Many brains make light work
Now there is a thought. What would 1.5 GW worth of human brain power achieve if concentrated on one subject? It could be a bit like the Manhattan Project, Bletchley Park, etc on steroids.
Posts by bernmeister
103 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Aug 2014
Million GPU clusters, gigawatts of power – the scale of AI defies logic
When old Microsoft codenames crop up in curious places
Google thinks the grid can't support AI, so it's spending on solar for future datacenters
Amazon makes $500M bet on itty-bitty nuclear reactors to fuel cloud empire
Wednesday 13th November 2024 06:56 GMT 
They are missing the point.
The whole point of an SMR is mass production in a purpose built factory. Its all very well having half a dozen reactor designs but without the factory every one is just a hand built prototype. Nobody has yet built a production SMR., they are all lovingly hand built with each part carefully dimensioned and finished by hand as if a luxury motor car was being assembled. I can visualise the logos, "My second SMR is a Rolls-Royce". Dont get me wrong, the concept of mass produced SMRs is a lovely dream but I think it may remain that way for a lot longer than expected. The companies involved dont raise much confidence. Elon Musk companies, Ford and Hitachi, they would be the main runners, not obscure startups.
Post Office CEO tells inquiry: Leadership was in 'dream world' over Horizon scandal
Raspberry Pi Pico 2 lands with (drum roll) RISC-V cores
Friday 27th September 2024 00:25 GMT
Re: Still with the micro-USB that detaches from the board if you look at it the wrong way?
The USB-C port is a fully functioning USB OTG port but many USB A to C patch leads only have the 5V and GND connections wired in. If you just pick a lead out of your cables box you may well end up with a 5V and GND only lead. All those leads I thought were faulty and put to one side are now clearly labelled 5V ONLY.
Scientists demonstrate X-rays as a way to zap asteroids out of Earth's path
Tuesday 24th September 2024 17:14 GMT
Loads of power
I was thinking perhaps we miss interpreted the article. A 15cm sphere would need close on double the power, no problem but a proper sized asteroid say 12 meters diameter would need 1000000 times more power than the largest pulsed power device in the world today. I am still checking the calculations to get the final laser link budget from the moons surface to an asteroid 250,000 km away. I think they are going to need some very very large capacitors to due this.Very large everything. Perhaps this is all just Pi in the sky.
'Hyperscale customer' to take massive datacenter site near London
Sunday 15th September 2024 11:28 GMT
Lets think about this.
The output of a small modular nuclear power station is 300MW. Since almost all of the energy used by a data centre is eventualy lost as heat it would make sense to build somewhere closer to a power station and where the heat dissipated by the data centre could be reused. South Mimms does not seem to fit the bill. Just another nail in the coffin.
Inquiry hears UK government misled MPs over Post Office IT scandal
BOFH: Well, we did tell you to keep the BitLocker keys safe
Windows Patch Tuesday update might send a user to the BitLocker recovery screen
Tesla shareholders agree to pay Musk staggering sum of $48B
Arm CEO warns AI's power appetite could devour 25% of US electricity by 2030
Wednesday 12th June 2024 20:36 GMT
IIve cracked it!!
Use the heat from the AI servers to run heat engine grid generators and community heating. Not only will this reduce the server energy bills but it will balance out the extra consumption. There will still be losses due to system efficiences. Are these losses all of the 25% extra power consumption?
Wednesday 12th June 2024 20:18 GMT
Who is designing these systems?
The extra electrical energy used by these systems is dissipated as heat. An obvious solution to the problem of high energy consumption is to use the heat to power things.that would otherwise be powered by the electrical energy used by AI systems. There will be losses but they cant be as bad as just releasing the energy into the environment.
Energy buffs give small modular reactors a gigantic reality check
Cybercriminals raid BBC pension database, steal records of over 25,000 people
Windows 11 24H2 might call time on that old NAS under the stairs
Aghast iOS users report long-deleted photos back from the dead after update
UK's National Cyber Security Centre entry code cracks up critics
Council claims database pain forced it to drop apostrophes from street names
First 9front release of the year is called DO NOT INSTALL
Tuesday 7th May 2024 13:16 GMT
They think they are funny.
Some IT guys just cant resist the odd.joke. One company I worked for had a software developer who delighted in adding cryptic comments into firmware upgrades. One example that caught me out was the screen text "Upgrade Completed" instead of the documented checksum.He thought it hilarious that I had to check w[th him to be sure that the upgrade was OK. His words were "Didnt you believe what you saw on the screen?"
Need to plug in an EV? BT Group kicks off cabinet update pilot
Saturday 4th May 2024 18:54 GMT
Low charge rate and poor location.
Low charge rate and poor location make this idea a non starter. People will use it when it is free but not when they have to pay. But, here is a thing. The 240Vac supply is low capacity but there are a tremendous amount of copper pairs connected. Perhaps this is part of the undeclared "innovative technology"? Also utility companies seem to have carte blanche to installing stuff.
Ford in reverse gear over AM radio removal after Congress threatens action
Plans to heat districts with datacenters may prove too hot to handle
Voyager 1 starts making sense again after months of babble
UK council yanks IT systems and phone lines offline following cyber ambush
UK and US lack regulation to protect space tourists from cosmic ray dangers
Grab a helmet because retired ISS batteries are hurtling back to Earth
Monday 11th March 2024 04:08 GMT
Re: The Master of understatement
Thats a big area and it covers the area controlled by my local council, They are red hot on catching fly tippers. So much as one discarded cigarette end could catch a fine of £400 pounds. A pallet full of batteries deliberately dumped in a country lane would attract the maximum fine.
Incoming wave of AI is making buying PCs riskier for businesses
Tuesday 5th March 2024 22:38 GMT
Bloat
Nobody needs all this preloaded bloat forced on by an upgrade. It should be available but not by default. I spend hours culling stuff forced on me every upgrade only for it come back a week later. I am not sure off the timing really but it is too often. I wonder if Microsoft is prepping us all for a miracle OS that is so efficient it will blow our minds.
New solvent might end winter charging blues for EV owners
Underwater cables in Red Sea damaged months after Houthis 'threatened' to do just that
Damn Small Linux returns after a 12-year gap
Sunday 18th February 2024 13:11 GMT
Small?
I had to double think here about the meaning of "damn small OS". Remember early systems? Just looking at Windows 3.1 requirements makes you wonder why we are so used to bloat that a 3.3G OS is called damn small. There is a real opportnity here for the development of a genuinly small OS with a friendly GUI and interfaces.
Microsoft might have just pulled support for very old PCs in Windows 11 24H2
Tuesday 13th February 2024 21:46 GMT 
So thats it for upgrades
So, in twenty years time or later we will still see W10 or older being used in ATM and announcement board systems. I still fireup XP now and then just to remind me how fast a slow machine would run with a small OS. I also have DOS that runs serial ports on old machines. W10 or W11 wont do thar.
Crippled Peregrine lunar lander set for fiery return to Earth in matter of days
Millions of smart meters will brick it when 2G and 3G turns off
Sunday 31st December 2023 17:42 GMT
Re: Is it kVA or kW?
Interesting point nobody has picked up yet. Older meters ( the ones with the spinning disc) measured kWh ignoring the reactive content. Modern meters can charge for the reactive content of your consumption. Unless a smartmeter is replacing an older meter (does anybody still have one) there is probabbly nothing to worry about.
Sunday 31st December 2023 17:19 GMT
There is something (or everything) about smartmeters that does not ring true. They cant possibly save the billions clamed. Everybody knows if you keep your heating up high it will cost more. You dont need a smartmeter (or an Einstein) to tell you that. For the price of a fleet of UK aircraft carriers or nuclear submarines I am sure the money could have been better spent. An interesting point, I read somewhere a case where Einstein confused energy and power during an interview. It was a result of a colloquialism but I dont think he could be excused it.
How hard is your network really, comms watchdog asks telcos
Monday 11th December 2023 17:34 GMT
Power backup
Power failure resilience is built in to telephone systems. Backup batteries are a standard part of system design. BT however have taken a backward step by starting to phase out copper telephone connection to the home and replace it with fibre. In the event of a power failure the BT service would contine but domestic routers would fail due to loss of power. BT propose to supply backup supplies to vulnerable users.(free or at a cost?). Sounds like a short term solution. A new breed of internet routers with high performance battteries built in are in order. Hang on a minute, I have got one in my pocke. I dont need that part of BT.
Tiny11 shrinks Windows 11 23H2 down to pocket size
Monday 27th November 2023 21:21 GMT 
Opportunity to downsize
As MS continue to bloat Windows there are increasing opportunities to shrink it without any loss of functionility for most users. Every time I get an upgrade I have to spend days removing unwanted stuff. There are loads of unwanted things that are locked and I cant remove. Remember when you could run Windows 3 on a 300MB disk? People said "Why do you so much HD? You dont need that much". Yes, 300MB not 300GB. I can get down to 30GB for W10 but it soon creeps up.
Half a kilo of cosmic nuclear fuel reignites NASA's deep space dreams
Thursday 23rd November 2023 10:20 GMT
Yes, but the phones have bigger, brighter displays, louder audio, bigger memories and loads of internal funtions. But as a phone they are pathetic. My Nokia 3000 is better at text and phone and still lasts all week on one charge with a battery the size of a matchbox and half as thick. (the battery, not the phone)
Overheating datacenter stopped 2.5 million bank transactions
Tuesday 7th November 2023 21:19 GMT
Backups that fail.
Backups that fail are a common problem in the industry. Backups get maintained but often not tested for fear that they will fail. Chernobyl disaster was reputed to be the result of a failed backup test. I personally crashed a system by switching over to an incorrectly set up backup. Luckily I was able to switch back after a few minutes. Nobody noticed except for the maintenance man and I. My boss never even knew about it. Whew!!
UK procurement is too glacial to bring AI into defense, MPs told
Friday 3rd November 2023 17:56 GMT
hang on a bit.
Its all very well saying that defence procurement procedures are too slow but equipment development can also be drawn out. How many defence contracts have had to be cancelled because the equipment became obsolete before delivery? I cant think of any examples off-hand but the history books are full of them. Perhaps BAE Systems Nimrod MRA4 is a prime example.
UK MoD braves the weather to train maritime AI capabilities
Friday 3rd November 2023 11:01 GMT
Re: Data-driven exercises like this demonstrate how AI can enhance our military capabilities
Mm, dont worry. In the case of AI lets hope the government keep their fingers out of the pie and just provide the money and some kind of ethical framework. When I was working on Skynet Remote Monitoring and Control (RMC) software, (yes, Skynet does exist but not in the form Arnie would recognize) we simply had the remit to make it work better than if a human was in control.There were n ethical remits, it was just fancy tracking software.
China's top EV battery maker announced a breakthrough, but top boffin isn't convinced
Thursday 14th September 2023 09:54 GMT
Re: Charger power rating
It would be more than a weekend even if the vehicles electronics took no current. Doing the calculation of USB-C power output to battery charge time with 100W USB-C supply, 98% efficient 5V to charging voltage converter (the efficiency may be much lower) and 400kWh batery pack, the charge time would be about 6 months. Dont try this at home folks. I think I have the calculations right.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
