The Penguin of Evil

Retired Linux hacker, gamer, retrocomputing, model trains

ESO: EtchedPixels & PenguinOfEvil (Wombles, Greymanes, Chill Mode)

Business: http://www.etchedpixels.co.uk
Fuzix: https://www.fuzix.org
GitHub: https://github.com/EtchedPixels
RC2014 Boards: https://hackaday.io/EtchedPixels

Public Key

npub1mpmrfzptmsyv7jjw885wdav4f78xctwne75sfsmvarhmwxfjrtdq3jmfte

NIP-05 Address

etchedpixels_at_mastodon.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsdsa353q4aczx0ff8rn68x7k25lrnv9hful2gycdkw3mahryep4ksx04y9c

Author Public Key

npub1mpmrfzptmsyv7jjw885wdav4f78xctwne75sfsmvarhmwxfjrtdq3jmfte

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Last Notes

2024-09-16 19:59:55

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Gopher doesn't as a result know what to do with non 8bit files. Terrible design ;)

2024-09-16 13:17:37

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And why can't our politicians just wear normal people clothes. The lines of smart suits in the commons are beginning to look as out of touch and comical as the lords in their finery.

2024-09-16 12:14:33

There's something terribly appropriate about the storm causing a mess all over Europe being called "Boris"

2024-09-12 13:08:10

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There is nobody to build it - it's already the case that many modern houses are terrible as they'll take anyone they can get to do the work. There is not sufficient material supply to expand building so expansion would cause massive price spikes.
Nothing is going to get fixed shorter term but the rental law changes and CGT changes will make it a lot worse.
Will take something like cracking flatpack on site assembly houses to change anything much.

2024-09-11 18:21:42

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and it gets worse. 7B means that if you have 6 people renting together on a joint tenancy house share and it turns out one of them fails the immigration "papers please" checks or loses their right to rent the whole lot will be out in 2 weeks.
The rent increases model is also shot. It says "to market rate" but there will be no market rate as there will no longer be a free market, and since you can't price above only below on renewal it's not going to work well I fear.

2024-09-11 18:17:48

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Some of it is bizarre as the weird was carried over from the previous bill including both bad and good weird.
14 for example is immediate proceedings for "causing or likely to cause nuisance or annoyance" to along list of people in the locality. So you can make environmental protesters leave as it appears now rather than just people doing stuff like holding wild parties at 4am.
15 is just bizarre. 2 weeks for "caused the condition of the furniture to deteriorate"

2024-09-05 08:12:33

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https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/sep/05/school-exclusions-rise-by-fifth-england-past-year-study
is timely on the subject.

2024-09-05 08:04:17

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I'm a big fan of delegating power downwards when it makes sense so I'd like to see more power delegated there. However there's now such a level of under-investment and resulting people drain and incompetence in local government you'd have to fix funding, recruiting and also people's views on local councillors first.
What it would mean for the giant unitary councils I am not sure. They would in some ways overlap if there were a set of English parliaments.

2024-09-05 08:01:20

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That works against new things very badly, and also entrenches the power of legacy organizations. Would we have created a new professional body for computing for example or would such an arrangment in the past have forced it into the IEE however badly it fitted in order to be eligible to play in the political field ?

2024-09-05 07:42:42

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There's a second hidden number - a lot of them are forced out of the schools into home schooling when they don't get the support needed or even the SEN staff they have a legal right too.
They know it too - they've been incredibly resistant to the proposal to introduce exit interviews or survey people as to why they moved to home schooling

2024-09-05 07:35:09

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I would actually argue for something quite different. Just abolish the lords totally. Make the the UK parliament the upper house and add one or more English parliaments as the other lower houses.
It lets you push more stuff away from the centre, solves the West Lothian question and gives you a giant building you can lease as a hotel/tourist complex to pay for the refurb of the rest.

2024-09-05 07:32:49

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The bishops model is awful. A bunch of people from a single sect of a church get to pontificate about our laws whilst there are no equivalent representations. If it was within a business or consultation it would be in court. It's almost as bad as having some magic bloodline whose members get UBI and large homes plus the ability to secretly block laws they don't like.

2024-09-02 11:08:28

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There are folks who do it both ways. I really don't care what kinks people get up to but actively dangerous ones really should be strongly discouraged or at least very informed.
autoerotic asphyxiation is a thing in all sorts of forms and for both genders. It's how Stephen Milligan MP is believed to have died for example.

2024-08-30 16:48:20

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Not numbers I'd recognize as a landlord. 50% would be a miracle even before tax. Maybe it's heavily loaded by the London side but those are certainly not credible numbers for the rest of the UK.

2024-08-20 09:14:40

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Sunsynk (aka Deye). Can be run entirely from a Raspberry Pi via modbus. Can be reconfigured to run entirely off grid, and can be configured with a generator.
Their own provided wifi/mobile app thing isn't great but if you don't need it then it's not an issue

2024-08-19 17:56:12

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Battery is even worse and most of it runs from random clouds in China. Was quite a battle to find an internet free solar/battery setup.

2024-08-16 21:55:17

Is there a German word for "deep philosophical concepts that can only be discussed in other languages by borrowing German words"
Just curious 8)

2024-08-16 20:58:04

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You have any idea how protected pubs are ? To convert one you've pretty much got to let it fall down for 2 years whilst trying in good faith to sell it in order to demonstrate it's not viable.
In a housing crisis, even if it's in a location that the council LDP records has "excessive drinking establishments"

2024-08-16 16:39:36

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Was real fun finding a home battery system that didn't depend on a magic box somewhere in China that would no doubt turn everyone's power off the day China/Taiwan kicks off. Fortunately there are still some options that can be set to just talk modbus to a pi or similar.

2024-08-14 08:59:08

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Empty and second homes pay council tax multipliers. There are also rules to stop you turning it into fake never rented airbnb and other tricks. The most recent attempt to crack down is centred around making 2nd home a planning change of use.
In some pressure spots other things are also being done, like requiring the property can only be the primary residence and cannot be let as a restrictive covenant placed on some new builds

2024-08-14 08:51:12

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There have been mechanisms for dealing with empty homes for years (CPO EDMO, section 17 etc). There's no money to use them is the problem there.

2024-08-14 08:48:47

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We've had penalties on empty and 2nd homes for a while in Wales. It has gotten housing back into circulation or sold. 2nd homes has been trickier. When the penalties came in everyone's 2nd home turned business. When that gap was plugged some couples started each claiming one house was their primary home and asking for 1 person discounts
The third accidental house hogger though is property rich pensioners with no easy way out of big houses they can't maintain.

2024-08-12 20:41:56

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This 100%
In production deployment "boring" is praise.

2024-08-10 17:34:42

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Well in the UK the regulator says it might be an issue so people follow the guidance
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/personal-information-what-is-it/what-is-personal-data/can-we-identify-an-individual-indirectly/

2024-08-10 17:23:49

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Same here - it's considered personally identifying data I believe

2024-08-08 13:08:26

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Should have built an RC2014 one clearly.
Not sure I could cope with the Jet Set Willy one. I'd be kept awake listening for the music to start so I knew there was no R tape loading error!

2024-08-07 18:08:55

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Unknown. I might be a replicant with pre-programmed early memories.

2024-08-07 16:58:10

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One question will be whether those who can be shown to have planned it as opposed to just throwing rocks will get far more and charged under terrorism offences. The JSO sentences are nonsense but the sentences organizers of the riots get (at least the ones out of reach working for foreign agitators) may be far longer still

2024-08-07 12:37:36

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Absolute pig of a function to implement on a virtual machine that can be migrated

2024-08-05 12:59:29

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I am curious how this plays out in the UK. Both the well off and landlords I know avoid new houses like the plague as they are perceived as piss poor builds, riddled with faults, poorly located and unadopted with unaccountable management fees.

2024-08-05 12:52:00

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Yes but on the bright side some of our police clearly already have extensive contact with the far right they will need to deal with ....
I am sure they are being treated as both an organized threat and also one driven by foreign actors. There will be a lot of careless people who've posted stuff to social media or have followable chains of social media interactions for the security services to trace.

2024-08-02 13:46:29

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birdstrike ?

2024-08-02 13:39:32

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Still want a hunting season for private jets where we all go out with manpads ;)

2024-08-02 13:24:47

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Laying off all too many validation engineers some years back worked so well so lets see how this one pans out.
Intel IMHO could lay off 15,000 people if they have gotten rid of the poor managers and broken processes
The oncoming train crash was visible some years ago when I left. Too many top people who'd never experienced competitive markets, vanity projects, buying random companies without a clear understanding of how they would integrate.
The Israel link is hurting them too

2024-07-19 16:57:13

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Also it seems "and lets not sign it either"

2024-06-21 15:09:03

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See instead XT60I.

2024-06-21 13:38:15

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USB3 is a bit more awkward given the number of pins, range and resistance sensing rules but I can see the appeal, and you'd probably want some basic USB 5v stuff on a bus stop anyway as well for phones and the like.
The other problem of course is the question of what people will do if you leave unattended free power around in public spaces. Things like flyposters replacing their crap with cheap loudspeaker/sound recorder chips plugged into the free power, and how to manage it

2024-06-21 13:13:32

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Agreed - it's just in my book the module would have an XT60 or similar input, an MPPT to the voltage for the bike and would live in the bike or as a lump in the cable your bike came with.
That cable would then also let you plug directly into panels (or portable fold outs), even ones stuck on the bike in theory as well as charging points. It would also mean a non battery backed charging point would literally be a panel or two screwed on the roof, and a piece of wire.

2024-06-21 13:08:53

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No they didn't - they knew a more important trick. The separate power bricks in various forms for different input voltages, frequencies and god knows what else for each jurisdiction output lower voltages so that the ebike maker is outside of craploads of per country regulatory nightmares. It's such an enormous regulatory compliance win that it outweighs any other consideration, and that will not get fixed.
How about USB3 ;)

2024-06-21 13:02:40

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Connector standards are one bit but the bikes vary wildly because they use different battery arrays - 36v (42v charge) and 48v (50+v charge) both are common.
The connector side is easy - XLR would work, XT60 would work but you'd need to ensure that all the bikes could accept a wide input voltage range or you'd need lose a lot of efficiency. If you just shoved a MPPT input on the bikes with XT60 you'd be able to just plug it into the panels directly *and* plug your own panels in too

2024-06-19 13:45:38

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All those tech skills are needed to 0day your tractor now

2024-06-13 10:19:10

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Given they didn't say that and it's dangerous that looks like Google AI is now churning out actively defamatory statements. Sooner they do that to someone rich and angry and it gets ugly the better

2024-06-07 20:02:59

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Just don't stop watching the constants. I've seen so much slow and hideously complicated code caused by people apply fancy methods for good scaling to 100 item data sets in fast paths.
Although big O notation for cloud billing scaling might be useful 8)

2024-06-06 14:26:18

Create a feature. Get everyone to use it, then break it.
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/18730340487709-Review-your-Cloud-Saves-to-avoid-loss-of-files?product=gog
Another reminder that clouds are just other people's computers and tend to evaporate.

2024-05-30 16:10:58

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Centre pin negative... cursed power connectors.
They were lovely little machines. Still have one with a 1MB SRAM card for running Fuzix

2024-05-28 10:08:18

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One day someone is going to take them to court in Europe citing UsedSoftware v Oracle. That will get interesting.
Same mess holds with stuff like Amazon although Amazon clearly look the other way when accounts get handed down.

2024-05-19 13:33:14

The elegance of the DG Nova instruction set really becomes apparent when you write emulation code for it. The entire core CPU emulation (no devices) is 250 lines of C, including comments and not even written to be small.
Nova 3 and 4 will probably add another 50-100 lines at most
#retrocomputing

2024-05-10 19:43:55

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I can't decide between Steamdeck/Proton and Windows 11.

2024-05-06 19:12:12

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Everyone I know at Google left. Says it all. It might have better PR than twitter but the rest .. shrug

2024-04-27 15:48:16

Every time some wannabe economics nut starts explaining how people should be economically rational explain that economically rational people would look at their pet cat when it needed the vet and conclude that since new cats are basically free it's not economically rational to repair the existing one.

2024-04-18 14:35:59

From Littlefuse/Zilog
"Dear Customer and/or Distributor,
Please be aware that our Water Foundry Manufacturer is discontinuing support for the Z80 product and other product lines. Refer to the attached list of the products affected
Last time to buy (LTB) Orders will be accepted until June 14th 2024."
Sic transmit gloria mundi Z80 and Z180
#retrocomputing #z80

2024-04-17 19:04:01

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Don't forget the local government ombudsman if you've not already started formal complaint proceedings.

2024-04-12 19:18:10

You know a vendor has quality issues when everyone on the related reddit forum is asking each other if they've installed the new firmware yet before they do and nobody apparently has
😆

2024-04-11 15:17:24

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We need a general regulator for the UK - OFUK

2024-04-10 18:21:20

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For further fun if they say to put it on the pavement ask them for a copy of the risk assessment for putting black bags on pavements and why they are not brightly coloured.
Had lots of fun with that. Even more fun when I asked them if the bin man putting a bag back into a garden when they refused to collect it was actionable as fly tipping 8)

2024-04-06 17:39:47

The fee for unauthorized copies is 3.14 .. it's the pi-rate
#dadjokes

2024-03-25 18:25:18

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I am curious about one item in your data (having been trying to do similar maths for possible heatpumps here). Your cheapest electricity is down as 0.08 per Kwh which actually puts the resistance heater about level with gas but surely your real lowest cost is 0.15 because you could export it to the grid for that and buy gas with the 15p you got back. Obviously not the green solution ?