velox_io

GDS are bringing them together, slowly... I recently applied for Personal Independence Payments (PIP). And despite being a new 'system' plus the assessments are carried out by two large IT outsourcing companies (Capita & Atos). It is entirely paper-based (drive.google is blocked, they don't take emails...). If you request a copy of the report they photocopy the physical file and post it. They are so backwards it is unreal.

Plus there's no provisions for an alternative format to the 30 page paper form. Not very independent if handwriting is an issue (the target demographic is people with disabilities).

Don't get me started on the actual assessment/ assessor. (it's been a long day going through this stuff).

It isn't the easiest article to read, plus they over complicate things by talking about things such as truncating SHA2 hashes.

I don't see why changing the hashing algorithm is so problematic, hence the reason why I asked the question. Converting a repository to SHA2 should be straight forward (the only issue is everyone's tooling), you could also run the repositories side-by-side. I'm genuinely interested as I think Git & Bittorrent are quite elegant solutions to complex problems.

There's no mention of one of the worst culprits, buses with diesel engines. Plus, outside of rush-hour they're driving around virtually empty.

Unless I'm missing something, why not just allow repositories to be upgraded to SHA2 hashes? The only problem is ensuring everyone's tooling supports it.

Yeah, Access' Jet Engine and many of its issues are very well known.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Jet_Database_Engine]

I am fascinated by the wings, you can see that they have been heavily optimised and wonder how much compute time went into perfecting them. I'd love to see a documentary on the design & construction. I have a carbon-fibre road bike and it is incredible how much they can tune the materal. Where it is rigid and where/ even how it flexes to dampen vibrations.

Interestingly, most of that article is about the 737 Max issues (the MCAS software is a disaster, it's a push to even call it engineering).

Most 'Smoke-free' policies are superficial and often make the problems worse e.g. Smoke-free sites mean people smoke near entrances, causing more annoyance for non-smokers. I've noticed most building sites around London are smoke-free as they have a line of builders smoking on the pavement. Their smoke becomes unavoidable to anyone/ everyone walking past.

I absolutely detest smoking, especially when they're exposing others to their cancer. When my dad died [of lung cancer] we weren't on good terms as I wasn't sympathetic to him. It was no surprise he got lung cancer as he smoked like a chimney and had a chronic cough for over a decade. The reason I have zero sympathy is because they made my sister and I breathe that crap in as kids (my sister is also very anti-smoking).

However, I don't have a problem with vaping. It is many orders of magnitude safer than smoking yet it is tarred (excuse the pun) with the same brush. In The States along smoking kills 500,000 people per year. Lives would be saved if people were encouraged to vape (it's by far the lesser of two evils).

The media is even more anti-vaping. Like the scare stories about that mystery lung disease killing vapers. As I vape CBD myself (I have a condition that causes muscle spasms, vaping is by far the most effective way to reduce them) I followed the story very closely. It was apparent that it was THC vape products in/ around New York from the get-go, yet a totally different message was coming from the media. Even if they did attribute those deaths to vaping, 14 [in total] is better than the 1,400 per day from smoking!

It would be interesting to see how micro-plastics differ from silica/ sand. Something most of us have been exposed to, especially if you live near a beach or other sandy environment.

One thing I do know is that not all sand is alike. There's the normal sand that has been ground & rounded over millennia and 'sharp sand' used in construction. Getting normal sand on your skin is a minor annoyance, and I'm not aware of any real damage if some are inhaled. Sharp-sand is much more irritating to the skin/ eyes, it feels more like fibreglass than the beach variety, and I believe the sharp particles are the reason for silicosis as they are not easily removed by mucus.

It would be interesting to know which category microplastics fall into. You would think (hope) micro-plastic would be more like the natural 'soft' sand variety than the more troublesome sharp sand.

I don't think it is purely a TSMC supply issue. To put it bluntly; AMD isn't used to selling that many CPUs. Zen 1/+ brought them parity with intel performance-wise (something AMD has been laking for over a decade). It's only with Zen 2/ the 3000 series that AMD has had both core-count and single-threaded. Before you had to choose between lots of slower cores or fewer/ faster cores.

I do wonder if the 3900x/ 3950x shortage is at least partially manufactured (they're so hard to get they must be good right?). Intel halved their prices pre-lunch which is something that has never happened before, but they still can't match AMD for price/ performance.

AMD has both good CPUs & GPUs (something that is very rare!). Being an owner of an RX 5700, I'm surprised how low the power usage is. If they put a cut-down RX 5000 on a low-power CPU, they could make some decent laptops that don't need dedicated GPUs (memory speed is a bottle-neck especially on a laptop with a single memory channel). That could pose a problem for Intel. I'm actually a little surprised it hasn't been more of a priority for AMD, all Intel can do to compete right now is to literally give their CPU/ APUs away (better to make a loss than lose a customer to AMD). Next year will be a good time to buy a laptop. It looks as though Zen 3 will first launch on laptops, that may pose a problem for Intel...

Likewise (I 2nd L1Techs btw). Having 16 cores/ 32 threads will greatly aid testing server applications. Making multi-threading & locking issues much more apparent (Amdahl's law) than they would on a slightly older CPU with only 4-6 cores (a i7 6700k in my case).

Wow, I didn't expect that. Laptops were the only market Intel was still strong, still dominated. Having brought an rx5700 XT recently, the power usage has been just as impressive as the performance. AMD will have some very nice products when they start putting mini RX5000s in their CPUs. Decent performance without discrete GPUs is a real possibility. (Just need add some HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) to the mix and things will get rather interesting!)

For the 4000 series, they're planning on sharing the L3 caches between CCD's/ chiplets rather than per CCX. It will be interesting to see if the more cache availible per core, and more cores being able to access the same cache will improve the performance.

The speed AMD has raised caches & core-count lately is insane. When the max for mainstream CPUs was 8MB (and 4 cores) until only a few years ago. (Things seem to have stopped when quad-core launched, the Intel Q6600 was an amazing CPU at the time.)

I've been a computer enthusiast for over 20 years and didn't expect to see advancements to return like the good ol' days (Moore's law) to ever return. (I don't think Intel did either, halving their prices pre-launch is unprecidented!)

I'm looking forward to a 3950X, this is the first time you can get a lot of cores without the expense of low clockspeeds.

I was interested in the new ThreadRippers however, I do beleive this gen is overpriced. I realise this is how supply and demand works, but I don't think the expense is worth it personally.

In addition, from what I've seen so far. AMD/ OEMs are chrging a large premium for TRX40 mother boards. You're talking ~$550 & up. Bare in mind that for a similar price you can get i an Epyc board with double the memory channels (8), AND add an addional CPU, AND duel 10gbe! (you would think a single port would be default on most workstations late 2019) It's a lot of money for 2 addional memory chennels & and PCIe lanes (PCIe is a serial interface so it only needs one wire per lane, per direction).

The problem with this strategy is that they often have much lower clock speeds/ IPC, plus they are often quite power-hungry and lose the ability to overclock (that one's subjective). So you do often get bitten by Amdahl's law. However, if it is purely a rendering machine and single-threaded performance isn't an issue, you can get a lot of processing power for the money.

Yes, very much so.

This problem isn't down to vaping, it's black-market THC products that were the problem. The ingredients in vape products are very safe (similar formation to the ingredients in asthma inhalers, and many other places).

Yes, a dozen or so people have died from this, but this is a fraction of the 500,000 people die per year from smoking-related deaths in the United States alone.

You have to seriously question the motives behind the "Vaping Deaths!" headlines. Most things in excess are harmful; food, even water! It's all a question of context, and how safe something is compared to the alternatives. Instead of encouraging people to move from smoking to vaping, quite the opposite is happening, like trying to ban flavoured vaping products for instance. There's underage drinkers, but banning any type of flavoured alcohol product would sound ridiculous.

I vape CBD as it is the most effective way to consume it to reduce muscle spasms. I have never smoked, I hate smoking, and that's before my dad died from lung cancer. So I have been following the story very closely, it's actually quite scary how low public health factors in the scheme of things. Big tobacco is still very big (and powerful).

Do you really believe zero oil/ fats from food makes it down the trachea? Of course it does! Plus you breathe in all manor of pollutants. It's a little like radiation; natural radiation is everywhere and you cannot avoid it, it becomes a major problem when the body is exposed to more than the body can safely remove/ recover from.

Yeah, the correct term is civilian or more commonly known as civvy. Error, in translation? Or they may need to be a Dutch citizen for security clearance, which would make sense.

It does sound similar to the UK's version, and I'm sure most countries have some sort of cyber division by now. Plus there's suppliers and consultants, like traditional forensics and computer forensics/ data retrieval e.g.

I don't believe this for a second. This is a hybrid fine-art / Ponzi scheme. Investors pay over the odds to inflate the valuation, hoping that more will follow after them, raising the value further, repeating the cycle.

A grey area where you don't have any rights, if they don't like anything about you they can just put you on the next return flight.

That's if they let you fly there in the first place. I know someone who was denied access because they had a criminal record from over a decade ago, even though it was a minor offence (no prison sentence). This is a UK citizen, so you can imagine how much more difficult it is for someone from a less favourable country.

This is advice for Brits from the US Embassy: "Can you advise me if my arrest, caution, conviction will prevent me from traveling visa free and registering under ESTA? We cannot advise whether a traveler’s specific situation will have a bearing on their eligibility to travel visa free under the Visa Waiver Program. Our advice is that if you have ever been arrested, cautioned or convicted you apply for a visa."

Cautioned! You don't even need to be convicted or even arrested for an offence.

They're removing the pre-Windows 10 Control Panel items with a new Settings interface. The problem is that it's far worse:-

Tasks such as changing network adaptors setting, or sound settings. I regularly switch between three different audio devices on my desktop PC, and doing simple tasks such as toggling volume levelling isn't in the new interface and digging into the old is becoming harder and harder to find, with more clicks for every revision. Just yesterday I went to add a firewall rule, and that was hard to find. I'm an MCSE, so you would think I could change a firewall setting!

It definitely doesn't feel like an improvement, it feels like they're forcing an abstraction. Plus they've recently removed the Control Panel when you right-click the Start menu. That was about the only 'Safe Space' left.

I feel for anyone who has to support Windows 10. They're definitely not listening to the users. This is the FisherPrice interface all over again, but there's no stopping it this time around.

There's a major security flaw with auto-fill when it comes to passwords. Sure, it's hidden on screen, but you only have to change the password box's type, so it isn't "type='password'" and it is revealed. This only takes a matter of seconds.

Chrome should remove the password if there is any attempt to change that form object.

This flaw has been there for years, it's actually handy if I'm not sure what the password is.

This is the first thing I went looking for after clicking the button.

I can't believe uptime isn't in there.

Banning encryption in one place will not change anything, it just means that those who want their actions hidden will go elsewhere or use tools such as VPNs, which seem fairly common these days, even amongst general users.

It's not so different from an electric wheelchair, the major difference is that your eye-line isn't crotch height. Plus, there's no reason they cannot add some type of haptic feedback. It doesn't even need to be natural or realistic as the body/ brain will adjust.

I'm a disabled person myself (I prefer to use crutches as the world isn't built for wheelchairs, that's another topic). I've been injured since 2012 and they now feel like an extension of myself (a little like having really long arms, I use them to push buttons/ switches and grab stuff). Now trying to walk without them feels VERY alien (and I often fall over if I put too much weight on my injured leg). With crutches; I walk faster than most people (they have suspension!), can climb stairs easier than somebody who is obese, even on days I can't even put my foot on the ground let alone weight-bear. The biggest limitation is the lack of hands to carry stuff.

The point I was making is that while aids/ devices may seem primitive and a poor substitute for what they're trying to replace, the difference they can make to an individual can be huge!

Repairing nerve damage is one of the last frontiers of modern medicine, but it is advancing, slowly...

That's strange, Take Newegg (both instock):-

WD My Book 10TB USB 3.0 External - $185.99 (free shipping) https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16822234346

WD Red 10TB NAS Hard Disk Drive $283.98 (with $3.99 shipping) https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16822231546

So it's still ~$100 cheaper. Like I said before, this isn't the only example.

I have no issue with them mentioning Oracle's involvement. They just went too far, by taking up [exactly] 50% of the video, the marketing spiel is a distraction from the breakthrough. Media companies aren't going to promote it, as it's an obvious advert (I can't see it on the BBC News website, I checked both health and science sections). "Our cutting edge cloud data services enabled..." that would have been sufficient.

Sure, as of right now:- WD 10TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive £184.26 (the 12TB version has been as low as £180) https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Elements-Desktop-Hard-Drive/dp/B...

In the comments from the above (you'll find similar in other comments, and on Reddit & YouTube). The Harddrive inside is a WD100EMAZ (WD Red 10TB), which currently retails for £318.68 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-10TB-3-5-SATA-5400rpm/dp/B07194...

It's even running the same firmware. It makes no sense, the only logic I see is that customers are willing to pay more for the 'enhanced features'. If you look into this, you'll find no manufacture states the read and write speeds of their USB drives, making it a little harder to compare, so there is a little luck of the draw in what you actually get. Seagate are similar: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/8thr34/seagate...

Speaking of right to repair, As anyone seen the price of hard drives lately? External drives are MUCH cheaper (half price in some cases), which seems backwards when the external drive also comes with an enclosure, power supply and cables.

Leading to the term 'Shucking', where people buy external drives just for the drive inside only to discard the rest.

It's quite a change going from not exporting any F22s to the F35s, which feels like they'll sell them to anyone that wants some (minus the usual suspects). Especially when the F35s stealth technology is said to be more advanced.

It's hard to get your head around a plane the can climb over 1000 feet per second (F22: 62,000ft in 60 seconds).