yes - apologies - you are correct - I was thinking of Merkel

I was a bit surprised to be modded down as a Troll for introducing Popper into a debate on the philosophy of science / epistemology!

The essence of current scientific philosophy was nailed down by Popper:

Popper essentially said that you cannot prove anything, all you can do is try to disprove it and if you fail it is probably true.

Explaining Popper to the great unwashed is difficult but must be within the bounds of a great communicator. Teaching of science in schools does not explain this important point. It must be possible to change the school curriculum to help children discover this and maybe they will help educate the adults.

When future generations look back, they will not be able to believe we had a situation where a failed lawyer with a strong brandname was in charge of healthcare policy of the largest and richest country in the world, and who clearly has no scientific understanding.
It is very uncommon for politicians to have a scientific background : in the UK Margaret Thatcher was the last top level politician who did: she had a PhD in chemistry from Oxford.

I work for a company that makes medical devices (ISO13485) and this situation is more complex that it first appears.

re the software update - this is usually a result of Apple moving the goalposts and is a constant pain for medical device companies that use smartphones as a platform for medical device software. Google does the same but is less aggressive.
The problem is that Apple is driven by the people who want to sell more Candy Crush Saga, not people who want the stability of a long term stable platform to build applications against.

The problem with the notifications is that is medico-legally indefensible not to have the notifications on maximum noise. If someone's blood sugar drops below 4 then they may become drowsy and less aware of alerts.

I had been locked to Apple since they started using Intel but finally made the jump to POP-OS when I got into machine learning but got fed up with spending days setting up Nvidia cards to run TF.
I bought the System76 hardware and the ML stuff just worked. No pain - just type

sudo apt install tensorflow-cuda-latest

comically pain-free.
And have never looked back. Steam means I can run my games, the one thing I do miss is Filemaker Pro for its RAD demonstration properties.

Despite the fact that I have given them my money I suggested that they set up a voluntary support program to help develop POP-OS - but this is only $12 a year!
While I have been using server linux since RedHat 5 and have tried many distros over the years, POP running on S76 hardware - as with Apple - you know that the drivers are properly configured.

Only thing I would say to S76 now - learn from Apple under Jobs - trim your range - it is three times too big, and charge a bit more - you shouldn't be offering poverty spec 8G laptops - leave that to someone else. All your products should have enough horsepower to sparkle. And put in a voluntary subscription for $120 / year to support POP-OS - I would sign up. Some custom builds available out of the box might be good as well.

There is no reason for the prices to go up.
It's perfectly possible to run a good business without trampling on consumer rights.

I just moved into a new phone and Ebay wanted my phone number to be able to register the app on my new phone - despite being a happy and safe ebay user for about 20 years on 3 contintents - and it said 'by doing this you consent to us sending you any texts we like'

so I just deleted the app.

same here - is now my travel laptop

13" MBP retina - spec'd it with 16GB and 1TB at the time, now on its third battery and on High Sierra. Wondering about converting to POP-OS as I have moved to System76 for my desktop and power laptop - the promised land - linux on the desktop that actually works.

The MBP still has the best keyboard - before the disastrous efforts of 2016.

Agree - been very happy with my desktop - rock solid - excellent after sales service, and they are nice people. Went to pick mine up when I was in Denver.

Also have Oryx Pro - only gripe is crap keyboard compared to my 10 year old MacBookPro

I think it is good advice to get used to using linux on a VM before taking the plunge to using it as your main machine, particularly if you have to share a lot of documents with people who are sad enough to use all the most deviant of MS Excel features.

yes
I have the system76 oryx pro which I bought for that reason and it is possible to use the nvidia board for proof of concept but it doesn't have a lot of oomph.

Increasingly just using a good quality laptop with good screen and performance to vpn into a big box.

I bought the system76 desktop and laptop because it was the first system vendor that realised there was real benefit in making ML easy to set up and maintain. I don't want to spend all my time faffing around looking for the compatible drivers and CUDA can be a nightmare for this.

Is to avoid significant change from 'business as usual' because otherwise your data quality will be junk.

In the UK we set up a monitoring system 'Syndromic Surveillance' which uses routine data that has proved to be invaluable in tracking COVID (and also the collateral damage - patients not attending) in near real time:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gov.uk%2Fgovernment%2F...

This is the key, the start of the RISC journey.

Over the last few years arm has been driven by marketers and makeweights and bought Pelion which is a white elephant, and failed to invest in mbed, their IoT tech. A return to an engineer led culture with a focus on the high value markets that capitalises on armâ(TM)s scale is a no brainier for NVIDIA.

This is news because it will reassure a lot of people like me who want to use Linux in (for us) critical environments and who are risk averse.

I recently bought a POP-OS workstation from System76 and went for the i9 because I had not been convinced that AMD had got compatibility and performance nailed but if it is good enough for Torvalds then I would certainly have considered it as the performance on properly multithreaded applications looked very impressive.

Agree - very useful

Made me look up what I am currently running: 2080Ti which apparently does 14.2 TF

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.techradar.com%2Fuk%2Fn...

so while a 25% increase over current consumer level hardware is good, it hasn't exactly shattered Moore's law, although the full fat versions that go to govt / military will be more capable (and a lot more expensive).

Staying at home and bought an Ultimaker 2+.
My gf works in a nursing home, so I want to at least be able to supply her with PPE. Also setting up for 24/7 ops so that I can print PPE all day/night.

I am one of the lucky 1000, and have just got the letter from Sir Jonathan Stephens which apologises for the breach.

I wonder if there will be a class action? That would be pretty embarrassing for all concerned so I don't think it will happen. Esp as we have not actually received our awards yet, we will be invited to an investiture to given them by a senior member of the royal family (although we are allowed to use the title / letters now)

btw the people on the list are by and large not the wealthy elite. While I think this used to be the case, a lot of work goes on behind the scenes to make sure that the recipients are legitimate. I certainly never thought I would get a gong.
To get on the list you have to have achieved something, and this usually means giving up your own time for the public good, and if people suspect you are gong-hunting i.e." look at me doing charity work" then that will disqualify you.

Whether or not to have these type of awards is debatable, but it seems most countries have them in some form (although maybe not referencing their Empire!). I saw a quote from ?Rothschild
1 never seek an honour
2 if an honour is offered, then accept it with grace
3 never ever wear an honour

Happy new year !

I have been thinking this for the last 20 years but this year it has become reality thanks to POP-OS.

originally on windows, migrated to mac with linux in VM in 2005 with first intel macs, and now have gone the whole hog and bought the system76 hardware as well, and have now rolled it out to our company (med tech) .

System76 seem to embody the the best bits of Jobs in terms of design and functional aesthetics, a bare bones customisable UI with good maintenance and out-of-the-box machine learning.

I am sure some of this is just my geek-pride. My laptop is my calling card. It is the clearest identifier of who I am - far more than my car/ suit etc
When I get my laptop out, I want the one in a hundred fellow geek to identify and bond.

A high-end mac used so say I was different, now it says I am the same. Time to move on.