HansardExpert

I am none of these. I'm in my late 50's and have been paying income tax since I was 16. Sure, rescind my voting rights ... I'd like all my 40+ years taxes back please then.

The latest results from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration, which involves UCL researchers, combined four methods for measuring the expansion of the universe for the first time.

It's from the Disney classic 'Dumbo'.

https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Pink_Elephants

It's a nice bit of prose but I am struggling to see what this has to do with boredom.

Staring out of window looking at scenery is for all intents and purposes doing something. This isn't even close to the silly pre-oocupation with 'raw dogging'. Being in a place (even if it is only in your mind) that brings you peace as you describe it above is not boredom. There is no tension to be doing something else, at least it doesn't sound like it.

I can sit in a room in the dark lying on the couch staring at the ceiling (that I cannot actually see) and stay like that for hours - I am absolutely 'doing' nothing but I am also absolutely not bored.

So I don't think 'hitting the road' is as you put it 'embracing boredom at all' it simply doing something else.

The next time you feel like hitting the road, don't. Stay at home and be truly bored.

Hikaru Nakamura commented on Chess960 (or 'Freestyle' chess as chess.com is desperately trying to re-brand it) and said that as a 'spectator' sport he felt that only the high-elo crowd would really get excited about 960.

To clarify, not that lower ELO or the casual player wouldn't enjoy it but that there is so much history with the standard layout that even the beginner ends up understanding the high-level tactics and strategies of the openings.

This makes standard chess much more enjoyable for more people to watch and follow (i.e. bums-on-seats at the chess tournaments). While the super grandmasters are celebrities for the chess crowd in their own right, those lower down don't generate that kind of excitement and throwing 960 in the mix would see much less eyes than normal chess does.

Literally 960 different layouts might generate some types of opening theory, but to layman or perhaps 2200 and lower ELO players it just isn't that much fun to watch.

They are both equivalent. Scratch-built is perfectly cromulant.

My father used to talk about 'Scratch-building' his WWII dioramas and model vehicles/tanks. While you could use a phrase like 'Scratch-cooked' rather than cooking from scratch, I've never heard but someone would not think the former meant something different to the latter.

Did you know https://play.generative.fm/browse

I like to leave my platonic solids in the toilet bowl.

Hmm I wonder if an Ox would be exempt from the new congestion cameras they've just set up. I can see some exemptions for commercial HGVs so maybe they might come under that.

A web app that uses Python to create Celtic knots and it's really fun!

The expression is "work in-progress"

As non-MLB watcher, I have only a passing knowledge of the game why does it matter if the strike-out is swinging or not?

To use a Cricket analogy you don't differentiate if or what the stroke was at the time they were LBW, stumped, bowled caught out.

If a ninth planet exists in our solar system, scientists say this telescope would find it in its first year.

Why?

I read the article and it wasn't clear to me what makes this telescope more likely (and within a year) be able to find this infamous Planet 9 than any other attempts.

What am I missing?

You should post this on twistypuzzle.com this is right up their street.

That was a great read. Thanks

I assume you're referring to this article https://arcadeblogger.com/2022/11/20/the-last-ridge-racer/ contact Tony (the arcade blogger) he's a nice guy to deal with - his book is also great by the way. Maybe he can do a follow up?

Not so much Check-cashing (although they do exist in some parts of larger cities) and I haven't seen a pawn-shop outside of London in ... forever.

We do have Vapeshops (before that 'Legal High' shops) but apart from those Charity Shops you get a lot of 'Gambling' (aka 'High Street Bookies') chains in those areas where the footfall has gone away to the out of town supermarkets or where the landlords are sitting on what they hope will get turned into flats so they can make a profit.

What I would say regarding Oxfam, at least in the area I live is that the book selection is suprisingly good, both in Oxford and Chipping Norton's where the second hand book selection has given me some great reads and I have seen them refuse the 'Celeb/Sports star' biogs and bundles of Harry Potter cast offs from people while waiting to be served.

Yes that is correct

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-54121151

The museum is still pretty much curated as it was, I have been going on and off for the last 40 years. The glass roof refurb made a huge difference and they seem to rotate their large animal skeletons more than they did, which my friend's children are always thrilled with.

But it is the subtle bits of the museum I enjoy, the aforementioned roof and things like the fact that on the first floor every 'marble' pillar is actually a made of a different stone (i.e not all marble at all).

It's a joyous way to spend an afternoon.

By former academic and current author Mark Scarbrough. 'Walking with Dante' is a passion project, taking on Dante's masterwork 'The Divine Comedy' passage-by-passage.

"I've taught it many times. But I've always felt rushed. I wanted to take this masterpiece at my speed. "

Also (from 7 months ago) see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39834020

The same questions about 'how does this work' were never answered there either (shrug)

Well-meaning people who remain idle end up sick in the heart and the head, and they often develop exquisite ideologies to excuse their inaction

or they get so used to being time and again that their offer of help is not needed or wanted that they just stop asking. :(

A Russian national allegedly involved in administering the Phobos ransomware appeared in court in the US after being extradited from South Korea.

The man, Evgenii Ptitsyn, 42, was allegedly involved in the development of Phobos, and oversaw the sale, distribution, and operations of the ransomware, an indictment unsealed by the US Department of Justice shows.

Still the human.

How about one million humans or one kitten?

Where is the cut-off point for you>?

inspired by the poetry clock (https://www.theverge.com/23669343/ai-clock-chatgpt-poems-rhy...).

That's fun. Although, from the article:

There’s one other problem, though. It’s well known that AI language models like ChatGPT have a tendency to make up data (sometimes known as “hallucinations”), and it turns out that’s true even if you’re just telling the time. Roughly once every 15 minutes, says Webb, the clock will simply lie about the time just to make a certain rhyme work. “The fibbing is hilarious. Sometimes you can’t tell — it might say ‘one past two’ when it’s actually ‘two past one,’” he says. He says this will be fixable but, for now, is a fun quirk of the system. “Clockwork means you get precision drift; AI-work means you get hallucination drift.”

;)

A 24-hour party of pain - a day and night running round a track

Apropo of nothing in particular if you miss those Old Peel Session days (like I do) YouTube is very much your friend now - https://www.youtube.com/@FruitierThanThou/videos

Yes completely.

I have both an old Kindle Paperwhite 2nd Gen I think and a Kobo Clara.

The kindle 'lives' in the car and the Kobo at home so I always have something to read.

I use Calibre to sync to both.

Rather than directly accessing Amazon from the Kindle I download bought books to my PC then strip the DRM - so I can read the same book on both the Clara and Kindle.

See: https://github.com/noDRM/DeDRM_tools

I'd say that the initial awkwardness is from deliberately not connecting the Kobo or Kindle to the internet to stop them from 'phoning home' when you set them up. The Kindle is easy - just don't connect it, the Kobo seems to insist but there's a simple step-by-step to bypass the enforced sign up on the Clara I use.

See: https://yingtongli.me/blog/2018/07/30/kobo-rego.html - basically SQL commands.

and you can get firmware updates for the Kobo devices via

https://pgaskin.net/KoboStuff/kobofirmware.html

and they are easy to apply - drag / drop.

I don't get books from Kobo's site as it used to be hard if not impossible to strip the DRM from them - which meant I couldn't read them on my Kindle.

Hope that helps.

Ever since Platformer left Substack in January, readers have been asking us how it’s been going. Today, in keeping with our annual tradition of anniversary posts (here are one, two, and three), I’ll answer that question — and share some other observations on the state of independent media over the past year.

What about your moral obligation?

Modern computer science is dominated by men. But it hasn't always been this way.

A lot of computing pioneers — the people who programmed the first digital computers — were women. And for decades, the number of women studying computer science was growing faster than the number of men. But in 1984, something changed. The percentage of women in computer science flattened, and then plunged, even as the share of women in other technical and professional fields kept rising.

What happened?