Tim Cutts
thecutts.org
Tim Cutts
@thecutts.org
Science geek. Singer. Current #HPC lead at @AstraZeneca. Former AWS and @sangerinstitute. Opinions expressed here are my own and do not reflect the views of my employer.
We owned Canada at the time. Lots of natural resources there…
March 2, 2025 at 1:59 PM
I believe we make our own warheads. The trouble is the delivery system, Trident. We have control over it, but rely on the US for maintenance.

I wonder whether Starmer has re-written the letters of last resort…
March 2, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Even Musk seems to think so … he’s changed his X profile image to being a black hole!
March 1, 2025 at 7:06 AM
Actually, I think she’s talking about British reserve. I would probably avoid a neighbour who put that sort of sign on their lawn. Not because I disagree with the sentiment, I agree with it, but the British generally just cringe at that sort of thing.
February 23, 2025 at 9:40 AM
Exactly. That’s how I use coding assistants for example. I’m a competent programmer, so I can use it to learn new things but have enough knowledge to correct what it suggests. Same when I use things like Copilot in MS Office.
February 22, 2025 at 10:31 PM
It takes a lot of awareness to use AI tools consciously so that they don’t rob you of agency. I think this is a really important message, both in home life and at work. GenAI does not replace expertise. All it actually does, at best, is make a good thinker more efficient, by being a source of ideas
February 22, 2025 at 10:22 PM
Wow. I got blocked for pointing out cherry picking of evidence. This is what’s wrong with debate today. People are completely unwilling to listen to an alternative point of view. That is precisely what leads to the polarisation of politics.
February 13, 2025 at 1:14 PM
You’re presenting a partial picture. The Falcon has launched 448 missions and failed 3 times. Starship is still in development. Failures are expected, and actually deliberate in many cases. As far as the money’s concerned, as a proportion of the multi trillion dollar budget it’s peanuts
February 13, 2025 at 8:58 AM
That’s only true of the new starship rocket which is still in development. Falcon and Falcon Heavy are extremely reliable and doing a good service. I abhor Musk’s current activities in the US government, but don’t stoop to the MAGA level and spread misinformation to make a point.
February 13, 2025 at 7:11 AM
Fantastic. That was the only track to select when playing Outrun!
February 8, 2025 at 9:04 PM
C, no, (I *am* the provider), a/b
December 21, 2024 at 12:02 AM
That’s good to see. It’s essential for production environments that require deployment through IaC
December 20, 2024 at 11:56 PM
I’ll contact her - I’m sure her email address will be easy to find.
December 8, 2024 at 2:13 PM
Yes, the same! How are you doing up there?
December 7, 2024 at 11:54 AM
Two issues, from my perspective. 1. Do those industries have problems that actually require national facility scale HPC? Or can they actually solve most of their needs with their own modest infra, and/or cloud? 2. It can be very hard to get governance permission to use a shared system.
November 23, 2024 at 10:54 PM
16/22 - in my defence I was attending remotely and it was getting pretty late in the UK. :-)
November 23, 2024 at 7:07 PM
Fortunately most big Pharma are multinational and can carry on doing evidence based research and medicine development elsewhere, even if the new US administration tries to make it difficult
November 23, 2024 at 7:57 AM
Multi cloud is a a different matter. Depends on your use case. If you’re heavily data dependent, such as genomics, egress charges can be a real barrier to multi cloud.
November 17, 2024 at 5:20 PM
Aha, right, yes, that I do understand and agree with - in fact it’s the future plan for how we’re going to deploy SLURM in the future at AZ, rather than in VM’s or metal today. Makes CI/CD easier too. Want to test that new config? Easy peasy.
November 17, 2024 at 5:18 PM
I’m going to have to watch that tutorial later. I’ve yet to be convinced as to what K8S adds over singularity containers in a regular HPC cluster. I’m not sure SLURM is the ideal scheduler either; it has enormous mindshare because it is free. But it is complex, inconsistent and arcane, IMO.
November 17, 2024 at 5:09 PM
It just shows. It’s not being told what to do that they object to. It’s who’s telling them.
November 16, 2024 at 4:11 PM
I think might have predated my time. Or else I wasn’t in the select group. I suspect Flinty to have been involved? Two curries in a night is quite a challenge. Was a tactical chunder required in between?!
November 16, 2024 at 11:09 AM