A 10TB Helium-filled Disk-Drive WITHOUT shingling

I'll bet you thought I was done here, hey? No, just very busy this last year.
This seems like a sufficiently significant bit of news to warrant a quick mention though.
WDC's shingle-free stocking filler: A 10TB helium disk drive
The spec' is pretty amazing and available in PDF format Here.
Here's a quick rundown -
Western Digital Corporation (WDC) has updated its Ultrastar He⁸ to the He¹⁰, providing the same capacity as the shingled HGST Ultrastar Archive Ha¹⁰ announced in June but without the shingling, meaning standard write speeds.
Compared to the He⁸ it has 25 per cent more capacity, and WDC says it has a 56 per cent lower watts/TB rating than traditional air-filled HDDs, a 2.5 million hours MTBF (mean-time-between-failures) rating, and a five-year warranty.
The drive has a second-generation, dual-stage HGST Micro-Actuator to enhance tracking accuracy and reliability in multi-disk enclosures. It is said to be "drop-in ready for all mainstream enterprise capacity applications." This presumably, partly at least, explains why WDC can now get to the 10TB capacity level without having to shingle (partially overlap) tracks and incur the penalty of slower rewrite speeds.
It rotates at 7,200rpm and is a classic capacity-optimized drive, with a 256MB cache and 249MB/sec sustained transfer rate. The previous He⁸ had a 205MB/sec sustained transfer rate. It can have a 6Gbit/s SATA interface or a 12Gbit/s SAS one.
There are Instant Secure Erase (ISE) and Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) options and the disk is built for 24 x 7 operation. To increase reliability, it retains a previous firmware version for safer firmware updates.

I think that Santa could probably fit that in his sack without any problem.

Python 2.x.x AND Python 3.x.x on Windows

If you need to run both Python 2 AND Python 3 scripts on Windows, this is good to know -
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15912063/how-do-i-run-python-2-and-3-in-windows-7
- also, check out section 3.4 here -
https://docs.python.org/3.3/using/windows.html

Less than 1 month later!

So, 8 Terabyte was the newer hotness in August, now at the start of September HGST has a 10 (Terabyte drive ready! (But I still hate Shingled Magnetic Recording)
Whopping 10TB disks spin out of HGST – plus 3.2TB flash slabs

4 months later

So, 6 Terabyte was the new hotness in April, now at the end of August Seagate has an 8 Terabyte drive ready!
That 8TB Seagate MONSTER? It's HERE... Have a look (sans specs)

Just when I plan to catch up...

Most of my machines have 1TB drives and 2TB external backup drives.
I was thinking about moving to multiple Virtual Machines running on the desktop PC with a 4TB drive to hold the VMs and another for backups.
This means losing having the SSD as Windows 7 boot drive unless I get a bigger SSD for Windows 7 and the Hypervisor and keep Linux machines on a HDD.
Still, as of today I know what the server needs for VM backups - Seagate brings out 6TB HDD
Get a datasheet here (PDF).

Ten Songs Challenge

Well, I know at least 10 good songs that I always want to have around.
Finding near approximations to my home versions took a little longer, but here (in no particular order) you go!

Everlast - Ends

Massive Attack - I against I

Jean Elan - Where's your head at

Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb

After Midnight Project - Take Me Home

Booker T. And The Mg's - Green Onions

Phil Collins - In The Air Tonight

M.I.A. - Paper Planes

Eddie Vedder with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - The long road (My version is 16:37 long)

Ng Pei Sin - Misty Heart (From my Mod collection, an XM actually)


I could easily do 100 if I had the time! Torley Wong and Madonna very nearly made the list for starters!

The Omega-3 and B12 Myth

It looks like being vegetarian is good for health, but not necessarily longevity for many practitioners.
A Vegan explains some worrying study results for Meat-eaters, Vegetarians and Vegans.
It's a worthwhile 1 Hour 15 Minutes of nice explanations and tips that we can all use -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7KeRwdIH04

So, What foods are good for you?

Eggs? - Not really

Avocados? - If only

Coconut Oil? - Hell No

Garlic and Flavinoids? - at least vs Fish and white meat induced cancer in breast cells

Acia Berries or Pomegranate Juice? - Finally, a pretty positive result (if you can actually get them)!

Nicola Scafetta's paper passes peer review

"This paper contains a detailed analysis of all CMIP5 models used by the IPCC, and demonstrates that they do not well reproduce the decadal and multidecadal patterns since 1850 (not just the temperature standstill since 2000, the failure is nearly total). The paper extensively discusses my astronomical based model since the Medieval Warm Period and demonstrates its far better performance than the CMIP5 models."

The PDF and an overview - Nicola Scafetta: Discussion on climate oscillations: CMIP5 general circulation models versus a semi-empirical harmonic model based on astronomical cycles

The steady march of Time (keeping)

I am tidying up my email folders and came across a couple from 2002, here they are -

New Optical Clock Promises More Accuracy than Cesium. 

NIST researchers have demonstrated a new kind of atomic clock that has the potential to be up to 1,000 times more accurate than today’s best clock. The new clock is based on an energy transition in a single trapped mercury ion (a mercury atom that is missing one electron). Building a clock based on such a high-frequency transition was previously impractical because it requires both “capturing” the ion and holding it very still to get accurate readings, and having a mechanism that can “count” the ticks accurately at such a high frequency.

The quality of a clock depends on its stability and accuracy—whether the clock provides a constant, unchanging output frequency, and how close the measured frequency is to the fundamental atomic resonance that provides the clock’s “tick.” One advantage of the new clock is that it ticks much faster. Today’s international time and frequency standards, such as NIST-F1, measure an atomic resonance of about 9 billion cycles per second. By contrast, the new NIST device monitors an optical frequency more than 100,000 times higher or about 1 quadrillion (US) cycles per second. 

And my follow up email (which still seems like a good idea to me) -

The Arithmetic Muse strikes...

 

I've just been musing over that Quadrillion Hz clock a bit, and I knew straight off you'd want me to share my musings ;-)

Basically in US-speak, 'illions (I just made that word up) are 1000 * 1000 ^ prefix.

So,

Mono (1) gives 1000 * 1000 ^ 1 = Million,

Bi (2) gives 1000 * 1000 ^ 2 = Billion,

Tri (3) gives 1000 * 1000 ^ 3= Trillion,

Quad (4, should be Tetra to stay Greek, I think) gives 1000 * 1000 ^ 4 = Quadrillion.

By the same logic,

Zero (0) gives 1000 * 1000 ^ 0 = the famous 'Zillion'

In which case, at a mere 1000, it isn't so huge after all :-)

I propose we stick with the classical languages and call Zero 'Null', therefore 1000 is a 'Nillion' which fits 'Nil' too.

 Today, we have this -

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/09/nuclear_clock/ 

Nuke clock incapable of losing time chimes with boffins

Precise to 1/20th of a sec in 14bn years

By Anna Leach The force that binds neutrons to an atom's nucleus could be used to create clocks that are 100 times more accurate than today's best atomic clocks, say physicists at the University of New South Wales (UNSW).
The nuclear clock outlined in a paper accepted for publication in Physics Letters Review would neither lose nor gain 1/20th of a second in 14 billion years, the age of the universe.

The unprecedented accuracy of this new time-keeping comes from linking the system to the orbit of a neutron within an atomic nucleus. That makes it more accurate than atomic clocks, explains Professor Victor Flambaum, Head of Theoretical Physics at UNSW.

Atomic clocks use the orbiting electrons of an atom as the clock pendulum. But we have shown that by using lasers to orient the electrons in a very specific way, one can use the orbiting neutron of an atomic nucleus as the clock pendulum, making a so-called nuclear clock with unparalleled accuracy.

...

Well, they have a theory, now they just have to figure out how to actually make such a clock!

General: ABout My About My Prediction

Well, the Chevy Volt didn't last long!
Production was suspend March 2nd 2012 following disappointing sales.
The story is Here.
If this is typical of electric vehicle sales then at least the electricity providers will be spared rolling out new infrastructure.