the industry players are prevented from collecting data from messagers that are not registered with their service. Or indeed requiring a native account before accepting cross messaging.

werdsmith Silver badge

It has always seemed so ridiculous to me, that I need to open one of several different apps to communicate depending on who I am communicating with. It's almost like having to have different SIM cards so I can talk to other mobile users on different networks. The way it was in the beginning, smtp/pop3 worked regardless of client software, and you could make your own. SMS worked on any phone, any network. Any browser could talk to any web server, mostly. These things remain today, but the newer messaging and social media platforms have setup for members only in the fight to dominate and this is the antithesis of what the internet original best intentions were.

Seaberry carrier board turns a Raspberry Pi into a desktop PC with 11 PCIe slots

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Not a surprise

The Pi has its place but it isn't a universal solution. It's too expensive, big or power hungry in some applications, it's underpowered in others. I get tired of all those comments here and elsewhere for any other SBC that amount to little more than "it's not a Pi" as if that is a bad thing.

Does a "universal solution" exist in any form? Nobody ever claimed a Pi was a universal solution.

The difference between Pi and other upstart SBCs that attempt to out-spec it, is the Pi creators stand behind it and offer real backing. Instead of just chucking it out to market with half baked OS and drivers and just hoping an extra feature will sell it. So many have tried and fizzled out.

40 million shipped and counting.

Only Jetson Nano has really offered any kind of competition.

Anyone who is thinking about running Pi CM4 in a mini-itx form might want to consider waiting for Turing Pi 2.

LoRa to the Moon and back: Messages bounced off lunar surface using off-the-shelf hardware

werdsmith Silver badge

Ham radio operators have been doing moon bounce since long before I read about it in RadCom back in the last millenium, true. But with reading back data, bouncing off a pretty rapidly shifting moon? A dopplering reflector? That's a bit more tricky than a CW contact.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: EME (Moonbounce)

Bit of a mismatch there, will need to use ATU for the 40MHz + difference.

But anyway, in the UK 70cms is so quiet these days, even repeaters are asleep most of the time.

Alleged Brit SIM-swapper will kill himself if extradited to US for trial, London court told

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Criminal prosecution is the civilized thing

I’ve sat on jury service for two crown court trials in the UK.

And whilst I cannot repeat what went on, I can tell you that I would not be very confident if I were accused and innocent in a UK crown court.

China's hypersonic glider didn't just orbit Earth, it 'fired a missile' while at Mach 5

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: This development is concerning to us as it should be to all who seek peace and stability

Not camps in mainland USA anyway. Bits of Cuba maybe.

Fancy being an astronaut but didn't go to uni? Your time may have finally come

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: too old, not a citizen of Japan

Yes, I always thought there would be rapid progress that would lead to spaceflight becoming routine, the unfulfilled promise of HOTOL. And that one day I would board a scheduled flight beyond the atmosphere and witness a very special view of our planet.

Alas progress has been slow. I achieved 60,000 feet. My children might get to see something close to the dream toward the end of the century. And no, the Bezos and Branson versions are not the real deal.

The ideal sat-nav is one that stops the car, winds down the window, and asks directions

werdsmith Silver badge

I can adjust anything too, without looking - just with voice commands

werdsmith Silver badge

No, indicator lights on BMW and Audi cars must be operational so they can be used in hazard mode. This allows the drivers of these marques to park anywhere they like.

Server errors plague app used by Tesla drivers to unlock their MuskMobiles

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Re: Tesla

This thread is an outlet for people who can’t cope with changes and their way of life being left behind. It’s all a bit insecure and emotional.

Me? I have a hasp and padlock across my door.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Internet dependency

If you place some papers and the key on the roof and drive off, then a big symbol flashed on the dash and a noisy alarm goes off.

See! The car companies can cope without your help.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Internet dependency

This problem only affected the few that chose to depend only on their phone app. Those sensible ones that had their keycard with them had no problem as it doesn’t need any connection.

The Rust Foundation gets ready to Rumbul (we're sure new CEO has never, ever heard that joke before)

werdsmith Silver badge

“Oh mate” I was trying to demonstrate the idea about being biased towards where you are invested. You’re not supposed to take the Java comments seriously. For goodness sake, you just stepped in to prove my point.

Having said that, applications built in Java and deployed to do serious enterprise work always seem to be the most troublesome, and worst performing. Must be all that thread safety. And to cap it all, it’s owned by Larry.

werdsmith Silver badge

It's interesting and fun how to see how these differences of preference cause these disagreements about programming languages. Also DBMS', computer OS, cars, cameras, phone OS, TV display panels, Hi-Fi, guitars and many more. Always good for a laugh.

I've been playing with RUST, and I like it. I will be doing a lot more of it. But, I have a probably unfounded bias against using libraries with anything but their native language so I still do C/C++ and can't see myself making a switch.

Python, great for quick and dirty jobs and better at glue code than shell. Also essential for Flask which I prefer over Node, though I still need Javascript for browser based stuff.

The one unbearable abomination that should never have existed: Java. Fuck Java and fuck everything about it. What the fuck is the point of that shit? It seems to encompass every point that can be used as a criticism of any programming language and none of the good stuff. I guess its popular because its so easy to use, my cat could hold down a job as a Java programmer - which becomes yet another weakness. It's like VB in that respect.

There you go, if you are massively invested in training and experience or even emotionally one way or the other then you are going to be biased. I'm sure if I had spent a career paying my bills by scratching out Java code then I might feel differently. And the best thing about all this, I'm not even a programmer/coder/developer. I just use this stuff to enable my real work. Most coding is fairly easy and doesn't need dedicated career skillset. Obviously you need a top knob to do your critical aircraft safety stuff (Boeing may be the exception here) or to work on kernels and hardware drivers - or OpenGL and Vulkan (I've messed with shaders and stuff and I won't be doing that again). But I've contributed to space science missions and I even have some work that is due to fly soon (after about 15 years of trying).

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Garbage Collection

Why is is that the vast majority of fanboi supporters of Rust appear to be completely clueless about the basics of Computer Science?

Because the vast majority of people involved in writing code are clueless about the basics of computer science.

Do not try this at home: Man spends $5,000 on a 48TB Raspberry Pi storage server

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Not too bad

Absolutely nothing on Netflix I am interested in. Seems it represents the ultimate dumbing down of media.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Not surprised

Experimenting with ML where you can plug a Coral device into a USB port and get decent performance. Think again yourself. There are plenty of ML things you can do with PyTorch and Tensorflow etc even without the Coral.

Anyway, there is plenty of education/experimenting you can do aside from ML. It's not vague at all, it's absolutely true. Nobody expects it to do everything, it's £35 FFS.

The original dream wasn't for a low maintenance desktop in schools. That's BS. The idea is for a device where you can switch out an SD card. It is totally successful at that.

Anyway, the massive global success of the Pi and its supporting backup resources speaks for itself. If you are inherently negative then I can see that you might miss that.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Even if money is not an issue

I think anybody interested in watching already knew that. That’s not the point of doing this stuff.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: YouTubers

Yes, and ?

This is what he intended. It’s a laugh, not something to wet yourself about.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Not surprised

Yes, it’s not a media streaming platform. Get an NVidia shield if that’s what you want.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Not surprised

“Goals in mind”

As I stated, educational/experimental system.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: But overall, the device's performance was ... mostly disappointing.

Nobody has fell for anything apart from a few miserable sods getting butt hurt about it.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Even if money is not an issue

The fact that it’s irrelevant to pi projects is irrelevant to making a YouTube video to attract views.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: '"how far can I push this before it gets silly". A true engineer'

Yes @juice. That’s how youtubers operate and have done since YouTube.

And he hasn’t spent any of his own money, just part of a marketing budget and given good value for it.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Not surprised

That last thing that Raspberry Pi OS based on Buster (it hasn't been called Raspbian for ages) is, is "fragile". It's as strong as it needs to be for an educational/experimental system, and that's pretty strong.

The new Bullseye based version needs to mature a bit.

I get along with it just fine for desktop use.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Even if money is not an issue

Should I do this?

Well, if you are Jeff then of course you should, because he is in the business of getting his YouTube videos seen and stuff like this gets attention. He's not out to put a storage server on the market.

And the rest of us who are interested can vicariously enjoy.

GPU makers increasingly disengage from crypto miners

werdsmith Silver badge

But there are many low energy crypto alternatives appearing.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: miners

Hmmm, which to trust?

You seem to think that US Dollar is the only recognised FIAT currency.

Amazon tells folks it will stop accepting UK Visa credit cards via weird empty email

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: To me .....

“ A fuck nugget he may be, but nobody else has managed to set up a true rival to Amazon.”

In the western world that is true, in the East I think there is a candidate or two.

Magnanimous Apple will allow people to fix their iPhones using parts bought from its Self Service Repair program

werdsmith Silver badge

New screen sir? Very reasonable at only £199, sir. Oh, and you're also required to purchase the repair guide manual, just £499.

You can get an Apple Iphone 11 screen repaired for £194 and they will do it for you while you wait.

Don't break an Iphone 13 pro screen Max though, that's going to be £316.

Other end of the scale, iPhone SE. £136.

Keep calm and learn Rust: We'll be seeing a lot more of the language in Linux very soon

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: The way in which this turd is being pushed “top down” makes me want to puke

The only people I've worked with over the years that are steadfastly stuck in their ways are academics. They got their Masters/PhD and never changed from that point onwards.

This stinks of bullshit. Postgrads work down to a very deep level on a very narrow part of a topic. They aren't generalised. Nobody would expect them to be the last word on any topic that they hadn't researched. And they generally do not throw their academic weight around, because they know what it means.

Linux 5.16 to bring mainline support to Raspberry Pi 4 Compute Module – and the nifty devices built around it

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Curious ...

Oh, then the answer is I have the standard RapsberryPi IO board, a Waveshare case (£10.50) that I cut a hole in the top with a dremel to accommodate the NVMe SSD. The SSD is in an adapter into the PCIe slot. I have the standard Raspberry Pi WiFi antenna too, but I'm actually using the Ethernet port hard cable to my switch.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Curious ...

What is an "item list, case etc" ???? I don't know what that means.

It's just a general purpose PC. It has Office stuff, does web development, has VS Code with C++, C and rust, I use it to make applications and games. Use Qt, and libraries like SDL and SFML. It runs postgreSQL with the DB on the 1TB drive, and other general stuff like any average PC user might use, gimp etc. It's also a web server, running python/flask with gunicorn and nginx proxy.

werdsmith Silver badge

Because of its eMMC and its PCIe slot, the compute module 4 makes a better Pi than a standard Pi for normal users, I use an 8GB/32 one with a 1TB NVMe in the PCIe as my main desktop.

Now that's a splash down: Astronauts spend 8-hour trip to Earth in diapers after SpaceX capsule toilet breaks

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Before SpaceX it would have been diapers all the time

There are toilets on small private jets, which amount to one of the rear seats with a curtain round. Remove the cushion and the bog is waiting. Nobody ever wants to use these, so experienced travellers make sure they are prepared for the journey, and do not partake the onboard refreshment until they are sure they are home "dry". Inexperienced travellers soon learn to do the same. People who are unwell should not step aboard.

Rolls-Royce set for funding fillip to build nuclear power stations based on small modular reactor technology

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Low hanging fruit

Because we are all heading into the Metaverse, every individual will need dual NVidia 4090 cards to drive their life, and their homes can be heated by the waste heat from these cards.

Still got to power them though.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: One million homes - I don't think so

Unfortunately as we all want to cook and heat our homes at about the same times during the day,

I don't think anyone is suggesting that these will be the only source of electricity generation and a million homes will depend on one. The number quoted, a nice round million probably is the average use of a house compared to the energy output, but there will be Sizewells and Hinckley Point and all the big fans , hydro and solar farms to back them up when demand is peak.

Another 100 space tourists buy a ride from Virgin Galactic: $25k of that ticket deposit is 'non-refundable'

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Don't you have to go into space in order to be an astronaut?

Is there an actual commercial use case for this?

Leisure and tourism, and the entertainment industry are as commercial as it gets. Are you suggesting that Disneyworld isn't a commercial enterprise?

Having said that, the article states that the next flight, Unity 23, for the Italian Air Force is a research mission.

Reg scribe spends 80 hours in actual metaverse … and plans to keep visiting

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: £500 bike?

The most development you are doing is the cardiovascular, it's not a body building process.

Your heart and lungs are what sustains a decent power output for a long period, it's not really about sprints (although there are attaque sections in the games).

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Potentially expensive

The kind of competitive riding that is available on Zwift and similar, where you can ride in pursuit of, or attempting to gap other riders is just not really very available riding round your local area. Especially at the drop of a hat any time of day, any day of the week.

The presence of other riders (and bots) to compete against is motivational to pushing yourself on.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Potentially expensive

RGT is free to use (it has a premium upgrade) so no need to pay for Zwift. I prefer it over Zwift anyway.

And RGT is not the only alternative.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Travel through the virtual worlds

One of the reasons we have litter by the roadsides is because the people who dump it there are selfish inconsiderate bastards and decent people consider them to be obnoxious.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: And it costs … ?

I switched from Zwift to the free RGT when free the trial ran out

Bullseye! Debian-based Raspberry Pi OS scores an update with 'less closed-source proprietary code'

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Re: Installed it

Not only is it python 3.9.3, it’s also the default now.

I had spent the weekend rebuilding one pi server with 64 bit buster. This drops on Monday, so I’m doing it all again today.