[Ed P]

Pi-Top is the full ‘laptop’ setup for a Pi. The Pi-400 is a bit like the old Commodore 64. i.e. the processor sits within a keyboard. The keyboard has a USB3 connector which you can use to attach an external SSD and use that for booting etc. Unfortunately to stick the SSD neatly inside the keyboard needs some major dentistry to the insides of the keyboard and afaik there is no easy way of making an internal connection between the SSD and Pi CPU. This link shows how someone cobbled together an SSD and Pi-400.

Attaching a small standalone hdmi screen to such a setup is relatively cheap and easy but eliminating the rats nest of wires is unfortunately the difficult bit.

I went in a very different direction, and used a small Geekworm X825-C8 enclosure to hold the Pi and SSD. This eliminated the messy SSD link, but left me having to add keyboard and mouse wiring, and of course a monitor. As the Pi setup was not meant to be portable the solution was the easy one of plugging it into my main monitor which easily switches sources and using a switchable keyboard and mouse. (both the keyboard and mouse have switchable Bluetooth or WiFi inputs and I just assigned wireless to the Pi as Pi4 Bluetooth can be very erratic)

[Ed P]

Friends of mine swear by Turkish dentistry.

it costs around 25% of UK prices for cosmetic dentistry. The results are often great but one friend chose to have implants to give him an ultra-bright smile and it looks too artificial for words. His wife was less extreme and the results look like a really nice natural Hollywood smile. The only problem they experienced was that the normal 3-4 month healing delay between pinning and implant insertion was quadrupled by UK Covid restrictions!

[Ed P]

keith with the teef wrote:

my new 32″ screen is because it fills more of your vision the ability to play games better is enhanced

The only problem with VR is that people wearing them  look like dorks to others.  Maybe something like this Samsung plus some CPU peripheral priority is really the way to go!

[Ed P]

By the way, apparently the Apple M3 hobbled itself somewhat by having a too small a buffer size between CPU and GPU, so cache is probably the key factor.

[Ed P]

This PC World article suggests that anything above 90Hz is a waste of money, except perhaps in the area of VR headsets, but even that that reads to be a little iffy. Unless you are a pro gamer 60Hz is apparently enough .

Interestingly, it appears that perhaps even 30Hz is enough for the central 40% of vision as it is only on the periphery of the eye that movement detection really kicks in. If true this implies that the CPU need only really shift the bits at high rate for about 60% of the frame buffer.

[Ed P]

SD cards are ‘OK’, but if you plan to use the Pi on a frequent basis then it could pay to make sure that you have a full backup SD card somewhere handy. I normally use Win32DiskImager as I find it better than the Linux tools. I use this to make a copy of the working SD card and save it on my PC, then use the PC version as a master to put it on SD cards or other media.

Unfortunately unless they have redesigned the Pi400 it looks like the better option of sticking in a cheap SSD is rather messy and has to be via the usb3 port.

[Ed P]

Edits time-out too quickly! I wanted to add the following comment:

On the other hand I have seen NO reports of Ukraine mounting meaningful investigations into the reports of war crimes against Russian POWs.  If that gets swept under the carpet, I for one will start discounting stories of Russian war crimes as being similar in ilk. War is horrible, and fear, adrenaline and lust need to be countered and constrained by meaningful official actions otherwise things too quickly descend into bestiality.

[Ed P]

Putin may know how to handle politics within Russia, but he could not have done a worse job of mismanaging Russia’s place on the world stage. The US have goaded him into a situation where he looks like losing his western buffers, even if he wins enough in Ukraine to satisfy his Russian audience.

Even Russia’s Italian and French political allies are keeping fairly quiet, and I have heard nothing of any substance from Corbyn in the UK other than him equating Russian aggression with that of NATO!  Only Hungary’s fairly fascist government distances itself away from European sanctions (mainly I think due to all the money it makes through Russian gas transiting its borders.) On the world stage other than the usual fellow travelers only India stands out by not condemning Russia. (some pundits say that India has sold-out to cheap Russian oil).

[Ed P]

I obviously do not know, but I’d guess they would use a similar mechanism to the way they blocked RT for a while. (looks like they have removed the block as you can now get through to rt.com). Previously if you tried to see what RT was saying the site came up with a message that seemed to imply that the DNS link was unavailable. I cannot remember the wording but it was unusually polite saying something like ‘the server could not be reached’ (not a 404).

While I am not taken in by RTs propaganda I find it a useful foil against the propaganda the Beeb feeds, and I feel the truth of the situation is somewhere between the two. e.g. the RT report that Bojo told Zelensky to keep fighting until offered a better deal has a ring of truth and pragmatism to it.

 

[Ed P]

Correction, I misread the Los Alamos paper. Gold was not a by-product, it was actually one of the neutron targets that produced charged particles.

[Ed P]

You have to remember that the people in the Iter/Tokamak projects are fighting for their research grants and this makes them more likely to stretch points to make them look more favourable. That said, Sabine is just reiterating what every Engineer knew, and why I, as an Engineer, favour the ‘cold’ approaches of NASA/Cold Fusion.

Assuming these can be made to work these have a much higher likelihood of Qout >> Qin where Qin is the total energy input. In the case of the NASA scheme a  ‘catalyst’ is squashing the atoms together rather than plasmas and huge magnets.

Sabine is correct in stating that producing electricity from heat is a wasteful process, however the overall efficiency can be raised substantially if the ‘waste’ heat is used for other ways such as district domestic heating, or pre-heat for industrial processes etc. Even fish farms benefit if the water is a bit warmer.

In addition there is some limited research on the lines of the Aussie experiment where the Fusion neutrons are used to directly cause ionisation. The research is limited in this area but one example is the production of charged particles through the neutron bombardment of beryllium, which also produces gold as a by-product. I suspect however that this is more applicable to the ‘Cold’ routes rather than ITER-type systems.

[Ed P]

Just a thought, the Kilns are a huge part of the battery load. Swapping them to bottled gas would bring his battery needs down to normal domestic levels. As I understand from my daughter-in-law, there are some pluses in having a kiln that can give a reducing atmosphere. Not my area of expertise but I believe some glazes benefit. Maybe Les can give some more convincing arguments of gas vs electric kilns.

[Ed P]

Lead-Acid batteries are simple, and individually cheaper than Li-ion batteries, but they demand a LOT of attention. They are also MUCH larger in size and weight for the same capacity, and possibly more costly to install giving all the strapping etc. If your mate is an ex-submariner then these should not be issues (except possibly size).

Li-ion batteries are getting cheaper, and one option to look out for are repurposed batteries ex (say) crashed EVs or early hybrids. Repurposing EV batteries to power homes and buildings is a growing area of business but it has its own set of HSE, fire and environmental issues. As you can guess, it is a very new and specialized area of work with not too many players. So the big problem is to find a player in Australia. I even found it hard to find one in the UK!  Background Link

Off-topic, but if you read the link, the main reason given for replacing a hybrid/EV battery is the number of recharge cycles, so if you are in the market for a second hand car in this range then you should be willing to pay a bit extra for low mileage vehicles.

 

[Ed P]

Yet another reason to check if a large proportion of Boeings are used by your chosen airline (e.g. Ryanair). Luckily this incident ended safely, but a recent  777-300 flying from New York to Paris experienced some scary moments (a ‘serious incident’) when it was coming into land.  The crew had to take emergency action as the plane was fighting against the pilot’s control and not following their commands. https://avherald.com/h?article=4f700fec

[Ed P]

The Government (NCSC) has issued some sensible nuanced guidance on the use of Kaspersky A/V. It basically says that if your Industry is Nationally Sensitive then stop using Kaspersky et al. Otherwise carry on, but be aware that security updates might get blocked if the Government decides to widen sanctions.

[Ed P]

I agree with your comments with respect to the BBC – definitely tailored news and by no means impartial. I now tend to look for my Ukrainian news in foreign English language sites such as The South China Morning Post, Der Spiegel, and even Pravda to try and navigate my way through the morass of propaganda.

This Der Spiegel article is a good balance between the extremes. It covers Trostyanets the first Ukrainian town to fall to the Russian invasion, the occupation and the aftermath. From this it can be seen that while the BBC is generally factual, its emphasis is biased.

Reading the German account, the Russian invaders were a disorganized rabble, who had no real idea of what they were trying to do.  The Ukrainians organized a quick partisan resistance that spied on and sniped at the Russian soldiers. In response the Russians became ever more brutal in their anti-partisan responses, and this was the root cause of many civilian killings. Even the possession of a mobile phone could be cause for death as the phone could be calling in a drone strike as obviously was the case in the death of one railway worker.

I’m not excusing Russian actions, but they become somewhat understandable in the context of every civilian being a potential threat to their lives.

There are no excuses for what Russian troops did, and Russia should have handled such threats far more carefully and looked to the lessons of British actions in the Malay uprising (contain and separate). Instead they reverted back to their actions against Cossacks and others in the Second World War.

It now appears clear that Ukrainian soldiers have also committed atrocities on Russian soldiers. What I hope now is that we see a clear and distinct difference in official responses to those who break the Rules of War. If the Ukrainian Government fails to act then they will be no better than Putin’s mob.

[Ed P]

My sympathies Les. As you so vividly point out there are two sides to every argument, and normally a compromise would be reached that would be hated by both sides. I hope they find this solution soon.

Unfortunately I think that all this talk about war crimes is going to harm that process. A War Crime trial is never going to happen because of the Russian veto,  just like Blair, Straw and Bush were never indicted for their ‘Iraq regime change’ war crimes because of the US/UK veto. (For clarity I am not referring to any alleged behavior of any armed services, but only the illegal declaration of War).

 

[Ed P]

Correction that should be £20000 NLAWS

[Ed P]

This horrible war drags on with no apparent end in sight. I did however hear a glimmer of hope on the radio today. Rather than the pro-Ukrainian reports that are normal Beeb fodder, this report came from the Donbas and featured a short interview with some women sheltering in their bunkers. Rather than condemning the Russians these women were blaming Zelensky for the war. I just wonder if we are being ‘prepared’ for a settlement in which the Donbas will be traded for peace, and give Putin his necessary ‘victory’ .

This war has changed the world. One aspect that I hope we learn is the asymmetrical nature of modern (non-nuclear) warfare. £2000 British NLAWS are devastating million dollar T72s, and the infantryman is king of the battlefield. Even in the air, cheap Turkish drones are providing the strike capabilities of US drones costing ten times as much, and one percent of the price of a strike aircraft that would not dare to go in the same airspace and would not be able to loiter for 20 hours waiting for a target.

[Ed P]

Just to add a Devil’s Advocate for your decision. The following comes from a NAS/Cloud naysayer.

https://www.inputmag.com/guides/you-dont-need-a-nas

[Author]

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