iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

June Eskom data was hoping to have migrated fully to the beta but still some lingering things to clean up Overall things still look kinda-ok but super low demand persisting throughout winter makes it easier for eskom Koeberg still wobbling. beta.unofficialeskom.com/updates/esko...

beta.unofficialeskom.com

Eskom Data: June 2026 | Unofficial Eskom

June 2026 Eskom data: EAF recovers to 66.8% for a third month, Koeberg stuck at 645 MW, the lowest June demand on record, and diesel turbines fired hard for the 6pm winter peak.

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

I've nearly fully migrated unofficialeskom.com from some janky python scripts I wrote years ago + metabase to real data pipelines with Bruin and Echarts. Still some polish to do but good enough to move over for the monthly update! beta.unofficialeskom.com/updates/esko...

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

ESKOM DATA - APRIL 2026 There have been many media statements (end of financial year) about how well things are going. In reality, things have not been going this badly in a while. - Worst EAF since May '25 - Highest unplanned outages since July '25 - Highest total outages since June '25

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

A little late this month as I was offline-ish for Easter weekend. Things are looking quite a bit worse than last month overall. - EAF at 66, worst since October - Increase is mainly in planned outages rather than unplanned, but still missing EAF target of 70%

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Eskom Data - February 2026 Small reversal in the headline metrics - unplanned losses up a bit, EAF down a bit to below 70% again, but nothing too concerning here

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Eskom data - January 2026 We skipped December as Eskom stopped publishing data in November and didn't fix it for several weeks. Starting with a highlight: best EAF in January since June 2020!

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

Eskom data - November 2025 End of Diesel? According to the data, we never generated more than 350MW with the OCGT backup generators, which is the lowest I have on record except for nov 2020 which might also be a glitch.

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Eskom data - October 2025 Not anything too interesting this month - EAF down again due to an increase in unplanned outages, but still 'ok' overall.

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Eskom data - September 2025 Another dip in unplanned outages takes us close to 2020 levels!

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

Eskom data - August 2025 (finally) I finally got a reply to my data request for August data (usually takes a few hours / days, this time several weeks) Metrics looking good compared to the last few months, but not that far off where we were a year ago. Very nice dip in unplanned outages.

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

Eskom data - July 2025 Sorry I missed June, I was travelling. July is looking positive! Big decrease in total loss, and this time it's in the good way (decrease in unplanned, increase in planned)

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

Starting a new thread to dump random stuff about Claude Code, mainly as notes for myself by maybe interesting to others too. 🧵

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

Eskom data - May 2025 - Unplanned outages still looking bad - Small bump from new wind installations - Diesel use trending down again 🧵

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Eskom April data 🔋🔌💡 Note: the sqlite databases that all the metabase queries are based on are now available for direct download at unofficialeskom.com/dashboards/#.... I still have a TODO to create a data dictionary and explain the columns etc, but it's pretty straight forward. 🧵

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

Fact checking Eskom's winter outlook claims (x.com/Eskom_SA/sta...) Eskom is great at using data to imply that things are going well, even when the data actually shows that things are not going well. They do this by cherry-picking data points and not precisely defining the time period. 🧵

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Eskom data from March 2025 - Planned outages down (= bad, less maintenance) and unplanned outages up (= bad, more unexpected failings). But overall leaves us with a similar EAF (availability factor) 🧵

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

New Eskom (South African electricity) data from February. - Planned up, unplanned down = good - EAF (energy availability factor) slightly better to 57.5%, far off the March 2025 70% target that we were 'on track' to meet in November 2024.

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

So we got loadshedding again in South Africa for the first time in 10 months. Some people think it's suspicious that it happened exactly after NERSA (the energy regulator) denied the price increase that Eskom (the producer) was asking for. Some say it's a coincidence. Let's look at some data 🧵

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

I use LLMs every day, and yet I still find it super hard to predict what they will get right and what will go horribly wrong. It's hard to fight the hindsight bias because after it works or doesn't work I always _feel_ like I knew, but if I am strict and make an actual prediction, I'm often wrong.

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Reposted by Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦

Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · 21/01/2025

If you have a browser that supports WebGPU (like Google Chrome) you try out the DeepSeek-R1 model based on Qwen2.5-Math-1.5B directly in your browser! It's a 1.28GB page load: huggingface.co/spaces/webml...

Screenshot of Spaces webml-community/deepseek-r1-webgpu" with "Running" status.

Prompt is "Solve the equation x^2 - 3x + 2 = 0

A "View reasoning" dropdown shows this:

To solve the quadratic equation (x^2 - 3x + 2 = 0), I'll start by factoring the left-hand side. I need two numbers that multiply to 2 and add up to -3. These numbers are -1 and -2.
Next, I'll rewrite the equation as (x - 1)(x - 2) = 0.
Using the zero product property, I'll set each factor equal to zero:

x - 1 = 0 leads to x = 1.
x - 2 = 0 leads to x = 2.

Therefore, the solutions to the equation are x = 1 and x = 2.

Below that a full solution is displayed:
"Step 1: Factor the Quadratic
We look for two numbers that multiply to +2 and add up to -3. These numbers are -1 and -2.
x^2 - 3x + 2 = (x - 1)(x - 2) = 0

Step 2: Apply the Zero Product Property
If the product of two factors is zero, at least one of the factors must be zero.
x - 1 = 0 or x - 2 = 0

Step 3: Solve for x
x = 1 or x = 2

Final Answer:
1 and 2

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

I asked Eskom for clarity about the Koeberg schedule, as I previously read that Unit 1 had more scheduled downtime after the return of Unit 2, but the latest media releases didn't mention it again. They confirmed that Unit 1 is scheduled for more downtime in Feb, so no net increase in nuclear yet.

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Reposted by Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦

Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · 02/01/2025

Huh oh. As a committed anti-conspiracy-theorist for the "phones listen to your microphone and targeted ads based on what you say" thing I can tell this is going to be exhausting

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Not much in the December data for Eskom. - Increase in planned (normal) and unplanned (unfortunate) maintenance led to lower EAF - As a result, more running of OCGT emergency generators - more than Oct/Nov, slightly less than Sep -

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

this is interesting. I remember being surprised when LLMs suddenly could do accurate arithmetic. I reproduced similar cases with GPT and Claude now - if you ask maths directly it works. Indirect doesn't. @simonwillison.net any take on this?

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

I've always been on the fence about whether Telegram is a group of cool engineers building a great product with amazing UX because they want to, or if it's a huge datagrab operation for <reasons>. The fact that I get this pop-up so often definitely pushes me towards the second hypothesis.

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Two biggest mistakes to make in entrepreneurship - Give up / pivot too soon - Don't give up / pivot soon enough The fun part is you never know which one you're making at any given time.

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

Looked at some longer term data and trends for 2024, had a very clear picture of what to do in 2025, including some difficult decisions and changes. Went for a walk and did a complete 180 on all of it. Founders/indie people, how often do you wish you just had someone tell you what to do again?

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

If you thought you didn't achieve enough in the last 3 years, remember that Zendesk just sent me an email to brag that they got into Gartner Quadrant 2021. I thought it was a typo so I checked 2023, and nope they're not there any more.

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

ok this is meta and an example of the thing it is advocating against, but how about everyone stops posting meta platform stuff? I tried/am trying to move from reddit/twitter to mastodon/bluesky/lemmy and each time I open the new one I see only posts about mastodon/bluesky/lemmy, so I close the page

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Gareth Dwyer 🇳🇱🇨🇭🇿🇦 @sixhobbits.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Testing out bluesky with my monthly update on Eskom's data that I usually do on a Slack channel. Eskom is South Africa's state-owned electricity provider. I started gathering and analysing the data when we had loadshedding (power outages) nearly every day. Nov highlight: record export (avg 2GW)

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