Norphy

This is what Delivery Optimization is for. It creates a cache of downloaded content from the cloud on a local PC. The other PCs on your network poll the other computers to see if they have the content before they go to the cloud. The downside is that you need to have space on the computers for this to work. If you've got a suite full of 120GB or 240GB SSDs, then you're boned.

Benchmarks are saying that the A18 Pro is roughly on par with the M3 in terms of single threaded performance and on a par with the M1 with multithreading. Plus, the M Series of CPUs were derivitives of the A-series ones, while Atom was a clean room design. You can't really compare the two. The laptop obviously isn't going to compete with a MacBook Pro, but I think the CPU is going to be the least of its problems. I suspect the RAM, despite optimisations in macOS, is going to be the limiting factor.

If all you're going to use it for is OSD, using ConfigMgr for that is using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut.

The main issue that I see with the Neo is the relatively small amount of RAM. They come with 8GB of RAM. It will be fine for internet browsing, basic office work and watching videos and the like. The CPU is also comparativley weak: 2 P cores and 4 E cores, although the single threaded performance is better than the M1 it's replacing. The rest of it is perfectly fine. I expect it will be fine with most of the workloads a basic student will want from it, but once you start getting into more advanced workloads, you'll want to look at the Air series. It is a shame that Apple don't offer it with larger amounts of RAM.

The Shattering Peace by John Scalzi I was excited to see that there was a new Scalzi book published at end of last year and doubly so that it was an Old Man’s War book, the first in ten years. The Old Man’s War series was what got me into Scalzi after Redshirts and so far it’s not disappointed.

If there was ever a more appropriate time for this gif, I don’t one when it was…

I bought the run on Apple TV for £25 about a year ago. The HD/4K transfers are nice; I just wish they would remaster the CGI too. It still holds up, and despite the CGI being old the space scenes are amazingly detailed. Quite honestly, I think all they need to do is increase the texture detail and maybe up the polygon count a little, and it'd look modern again. And the parallels to what's going on today are... scary.

As much as I think I'd enjoy car development, my current role doesn't offer that

SCCM uses task sequences very similar to MDT’s, and you can integrate MDT into SCCM if you so desire, but natively SCCM does not use MDT.

I had a hire car with that too. At first I thought there was something wrong with the car - the steering wheel kept on vibrating and I couldn't work out why. In the end, I worked out how to kill most of the annoying assist features but couldn't get the speed warnings or "take a break" warnings to shut up. The annoying thing is that those things are incredibly distracting. You find yourself taking your eyes off the road to find out what the car is beeping about. That was a stressful two weeks with that thing!

That's mostly fine, but please don't get second-hand car seats. You don't know their history, plus the polystyrene in them degrades over time. Second hand prams etc are fine though.

My son uses it for Spongebob. I've watched Tulsa King on it, that was pretty good. Landman looks like it might be good too. I liked Your Honor with Bryan Cranston. If you like South Park, it's got that too. Otherwise, I just sub to it when a new Star Trek comes out.

There is one thing I will say - they'd better bring back Tatiana Maslany in a meaningful fashion. She was criminally underused in the pilot. You can't have an actor of her calibre and just have her do three lines and 14 seconds of screen time. I didn't like the casual swearing very much either. "Asshole 1 to Asshole 2"? “I'm Khionian, bitch”? I mean, come on. This isn't Breaking Bad and they're not Aaron Paul. That just didn't work. But that aside, as I say, I think there's some potential there. I'll be watching ep2 later.

Watched the first episode of Starfleet Academy on Paramount+ I don’t know. It wasn’t entirely awful. There were bits which made it look like there might be some potential but other bits that were questionable. The thing I really want to know is: why is the Klingon cadet so stilted? Not even the Disco Klingons were so stiff. I liked Gina Yashere’s character though, and Robert Picardo was as good as ever. I’ll keep going with it because it’s Star Trek and there hasn’t been one that’s defeated me yet.

I used to enjoy Dilbert, but good lord this guy turned out to be an utter piece of crap.

Funny you should say that about SCCM. I've always found MDT's task sequences to be overcomplicated to an entirely unnecessary degree. I've always preferred SCCM's task sequences. You can bloody keep Intune though.

Hard to tell from a teaser, but that looks very promising nevertheless. Glad to see Francis and Piama are still together!

I seem to vaguely remember problems with these things when it came to audio. The driver didn’t install during a task sequence and even at the time I couldn’t find a download for it. The way I ended up resolving it was to use a powershell command to extract the driver from a factory image and then use that driver to install it by hand later on. Unfortunately I don’t have access to one of these any more so I won’t be able to send you the driver; maybe someone else does. i really don’t miss those things.

I've not used ClassDojo professionally but speaking as a parent, it works well. We use it to communicate with the school and that works effectively. It's nice to see what they're up to inside of school and lessons without having to rely on public social networking platforms.

And just as I post this, the power has come back on! Not counting on it staying though. Seems absurd that I’m not even 10 miles away from Dumfries and in a relatively large village, and power just goes off like that.

Storm Bram brings flooding and travel disruption to UK Anyone else affected? Our power is out at the moment. Scottish Power Networks are saying it will be restored tomorrow by 6pm

Really? I've not got that LG TV but I was quite impressed with the sound on the 43"-ish one I bought last year for about the same price. Compared to others I've seen, it's a lot better.

Because that assumes three things: 1) The extra time spent fitting the RAM is worthless 2) You don't care about the warranty and support of the computer. Adding RAM might not void the warranty but if there are any RAM issues on them, you can absolutely guarantee that the vendor will tell you to go whistle. 3) That the computer doesn't have soldered RAM, which a lot do these days. It's much easier to just buy them with what you need. Upgrade them further on down the line, sure, but not out of the box.

Flu jabs are £15-20. Charging £100 for a COVID jab seems obscene. I know that the COVID jabs are new and the pharma companies need to recoup their investment but COVID can still be deadly and that's just gouging.