stoobs

See: PC vs Console, AMD vs nVidia, Playstation vs XBox, Sega vs Nintendo, Amiga vs Atari, Spectrum vs Commodore 64, etc etc

It's just the usual tribalism.

Not all smart systems are terrible, I've the Honeywell evohome system and it has been flawless for the 18 months or so that it's been installed, bit it looks like a different strategy was used - the main thermostat/bridge/controller is linked via wifi, but everything else is run over a different RF standard, so all the TRV's, thermostats and the boiler controller talk to the main controller directly (iirc it's in the 900MHz range)

The main controller runs the scheduler and is the only device which reaches out to the internet (to sync with honeywell's cloud systems so you can control heating etc from an app remotely when away from home).

Other than the interface on the controller being a bit clunky, I've no complaints, even the batteries in the TRVs seem to be lasting well.

Was this fixed given that the story is from 2018?

Yeah, this is why people dislike Adobe.

Updates come via paying the fairly high price to start with, you know, supporting the damned product you paid for.

Document sync is something that is provided via a bunch of other services if you need it - icloud/onedrive/dropbox/etc

But sure, come up with more laughable excuses to justify shitty company practices.

Feature updates just come in new versions, which you pay for.

Monthly payments can still work, many other companies use that model, and after a period of time, you're frozen at the last version you paid for (after a year for example) if you stop paying.

But yeah, screw them now - I used to have a usable paid version, but no longer - there are better alternatives now.

Yes, with direct previous experience and knowledge of large UK Government IT projects, how they were integrated and how staff were trained, I feel I'm well placed to comment harshly.

"They" in this case was the UK Government, and part of the goal was creating secure backend systems specifically for the NHS as a data store, Public Health England would absolutely have access to it.

Even the most basic of checks at the start of the project would have highlighted that Excel was not a proper solution for the application (Even if the developer(s?) had used the newer(?!?) XLSX format rather than XLS) - which highlights that there was no proper oversight as to how the system was constructed.

WTF, they have a big Azure deal with Microsoft, why the hell would the be using Excel as the data source?

IT ineptitude of the highest order, although I'm not surprised having been involved with government IT previously.

Short answer - it's BT.

From personal experience it probably took most of that time to escalate the issue high enough for someone to take it seriously, then a few visits to get the right people onsite.

It would have probably been quicker to migrate the village to FTTP

Depends on your use-case - I already have two screens but I need them switching between multiple computers - there are very few options for dual display multiple input KVMs which can support 4K60 and USB3

Another option is the Aten CS1944DP - 4 input dual 4K60 USB3 KVM switch - I have it and it's rather wonderful given I now have my work laptop here due to covid - not cheap, but it's really, really good.

Hmm, I can get a 4 layer board the same size as the a500 motherboard in quantities of 5 in 2 weeks for £100 delivered, European suppliers seem to be nearly that for a single board even with prototype specials?

It may be useful for smaller pcb's and a fast turnaround, but given everything at the moment, is anyone really in a rush?

Incorrect: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/reports/bbc-c...

Point 203 on page 37.

GDP rankings are as follows from the last posted results (2018):

  1) United States 20,544,343.46
  2) China 13,608,151.86
  3) Japan 4,971,323.08
  4) Germany 3,947,620.16
  5) United Kingdom 2,855,296.73
  6) France 2,777,535.24
  7) India 2,718,732.23
  8) Italy 2,083,864.26
  9) Brazil 1,868,626.09
  10) Canada 1,713,341.70

So out of "EU" it's only Germany which was larger according to those figures (from the World Bank).

Of course things will have changed over the last couple of years, but I doubt it is substantially different in terms of order.

I think the issue comes when people try to circumvent the give-way priority - which gets worse when there are multiple lanes and multiple exits.

It certainly seems to be a people problem rather than a roundabout deign issue from my experience?

People trying to "beat" people out onto the roundabout rather than giving way, people not using proper lane discipline and squeezing/cutting into other lanes etc..

Yeah, and will give you that look too as he walks away...

My little chonk monster is actually pretty good with food, and isn't interested in human food much at all, possibly because he had to fend for himself for a few months before he imposed himself on me. He's certainly partial to the odd pigeon which are too slow/stupid to get away.

He currently has mostly dry kibble and water, but with the odd wet pouch for some variety.

I've tried him on a little milk before and he wasn't bothered, but I have semi-skimmed lacto-free, so I don't know if it offends his taste-buds or not.

Normally you get a vet to do that...

Yeah, older ones had some issues with the blade geometry iirc which caused a fairly penetrating "Wump" noise which people complained about. There's a big one in the town I live in, and people were complaining that the low frequency noise it was generating was impacting quality of life.

I presume that's something which has been optimised away with newer designs?

Mostly because they're throwing buckets of money at the developers for exclusive deals, not because it's a better product offering in any way, or has a better audience.

I think some people have short memories, there have been numerous grumblings (right or wrong) about many of the step-change releases. To me, this feels a bit like when the rosetta fat-binaries were killed off in 10.7, for some people it was pretty bad for those with software which didn't and wouldn't support Intel binaries, but for others it was a minor blip.

Catalina has been fine for me, but I probably have a different use-case.

All the Dev machines where I work have been 16GB for years, I wouldn't be surprised if we jumped to 32GB in the next hardware refresh.

5' is also a notation of 5 Feet..

That's a great letter, kudos!

Which is relatively new compared to geological or cosmological time.

Yeah, that makes sense - you wouldn't want to gimp the system by only doing half a job :)

This was mentioned in the rpi forum by staff:

    May I ask whether RPI supports things such as 10 bit video decoding, Dolby Vision and Atmos? Thx. 

HEVC hardware decode supports 4kp60, 10-bit. Audio output is pretty much unchanged, but the HDMI audio channels now support 8x192kHz bitrates.

(including ads displayed over hdmi input)

What the hell?

Inflation adjusted it's just under $9000

Nope, it's not, it's more like a spiritual successor to the Sinclair C5 than anything else.

That makes far more sense!

Yup, same here.

Apparently I'm a moderate deutan according to one of the online tests, but the only time I have any trouble with anything is with the colour blindness tests, in real life, never - completely fine with electrical wiring, photographic re-touching, display reading etc etc.

I've never mixed odd socks, worn the wrong colour by mistake or anything else apparently colour-blind people have trouble with.

Quite happy to keep better night vision and ability to wander around in bright sunshine without squinting vs a completely non-impacting deficiency. :)

Not really, other than adding the ever more present BBC spin on things :/