COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Stanley]

I get a similar syndrome David, mine are in Chinese.....

[Big Kev]

Interesting to read that the Google CEO thinks the same as me

Don't blindly trust what AI tells you, says Google's Sundar Pichai

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8drzv37z4jo

[Whyperion]

I am visiting a couple of websites and "cloudflare" is interfearing , I dont know if they dont like me or the site domains are having problems ?

BBC

[Big Kev]

FB_IMG_1763477026138.jpg

[Stanley]

I have found mistakes in AI especially when dealing with archaic spellings and obscure technical matters in textiles.

[Tizer]

I get a similar syndrome David, mine are in Chinese.....

Last week we an email each day, all from the same domain and like this example:
We thought of you…！
Handpicked coupons from stores with excellent ratings – just for you!
Sale alert: get up to 99% off with no code needed.
Your special discount codes are below:
MUS226DC94OC
6VK2MG1U9MC1
0QIZZ6AU9G3W
Open DealShort-term offer. Check terms.
– Trusted deals, AliExpress

I've blocked them in Thunderbird. When I had look at AliExpress on google it turns out to be a subsidiary of AliBaba, the big Chinese equivalent of Amazon. I guess they are trying switch Amazon users in West to the Chinese companies, perhaps something to do with tariffs.

[Stanley]

I can remember when, many years ago, youngest daughter Janet told me that there were half a dozen giant companies out there who were working flat out to get control of as much of the world's economies as possible. It was bad enough then, now they have AI and the Quantum revolution to assist them.....
Perhaps we are doomed......

[Tripps]

Well it's ecstacy rather than agony today.

Having struggled for too long with a desktop that was short (64GB) of memory - I bought a laptop yesterday with 1 TB of SSD. (That's 1000 GB ) That should be enough! My young lad recommended the model and he found one on eBay. The seller is CPR recycling

They offered 10% discount on my watch list, answered a query by email yesterday afternoon, then I bought it for £224.99 and they sent it to me. The packing was exemplary, and the courier delivered within the hour they predicted.

I had it up and working by 1.00 pm. So less that 24 hours start to finish.
It runs lovely and looks new. Best of all they are a non profit company, and contribute what they make to charity.

I commend this statement to the House as they say. . . .

[Big Kev]

[Stanley]

That sounds very interesting. Touch wood the FM3 that Pluggy built for me is still working well but I shall bear what you say in mind David.... Thanks for posting.

[Tizer]

I'll bookmark it too. After building a couple of PCs myself years ago (with help from OG) I later paid Pluggy to build ones for me and Mrs Tiz. I guess he may not be available for that now and I'd have to go out into the dangerous wide world to buy ones!

And I should have added that the ones he built were excellent, never a fault. I'm still using one of his but Mrs Tiz was still on 32-bit so I bought her a 64-bit one recently!

[Stanley]

The FM3 is still performing flawlessly Peter. I keep trying to get up enough courage to ring Mrs Taylforth and ask how Stephen is but I am afraid of what I might find out......

[Julie in Norfolk]

Glad to find that the site is once again accessible. Not sure what happened there but at a similar time we had a death in the family so I haven't been keeping up.

[Stanley]

Sorry to hear about your loss Julie but nice to see you back!

[Big Kev]

Busy day at work yesterday, it all sounds wonderful until you have to troubleshoot an issue when it stops working, thank goodness for Google or there would have been several million people without meter reads...

Apache Kafka is an open-source, distributed event streaming platform used for building real-time data pipelines and applications. It handles large volumes of continuous data streams, allowing for high-throughput, low-latency data processing, and is used for tasks like data integration, streaming analytics, and log aggregation. At its core, it functions as a distributed publish-subscribe messaging system where producers write events to topics and consumers read from them.

[Tripps]

Once upon a time a little man came to your house and emptied the coins from the gas meter, calculated your rebate, gave it to you and went about his business. Another little man came to read your electric meter every now and then . You got a bill through the post, and paid it in cash at the church hall at the top of the street. You could actually afford to do that. All the workers involved were local people. No American computers or software at all. It never had an outage, and google was never needed - which is fortunate as it didn't exist.

However - Man has never lived at a level of technology below that which is available.

I shall be getting down to floor level with my home made kneeling frame tomorrow in the cold and rain to read the gas meter. Then I shall be putting on my head torch to read the electric meter in the dark cupboard.

Please tell me in what way the new system is better.

[Big Kev]

Please tell me in what way the new system is better.

It keeps me employed

[Stanley]

I have exactly the same thoughts David when I read my 'smart' meters on the 22nd of each month. If I understand it correctly I am paying for the smart meters through a levy on my energy bills.
I'm glad you have an income Kev but I do wish the system worked.....

[Big Kev]

I'm glad you have an income Kev but I do wish the system worked.....

The majority of it does. There are 39 million smart meters in the UK, unfortunately 4 million of those aren't smart. Not all of those 4 million will be due to faulty equipment or insufficient signal for it to communicate, some of the small suppliers don't have the resources in place to fix software issues.

[Stanley]

Which doesn't make it any easier for me to put up with British Gas giving such lousy service!

[Big Kev]

Which doesn't make it any easier for me to put up with British Gas giving such lousy service!

Have you emailed them again to tell them they're not working? BG have around 8 million smart meters, I would suspect around 10% of those aren't working as they should. The more you keep on at them the more chance you have of them fixing it.

[Gloria]

We’ve just had ours fixed after a good couple of years badgering.

[Tizer]

Gosh, what exciting lives you all live, I do envy you! We suffer a boring life, living without a magic smart meter. Like Tripps, we have the arduous task of using a torch to read our meters in the garage. (Sorry you have to go out in the rain, Tripps.)

[Gloria]

Our meter wasn’t showing a reading, it was still sending info to British Gas though.

[Stanley]

I shall have to have another educating BG campaign....