[Ed P]

I guess others have seen the reports in El Reg and other places that the South Koreans have taken a massive step towards Fusion power with a fusing plasma that stayed stable for 20 seconds/

Elsewhere I read that progress beyond this is a major engineering problem as one of the constraints that limited the duration of the run was that it became too hot.

Apparently you cannot just stick cooling coils into the fusion reactor as this would almost certainly make it impossible to maintain a stable plasma.  This is a double-edged problem as not only is it necessary to prolong the period of stable plasma, from a practical standpoint the energy/heat has to be extracted in order to generate any usable electricity.

Bottom line do not count on fusion power in our life-times.

[Ed P]

I’m a Republican, but I’m sad that she did not make her century. She tried hard to show that the monarchy still had some relevance in the modern world. While I do not think she succeeded, at least she wasn’t guilty of always putting her foot in her mouth unlike her husband and sons.

Its the end of an era, but I hope that the usual period of Royal Mourning does not interfere with the urgent problems that Truss & Co need to address..

[Ed P]

I would guess the easiest way of automating usage would be to use IFTTT on this total generation page.

[Ed P]

On our setup (which is minus the battery management system for now), I can just enter the IP address of the inverter (actually the total micro-inverter’s consolidated output), and that gives me a web page that updates every five minutes or on demand.

The web page itself is fairly basic but does allow you to grab current generation, and see if there is any problem with the panels.

[Ed P]

Drezha, if you have a long term plan to install a battery hold off on spending too much on any generation kit as the battery management system has more data output than you will know how to put to use.

I assume your  solar installation has a generation meter. This may have an Internet connection which will enable you to grab some basic data.

[Ed P]

Weather patterns seem to be very susceptible to ground contours.  When I lived in the South-Wales/Gloucestershire area it was very noticeable the way that bad weather seemed to follow the Severn valley, Ditto the M4 corridor often has different weather on the north from the south!

[Ed P]

Our e-Niro is going in for its first 12 month service. So far both SWMBO and I are very pleased with the car.  It gives a very pleasant drive with lots of reserve power if needed.

 

We have only had one minor problem with the car during the first year. The Android powered central control hub went scatty and once triggered, started displaying the rear-view camera picture continuously. It needed a car power on-off to reset it which was a bit of a pain as it takes maybe ten seconds to go through this cycle.  Although this situation gives a much better rear view coverage than the rear view mirror, the idiot law-makers classify it as a TV and it is illegal to drive with it on in the UK! So it needed fixing pdq. (Apparently a known issue)

[Ed P]

“It’s kept me interested the last few days… so I can set things to turn on when it’s producing most power.”

That is my wife’s favorite occupation so not one for automation. However to take full advantage of it you really need a battery, otherwise you are guessing at the size and speed of clouds!  Unfortunately our battery is still away for inspection/replacement. If you do decide to install a battery give LG a miss, their customer service/ response is appalling.

 

[Ed P]

Compressed drive?

Incidentally the easiest and most secure way of permanently  erasing a drive is to do a quick format then ‘kill’ it with a pair of side-cutters. Just cut the small data loom in a couple of places and remove it. Only a very determined and highly skilled hacker would be able to access your data!

[Ed P]

I picked up a Beelink for my wife. They give excellent tech support (I was adding an extra SSD and had a minor problem). The little box runs fast and cool and SWMBO is very happy with it.

[Ed P]

The ‘brouter’ app has a few little gimmicks that make it more than just a routing map. Its use of OpenStreetMap means that it is possible to switch on Hiking trails, it also works out how much energy/km will be burnt for each route section and a nice little route elevation pop-up.

If I did not confine my walking to canal tow-paths I’d probably be tempted to use the ‘energy burn’ in reverse and look for the routes that offered less of a cardiac challenge!

The route below is one I used to cycle as a teenager – it would probably kill me now!

[Ed P]

Unfortunately Labour have Keir Starmer as leader instead of Andy Burnham.

[Ed P]

Just to expand on this a little. Graphical AI programs need zillions of labelled images to use as training datasets.

As an aside this is the key area where hidden racial and gender bias comes into play. As an exaggerated example, if a Police criminal dataset has a disproportionate number of green people labelled as criminals, it is highly likely that all green people will then be labelled as potentially suspicious on Police CCTVs.  Hidden bias goes further than this as it has been found that the AI frequently uses texture rather than object boundaries or other humanly obvious characteristics. This could mean that all green people with acne could be doubly suspicious in such an imaginary police computer system!  The nasty side of AI is that currently AI does not have to explain which characteristics are most relevant too its classifications. (It is actually quite a difficult and laborious task to find this out.)

But back to topic – the 2.3 billion web image dataset initially used in Stable Diffusion is obviously too large for any single human to review, but a 12 million subset  has been grabbed and can be explored by you.

This link gives some details on how you can waste a couple of days viewing some of these images!

 

 

[Ed P]

I guess I could partially answer my own question in that many politicians, such as that master of dissembling TBLiar, first train as lawyers. It should not be forgotten  that criminal defence lawyers basically have to bend the truth and omit opposing facts in order to present the best case for their client even if they suspect the guilt of their client..

Perhaps one could, or should object that prosecuting lawyers are an exception, to which I would respond how often does such a lawyer point out any mitigating facts. For example  in DNA cases of (say) ten million to one against something happening prosecuting lawyers never  point out that you could expect six+ people in the UK to fit the bill. The prosecution would expect the defending lawyers to raise that particular objection.

In other words, dissembling and misleading are an inherent part of their training that they never manage to put on one side. Perhaps that is a good argument for saying that people with law degrees should be barred from ever standing for parliament!

[Ed P]

It would be fair to say that the C++ code reflected the state of the 2005 Unreal engine. When I look at the capabilities of Unreal today the numbers of programmers could well go down for an isometric or closed world games but go through the roof for procedural Open Worlds or ones with AI driven NPCs and opponents.

I’m also not so sure that C++ should be the language of choice for game development. Imo C++ suffers from bloat and overhead slowdown when it comes to handling exceptions, and C would be a better choice. I fully accept that C++ handles reusable code and documentation a lot better and is almost universally used for Game Engine Development, but only a masochist would start game development by writing their own game engine!

[Ed P]

You need to start a new thread on ‘The benefits of Brexit’ and see what response you get on this forum.

Assuming of course if you can find ANY actual benefits after two years of real Brexit in order to start off the thread!!!

[Ed P]

Apparently nVidia has a surplus of RTX-3000 chips and is reducing their price in order to shift them before the 4000 comes out.

“Jensen Huang said during the company’s Q2 2023 earnings call yesterday that the company is dealing with “excess inventory” of RTX 3000-series GPUs ahead of its next-gen RTX 4000 series release later this year. …. Nvidia has “instituted programs to price position our current products to prepare for next-generation products.”

Source Ars Technica

One other factor which may drive the market is the emergence of a Chinese GPU. Its not exactly next-gen at the moment, but once the Chinese manage to copy the ASML photolithography technology they could become a formidable competitor.

[Ed P]

Supposedly the Lawrence Livermore crowd achieved self sustaining fusion a year ago, but unfortunately a ‘dog ate their notes’ and they have not been able to replicate their success.

Slightly tongue in cheek comment. The real facts are here:

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-achieved-self-sustaining-nuclear-fusion-but-now-they-cant-replicate-it

[Ed P]

I have no idea, but I could rationalize the need to heat the paste before application.

I guess that the paste has to be fairly ‘stiff’ so that it just does not flow out of the chip’s edges when at operating temperatures. If that is true then warming up the paste to make it easier to apply does make some sense.

[Ed P]

keith with the teef wrote:

One problem for me with the Radeon RX6600XT is the HEAT. apparently the silicon is good for 110c before the GPU will start to throttle back. But the consequence for me is the heat being given off by my rig.

Wow! I guess that is ok in the Winter, and en efficient way of heating your house, but I’m really surprised you managed to stand running the beast in last week’s temperatures.

[Author]

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