tboughen

I’m a UK teacher. I have built a custom GPT that marks essays for the subject I teach in a repeatable and reliable way. It gives actionable feedback to students.

I use it, and have given my students access to it too - they use it to help their revision.

I am a ChatGPT plus user in the UK. I believe this should work for me as I am outside the EU (!), but every time I have tried it I get ‘Currently Unavailable - please try again later’. Which is very unhelpful.

I’m 41 and my body is nicer to be in than when I was 25.

Like you, I have much less youthful buffer that shrugs off poor sleep or overindulgence, but I have much more knowledge and much better habits.

Daily habits: better nutrition (based on Bryan Johnson’s super veggie and nutty pudding), stretching, weak points warmup, proper oral hygiene, regular bedtime

Weekly habits: 4x gym, 3x run, 2x weighted walk

I have used ChatGPT to work out a program that is helping me to overcome injuries and niggles while building strength and cardio. I’m 3 months into my latest training schedule, and it’s unreasonably effective.

I don't like it because, after upgrading from Windows 10, my computer can no longer go to sleep and I can no longer connect to Minecraft servers. These things did not happen straight away, but have developed as problems over time.

I think that’s because the change wasn’t between TOS and TNG. It was between TOS series and TOS films; new style Klingons were in Star Trek 3 (1984) and Star Trek 4 (1986) before TNG started.

There has just been some economic 'good news' released that inflation has fallen to 2.3%. If there is a risk of bad news later, it's best to go after some good news. For example the infected blood scandal has just been somewhat dealt with by a mea cupla and announcment of large interim compensation payments, and the Rwanda migrant scheme is technically operating.

There was also concern from Conservative activists about campaigning in cold and wet November weather - these people are mostly retired.

Yes and no. I used to have a regional accent that was a soft mix of Lancashire and Yorkshire accents. I now work in south Worcestershire, and the local accent is pretty much modern RP. In adulthood, I softened my accent further towards RP to such an extent that people think I’m local.

What you are probably referring to is the ‘educated European twang’ that often remains when people are targeting the RP accent from 50 years ago.

My parents' Casio calculator is 40 years old, and still on its original battery. It does not have solar power.

It is still used weekly or so!

Fair point about the gums. But my Huel Unflavoured and Unsweetened powder does not have any artificial sweetener in it. It’s not very palatable on its own, but half a banana and a little peanut butter and it’s great.

I don’t pretend huel is perfect, but it’s definitely a meal. I feel good after eating it. Also, I alway have time at work to eat it, even if it’s only 7 minutes (which is quite often), and time to make it in the morning.

For me, huel is definitely better than the meals it replaced, and the other things that I could make/consume with the time and budget available.

Very true. Though he must have personally known Slobodan Milošević, who died after 6 years of UN detention.

My favourite fact about it comes from https://phys.org/news/2016-02-plasma-physicist-discusses-wen...

“…the supporting structure can only withstand the forces if the interfaces between the ten individual segments of the central rings, which weighs several tonnes, are built with a level of precision of less than 100 millionths of a metre…” - and they found a small family business in the north of Italy capable of doing this!

It may be worse than that if this Sony patent is any guide... https://www.techradar.com/news/sony-patent-would-have-you-ye...

I think there is a distinction between a charitable donation pop-up that forces the user to round up, donate, or actively select 'no donation' is a dark pattern.

Whereas having the option to select a charitable donation, or passively ignore it, as a part of the normal checking out is fine.

To those who don't know, Juicero's juice pressing machines were notoriously complex and expensive due to extensive use of custom components. https://blog.bolt.io/juicero/

I played Doom, Doom 2 and Final Doom all the way through about 20 years ago - I can’t recall a single instance of this kind of level design. Doors stayed open once opened. Maybe it was done with corners/sight lines instead? To be honest I remember some vast areas rendered, especially when accessing secrets.

I buy them in bulk from a factory outlet nearby, so the price is reasonable given my income. Furthermore I find they can withstand the hilly and muddy half marathons that I run, while keeping my feet in good condition. I like to run after work, so by wearing these socks to work I can give myself one less thing to pack/change into. (I dislike the aesthetics of dark socks with shorts)

As I must wear smart clothes to work, and white socks with a suit is a fashion faux pas, this means I must wear smart boots to work. But this works for me as then I choose zip-up boots to save time doing laces.

I acknowledge this 'life hack' is a minor time and convenience saving with some drawbacks, and clearly won't work for everyone. But as a working father with two young children, this gives me a little more time to spend on myself, and a little more time with them.

I’m glad that works for you, but it doesn’t for me. The one ‘life hack’ that’s ever worked for me is to own a single type of sock (white, cotton, Nike). The entire batch of 30 pairs was bought at the same time so they wear evenly, meaning all socks match with all other socks. When I get down to a few functioning pairs, into the bin they go and a new batch is ordered.

My family knows not to buy me socks…

You mean like ASML already is? They are the only manufacturer of EUV lithography equipment for fabs.

https://analyticsindiamag.com/is-asml-the-most-important-tec...

Maybe. I’d like to see the research that says this effect is greater than the impact of consumers switching elsewhere in frustration. Especially in the current age of increasing availability of online grocery shopping.

I don’t view it as my role as a consumer to prejudge the business model of the websites I visit. If a website does not want my view, they can block me or use a paywall. That’s fine.

But a website could cover the marginal cost of serving me content with simple image adverts, sponsored content, donation mechanism, subscription or otherwise. They may decide that having X% of viewers block ads is a ‘cost of business’ and is worth it to increase viewership.

Modelling the situation as ‘honest’ to accept ads and ‘dishonest’ to block them may undermine the chosen business model of the site, and not visiting again models the monetisation strategy as static, which it is not.

I disagree. There are forms of adverts that my browser extensions will not block - simple images for example. It’s not my fault that sites choose not to use these any more, and instead use a model that is, in my view, an unacceptable security risk.

I believe the comment is a reference to:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS

Thank you!

The searches are trying to allocate groups of teachers to time slots, subject to the inputted constraints e.g. their students aren’t elsewhere, changing rooms are available if needed, a teacher hasn’t been allocated a different class already etc.

But I can’t tell the software which constraints are hard, which are soft, and which have alternatives we are indifferent about. Hence the need for parallel searches!

I’m a teacher without a tech background. My role is to schedule a high school timetable.

To do this I have been given software that is single threaded and will only run a single instance, so I have taught myself Hyper-V, and run several VMs with alternative searches simultaneously. These searches can take 12+ hours to run.

The software also runs 25% faster when allocated 2 threads maximum than when 3+ are available…

It’s an interesting comment, and a nice line about Coca Cola that I’ll definitely steal!

But the conspiracy theory part is obviously untrue. A less educated population is a less productive population, and a less productive population is a poorer population. Less income means less spending on products and less tax revenue. A group with sufficient skill to implement this conspiracy would know this, so wouldn’t do it.

(A counter is that the group could be made up of advertisers pushing inferior goods (income elasticity of demand is negative) and government authoritarians - but why would they be so much more competent than the luxury goods pushers and libertarians?)

“cyclists were given 8.5cm (3.3 inches) more clearance by cars if they were not wearing helmets.”

https://helmets.org/walkerstudy.htm

I’d love to use Gigaclear since they recently became available in my area. I booked installation twice - no one came either time, and when I contacted Gigaclear I heard nothing.

I agree that the BBC article is poor, but an earlier article in The Guardian made clear that this was more than concern trolling:

“But this is not the correct route and we often come across groups of inexperienced walkers heading towards Steall Falls or up the south slopes of Ben Nevis believing it is the route to the summit.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/16/google-ma...

This may be true if the housing market has sufficient capacity to build homes at the required rate. The UK’s experience over the past 50 years is that the private sector has built around 170k homes per year, but the rate of household formation suggests we need around 300k extra each year.

The U.K. hasn’t built 300k+ homes per year (or anything like that) since the government stopped building houses - the private sector has never picked up the slack. And the result is hugely increased prices.

I think you’re right about the privacy moat. But I think it flows from a focus on improved user experience. Ads are terrible for user experience because they slow your browsing, block content from your app, take up space in your start menu and are a malware vector.

Once ads are off the table, what else can Apple do?