Tim Small

@tim@mastodon.energy
110 Followers
192 Following
731 Posts
Hygrothermal and energy performance of buildings. Embedded control and monitoring software. Computer Science, Physics. Jack of a few trades.
Twitter@linuxtim
emailtim@buttersideup.com
@tim @doctormo oh god, this table with poorly aligned numbers typeset in a proportional font is kind of offensive lol

@tim that looks like 1 page per day (not great, not terrible). How did they get to 321 pages??! Is it most of a years worth of billing detail all at once? 🤔

(And yeah, properly encoded even 48*80 characters per page, plus a graph with the same number of data points, ought to be ~5-10kB per page properly encoded in a PDF. So maybe ~3MB or so without any type of dictionary compression, for 321 pages.

It is no longer safe to move our governments and societies to US clouds - Bert Hubert's writings

The very short version: it is madness to continue transferring the running of European societies and governments to American clouds. Not only is it a terrible idea given the kind of things the “King of America” keeps saying, the legal sophistry used to justify such transfers, like the nonsense letter the Dutch cabinet sent last week, has now been invalidated by Trump himself. And why are we doing this? Convenience.

Bert Hubert's writings

For the first time, the growth in China’s clean power generation has caused the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to fall despite rapid power demand growth.

The new analysis for Carbon Brief shows that China’s emissions were down 1.6% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025 and by 1% in the latest 12 months.

#China #CO2Emissions #CleanEnergy

Analysis: Clean energy just put China’s CO2 emissions into reverse for first time - Carbon Brief
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-clean-energy-just-put-chinas-co2-emissions-into-reverse-for-first-time/

Analysis: Clean energy just put China’s CO2 emissions into reverse for first time - Carbon Brief

For the first time, the growth in China’s clean power generation has caused the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to fall despite rapid power demand growth.

Carbon Brief

The value of institutional memory

In 1978, a dredging gang working for British Waterways was struggling with a problem. They were trying to clear obstacles on the Chesterfield Canal so they could stabilise a concrete wall — not an easy day’s work. But what really had them stumped was a heavy iron chain on the canal bottom. After various attempts, they hooked the chain to their dredger. That did

https://timharford.com/2025/05/the-value-of-institutional-memory/

#UndercoverEconomist

The value of institutional memory

In 1978, a dredging gang working for British Waterways was struggling with a problem. They were trying to clear obstacles on the Chesterfield Canal so they could stabilise a concrete wall — not an …

Tim Harford
Octopus Energy posted me a 321 A4 page electricity bill printed out on paper as a physical 5cm thick package (on their "Agile tariff" the rate changes every half hour, so there are 48 line items per day). I enquired as to why they'd done that?
Apparently they tried to email it first, but the 15 MB email exceeded my email server's size limit, so they posted a hard copy instead.
Have I mentioned that I'm a fan of both moving slow and fixing things?

Freelance or want to be? In Brighton? Come to our freelancers networking event tomorrow evening in the Lord Nelson Inn. We'll be there 8pm - 11. All welcome.

Last week: https://www.brightonfarm.com/2025/meeting-notes-20250423/

Map: https://maps.app.goo.gl/cvx8bVp8Aj6C379e9

#event #brighton #networking

Looker Studio, batching and filtering news - meeting notes from 23rd April 2025 - Brighton Farm

On 23rd April, eight freelancers met in the Lord Nelson Inn to discuss all things self employment and tech. This is some of what we talked about: What you can claim as an expense Using GnuCash as a UK company Clients who are picky about costs like WordPress plugins, but spend more on devs to […]

Brighton Farm
Musk should consider resigning from UK Royal Society, new president says

Musk’s attacks on publicly funded scientific research make his position as a member difficult, says Sir Paul Nurse

The Times
Careful now