I've just been watching a new BBC documentary, and I can't make up my mind what to think about the events depicted.

Life with a Russian billionaire: money and death threats

iPlayer: The Countess and the Russian Billionaire

There are multiple strands to consider here, and all are at least touched on in the film. The evolution of the USSR into current Russia (with the characters including Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, sundry oligarchs, and a cast of thousands). A simple human love story. The courts and legal systems across Europe. Sundry enforcers, both judicial and extra-judicial.

All of those are still very much a 'work in progress' - a first draft of history. It'll take a century or more to write the whole story, and conclude who were the goodies and who were the baddies (I suspect the baddies will outnumber the goodies).

But in this time of pandemic coronavirus, my mind was taken up by the lifestyles of this group of people in the good times.

"We have a PA, two drivers, two housekeepers, an English nanny, and a Russian nanny as well as a French teacher for homework", counts Alexandra as she gives a tour of her home.

"He'd give me his credit card and I'd go shopping, I could do what I liked," she says. "I had a private jet. I just had to pack my suitcase and go."

The couple split their time between an array of properties; including a £12m family home in Battersea, a 200-acre estate in Hertfordshire, and a beach-front villa in the Caribbean, worth $40m. [not to mention the Chateau in the south of France]

If they'd kept that up into the first three months of this year, they'd have made the lead in a different sort of documentary.

Good news on a Coronavirus vaccine.
Coronavirus vaccine breakthrough as Queensland scientists raise high levels of antibodies in testing
Still at the animal testing stage, so continue to Stay Safe.

It's too hot!

It's not "normal" to be this hot, this far north. More than 30C for a week now, and 33C inside my apartment.

Minimal crunching for me now. (Since SETI went into hibernation, I moved to WCG)
I'm running only my old Laptop, Samsung NP-RV511 now 24/7, and on 3 threads only of its 2C/4T processor (Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 380 @ 2.53GHz).Tthrottle is installed and works perfectly.
The rest of my computers are not crunching when it is this hot, including my even older ASUS Laptop 1C/1T (Intel(R) Celeron(R) M processor 1.50GHz)

C l i m a t e C h a n g e

Well, it's possible, but I remember a couple of summers like this.
One sometime in the 70's, I do not remember the exact year, but I think it was 1975, and then the famous summer of 1994.
So far, this summer even though hot just now, can not compete with 1975, or 1994.

It's just that the older I get, the less heat I can deal with without feeling uncomfortable.

As of now, at 18:50 local time, it's still 27C outside (and despite open windows 32C in my apartment)

1976. Loved working on Met main but hated the Circle duties.

Yes, 1976. I had a holiday booked (overland to Morocco), but the tour company rang up at the last minute and bumped me back a week. Didn't feel like working the extra days, so - literally - caught the service bus at the end of the road. Took me 65 miles from Bradford, via Hawes, to Keld at the head of Wensleydale.

Then I spent the spare week walking back - eating in pubs, sleeping in unlocked barns on piles of hay (winter fodder in storage). It worked then, in that summer, but I don't think I'd try it again today.

Why not? If you wear that sweater, you'll look the type. No one will ask you anything. ;-)

It's not me, it's the accommodation. I don't think you can just walk up to a barn in the corner of a field and try the door, any more.

They've all been converted into bijou bunkhouses...

Well, isn't that much easier then? At least then you'll have a bed to lay in, instead of fodder for winter. :)

But I'd have had to book it weeks in advance!

From 11am CEST (9am UTC) onwards you can follow a live stream watching the sun here via the radio telescope at Dwingeloo in The Netherlands.
The telescope can see through clouds and rain, so this live stream will continue despite the bad weather.
(Explanations are in Dutch)

Why are they speaking English backwards?

ROFLOL, says the Swede whose language is equally impossible to follow. :)

Why are they speaking English backwards?

With a Mumbai accent.

Another Doomsday Vault: Buried deep in the ice is the GitHub code vault — humanity's safeguard against devastation
This one is for computer data.

Had several HD7950 & S9000 radeon systems most liquid cooled running milkyway. Gave them away recently as older systems need a lot of baby sitting to keep running plus I got interested in other things that dont involve baby sitting computers. Have a few mostly gtx1070 systems running gpugrid now.

Gridcoin used to be 21 cents just a few years ago but now only .005 (1/2 a cent)

Which is why these coins are pointless. I've tried many a time on CPU, GPU, ASIC, etc, and every single time the coin value produced is less than the cost of the electricity and hardware. Absolutely useless. Even if you find something good, the value drops in the next week and you have to change hardware and mess around. You never ever make any money.

Agreed. Unless you want to contribute to the science on the projects you run and are looking to recoup a small fraction of the cost or like myself at this time of year, all my daylight computing is free from the panels on my roof.

Agreed. Unless you want to contribute to the science on the projects you run and are looking to recoup a small fraction of the cost

That's why I tried it, since I was spending the money anyway. But the fraction earned was miniscule, and it reduced my control over which projects I could do.

I'm surprised the green lobby hasn't realised just how much power is being wasted "creating" bitcoins. I did find this article, but the greenies don't seem to be getting upset about it. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/bitcoin-environment-green-energy-power-global-warming-climate-change-a8094661.html "The sheer amount of computing power and energy required to run the bitcoin economy means that the surging prices could literally be damaging our planet, experts have warned. And as the price of the cryptocurrency surges, that problem is likely to get worse. Already, the power used to mine bitcoin around the world takes up more energy than 159 individual countries. And each bitcoin transaction uses the same amount of energy required to power a US household for nine days, according to Digiconomist."

or like myself at this time of year, all my daylight computing is free from the panels on my roof.

Ah, one of those treehugger government grants :-) They pay you for the electricity you're actually using! I tried to get that twice, but bad timing meant on both occasions the fitting company pulled out because the government just lowered the tarrif.

I also tried a few solar panels fitted and paid for by myself, and realised that they generate such a pathetic amount of power in Scotland that they don't even pay for themselves for 25 years.

---

I also tried a few solar panels fitted and paid for by myself, and realised that they generate such a pathetic amount of power in Scotland that they don't even pay for themselves for 25 years.

Ours have paid for themselves in nine years. We were lucky and got in just before the first cut in the feed in tariff.

The Green Party did put out a statement about the CO2 produced by mining for bitcoin a few years ago. If I can find it will post a link.

Ours have paid for themselves in nine years. We were lucky and got in just before the first cut in the feed in tariff.

They haven't really paid for themselves, you've been given money by the government. It may be different in hotter climates, but in the UK solar panels are not a good way of generating power. We should stick to wind and hydro, we get plenty of rain and wind!

The Green Party did put out a statement about the CO2 produced by mining for bitcoin a few years ago. If I can find it will post a link.

Bitcoin seems an utterly pointless exercise to me. I'm sure they could make a secure non-government-based transaction system that doesn't require useless mathematics to be done over and over. I'm not a greenie in any way at all, but even to me it seems silly to compute for nothing.

---