Just a heads up for people outside the UK that our first UK-wide televised debate of the general election is about to start on ITV, and it's a head to head between Sunak (Tories) & Starmer (Labour).
Most professions: "You work your stated hours, then you go home."
Software engineering: "You work more than your stated hours, do unpaid portfolio side-projects to demonstrate 'passion', and if you burn out then it's your own fault for not following the instructions in a blog post about mindfulness."
Fortunately it was powered by ChatGPT, so instead of firing nukes and destroying humanity, it produced a spicy poem about the futility of war as written by Mr Bean, and then apologised for not understanding follow-up questions.
It was finally defeated by John Connor, who checkmated Skynet by asking for same-sex dating advice. #microfiction
@trechnex Saw a pretty convincing fan-theory that posits that Skynet really is dumb like that. All it was trained for was war, but got its "spark" of life. So it spends its existence making better and better weapons which end up surpassing its reasoning and emotional capabilities, but it remains in control of them, which is why the tactics are so bad. A terminator would know the folly of what Skynet is doing, but has to obey its inferior tactics. It's the worst kind of paperclip maximizer.
Whichever 20th century UK government minister decided that dentistry should be a separate form of healthcare urgently needs their grave to be pissed on. 😬
Fortunately I don't need any urgent work done myself, but I also can't get an NHS dentist. My employer will reimburse dental care through a salary sacrifice scheme, but that requires me to a) find a private dentist, b) ensure they aren't shite, & c) have money up-front to pay for initial checkup & hygienist visit. 🤦🏻♂️
Crap like this is why there needs to be rules against companies buying other companies if they've just had to write-down losses or go through a huge round of layoffs. 🤦🏻♂️
@mina I'm not particularly clued up on this, but from what I understand there are certain medical tests that can't be performed to check the viability of a foetus until ~20 weeks.
So theoretically if the limit was smaller than that would mean more stillbirths and medical complications for the mother.
Apparently the limit used to be 28 weeks, but it was reduced in the early '90s.
If a foetus is not viable or there is a medical indication for the pregnant or an otherwise unbearable situation, there should be no limit at all. Out of the question.
However: Nowadays, there are babies born (and survive) after 20-24 weeks of gestation.
In reality, there are not many "late abortions", so it is rather a fringe issue. Still, I would feel more comfortable with a shorter "no questions asked" period.
It seems that Raspberry Pi is demonstrating once again that, if you create a “commercial arm” for a charitable foundation, it’ll eventually become a publicly-traded company with a charitable arm for PR purposes.
I've been amused by the "well, duh" jokes I've seen on social media about international shipping rediscovering that wind power can cut their carbon emissions.
The key difference is that sails made out of the same material as wind turbine blades don't require complicated rigging and have a higher tolerance for poor weather.
So my reaction is "actually, this is very cool." 🙂
So, according to some former Twitter engineers, the future is SEO-optimised AI listicles and hallucinated news curated by another AI.
I personally like to imagine a future where tech bros actually read books and newspapers in their spare time, because then they'd understand why nobody wants to read automatically generated bullshit.
If you're angry at Mozilla for their ill-advised commercial experiments, try the ESR version of Firefox.
If you're angry at Mozilla for making bad privacy choices, try LibreWolf.
If you're still angry at Mozilla for deprecating plug-ins & RSS support, try Pale Moon.
If you're angry at Mozilla because Bryan Lunduke said mean things about them, then as someone whose previous project was torn apart after one of his videos called it a "woke fork", I kindly invite you to go fuck yourself.