[Ed P]

My post completely disappeared – the original post said I was about to go full fibre and wanted an alternate to BTs crappy kit. I found to my surprise that I had to have an approved VDSL modem/router. link

My big surprise was that TPLink is not approved! Approval is also required if you are using (say) Sky on a BT backbone.

Sorry my posts have got out of order, I have no idea what happened!

[Ed P]

I could not add a further edit, but I wanted to add this link to the rationale for requiring MCT tested kit.

link

[Ed P]

I may soon be getting a full fibre connection. In preparation I had a look at what options I would have for replacing the crappy equipment BT supply, and discovered that I should really use an ‘approved’ VDSL modem/router. (I suppose it makes a degree of sense in that unapproved kit has a slight chance of screwing things up.)

If all this is news to you as well, you may be interested in this list of approved kit. Incidentally if you (say) have Sky or heaven help you, TalkTalk sitting on a BT fibre line then you still need to take a look as they could in theory refuse support. (It is thankfully quite a long list – but no TPLink!)

link

[Ed P]

This Government is sitting on lots of things at the moment – including The Russia Report that shows that the Brexit vote was won with Russian money and Cummings (who apparently spent four years in Russia) appears to be tightly coupled into that can of worms. However they have found the certain way of ensuring that the report comes to nothing by putting incompetent Greyling in charge!

[Ed P]

The Scientists (like Matt Hancock) were only there to blame if things went wrong. All the key decisions such as stopping track, trace and isolate too early were political ones. (They started to run out of testing capacity and tried to make a virtue of it, by only testing people in hospital who pretty obviously had the disease and could be diagnosed with a simple lung ultrasound — ).

All this has been compounded by a Government of second rate Blow Hards with zero organisational ability, and a fire-proof  Political Advisor who fled the capital in a blue funk.

History will not be kind to this Government.

[edit] If Wales does go the way you say then the English border pubs will think that the glory days of the 1950s/60s have returned!

[Ed P]

Got your Beer Serving App yet Steve?

link

From your earlier rant I’d guess this is just another case of the Government forgetting to tell those who really matter. They really are an organisational shower – heaven help us when Brexit chaos strikes.

[Ed P]

I’m sure that everyone saw that my post was somewhat tongue in cheek, and that there are obviously other factors coming in to play that make religious gatherings somewhere that diseases fester.

It would be interesting to include other human activities and see if they had an impact. For example did going to football matches make people more susceptible to catching covid-19? Or are karaoke bars also places that are bad to visit?

[Ed P]

Obviously Covid-19 is the Devil’s Spawn as those without religion are less  likely to die from Covid-19 even after doing all the usual socio-economic adjustments.  Of course you could take the opposite tack and say that God is punishing all those full of religious cant! :scratch:

The raw ONS data can be found here,

“The risk of death involving COVID-19 is . . . males and females from the Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Sikh religious groups are at greater risk of a death involving COVID-19 compared with those identifying as Christian. Among Muslim males, the rate was 2.5 times greater than that for Christian males, while for females it was 1.9 times greater.”

Those with no religion are about 15% less likely to die than Christians – now I know why I survived February! :yahoo:

My guess is that religious dietary restriction is the biggest discriminatory factor rather than simple ethnicity. All the badly affected religions have severe dietary restrictions and tend to refrain from consuming shellfish or other foods high in zinc. Those of colour will also tend to have much lower levels of vitamin D. Not having deficiencies in these has been postulated to be a survival factor.

However next time the Mormons or Spanish Inquisition coming knocking on your door you will have the perfect riposte :yes: .

[Ed P]

This review of the Swiss-Covid tracing system  contains one criticism similar to that made wrt the NHSX proposed changes to the Apple-Google model. It would seem that Governments hate the idea of anyone having privacy.

“Users may be traced or identified by surveillance systems of third parties while using SwissCovid. ”

 

[Ed P]

Bob, I suspect that with the numbers of restaurants going belly up, finding good chefs may be the least of their problems.

[Ed P]

I happened to look at the newspaper rack while waiting in line at the Supermarket and nearly fell over backwards the Daily Mail was ranting about Covid on the front page and the incompetent Government they helped to elect. It even had a larger typeface than Dame Vera Lynn!

Poor Mushroom Matt – he may as well give up all his political ambitions and go back to being an economist right now. They will probably find a job for Dido Harding as Ambassador to Sudan or some other equally ‘nice’ far away place. (btw Sudan was always rated as the worst possible UK Ambassadorial posting – either a newbie or someone they wanted to lose/bury always had that slot.)

 

[Ed P]

There was an interview last night with the Brit involved in the development of the Google/Android app. He said that Germany and Switzerland had just started using it and already had a 60% sign-up. He also said the EU had agreed to use the unmodified Google/Android standard and any Brits coming into the EU would probably have to use their App if our App deviated.

He also revealed that he had written to the Government on 11 April to tell them that the NHSX app would never work with iPhones, and he essentially received a ‘run-away sonny’ from Dido Harding;’s group. He also said that the NHSX ‘improvements’ would mean that anyone could latch on to someone’s Bluetooth signal in a Shopping Mall and track them all over the Mall – sounds like yet another NHSX failure to me!

I suspect that when the journalists latch on to his interview they will be putting the incompetent Dido on the rack, and judging from last night’s performance she could crack and spill the beans.

[Ed P]

Well Dave, you were absolutely correct in forcasting that the NHSX Track & Trace app would not work, but I suppose with hindsight I should not have hoped for anything better with Dido Harding (COO of TalkTalk infamy) in charge.

[Ed P]

It may be your router  that is causing the problem. I have had major issues with BT Homehub routers doing some sort of sneaky update and needing power cycling before they would work correctly once more.

[Ed P]

The X570 mobos tend to be gamer models but the Asus ROG Tuf has dual PCIe4.0 NVMe sockets. It would be interesting to know if these could be configured as Raid Zero to debottleneck i/o even further.

A lot of quiet reading will be required over the next three months or so as the NVMe spec seems to be tightly coupled to the Ryzen gen number.

[Ed P]

I’m afraid I cannot help, but looking at your spec what you really want is a custom keyboard as the rest is not that out of the ordinary.

If you are happy to mainly use the machine on a desk/table then I’d suggest just find a suitable keyboard and plug it in.  Most laptops work quite happily with an external usb or wireless keyboard. Of course this solution is neither portable ot suitable for use on your lap.

[Ed P]

I’d dispute that,. Studies have shown that simple masks (let alone PM2.5 pollen grain/pollution masks) are more effective than increasing social distancing from one to two metres. However everyone has to wear them as the main benefit comes from cutting transmission FROM infected asymptomatic wearers, so even putting a smile on your face helps!

link

Interestingly Australia reported that social distancing , mask wearing and vaccination  seemed to have substantially reduced their normal seasonal flu epidemic. Its obviously impossible to separate the value of each anti-covid measure in cutting down flu

However, an earlier study showed that even simple masks cut flu transmission, (flu is normally carried in fine aerosols rather than the larger particles associated with covid.)

link

[Ed P]

The US (and UK) are currently accidentally providing the opportunity for huge Petr–dish experiments into what does or does not matter with respect to spreading covid-19. One intersting ‘experiment’ took place in Missouri in which zero social distance (infected hairdressers) was offset by the infected people wering masks. No cases have so far been reported in their 140 customers.

I suspect we may well see BoJo doing a Santa Claus act to further bury talk about Cumming’s flight from London, and announce that social distancing can be cut to one metre if everyone masks when outside their houses, as mask wearing more than offsets reduced social distancing.

I shall then take great pleasure in walking around with a smile on my face.

(Etsy Face Mask)

[Ed P]

In theory the latest X570 chipset for the Ryzen 3000 series allows up to four NVMe devices. But again that would be down to the mobo manufacturer.

[Ed P]

Tippon wrote:

Ed P wrote:

supposedly all AM4 mobos have two NVMe slots

Unless I’ve misunderstood, mine only has one slot: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/B450M-PRO-VDH-MAX/Specification

Hence my ‘supposedly’ comment. I picked up the original M2 quote from a Reddit thread:

“Most AM4 Motherboards shown at CES (at least the ones using X370 and B350 chipsets) were configured with 2 M.2 Slots:”

My guess is that the AM4 spec allows for two slots but of course the mobo manufacturers can pare down the peripherals to save money.

The MSI X370 has two slots for example.  However the devil is in the detail as some M2 slots only support the slower PCIe2 storage devices.

I think I am going to have to read a lot of detailed spec sheets!

 

[Author]

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