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John Looney

@bigvalen.bsky.social

Site Reliability, lover of crafting, science and history. “Ecrasez l’ infâme”.

286 Followers  |  290 Following  |  410 Posts  |  Joined: 13.10.2023  |  2.1272

Latest posts by bigvalen.bsky.social on Bluesky

If you can't avoid a jaywalker in a car, you shouldn't be on the road, of course.

11.10.2025 15:12 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

I literally just invented it as I was typing, trying to work out the cost per meter of multimode fibre vs. 500kv cable...turns out the price difference is about 1000x :-)

09.10.2025 20:48 — 👍 5    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Very very few datacenter workloads are happy to load shift, unfortunately. It requires you to have the same data in multiple places, and be OK with driving user latency up (inference) or duplicating enormous datasets (training). Easier to just pay for storage.

09.10.2025 19:18 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

You do lose some power, even at 200kV.

The real problem is that grids are under enormous pressure to allow new connections, and can delay adding wind farms and solar parks for YEARS. This can be called stranded power, and big power users chase it.

It's easier to move gigabits than gigawatts.

09.10.2025 19:17 — 👍 18    🔁 2    💬 2    📌 1

I wonder if the minister is secretly relieved that they don't need to go through with it. They can just say "no" to the police.

08.10.2025 17:00 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Any chance we could get some hilarious 1970s safety TV ads, do you think ? Some 'oul lad giving a leg up to a kid, trying to hang posters on a pylon, which then cuts to a mother in a car full of posters, who hears a zap, a clatter of dropped zip ties, and asks "Mikey ? Joe ?" in a nervous manner.

26.09.2025 11:11 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

My first earthquake. My rational mind assumed someone had come into my room and was trying to shake me awake. I guess, no more sleep for me.

They should really schedule these things at night. Much more convenient.

22.09.2025 10:14 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I made a lovely leather coat, based on a 17thC Irish great coat. It's magnificent for winter weather, except that the pockets are really low...didn't realised that they were set assuming you were riding a horse. Which, I tend to do, rarely.

18.09.2025 11:21 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

The 2nd amendment was designed to ensure people could protect the ones they loved. Or something. I'm not expert on what was in the brains of 18th century revolutionaries who were convinced the English would attack again, at any time.

17.09.2025 13:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Many of the newly built DCs are taking power "behind the meter" for that reason, bypassing the grid. It's not great, for the grid, or consumers, long term. But the processes around onboarding new grid connections was not designed for the level of tumult that these datacenters has brought.

14.09.2025 10:58 — 👍 4    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

Love the idea that Dev was somehow noteworthy in the Ireland of the 1930s for misogyny.

11.09.2025 12:12 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

"Googlieness" was a continuous internal debate that happened everywhere, at every level. It meant mirth, or intensity, or a strive for engineering perfection, or a tolerance for diversity, or an intolerance for political expedience. I remember an internal document of over 100 proverbs, Aesop style.

07.09.2025 15:07 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I think Google had a huge number more principles that were very heavily communicated internally. Like ... hundreds, maybe. Unlike Amazon and Meta, they didn't come from above, they could come from anywhere. Because they weren't codified, the post 2014 Oracleification eroded them.

07.09.2025 15:04 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Obviously, it would need a breather of some sort.

16.08.2025 22:55 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Be careful of what you wish for. There are Irish folks who left, and became a LOT more conservative. Not everywhere is more liberal than Ireland, and where you move to changes your outlook a lot.

There is a lot to "if you still have a passport, you must register for taxes, and you get a vote".

12.08.2025 09:47 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

If growing up means not owning beautiful things, it sounds like a terrible idea.

12.08.2025 09:43 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Before a revolution happens, you see it in the creative arts. You hear poets and songwriters predicting change. You need playwrights and scriptwriters praising failed revolutionaries.

The UK has none of this. Their politicians are deaf to the need for change. Memes about using VPNs aren't enough.

10.08.2025 21:26 — 👍 6    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
Canon Law Preview Post Hey guys, Just a little update to let you all know that Lightning Strike Comics will be making an appearance at 2 conventions next year in the UK. On May 19th-20th we’ll be at Kapow! in Londo…

Heh. Reminds me of that Comic series "Canon Law", about a Catholic Canon, called "Law", who solves crimes his own way...with a magnum 45. So many puns.

lightningstrikecomics.wordpress.com/2011/12/16/c...

10.08.2025 21:22 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

That's up to the company that runs the grid. They can also setup Power Purchase Agreements and do this every few years. Unfortunately, because it takes EirGrid suppliers up to ten years to build a new power plant, and the Irish population grew 20% in 15 years, they ran low.

10.08.2025 18:34 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

These stories about people following LLMs into madness are helping me understand how so many people could listen to a teenage girl getting fucked up on volcanic gasses and understand her to he the voice of God.

08.08.2025 19:42 — 👍 126    🔁 31    💬 3    📌 2

I buy Osprey books for the articles.

08.08.2025 22:34 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Fascinating. Will it deal with the weird obsession with rules? Rule following, even when nonsensical and unfair, is the basis for colonial participation.

06.08.2025 20:56 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Seems it started a after after WB was refused the rights to do an animated American version of F5. Wow.

03.08.2025 13:09 — 👍 1    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
Preview
“No one wants to use the word ‘cull’”. There’s an island off the UK overrun with wallabies – and they’re causing chaos | Discover Wildlife Feral wallaby populations are growing on the Isle of Man – and native wildlife is suffering, dividing opinion among islanders

They need to introduce the wallaby's natural predator. Drunk Ozzies night shooting at them from the back of 4x4s with headlamps.

03.08.2025 12:44 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Fucking what ? Really ? Aaaaaaah.

03.08.2025 12:38 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Don't miss the barricades set across the north wall, to get drivers to leave the main road, get stuck, someone would drop a breeze block on the car roof, causing people to run out of the car, so the teens could joyride until the fuel ran out or they crashed.

Dublin is way better than it used to be.

03.08.2025 12:34 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

I dunno. I remember as a teenager walking down Summerhill, and kids in the apartments would throw glass milk bottles at you, from the third floor. 1990 or so. Don't miss that.

03.08.2025 12:33 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
Parnell St in Dublin in 1985. There is a large building with a sign saying “Peats Wholesale”. There are several derelict sites being used as surface car parking.

Parnell St in Dublin in 1985. There is a large building with a sign saying “Peats Wholesale”. There are several derelict sites being used as surface car parking.

This is what Parnell St looked like when I was 10. Close enough to Dresden 1945. How have people forgotten this?

02.08.2025 10:25 — 👍 41    🔁 8    💬 7    📌 1

Binge-watched both disks of the extended-edition Blu-ray of Fellowship of the Ring, and my 22 year old said she was exhausted.

"Did everyone watch movies like this in the old days?"

I did point out, that in the old-old days, movies were only allowed to be 90mins long.

03.08.2025 12:23 — 👍 6    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

But holy shit. When she told me what had been tolerated until then. And how you couldn't fire just one consultant. You had to fire the ones that lied to cover them up, too...who were happy to frame nurses for deaths etc. knowing no one would believe them over a man.

03.08.2025 11:18 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

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