vivweb01

  Editors note: I wheel this blog out periodically when drought threatens to strike again, as it is doing now, despite the UK experiencing one of the wettest winters I can remember in 2025-6. The main problem with our drought resilience is that UK doesn't seem to be able to 'hold its water' nowadays...or is it perhaps we're using too much of the stuff cooling all these new AI data centres ?  One way or another, we need a bit of rain....AI won't save us if the raw material in question isn't there to do the job, particularly if its servers regularly overheat due to lack of cooling water. Here's hoping the rain gods will read this and oblige us with their bounty once again, as they did in '76! With the country teetering on the brink of a prolonged drought, and hosepipe bans coming in thick and fast, particulary in the parched South, we really need a good dousing...and some new reservoirs ! Incidentally, I can now answer my own question - Yes, and we now hav...

In view of the current reflections on AI and what its consequences are likely to be, I couldn't resist revisiting an early blog I'd written on the subject in 2022....  Could it be that AI has been evolving for some time - without us actually realising it ? Enjoy.... --------------------- Travelodge and the ‘Escapist’ Robot – was it cleverer than we thought ? An entertaining news story took my eye last week and brightened things up somewhat amidst the anticyclonic gloom of late January in UK…. Apparently a cleaning robot being used by the Travelodge hotel in Cambridge went AWOL, and was later found under a hedge nearby. ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-60084347 ). Having checked my calendar to ensure I hadn’t managed to hibernate without realising it,   thus missing February and March this year and landing on 1st April, I then verified that other news outlets were also reporting the story. After reading a couple of them, I wiped my eyes and started w...

  Amazon’s Kindle eReaders were ahead of their time when they first emerged in the late noughties, and were the first of the specialist eReaders with e-ink displays and long battery life to hit the mass market. They have amassed a large following of dedicated reader fans over the years since then, and have proven themselves to be robust and long-lasting devices. Dedicated e-readers are also the preferred vehicle for reading eBooks, given the eyestrain probems associated with long-term use of the LED screens typically used in phones and tablets.  Amazon have been steadily phasing out support to their older devices 'on the quiet' for the past couple of years, with increasing restrictions on registration and downloads for their oldest models. There has been considerable concern voiced recently amongst the Kindle fan-base over the recent 'final' announcement   by Amazon that they were withdrawing support from all of their older devices from May 20th 2026. Arguably some...

AI development has continued apace since this blog was first published in June 2024, with little sign of a slowdown. Herewith an update for 2026.....   Introduction There has been much discussion, and not a little concern, voiced in the press and on social media recently about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the dangers it might pose for humanity. How dangerous is it really, and what if anything can, or indeed should, we do about it ? First, let’s try to pin down what we mean by the term ‘AI’. The OED dictionary definition is: “.. the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. ” This rather narrow definition focuses on the use of AI as a tool, to be used to enhance what we as humans already manage to accomplish, rather than considering what a new ‘cohort of intelligent machines’ might do themselves in the future....