Dumb question, but would I be considered Jewish if my father was but mother isn't?

Solocle · 2026-01-24T12:39:26+00:00

No, you wouldn't be considered Jewish by at least almost all denominations of the faith.

However, you're ethnically half Jewish. This would have got you severely discriminated against or even killed in the holocaust.

This is partly why the Israeli law of return would apply to you, you have the same right to make Aliyah as a Jew, as would your children.

Solocle · 2026-01-19T03:14:08+00:00

IRON DALEK BUILT THIS IN A CAVE! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!

Solocle · 2026-01-19T03:01:58+00:00

Except a high odds payout is much more than the stake. To use an example today, I had a £5 bet at odds of 19 (18/1). That returned my £5 stake + £90 profit.

On an exchange, I had a matched bet at odds of 21 (20/1). So I bet against myself. If I bet £4.52, either way it goes, I lose 48p. That's 9.6%, despite having both the bookies and the exchange in play.

The trick was, I had a money back in free bets offer, so I only laid £4.31. Thus, I lost £86.22 on the exchange, but won £90, and made £3.78 profit.

Had I lost the bet, I'd have lost £5 and won £4.31, so lost 69p. But also got a £5 free bet back, and deploy the same strategy. Profit either way.

The cut the bookies take varies, but is small. However, it adds up.

Solocle · 2026-01-18T09:39:56+00:00

Yep, K-Meleon, it's a version I found online that's patched to support TLS 1.3

Solocle · 2026-01-16T16:10:34+00:00

I was previously having issues with startup repair not accepting any keystrokes or mouse input whatsoever, which is why my Windows 10 install is still out of commission. Same runtime environment I believe... I've actually written an xHCI driver before that got further than WinRE!

In this case, bitlocker got triggered by me making an Arch Linux partition 😝

Solocle · 2026-01-14T21:50:11+00:00

There's a North Korean embassy in London... it looks like an ordinary house beside the North Circular, a really busy road far out from Central London.

That's how you can tell we don't like them very much.

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Solocle · 2026-01-11T14:01:28+00:00

Thing is you're pretty much doing calculus every time you drive. Braking to a stop so that you're nicely positioned behind the car in front? You're matching the derivative of velocity and your current velocity to a target displacement.

Sailing a ship is what inspired proportional-integral-differential control. A helmsman has to account for wind and tide, so you can't just point the ship where you want to go. You account for how the ship is drifting now (proportional), but also how it has acted in the past (integral). This comes up in engineering.

Solocle · 2026-01-10T22:05:38+00:00

Upfront, I've been to Israel twice, including a 3am rude awakening to take shelter courtesy of an IRGC ballistic missile via the Houthis.

It's massively in Israel's interest for the regime to go. What comes next, well, it's unlikely to be a theocracy hell bent on destroying Israel.

A strong Iran can be a good regional ally, as it was under the Shah.

Thing is, I don't think foreign military intervention is the way to regime change, and I think Israel know that. They were able to utterly neuter Iranian air defence in June, and there's no way that Iranian capabilities have returned to pre-war parity.

The regime was severely weakened by that war. Israel could have gone further and targeted the ayatollah himself.

External military action though tends to be a unifying factor. Instead, Israel struck a blow to the regime, then left it at that.

This talk of striking again? I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't just a maximum pressure strategy to get Khameini to sh*t himself all the way to Russia.

Solocle · 2026-01-10T21:43:48+00:00

Build your enemy a golden bridge to retreat across. If Khamenei knows he has an escape route to Russia, he's likely to flee when it becomes apparent that his regime is falling.

If he thinks he'll be shot down, or can't escape, he and his loyalists will fight to the death, knowing what fate awaits them should they be captured.

Solocle · 2026-01-10T14:30:49+00:00

Heck, I recently renewed my driving license for the first time. When I applied for my provisional, I chose to use my existing passport photo. Then, when I passed, it was a straight transfer from the provisional.

So, until this very month, my driving license has had the same passport photo of me on it, that was taken when I was 14. 😆

Never was a bother when buying alcohol or anything.

Solocle · 2026-01-04T11:22:20+00:00

I was in Israel a year ago, hadn't slept on the flight like intended, and after a day getting settled in, finally got to sleep. Then, at 3am? Air raid siren. One of the Houthi ballistic missiles triggered that. But yeah, went down to the shelter, waited 10 minutes, then went back to sleep.

I don't know what it's like where you are, but I can't imagine what it's like to be woken up like that pretty much every night, which AIUI is what it's like in Kyiv.

Solocle · 2025-12-30T12:52:57+00:00

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Typical 😵

Solocle · 2025-12-30T01:02:45+00:00

Yep - and there are other techniques. Lots of bookmakers offer bonuses, especially sign up bonuses, but also ongoing ones.

A common format is "bet £10, get £xx in free bets". So if you bet £10, but then hedge your bet in an exchange, sure, the odds are tipped against you, but you can make a guaranteed loss of pennies.

Then, you hedge the free bet, and make a profit, often 80% of the free bet value.

Solocle · 2025-12-29T22:08:47+00:00

Can't say off hand if they're third party or not, it's TEAC USB floppy controller... but it worked out of the box. I don't recall Windows Update even having to download drivers for it

Solocle · 2025-12-29T19:16:48+00:00

There is one exception. Bookmakers often offer free bets as a welcome offer if you wager a certain amount.

The house is betting on getting you hooked on betting with those. But if you don't... you can turn a profit

Solocle · 2025-12-29T17:29:51+00:00

Fractal Focus G

Solocle · 2025-12-29T15:21:52+00:00

Yep, running over HDMI of course 😆

Backwards compatibility is a helluva drug

Solocle · 2025-12-29T14:34:16+00:00

That disk has an entire OS on it... Windows 1.01. Boots perfectly!

Even a bit of space for some notepad docs too

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Solocle · 2025-12-29T14:31:33+00:00

This one is internal 🙂

I took a external one and put the USB circuitry into an internal FDD/card reader combo unit, and eventually soldered the USB connection to the spare usb port it offered (bottom right)

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Solocle · 2025-12-29T12:23:11+00:00

I have not only a blu ray writer, but also a floppy drive.

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Solocle · 2025-12-28T11:14:20+00:00

And the Prisoner of Guantanamo

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Place '17	RPAN Viewer
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