jmak

After my earlier post about not wanting anything, I could quite fancy one of those [emoji854]

Assuming you mean "I wouldn't even consider anything that doesn't have an SSD?" Anything with spinning rust is an awful investment at this point.

At my last school we gave all the teachers a Surface Pro (4 -it was a long time ago) which had the Core M3 processors and they were fine for almost everything teachers needed, so I'm sure a current model Surface Go would be fine. The business case was that they already had laptops and they'd found money to buy iPads in addition, so I could show that the Surface Pro was cheaper than a laptop and an iPad. Teachers preferred the idea of only having one device after they'd been shown. Docking stations would have improved the experience a lot, but they were too expensive at the time. At home I recently bought a £20 USB C docking station similar to this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07QXMNF1X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm_t1_.CMRFbWCB6Y45 Mine has been rock solid and there are other options with VGA if you need that. I played with the Miracast adapters with the idea that you could replace interactive boards - teacher wouldn't need to be at the front and could look at the class while they were using it, but that never quite took off although it was fine technically. I still think that when you take into account the full cost of running a teacher (salary, pension, NI, management won't leave much change from £50k/year for even a new starter) spending a few hundred quid on a decent laptop that lets them work flexibly is a no brainer - especially now that they're more or less expected to be able to work from home...

Part of me is a bit annoyed and I know it's a business decision, not for the good of the World, but using energy and space and ever increasing resources to build new storage when most people just fill it up with useless carp* feels like a waste of resources. *Makes note to self to delete no longer required files before June [emoji57]

They don't tend to live alone...

And hopefully they'd come with an app so that you could automate it a bit. Sounds like a worthwhile half way house if you either don't want to be bothered with wiring in new kit or want some automation without sharing stuff "across the internet".

My immediate reaction to the reports that the vaccine is over 90% effective being based on 92 cases was to laugh and say how can that be statistically significant. But then I thought about it a bit more. 1) If they got 90ish cases in 43,000 sample, that sample has a fairly high incidence of infection - over 200 per 100,000 population which was enough to send places into lockdown 2) There were no significant adverse effects, so no reason not to give it to everyone (caveat being that you'd need to closely monitor, in case it doesn't give as much protection as people expect) 3) How did they get this far so quickly? Firstly, funding - they've been making the "Oxford vaccine" in bulk since April, so that if and when it gets approval, they can start distributing it straight away. That's a huge financial risk, but it's been shared with governments. Secondly, there's more of the infection around. Normally it takes much longer for enough people to become infected to show the difference between the vaccinated group and the placebo group. The same standard as normal has been used to judge its efficacy. To summarise; obviously we need to wait until the regulators verify the results, but let's focus on convincing as many people as possible that it's safe and that they should get it.

Depends on what system you have. Most straightforward is if you have a combi boiler and a wired room thermostat. In that case you need a wired starter kit which has a wired "smart thermostat" and an "internet bridge". If you have wireless room thermostat, you'll need the wireless starter kit which includes a wireless room thermostat and a wireless controller which connects to the boiler to tell it to fire when triggered by the thermostat. I bought the wired starter kit for my >35 year old boiler and was amazed to find they had specific instructions for my model of boiler. As mine is not a combi boiler, that doesn't control the hot water - I had a separate programmer by the hot water tank in the airing cupboard, so I later added the wireless controller to replace that timer. I've found their support service quick to respond to queries, despite the fact that the packet is covered in recommendations to employ an approved installer. Definitely nothing to be scared of for a self installation though - it's all logical. If you're not sure what to buy it might be worth contacting them before you purchase. If you give them the details of your existing system, they'll soon tell you what you need.

I've tried a few edits of this and I still think it might come across as being a bit sulky or sarcastic, but it's really not meant to be. I really don't want people who care about me to spend ages thinking of something I didn't even know I wanted. I am a total pain to buy presents for and people get really upset when I say I don't want anything. But I really don't. I'm not upset when everyone else is excitedly opening theirs and I am happy to spend money on other people. People know I like coffee. Guess what? I researched ways to make coffee and bought the one I wanted. I have at least 5 other devices for making coffee that I don't use. If he really likes Bassett's liquorice all sorts, buy a year's supply? (But not to eat in one go - that can have an unfortunate effect!) If you need him to have something to open on the day (that's apparently a requirement in our house) buy something for yourself and wrap it up... I hope that's not entirely unhelpful [emoji849]

If he does like coffee, an Aeropress and a burr grinder?

I'm not a gamer, but I do have an Xbox connected to my Optoma projector. The comment I'd make is that it'll be quite dependent on how large you have the image and where you sit. I chose my screen to be the right size (120" diagonal or about 3m across) for watching films from where the sofa is. Turns out that the range on the Xbox controllers is about 2.5m. That means quite a lot of looking side to side in a game - although if I was really bothered, I'd rearrange the room so that the Xbox was nearer the sofa. At the minute it's under the screen because it used to make sense when it's where the telly was... At that size, I find it struggles in bright sunlight, but since brightness will vary as a function of the square of the size, of you have it set at a screen width of 2m instead of 3m, it'd be about twice as bright. I also just checked and mine has 1200 hours on the bulb and I can't detect any dimming. A replacement bulb was about £40 last time I checked. If you're after immersive gaming, seriously consider decent surround sound - hearing stuff approaching from behind definitely adds something. You could also hedge your bets by keeping the TV - just have a screen that you pull down in front of it for when you want to use the projector. I do really enjoy mine, but watching things like the news and panel shows is a bit odd, so I still watch those on a normal TV. I'd imagine CBeebies might be a bit weird at that size too once your daughter starts watching TV...

Guess what? Another Tado user here. As a system I really like the amount of control I get - with shift workers and some non-full-time residents, I reckon there's no occupancy pattern for AI to learn in our house, so geo-fencing was essential for me. While you can control stuff manually from the physical control, it is highly dependent on the internet. No programming information is stored locally - it keeps doing what it's doing until it receives a instruction to change. Earlier this week I noticed that the house was still warm a couple of hours after I'd gone to bed and found the heating was still running. The "bridge" had lost its internet connection, so didn't receive the instruction from Germany to turn off for the night. That doesn't happen often though. The only other quirk I've had is that it didn't seem to like Huawei phones. We've had Google, OnePlus, Samsung and Apple phones and they all interact reliably, but the three different models of Huawei phones quite often didn't register as leaving or returning to the house. One other thing to be aware of, I think new users have to pay a subscription now for full functionality.

I'd advise cooking what you buy from the fresh meat or fish counter...

15" screen is not the right balance between portability and usability - even more so with the poor resolution mentioned. CD drive is a waste of space and weight for the amount of use vs portability. They're also fragile and have a high rate of failure. SSD is essential for performance. Also adds robustness compared to spinning rust. On the fanless design, personally I think the benefits outweigh the downsides for this use, as long as you have a processor designed for this use. Laptops that are likely to be chucked in pupils' bags have a good chance of the fan getting blocked with gunk and dust or stopping working due to being dropped. Then it'd be even more likely to overheat as it would be designed to work with a fan but wouldn't have one.

If you hadn't chickened out, you might have flew

PM sent

At my last school I implemented guest WiFi after a similar conversation, ie everyone has it, why don't we? The specific example was for people coming from NHS and LA who were on working visits. Obviously I did it, but all the while grumbling to myself "what kind of organisation sends people out to work at remote sites without providing an independent way of accessing the internet?" And for governors "out of people who want to bring their own mobile device to meetings, who doesn't have a phone which can run a hotspot?" Eight years ago it would have seemed reasonable, but with the current price of data packages and with full strength 4G signal, it seems unnecessary to me. Rant over [emoji57]

Sounds like someone needs to put in an foi request to find out what's being paid pretty machine.

I think it uses a combination of face detection and movement detection. Maybe poor lighting or too little contrast between the (real) background and the person. I managed to sneak up on mine [emoji23] Took quite a while to achieve though! Disembodied head was easier to achieve...

You're clearly living a more exciting life than me. Also might be a sign that more people are using the app.

Thanks all. I just had a memory that HP had changed policy and you had to pay for updates after the initial warranty period.

Yep, there have been zero cases in the council District I live in over the last 6 weeks. Most people are doing mostly normal things. I also have friends who work in the performing arts industry and they have had no income since March and know people who were furloughed before, but don't know how they'll pay the bills if it happens again. However, a family friend who is in his mid-fifties but otherwise healthy was very unwell for two weeks - close to hospitalisation. His 22 year old son was then unwell for two weeks - not dangerously, but bed-bound. My partner works in a hospital. In May a quarter of their team was off with confirmed Covid-19 at the same time, never mind the ones who were isolating due to contact with them. All operating theatres were converted to additional intensive care capacity and it was 80% occupied (equivalent to over double normal ICU capacity) meaning that all other operating stopped. In March there were lots of unknowns so it was just about forgivable to make mistakes and they just about got there in the end. It's difficult to say they made the best guesses when we've done so badly by almost any international comparison. Now there's strong evidence about what works and what doesn't. To choose a path that is known to cause more harm is a failure of government. The crazy thing is that it doesn't even make sense economically. People's mental health, their businesses and income and a return to some kind of normality are all essential. Thousands of deaths and an overwhelmed health service won't help that.

I'm looking at upgrading my home network and need about 10 ports as a minimum, although if I'm putting network points in I may as well as a few more for future proofing. Something like the Procurve is cheaper second hand than the cheapest new 16 port switch. The thing that concerns me is software updates. Am I likely to come unstuck? If so, any other recommendations?

https://hartfordhealthcare.org/about-us/news-press/news-detail?articleid=26936&publicId=395 It's a descriptive article, image is linked at the bottom.

This is the clearest risk guide I've found: It's from July and it is American, but it was produced by medical professionals and it's easy to understand. I think something similar (potentially with the option to drill down further) would be really useful to allow politicians explain to the public what the options are and what the impact is likely to be. Even if there isn't any further lockdown, it would allow people to make better informed decisions on their personal choices.