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• Post #4143270

  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y6r9rdxygo - I am beyond furious about this bit of news. The Lovell Telescope has - from day one - been a project that has produced incredible results on a shoestring budget, using whatever Lovell could scrounge to produce an instrument that has reshaped our view of the Universe. (I was observing OH- masers there the day Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit Jupiter.) The budget needed to keep it running is a rounding error when compared to government spend on 'AI&#39...

• Post #2113671

  How Do You Do, Fellow Kids? Armed with some research (H/T @neil) and after spending some time reading up the subject, I went to the Apple Store and then spent an hour on the phone to Apple account support yesterday. They're very aware that they dropped a bollock here and have thousands of very angry adult customers. The support team manager I spoke to yesterday said that some sort of fix was due within days That's the /good/ news. (1/7)

• Post #1404983

  @KrissyKat It’s a thing that particular type of leader loves doing.

• Post #1404982

  I have a new toy. It is cute and beautifully made and shiny. Also very well-made, very sturdy and likely to be very useful for fiddly little jobs. (It’s the Metmo Fractal Vice, if you’re curious.)

• Post #1404980

  Seen in St Paul’s Churchyard. No argument with the point in question - but dear God, the scansion… That faint vibration you feel might be the Central Line; it might also be the remnants of John Donne rotating at generator speed.

• Post #1404978

  When someone in public life says ‘but think of the children’ (or similar) as a reason for doing something, ask yourself what they *don’t* want you to think about instead - and why.

• Post #1096321

  And that was that - for me, at least. iOS 26.4.1 dropped this evening, and either the 18-year Apple account limit has been dropped, or they’ve added in other metrics (I bought my first bit of hardware direct from Apple in 2005 - 5 years before I had an iCloud account). It’s still a Bloody Stupid Faff and - as a technology, has more problems than a logician’s wet dreams, but I can at least use my phone for work again without fearing it’ll block or report me.

• Post #1096320

  Morning word-nerd silly thought: is there any more fatuous phrase for resolution or determination than ‘a line in the sand’? Sand? Just about the poster child for impermanence and mobility.

• Post #1096319

  RE: https://c.im/@Opfoss/116379397470028171 All together now, in four part harmony and with feeling! (and 27 8” x 5” colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one…) You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant…

• Post #1096317

  Sudden random flash of memory and spotting a pun I’d never clocked before. Yellow Submarine, just after the four board, and Ringo says: ‘I wonder what happens if I pull this lever?’ Young Fred: ‘Oh no, you mustn’t touch that!’ Ringo: ‘I can’t help it. I’m a born lever-puller.’ *groan* (Haven’t seen the film in decades. Don’t ask me why I just realised now.)

• Post #1045738

  @cstross@wandering.shop True, that’s a good one! There are so many good nautical phrases, and the context is usually forgotten - the one I like is that the longest seam on a boat is the devil - so caulking that seam is a terrible job - having the devil to pay - and the person doing it was ‘caught between the devil and the deep blue sea’.

• Post #763749

  In Which I Am Apparently A Child... So, I saw today's news about DarkSword, and although I don't have anything with iOS that old (v18.7 or older), I noticed a new version of iOS out (26.4) and decided to update. Bad move. Bad, bad move. iOS 26.4 implements age verification. It's very simple - just scan your credit card or government id and bingo. I don't have a credit card. The government ID is apparently: - a driving license (which I don't have)...