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Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Solar farms are fantastic for insect biodiversity


Insect populations flourish in the restored habitats of solar energy facilities



Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


The people who are most optimistic about AI are people who've never tried to use it for anything they're expert in. Its reputation seems to rely almost entirely on the Gell-Mann amnesia effect. I try to explain this to people; I just wish people who know something about something just ask it a question.

I keep on giving it a go our of desperation, just to get some kind of lead in something I can research manually (which I'd investigate separately).

It always disappoints me.

Here's a great example:

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in reply to kæt

yeah, this has also always been my experience - every time I've tested an LLM in a field I know something about, it's been wrong in a way that wouldn't be obvious to a non-expert. Which, of course, means that I can't trust them in fields where I'm *not* an expert, because I won't be able to see the mistake.
in reply to aoanla

@aoanla Another example was that wikipedia claims

"The last time it was read in Scotland was by the deputy town clerk James Gildea in Airdrie in 1971".

As far as I can tell this is true, but I was looking for a reference. ChatGPT claimed it was due to striking miners clashing with police, which sounded very plausible for the seventies. But there weren't any in that area in that year. It looks like it was actually gangland warfare (though never quite got to the bottom of it with a good enough reference for Wikipedia).

The way it comes up with very plausible cr@p is worrying.



When he's done travelling the Clapham Omnibus the reasonable man turns out to be handy for my mental health. I am very harsh on myself and very strict when I'm interpreting instructions and deadlines others give me in words, so it's useful to have the reasonable man point out that it isn't quite so cut and dried.



There's this thing that seems to be happening in western democracies recently where leftish liberal politicians look at their right-wing-going-on-fascist opposition and say "they're right, but don't vote for them". The result is that people shrug and think they may as well vote for the real fascist rather than the guy doing fascist cosplay.

But does this ever happen the other way around? You never get Trump saying "The socialists are right, don't vote for them". Possibly I'm asking why the Overton window only ever goes rightwards.

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in reply to Alexandra Lanes

It occurs to me that on a small scale politicians know it’s not a good idea to agree with your opponent too much. Remember “I agree with Nick” from the first leaders’ debate in 2010? IIRC Clegg got a bounce in the polls and public estimation after that debate. “I agree with Nick” was not uttered again.
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

The real problem to me is the left/liberal pretending the populist far right is just another player in the democracy game, when it obviously isn’t. They’re treating equally something that is not equal. They’re debating something that can’t be debated, with people who go to debates do everything but debating. It’s like history taught them nothing and they don’t understand this is something that needs to be eliminated while we can, before we need to do it with guns and bombs again.

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Xelä is a cheap smart lightbulb that can change colour or brightness but not both.



Somewhere in my past there is an officious bystander trying to point out that I obviously didn't intend to be doing a law module, a Portuguese course, and a work project all at the same time.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


We've released #PuTTY version 0.82.

The biggest change is improved Unicode support. Usernames and passwords read from the terminal or the Windows console now support full Unicode, so that you can use characters outside the Windows system code page, or the character set configured in PuTTY. The same is true for usernames and file names provided via the PuTTY tools' command line and via the GUI (but unfortunately not yet if you save and reload a session).

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One entertaining detail from last night's bad dream: the loo doors in the building were labelled with various chromosomal makeups. (Wasn't a "plot" point, just something people tutted and said "yeah I know" at.). Anyway, one of the doors was labelled ZW.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Researchers from Zayed National Museum have discovered text concealed beneath a layer of gold leaf on a page of the Blue Qur’an - one of the world’s most well-known Qur’an manuscripts.

zayednationalmuseum.ae/en/abou…

#islam #religion #IslamicArt
@histodons @historikerinnen @medievodons @dh #MiddleEast #geschichte #histodons #MedievalStudies #medievalists #MiddleAges #Mittelalter #ReligiousStudies #paleography

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in reply to Sarah Brown

@John_Loader that makes sense. I was thinking if it was a real problem I would have seen one of the activists somewhere mention it at least once.
in reply to Sarah Brown

Wow. He was a bit OTT, but a lot of early rights campaigners in various movements felt obliged to be that way to force change and get people to sit up & take notice.


Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


I've started looking for a job again. Not too strenuously, just seeing what's out there for a C++ and Fortran programmer with an engineering/physics emphasis who wants/needs something at least close to full remote.

Probably not a lot!

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

in reply to Ghost of Hope

I checked in, and UK would be too hard for us to manage. Best of luck finding good gigs though!


in reply to Adam

@ifixcoinops I get this from my dad. He's been a computer professional since it was punched cards and I was brought up ab ovo that every extra function on a device is just another opportunity for it to go wrong.
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

@ifixcoinops This may be a good time to mention my new Sony TV came with two remotes, and I wish I was kidding. There’s the traditional TV remote, and the “smart” one. Where, and I kid you not, some buttons work via Bluetooth, others via IR.

I’ve never seen such a great example of what results from stitching two products together in something barely sellable. Sony is a shadow of what it used to be. Just like every other electronics brand.



#ukpol Suppose you wanted to institute some form of right to buy for private tenants. Possibly without the ludicrous discounts you see with council RTB. You'd presumably have some sort of time period a tenant would have to have lived in a place before they'd qualify. How do you stop the landlord evicting the tenant just before the tenant becomes eligible?


I’m an IT professional. Do I turn back into an IT amateur when my contract is up? Or do I enter some liminal IT dilettante state?

Simon Landmine reshared this.



I wonder if the higher than usual number of American accents I’m hearing in the Algarve is connected to the recent election results.
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

Possibly? Although emigrating from the US isn't that easy and Portuguese isn't a commonly taught foreign language.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Mouin Rabbani on What Really Happened in Amsterdam Between Israeli Soccer Fans & Local Residents
youtube.com/watch?v=ttS8pKwvoI…

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Dear Apple, when the device is localised (see that S there?) into British English, "chips" does NOT go under "confectionary" in the shopping list.

Goddam fuckmuppet seppo nonsense.

in reply to Adam

@pseudomonas
oh, the US is VERY invested in deep-frying confectionery
@Adam



youtube.com/watch?v=jN7bQ0MnP3…

This is Porterbrook's protoype hydrogen train. It's kind of nice but to me it begs the question: why not just electrify the lines in the conventional way? Producing and transporting the hydrogen for these things is surely going to consume many times more energy than conventional electric traction.

in reply to Cyberspice

@Cyberspice Reopened Varsity line. The bit between Bedford and Cambridge is going to be on a different route and will be new build.
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

Ah yes, the south, where they spend three times as much per capita on transport infrastructure than the north!


I have nobody to shout this at right now but it seems like a shame for it to go unrecorded. So I offer this as a free piece of clichéd rage to anyone with occasion to use it.

Breathe my incinerated dick dust!

Sion [main] reshared this.

in reply to Alexandra Lanes

There are more refined ways of saying it. youtu.be/17rOl7i55ag


Day made less good by the (male) cleaner who shouted at me in the ladies’ at St Pancras. “This is… woman!” he shouted. I calmly replied “indeed, and so am I” and shut the door of the cubicle. Gave him a cheery wave in his cleaning cupboard on my way out.

But.




Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Americans: if you're thinking of leaving, beware before considering an asylum claim.

"Safe" countries have treaties recognising each other as safe, and do not recognise asylum claims from each other as valid. So if you as an American try to claim asylum there, at the moment you will be automatically rejected.

Instead, travel on a tourist visa. If things get bad for US trans people, this may eventually change.

#trans #TransRights

Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source
Trans Rescue
EU pol regarding refugees (it's bad)

Sensitive content


Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


Unfortunately, our university is discontinuing personal web pages for academics for incomprehensible reasons.

Fortunately, our department was allowed to set redirects to external web pages, so that the existing links still work.

My web page is now at gihub, accessible from the original links.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.

in reply to Conor Mc Bride

@pigworker @johncarlosbaez

Honestly I remember one university who's main IT help desk was comically incompetent, and incredibly user hostile. For example, you could customize parts of your user experience on lab computers, but the settings would never stay.

The CS department handled their own IT at the time, and it was a _much_ more tolerable situation.

I've yet to understand why IT departments are typically so incredibly user-hostile, like they forget what purpose they actually serve.

in reply to Leon P Smith

@leon_p_smith @johncarlosbaez They want to get away with the lowest common denominator and address nobody's specific needs. A CS department obviously has specific needs. (I used to specialise in manufacturing specific needs. In fact, I still do.)
in reply to Conor Mc Bride

@leon_p_smith @johncarlosbaez Essential context is that my father ended his university career as Director of Information Services at the Queen's University of Belfast. I have so seen both sides of this game.
in reply to Conor Mc Bride

@pigworker @johncarlosbaez

> I used to specialise in manufacturing specific needs. In fact, I still do.

Nice quote. That's certainly true of myself as well, to greater or lesser extent depending on whatever tends to capture my attention at that moment in time.

That's probably also why I found it pretty easy to get a bit crosswise with IT departments of all stripes.


in reply to mathew

@mathew i think zmodem’s lack of congestion control might be problematic or at least very rude 😈 and you would need to invent an encryption layer 😭

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


This is a brilliant take by Gianmarco Soresi on the absurdity of comparing any criticism of #Israel to antisemitism

youtu.be/jhST1Q230zI

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Big fan of Bernie Collins on Sky F1. Whereas usually a lot of the presenting team is drawn from former drivers, she used to be a strategy engineer for several teams in the paddock, so she brings a lot of insight from the "behind the scenes" part of the sport. Also unlike some of her counterparts she doesn't feel the need to chip in when she has nothing useful to contribute!
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

Leena Gade is similarly good in the Le Mans commentary (which we're about four hours into watching).


Advantage of intelligence: being able to catch up an OU unit and a Portuguese language unit in an evening

Disadvantages of procrastination: having to



Today's law study amusement. "Even taking into account that the bird had travelled from Leicester in a box on British Rail its condition was rough"

(Partridge v Crittenden [1968] 1 WLR 1204)


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Janey Godley has died.She's been going to do so sometime soon for a while now, and very soon indeed for the last couple of weeks, and now she's gone.
She was always a proper ally, and the world is poorer for her absence.
Long may she be remembered and celebrated.

Trump is still a cunt.

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So I know it’s all very funny, ha ha, but here’s why the orcas don’t go after the boats of the ultra rich.

Two photos. One a multi million euro luxury yacht. Notice it has two props. They steer by vectoring the thrust. There is no rudder.

The other, my boat. It costs what a new car costs (like if you were buying a low end Tesla. Expensive, but not stupid money). It has a rudder because it’s a sailboat. It can’t rely on thrust being present.

No rudder - no orca attack. People who can afford sailboats, which the orcas are attacking, cannot afford luxury motor yachts, which they aren’t.

A sailboat is like a mouldy caravan, but floating, and slower.

in reply to Mike J👹🐀 🤘🏻

@Mike J👹🐀 🤘🏻 same. I run the gauntlet next summer. Somewhat worried. I have a life raft and a phone that can do satellite distress, and I don’t taste like tuna.

Alexandra Lanes reshared this.


On my quasi-blog: "Separation of concerns in a bug tracker"

A thought about bug trackers I've used, how they make some kinds of database query difficult, and how one might be designed more sensibly.

chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtath…

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in reply to Luis Villa

@luis_in_brief @brainwane I've been known to get really angry at bulk or automated closing of old bugs, for purely sociological reasons. No matter how stale the bugs are, closing them without going through them by hand and attempting to reproduce each and writing a personal note for each is disrespectful of the original reporters' time and effort.

But I don't think this argument would carry over to a tracker with Simon's facts/plans split, as long as automated sweeping only applied to the plans side. "We don't have the capacity even to investigate whether this is still relevant, so we're not going to make plans to do anything about it" is not what a reporter wants to hear, but it's honest and doesn't disrespect anyone.

in reply to Simon Tatham

@zwol @luis_in_brief @brainwane The OldFoo bugs need not pollute a search for still-relevant bugs, because you probably already wanted to search for bugs in a specific component in any case.

But probably someone will still _want_ to check the OldFoo bugs to see if they're fixed in NewFoo. And if the dev team doesn't have time by 2 orders of magnitude, they'll still have to ask the users to do it, one way or another.

So probably the JWZs of this world would still have been annoyed about it!