[Ed P]

The FT seem to have pay-walled my link, so here is a link to the original research. link

A summary of findings is towards the end.

“… in our investigations of Twitter conversations associated with highly automated accounts we found little evidence of links to Russian sources. On examining a sample of YouTube links tweeted by Twitter users during the referendum we again found little evidence of Russian content . . .!

There were however a very large number of other (presumably non-Russian) automated accounts ) that generated a lot of Twitter traffic, Maybe the Trumper was involved, as the Republicans make no secret of their dislike of the EU !!!
.

[Ed P]

A classic problem I’m afraid. The ‘easy’ way is to remove the lot but some of your old games may barf and demand re installation. (see link).

Be very aware that some of the early versions such as 2005 have some really major security problems.

 

[Ed P]

Dave – can you upgrade from Home with it without a fresh restart?

 

[Ed P]

Wheels-Of-Fire wrote:

Ed I have just read your post about Windows update causing problems with your CCTV recordings. Have you tried disabling the update service wuauserv ? I have heard that this will stop all updates even on W10 home. I have not tried it myself though so if it works let me know

Disabling the service stops MOST updates but M$ ‘security’ updates do their own not so sweet thing as they do not use the update service.

I understand WHY M$ want to force better practices on everyone, but their one size fits all policy is a major PITA. A warning and two weeks notice of an enforced update would have been ok and given time to get organised. (that delay would cover most vacations)

[Ed P]

We are extremely fortunate to have both a traditional butchers and an excellent Saturday market for veg, that plus a cold garage does us for the Saturday/Sunday storage. The kids all arrive on Boxing Day which is when a rib roast of Rudolph will be devoured!

Tofu stir fry on Christmas Day – just to balance the diet and leave plenty of room for the mulled wine and mead.

[Ed P]

Good luck Bob,

as said by others there are a variety of causes, with some being almost trivial in the required treatment – drink lots of water. You were however wise to draw it to the attention of your Doctor, but beware some tests such as that for Prostate problems can generate false positives because of a ‘simple’ infection. As the old saying goes – keep your pecker up, things may well be a lot better than you fear.

[Ed P]

I have found through bitter experience that soldering gets easy if you use the right kit (a temperature controlled solder station) good flux and the right temperature setting for the solder type being used. Soldering is a piece of pudding if you use the frowned upon lead solder!

edit – regular cleaning during use of the soldering iron tip is also a must (the brass pan scraper things are the best cleaners ). Practice helps too!

[Ed P]

I can understand not running a high amp power cable OVER a path, but surely they would let you ‘mole’ a cable duct UNDER the path? Probably the installer did not want to know as he may have to do everything within a Government set budget.

I’m interested as my next car may well be a ‘plug’ provided that I can integrate its battery with the house solar pv set-up. (At the moment auto companies are ‘iffy’ over this due to battery manufacturers warranty doubts).

[Ed P]

Drezha are you a ‘registered installer’ as defined under the Government Scheme, if not I can’t see how you would get a grant anyway.☹

[Ed P]

Steve, be very careful about positioning anything with a screen in your car. As the law stands, a badly positioned screen is a very serious road traffic offence and could result in a whole string of charges. see link

Personally I think the TV part of the law is badly out of date as it prevents one mounting a sensor equipped  dash cam to act as a very wide angle rear view mirror. But why should I be surprised that our laws struggle to keep up with technology.

[Ed P]

I’ll just post a few links that sum up the mess in I think a factual way (but some are open to further interpretation and are somewhat contradictory).

The most important is an FT Article. Note especially the piece on Human Rights and the Good Friday Agreement.

Second what the Irish believe are firm commitments by May. RTE link

The first link highlights that the UK can never abrogate the Human Rights Act or the primacy of the EU based court. (The Daily Mail’s prime target that they always wrongly  associate with the EU)

The second link highlights the commitment to the EU Common Travel Area. Once a person is in Eire the UK is wide open for someone to come into the UK and ‘disappear’.

The Irish Government have a different view on what was agreed as they include ‘Full Alignment’ with the EU Customs Union come what may. (Irish News link)

Put whatever spin you like on these reports but I come out with it being a glorious mess and we find ourselves on a path that with 20:20 hindsight we would have been better advised to not follow.

[Ed P]

I do not think it offers anything over the 2-in-1  detachable Lenovo laptop that my wife uses. In fact it probably offers less, as you cannot lose the weight of the cased keyboard.

[Ed P]

BL sorry I offended you, by saying a ‘few’ people I meant it – just a few but very vocal people on the far right voted in that way for those obviously jingoistic reasons. Farage played up to this audience with his infamous UKIP posters so I don’t feel too badly about resurfacing this aspect. However, those few were probably enough to tip the balance of the whole referendum based on UKIP’s percentage standing at that time. (Incidentally I agree that immigration was not a socialist versus conservative issue, if you look at the exit polls it was the typically socialist areas that were the strongest supporters of Brexit.)

I’m also sorry to push it further, but controlled immigration with an open Irish/Ulster border – how exactly is that going to work? Believe it or not, that is not a troll but an honest question, as the DUP have firmly ruled out any additional border between Ulster and the rest of the UK. Ulster and (say) England have to be treated in exactly the same way according to May’s commitments.

That plus my point on EU regs makes me question exactly what is going to be accomplished? I suspect a few politicians are starting to ponder this self-same question and how to wriggle out of the political mess they have made. I just hope for once that they put the country ahead of their own backsides. Otherwise I fear we will pay billions and finish with far less than we started with.

If anyone can point to the flaws in my assumptions I’d love to hear them as this whole mess is starting to make me concerned for my offspring’s futures.

[Ed P]

Drezha wrote:

I thought I was running in a headless mode for a server only and no X server, but I’ll check in to that over the weekend. I only access it via SSH anyhow. Resilo Sync is running on it with storage to a USB and that’s working fine. If it was overheating, surely it would effect all processes rather than close the offending program?

You are probably correct unless the overheating is in the read/write area, that is why I threw in the comment about a metal encased usb stick for booting. If you are using an SSD forget my comment.

When you say ‘close’ is it ‘close’ or unresponsive/locked. You can check its status if not locked using ‘top’. If it is not locked then I suspect it is the stupid screen blanker. If you are running vnc or the like the gui is there whether you want it or not. If you are just in ssh I do not know but I still suspect the stupid ‘blanker’ as it seems to cut out all comms. Suck it and see by trying the xscreensaver fix (I think ‘x’ has to be running even in headless mode as it is core to many kernel i/o processes)

[Ed P]

I tend to agree with Dave’s point there will be some sort of deal, but whether it achieves ANY of the Brexiteers aims seems to me to be unlikely. As many predicted, the dividing line (not border) between Ulster & Eire makes Brexit a completely impractical ideal unless we want to return to ‘Bloody Sunday’ days, and I cannot honestly see anyone except a lunatic wanting to go down that path. May has basically committed her parliament to both the customs’s union and full common market with all the rules & regs (plus human rights, digital alignment, EU laws etc) that this implies. Brussels wins, all we now have to find out is just how much we pay.

As I said at the start I really do not understand what is going on, and I suspect few if any can enlighten me, but if they can I’d welcome them doing so.

This all leads me to believe that we are going to be engaged in eighteen months of futile political masturbation, with all the political participants carrying the epithet that goes along with it.

[Ed P]

Damn – just lost my much longer response by navigating away!

Try the following:

Disable the extremely stupid default screen blanking. see Pi Forum.  The only cure that worked for me was the one given in the last response to install and disable xscreensaver!

Eliminate overheating by adding heat sinks and fans.

If your program has a lot of i/o use a usb boot with a metal encased usb stick. I had to superglue a heat sink to this as the stick was running painfully hot.

[Ed P]

While normally I have no problem in using the automated update system, it is a disaster if Windows is used for 24/7 security purposes. One recent such roll-up on Windows Home totally stuffed a week’s cctv recordings. If you have the same problem in letting Windows update run rampant you can simply zap the Windows Update Service afaik this is an all or nothing nuclear option so do NOT use it unless you are willing to take full responsibility in turning updates on or off. (there is no fine-grained control). This does NOT turn off security updates so unfortunately my security system can still be zapped by ‘security’ updates.

I think if I still can an unacceptable number of problems I am going to have to somehow install Windows 7 or move to a Linux setup (not a trivial move unfortunately as I would have to re-roll my security system).

[Ed P]

‘Daughters friend is from Singapore, it’s the first real snow she’s ever experienced.’

Corrected – Singapore is a retail wonderland and spends a fortune on Christmas attractions – dancing in the snow is almost passé. Link

 

[Ed P]

Open the File Explorer Window (click on any folder or drive icon), in the top ribbon bar go to ”View’ then ‘Options’, then there is a drop down for you to select ‘ Change Folder & Search Options’, then ‘View’ you may need to open ‘Advanced Settings’ (I didn’t need to). In that list you will see a click box for ‘launch folder windows as a separate process’. If you have never fiddled with folder search then it is probably best if you just click ‘Restore Defaults’.

[Ed P]

Problem with DAB is that it does not live up to its promise of full national coverage. It remains terrible in many parts of the UK. Where it is good it is very very good but where it is bad it is appalling or non-existent. link

Coverage is worse than shown on the map. I live in a average good area according to the map, in reality I need a full roof-top mounted dab aerial to get anything!

[Author]

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