Thank You To Linus Media Group.

[William Payne]

I would like to take the time to say a serious thank you to Linus Media Group. I am a man of science and engineering. Sure I spend way too much time playing video games same as everyone. But LMG have taken the time to go beyond their normal audience and show fantastic videos like their recent IBM tour, and past videos showing data centers, quantum computing, fusion reactor development, machine learning. 

 

The tour videos of these types of facilities I really appreciate. None of this kind of stuff is going on down here in New Zealand. So being able to see it on youtube I am thankful beyond what I can put into words. 

 

Scientific and engineering computing video's probably due to the limited audience are not as easy to find as I want them to be. I have often wished there was a channel devoted to scientific and engineering computing, I would do it myself but I am not qualified to do it properly, nor do I have the access. 

 

I don't know who will read this but seriously. 

 

Thank You. 

[LinusTech]

13 minutes ago, William Payne said:

I don't know who will read this but seriously. 

 

Thank You. 

Some of us hang around here sometimes

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, William Payne said:

machine learning

 

6 hours ago, William Payne said:

data centers

 

6 hours ago, William Payne said:

None of this kind of stuff is going on down here in New Zealand

 

We actually have quite a decent history here of machine learning. Far as I know Weka, developed by University of Waikato, is fairly popular tool in the ML community and even Google uses/teaches with it.

https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~ml/weka/

 

 

From what I understand Weka is a very good learning tool.

 

As for datacenters there are plenty here although not many that would be considered large globally, but fairly big none the less. Datacom, Spark, CCL etc operate fairly large public loud and dedicated host offering in very large facilities as well as AWS and Microsoft/Azure both entering the market here (I know some details around that but can't remember if can talk about it so not going to heh).

 

Also we have other things like NeSI which is our national High Performance Computing service that is jointly ran and operated with NIWA as well. Infrastructure wise it's HPE Cray and decently sized deployment.

https://www.nesi.org.nz/

https://www.nesi.org.nz/services/high-performance-computing-and-data-analytics

 

https://support.nesi.org.nz/hc/en-gb/articles/360000163575-Mahuika

 

 

https://support.nesi.org.nz/hc/en-gb/articles/360000163695-Māui

 

Plenty of stuff going on here, just not well publicised.

[William Payne]

19 minutes ago, leadeater said:

 

 

 

We actually have quite a decent history here of machine learning. Far as I know Weka, developed by University of Waikato, is fairly popular tool in the ML community and even Google uses/teaches with it.

https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~ml/weka/

 

 

From what I understand Weka is a very good learning tool.

 

As for datacenters there are plenty here although not many that would be considered large globally, but fairly big non the less. Datacom, Spark, CCL etc operate fairly large public loud and dedicated host offering in very large facilities as well as AWS and Microsoft/Azure both entering the market here (I know some details around that but can't remember if can talk about it so not going to heh).

 

Also we have other things like NeSI which is our national High Performance Computing service that is jointly ran and operated with NIWA as well. Infrastructure wise it's HPE Cray and decently sized deployment.

https://www.nesi.org.nz/

https://www.nesi.org.nz/services/high-performance-computing-and-data-analytics

 

https://support.nesi.org.nz/hc/en-gb/articles/360000163575-Mahuika

 

 

https://support.nesi.org.nz/hc/en-gb/articles/360000163695-Māui

 

Plenty of stuff going on here, just not well publicised.

 

 

Hey thanks for your post. I had forgotten about and not known about others of those. I guess what I am more meaning is we aren't bashing particles together like at CERN or building the next moon rockets. (Yes I know about RocketLab). I think I am just getting a bit dejected. Many of the things that excite me are always happening somewhere else in another land. 

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, William Payne said:

I guess what I am more meaning is we aren't bashing particles together like at CERN

I think we are a little small to be "CERN scale" haha 

[William Payne]

Just now, leadeater said:

I think we are a little small to be "CERN scale" haha 

 

Yeah I just wish it wasn't a situation of having to go somewhere else to be involved in "the next big thing" whatever that may be. 

[William Payne]

5 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I think we are a little small to be "CERN scale" haha 

 

I generally consider myself a computer "user". If I was to work in computing it would have to be in scientific research or engineering design. Or what truly gets me going and the main reason I want to learn how to computer program which is to make machines work and dance. I have no interest in building the next best website or the next best operating system but making machines do things interests me a lot. 

[leadeater]

19 minutes ago, William Payne said:

I generally consider myself a computer "user". If I was to work in computing it would have to be in scientific research or engineering design. Or what truly gets me going and the main reason I want to learn how to computer program which is to make machines work and dance. I have no interest in building the next best website or the next best operating system but making machines do things interests me a lot. 

You'd probably want to do an Engineering degree and major in software engineering or robotics etc and then look at areas to do with industrial machines for produce picking like vine fruits.

 

 

This stuff is super cool. A lot of devil in the detail like being able to scan the fruit to know if ripe or not, I know some of this is going on where I work. Zespri funds a lot of research.

[William Payne]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

You'd probably want to do an Engineering degree and major in software engineering or robotics etc and then look at areas to do with industrial machines for produce picking like vine fruits.

 

 

This stuff is super cool. A lot of devil in the detail like being able to scan the fruit to know if ripe or not, I know some of this is going on where I work. Zespri funds a lot of research.

 

I am 35 years old. Spent since 2011 in the mould, tool and die industry. Being around cnc machines and seeing the post processor code and machine languages and other things that make them dance when you really look into them deep is what sparked my curiosities within that aspect of computing. 

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, William Payne said:

 

I am 35 years old. Spent since 2011 in the mould, tool and die industry. Being around cnc machines and seeing the post processor code and machine languages and other things that make them dance when you really look into them deep is what sparked my curiosities within that aspect of computing. 

Nothing is ever too late 

 

What's interesting is just how different coding for those types of machines are compared to general computer software. I really only know a little about that and my actual coding experience (which I don't do) was all in C# and Java. At one point I got really interested in VEX Robotics due to it being tangentially related to my job, IT contract support in schools and since I was good at programing and also national cert in electronics would help out a lot. Team got to go to the US for the VEX Champs but I didn't go, probably should have found a way, oh well.

[William Payne]

Just now, leadeater said:

Nothing is ever too late 

 

What's interesting is just how different coding for those types of machines are compared to general computer software. I really only know a little about that and my actual coding experience (which I don't do) was all in C# and Java. At one point I got really interested in VEX Robotics due to it being tangentially related to my job, IT contract support in schools and since I was good at programing and also national cert in electronics would help out a lot. Team got to go to the US for the VEX Champs but I didn't go, probably should have found a way, oh well.

 

Yeah. I am just using books and online short course to learn coding. Wanting to just learn and not trying to use it to get a job really take the pressure off and allows focus on learning how do things well. If I was ever to go to university it would be for mechanical engineering with electrical engineering mixed in. I see the importance of both. 

[LinusTech]

16 hours ago, leadeater said:

Nothing is ever too late 

 

This is so true. Kris Jenner (love or hate Keeping Up with the Kardashians, you gotta respect the hustle) gave a talk at an event I attended and basically said "yeah we started this in my 50s. It's never too late.

 

She... kinda crushed it, so who knows where the limits are?

[William Payne]

7 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

 

 

She... kinda crushed it, so who knows where the limits are?

3452

[William Payne]

7 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

This is so true. Kris Jenner (love or hate Keeping Up with the Kardashians, you gotta respect the hustle) gave a talk at an event I attended and basically said "yeah we started this in my 50s. It's never too late.

 

She... kinda crushed it, so who knows where the limits are?

 

Seriously though, how does one put limits on what you can achieve if you can still work. I can't turn back the clock. I am the age I am and if I want to do something I have to do it irrelevantly. They haven't invented reverse aging yet. 

[William Payne]

I obviously can't tell @LinusTech what videos to make but one thing I think is needed in the enterprise/workstation world is example use cases. In gaming videos you can build a pc and see actual results within the game. But you see workstations like what Puget Systems build or big gpu servers and various high performance computing hardware examples. But you never see what people are doing with them. 

 

Like when people say they are doing machine learning, or scientific simulation, or data analysis. Well can we see some examples? Haha. 

[Mark Kaine]

On 9/10/2023 at 1:39 PM, leadeater said:

I think we are a little small to be "CERN scale" haha 

even though New Zealand is 7 times bigger than Switzerland?  im confused UwU.

 

 

Think big, i believe in you! ~

 

 

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

even though New Zealand is 7 times bigger than Switzerland?  im confused UwU.

 

 

Think big, i believe in you! ~

Unusable land doesn't really count 

 

Switzerland nearly 2x population, 4x GDP and also within Europe, we are next to water, beside more water, and neighbors to water 

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Unusable land doesn't really count 

 

Switzerland nearly 2x population, 4x GDP and also within Europe, we are next to water, beside more water, and neighbors to water 

oh ok, i didn't know about new zealand population wise tbf

 

 

yeah, can confirm they have neighbors (im one of them xD )

[William Payne]

2 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

even though New Zealand is 7 times bigger than Switzerland?  im confused UwU.

 

 

Think big, i believe in you! ~

 

 

here is my funny but true joke I have about New Zealand. A country bigger than the United Kingdom but with only half the population of London. 

[William Payne]

I just watched the LTT $1,000,000 PC series of videos. That was great. I wish it was a longer more intensive series. That was really interesting.