Discount code is GOOGLEPARTY24

AHH yes, sorry, it might have been helpful for me to have mentioned that!

If you are going to do it, you can get 20% off at the Google store today.

Also they offer good prices for trade-ins so I just upgraded my pixel 4a to a 6a for £120.

That kid might have just stolen the show for me

It’s an awesome show, loved Nandi. Guess Macca was inevitable. Dave manages to pull off missing out more and more words each time I see him.

Some people are properly into this stuff:
Supersoaker armoury database

Your kinds might have done well to thoroughly research the cons of this particular model before engaging:

Pros
Mid-sized, light, and easy to carry thanks to its shoulder strap. Despite its size, it packs good power and stream size. It also does not take too much effort to pump up the firing chamber. The two nozzle settings also allows one to be a little more thrifty with one’s water usage or more sadistic with drenching your foes.

Cons
Like the Super Soaker CPS 1000, this weapon can quickly drain is resources if the user is too trigger-happy. One should also take care not to run or fall with the pumping mechanism extended as this appears to be the most fragile part of this otherwise well-built blaster. The pump may break if not treated with proper respect.

Just can’t wait to be king. Everyone in the car can take a character. It was only very recently that I twigged that Zazu is Rowan Atkinson!

At least in the black colour we bought, DIY kitchen’s quartz (innovo? Or something) is identical to silestone. We had samples of each and couldn’t tell them apart, then we noticed that the DIY sample had residue on the back where the silestone sticker had been removed and the smaller DIY one added instead. Worktop fitter confirmed later

Hint: with some sticky felt pads, worktop samples make great coasters.

Well that’s the “real Turing test” passed according to Ex Machina.

(skip to about 60 secs in)

Reading the transcript, that must have been hugely unsettling conversation. Properly amazing stuff.

They should get the names of all the country’s school headmasters in a hat, and draw names until they find one willing to do the job.

Sounds flippant but actually genuinely think it would work better than the current system.

How to best deal with the kid who took the video probably depends on whether this is a one off or part of a history of bullying.

But I would also be very keen to see every single person who forwarded the message getting a bollocking too. It might not be fully traceable, but every recipient of the first share at least should be given a talking to, probably from the police if they did anything other than delete it immediately.

I subscribe to Sam Harris’ making sense. It’s very expensive at £15 per month so I dip in and out rather than keep it up permanently. Some of his stuff is great, some more average, but the complete lack of ads or sponsored content makes it worth it. Agree that all the monetisation ruins a lot of other podcasts.

For a country’s own security, there is something to be said for telling the whole world that their nuclear weapons are under the control of a complete throbbing lunatic who just wants to be a big name in history. But ideally in reality the big red button in front of the lunatic would actually be wired up to self-administer an electric shock.

I reality, I think that it would take a credible invasion attempt, not just a stray wandering aircraft or few shells, into Russian or NATO territory for WW3 to truly kick off, and I don’t see that happening. It’s incredibly depressing for Ukraine, but I think all the west can do is make it hurt Russia economically as much as possible, and help Ukrainians in either fleeing or fighting as they wish. And hope that Putin shuffles off one way or another asap and whoever replaces him is willing to be more reasonable in order to get sanctions lifted.

It’ll be a long slog and weaning ourselves off Russian oil and gas will be vital even it it takes a couple of years.

The BBC is taking me on an emotional rollercoaster, last night there was a 40 mile long line of tanks and artillery ready to flatten Kyiv and end everything in a single night. Now it is a rag tag collection of vans which can’t make it down the road without braking down. Can’t help wondering if these snippets are being orchestrated to maximise the level of support and feeling of urgency in getting supplies to Ukraine. Excellent job if so.

BBC live feed at 4:31 today:
Some clarity on that massive Russian armoured column heading south towards Kyiv.

Close analysis of the latest satellite images by McKenzie Intelligence Services reveals the following:

The convoy is not 40 miles long, it’s a series of logistical ‘packets’ strung out along a major highway from the Belarus border, aiming to link up with Russian units on the northern outskirts of Kyiv.
The convoy appears to be hampered in several places by broken down vehicles.
The column consists of some armour (tanks) and infantry fighting vehicles but mainly logistical vehicles, implying plans for more than just a brief battle.
Separately, the imagery examined by McKenzie Intelligence Services shows a Russian parachute battalion dug in to the area of Hostomel airfield – Ukraine’s most important international cargo airport and a key military airbase near Kyiv.

But their artillery is assessed to be outside the range of most of the capital.

The analysts say they have noted very little Russian progress over the past 24 hours.

We have a sureflap smart one with WiFi and a hub. It eats batteries and the smart features are really unreliable. It seems to have been discontinued and replaced by a monstrosity which uses c-cell batteries.

Before that we had a normal sureflap microchip catflap without all the smart stuff. That was flawless.

So get sureflap but just a simple one.

Great post by scruff9252

Yeah, because the Daily Mail etc were never capable of that

The thing is that with social media, a person can get through life seeing nothing but right wing bilge. In fact Facebook will actively target some people with nothing but right wing bilge from various sources, making it appear widespread and universal. 20 years ago, it would be difficult not to notice all the other headlines of the other newspapers on the shelf, and hard not to encounter mainstream news on the TV.

There is now a huge division in people’s beliefs, held in good faith based on the news they are presented with, of what is factually true about the world.

Also I’m a big believer in happiness = reality – expectations. Many in their 20s and 30s saw their optimistic 90s prospects buggered by the 2008 financial crisis, house price inflation, and other world problems. Young teens today know that they are in for a horrible time economically. I don’t know what that will mean for society once they become adults!

Completely devoid of detail on what we actually want to know, like what Boris was aware of and what he was present at. Agree with others that this serves only to help the whole thing fizzle out over time

I think the root cause was caring too much about work and being too emotionally invested in it. Some of the workload and expectations came from myself; I see my own work and have high/unrealistic standards – I probably cared more at times about many things than anybody else involved. Stress and voluntary overtime, much of it nobody was aware of. And for what.

I can definitely relate to this. One thing that has really stuck with me is the section of this video between around the 2nd and 4th minute. The subject of the video isn’t directly relevant, but remembering that each hour of your life you spend working is an hour you will never get back is a good way to motivate yourself to switch off from work and do what you actually want to do with your life.

I find I am not short of ideas of things I would like to do with my evenings, rather I too often lack the mindset to recognise that the right thing to do is to forget work and do things for me.

So, do we think Van-Tam is bowing out for a quieter life now he has his knighthood, or is he about to stick the boot in as well?

I suspect he is tired of working with the clowns but has better things to do than join the bun fight.

@thisisnotaspoon

Thought experiment: for each extra transaction, where does the extra processing power (=electricity consumption) come from? If I do a million transactions in a minute, where would all the extra processing power come from?

AIUI, what happens is that each transaction means more competition for the (finite) number of transactions allowed in a ten minute block, and so the processing fee ‘paid’ to miners increases. At the moment, the revenue from new bitcoins awarded to miners dwarfs the revenue for miners from transaction fees, hence there is no *material* increase in incentive for more processing power to be put into mining. Admittedly that might change in coming decades as the number of new bitcoins awarded to miners decreases, and transaction fees become a larger part of the revenue.

@thisisnotaspoon

You are presenting numbers as if that is the marginal cost of each transaction, when it really isn’t. If I make an extra bitcoin transaction, it doesn’t result in any material increase in electricity usage whatsoever.

I’d really appreciate one bit of help understanding how NFTs are created. How is scarcity ensured? If someone made an NFT of a meme picture, what is stopping me from changing one pixel of that picture and using it to create my own NFT (which I could try to sell).

I get how bitcoins could have a stable value since supply is limited, but surely there is no upper limit on the number of NFTs that could exist?

(I’m sure I have fundamentally missed a key point somewhere but have never found an explanation!)

Dropkick Murphys: The season’s upon us

How about clinical need?

Sorry, I had edited to add “(including the chance of hospital treatment being effective)” immediately after re-reading my post

And further edit, I guess I have just implied that the vaccinated person only gets priority in a dead heat, but I would still give the person with the biggest chance of benefit access to the single remaining hospital bed. So I’m not really making a particularly meaningful point. I guess I’m just frustrated by people who have chosen not to be vaccinated and would like there to be some negative consequence for them. Maybe we could bar them from large non-essential public gatherings? Everyone agree with that right? Oh wait.

So the obese individuals would perish in the car park?

I was more focussing on prioritising those who had done their bit to help the pandemic (as mentioned above, obesity isn’t infectious). But I’ll still take the bait. Hypothetically assuming all else being equal (including the chance of hospital treatment being effective), yes. How would you suggest prioritising? A coin toss?

Fair point about waiting for it to become apparent that hospitals will be overrun means it will be too late to help. It was more of a thought exercise.

Maybe it’s time to protect the NHS by not treating people have chosen not to get vaccinated then there’s be no need for a lockdown as the NHS wouldn’t get overrun

Bit harsh (edit: appreciate you might not be 100% serious). But if we do ever reach the stage where the NHS has become overrun, and people are dying in hospital carparks, I would favour an approach of prioritising those who did all they could to help themselves and others (ie. get vaccinated unless medically unfit) over those who chose not to. Thankfully feels very unlikely at this stage though.

I do think some people are too dogmatic in their support of a lockdown. Lets imagine that in a few weeks, we have enough data to conclude that:
– Omicron spreads among today’s mostly vaccinated population just as easily as the first wave spread in an unvaccinated population
– If a vaccinated person gets omicron, they are far less likely (say 85%, or call it x) to get seriously ill than an unvaccinated person with original covid

What value of x would change you support for a lockdown? 0% would effectively mean the same situation as the very first lockdown. What about 50%? 100%?

Lockdowns cost a lot of money, which could be spent in many other good ways, and have many more non-financial costs too.

For me, there is a clear threshold where hospitals are in danger of becoming overrun, at which point lockdowns become far more appealing.

Virtual socials are inevitably terrible, but the least bad one I ever did was a Google maps-based treasure hunt.

“Start from the office, and go as far west as you can without leaving an a road. What town are you in? Now go to the town in Ohio with the same name etc etc etc”

That sort of thing. I think the key was that we could just get on with the task without waiting for a slow quiz master. Rude place names help too.

12 / 20.

Enjoyed it, reminded me of the classic “is it big data or is it a Pokémon?”
Big data or pokemon
What others are there like this?

I think that looks awesome! I’ll be keeping a lookout for other items which can be fixed with old disks.

Worth saying that Tado stuff is very often on offer. We paid £35 per TRV which is much more reasonable!

Yes it is worth it if you get smart TRVs. We have a Tado system which has been great. We have a schedule to only warm the bedrooms at night, only warm the office in the day and only work days, put the UFH on from 5-7am only, etc.

Think Drayton and Honeywell also do similar. It’s like every radiator being its own heating zone. For us that is way more beneficial than just the hive or nest system which is still just an overall on/off for the whole house.

Salt. We will always have salt. And sunny delight.

The problem I have with the whole climate change debate is the basic assumption at its heart. That is that the planet should stay in a state suitable for human habitation indefinitely. Why should it? Human habitation has occurred for a tiny fraction of the planets existence. Yes climate change is happening, yes we are making it worse, but the planet should change

Erm, because we all want our children and children’s children to have happy lives?

If my house is falling down, I fix it. If the planet’s climate is changing (even naturally) to become inhospitable, we try to keep it hospitable.

Do you not put a coat on when it is cold outside? Or do you have a problem with the assumption that humans like to stay warm?

I read yesterday that just a single revolution of one of the larger offshore wind turbines in the North sea generates enough power to drive a Tesla 200+ miles. That’s amazing.

I do also wonder if the “What can you do? Top tips to reduce your own carbon footprint” style communications do more harm than good. “But if everyone did it…”

No. Even if every single person in the entire world recycled their yoghurt pots, it would make sod all difference. It can only be addressed if governments come up with a global solution which will inevitably be painful given how we in the developed world have become accustomed to living.

Sounds great, completely at odds with the interests of those in the position to implement the concept.

Us (post industrial) first-worlders just bang on about how low ‘our’ emissions are getting now we’ve got Tesla’s, whilst simultaneously berating developing nations for ‘their’ polluting activities and inducing them to pollute by paying them to run data centres as well as manufacture and export all the tat we love to buy…

It doesn’t work, it’s still in China and India’s financial interests to burn lots of coal. The UN won’t change that because the backlash from us Western plebs when costs increase and choices decrease will dislodge many from their current positions of power.

Completely agree, hence saying that arguing over the rules would be endless. There absolutely has to be recognition that us first-worlders have led the way in creating the problem, frankly done staggeringly well out of it economically, and we have to lead the way (and carry the greatest burden) in solving it. I’m not for a moment suggesting that anything as simplistic as emissions quotas would do the job.

But there are certainly some first world countries doing less than others, and I would love to see some collective pressure put, very publicly and bluntly, on those not pulling their weight.

I’ve always thought that the answer to this is for a band of national leaders to form a little club, and lay down some rules which essentially say

“Make this committment to do your bit to cut emissions and we will trade with you on favourable terms. If you don’t make the commitment then we will impose sanctions. We will self police and kick you out of the club and impose sanctions if you don’t keep your promises. And we are willing to accept this might cost us money. People of the world: put pressure on your leaders to join. Oh and the sooner you get on board, the better we will treat you, so get a move on”

So basically create a situation where it will hurt each nation economically to not join in. The problem is that it would require multiple world leaders to commit to a big gamble, they would be heros if it worked but look like fools if it fizzled out. And the arguing over the rules would be endless

. I could make more in a day speculating 1% of my savings on crypto

To be fair, you could also lose more in a day. Premium bonds are basically risk free, so it is unsurprising that returns are poor.

Being given a cheque for $2.5m was hilarious

For the road cycling, I’d like to see something a little different. Either

(A) make it officially a team sport whereby each national team is timed by its fastest rider only

(B) a ‘race’ where the winner is the person (or team) who spent the most time at the front. Would be a whole new set of strategies available and be dead fun to watch. Maybe allow multiple people to be considered at the front of they are within say a few meters of the leader and not slipstreaming. Kinda means the whole race is a race and not just the end.

Commentary “we are 15 minutes from a historic mountain bike Gold for UK, let’s switch to canoe” shows how little respect mountain biking gets, can you imagine them cutting off Peaty to Sweden vs New Zealand table tennis?

To be fair, they switched the MTB to the main coverage on proper BBC1 right after Tom Daley was done. I appreciated watching the last bit in HD!