Andrew

Andrew

@andrewt.net

I am: Andrew https://www.andrewt.net • The Cell Tower guy https://www.andrewt.net/puzzles/cell-tower/ • Polymath on MyCrossword https://www.mycrossword.co.uk/Polymath

686 followers1K following1.6K posts

A thing that strikes me about the Duo, and about the iPad tbh, is that Apple's strict adherence to their own rules does tend to be their undoing when launching this kind of thing. Android apps already assume your screen might be literally any crazy shape, so foldables or tablets just kind of work…

…whereas there somehow *still* isn't an iPad-optimised Instagram app, so that's just an iPhone app in a window. On Android, it'd just expand elegantly (at least, as elegantly as the Instagram app ever does anything) to fill whatever space it had. On iOS, it just sits there looking out of place.

"Our things are better because developers can optimise for exactly the hardware the user has" works really well as long as you never sell upgraded hardware, a thing hardware vendors always eventually decide they want to do.

Andrew reposted

“Ain’t no party like an S Club party”. BOLLOCKS. I went to a B*Witched party & it was EXACTLY the same as an S Club party. Same caterers. SAME MAGICIAN

researchers have found a critical problem with computer. according to the paper, computer is bad. this is a fundamental problem with computer and can't be patched. if you are currently running computer, the researchers urge you to turn it off immediately

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"and you can see that computer just runs the program. this is so crazy. this 'program' could do anything, you could write a program to connect to internet."

"and i know what you're thinking: would rust have solved this? actually, no. rust relies on the same design that enables programs, so if you're running rust, you're already vulnerable to this"

researchers have found a critical problem with computer. according to the paper, computer is bad. this is a fundamental problem with computer and can't be patched. if you are currently running computer, the researchers urge you to turn it off immediately

the root of the issue appears to be that the design of computer allows a user with root access to the machine to execute arbitrary code. this enables a unique form of harmful malware called "programs"

researchers warn that so called "programs" are already in widespread use and if you use computer it is probably already infected

Andrew reposted

no matter what the reasons, the prime minister starting the week by telling people to use headphones on public transport and ending it by telling them to stock up on tinned food and bottled water is objectively hilarious

This rings true to me — I've been thinking lately that it's not so much that AI is amazing or terrible, it's just that this is what happens when you spend decades writing bad software and then throw tens of billions of dollars at cybersecurity research in like six months.

Jason Koebler@jasonkoebler.bsky.social

wrote about "Black October," the PHP vulnerability, and the AI-fueled dread and panic I'm seeing among almost all of the cybersecurity experts I've ever known. I think people w/ LLMs are brute forcing software the same way they brute forced social media w/ slop www.404media.co/php2shell-bl...

Also, this is an excellent paragraph: A blog post… written by Elias Taylor, quickly went viral and was dissected on Hacker News, especially by people pointing out that … it wasn’t clear who Elias Taylor was. 404 Media reached Taylor by Signal; he said “I am real and on a delayed train.”

"Art Club Run By One Tired Person" is on Zlorp! Why not send them a Zlorp Buzz? They'll be able to answer your questions (if they go four pages deep into a hidden menu which we assume they know how to do because surely they're a huge corporation that has a whole department to deal with our bullshit)

did you know this country has more queer art clubs than statues of Winston Churchill and I think that really tells a story about modern Britain

Saul Staniforth@saulstaniforth.bsky.social

Interviewing a govt minister Hazarika shows a graph comparing young people claiming PIP to the size of our armed forces & declares it "tells a story about modern Britain" I can't even make a sarcastic comment about our fearless fourth estate, because Hazarika is a Labour politician

Andrew reposted

I actually think the use of the word “finally” is so telling as to the role our heavily right-wing media plays in our politics. Sources like The Telegraph have been pushing successive governments for trans-exclusionary policy for years. They’ve got what they wanted. This is now their victory lap.

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There is one acceptable version of this: Alanis Morrisette's cover of King Of Pain, in which she sings "queen of pain" but the track is still called "King Of Pain" because Alanis understand that IDs should be immutable, dammit

Lane Moore@hellolanemoore.bsky.social

doing a cover of a song and changing the pronouns in the lyrics to make sure the listener knows youre straight should be punishable by death

I have set a crossword! And not a crisis, as my phone keyboard wanted to write (at least, I hope not) Sample clues: 🖨️ About 14% of printer ink is magenta (4) 💎 Decline opportunity to take diamond centrepiece for rings (4,4) 📺 What CSI: Fresno might be representation of (9)

mycrossword.co.ukCryptic crossword No 4,010 · MyCrosswordSolve Cryptic crossword No 4,010 on MyCrossword. 15x15 grid with 33 clues by Polymath. Published Sun 11 Oct 2026. Features annotated solutions and special instructions. Free to solve online.

IF the cardboard box my nephew wrote "timɘ mashine" on turns out to work, it could really disrupt prediction markets

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going to make a small, folded booklet for trump supporters, I'm calling it a "maga-zine"

The important thing to remember when people remind you that Googlebooks and Google Books are different products, is that neither Googlebooks nor Google Books is the same thing as Google Play Books.

Bruno Dies@brunodias.dev

when I initially heard about the "googlebooks" (not to be confused with distinct google product "google books") I assumed this was google using monopsony power to exploit the ram shortage to force more people into locked-down computing but no they are priced at full ram-is-stupid prices lol

Thing is I'm pretty sure this would have been partially avoided had the government not made life so damn complicated, like I made it to 40 without thinking I had ADHD and I think I'd have made it to 60 if the trains worked and I wasn't constantly on the hook for increasing amounts of nonsense admin

theguardian.comNHS at risk of ‘system failures’ as demand for ADHD and autism care soars, inquiry findsEngland-focused review led by Prof Peter Fonagy returns stark warning and calls for shift to ‘needs-led’ system

I was doing fine! I don't mean to be all "we need to retvrn" about it but I don't think my realising was *entirely* caused by covid or work stress or whatever

It's grimly amusing that, having been roundly rejected from the art community for not understanding why people do art, the AI bros blundered into mathematics and completely failed to understand why people do that either

Pile Of Garbage@pileofgarbage.net

Shot and chaser. I recall someone smarter than me talking about how AI companies are disrespectful and outright hostile towards real experts. This is just further evidence to that point. What an absolutely shitty, useless thing to do. www.scientificamerican.com/article/open...

What's fun about this is, by the show's established logic, since the Tardis takes the Doctor to situations that reflect their personality and emotional state, of course if they regenerate into a child, they'll go on wacky cartoon adventures and none of the Serious Grown-up Fans can say shit about it

Paul@rudemrlang.com

Fans like to claim Doctor Who needs to be rested becuase the ideas are getting stale the someone comes up with the idea of a companion who shoots TOAST out of his head when he’s scared, this show will never ever die!!! www.doctorwho.tv/news-and-fea...

that and I collect trivia questions with two answers and "what BBC sci-fi show features a sentient toaster as a recurring character" is a great one

Serious question though, why are these always so bad? The internet is not exactly hurting for good photos of delicious-looking food, so why can't these models that are supposed to be good enough to replace human designers create even an OK picture of a hamburger?

LF Lightning-Barugh@cheeseford.bsky.social

Another café doing an AI flyer that looks like all of the others. People saying they won't eat there, others saying why blame small businesses for using AI? Yes, of course, the environmental cost, but mainly, it looks shit. How much for the ball bearings on an armadillo, topped with matchsticks?

Andrew reposted

the replies to this contain 100,000 variations of the "sickos" comic with different self-insert fursonas in them and that's beautiful

The Onion@theonion.com

This Weeks Editorial Cartoon: Hiding in Plane Sight https://theonion.com/hiding-in-plane-sight/