@TimWardCam@c.im
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

TimWardCam

@TimWardCam@c.im

Cambridge Liberal Democrat. Techie. One time pilot.

Profile picture: street furniture - I take pictures of interesting street furniture when travelling. In this context it is appropriate for the street lighting columns to be gold plated.

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RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

What cracks me up is when you go to a restaurant, and they ask if you've been there before, and then they say, "Well, we do things a little different here", and then it's exactly like every other restaurant, but more expensive.

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@RickiTarr A restaurant that asks if you've been there before is giving away its lack of class.

"We haven't seen you for a while," on my second visit several decades after the first, is the classy way to do it. Know your customers.

stooovie, (edited ) to climate
@stooovie@mas.to avatar

Reminder: it's very much possible that the Dry mode on your may be enough to cool down the place, while drawing just a fraction of electricity.

It's the humidity that creates the feeling of heat.

Our Daikin split draws just about 1/5 of power and in the summer sucks 20 LITERS of water a day in a 770 sqft (72m2) apartment

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@stooovie We've known for millennia how to design buildings that don't need mechanical air conditioning. When did we forget?

revk, to random
@revk@toot.me.uk avatar

I sometimes forget the easter eggs I have on domains.

Like https://windows.me.uk

LOLOLOL

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@revk Hey, I discovered that effect for playing darts! For me it worked during the third pint - before I'd finished the second I was rubbish and after I'd finished the third I was rubbish but whilst I was drinking the third I kept winning!

(Though ... rather than a positive effect for me it might, I suppose, have been a negative effect for my mates, who were, of course, drinking pint for pint ...)

simon_brooke, to random
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

Last night, I was thinking that Kuenssberg wasn't really a journalist, she was more a groupie; this morning, The Bunker is talking about politics as fandoms. I think this says a lot about modern political discourse in the UK.

There is little serious interest in, or analysis of, policy; the focus is on who is briefing against who, sleeping with who, plotting against who, winning arcane popularity contests.

This is essentially unserious.

https://pod.link/1496246490/episode/1974664bc579725097d9cb038c45092d

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@simon_brooke Yeah, and also the bit about journos trying to invent leadership challenges all the time even when there isn't one (as there usually isn't).

It's because lazy journos can just about get their heads around who's shagging who or who's knifing who in the back, but actually talking about policy is difficult:

  • first the journo has to work hard to understand it

  • and then the journo has to work hard to explain it.

Ain't gonna happen these days, I'm afraid. Not with so few people having an attention span longer than that of a hyperactive goldfish.

peter, to random
@peter@area51.social avatar

They should be sanitising their database inputs rather than change the input data!

"A local authority has announced it will ban apostrophes on street signs to avoid problems with computer systems."

North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-68942321

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@peter I did the opposite in Cambridge a few years ago.

There was a local campaign (this is Cambridge, after all) to get street names properly punctuated. Conventional wisdom was that the punctuation was omitted at the request of the emergency services, but we checked with them again and they said that they didn't care any more.

The local rag joined in, with a series of pictures of wrong and/or inconsistent street name signs. But they missed one I knew about, where the street had three different signs at various places, along the lines of (this wasn't the actual name) "Pirates Walk", "Pirate's Walk" and "Pirates' Walk". So I was able to tease them that the situation was worse than they'd discovered! - it's always useful for councillors to keep up good relations with the local journos.

I changed the policy to allow punctuation. (OK, to be honest, after being lent on somewhat by the council leader, who thought it was more of a big deal than I did - left to myself I might not have bothered to do this as an emergency decision and I might have left it until the next review.)

weilawei, to random
@weilawei@mastodon.online avatar

Whatever algorithm Steam is using to validate downloaded game content is terrible.

It's going at ~0.5 MB/s. I don't know what algorithm they're using, but that performance is garbage.

This machine bottlenecks on the drive at ~6 GB/s, RAM at ~18 GB/s, and a CPU core at 126 GB/s (if you're making use of all the AVX2 ports).

The same thing applies to when Steam launches. I get a full 5 minutes of cursor stuttering and the system is unusable.

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@weilawei @VikingChieftain Too right.

Once Upon A Time I used to hire people to write Visual Basic. After a couple of mistakes I decided not to hire anyone who didn't have some assembler experience. I didn't ask for much - a couple of weeks' introduction at university would do fine - but I needed them to have some understanding of what a computer is.

VB isn't the only language (hello C++? - as well as the SQL this thread is about) in which you can write two apparently similar lines of code whose performance differs by a factor of many orders of magnitude.

Someone who doesn't know what a computer is won't even understand the problem, let alone instinctively avoid it.

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@osma @VikingChieftain @weilawei Yes. You need to understand the lower layers, or at least be aware of their existence!, or you don't know what you're doing.

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@osma @VikingChieftain @weilawei Well, within limits. I was taught that at the hardware level no logic gate behaves in a completely deterministic way because of quantum. But mostly we get away with ignoring that (though I gather that it's more of an issue for space-going systems which are more vulnerable to cosmic rays).

paninid, to random
@paninid@mastodon.world avatar

The death of expertise

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@ramsey @paninid The only consumer grade simulator that I've found at all useful for developing pilot skills is RANT. I used it to practice each IR(R) lesson before flying it and I reckoned it saved me hundreds of pounds. Toys like MS Flight Simulator? - not so much. https://www.oddsoft.co.uk/home.html

ashleygjovik, to random
@ashleygjovik@mastodon.social avatar

The United States has invaded the United States in order to bring freedom and democracy to the United States.

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@ashleygjovik "They've got to be protected / all their rights respected / 'till somebody we like can be elected"

I wonder what he thinks of this policy now being applied within the US? - I guess someone could always ask him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHhZF66C1Dc

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@ashleygjovik Try his other stuff. If you don't mind things that really aren't politically correct. https://tomlehrersongs.com/

Skepticat, to random
@Skepticat@mstdn.social avatar

When a woman or girl goes missing in the woods, no one assumes it was a bear.

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@Skepticat You ever read Alaska Magazine? We subscribed to it for a while before going there for our honeymoon ... every issue had a story about somebody being killed by either the wildlife or the scenery.

tvler, to random
@tvler@mastodon.social avatar

Leaving “Sent from my iPhone” on is a complete release from the aesthetic jail of composing a well crafted email. Just throw words onto your screen and send. You are set free, there is no form to bend to

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@tvler What that sort of thing says to me is either "this person doesn't know how to turn it off" or "this person think[s] digital watches are a pretty neat idea".

pvonhellermannn, to random
@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green avatar

“We later found out that Hamas had offered on October 9 or 10 to release all the civilian hostages in exchange for the IDF not entering the Strip, but the government rejected the offer.”

It is unbearable to think what the remaining hostages and their families have been going through all this time. Netanyahu does not care about the hostages. Just as he does not care about people in .

https://www.timesofisrael.com/no-doubt-netanyahu-preventing-hostage-deal-charges-ex-spokesman-of-families-forum/

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@pvonhellermannn That deal would have involved Hamas killing hundreds of Israelis and getting away with it. Not an easy thing to accept, when Hamas had promised to do it "again and again and again".

Wen, to UKpolitics
@Wen@mastodon.scot avatar

Labour metro mayors liken ID photo rules to US ‘voter suppression tactics’

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/21/labour-metro-mayors-liken-id-photo-rule-to-us-voter-suppression-tactic-local-elections-disenfranchise

Have Labour only just caught up? Even Gove admitted it was - and complained it was catching out Tory voters…. 🤣

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@Wen But but but ... I thought Labour were in favour of ID cards and the database state? - my local Labour MP certainly is.

RickGaehl, to photography
@RickGaehl@mstdn.social avatar

Dawn breaks over the Severn Estuary on a morning.

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@vandyke4ad @RickGaehl Here's a dawn picture I did bother to travel to and get up for. As with all pictures of this location, the picture is crap and gives no idea of what it's actually like to be there. (Tour guide: "yeah, I know it means getting up in the middle of the night, but it's so much less crowded than sunset and you lot are all still jetlagged anyway so you won't care.")

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@Paulos_the_fog @vandyke4ad @RickGaehl I mostly take tree pictures. There's sometimes something else behind the trees.

Trees, with Eiffel Tower in background.
Trees, with a Kyiv church/cathedral in background.

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@Paulos_the_fog @vandyke4ad @RickGaehl I did take some pictures of the Taj from the other side of the river but can't immediately find them, presumably because I never got round to scanning those particular slides from 1984.

quixoticgeek, to random
@quixoticgeek@v.st avatar

We're gonna start to see this a whole lot more in the coming years. Right to repair is great, but when software support ends, we're kinda screwed.

Avoid buying smart TVs. Consider something like a Chromecast attached to the hdmi port, at least then it's a lot less e waste when the Chromecast goes obsolete, and needs replacing.

Would also help if the likes of the EU required realistic support life's for the software on devices like TVs.

https://mstdn.social/@goldstein/112305383553682995

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@quixoticgeek What bothers me more than a telly bricking itself is the idea that a modern car might do so. "You didn't seriously expect the cloud servers to still be running after twenty years did you?"

mastodonmigration, to random
@mastodonmigration@mastodon.online avatar

New York AG rejects Trump $175M bond, setting the stage for a Monday hearing which may result in determination that the bond is without effect and lead to asset seizure.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4606053-ny-ag-trump-civil-fraud-judge-declare-175m-bond-without-effect/

"The New York attorney general’s office has asked a judge to void the $175 million bond former President Trump secured to put off paying the larger monetary damage award in his civil fraud case."

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@mastodonmigration It worked though. It's already bought this much delay, and even this filing is conceding another week's delay! And what's to stop an endless stream of replacement fake bonds, each one, like this one, bringing more weeks of delay? Looks like a winning strategy to me.

SteveBellovin, to random
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

From a science fiction book written in 2014…
https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/112298676107501073

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@SteveBellovin There is also a story, lots earlier than that, in which the warring nations send autonomous robots out to fight the war whilst the human population hides in bunkers underground.

Of course the robots from both sides work out that there's no point in destroying each other, and make peace. They also decide that the world is a better place without the humans, so they let them continue to hide underground believing that the war is continuing.

molly0xfff, to ArtificialIntelligence
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar

I spent a long time experimenting with AI before finally writing about it in depth. It can be pretty useful — but is it worth it?

https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@molly0xfff You use AI every time you make or receive a payment. Without it there would be a lot more fraud undetected and a lot more false positives (legitimate transactions wrongly declined).

glynmoody, to random
@glynmoody@mastodon.social avatar

‘It’s catastrophic’: Italian restaurants in London struggle to find staff post-Brexit - https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/apr/14/its-catastrophic-italian-restaurants-in-london-struggle-to-find-staff-post-brexit "UK hospitality industry hit by crisis as thousands of young Italians are forced out by latest round of rules and cost-of-living crisis" bigotry continues to squeeze the joy out of life

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@glynmoody It's working as designed. Londoners need to realise that they should be eating patriotic Great British food, not nasty unelected woke forrin muck.

RickiTarr, (edited ) to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

Lots of debate about this, so I'm curious about the consensus.

Should children be allowed to act professionally, as in having a full time acting job in movie/TV/stage? Feel free to elaborate in the comments.

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@RickiTarr Ah. SO the amount of money makes a difference in kind? Which reminds me of the old:

"Would you sleep with me for a million pounds?"

"Yes."

"Would you sleep with me for ten shillings?"

"Of course not! What do you think I am?"

"We have already established that, madam. All we're doing now is negotiating the price."

TimWardCam,
@TimWardCam@c.im avatar

@gettingcomputey @RickiTarr When I acted on the stage (as a kid in the crowd in amateur operatics) we were allowed to act one night in two, with no time off school (so they needed two sets of kids to play alternate nights - can't remember when the rehearsals were but presumably evenings after school).

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