velox_io

Here's a good video on the problems of transmitting power, and why we need such high voltages.

How do Electric Transmission Lines Work? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjY31x0m3d8

That does make sense, especially for IoT devices (literally anything low power). However, I haven't seen PoE used outside of business use. The problem is that Wifi is becoming ever more prevalent (on my network I have 12 devices using wifi, and only my desktop using an ethernet cable - ironically the only device that isn't suitable for PoE).

Reading the title has affirmed to me that we are living in a bubble (and it doesn't look good). I just can't get it through my head how an investment of that size will EVER pay off. A major reason people buy dogs is because they want to get out and walk more. If they can't they outsource it to a teenager you or your friends know, there's no need for a middleman in most cases. (If it was baby-sitting I could understand more it as there is far less flexibility.)

WeWork's valuations have also seemed strange to me, when they don't have any assets of infrastructure to warrant such a high value. There's very little stopping others renting office space, in fact a friend of mine has done just that.

I'm surprised this concept died out. Take the next-gen consoles, they're supporting games at 120fps/120hz. They could target 60fps (what the vast majority of users will use) and daisy-chain another console for the serious gamers who 'need' 120fps. This could be done through the HDMI cable (which supports ethernet in addition to video & sound), it could even be enhanced to support 8k.

Yes, this is essentially SLI/ CrossFire, something that has been around for some time, and support would be described as patchy at best. I believe the main issue is that it's left to game developers to implement, rather than something abstracted away to the graphics drivers/ GPUs.

Re-inventing the wheel is a funny idiom itself.

In 99.9% of cases it holds true, it's easier/ cheaper to use existing/ off-the-shelf solutions.

The other 0.1% (not absolute numbers), it makes sense to innovate.

Quite a few idioms fall into this category, like premature optimisation being the route of all evil. You really don't want to be on either end of the scale.

I don't think the website is redundant. Something I think is useful to be able to compare languages, especially when using a new language. Plus, languages are interesting, they're not just a syntax, they often bring a different way of thinking.

One issue with the website is that there is no indication of example quality. For instance, the B-Tree* in C# has some issues[0]. Using classes instead of structs is horrible for memory management and garbage collection. As does not constrain the generic type to structs ("where T : struct"), this continues on from the above. None of this would be apparent unless you understand .Net's memory management, inheritance, garbage collection, and spent some time with generics. Many of the other languages have got this right.

[0]https://www.programming-idioms.org/idiom/9/create-a-binary-t... *I have often wondered why trees aren't standard collections, inserting nodes and tree rotations etc are common use cases for B-Trees. This does feel like re-inventing the wheel, giving developers plenty of opportunity to screw things up. Tries are another structure I think they have left out, there are times when tries are often a better solution than dictionaries (urls spring to mind).

This is a tricky one; maintaining people's safety/ privacy while giving drone pilots 'freedom' is quite a balance. For instance, in the UK you must maintain a physical line of sight with the drone at all times, this makes flying winged craft virtually pointless.

Right now the geo-fencing of where you can fly is very rigid, with no provisions for altitude and distance, this could be improved to include glide-paths near airports for instance. It could also be tiered depending on the pilot's qualifications (similar to scuba diving) and if the drone is fitted with a transponder, or if they have submitted a flight plan. With these, there's no reason a drone pilot can't have similar freedom as a helicopter pilot.

I think most of these problems stem from technology being ahead of legislation, as always.

I'm also in the UK, I've had the same phone number for at least a decade. It has been easy to carry your phone number to a new provider for as long as I can remember.

You just contact your existing provider, tell them you wish to leave and need the PAC code. After they beg to stay and throw you a sweetheart deal. They'll send it via text or post.

I find it interesting that the article is targeting vaping in general rather than buying tainted products.

(My money is on THC extraction using Butane that is meant for fuel (that's heavily contaminated) rather than lab-grade/ pure.)

That picture is bounced off a 2.4m mirror from nearly 400km away, calling it flawless would be an understatement!

The image has also been heavily compressed (after it was annotated), so we're looking at a very poor version of it. So yeah, bonkers is probably the best term to describe it.

On one hand, I think that Boris is flexing he power to prove to [the rest of] Europe that he is willing to take a hard Brexit if the EU is unwilling to negotiate (you can't negotiate unless you're willing to walk away).

On the other hand... This is a complete disaster. If parliament can't function, what hope does the rest of the country have? I think the exchange rate is the best metric on how well Brexit is going. The sad irony is that Brexit was meant to give the UK sovereignty (rule Britania and all that...), but crashing the economy has made everything cheaper for foreign investors. The UK is no longer united metaphorically and literally.

Brexit has been a death march from the get-go.

This sounds similar to Fleischmann–Pons 'Cold fusion' in 89 [0] (Could be related as the 30th anniversary?). It would be great if we could easily spit water to hydrogen and oxygen (unlimited clean fuel), but it comes down to those pesky chemical bonds, it takes a LOT of effort (energy) to pull them apart.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion Hopefully, someone can find a good video covering it.

Shortening patents (when it can take years to gain traction) or making them more expensive only plays into the hands of large companies

I only wrote about the GPUs initially (as I had been looking at them in the last week). Then I released the comparison to CPUs, which even included the same company. It just seems strange that two similar markets are functioning very differently. Increased fabrication costs don't explain what is going.

I have a feeling AMD wants some of Nvidia's market share too. In fact the reason Nvidia recently released all those 'Super' cards was to counter AMD's release, it's also rumoured that AMD had to reduce their prices as a result.

In many ways, Nvidia is acting like Intel did. AMD simply couldn't compete on performance so this allowed them to get cosy (Intel's high-end for consumers stayed at 4 cores for a decade, Nvidia's prices have been steadily raising for a while).

Also, a lot has happened in the last few years: RAM prices skyrocketed, Bitcoin mining drove up demand for AMD GPUs. However both of those have been over for a while now.

The rx480 was priced very aggressively, the $199 price grabbed some headlines (8gb card cost a little more). Given the die shrink and three years (plus the Ryzen cores doubling), you'd be forgiven for expecting the rx5700 to come in closer to $199, than the $349 (XT is $399) keep in mind that these new cards aren't much over double the performance.

While, it's no secret that shrinking fabrication is getting harder and more expensive (it's hurting Intel right now). Prices per transistor have dropped for CPUs and SSDs has dropped noticeably, even DRAM to an extent, but not GPUs...

Even demand for machine learning doesn't explain the price hike (GPUs are now being artificially handicapped, just as professional graphics have been, shifting demand to the even more expensive Tesla cards).

In a way, yes. I don't fill up the whole tank when I buy fuel (as do most people who don't travel large distances day to day). It's easy to add more fuel before I make a long journey. It makes more of a difference for EV as batteries have a considerably lower energy density than petrol, a couple orders of magnitude it appears: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

I thought about upgrading my GPU recently (an rx480 8gb from 2016), I was disappointed to find that even the rx5700xt was only double the performance of an rx580/rx480 (they're essentially the same GPU) [0]. It also costs double, this is THREE years later. (It turns out the rx 500 series have hardly dropped in price since release ~£200.)

So while Moore's law is still ticking along (albeit a little slower), and transistors are still shrinking (7nm vs 14nm). It doesn't really affect the price, so instead of being able to buy 4x the performance (transistors) for a similar price, it hasn't changed. It seems pricing is no longer based on cost, it appears to be based on what the market will pay.

Strangely, it doesn't seem to be the same with CPUs. During the same period, AMD has doubled in core/ transistor count between Zen 1 and Zen 3 while has stayed the same price[3].

[0]https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/msi_radeon_rx_5700_xt_... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_graphics_processin... [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryzen

It would be great if they standardised battery packs and made them configurable. So you don't need all that weight being carried around when it isn't needed, or you could rent more batteries for long journies if you rarely travel very far, maybe exchange cells instead of charging along the journey. Two-car(+) households can pool their batteries for going on holidays etc.

I don't think it will happen though. It would be tricky to get the right size/ weight that most people can carry without making it tedious (wouldn't be fun swapping 18650s around). Any larger and people would need hoists or jacks, then the is the issue of how to quickly & easily secure these large battery packs...

Apple has a good thing here. They limit repair and parts to only those who they authorise, keeping parts off the second-hand market.

And why replace a cable when you can replace both boards, then maybe the cable too. They do seem very quick to recommend replacing major parts or to buy new. They could try the easy fixes (such as cables), I think people would rather risk a small fee before deciding if it is worth shelling out for more expensive components.

The was quite a while where iPlayer was covered by their law, there was another loophole where if your watching it on an untethered device (on a battery with wifi) that wasn't covered either, but I'm not sure now...

The whole law is antiquated, now you don't need them or their transmission equipment. I do believe that if they move to a subscription model they will lose many customers, especially those with Netflix etc (I don't even know if the aerial cable in my flat works or even own a tv, I use a 43" monitor if I do want to watch anything).

I recently found out that Bedbugs are still a thing (I thought they were largely eradicated). I also found out that I'm allergic to them, and While a mosquito will bite once of twice (until it finds blood), these guys leave a line of bites as they move around sampling your blood (my back, neck, and shoulders were covered in welts).

I generally avoid killing/ removing spiders (they also prey on moths, keeping clothes etc hole-free), wasps too to an extent (but they are still largely a pest).

The Bedbugs were quite easily eradicated with insecticide around and under the bed, but that's last a resort as it is toxic to virtually everything (including pets and humans), something I don't doubt as the smell is more irritating than Ammonia. I'd much rather use natural remedies (especially when you don't have to do anything), than strong chemicals that we don't truly understand the effects on the environment or the food chain.

I believe this is mainly down to the FAT16/ FAT32 filesystem on the SD cards. Those filesystems have never been particularly reliable, when those were the dominant hard drive formats, MANY users back then lost data (and backing up to floppy had its own set of issues).

This is why you have to unmount USB drives, if you pull the drive while data is still in cache would also create problems. The difference is when copying files to the drives, it's sequential, you may lose a file or two. When it's the OS using it as the main drive there are loads of write operations going on.

At least it's easier to add battery backup to a Pi then most other computers.

There's a fascinating documentary called: 'The Lost History of Cannabis'. It goes through how religion seems to be intertwined with cannabis. For instance the 'anointment oils'. How it probably wasn't Mer gifted by one of the Three Wise Men (I tend to agree).

Found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2p6qFT_Zjg

It's also safer than buying it off the streets (aside from dealing with gang members), there is no telling what you are buying (they probably don't know either).

While it's true that everyone mistrusts each other. Sellers are also competing with each other to offer the best products with the best prices, putting a huge amount of effort to build the best feedback ratings. A world away from gangs using extreme violence to increase turnover (you would think that factors into the priorities). I'd feel safer buying from DreamMarket than I would Ebay.

There is quite a big difference between the prescription Fentanyl patches and the crap coming out of China and co. It is actually a very effective pain medication for those who need it, I've taken it before and lived to tell the tale.

What poeple don't talk about is the damage that UNDER-prescription does, politicians (not doctors) are taking away what quality of life people do have left. People receiving pallative care are often being denied pain adiquate pain medication, I wouldn't call that civilised.

This opioid chrisis stems from doctors carelessly prescriping pain medication and patients (who haven't been educated), being just as careless. The term 'pain killer' has done a huge amount of damage, if you try to kill your pain, you're going to have problems (very fine line between no pain and high), the goel is to be able to function, simple things like be able to sleep.

I don't think Naloxone is helping matters, it provides a safety net allowing adicts to take ever higher doses.

AMD did have a huge amount of catching up to do after Bulldozer. One of the things that has been keeping Intel ahead is their fabrication has been going smoothly, generally ALWAYS ahead of what AMD had available to them. Here's the first article I hit (AMD loses on both idle and load): www.anandtech.com/show/11544/intel-skylake-ep-vs-amd-epyc-7000-cpu-battle-of-the-decade/22

Intel seems to be in a perfect storm, while AMD seems to have all their ducks lined up (architecture, Fabrication Process, clock speeds).

Still, exciting times! Intel has stagnated on quad-core enthusiast CPUs for a decade (Q6600 - 7700k), it's good to finally have some competition again.

There is a little confusion whether it is 40 lanes or feels like 40 lanes. PCIe is a serial interface so they only need an additional wire per lane, per direction. So it is feasible as CPUs generally have spare pins.

As DDR5 is coming out next year, that will mean a new socket, limiting the upgrade path for the CPU, RAM & Motherboard. Although, 16 cores ~4.5ghz shouldn't be a problem for the near future (maybe 5 years even). Same goes with the PCIe bandwidth.

Edit: Just done some checking, I appears the 3950X has 24 PCIe lanes (16+4+4), but they are twice as fast, so not far behind the current 2nd generation ThreadRipper!

They've not had the IPC of Intel for Sometime (I haven't owned an AMD CPU since the Athlon days, even though I was a fan of AMD as they were better value than Intel).

Where AMD does compete is thread-count. A higher number of slower cores did feel a few niches. Except... Many software vendors charge per core (a Windows Server License is limited to 16 cores), so fewer, faster-cores work out better value for most business users. Plus, power usage is a huge issue in data centres, again favouring Intel.

The biggest problem right now is virtual machines can't move (live migrate) from Intel to AMD hardware (and vice versa) without having to be restarted. So AMD is only really a viable option for new clusters, but I would think Intel is still nervous.

I think it's aimed at people who do specialised tasks such as video editing without the extra expense of moving to HEDT hardware.

Plus, these chips with two CCXs also has double the PCIe lanes 40! So a number of NVMe drives, GPUs, 10GbE etc... can run together without fighting over lanes (and that's without double bandwidth of PCIe 4.0).

It does still feel weired calling 16 core/ 32 thread CPU with 72MB of cache 'consumer'.

There's a huge difference between an exercise bike and the real thing. Sure you can add online gameplay, but it is a poor substitute.

I'm not sure how much staying power they have. More people seem to like the idea of excerise rather than the exercise itself. Maybe I'm missing something..

I'm surprised that they haven't expanded into rowing, seems like an even better fit. Personally, I think you're better off joining a gym and going to spin class if you don't have good roads near you.

Oh, and seeing that they have packages with bundled cycling shoes did make me cringe. That's when you need to go to a bike shop and get some that fit (cycling shoes are designed to be stiff so they don't 'wear in' to the same degree as other footwear.

Wow, I never knew/ expected MS to switch to Chromium. Given how much MS boasts about Edge's battery life over Chrome.

Hopefully Google leaves a workaround to enable ad-blocking. Otherwise, I will switch, it will be a bit of hassle, but I'll drop them none the less. No ads & lower power usage would be nice though.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/8/18300077/microsoft-edge-ch...