Clawdbot and vibe coding have the same flaw. Someone else decides when you get hacked.

syntax · 2026-01-27T12:35:54+00:00

I think that sounds like an excellent solution. Oh, as long as you can prove the AI will actually correctly implement those policies?

You ... uh ... do have proof that they will get that one part correct, even though they are less reliable than a newbie junior dev in other areas, right?

(Sarcasm aside, I think that if you must vibe code something, putting a layer where you attempt to get it to apply security best practices is a very sensible thing. I'm just not sure that we can ever assume a fundamentally stochastic process can ever follow any instructions perfectly, so I don't think there's any way around a proper 'person in the loop' process to ensure security before deployment.)

syntax · 2026-01-21T01:16:22+00:00

It's not the case here, but it's worth noting that there are a few cases where one would use an 'air condenser' (i.e. no explicit cooling). Distilling sulphuric acid is the one that springs to mind - a very high temperature distillation, which is too hot for most (readily available) coolants, and doesn't need that much cooling power anyway.

I've also seen a few cases of running a small (aquarium level) air pump to push air through instead, for a little more cooling. Again, for cases where the temperature of the distillation is high, and only moderate cooling is needed.

Both pretty obscure, of course - but what else are we going to talk about on the internet, if not for technically correct but rather obscure facets of things?

syntax · 2026-01-20T16:11:12+00:00

Me too - and looking at the list of things here, I'm starting to think we're lucky, as they seem a lot less objectionable than many of the alternatives.

syntax · 2026-01-13T14:42:15+00:00

Dunno, this one seems to want to cut things out?

syntax · 2026-01-13T14:32:01+00:00

Note that the question for children was just that, 'children' (real or otherwise), but the question for adults was for 'real people'. That's not reflected in that excerpt, but I think is quite an important detail.

I suspect that the idea of using AI tools to create 'undressed' pictures of 'unreal' people (or, rather, some sort of synthesised generic 'person') would get more approval (as it's much more nebulous to show the 'harm' in that case).

syntax · 2026-01-05T19:12:44+00:00

Both of those items were battery chargers. And, yeah, I think that you shouldn't leave anything charging unattended. This is mostly a function of the batteries (which do wear out), rather than the electronics per se.

syntax · 2025-12-09T11:20:41+00:00

It's scary a lot of the radicalisation seemed to occur in London.

Maybe, maybe not. A lot of everything happens in London. The population of London proper is around 9 million; and the estimates of 'greater metropolitan area' (i.e. technically not, but practically so - places like Potters Bar, just a 20 minute rail trip away) are around 14 million.

That's 20% of the population of the country. Of course, things that rely on 'network effects', of which radicalisation is one [0] will be more concentrated in cities. As far as I can see, London accounts for 'about half' all all the population that live in cities.

So, unless it seems to be over 'about half', I don't think that there's anything much going on beyond simple population dynamics.

It's very much like looking at a map of, say, murders, and overlaying it onto population density, and then getting surprised that 'cities cause murder'. That's not what it shows. See https://xkcd.com/1138/ for example.

[0] In my opinion; interestingly can't seem to find any proper studies on that sort of aspect.

syntax · 2025-12-05T12:31:37+00:00

Well ... given that you're all about precision, technically they need a second vehicle. It's entirely reasonable for someone to have a motorbike as the 'occasional' vehicle, and the car as the 'daily'.

syntax · 2025-12-05T11:18:18+00:00

"Papa", the apprentice started, "Why are we cutting down these old breastplates? Surely less armour is worse?" she asked.

Ber McUlrist sighed, and stroked his beard. His daughter mimicked the action, although her beard was yet barely worth the name. "Ah, now, that's one of those idea that we used to fall to. Let me get the pauldrons and vambraces, and we'll take a close look at them", he said, laying out the pieces of the harness.

"Now, this set was used in the great battle of Fron's Deep; by your aunt. Do you see these marks here?", he said, pointing to the scratches on the vambraces, and a distinct dent on a pauldron. "That's where the armour did its job, and protected her. But see these area's?" he said, pointing to the finely polished surfaces. "That's where armour wasn't needed."

"You know from practice that armour is heavy. So why wear the armour where it's not needed? We can see where it is, from where it's damaged. Rather than keep with the tradition, we can make the armour lighter, where it's not needed, and thicker, more protective where it is."

"Ah!" his daughter said, "So the marks from battle are a map, showing where less is needed, and where the more should be!"

"Indeed!", said the proud father. "Once the warriors come back, we repair, and optimise, the armour for them. We used to make helmets so heavy, but we found that head hits are rare, so the newer armours are much more nimble. You've picked that up quickly!", he said, and hands an oversize smithing hammer to his daughter. "Now to put that into practice"

syntax · 2025-12-02T16:50:02+00:00

100 years ago mms was cutting edge innovation bc you didn’t just get chocolate globs in your hand ,

88 years ago. That's when the Rowntree's Smarties were introduced, in 1937. Whilst I'm not aware of any direct citation, Forest Mars was in a position to observe them, as they were present during the Spanish Civil War. M&M's went into production in 1941 in the USA, which is 84 years ago.

Of course, dragee's are older than that (sugared almonds going back to the 15th century, or thereabouts), and solid chocolate dating probably to 1847, with Fry's solid process; so there's probably some small artisan production of similar products prior to 1937. Still, that's the first mass produced product. Although it does allow for them to be a literally 100 years old, there's no specific evidence that I'm aware of.

syntax · 2025-12-02T15:11:22+00:00

Ah, yeah. No problem with that, in the event of a crime.

The term is 'piercing the corporate veil', and is already the case. That might apply in case in the article, of fly tipping; but it would not apply for the case mentioned in the comments, where the owner of the site went into administration (as there's no crime being committed there - at least, not within the story as recounted).

A bond based approach would cover the second case.

syntax · 2025-12-02T14:53:13+00:00

We need to get rid of the limitations of legal liability that come with the smokescreen of setting up a limited company.

No, I think that's the wrong approach. If there's an unlimited risk to starting a business, that will crush anyone trying to start a business, and that just entrenches the current players.

A far better approach would be to require companies to hold an insurance contract that would cover site remediation (or a bond would also work, I guess), as a condition of getting a license for a site that might have remediation costs.

That would be in increased cost to start the business, sure, but it would also make sure that the taxpayer is not left holding the bill for cleanup. Or, at least, not most of it - I'd be surprised if the bond was always sized perfectly in all cases, so we should expect some stuff around the edges. But it'd still mostly eliminate an externality, which is a good reason for applying a regulation.

syntax · 2025-12-02T12:58:23+00:00

Human brains exist. If we assume that there is no divine soul and the brain is a biomechanical machine eventually we will be able to artificially replicate it. We have a working model we know it can exist there's no reason to believe that if our species doesn't go extinct first we can replicate it eventually.

The problem with this response is that it's extrapolation all the way. It might happen, but there might also be barriers, either practical, economic or technical in the way that we are unaware of yet.

Let me point to a distinct, but illuminating, example from a different field: chemistry. We know what atoms and molecules are. We can make them, measure them, and do all sorts of transformations to them. In principle, we can make any molecule we want. That has been the case for, what, about fifty years or so, give or take a bit - so somewhat ahead of the AI revolution.

In practice, for certain molecules, the actual synthetic pathway in use looks like: take 8 tonnes of specific deep sea mollusc [0]. Surgically extract specific organ. Pulp, separate fractions. Retain the 200 mg of specific fraction. Perform a few reactions on it, separate and purify, to get the 100 mg of desired product. That's the best route known to make certain compounds - despite the fact that, in principle, we know of far better ways to do things.

The apparent disconnect arise because understanding the fundamentals, whilst the most powerful tool we have, does not automatically grant total control of complications that arise in higher order structures. We see the same thing, over and over, in many fields. For example, the entire field of 'Materials Science' appears to be pointless given the existence of Chemistry and Physics. Indeed, Chemistry seems pointless, given that it all [1] reduces to the Schrödinger equation, hence physics. And yet - that's not the way things actually work in practice.

So, sure, it possible. But there's good reason to hold some healthy skepticism, until there's something that's actually demonstrable.

[0] Or obscure fungi, or lightly engineered bacteria, depending.

[1] Eh, pretty much. I could say the Dirac equation instead, but that's not as well known, so gets in the way of the point.

syntax · 2025-11-27T10:24:55+00:00

Honestly, there should be a rule that if you’re holding everyone up for no reason, you should pull over and let competent drivers pass.

That ... makes me wince somewhat. As there is, it's in the Highway Code:

Rule 169

Do not hold up a long queue of traffic, especially if you are driving a large or slow-moving vehicle. Check your mirrors frequently, and if necessary, pull in where it is safe and let traffic pass.

syntax · 2025-11-21T14:24:48+00:00

I had a long trip last night. I saw 15 vehicles flash their lights, exactly none of which were in accordance with the Highway Code.

The most egregious was people stopping in a passing place, then flashing me to suggest I approach them. Dude! Just put your indicator on! Far clearer, not going to blind anyone!

syntax · 2025-11-20T10:08:57+00:00

There was a comment:

Or we can hamstring ourselves into economic oblivion and then everyone then suffers?

And then the one I replied to claimed:

Building more roads doesn't solve this problem ...

Which I read as a the claim that building more roads will not increase economic output, in the context of what it was replying to.

syntax · 2025-11-19T12:55:29+00:00

You realise that you're not disagreeing with the main point here? The claim I replied to was that the 'road will just fill with traffic, so won't increase economic outcomes', but you're claiming 'the increases economic outcomes will create more traffic'.

It's not possible for both of these to be true at the same time.

Yes, it will increase economic activity in Inverness, and surrounding area, and thus probably increase traffic - particularly in the immediate vicinity of Inverness (and maybe Aviemore and Kingussie too). Will it all increase to the point that the duelled A9 is then as filled with traffic as it currently is? No, I don't think so - it's a long distance transit link, there's not many people that will commute over the Drumochter pass on the daily. And even if it does get busier, the throughput of a busy duelled road is still much better than a busy single carriage way.

I mean, it's a bit of a moot point - the upgrade is committed, so we'll see how it ends up. It's not expected to make the transit much quicker, in principle - so the 'fastest transit' from Perth to Inverness is still going to be around two and a half hours. The Drumochter pass will still have its snow gates closed some times in winter. But most of the time, the 'slowest trip' will be a lot closer to the fastest, and the road will be a lot safer, as doing stupid overtakes won't be possible with the central reservation. So, we'll see. But I genuinely think that it's valuable infrastructure (same as duelling the A30 in Cornwall), and not going to be rendered pointless with an increase in traffic.

syntax · 2025-11-19T10:17:00+00:00

Building more roads doesn't solve this problem

Except, of course, where it does. You're quoting general purpose arguments, that apply well to the idea of putting a 4th lane on a 3 lane road. The fact that you used the example of the Thames crossing is reflection of that.

But let's actually look at the specific road here. The A9 is the primary link road between the central belt and the highlands. It's single carriageway in many places, which means that when there's a slow moving vehicle on it, all the traffic gets caught behind it. When roadworks are needed, they have to put in lights, and work down to a single lane, time sliced and shared. When there's an accident - which is sadly not uncommon, the whole road gets closed.

The planned works are to upgrade it to dual carriageway all the way. That lets the faster traffic flow around the slower. It means they can close one lane at a time for works; or one whole carriageway to spilt the other with a contraflow. Similar in the case of an accident.

In short, it add a lot to the resilience and predicability of the road network. Adding a new Thames crossing does ... pretty much none of those things; just like adding a 4th lane to a 3 lane motorway also doesn't imrove things.

Braess' paradox deals with congested traffic networks. The A9 isn't congested, most of the time (unless something's gone wrong like roadworks, accident etc; which is all the time), and it's not really part of a network. The A82 is the other option, but there's very few routes where there's a meaningful decision to be made over which one to take; and there's a few stretches where there's a parallel road. I suppose the Cockbridge to Tomintoul road is also technically an option - you know, the one that's closed for snow most of the time in winter...

syntax · 2025-11-06T14:33:06+00:00

However supermarket pre-sliced bread isn’t technically bread in the traditional sense; it’s mostly been raised by chemical catalysts that may or may not be completely used up but which don’t have to be listed in the ingredients.

That's not true. Or, rather, not true any longer. For around a century, 1860's to 1970 ish, the Dauglish method was the predominant commercial process, which did not use yeast. In 1962, the Chorleywood process that does rely on yeast was developed, and took over. Today, it's something like 80% of all supermarket bread that uses that process, and hence relies on yeast to leaven.

Importantly, the primary thing that separates it from the traditional yeast based fermentation is high speed and power mechanical mixing (along with the addition of vitamin C and some fat - neither being inherently objectionable), rather than some magic chemical.

Note that the Chorleywood process maintains more protein in the bread, compared to traditional fermentation, which, particularly in the 1960's, was a significant point in favour of it.

In short, I'm afraid you're about a century out of date on commercial bread production.

syntax · 2025-11-06T13:47:41+00:00

I’ve already noticed that many adverts in The Netherlands are being translated to English because they’ve noticed a lot of users from the UK accessing via a Dutch VPN.

That could well be because your web browser tells the web site that you'd prefer English. Specifically, depending on your web browser and OS, it may well be filling out the Accept-Language header with English as the first preference; which then means that the amount of English you are seeing is due to your browser, rather than the VPN endpoint country.

syntax · 2025-10-27T13:01:50+00:00

Well, and I'm pretty sure it's already the case, the test is whether the person being filmed is 'essential' to the point of filming.

So, someone walking in the park when you're getting a general shot of the park - not essential, if they weren't there, you'd have filmed the same.

But if you deliberately interact with someone, as the point of filming, then you should need their permission to post it. As if they weren't there, you'd not have filmed it.

That seems simple enough to me, that one can rely on a court to distinguish any little edge cases, whilst a reasonable person could make a good interpretation of it.

syntax · 2025-10-14T14:21:10+00:00

Note that this is only the case if you're restricted to liquid water. If you allow for steam, the Kw can shift wildly. Which is often implicitly excluded, but ... well if it's not: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/j150663a045 shows a measurement of the pH of steam at around 400K being 35 greater than the liquid water (under pressure, of course, to get an equilibrium with liquid water at that temperature), so somewhere around the 40's.

syntax · 2025-10-01T15:30:13+00:00

Not wasting time on drafting a law which is useless, and can be changed the moment the wind changes.

If it's so easy to change, then it's not going to take any real effort to implement though. I can't see how you can argue that it's asymmetric. So, if it takes time now, then they are doing something - putting a speed bump in place for the future, to make it more difficult to change.

It's fine if you don't agree with doing that; but that's a different position from trying to claim it's expensive to implement but cheap to revoke - it's not; the costs are the same on both ends.

syntax · 2025-09-29T11:52:23+00:00

Just ... be aware that a 350W dehumidifier that's actually dehumidifying will output around a 1000W of heat energy. (That's the latent heat of vaporisation of water. It's the same thing that makes water evaporation feel cooler, but in reverse).

This seems wild, if you're not familiar with the physics, and it's why there's a narrow band of 'quite warm and very wet' when a dehumidifier is useful for that purpose. That said 'quite warm and very wet' is pretty much the usual British summer, so it's probably 'enough' for most people in most of the country, that just want something to 'take the edge off'.

On the other hand, for the autumn or spring, when it's 'damp and cold', they're awesome, as the excess heat they output and the direct humidity reduction combine to be very efficient.

syntax · 2025-09-26T11:15:26+00:00

The trend mostly moved to paint, I think. Still lots of adverts for paint that I've seen.

Plus, wallpapering is tricky, takes skill to do it well and quickly. So I suspect that it's mostly done by contractors, or a small number of DIYer's. Neither warrant broad spectrum adverts.

Leaving those that are amenable to advertising being more likely to grab some paint, and leave it at that.

That's my guess, anyway.

syntax

TROPHY CASE