[Ed P]

I’m hoping it is just a carp solder joint or an unintentional short. However before I risk destroying the appearance of quite a nice looking boombox, I just needed a bit of reassurance that such troubleshooting is possible.

[Ed P]

Whether it is or isn’t undemocratic, the Beeb seem to have a policy of never giving any support/publicity to right-wing groups. However his case features in several newspaper articles so there is no D-notice on this. As I know nothing about him or any cases he has been involved with I will refrain from any further comment.

[Ed P]

If you read the link I gave it says that parking issues are excessive if you use a WD drive as an OS drive. Just use it for data and put a cheap 128GB SSD on for the OS. It parks a lot as it read/writes the swop space then parks excessively  when it is used for the OS/swop. Alternately use wdidle3 and stop the ‘greenie’ noisy spin up/spin down park cycle.

[Ed P]

Having listened to the noises I would agree with Richard, but also WD have had a very bad reputation for excessive parking that causes drive wear at the parking point. (I believe the ‘Blacks’ are particularly bad, and can cause the early failures that dwynnehugh has experienced in the past). If you want to look into it Google for wdidle3.

[Ed P]

Clicking can also mean a re-read of data. If the tests turn out OK, try doing a simple chkdsk on it. You may have cross-linked or simply a few bad sectors. Spinrite fixes such non-mechanical read problems but it is quite expensive unless you already have a copy.

[Ed P]

If you do not like Paragon, Dave did a lot of testing of backup options: here

[Ed P]

April 10 KB4093112 failed on a ‘simple’ Windows 10 VM.

M$ quality control of updates is starting to get laughable. A bug-fix is buggy!

[Ed P]

Easy solution – stop acting like a world power when we are NOT! Start acting like Sweden, make/take money from anyone.

[Ed P]

I’m very happy with the use of my purchase with a Pi 3B. It completely eliminated the SD card weak spot.

I just hope that the Raspberry Pi foundation takes a leaf out of the Firefly’s spec list and includes USB3 or an SSD socket in the Pi4.

[Ed P]

I think in this example Alexa showed both the strength (and weakness) of continuously learning AI driven applications. Alexa has the ability to learn new skills during use, and when it finds itself stumped it can go out and add additional skills. link. Although this requires human assent, it also means that a human has to anticipate the upsides and downsides of using the skill in question. I suspect that the victim of the blabbing had at some stage allowed calls to be automatically made in response to a set of spoken comments.

When I had a hand in evaluating the use of primitive AI tools (twenty-odd years ago), the big drawback was documenting WHY AI generated a certain outcome and why just a small input perturbation flipped the result. AFAIK AI has not progressed too far since then  in self-auditing its decision-making process. Until this happens AI will always have the ability to both shock and delight.

Averting any problems requires knowledge, imagination and application of logic by the user. This in turn means that general public tool-sets such as Alexa will always come with potential problems for the unwary or technically illiterate. I therefore anticipate seeing stories of unwitting revelations by UK Ministers in the not too distant future!?

[Ed P]

Use them when it suits ourselves, DUMP them when it doesn’t. We should take a leaf out of the USA’s play book.

[Ed P]

Words are inadequate – I just wish you all the necessary strength and compassion to carry you through this trial.

[Ed P]

Generally speaking M$ does not ‘DO’ drivers they just give their WHQL approval to manufacturers drivers and uses these for updates. I have no idea why the two different isos behave differently but it may be that the May 2018 download is a little bit corrupt. Try making a new 1803 iso. link

[Ed P]

Dave has more experience with this, but it was my understanding that changing the mobo/cpu was one step too far and M$ deem it to be a ‘new’ PC. That said, given the circumstances you could go for John’s sticker with a clear conscience, and save yourself a lot of messing about.

The change in hardware probably accounts for Windows ‘hanging’.

[Ed P]

This thread became a little gloomy, so I thought it may be nice to interject a lighter note without diverting too far off the course of hospitals etc.

Today my wife and I took a train to go shopping (parking costs ruin car economics in this area), so my wife picked up a paper-back to read on the train. The whole journey was then interrupted by her giggling and LOLs. The paperback that had her in fits of laughter was:

“This is going to hurt” Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay.

I sneaked a peek at the book and the following is a short extract from writings that generally resemble the zany but slightly black humour of Tom Sharp (Porterhouse Blues).

“I noticed that every patient in the ward has a pulse of 60 recorded in the observation chart, so I surreptitiously inspect the Healthcare Assistant’s measuring technique. He feels the patient’s pulse, looks at his watch and meticulously counts the number of seconds per minute”

Enjoy – but don’t burst any stitches!

[Ed P]

I once mortally offended my wife’s Bank Manager. I picked up the phone and a lady with a VERY broad (probably lowland) Scottish accent spoke to me. I can honestly say I could only pick out one word in ten, so I apologised and asked if it would be possible for an native English-speaking person to talk to me!

[Ed P]

Nowhere near as much an age-gap challenge as 64 years old Brigitte Macron. All things considered she is quite a good looking Granny! link

[Ed P]

Obviously those with very high sodium levels may need to take medical advice first. As a matter of interest there are still many who think the jury is still out on dietary sodium and its impact on long-term health. link

The earlier link does not contain bicarb dosage, but if it assumed that it refers to an average US soda water, this is about a half teaspoon of bicarb in a glass of water (i.e about 2.5 grams of bicarb or 0.9 grms of Na+)

As an example of apparent anomalies, Miso is a very salty food, yet it actually has no discernable impact on blood pressure when consumed on a regular basis. It does however lower the heart rate. link

All that said Milk of Magnesia may have other benefits as Brits seem to be fairly deficient in magnesium, but I guess it depends whether the observed effects are due to pH or Na+.

[Ed P]

Just as a matter of record Richard NOx wasn’t the big problem with the yellow London smogs – it was SOx. The clean air act concentrated on moves towards ‘clean’ coal which in essence pushed us towards using lower sulfur coal and scrubbers at the CEGB plants. It worked, but the reduction in SO2 brought black spot to roses and had the longer term unintended consequence of bringing warmer drier summers. (SO2 aerosols promote cloud formation).

[Ed P]

Those with autoimmune problems, be they hay fever or arthritis may find this baking soda article interesting. Perhaps a morning soda before lunch may be a good idea!

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