JdeBP

@jmax@mastodon.social The question is: Are they actually dead at that point? What constitutes death for a plant? It's not lack of brain activity. Warning: Go too far down this road and you realize that the #potatoes that will happily begin growing shoots if you leave them in the sack for too long are alive and screaming when you drop them into boiling water. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190687724.003.0010 After all, part of the point of #cooking is to kill otherwise still-alive organisms before eating. @cstross@wandering.shop#ValentinesDay #biology #botany

@vmstan@vmst.io From the current status page (https://health.aws.amazon.com/health/status) 'At around 4:30 AM PST, one of our Availability Zones (mec1-az2) was impacted by objects that struck the data center, creating sparks and fire. The fire department shut off power to the facility and generators as they worked to put out the fire. We are still awaiting permission to turn the power back on, […]' As Hans Gruber would say: You asked for miracles, Theo. I give you the #UnitedArabEmirates fire department. #AWS #Amazon #CloudComputing #DataCentres #DieHard #HansGruber #RisksDigest

@cks@mastodon.social OpenWatcom vi is source available. https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/116052015020764901 Ritter's Heirloom #vi is in #FreeBSD ports today, coming from the same place that it has for a long time. https://freshports.org/editors/2bsd-vi/ It was dropped from #ArchLinux because it did not compile and hadn't changed in 20 years. Ironically, this is because the (GNU) C language had changed, and it has to nowadays be compiled forcing an older GNU C language version. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=2285124#p2285124 Several people have independently discovered the Makefile patch that gets it to build on #Debian and the like. https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=629775 https://gist.github.com/cwfoo/01abac5c39f398b7e7b16a2b87aa518b #elvis, the precursor to #nvi, is packaged for both #NetBSD/#pkgsrc and #OpenBSD. https://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/editors/elvis/index.html https://github.com/openbsd/ports/tree/master/editors/elvis #retrocomputing #ComputerHistory #Watcom #OpenWatcom

On #Illumos, Jov vi is in /usr/src/cmd/vi: https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/tree/master/usr/src/cmd/vi On #OpenBSD, Bostic #nvi is in /usr/src/usr.bin/vi/vi; #NetBSD having it in /usr/src/external/bsd/nvi; and #FreeBSD in /usr/src/contrib/nvi: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/tree/main/contrib/nvi FreeBSD has an nvi2 in ports: https://freshports.org/editors/nvi2/ OpenBSD has elvis in ports: https://github.com/openbsd/ports/blob/master/editors/elvis/pkg/DESCR Ritter's Heirloom vi is on SourceForge: https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net STEVIE was posted to comp.sources.unix in 1988: https://sources.vsta.org/comp.sources.unix/volume15/stevie/ Unfortunately, Sven Guckes's vi Clones WWW site was never completed with some of this, notably lacking Heirloom vi, for example. https://guckes.net/vi/clones.html But it does mention oft-overlooked commercial clones such as Watcom's vi, a from-scratch implementation started in 1983 that is also now source-available: https://github.com/open-watcom/owp4v1copy/tree/master/bld/vi #vi #retrocomputing #ComputerHistory #STEVIE #elvis #VIM #NeoVIM #Watcom #OpenWatcom

@reallyflygreg@mstdn.ca @toddalio@mstdn.ca I'm inclined to believe that it is indeed the people who don't understand technology (specifically: they think that everything works like their smart 'phone or Microsoft Windows 11 PC do) making policy; or that they did understand the technology and were just crap at drafting legislation such that it could distinguish the Microsoft Store, Google Play, the Apple App Store, et al. from #Ubuntu's package repository and #OpenBSD's ports tree. And that distinguishing criterion is not #FreeSoftware. Given the aims, the #California legislators would want #FDroid to be required to hand over #AgeVerification data to free-software apps that F-Droid allows, that themselves want to impose age restrictions (on, say, showing certain content to minors) via the route of getting the account holder's age (bracket) information from the operating system via a 'signal' from the 'store'. https://monitor.f-droid.org/anti-features #FreeBSD #NetBSD #Debian #CaliforniaLaw #USLaw

@montyontherun@bitbang.social The definitions are broad, so to quite an extent they would. There are users, who have accounts, on general purpose computers, and run applications. The only hope for #mainframes seems to be that they likely don't have things that fit the definition of a 'covered application store'. But they might; especially if the mainframe is nowadays running a Linux-based operating system. http://linuxvm.org/info/distros.html #Debian and #Ubuntu have package repositories for s390x, for example. Such a repository is a 'publicly available internet website […] that distributes and facilitates the download of applications'. Here's one way how the naughty 16-year-olds in #California would download rustc onto such a mainframe with no #AgeVerification, for example: https://packages.debian.org/trixie/s390x/rustc/download #CaliforniaLaw #USLaw #FreeSoftware #rust

@londondreamtime@mastodonapp.uk A remake so famous in #SciFi circles that even though I have never seen the movie I know the ending. It was only a year later that #Alien came out, and a mere 4 years until the best version of The Thing. It was a time for topping 1950s Sci-Fi movies. #InvasionOfTheBodySnatchers #TheThing

@sueW@mastodonapp.uk @ColesStreetPothole@weatherishappening.network I can imagine myself, not having been forewarned thanks to @wild1145@mastodonapp.uk, seeing that all of the green baskets had been claimed, not caring about the colour, being a little contrarian, and picking one of the huge pile of red baskets that everyone seemed to be avoiding for some unknown reason. That said, if I go to Fosse Park, it is almost never for Asda. Sainsbriz or M&S, more usually. *That* said, I'm *now* half tempted to run an experiment to see whether it changes my Asda shopping experience in any way. I predict no effect whatsoever, except perhaps some disapproving stares and a comment by the checkout person that I was only the second person with a red basket today. (-: @aroundthehills@mastodonapp.uk#Asda #BoycottRedBaskets #Leicester #Lesstar #FossePark

@ianbetteridge@social.vivaldi.net Several very cynical answers, here. But the correct answer is to refer to ancient prophecy, where such events of the future were foretold — Yeah verily! — back in the Apollo Era. You are, after all, talking of what we coyly refer to as Space XXXX. In and out the Eagle: That's the way the money goes. https://artstation.com/artwork/3dozPB @davidgerard@circumstances.run @simonzerafa@infosec.exchange @blabberlicious@toot.community @londondreamtime@mastodonapp.uk#Space1999 #SpaceX #PopGoesTheWeasel

@gettie@fedi.catto.garden Actually, it's 'yes' as a login-name here that causes #OpenBSD to issue a message. (Also 'root', 'daemon', 'operator', 'bin', 'build', 'sshd', 'www', 'nobody', and 'ftp'.) @domi@donotsta.re @prahou@merveilles.town#ColoradoLaw #CaliforniaLaw #AgeVerification

@ariadne@social.treehouse.systems It concerns #AlpineLinux the same as it concerns every other Linux-based operating system that has a package management utility that talks to a public WWW site. As I said at https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/116156019252249071 and as @RunxiYu has also said, the statute as written covers all such systems. (It's an Act now, by the way, not a Bill.) Alpine Linux has a covered application store. Here, for example, is what 'publicly available internet website' apk as the 'software application' uses to 'facilitate the download' of the third-party rustc 'application' from the 'store' in Alpine Linux on the aforementioned #mainframes used by the aforementioned naughty 16-year-olds in #California: https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.23/main/s390x/ Yes, #CaliforniaLaw as written is this expansive. Yes, the legislators did not even consider how the BSDs and Linux-based operating systems work. None of the objectors apparently even mentioned how these work. #rust #USLaw #AgeVerification #GDPR #FreeSoftware #Unix

@ratsnakegames@mastodon.social No, it doesn't. As I said, I'm talking about the original Notepad. And that gained significantly simply by having a better keyboard than a Model F XT or AT and better graphics than CGA. It was basic things like SVGA graphics being able to display more characters on the screen with the same font sizes; dedicated editing keys; and Windows's ability to set a colour palette. Even just in its original form, it got more usable. Whereas there were no similar gains to be had by solely running Joy+Horton #vi on better hardware. So the Notepad experience got better as the years went by, whilst the Joy+Horton vi experience stayed the same. What began as a huge step up became less and less so. The Joy+Horton vi experience was not as good as running the clones in their 'vi' modes now might lead one to believe. To step up from Notepad, one really had to go with the vi clones. Or Qedit, T, T2, E, EPM, The Semware Editor, Brief, Boxer, and suchlike. @cstross@wandering.shop @davep@infosec.exchange

@cafuego@misanthrope.social It does bring home how very flat those parts of WA and Queensland must be. @infobeautiful@vis.social#Australia #Queensland #WesternAustralia #geography

@kaveman@mastodon.bsd.cafe Yes. I was mentioning this to @cks@mastodon.social the other day. https://tty0.social/@JdeBP/116030855863806427 I think that it came out in the early 1990s. The copyright dates in the source uniformly say 1983, which would make OpenWatcom vi the earliest vi clone on record (pre-dating #STEVIE by 4 years). However, they say this uniformly, even for its OS/2 and Windows NT parts, which couldn't have existed in 1983. And 1983 pre-dates even Waterloo C. So I suspect some Sybase lawyer has lied in these copyright declarations. Watcom had a non-vi multi-window and menus TUI editor for DOS named wbed.exe at one point. #Watcom #OpenWatcom #vi #retrocomputing #ComputerHistory

@gumnos@mastodon.bsd.cafe @joel@gts.tumfatig.net It's a good test. I probably haven't used open mode since I started building #STEVIE from source back in the 1980s. Which of course I used on VDU terminals, not the paper ones. (-: The test for it being Bostic #nvi , in my experience, is whether it supports :qa . #vi

@ianbetteridge@social.vivaldi.net Taking the 'and' to be a logical operator, obviously 'No.' anded with anything is still 'No.'. Except in #Python, of course. (-: #ComputerProgramming #logic #QuestionHeadlines

Thumb-Key installed on a relative's 'phone. I didn't enable anything fancy, or enable the #MessageEase compatibility layouts. But I was explicitly asked to install Spanish and French alongside English. I made the relative make the layout switching gesture multiple times, so that it stuck. Otherwise I knew what the first panicked 'phone call would be. First panicked 'phone call: all of the letters have disappeared from the keyboard. There is a setting in the Thumb-Key settings called "Hide letters", and it had been switched on. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.dessalines.thumbkey/ There's another option called 'show toast' and is a prime example of programmers writing for programmers instead of for users. 'toast' is specialized Android developer jargon. Users won't know that it means showing the layout names for a brief period when one switches layouts. They'll be wondering what the Hell bread has to do with a keyboard. #ThumbKey #Android #SoftwareDevelopment #ComputerProgramming

@bobulous@fosstodon.org See the widely publicized announcement by the developer of #MidnightBSD, which caused a lot of people, including me, into looking at the actual law. https://nitter.net/midnightbsd/status/2027101491211718765 The only people concerned with free software, apparently, as the bill made its way through the #California legislature, were Oakland Privacy, and they were only interested in 'gratis' free software on the Google and Apple Stores and the impacts on its development. The various committee analyses are on that legislature page, and they give the objectors's objections. I have yet to find a mention of BSDs, Linux-based operating systems, or even Unix. Goodness knows what #IBM is going to do about #RHEL and #RPM. Clearly they completely missed a very important lobbying opportunity. I wonder if the IBM legal people know about this even yet. @ariadne@social.treehouse.systems @RunxiYu@social.treehouse.systems @reallyflygreg@mstdn.ca @toddalio@mstdn.ca #USLaw #CaliforniaLaw #FreeSoftware #RedHat

@futzle@old.mermaid.town Mostly, what they read are the old boy's #SciFi stories from around the 1930s and 1940s, where the male uberman genius industrialist, with his girlfriend along for the ride in the rocketship, saves the galaxy, and knows better and does better than stupid governments. https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/115826293180493731 Every half-arsed idea that makes for a good boy's story but is terrible science, from greenfingering a planetary climate to swarms of 'AIs' in space, has a precursor of some kind in these tales. It's not that they've missed LeGuin specifically. It's that they've missed six decades of thoughtful counterpoints to that old stuff beginning in the late 1960s. #UrsulaLeGuin #EESmith #DocSavage #HarryHarrison

Here's a thought experiment to ponder. Take the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, and replace dog with AI agent. https://legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1991/65/section/3 It even has provision for falling back from the owner to the person(s) immediately in charge of the relevant computer system. Six months in stir for being the owner or enabler of an "AI" system that blackmails or extorts people (both of which have already happened in the real world — This part is not, alas, hypothetical.). #UKLaw #AIs #AIslop

@gumnos@mastodon.bsd.cafe I mentioned Guckes's list not having Heirloom vi in that other thread. I haven't thought about these in years, and they are an understandable additional blind spot in Guckes's list; but the MKS Toolkit had a vi, as did Interix. https://www.mkssoftware.com/docs/man1/vi.1.asp The :open test indicates that vi in the MKS Toolkit was actual Joy+Horton vi. #Interix (at least according to an old Scott Mueller book) had both vi and nvi, so I wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to have been Bostic #nvi by two names. As I recall, Central Point PC Tools, the Norton Utilities, and the Graham Utilities had text editors of varying degrees but did not have vi. @cks@mastodon.social#vi #ComputerHistory #retrocomputing

@davefischer@hachyderm.io I'm guessing that that was Ritter's Heirloom vi. https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/116052015020764901 There are discussions in an Arch Linux forum of its package being removed because it hadn't changed in two decades and the (GNU flavoured) C language had. It's in the #FreeBSD ports collection; and several people have independently come up with the Makefile patch that gets it to build on Debian Linux. https://freshports.org/editors/2bsd-vi/ #vi #retrocomputing #ComputerHistory #gcc #ArchLinux

@daveybot@mastodon.scot I was quietly thinking to myself earlier this morning that only 1 person in any of my home timelines had even mentioned it, either way. Xe was of persuasion (b). And this despite that this year it has had an extra political dimension added. #AmericanFootball #SuperBowl

#Fortress (2021) is an abysmal movie. The protagonist, with whom we are apparently meant to sympathize, being a cryptocurrency scammer trying to fleece his parent for more money, was not a good start, and it went downhill from there. Pretty much everyone's acting was either completely over the top or wooden as Hell. The plot was ludicrous; the ubiquitous special effects mist and random camera angles, annoying. The final straw, at which point I just stopped and deleted it from the TiVo, was when the character who had been speaking with a vaguely Australian accent for the entire movie until that point apologized to another character for putting on a British accent. Apparently, they made a sequel at the same time. Avoid both. #USMovies

@wild1145@mastodonapp.uk I've seen it at work several times in my career. Unlike the relative, I recognized that this was jargon and knew where to look the jargon up. https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/notifiers/toasts The setting actually is not actually developer oriented. It's aimed, like the "hide letters" setting, at people who know the tool and who can (or at least want to) get by without the visual aids. It's even something that I've directly experienced. Change layout multiple times to get to the desired point in the layout loop, and the names of all of the layouts passed through take significant time to all, one by one, flash on screen and disappear. #ThumbKey #SoftwareDevelopment #ComputerProgramming #Android

@dessalines@mastodon.social Quick suggestion, based upon having to explain to a relative that this was computer programmer jargon and did not have any connection to any ordinary meaning of the word 'toast': Change 'show toast on layout switch' to something like 'display the layout names when switching layouts'. @wild1145@mastodonapp.uk#ThumbKey #SoftwareDevelopment #ComputerProgramming #Android

@acb@mastodon.social At this point, I recommend a short story by #RoaldDahl titled "The Sound Machine". It's collected in More Tales Of The Unexpected, amongst other places. The story was published in 1949. Botanical science finally caught up with fiction in 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2023.03.009 @cstross@wandering.shop @jmax@mastodon.social#biology #botany

Another 2nd chance to tell legislators that the mechanisms that we have inherited from #Unix, and used in loads of #FreeSoftware operating systems from #NetBSD to #Tribblix, do not have date of birth/age fields for user accounts, is #Illinois, where HB5511 is the very same text as #California's, too. https://my.ilga.gov/Legislation/BillStatus?DocTypeID=HB&DocNum=5511&GAID=18&LegID=167486 It really does seem at this point that this is model legislation. Sponsors in Illionois are Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, Margaret Croke, Janet Yang, Rohr, Kimberly Du Buclet, Natalie A. Manley, Angelica Guerrero-Cuellar, Rick Ryan, Michelle Mussman, Martha Deuter and Tracy Katz Muhl. The bill is in the judiciary–civil committee as of yesterday. It was introduced last month, 1 day after it was introduced in Colorado. I wonder in what other states it has just turned up. A lobby organization handing pre-drafted bills to multiple sets of legislators is not unknown. @nileane@nileane.fr @RunxiYu@social.treehouse.systems#CaliforniaLaw #USLaw #IllinoisLaw #FreeSoftware #AgeVerification

@lindasgoluppiart@mastodonapp.uk Other unprecedented judicial activism by the Roberts Court has additionally held that the scope of "official acts" by the POTUS incorporates almost everything that xe does. And there are doctrines of both sovereign immunity and executive immunity for official actions. Nixon tried to rely upon them. Per the Roberts Court, and quite contrary to the stated contemporary intent of people like #AlexanderHamilton as well as post-Watergate lawmaking, the POTUS now has the same immunity as King Charles 3. So there's a question of most of the President's activity, 'personal' or no, actually being covered by immunity and being wholly unaddressable anywhere within the U.S.A. judicial branch, even after xe has left office. #USLaw #ConstitutionalLaw #EmolumentsClause #Federalist69

@matt303@cyberplace.social It's fairly simple. I have a pre-written .zshrc that I copy over that avoids going through the configuration utility at first use. I avoid #OhMyZSH, which over the years seems to be the actual source of most people's woes. It does not seem to do anything that I actually want that stock #zsh does not do.

@InTheseHeels@mastodon.ie There comes a time in everyone's life when one learns where Smooth Chill is on the tuning list. Or even sneakily configures it as one of the presets. Magic Chilled or Mellow Magic, if one must. (-: #radio #DAB #SmoothChill #MagicChilled #MellowMagic

@davecb@hachyderm.io Quite! See https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/116156019252249071 for what kicked off David Chisnall's post half a day beforehand.

@WiteWulf@cyberplace.social @sharongascoigne@mastodonapp.uk#FilHenley just put me onto these. They're a bunch of high school children from #SanAnselmo, #California. Not my instruments nor style of music. But the claim is that they are very good technically. Fil was waxing lyrical about there being not a scintilla of AutoTune and the skills of the drummer and guitarists. And YouTube commenters have said the same. So I thought that I'd ask two people that I see regularly talking about such things. (Other people are welcome to chime in too.) Are they as good as I have read? https://youtube.com/v/3fFGdl3_k0Q There are a few other videos on the channel. #FATBetty #Rush #WingsOfPegasus #AuthenticVocal

@spytfyre@mastodon.scot An unpaid support nightmare. I'd have been getting 'phone calls at all hours. The relative's complaint was that keyboards like that make the keys too small and awkward, and the way that G-Board dynamically varied the hit rectangles under the covers made things even more difficult. Keeping the idea of miniscule QWERTY rows that are offset by ⅓ to prevent the non-existent 19th century typewriter levers from jamming, and making it even busier still, was not the way. (-: Xe had used MessageEase to major success years ago, until it became nagware, and I'd even installed Thumb-Key on a previous device after I tested it out myself.

Seeing that so-called "AI" today libel someone with the goal of extorting that person into not obstructing it, made me think that the first time that I saw a human being use that exact tactic must be around 20 years ago, now. I just checked. It's actually more than 20 years. Yes, the text is still on the WWW. Yes, undoubtedly the #LLMs are trained on the reams of examples of this (and related evils) that malicious humans have provided the world with over many years. #AIs #AIslop

@cstross@wandering.shop And on Usenet. There was a parallel to that 'MJ Rathbun', that went after Scott Shambaugh this week, from back in the tail end days of significant Usenet trolls. https://mastodonapp.uk/deck/@JdeBP/116060705914714390 A follow-up post by Shambaugh reported that the 'AI agent' had been widely cheered on in some quarters. So now there's even more training data for the next robot. https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me-part-2/ @n1xnx@tilde.zone @keith_lawson@mastodon.social @GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social @quixoticgeek@social.v.st#AIs #LLMs #AIpocalypse #matplotlib #GitHub

#MyWeirdSchool (2025) is unlike the novel series that it is very loosely based upon, but it is fairly standard antics-at-U.S.A.-middle-school stuff for #Nickelodeon, taken standalone. (The source material, for starters, is set in elementary school.) Although it does seem that it's going to take a few more years before the knowledge sinks in, institutionally, that Nickelodeon's strategy of letting TikTok and YouTube be a filter for its casting process, and a ticket to greater audience numbers, is not the magic bullet that people clearly thought that it would be. Grown-ups will spot several slight nods to things like The Faculty (1997) and Jurassic Park (1993). The Youth of Today will, conversely, likely see this as a hodge-podge collection of TikTok and YouTube people they know largely carrying their own existing personae (magician, influencer, gamer, et al.) into a fairly incoherent movie that barely addresses the books. I suspect that we Grown-ups are getting the better deal.

@jmax@mastodon.social You are likely going to regret that. (-: When discussing the energy–momentum relation, mass *is* by convention rest mass, as the usual formulation E^2=m^2×c^4+(p×c)^2 is in terms of rest mass m. The relation says that energy does not imply mass when m=0. Energy implies the momentum portion of the sum, which photons have, defined as p=h/λ. With m=0 the full form reduces to E^2=(p×c)^2 which after substitution for photon momentum becomes E=c×h/λ=h×f . But this does not become a statement about mass. It's fallacious to then substitute E=m×c^2 and solve for m to get m=h×f/c^2 . E=m×c^2 is a different reduced case for massive stationary objects (m>0, p=0), neither of which is the case for photons. Furthermore, the maths yields divergent γ=∞ Taylor series sums when u=c so thinking of K.E. terms for photons is aphysical. Energy-mass equivalence is a special form for the case of m>0, γ≠∞. Energy does not imply mass in the general case. @cstross@wandering.shop#physics #relativity

@bytebro@mastodonapp.uk Welcome to the continual arms race between the ad-blockers and the predatory advertiser. This seems to be #YouTube's latest gambit. What happens when you try again? #VivaldiBrowser

I should add to that (which almost reached the character limit) that it gets plus points for the surprisingly accurate set decoration (backpacks, the stage) of the amateur #salsa class attended by the leads, but several minus points for (a) that not being not at all how everyone else in the room would react to two people falling over repeatedly doing a dip, and (b) the extras in the montage of supposedly week-after-week classes all dancing in the same places and the same costumes in successive shots. Enjoy the magically disappearing helmet hair, too. Minor goofs, as this isn't exactly a high-budget production. And the set people did have a fair go at trying to make it look like the bookstore was progressively being decorated as the weeks wore on. #SameTimeNextWeek #CanadianMovies

I'm up to #NCISSydney episode 1.7. The life threatening risk at the product launch was ordered to be made real by the CEO. None of the other CEOs listened to or took advice not to turn up when it meant being incommunicado. A bus factor of 1 was ordered by the CEO. VC money was spent by the CEO to ensure that the taxi drivers weren't a handy low-tech safety net. All of the multiply-redundant ways in which bunkers (including the very real ones at the place in the story) are designed not to do this were apparently defeated on the CEO's orders. In the 1980s, this would have been stupidly bad cyberpunk that everyone would have laughed at for having wildly inept corporate security. But it's the 2020s. We can also tell it's the 2020s by the main characters being entirely stumped at having to trace the physical origin of a telephone call that came from a land line. We're still shooting massive padlocks open with tiny pistols in the 2020s, too. #SciFi

Most #JasonStatham movies are not worth it. I've mentioned #Homefront and Crank: High Voltage. The only reason that I stuck with #TheBeekeeper (2024), despite Statham once again strutting around muttering expressionlessly, fighting people, and stealing other people's cars, was the cast of British actors (from #MinnieDriver through #JemmaRedgrave to #DonGilet) all putting on their best General American accents and pretending to be the upper echelons of the U.S.A. intelligence services and government. I was also intrigued by the #bees, but that part was rubbish. There are holes in the plot that one could drive a truck through. Indeed, Statham does drive a truck through one, and ride underneath a truck over another. The whole premise of the movie is stupid, and it is nothing more than a bunch of fight scenes strung together, but not with anything like the panache of Kill Bill. Of course they've already made a sequel. I can make a good guess what Statham will be doing. #UKMovies

@john@social.gozzys.com How long did you hold out before creating an account? #Wikipedia

Someone has run a plasterer's trowel over #RobinHoodsBay . https://mastodonapp.uk/@botrhb/116107799813695923 #YorkshireCoast #Yorkshire

@keefeglise@mastodonapp.uk Have you at least been taken to the Gateshead Metro Centre? #Newcastle #Gateshead

@hitthetowpath@mastodon.scot 'Menu' is, however, already a different key, usually to be found next to the right GUI key at location A11 on the #ISO9995 layout. The 'Super' key from the 1970s Space-Cadet keyboard long pre-dates the 'Windows' key from Microsoft's 1990s Windows keyboards. It is indeed a bit misleading to conflate the two, and confuses the Hell out of novices looking for 'Super' when their doco says to use it. The irony of using 'Super' as the name is twofold. First: The Space-Cadet keyboard that people wistfully want only had 100 keys, fewer than even an old 101-key U.S.A. Model M keyboard, let alone a modern 124-key Windows keyboard, with its Internet+multimedia keys and 8 electrically and wire-protocol distinct modifiers. Second: Things like the USB HID specification avoid trademarks like 'Windows' & 'Apple' anyway, calling the two keys (usages 0xE1 and 0xE7 on the keyboard page) the left and right 'GUI' keys. #ComputerKeyboards #retrocomputing #USBHID #HumanInputDevices

@lindasgoluppiart@mastodonapp.uk As a legal question, keeping the politics out of it, this is actually a tricky one. It involves, amongst other things, a part of the U.S.A. Constitution known as the Emoluments Clauses (Article 1 §9 ¶7 and Article 2 §1 ¶7). These have had very little testing in the courts, most people in history having avoided issues of foreign/domestic bribery and corruption; and current indications are that the Roberts Court, which is one of the most judicially active #SCOTUS es in history, will hold that no-one actually has standing to sue under the Emoluments Clauses, rendering it effectively defunct. It has already done this with other parts of the Constitution, so has form. Other legal issues include one that seems bizarre to outsiders: there is actually an argument that people take seriously, that the President of the United States is not considered an officer of the U.S.A., and the Constitution only talks about officers. #USLaw #ConstitutionalLaw #EmolumentsClause