Craig Heath

I lived in Groningen briefly in the 80s (born and brought up in the UK). On a cycle ride one weekend I suddenly noticed the road signs were in German. As you say, if you're not from an island nation you wouldn't expect the profound perspective shift that gave me (I'm very glad of it, of course!)

This is why mechanical computers like the fire control computers in submarines had “fuse gears” made of softer metal that would break first if something bound up and were located in easy-to-access locations for repair.

OpenBenches 💖 OpenStreetMap When Liz and I created the OpenBenches website, it was just designed to be a fun way for people to record memorial benches. Since then things have got out of hand and we now have over thirty-nine thousand benches recorded! Our plan was never to compete with something like OpenStreetMap. The OSM project is vast, complex, and brilliant - we are small, simple, and differently brilliant. But, over…

New blog post: OpenBenches 💖 OpenStreetMap

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/11/openbenches-%F0%9F%92%96-openstreetmap/

When Liz and I created the OpenBenches website, it was just designed to be a fun way for people to record memorial benches. Since then things have got out of hand and we now have …

“A vote for Labour is the only way to stop Reform”

Or

“Labour can actually do what Reform only claims it can do”

The government needs to pick one strategy, not both. The government seems unaware that voters can actually hear it trying both messages at once.

Defend the BBC before it’s gone – an open letter The BBC isn’t perfect – but it’s ours. If we don’t defend it now, we may lose a cornerstone of British democracy

"The BBC isn’t perfect – but it’s ours. If we don’t defend it now, we may lose a cornerstone of British democracy."

"... I usually submit an article and invoice on the same email. That way, there is no opportunity to use excuses like they didn’t get my invoice ..." Sound advice!

Leamington Spa W.H. Smith's. (It's a cassette, not a record, but I'm interpreting the request as first "album" :-))

Link works; recommended reading.

Review: The Cheapest USB-C Headphones I Could Find Ever since phone manufacturers killed off the headphone jack, there has been an epidemic of people blasting sounds from their shitty speakers in public. Music, TikTok, phone calls - it seems some peop...

Annoyed by commuters playing their shitty music at full volume?

You can buy USB-C headphones for £2. Grab a sack of them and hand them out to sodcasters everywhere.

shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/10...

Virtual Schlüsselgerät 41 (SG-41). Another week and yet another mess of levers in the CT scans that do something .. but what? One of those cases where I'm just going to have to model & animate them in @blender.org & @threejs.org to find out. @tnmoc.bsky.social @cryptomuseum.bsky.social

The Witch share.google/NNABClxGQnJu...

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:To...

Vertu Agent Q phone with electrical connections under two flaps

I have a lot of questions about the Vertu Agent Q "AI phone" which is launching this week at Harrods...

England is now experiencing a significant Covid wave, after 10 months of relative quiet The latest Covid situation in England and a look at where NHS services are as we head into winter

After a long pause, I've just done another England Covid & NHS update as we head into the autumn/winter season.

TLDR: we're in a significant Covid wave now, the NHS is stretched, get boosted if you're eligible.

christinapagel.substack.com/p/england-is...

OK BlueSky network, can we do the six degrees of Kevin Bacon thing? Does anyone know Ian Livingstone or someone in similar tech/tabletop gaming/boardgame area? I've got a tech demo that I'd love to take further, or at least show to people who might 'get it'.

Reposts appreciated.

Don’t believe the hype: AGI is far from inevitable | Radboud University Will AI soon surpass the human brain? If you ask employees at OpenAI, Google DeepMind and other large tech companies, it is inevitable. However, researchers at Radboud University and other institutes ...

“Few people realize that cognitive science is crucial for evaluating claims about AI capabilities. We often overestimate what computers are capable of, while vastly underestimating what human cognition is capable of.” www.ru.nl/en/research/...

Agreed, they do appear to have changed the story yet again, this is my main gripe, that we have no statement directly from ENISA, and Reuters have now silently changed their story at least 3 times.

You're agreeing with me then? The BBC was told "malicious software" but Reuters was apparently told "type of ransomware".

Not to the BBC, it says "in a statement to news agency Reuters", so the same single source.

I found one news post (on ex-Twitter, in Spanish) explicitly retracting a post earlier today saying it was ransomware. I wouldn't be surprised if the retraction actually came from ENISA, given my previous experiences with them ;-)

Which cites Reuters as one of its sources. I can't find the actual statement from ENISA anywhere, presumably it's gone out through non-public PR channels?

...and they've changed it again in the last few minutes to say at the end that ransomware is the most common attack, but not that _this_ one is. Aren'r Reuters supposed to be a reliable source? and yet they keep changing the story *sigh*

Hmmm. Evidently Reuters have changed the headline and there's no mention of ransomware now??

A graphic detailing the nationalities of all the pilots who took part: Britain: 2342 Poland: 145 Czechoslovakia: 88 Australia: 32 New Zealand: 137 South Rhodesia: 3 South Africa: 25 Belgium: 28 France: 13 Barbados: 1 Jamaica: 1 USA: 9 Canada: 112 Ireland: 10

Battle of Britain Day today. And a welcome reminder from the RAF Benevolent Fund of what an astonishing team effort it was which led to such an essential victory.

I thought that signage looked familiar :-) I remember the old maths department on the East Site too. Mind the goose poo!

Text logo for the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Below that is the text Save Page Now, alongside a pale blue outlined file icon with a plus symbol as the lower right corner.

The internet forgets. You don’t have to.

📥 Use the Wayback Machine’s Save Page Now tool to capture and preserve the sites you care about.

🕰️ Try it here ➡️ web.archive.org/save

#Wayback1T #WaybackMachine @Archive.org

Just for perspective, a few weeks ago roughly 100,000 turned up for the London Trans+ Pride march. By contrast fewer than 3,000 ACROSS THE WHOLE COUNTRY, have turned up to anti-asylum "protests". Yet we are meant to take the latter as "the voice of the people" and the former as "the minority".

Andrew (@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz) Attached: 1 image @OscarCunningham @kenshirriff@oldbytes.space a logical extension of this idea is...

This is absolutely amazing. Perfect art.

https://mathstodon.xyz/@andrewt/115056697540191327

"Well, of course, in a perfect world we'd sterilise the instruments first..."

"In a perfect world the electrician would be qualified..."

"In a perfect world we'd wait until the chicken's cooked all the way through..."

#LinkedInPragmatists

Got the second one, thanks!