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QUENTIN STAFFORD-FRASER'S BLOG

One should always have something sensational to read on the net...
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July 13th, 2024


TWO HOUSEHOLDS, BOTH ALIKE IN DIGNITY

July 13th, 2024

Two long-established names in the world of journalism are approaching the
challenges of AI in very different ways.

The New York Times is suing OpenAI, in an expensive landmark case that the world
is watching carefully, because it could have very far-reaching ramifications.

The Atlantic, on the other hand, has just done a deal with them.

This isn’t a subject I normally follow very closely, but in what I found to be
an intriguing interview, Nicholas Thompson, the Atlantic‘s CEO, explains how and
why they made this decision, and explores areas well beyond the simple issues of
copyright and accreditation.  It’s an episode of the Decoder podcast, hosted by
The Verge‘s Nilay Patel, who is an excellent and intelligent interviewer.

Recommended listening if you have a car journey, commute, or dog-walk coming up
— just search for ‘Decoder’ on your favourite podcast app — or you can get the
audio, and/or a transcript, from the link above.

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Tags: AI, business, journalism, machine learning
0 Comments
July 11th, 2024


COFFEE POT – THE MOVIE

July 11th, 2024

For a long time, it has both bugged and bemused me that, though the first webcam
ran for 10 years taking photos of our departmental coffee pot, there are almost
no original images saved from the millions it served up to viewers around the
world! I had one or two.

Then, suddenly, in a recent conversation, it occurred to me to check the
Internet Archive’s ‘Wayback Machine’, and, sure enough, in the second half of
the coffeepot camera’s life — from 1996-2001 — they had captured 28 of its
images. I wrote a script to index and download these, and turned them into a
slideshow, which you can find in my new and very exciting three-minute video:



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6 Comments
July 1st, 2024


GO, OCTOPUS, GO!

July 1st, 2024

One of the surprising things about Octopus, the UK company from whom we purchase
our gas and electricity, is that, despite growing to the point where they handle
about a quarter of UK households, they continue to innovate.

For a long time, we’ve been on the ‘Octopus Go’ tariff, which means that for the
four hours starting from 00:30 each night, we get electricity at less than
one-third of the cost of the rest of the day. We make good use of this, charging
our home batteries to the point where, combined with our solar, we very seldom
use any normal (i.e. peak-rate) power.

We also charge our car during this time, meaning that our ‘fuel’ costs are about
2p per mile, and one of my favourite statistics is that, since it cost me about
£600 to replace our car tyres recently after 30,000 miles, we pay almost exactly
the same per mile for fuel as we do for tyre rubber.

All of this may sound very impressive, green and economical… just don’t ask me
how much I’ve spent to get to this point! Still, I find it very satisfying.

One of the purposes of this post, by the way, is to remind anyone else also on
Octopus Go that, from today, the cheap period has been extended to five hours:
from 00:30-05:30. So go and reprogram your cars, car chargers, home batteries or
whatever now, before you forget! For those of us who have a standard 7kW home
charger, that means 35kWh of cheap-rate power per day, which probably translates
into about 100-150 miles, depending on your car.

But Octopus also have some interesting features aimed at balancing the load on
the grid during times of peak supply or demand. They’ve tried a few variants,
and the availability of any particular one will be rather dependent on your
postcode, but here we do quite well, as a result, I think, of generating vast
amounts of wind power off the East Anglian coast and not yet having all the
cabling that’s needed to distribute it effectively to other parts of the
country!

One of these schemes is called ‘Saving Sessions‘, where, at times of peak
demand, you can get paid surprisingly high rates per kWh for using less than
your normal amount of electricity. At first, I ignored this because we use so
little daytime grid power anyway that I thought it would be pointless, until a
friend pointed out that even if your usage is normally zero, you can be paid for
negative usage; in other words, for exporting to the grid.

“Oh ho!”, thought I, “I can do that!” And so, after a bit of programming, my
home automation system notices whenever a Saving Session is active and starts
discharging my house battery (and any excess solar) to the grid. These sessions
only happen in the winter, and not very frequently, but we still managed to
export 40kWh between November and March, earning us about £100. Yes, they really
do pay as much as £2.50/kWh for energy we might have bought the night before for
9p. On rare occasions even more.

And finally, there are Octopus Power-Ups. When they think supply is going to
exceed demand, they need to absorb it, and so they will let you consume as much
as you want for free. Since this is primarily down to the weather forecast
predicting strong winds, or lots of sunshine, or both, you don’t get very much
notice: typically an email the day before or even on the same day. I just plug
the times into my system, and when the moment comes, my car starts charging, my
batteries start charging, my hot water starts heating, and so on. It costs me
nothing, Octopus probably make more money the more I use, and everyone is happy.
(Except my envious friends who don’t live in one of the blessed postcodes!) The
main challenge was that I had expended so much effort over many months trying to
configure the house to draw as little as possible from the grid, and I now had
to set all of the components to do precisely the opposite for a short time and
then revert! Still, that’s what home automation is for!

Octopus is a large company now, and like all organisations on such a scale, does
have plenty of problems too. They suddenly realised at one point in the past,
for example, that they had been billing me for gas but not electricity for
nearly a year, and I got a very large bill that month. Also, I had smart meters
installed for both gas and electricity, and the gas one has never worked, so I
still have to go and read it manually. To be fair, this is a technical problem
suffered at a lot of UK households by most providers, who didn’t realise that
providing the electricity meter with connectivity and assuming that the gas
meter could relay its reports through it using Zigbee wasn’t going to work when,
as is often the case, the meters are on opposite side of a brick or stone house
filled with competing 2.4GHz signals!)

But, in general, I’m a happy customer, and I hope they continue to explore new
and interesting ways to optimise supply and demand. Further innovations will, of
course, require me to keep tweaking my code, but, hey, everyone needs a hobby!

My thanks to my pal Gareth Marlow, who has a similar set-up and whose Home
Assistant configuration helped me make mine much better! Gareth has also done
some great YouTube videos analysing the costs and savings resulting from his
home solar/battery system; perhaps the best I’ve seen on that topic for UK
enthusiasts. Recommended.

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Posted in: Electric Vehicles, General
Tags: energy, home assistant, home automation, renewable energy, solar power
4 Comments
June 24th, 2024


SLOW TIME?

June 24th, 2024

Back in the days when I had an analogue watch, rather than a serious computer,
strapped to my wrist, I often wondered whether life would be more or less
stressful if I removed the minute and second hands, so that I could only tell
the time to, say, the nearest 5-10 minutes.  Would I be more likely to be on
time for meetings, for example, or would I still try to squeeze other things in
right up until the last minute?

Well, it turns out I wasn’t the only one to find this idea at least intriguing.
 Enter Slow Watches, who make some rather nice designs with a single hand.  In
their case, they chose to make this hand rotate every 24 hours instead of 12, to
‘follow the natural rhythm of the sun’.



Now, that’s quite poetic, and I like the way midnight is at the bottom, so the
hand will rise and set in a way that should feel natural, at least if you live
in the northern hemisphere.  But it might take longer for you to be able to
glance at it and know that it’s roughly half-past two.

I’ve got so used to all the wonderful facilities of my Apple Watch that I find
it hard to imagine exchanging it for anything, though there’s no denying that
these are more aesthetically appealing.

What do you think?  Would your quality of life improve if you could only tell
the time to the nearest 15 mins or so?

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5 Comments
June 23rd, 2024


TOTAL RECALL

June 23rd, 2024

The tech news has had a lot of coverage recently of Microsoft’s proposed
‘Recall‘ system, which (as a very rough approximation) takes a screenshot of
your display every five seconds, and uses their AI-type Copilot system to allow
you to search it. “What was that cafe or restaurant that someone in the call
recommended yesterday?”

At first glance, this is a very appealing feature. Back in the 90s, when I was
working on human-computer interaction stuff, we used to say things like “the
more a secretary knows about you, the more helpful he or she can be”. We were
living in a world where your computer knew almost nothing about you except what
you typed on your keyboard or clicked with your mouse.

Nowadays, however, users are more often concerned about your computer — or
someone with access to your computer — knowing too much about you. The data used
by Recall is only stored locally, but in a corporate environment, for example,
somebody with admin access to your PC could scroll back to the last time you
logged in to your online banking and see screenshots of your bank statements.
So, potentially, could a piece of malware running with your access permissions
(though that could also probably take snapshots of its own). You can tell the
system not to record when you’re using certain apps, or visiting certain
websites… as long as you’re using Microsoft’s browser, of course. Or you can
opt-out completely… but all of these require you to take action to preserve your
privacy – the defaults are for everything to be switched on.

This caused enough of a storm that Microsoft recently switched it from being
part of their next general release to being available only through the ‘Windows
Insider Program’, pending further discussion.

There’s been enough online debate that I won’t revisit the arguments here about
whether such a system could be built securely, whether we’d trust it more if it
came from someone other than Microsoft, what the appropriate level of paranoia
actually is, and so on.

There are, however, a couple of things I’d like to point out.

The first is that this facility was to be available, in the immediate future at
least, only on PCs that meet Microsoft’s ‘CoPilot+’ standard, meaning they had a
neural processing unit (NPU) which allowed them to run the necessary neural
network models at a sensible speed. And the only machines on the market that
currently have that are ARM-based, not powered by AMD and Intel. I find it
intriguing that the classic Intel x86 platform which has been so closely tied to
Microsoft software for so long is not able to support such a headline feature of
Windows. “We are partnering with Intel and AMD to bring Copilot+ PC experiences
to PCs with their processors in the future.”

The second is that, ahem, I predicted such a system, right here on this blog, 21
years ago.

Actually, though, my idea wasn’t just based on screenshots. I wanted a jog-wheel
that would allow you to rewind or fast-forward through the entire state of your
machine’s history: filesystem, configuration and all. One key component for this
we didn’t really have then, but it is much more readily available now:
filesystems which can save an instantaneous snapshot without using much time or
space to do it. As I wrote at the time,

> The technology would need a quick way of doing “freeze! – duplicate entire
> storage! – continue!”.

And that, at least, is now possible with filesystems like ZFS (which I use on my
Linux home server), BTRFS (used by my Synology), and APFS (used on my Macs,
where such snapshots are a key part of the Time Machine backup system). So one
of the key requirements for my wishlist is now on almost all my machines.

And my Linux server is running NixOS, which means that I can, should I so
desire, at boot time, select any of the past configurations from the last few
months and boot into that — Operating System, applications, configuration and
all — instead of the current version.

I haven’t quite got my rewind/fast-forward jog-wheel yet, though. Oh, we do have
that AI stuff… all very clever, I’m sure, but I’d rather have my jog-wheel.
Let’s give it another 21 years…

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Posted in: Computing
2 Comments



GO WEST

June 23rd, 2024

We’ve been away for the last week or so on the south coast of Cornwall, and it
was a great trip. We had our folding e-bikes inside the van, and our little boat
behind, which meant it wasn’t always the easiest setup to take along narrow
Cornish lanes, especially if we found ourselves needing to reverse!



Once we arrived, though, we did most of our travelling like this:



We ate at one of our favourite locations:



We enjoyed walks with some wonderful views:



And slept soundly in our van.



And now, back to normal life!

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Posted in: Boating, Campervan, Travel
1 Comment
May 20th, 2024


ROAD (ENTHUSIAST) RAGE?

May 20th, 2024

Many years ago, we discovered that audiobooks are a wonderful way to make long
journeys seem shorter, and seldom does a motorway junction go by without it
being accompanied by a snatch of, say, Jules Verne, PG Wodehouse, Arthur
Ransome, Neville Shute or Patrick O’Brian.  

Aside: This is one reason why I’m delighted with my latest Tesla software
update: as of last week, my car now includes an Audible app, and a single
button-press on the steering wheel will continue the current adventure from
wherever we left off.  But more about Tesla software updates will follow in a
future post…

But if audiobooks aren’t your thing, and you want alternative sources of
distraction en route, perhaps you could ponder the history of the numbers of the
roads themselves!  This is the topic of a surprisingly interesting blog post by
Chris Marshall, talking about UK road numbers like ‘A14’ and ‘B5286’.  

Have you ever wondered where they come from, what the rules are, or who cares
about it when the local authorities get the numbers wrong?  Because they do get
them wrong, you know, and then SABRE, the Society for All British and Irish Road
Enthusiasts swings into action to try to get things put right!

You may feel strongly about this.  You may want to join them and rattle a sabre
of your own from time to time.  Then, perhaps, you could join The Milestone
Society.  But even if not, Chris’s post will start to educate you, and then you
might try searching for your favourite road on the SABRE Wiki!

But not, of course, while you’re driving.

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Tags: cars, motoring, travel
0 Comments
May 18th, 2024


WELL, THAT SEEMS APPROPRIATE.

May 18th, 2024

A couple of days ago, I pointed out that a better name for climate change might
be “Global Drenching”.

However, it’s clear that I’m not the only one who is thinking that way.

An article on the BBC website tells me that, in England & Wales, the most
popular boy’s name for babies is now, apparently, Noah!

Coincidence? Ha! I think not!

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Posted in: General
1 Comment
May 16th, 2024


REBRANDING CLIMATE CHANGE

May 16th, 2024

As I look out of the window at yet another rainy day, it occurs to me that we
missed an opportunity to get climate change taken seriously.  Here in Britain,
‘global warming’ often sounds rather nice. An opportunity to improve domestic
vineyards, perhaps, and make wines here like the Romans used to do.  Or to save
on air fares to the south of France… I know some have argued that ‘global
heating’ is a better phrase, for just that reason: it’s a bit less cozy. 

But since, for many people, warmer temperatures will mean increased
precipitation, I think we should also consider names like ‘Global Drenching’ or
‘Universal Drizzle’.  That sounds more like something we would want to avoid in
the home counties, and might spur people to action.

Right.  Action.  I’m off to buy shares in Gore-Tex…

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Tags: climate change, environment
0 Comments
May 14th, 2024


HOW TO SOLVE ‘RANGE ANXIETY’

May 14th, 2024

Rory Sutherland has a nice piece with this title in The Spectator.  Excerpt:

> As you are reading this, thousands of the world’s cleverest people are
> spending billions to increase the range of electric car batteries. The reason
> for this is to reduce a phenomenon called ‘range anxiety’. I suggest that it
> might be a lot cheaper to reduce anxiety than it is to increase range.
> 
> The truth is there is no such thing as range anxiety…

I’ll let you read the rest.

This also reminds me that if you missed Geoff Greer’s review of a
gasoline-powered car last year, do go on to read that afterwards!

Many thanks to Peter Robinson for the link to Rory’s piece.

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Posted in: Electric Vehicles
0 Comments
May 7th, 2024


AI WHITEWASHING

May 7th, 2024

Yesterday, I asked:

> Here’s a question, O Internet:
> 
> If I buy full-fat milk and dilute it 50/50 with water, do I effectively have
> semi-skimmed milk, or is there something more sophisticated about the skimming
> process?
> 
> And if I then dilute it again, do I get skimmed milk… for one quarter of the
> price?

Now, the quick answer, as I understand it, is ‘no’: milk contains a variety of
nutrients, and several of these are water-soluble.  So the process of ‘skimming’
to reduce the fat content doesn’t dilute these nutrients in the way that you
would by just adding water: you still get them at approximately the same
concentration when you buy semi-skimmed or skimmed milk.

But I learned a couple of interesting different things from asking!

The first thing is this wonderful diagram, found and posted in the comments by
Spencer:



(click for full size)

It looks like something explaining the petrochemical industry, but much, much
more yummy.

His comment: “I wonder how many of these I can have with my breakfast today?”

And the second thing is that, as well as beginning “Here’s a question, O
Internet”, I could have asked “Here’s a question, O Artificial Intelligence”.  

My friend Keshav did that, submitting my question verbatim to Perplexity, a
system I hadn’t previously tried.  Here’s the rather good result (and here as a
screenshot in case that live link goes away).

I then went on to ask “Which nutrients in milk are water-soluble?”, and it told
me, with good citations, with the comment that “maintaining adequate levels of
these water-soluble vitamins in breast milk is important for the health and
development of the breastfed infant”.  So I asked a follow-up question:  “Is
this different in cows’ milk?”, and again, got a useful, detailed response with
references for all the facts.

This stuff really is getting better… at least until the Internet is completely
overrun by AI spam and the AIs have to start citing themselves.  But for now,  I
think Perplexity is worth exploring further.

Thanks to Spencer, Keshav and other respondents!

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Posted in: General
Tags: AI, artificial intelligence, food, nutrition
0 Comments
May 6th, 2024


WHITEWASHING?

May 6th, 2024

Here’s a question, O Internet:

If I buy full-fat milk and dilute it 50/50 with water, do I effectively have
semi-skimmed milk, or is there something more sophisticated about the skimming
process?

And if I then dilute it again, do I get skimmed milk… for one quarter of the
price?

Possibly-related posts:

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   Milk chocolate...
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   for...
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   manufacturers have cottoned on...
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Posted in: General
Tags: food
3 Comments
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