vmilner

I forget that shows from non-BBC channels in the Uk can get shown on BBC America.

I got the Linux Answers “trial” magazine and then subscribed to Linux Format for ~20 years. Sorry to see it go :-(

Did Father Ted have much impact in the US? - it always seems v British/Irish in its humour (but that’s true of Monty Python of course and that obviously made it over there)

I got a lot more out of his Metamagical Themas (scientific american columns) collection book. Eg Lisp and making self-referential sentences (“This sentence contains three a’s, one b, …”)

I noticed watching the recent 4K release of The Terminator that the garage attendant in the final scene has a piece of paper in his top pocket with "There's a storm coming“ written upside down on it.

Certainly with maths you’re marked almost totally on written exams, but even if that weren’t true you’re also required to go over example sheets (hard homework questions that don’t form part of the final mark) with a tutor in two-student sessions so it’d be completely obvious if you were relying on AI.

We should get them to play Diplomacy.

However, the widely used tariff exemptions available to US steel consumers who could claim difficulties sourcing cheap steel are now being closed.

It’s hard to see tariffs on steel (say) not raising wider domestic prices. Any domestic industry using steel (car making, house building etc) presumably now has to pay more for its steel which feeds through to consumer prices. You might increase the number of steel worker jobs but at a hidden wider cost to the wider US economy.

Richard Dawkins claims later editions of Darwin’s Origin of Species got worse because of trying to appease critics.

Ah worth knowing thanks.

Less the weight than the increased size for me. Admittedly I don’t use it for very long periods so the smaller screen is less of an issue. I think for my needs it just lets me stick it in a small backpack and forget it, and I prefer the keyboard to a tablet (though no doubt someone will tell me there are fancy tablets with keyboards now!)

I don’t know why they stopped making 11inch MacBook Airs - the 1kg size makes them easy to carry around. I’ve recently picked up an old final 2015 8GB 256GB edition and it works fine with Linux on it.

This is so good. It reminded me of the foreword to Simon Jenkins’ “A short history of England” when he says that breadth of knowledge should come before depth (ie knowing about the details of Henry VIII or Charles I beheading fits better after a solid grounding in the overall scope of English history)

Similarly I now have a much clearer idea of how (say) the main sequence of star formation and standard candle stars fit into the historical picture.

Only thing that annoyed me was that the “combat ratio” involved addition and subtraction rather than dividing! Otherwise great :-)

Someone wrote some excellent software to play the books based on this open material, though it’s fiddly to get running - but worth it if you’re a fan.

https://projectaon.org/staff/david/

As he says, his fighting fantasy books were often sniffed at by adults, but they got boys to read and do sums.

“This steady increase does not necessarily mean that the asteroid is actually more likely to hit Earth”

I’m struggling to understand the alleged difference between “odds increasing” and “being more likely”.

Isn’t that exactly what it means?

A few of the librivox Hugh Lofting Dr Dolittle readings arent picked up (post office, zoo)

The Uk joined the EEC in 1973 and Euro coins and notes came into circulation in 2002.

Though it’s flagged for some reason that’s unclear to me.

Paul Nahins books are so good.

See also The Science of Radio And the Mathematical Radio (Similar content but one more focussed at elec eng people and one more at math(s) people)

Distrowatch seems to be under heavy load (probably because of this news story)

I sometimes struggle with Harris’s recent books but I agree these are great.

I can never praise A Wizard of Earthsea enough - although it’s highly regarded I never think it quite receives the level of praise it should as a book that will move children (and adults). I first heard it read by Edward Fox on BBCs Jackanory in the mid70s and have remembered it ever since.

Can it be tried without creating a login?

I always liked the hardback editions of children’s books in UK libraries in the 70s and 80s , and have sought them out secondhand since. Favourites were the US Danny Dunn science story series - almost all of which were amazingly available in the UK, Dr Who hardback editions of the famous Target novelisations - pre-vcr the only way to access old stories (even in the Uk these were very rarely repeated). Hugh Walters 1960s/1970s sf books (passage to Pluto, journey to Jupiter, expedition Venus etc.)

Also the Agaton Sax comedy detective stories, and the largely unknown Uncle the elephant books by JP Martin.

I remember porting code from 32-bit address spaces to 64-bit ones in the 90s and thinking 2^64 was “Kind of infinite” - but this machine does 2^64 operations in 8 seconds…

I just found it by chance somehow when trying to review gaps in my maths education - it’s excellent for reviewing complex analysis (say) if you did it years ago - or less obviously - doing a quick pass over a topic before you learn it for the first time. Then I found the excellent math sorcerer channel and his view is much the same as mine.