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 SmallMay 16
Show threadjasegMay 16
@tim @doctormo oh god, this table with poorly aligned numbers typeset in a proportional font is kind of offensive lol
Tim SmallMay 16
Show threadEwen McNeillMay 16

@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.

Tim SmallMay 16
@doctormo Each page does have a nice graph on it, but still I reduced the file size by 34% by running it through ghostscript (lossless conversion). These files are made available to download permanently through their web site, so they're paying for some extra useless storage there too. The download URL points to AWS, so their S3 bill must be fearsome.
Show threadTim SmallMay 16
@brunogirin For some reason the bill covers the electricity consumption from 21st June 2024 to 4th May 2025. One day per page. They had been crediting me for solar generation and charging for gas consumption, but not billing anything for electricity consumption.
Tim SmallMay 15
Show threadbert hubert 🇺🇦🇪🇺🇺🇦May 15
And not only was this predictable it was predicted: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/you-can-no-longer-base-your-government-and-society-on-us-clouds/
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
Show threadTim SmallMay 15
@TimWardCam @zleap@qoto.org Yep, I presume it's something like this however there's probably no law/rule which prevents them splitting the pdf in half and sending the bill as two separate emails, and there's certainly nothing to prevent them optimising the PDF so that it is 34% smaller (with no change in quality) - both of which I managed in 2 minutes (using ghostscript, including time to look up the necessary gs options).
Show threadTim SmallMay 15
@Martinius @zleap@qoto.org I ran it through ghostscript, and that shaved 34% off (no change in quality). That is still apparently slightly too large for my mail relay (after mime base64 encoding) but after the radical innovation of splitting it into two PDFs, I successfully sent it to myself in two emails (from a different email account hosted elsewhere).
Octopus make all of my historic bills available to download via an AWS URL, so I suspect they are paying 34% too much on their S3 bill.
Tim SmallMay 15
JuneSim63May 15

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
Tim SmallMay 15
Tim Harford May 15

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
Tim SmallMay 15
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.