Given how hard it is to keep track of one's own actual socials, why on earth would anyone want to sockpuppet? Just a whole lotta wasted time/effort that would be better spent ACTUALLY WRITING.
@lilithsaintcrow@cstross@soonleenz Yah. I can't imagine what the poor agent must have thought when they found out, but having one of your writers depth charge her career before it's really begun?
I can see a standard advice template being updated in a hurry
Microsoft Recall in Windows 11: in what way can this be POSSIBLY compliant with the requirements of GDPR?
(Same goes for Office365 requiring autosave to stash files in OneDrive, and Outlook slurping all your emails into Microsoft's cloud and using them for AI training.)
@cstross@stavvers We used to have the F-111s out of Upper Heyford climb out over us. Yeah, supersonic nuclear-bomb-capable F-111s, surely not a first strike target
#WritersCoffeeClub May 28: Do you have advice for other authors that you haven't heard from different sources?
Yes: "there's more than one way to do it." (For almost any value of "it" that doesn't involve mathematics or formal logic.)
This is actually advice from a programmer, Larry Wall (inventor of Perl) but it applies especially strongly to writing fiction. Whatever you're trying to do, consider alternative ways of doing it.
@cstross Yeah. There were reasons that he was respected enough to get a Nobel, but it's a shame that some of his views could have done with re-examination
So this happened. Given the colour and the fact they were working with nitric acid, I'm feeling somewhat doubtful this was (relatively benign) nitrous oxide.
@cstross@mmby@nyrath@pauldrye I was in a meeting once, with the window beside me, and noticed something flying through the air outside with an orange smoke trail. This was followed by an orange column of smoke
It turned out to be an abandoned large plastic tank of picric acid used for etching circuit boards had decided to blow its top
We dialed 999, and ended up evacuating north Royston, including the HO of Hotel Chocolat which was just to the side of the smoke
Thought for the day: Air Fryers are obviously the next instar (larval stage) of the venerable Instant Pot. They seem to have hatched from the 1980s Food Processor and they're on an ontological road to somewhere ... so what do they mature into next? Microwave ovens? Or something new and terrifying?
Glasgow’s disastrous Wonka character inspires horror film
A villain devised for the catastrophic Willy’s Chocolate Experience, who makes sweets and lives in walls, is to become the subject of a new horror movie
@cstross I got to go on the Portsmouth to IoW one once. One way, as the weather was too rough for it to run in the opposite direction so I had to take the ferry
I also did some hovercraft racing one time. They're a bugger to control as with no wheels, wings or keel, they carry on in the same direction until you've pushed enough thrust in the correct direction to compensate. Huge fun though
Gaah: dishwasher just died on me! (There's a touch-sensor control panel and the START button decided to crap out.) As it's 12 years old, and they're designed for 3-5 years' life, I figure it's had enough. (Bosch, FWIW.) Replacement purchased, due to delivery (and removal of the old one) on Thursday. Wallet now lighter because I went for Miele …
Welp, woke up this morning, went downstairs, and suddenly my lower back is in agony! Guess I shouldn't have gone foodshopping and filled a backpack on two consecutive days.
@cstross I'm a few years ahead of you, and for me it was my right arm. It started hurting about this time last year, and I eventually went to the physio for a checkup.
It's just about stopped hurting, but the best part of a year has been a pain. Still no idea what caused it, but healing is a very slow process compared to one's teens and twenties
Speaking of Apple Pass shenanigans, has anyone discovered a way to make the QR code be physically larger? It would make scanning them at the door much easier. We often struggle with it.
I'm like 99% sure the answer is "you can't" but maybe someone has figured out a workaround using images or something that I haven't thought of.
E.g. in this picture I want the white box to be the full width of the phone:
@jwz I got the impression that you were unable to do that. If the complaint is that the code ought to fill the available width, I agree that would be nice. But the scanners really shouldn't be having any problem with this - what you showed is clear, and assuming the code is generated correctly, ought to be scannable when waved in the general direction of a scanner
@grumpygrimnir@jwz Yes. I've got a bunch of PDFs for train tickets for today, and I just zoom in to expand the code. If the Apple Pass doesn't permit that, it's broken
(Why yes, I have implemented QR Codes. Part of my testing used to be to read one across a room on a monitor)
Welp, @Menhit has caught a mouse in my office but we now discover the inconvenient fact that she doesn't know how to kill a mouse, so when I startled her she let it go and it ran behind my bureau desk.
(This is the second confirmed mouse in the house since late 2007. Driven indoors by the weather, I guess, because only a madmouse would court her feline attention.)
Went to the GP surgery today for bloods (I have a regular diabetic check-up coming up in two weeks). First sample tube failed to fill, so the phlebotomist tried to draw from the back of my hand and JESUS FUCK apparently it's entirely possible to fill a blood tube from a pain nerve if you use a murder hornet's arse dagger for a needle OUCH (whimper).
Seriously, that was the most painful needle stab I've experienced in a couple of decades, including @Menhit's claws.
@cstross FWIW I'm currently playing Baldur's Gate 3, as a Githyanki. One of the other current members of the party is Lae'zel, also a Githyanki, and we all have Illithid tadpoles in our brains
Why yes, it's part of the game that you can end up having sex with each other
