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Comment Re:What is "the internet" (Score 1) 163

I have account number 13,802 here, which I've never been able to persuade the admins to recover for me. Notice how there's no activity on it. That's because when I created it and saw that user number come up I thought "huh - no point in carrying on here then, how could anyone possible read or make sense of anything with nearly fourteen thousand people on it?".

Since then, the chorus on various sites has become rather larger than merely fourteen thousand. The background noise is incredible. I'm amazed any signal gets through at all vs the constant noise to be honest.

Comment Coding interviews are a waste. (Score 1) 140

Your best engineers will be AuDHD, and AuDHD folk don't do well in these sorts of synthetic tests.

I can code in 20+ languages for over 12 different OS', write code that's good enough for CERN to run for particle accelerator data collection for a decade, have accelerated systems by an order of magnitude by understanding the poem space better than their previous engineers, but I am abysmal at exam style settings.

The software industry is riddled with SEs who write abysmal code but can pass a coding test easily. They're the folk that you have always needed to reject but didn't because they ticked a box.

Comment Re:Solar is not enough (Score 1) 102

It's not either/or though - if you're generating more than you're using, then you can redirect that back into the battery (or sell it back to the grid). I have limited winter experience at the moment, but the battery is fully topped up during the day while still powering the house from solar. That said, the darker nights/evenings right now means you kick into battery power earlier, so for me for example at roughly the same lattitude as London, the battery is drained by about 9pm.

It's interesting to watch and fun too if you're in to that kind of thing. Which, quite clearly, I am.

Comment Re:Solar is not enough (Score 1) 102

That's increasingly true here too (UK). I'm on an EV-focused tariff which guarantees me up to 6 hours cheap EV charging per day, and in addition there are lower, cheaper overnight rates for the electricity.

What's been noticeable recently is that these periods are now tending to be different. I've been driving EVs for eight years and on roughly the same tariff (the 6 hour cap is new), and usually the "cheap EV charging" and "overnight low rates" coincided. Now however, I've noticed that if I plug in the EV during the day it pretty much starts charging instantly and you're right - I could say that's 100% around lunchtime. My usage means I can't really take advantage of that much since I commute in the day and plug in in the evenings, but it's still a noticeable pattern for the days that I am either working from home or its a weekend.

Comment Re:Solar is not enough (Score 1) 102

It's not, but that's where home batteries come in. I'm a new'ish convert to solar, having had it installed in March and so this will be my first winter with it. I also installed a 12kWh battery to go along side it. The combination pretty much takes care of all my daytime home usage, although it does not take care of my full usage since I also have an EV.

I charge the EV overnight, plus top of the battery on cheap overnight rates. Result is barely any daytime usage for me. How that translates to a 24 hour data centre of course is a question in its own right, would they start affecting the overnight rates? Hmm.

Comment This has been around a while (Score 4, Interesting) 144

The DOD/DOW have been working on this for a while. They discovered, early on, that the device had a propensity to cause permanent nerve damage.

It's very unlikely the US have fixed that, as they'd largely sidelined the work as a failure. However, at 36%, Trump needs something he can call a win, no matter what the long-term consequences.

Comment Mafia does better than Private Equity (Score 1) 202

I viewed a YouTube about how Mafia control of the Las Vegas casinos ended by the 1980s on account of Department of Justice going after them for "skimming" income from the counting room to avoid taxes.

Apart from cheating the government, meaning you and me out of lawfully imposed tax revenue, along with the services we the people derive from it, and the odd murder here and there to maintain organizational discipline, Mafia Las Vegas was the Golden Age of the $1 buffet lunch. Sure it was a loss leader that you would drain your bank account at the gaming tables, but whether through illegal of legal gambling, the Mafia offered much better odds than the government in the form of state lotteries.

Sure, from the images, The Strip of the late 1970s was cheesy schlock, but private equity has sunk billions into schlock with high production values. And how they (the current owners) fleece you with a 50 dollars for parking, 40 dollars per night resort fee, mandatory 20% (or more) tipping and on an on. If you had no interest in gambling or set a strict budget on how much you were going to blow, Las Vegas used to be a budget destination, but not anymore!

Comment Re:Rinse and repeat (Score 1) 22

USB-C? Apple were laughed at for only including USB-C on their laptops and there are still weird antique societies around keeping USB A kicking when it should have been buried over a decade ago.

If you mean only the world of phones - Apple changed their charging and connection standards three times. 30 pin -> Lightning -> USB C. Each one lasted about a decade, which is what they always said. Lightning came out in 2012, USB C didn't even exist as a standard until 2014. Should they have changed yet again after two years, thus annoying everyone?

Meanwhile, over in the rest of the world you had an assortment of barrel connecters, USB Mini, USB Micro, USB C. USB C emerged the winner (although you still get these hateful USB A->USB C power-only cables. I hate the USB C 'standard', never know what cable you're picking up), and yes Apple was arguably forced to change but then so were others. I'm still plagued by more USB Micro devices than I am USB C, a connector that Apple entirely skipped (thank god).

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