Solar farms are fantastic for insect biodiversity
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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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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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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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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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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!
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@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.
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youtube.com/watch?v=ttS8pKwvoI…
Mouin Rabbani on What Really Happened in Amsterdam Between Israeli Soccer Fans & Local Residents
Support our work: https://democracynow.org/donate/sm-desc-ytDutch Palestinian analyst Mouin Rabbani discusses the violence that broke out last week between v...YouTube
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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.
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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.
The Class 799 Hydrogen Train
Let's go for a ride on the Hydrogen Powered Train! This is an old 'Thameslink' train now converted by Porterbrook to be the Class 799 "Hydroflex" unit. I ...YouTube
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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!
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Dinner With the Russians | Cockburn's
The second in a series of groundbreaking advertisements for Cockburn's Special reserve.YouTube
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
> 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.
this is neat
qcp: QUIC remote file copy for long distance high-bandwidth lossy links
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This is a brilliant take by Gianmarco Soresi on the absurdity of comparing any criticism of #Israel to antisemitism
The Redefining of Antisemitism | Gianmarco Soresi | Stand Up Comedy
Words should mean things.🎤 Check Out my Tour Dates! 🎤Tour Dates: https://beacons.ai/gianmarcosoresi📱 Get a text next time I'm performing in your city 📱ht...YouTube
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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)
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.
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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.
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@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.
@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!
sunflowerinrain
in reply to kæt • • •aoanla
in reply to kæt • • •kæt
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.