[Ed P]

Hammond clearly sets out that the cladding is banned everywhere and he believes it to be banned in the UK. He sets out two requirements for the inquiry pretty clearly.

In my view regardless whether he wants the job (fool if he wants that poisoned chalice), it is obvious that the public is in no mood for political obfuscation. Good for him that he saw the need for plain speech even if it results in jail for a lot of Tory chums in Chelsea.

[Ed P]

Use the Windows 10 disk manager and clean out all the crude including any upgrade files that could save as much as 20GB!

[Ed P]

RSB wrote:

Its just been on the radio that the cladding was more than likely banned in the UK.

Philip Hammond (no less) made that ‘helpful’ remark.

A synopsis of the Building Regs is on this link.

” Approved Document B of the Building Regulations for England and Wales, Section 2 of the Technical Handbook Scotland, and Technical Booklet Part E for Ireland all make reference to the requirements for the safe design of high-rise buildings. Approved Document B4, Section 12 states: “The external envelope of the building should not provide a medium for fire spread if it is likely to be a risk to health or safety. The use of combustible materials in the cladding system and extensive cavities may present such a risk in tall buildings.”

It seems perfectly clear to me, the insulation panels must be in full compliance with BR135 B, and the materials used should also be in full compliance.

The Beeb quoted that the insulation of this board comprises of polyethylene fibres. Assuming this report was accurate then I would have thought the material completely fails on two counts . First it is most definitely flammable, and second the use of flammable fibres will almost certainly give rise to a disasterous wicking effect that will accelerate the vertical propagation of the fire.

[Ed P]

RSB wrote:

and there is some strange sounds out there

Love FM??

What software did you use to hook it up?

[Ed P]

The Duke wrote:

Is this the old police scanners of old? Would be a little pointless around my way. But back home everyone had them in the 80/90s.

Far more sophisticated, and uses kit like old DVR sticks. As the term SDR means software defined radio it can do a very wide range of things. (See wiki) The most interesting is the potential to set up a very low power wireless mesh network as an Rx/Dx capability is inherent when used with a Pi.

[Ed P]

Not got around to it yet, but there is masses of info/how-tos for the raspberry pi. Just google “pi and sdr.”. I wonder how long it will be before the Government bans it.

[Ed P]

C# is ‘safe’ as it produces managed code, and yes it is object oriented but so are many other languages such as C++. The big downside to C# is that it ties you to the Microsoft environment.  C++ does not but is slightly harder to learn.

Python runs on anything, but is on its own when it comes to database and web manipulation. Like Java (more insecure) Python does not force object orientation but can be structured in this way.

If you are going for a specific job then C# is the way to go. Just bear in the back of your mind that managed code is secure but makes some tasks hard/impossible.

[Ed P]

If you can learn from videos this M$ course is highly recommended.

Microsoft puts out a whole lot of free stuff. Google on “c# microsoft tutorials”

You should of course be downloading the latest free C# tools. downloads

I’m honestly not sure that I would recommend learning C# to anyone as managed code comes with some huge downsides. It depends what you expect to get out of your upskilling. As I see SQL obn your list you may be better looking at Python or even C++.

[Ed P]

Dan, it is often drivers that cause the sort of problem you are seeing.

Intel mobo chipset and network drivers are often the ones that cause problems. They do not show the yellow flag in the Device Manager but nevertheless  cause update problems. If you have either Intel chipset or network cards I would recommend installing the Intel Update Advisor and take it from there.

The other problem areas are graphics cards – ditto on updating and vm drivers.

 

[Ed P]

Many of the Chi-phones are excellent value. Just three things to look out for in the short/long term.

a) Get a good root kit scanner and watch out for unwanted links being pushed at you. Kaspersky does a good scan. If you need to root to get rid of it that may or may not be a problem. So fat out of three Chi phones two had pups on board

b) Android updates can be very patchy

c) As soon as the battery starts to fade get a new one – battery replacement is sometimes hrd.

[Ed P]

Slight divert, but it does not warrant a full thread. Microsoft have just issued patches for XP, Windows Server 2003 and Vista! El Reg has the details

[Ed P]

Well at least the election revealed the complete sham behind Teresa May’s ‘strong and stable’ veneer.  It also reveals that she is incapable of negotiating her way out of a paper bag. Just three days of the DUP saying ‘these are our demands take it or leave it’, and she is about to completely cave in order to get her five year term.I’m not surprised that the DUP are smiling every day, the taste and smell of ‘pork’ must be overwhelming.

However, the realities are that unless she also caves into meeting Scottish and anti-Brexit MPs she will fail at the first confidence vote.

Looks like five years of torture for the Government and five years of hell for us.

[Ed P]

The tuners are cheapish. Personally I have no idea about Kodi. The XBox One is essentially a Windows 10 in a console box. However, the answer apparently a qualified yes, but it looks a bit of a cobble to me. link

I think you would need to do a bit of exploring on the Kodi forums or maybe Planeman could answer regarding using a Firestick in this way.

[Ed P]

The Maori had no bears to fend off, but they did have some pretty evil killer birds around until they ate them all!

“Haast’s eagles preyed on large, flightless bird species, including the moa, which was up to fifteen times the weight of the eagle. It is estimated to have attacked at speeds up to 80 km/h (50 mph), often seizing its prey’s pelvis with the talons of one foot and killing with a blow to the head or neck with the other.

Its size and weight (10-15 kilos) indicate a bodily striking force equivalent to a cinder block falling from the top of an eight-story building. Its large beak also could be used to rip into the internal organs of its prey and death then would have been caused by blood loss In the absence of other large predators or scavengers, a Haast’s eagle easily could have monopolised a single large kill over a number of days.“

[Ed P]

OK an off the wall suggestion. Buy a second-hand XBox One from CeX and add an XBox one Digital TV tuner. I will not get into the XBox/Playstation war but the XBox does make a good media streamer and PVR!

[Ed P]

Thanks for the answer Dave.

Steve you may want to wait to finalize your decision. Although the Ryzen looks very interesting it still has vm issues (problem for me) and graphics card issues that may be a problem for you. link

I’m in no hurry so I’ll wait, and maybe solve a couple of little issues for now just by spending money on a PCIe SSD solution.

[Ed P]

I suddenly cottoned on – I was using the ‘wrong’ search. The one in the black top bar does not work at all. it doesn’t matter what term I use. I’m not really sure what it is supposed to do.

The search in the Green bar works fine.

Sorry for the confusion!

[Ed P]

It might be a lot less aggro to go the route Dave is suggesting it certainly makes buying a compatible usb PVR stick a lot easier.

[Ed P]

The Duke wrote:

They should of built some British pryimids bob. If only the Poles came earlier we may of

They did, but made the mistake of building using earth, chalk and clay. e.g. Silbury Hill etc all of which now look a bit naff compared with stone. Maybe we should strip off the topsoil and show it how it was originally.

The archaeologists talk of these as places of religious significance – to me they are very like Maori Pas which were most definitely warlike and built to suppress surrounding inhabitants.

[Ed P]

Unfortunately a whole string of drivers were made obsolete by kernel changes. It is old kernels that cause problems and you lose quite a lot of security by not updating. Your best bet would be to air gap your old Maya box and put it on a different network. Dave could probably give you much better up to date advice on that.

There is a remote chance that you may be able to just add the drivers for your TV cards to a modern Mint. This link MIGHT help – take a look. As the man says this is a bit of a cobble that will need to be redone everytime Mint updates the kernel (Mint rarely does this between releases which is notr great for security but better than using Maya)

[Author]

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