So I've found out why one of my automations dealing with an Octopus Saving Session hasn't been doing what I expected, when it worked fine last winter.
This'll be due to Saving Sessions now occurring in the summer, not just the winter, and my code having a time zone bug ...
I have only just learned that Arthur C Clarke invented (as well as communications satellites and his many other inventions) modern LLM text generators.
The story is The Steam-powered Word Processor, 1986, and includes:
A vicar bored with writing sermons, which he realised consisted of subsets of the same text rearranged in slightly different ways each week "... conceived a machine which would automatically reassemble massed of text in any desired order ...".
And to train it?
"Before the machine could be used, [he] was faced with the laborious task of punching not only the Bible but the whole of Cruden's Concordance on to Jaquard cards ..."
Should my web site block access by user agent "feroxbuster", on the grounds that it's not a real person wanting to do something real, and then blacklist the IP address to block the follow-up probes for weird files with a different user agent, or isn't it worth the effort because they'll soon fix their user agent string?
What's with probing for <valid URL>/.env anyway?
Oh look, a new prime minister who promised devolution is actually delivering centralisation.
As expected.
There must be something I'm missing here.
If you've got a stocks and shares ISA and you keep a few pounds, or even tens of pounds, in cash, perhaps from recent dividends, perhaps so that fees can be paid without selling anything, then you'll get a few pence interest each month.
And the ISA provider will have to write new systems to pay a penny or two of that to HMRC. And HMRC has to write new systems to accept these odd pennies.
The whole costing, surely to goodness, several times what it will raise in this "charge" (which isn't a "tax").
What am I missing? Or is it really as bonkers as it sounds?
Discovered a bottle of Moulin Touchais 1964 when auditing the cupboard content which had to be emptied out to make room for the electrician and the gas man.
The cork had crumbled to little pieces, but it had serious metal foil over it which looks like it remained airtight.
Tastes OK, anyway.
New installation of Firefox on a machine which hasn't had it before. FFS.
I still reckon that rail engineering works should be done during the working week.
Because during the working week, most passengers are commuters, who know the system backwards, and can navigate round system failures without even bothering to wake up.
Whereas weekends and holidays are for occasional travellers, who've spent months planning their journey, and haven't the remotest clue what to do if they turn up at the station to find their train is cancelled.
Y'know how people claim that Mastodon is too difficult because of the need to start by choosing a server?
Well, I have this vague idea that I might run up Linux on a spare box with a view to parallel running to see if I can do everything I can currently do on Windows, but actually installing Linux is too difficult because of the need to start by choosing a distribution.
(I know what I'm going to get - around a dozen replies naming, between them, about two dozen distributions that I should start with.)
RE: https://wandering.shop/@vapaad/115975141052792861
Yes. This is how politics is done.
An entire article on that railway line along the beach being washed out AGAIN as we all knew it would be, and not a single mention of the need to re-open an inland line. #Cornwall https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8gldd9zyyo
So I get that modern cars have a "lane assist" feature whose job is to wrench the steering wheel out of your hands when you cross a white line to avoid a flood or (certainly in Cornwall at the moment) the remains of a fallen tree.
But when there's no white line in sight? As far as I can guess it's reacting to low sunlight reflected off a wet road.
FFS! If a system hasn't the remotest clue WTF is going on it should switch itself off, no? In preference to trying to kill people?
Tories and Reform should "unit the centre right"? I really didn't expect those two to be Labour supporters.
(For any foreigners reading this who haven't been keeping up to date with UK politics - and, indeed, why should you? - the current alignment of parties goes something like this:
Far right: Tory and Reform
Centre right: Labour[#]
Centre left: Lib Dems
Far left: Greens
I don't know enough to pass left-right judgement on the nationalists, SNP, PC, MK.
[#] Except when they're chasing the far fight vote on things like immigration, then they count as far right.)
So I've been expecting my 23 year old car to die at any moment for a few years now.
What I wasn't expecting was that this would be as a result of someone driving into the back of me at (estimated) 85mph. Pretty sure any insurance company (or, indeed, any garage) is going to laugh their heads off at the idea of repairing it.
Once Upon A Time I despaired at the Radio Times giving more acreage to what film stars had for breakfast than to the actual times of the radio programmes.
That wasn't pretending to be news, though, at least. But now on the BBC "news" front page we have:
@millie Tell that to the security auditors and regulators.
Here's a solar array ground mounted on Cornish Rocker, pointing the right way, and properly adjusted for the season (weather unknown - it's hundreds of miles away - but assume full sunshine). Followed by a similar number of panels on a roof, in full sunshine, pointing in various different fixed directions 'cos that's how the roof is.
@grrlscientist I've never heard of Dahmer but what strikes me about that picture is ... are there really still people who measure heights in feet and inches?
"He cited how members had been instructed to oppose all renewable energy projects when they came before planning committees - whatever their merit."
Um ... that's not exactly what you might call "legal"??
Some (more) #brexshit insanity.
Some low volume wines are no longer imported to the UK, because the supermarkets etc can't be arsed with the #brexshit paperwork.
But there are (just) two EU wine warehouses left (that we've found) which will ship to UK retail customers and do all the paperwork for you (for how long they will continue to do this, who knows).
And one of them, the one in Spain, has stocks of the particular Austrian wine we wanted. So we've just had a case delivered.
So due to #brexshit this wine has travelled from Austria to the UK ... via Spain. That makes the world a better place how, exactly?