Astrospanner

Oops 😬

Secondly, why are there not more Excel specific policies, as you are ExcelPope.

I'm interested in how you reconcile the date code schism between Mac and Windows versions of Excel.

How do deal with the small upstarts, the religion-lite if you like, that just run in the browser?

Firstly, the public lottery for royal occasions. Is this to be fully involved in the occasion; eg to be a bride at the royal wedding, or just a guest?

I have questions.

a slightly grumpy looking tuxedo kitty, lounging in a wood tray filled with straw, with a medal round his neck.

The Dickin Medal is the highest award that can be issued to animals in British military service. Bearing the words "We Also Serve" it has been awarded 75 times since its creation in 1943.

Only one cat has ever received the award.

This is the story of Able Seacat Simon, of HMS Amethyst. 🧵 1/25

1x1 lego piece with studs both top and bottom

No-one tell them about these...

Thanks for the clarification! I only did a quick google, but it sounds like the situation is confusing anyway.

Interesting thought. I hope that if the NASA funding source gets pulled (the grant proposal probably includes some of the "forbidden concepts" like "increasing access" or "reducing bias") then Harvard would recognize the value and replace the funding.

NSF funds a bunch of astronomy. There are a number of words in this list that will be in observing proposals. If I were writing one now, I would probably try and shoe-horn a bunch of these in...

When the Patriot Act was passed, libraries got requests for patrons’ borrowing history. We were prohibited from disclosing those requests.

We deleted and shredded those records and stopped tracking reading history for that reason.

ALSO.

Apple had one that disappeared in 2014.

www.theregister.com/2014/09/20/a...

One of my fears was that this administration would have learnt from previous experience how to get the crazy stuff done, and be able to put competent loyalists in place.

Seems that fear was misplaced.

Using AI to train AI: Model collapse could be coming for LLMs, say researchers Using AI-generated datasets to train future generations of machine learning models may pollute their output, a concept known as model collapse, according to a new paper published in Nature. The resear...

This is the SciFi dream. AIs training new AIs, and they get progressively better.

However, it's nonsense, as discussed here. techxplore.com/news/2024-07...

stick figure drawing chemical structures on a board, attempting to make a joke of the names. However, a carbon atom is drawn with 5 bonds, rather than the accepted 4.

I suspect the chemists are more annoyed by getting the valence of carbon wrong...

(a very rare nerd error in xkcd!)

I mainly use sypder. I should have a look at PyCharm...

New spyder install on my machine.

Why did I uninstall? Can't remember. IT may have done it for me...

Nice to see that "pip install" now works from the terminal.

Not nice to see that xlrd has removed xlsx functionality. Fortauntely I can resave the workbooks as xls and not have to re-write...

My workload (largely data analysis, simulations) is to write/debug/enhance functions in a script and call them interactively in the spyder IDE whilst doing visualisations.

When I shifted from largely Linux to Windows I became more reliant on IDEs so not sure how I can maintain v2 and v3.

I have just had to update my python install... lots of my old 2.7 python code is now broken because of "print()"

I suspect I'll have to write a python script to convert everything...

If you are not following @garius.bsky.social, then you are missing excellent threads such as this.

side view of a British destroyer, with two funnels, at sea.

Meet the destroyer HMS Glowworm. In April 1940 she was forced to fight the German Heavy Cruiser Admiral Hipper, ten times her size, and Hipper's destroyer escorts.

Her extraordinary last stand earned her captain the first Victoria Cross of WW2. In part because THE GERMANS nominated him for one /1 🧵

I deliberately went for a laser printer so the cartridges don't dry out...

my personal favorite comic of 2024

Thanks to an ifixit guide, I seem to have cured my old (10 year old) brother laser printer of paper jams.

Hurrah!

From the printer stats, it reports printing ~4000 pages in those 10 years, and everything has 50% life left.

Not often I find myself on the same page as the Spectator...

blu ray package showing a PG rating for TRADITIONAL GODZILLA VIOLENCE

the perfect rating doesn't exi......

📽️

He's making a list
He's checking it twice
Of the fuzziness things that clutter the skies
Charles Messier is coming to town

I now want a podcast series of "Badenoch explains films", starting with simple like Love Actually, and then getting progressively more complex. Her utterly misunderstanding Tenet or Inception would be a joy.

BREAKING: Jerry has a new jacket! He's drier! He's live again here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f09f...

Sausage!

The Partial Revolution - Penny Arcade Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

Every time @edzitron.com does a podcast ranting at how fawning tech journalists are (and yes, I'm going through a back catalogue of his Better Offline podcast), I'm reminded of this comic from @pennyarcade.bsky.social

www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/0...

We "just" need the full revolution...