Posts by Sgt_Oddball 2317 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jan 2010
Was named by my kids. They simply called it "the thing"...
This name might have had something to do with the colour of bronzed copper and whilst being a current gen X trail (pre-face-lift), it came with huge wheels, door runners and extra trim giving it a presence not normally seen on the engorged Qashqai.
My previous car was an estate corolla usually referred to as "surprising" because the VVTi was knackered on the low revs (it managed 126k before being scrapped due to the handbrake hubs rusting through allowing the car to roll into a wall) but when it kicked into the higher cam at 2,750rpm on the nose it went like a bottle rocket. Might have been down to having the same 1.6 ltr petrol as the top of the range corolla SR...
The wife's car we've not bothered with naming... It's a bit hard when it's a micra and thus 10 a penny round these parts.
It normally idles around 88watts which is surprisingly small when it's not being hammered. Put a heavy load on it and it'll hit about 3-400 Watts. It does have 2x 750 watt platinum rated Psu's it can go quiet high but since I'm not running a graphics/AI/mining card it sips it's juice normally.
My basement dwelling server cost the same as a RPi 4 - came with 8 sas drive slots, 24gb of ram, 4x 1 gigabit ethernet, 2 x 8 gigabit fibre cards, 2 x 4 core CPUs, 2 psu's... Admittedly it's cost me about £250+ for sas hard disks and a second 8 drive caddy (plus second raid array to manage it).
Still cheaper than one of these efforts...
That reminds me. I must get my X200t back from a friend (you know who you are). Now that's one I would love to get a new motherboard for (and yes I'm aware it's not got a trackpad - that's fine with me since it makes it less likely to be nicked.).
The damn things my favourite travel machine as it'd take a direct hit from a air strike to destroy it.
I did that once over the moon landings.
I broke his mind by explaining how the sky works and that if you look up during the day so you see the stars?
After acknowledging he couldn't, I then explained the same principle works on the moon. Cue ramblings about the sky being black on the moon until I reminded him of the distinct lack of atmosphere with which to colour the sky (Rayleigh scattering duly employed to explain how much of an idiot he was being).
He then proceeded to change the subject to football. Alot less challenging to his world view and significantly more likely to lose my interest instead, mores the pity...
Has anyone thought to ask exactly what sort of Soviet satellite it was?
Being unplanned, unannounced and hugely dangerous to alot of satellites nearby has to make you wonder what exactly was on the now large cloud of metal fragments that meant it really ought to be dealt with in such a way that it couldn't come down and leave traceable chunks?
I mean, perhaps the movies aren't too far fetched (I'm thinking Space cowboys here, rather than Armageddon) and it had something which really shouldn't be left alone anymore without creating bigger issues... Just wondering.
I mean... Its not like they haven't already had guns in space, a nuke armed satellite has also been rumoured for long enough that it wouldn't surprise anymore.
(I am also aware this opinion is close to tinfoil hat territory, and I'm still not saying it justifies making such a mess of things, it just might explain why such a measure was taken).
I do have to wonder who is going to load and unload the vehicles in a safe and effective manner? I mean if it's purely from warehouse to distribution center (and back again) then no problem. Truck arrives, drops off trailer and loads a new trailer.
But, have a multi-stop run (say from various supermarkets, dropping off full food cages and picking up empty ones) who's going to make sure the truck's cargo is secure? Would you trust thousands of pounds off stock to your wage slave early morning shelf filler? (having done this as a summer job, the drivers never let us near the trailers).
It's a mess waiting to happen.
For their graphics cards as well. Just try and find one at anything close to a sane price that's available to buy... I'll wait.
(and by sane I mean £800 is steep for a near top of the line cars about 3 something years ago. Now that wouldn't even find you a middle of the road card that's only a minor bump in performance over that same card)
We bought a Sony smart TV (mainly because they last... And last.... And last) as our previous two TV's were Sony's and each of them happily went past a decade of ownership before any issues prompted a replacement (Sony CRT 15 years ago wasn't wide-screen/HD so we bought an early LCD, moved house a few years ago and it didn't fit the front room so we bought a smart TV).
Running Android TV hasn't been too painful (stop giggling at the back), it's had updates, I've monitored its traffic (about same amount as a standard Android device) and it's adverts for other services/devices/notifications are set on a tile row right at the bottom. It requires scrolling down to get to. Past the app tiles, past the input tiles, past the app program recommendations (currently a YouTube play list of MREs rations through the ages eaten by a man far too eager on the items).
Even then, the tiles are all the same size. Nothing is favoured and the ad tiles do have stuff I might want to look into like a new Sony app, where to buy a PS5 and any new features they've added in the last update.
But.... After all this. I'd expect as much considering we invested in a TV that's meant to last at least a decade (3 years in and it's been fine save for the odd TV restart and a green border issue on some home steamed content but fixed some time ago). If the Samsung TV cost the same, I'd expect as much from them, rather than feeling like I've paid to sold to.
Now, get off my lawn so I can go back to playing retro consoles on it.
It's all a big joke (though that would require it to be aware of it being a joke).
Haven't we been warned enough over the years just how bad an idea it is? Red Dwarf (better than life), Syndicate (Amiga game), They live (Hollywood's finest example of two men having a fight), Neuromancer (cyberpunk kick starter) the list goes on.
Finally, SillyCon valleys last great name change has done wonders for Alphabet Google, no?
The sooner it's smashed up, the better.
Again, yes and no. Emerging markets have no standards save for those that got there first (and even that's not guaranteed). Going off and inventing your own tech or variation of is only really viable if you known you can do it better than the completion (be it better supported, better marketed, more reliable or with better features).
Otherwise if you're only offering the same but different markets tend not to be interested. See the various media format wars for the most visible example (cassettes, floppy disks, video cassettes, video disk formats etc etc).
The virologist I'm acquainted with would have some interesting words with you about that...
You're also assuming that children will catch it in isolation, not spread it their immediate or extended family. If you're fine with kids infecting and potentially killing their parents then by all means carry on.
Welcome to survivor bias.
If 80% of all cars have seat belts, would you then state that seat belts don't work because there's now a number of fatalities of people wearing seat belts? If the numbers were directly comparable (say 4 seat belted deaths to every 1 non-seat belt wearing) then you'd have a point but it was say 1 to 1 or 1.5 to 1 then would you say that's a failure?
It's similar to the WWII plane survival issue where they looked to up armour the spots on planes that returned that were full of holes... All the way until it was pointed out that that these were the planes that returned. The armour would be better placed on the spots not full of holes since those planes did not return....
I've got an old G3 iMac I keep pondering on if I should change a couple of the resistors to bump it from a 333mhz chip to 450mhz. No chip swap required.
What I'd really be interested in with this tech is if Intel would unlock all features when the chips aged out and swapped? (sort of like HP and their iLO licenses/older raid arrays so you can find the right licence keys on out-of-support hardware and bump it up in the knowledge that buyer beware.. Hence my jerryrigged streaming server)
Yeah.. Good luck with ripping any one of the three off a wall. You'd need a stepladder or accomplices to hold a ladder to reach the front two. Specifically a ladder that extends to at least 10ft. Oh and good luck keeping it steady on the loose stones that cover the driveway.
For the rear camera less of a challenge, save for being directly over a very steep and fragile outhouse roof in a back garden that requires making it through either the neighbours gardens first or clearing the other two cameras first, then climbing over/breaking through a very sturdy shed.
So it's far more of a task than your average chancer is willing to take.
The cameras on my house being intrusive actually works to it's favour (having witnessed a roving gang of oiks consider checking if our front door was locked and thinking twice after spotting the red ring from the infrared and promptly sodding off.) whilst the neighbours ring doorbell did sod all to stop them giving their door a try.
However, I don't have audio recording, I do have zoning set up and I have spoken to the neighbours about how I've got it set up. It also doesn't hurt that I've got tall hedges since I appreciate privacy, It makes sense for me to ensure I'm only covering my own land and no-one else's.
Being considerate of its use hasn't cost me anything and I'm pretty sure won't result in a court case after a neighbour gets freaked out because I can't understand how others might take issue.
Now, on that note. Get off my lawn!
Having stayed at my sister-in-laws house in Canada, it depends on which floor the bedroom is.
In the sister-in-law case, the house was built on the side of a hill and her bedroom was 4 levels down. So there would have been alot of floors and furniture in the way.
So in essence, don't assume that her bedroom was directly underneath the roof since the article doesn't clarify the house's structure... Though going through the roof, giving her a drywall shower and hitting the bed that does give the impression that it might be the case.
It could also be that her roof is particularly thick with insulation/rain sheeting that might have absorbed sufficient force to give it a soft landing.
The problem with grinding them to bits is making sure they don't then decide to warm themselves up.. And then the surrounding other batteries. And then the whole facility in what the chemists generously call a "thermal runaway" as in run away because everything is on fire....
The issue then is that you've just toasted and chemically altered alot of the material which make things difficult. Not to mention the toxic fumes they give off whilst immolating themselves...
Now, if we could crush and grind them in a way that doesn't cause issues (some bath which nullifies the chemistry?) then you'd be onto a winner I think.
They could manage some additional forms of sensing equipment. Magnetic anomaly arrays stuck out of the front and back.... Maybe a number of cameras with lights that can only penetrate a short distance and some ML guff to look for things big enough to warrant avoiding (but not bore the poor operator to death looking at floating hubris)?
I mean, <Clarkson voice> how hard can it be? </Clarkson voice>.
Maybe investigate water current changes when a vessel is coming close to another object, or.... Go the other way... Some long, flexible pipes off the front of the vessel and detect when they're deflected enough to be a possible collision...
The reason Facebook is in decline might have something to do with the decline in what people originally joined for?
I mean when was the last time you managed to have a post of something from an old friend whom you don't talk to that much on Facebook? Before I stopped using it I was only getting posts from about 3 maybe 5 at the most people I knew out of the 200+ that I had as friends.
If I went to check it's not like they weren't putting up posts, I just never saw them. What I did get was BS ads for things I wasn't interested in and posts from a beer forum.... That was about it.
So I stopped and honestly haven't missed it. Twitter as much of a fear merchant as everyone seems to think has at least informed me when someone who doesn't post frequently has a new post up. At least I get to see the post.
I second that. Old place of work used to have USB sticks for Esxi instances but after the second death, we ripped out the CD drive and hooked a small but quality sata SSD drive instead.
No loss of SAS drives or hard disk space, just lose the DVD drive (which can be conveniently replaced with a usb dvd drive in a pinch).
The biggest issue was getting hold of an adapter cable for HP's combi sata data+power cable.
We might have an actual use case for "AI" unique to a problem the UK faces...
Imagine when this on general release, we can finally be free of the tyranny of having the washing rained on. Our forgetting your umbrella.
Finally a utopia for all in Blighty.
/sarcasm
Still one can dream.
Coat icon because until then you never know when it's going to rain.
So basically TalkTalk got a finger wagging and that was it? Not even a refund to the affected customers over trading standards?
Also... I do have to wonder by this point who are these customers that TalkTalk have? You'd think by this point they would have been through enough to go elsewhere?
My sisters boyfriend had for the longest time a rally prepped mki Mexico with a 2ltr cortina engine swap.
It was loud, uncomfortable, difficult to move around in and I wish I got a chance to rag it at least once... The thing moved unlike anything else I'd seen or been in.
So what you're saying is... That the insurance robots will need their own insurance? Would the same insurance companies cover that or would there be a need for a second insurance company that deals with them?
And then would they need....
I'll stop. Down this path insurance indemnities lie.
Would they start to do the same for food delivery riders? (you know, where electric bikes have become a requirement rather than a convenience because algorithms keep on adding more time pressures).
As the article states, workers aren't machines. Shame that the rules in the states make it so easy to swap them out like broken parts though.
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