Posts by Eclectic Man

Comment in code read 'Dear future me, sorry I wrote this'

re: misfortune

I once had to code something in MicroSoft Visual C++ for Windows. Now, I did have some knowledge of objective C, but not of any of the then 'newfangled' Object-Oriented stuff, or programming for Windows. In addition, I was not then and never have been a trained 'proper' computer programmer. Well it was not a happy time for me, but I eventually got the things sort of working. Fortunately there were no actual customers as such to support or I would have been in trouble. I well remember being on hold to the MicroSoft 'Help'* line for ages, and after describing what I was trying to code being told that Visual Basic would have been a better choice of language.

'Why use C++?' I hear your cry. Well, one of my colleagues wanted to steal, sorry borrow the installation discs so that he could have it at home for free (those were the days when that sort of thing happened a lot, although I didn't).

You win some, you lose some, and still the World turns.

* Technically they were MS Help, but they were of no actual help to me at the time.

New Horizons Pluto probe just woke itself up after 321 days of hibernation

Running out of 'Puff'

... the heliosheath, a distant region where the solar wind starts to run out of puff as interstellar gases push into the solar system.

I know how it feels. I was* in training for next year's London Marathon, and in 30 plus degree heat I run out of puff very quickly (after about 100 metres).

* Rejected this time ( strangely I feel somewhat relieved ), but I'll keep up the training, probably.

Enterprise AI still smarting from leaping before looking

Re: You forgot a word there, Nvidia

I am still waiting to hear of a successful business implementation.

You may have along wait. Any company successfully implementing an AI would be likely to keep it secret to avoid alerting their competitors. If it gave your company a competitive advantage, what would you do?

Smooth AI criminal drives 'first' end-to-end agentic ransomware attack

Ignorance of the law

I understand that 'Ignorance of the law is no defence' in most judicial systems. I also understand that LLMS have been 'trained' on pretty much all publicly available texts, which, I assume, includes all the legal texts available online. This means that an LLM cannot claim to be unaware that hacking, theft (intent to permanently deny an asset to its lawful owner), extortion and blackmail are criminal offences in most jurisdictions. My question, therefore, is why do they show how to perform on in this case actually perform, criminal acts?

Oh, hang on. Trained on is not the same as understanding, is it?

Boffins peg narcissistic leadership as the real driver behind 'return to office' demands

Narcissism or Sadism?

Narcissism is a self-centered personality style characterized as having an excessive preoccupation with oneself and one's own needs, often at the expense of others

Everyday sadism, the derivation of gratification from the physical pain or humiliation of another person

I am not convinced that the only motivation of senior managers implementing a return to the office mode of working is self aggrandisement.

Supreme Court rules cops need a warrant to vacuum up phone location data

Re: You have nothing to fear if ...

Stanford Law School professor Orin Kerr expressed surprise that Justice Kavanaugh joined the majority in the 6-3 decision.

I may be doing Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America Kavanaugh a disservice, but I could not suppress the thought that maybe the Hon. Mr Kavanaugh has some location data of his own that he would want the law enforcement agencies to need a judicial warrant in order to access. He was, after all accused of some pretty heinous acts by some women when nominated for SCOTUS.

Then, again, I cannot believe that a Supreme Court Justice could possibly have anything to hide. Nothing at all. They are all, without exception, I am sure, exemplary human beings. (And always have been.)

US auto regulators want to kill robotaxi brake pedals

Let there be L I G H T

Trump-shuttered climate change site back online in nonprofit hands

Re: Don't know if it's a shame or a good thing

If you truly want to know how a narcissist thinks, read Friedrich Nietzsche's book 'Why I am so wise'* (genuinely the title). (My copy is ISBN 978-0-14-101897-3 published by Penguin Books.) It includes the (in)famous 'that which does not kill me, makes me stronger' and suchlike nonsense. Or you could read 'Poisonous People' by Leanne ten Brinke, ISBN978-1-3985-3560-2, which also includes Machiavelianism, Sadism and Psychopathy/Anti-Social personality, and advises strongly against putting a narcissist in a position of power or authority over others (seems like that particular boat may well have sailed).

* One of the only two reasonably comprehensible of his books. The other being 'On the genealogy of morals', in which he advocates the submission of the weak to the strong, genocide and the subjugation of women. (I am not a fan, you can tell, can't you?)

HOORAY!!!

All of the content that was purged from the .gov is now back

Well done and congratulations. I'm not saying that the rebellion has started, but this is one blow for rigorous science and scientists against ignorance and denial of reality.

Western Europe is currently sweltering in unusually high temperatures which have been linked to global climate change, so we need these data and scientists to keep up the good work.

Space Shuttle Endeavour stacks up nicely for new California exhibit

'Three feet in any direction'

That is quite some leeway. Although according to New Scientist:

"An extremely unusual tectonic movement took place 15 minutes after the Tohoku earthquake in 2011, causing almost the whole of Japan to move 5 millimetres to the east"

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2531001-almost-the-whole-of-japan-moved-eastward-after-2011-earthquake/

Security boss thought MFA would be too much security

Re: Not quite the same but...

I was pretty 'relaxed' about fire alarms in buildings for decades. Then I was in a building that actually had a genuine fire.*. There is nothing quite like waiting for the fire alarm to go off after a minute or so (as usual), then when it continues, getting to the top of the seven flights of stairs which are your nearest emergency escape route to smell strongly acrid smoke and realise that you really should have left a minute ago when the alarm went off ..

Now when I hear a fire alarm I leave the building. As the late, great, Barry Sheene** said, 'better a live coward than dead hero."

*Some UPS's decided to go all thermal one morning.

** Twice world 500cc motorbike champion. His response to being asked why he never raced in the Isle of Mann TT races. His fastest lap record at Spa of > 135mph still stands after nearly 50 years of improvements to motorcycles, aerodynamics, brakes, tyres, engines etc.

https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/motorcycles/135-067mph-the-fastest-gp-of-all-time/?srsltid=AfmBOoqEISY_9gB3sDOC1BJS-tAcnub5A5IOVXBXdr5OGkuabDKhdBHu

Re: Have you ever been told to make IT worse ?better?

I assume that by 'better', your management means "cheaper"?

As in: cheaper to run, no overtime payments (to the AI), as opposed to "more reliable, and with an improved understanding of what is acceptable conduct, and what is legally permissible in the relevant jurisdictions in which your company and its products are employed and less likely to just make things up."

(Good luck.)

Regarding "yelling"

A director yelling at a subordinate is only appropriate when there is excessive 'background noise', such as in an engineering shop floor, in an active combat situation, or when the person is a long way away and normal volume would not be noticed. The description indicates that the director was not behaving properly and determining what had caused the problems and was overly emotional. Not someone to be trusted with a high pressure high responsibility position.

Inspired by musical greeting cards, DARPA demands tiny, cheap, self-modifying systems

Ummm 'not trustworthy' vs 'reliable'

Concerns include low-trust environments where data sources and system components may not be trustworthy,

...

DARPA wants cheap, tiny, and reliable devices ...

Well we all want (cheap and) reliable, but how do they expect to get that in an environment where there is low trust?

Humanity trashed Earth orbit – next stop the Moon

Re: dumping grounds where material can be deposited, collected, and recycled

a structure orbiting the Moon whither discarded material could be slowly shuttled by a fleet solar powered ion-drive craft

OK, but only if the orbital structure and fleet are made of less material than they recover would that be at all economical.

Maybe we could try it out in Low Earth Orbit first, after all there is reputedly a lot of junk up there just waiting to be 'recycled' along with all the starlink and old spy satellites.

Recycling

dumping grounds where material can be deposited, collected, and recycled

Whilst I appreciate the sentiment, unless there are a lot of items deposited in one small part of the lunar surface, surely the costs of getting there, even from a permanent lunar base, collecting the stuff and recycling it would be excessive? The 'dumping ground' would have to be far enough away from any Moon Base to avoid the chance of killing anyone when depositing the junk, yet close enough to be collectable. Unless it would be a controlled and very accurate lunar landing like the Falcon 9's on Earth I cannot imagine that wandering about the Moon looking for bits of a 'rapidly disassembled' former spacecraft would be a worthwhile use of astronaut time.

Techy readers please advise.

NASA said nyet to Roscosmos plan to cut into leaky ISS segment

Diagram

For those interested, there is a diagram of the ISS here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/ISS_blueprint.png

The Zvezda module is shown in the subsection top right on the side view.

France and Germany agree to disagree, ditch joint next-gen Euro fighter

Breaking News: John Healey, UK Minister of Defence resigns

Just to add to the UK confusion: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cgqeg09p3p1t

"Forget, for a moment, the here and now about John Healey’s resignation. There is a bigger picture.

Successive governments have struggled to get a grip on defence spending. They spent less after the Cold War ended and failed to spend more as the world became more dangerous.

To its many critics, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) failed to spend well what money it got, botching procurement after procurement, delivering late and over budget.

Whitehall failed to resolve its internal tensions, both Number 10 and the Cabinet Office unable - or too weak - to manage repeated rows between the Treasury and MoD.

All the while, many analysts believe politicians failed to be honest with voters about the increasing threats the UK faced, and the brutally hard trade-offs needed to address them.

..."

See also https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/11/john-healey-resigns-defence-secretary-military-spending

So, well,, watch that space, or this space, but Healey resigning makes me think the UK may soon have both a new Defence Secretary and Prime Minister.

Interesting times, as they say.

Re: Nervous pilots. - frigates

I worked on the CNGF, Common New Generation Frigate, a joint UK, French and Italian warship built around an Italian weapon system. The HQ was in London, and the team of navy personnel and civil servants was hand picked (I was a contractor consultant). They all knew the danger was cancellation and had to race to get steel cut and a hull in the water before the politicians lost interest (once royalty has named and launched a vessel, it is much harder to cancel). Sadly they lost that race.

I suspect the real problem is that the style of warfare has changed so rapidly in the past few years due to the use of drones in Ukraine and by Iran, that specifying the threat and designing countermeasures a decade at least in advance of operational capability is genuinely difficult. Don't forget, just before the attack on Pearl Harbour, the US Navy did not consider aircraft carriers to be particularly useful. The invention of the tank in WW1 and its potential was appreciated only by the German high command, not the British or the French. Basically, defence procurement is really hard. Best of luck with this, folks!

If your sex life is dead, you can blame Steve Jobs

Re: When they invent a Rampant Rabbit that can get spiders out of the bath.....

Upvoted as you are mostly but not quite correct about timing. There was a fatality in 2016, according to:

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/nature-wildlife/2012/08/australian-spiders-the-10-most-dangerous/

"Spiders tend to incite more fear than favour and even provoke phobias for some. And many a visitor to our shores has been more than a little worried about our venomous eight-legged friends.

It’s true that we have some of the most venomous spiders in the world – but Australia’s spider reputation is bigger than its bite: a death in April 2016 was the country’s first recorded spider-caused death since 1981."

I hd no idea that Australian bees are so dangerous as the article states: "Australian spiders have a fearsome reputation, but our bees typically pose more of a threat."

I am off to buy some gauntlets, mosquito netting suitable for headgear, and bicycle clips.

Re: too much wanking

OTOH masturbation is correlated with a lower incidence of prostate cancer:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/mens-health/ejaculation_frequency_and_prostate_cancer

Ahem (my emphasis):

"The scientists found no evidence that frequent ejaculations mark an increased risk of prostate cancer. In fact, the reverse was true: High ejaculation frequency was linked to a decreased risk. Compared to men who reported 4–7 ejaculations per month across their lifetimes, men who ejaculated 21 or more times a month enjoyed a 31% lower risk of prostate cancer. And the results held up to rigorous statistical evaluation even after other lifestyle factors and the frequency of PSA testing were taken into account."

(Smiley icon because, well, I am a man, so, umm occasionally, and purely for health reasons you understand, I go and have a little lie down.)

Online access to ...

Third, the iPhone gave people easy access to information about contraception and abortion access

And fourth:

The iPhone gave people easy online access to information about Chlamydia, Gonorrhoea, Syphilis, Genital Herpes, HIV, oh yes, and stretch marks, the costs of raising a child, etc. not to mention all the diseases of childhood, vaccinations, anti-vaxxers, Autism, and any number of other disincentives to procreative activities.

Speaking personally, my sex life (or lack thereof) is probably more to do with my irritating personality than having an iPhone.

Re: When they invent a Rampant Rabbit that can get spiders out of the bath.....

In the UK, or more correctly southern England you can try https://www.londonzoo.org/plan-your-visit/zoo-experiences/friendly-spider-programme

"Do you have a spider phobia?

Millions of perfectly rational people are terrified of spiders. No matter how much they try to calm themselves, the response remains the same: sweating, nausea, panic, rapid heartbeat and worse. But spiders are harmless* and extremely beneficial invertebrates whose survival depends on avoiding such large, lumbering threats as ourselves. Join us for a session with a hynotherapist and zookeeper, and let us help you overcome your fears."

I tried this and it worked for me. The bravest thing you do is turn up, you can leave at any time, and bring a friend for emotional support. I even got my (older) sister and niece to go, and my sister considers me to be at best a useless irritant and waste of space.

* (My comment) Does not apply to Australian spiders whose bites are often deadly to humans, and in the UK there are 'false widow' spiders which can cause a bit of a problem.

If you don't fall for these extortionists' calls, they'll show up with USB sticks

MS Teams

Does this mean my occasional 'Teams' call with my ex colleagues (I connect from home on my personal device) is a danger?

How do I stop my former colleagues downloading all my personal data?

Election interlopers register 5K+ domains, hope to catch some voting phish

Re: Interesting pivot

The worry for the Democrats is that they win the November mid-term elections to Congress, but that Trump can claim there was so much fraud that he can annul the election results, or at least challenge them in court, denying the Democrats their majorities and ability to hold his administration to account. Trump has been looking for a way to 'win' the elections, and as his Iran war is going so badly, even for the USA (see the price of 'gasoline' at the pumps for citizens), he may need to override the democratic process. Coz lets face it, as soon as they can, the Democrats are going to impeach Trump on whatever charges they can think of.

Degrading all of the federal agencies which promote and protect fair elections is merely the precursor to claiming electoral fraud.

Russian spy agency says foreign spies turned officials' smartphones into surveillance devices

Politics

The 'story' here is surely that the Russians have admitted there have been successful attacks on senior people's mobile phones. I do not doubt that many agencies have tried to 'bug' phones, the Americans (in)famously bugged senior German politicians' phones a while ago (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24690055) .

My guess is that the Russians are using this to claim that they are the innocent ones under attack from whoever (I am sure that the Ukrainians would very much like to know what they are doing). The question is why they have made this public now. (One to which I do not have an answer.)

LLMs are closer to religion than they appear. Watch out for those who like it that way

LLMs and Religion

They do share one trait - they give the appearance of complete certainty. 'Thou shallt not question the Lord thy God' and such like. LLM's do not come up with a response stating a percentage or probability for their answer. The 'human' thing about 'Sonny' in 'I, Robot' was his doubt, the thing we fear is certainty in a system we cannot argue with, but strangely we humans do like certainty in our politicians (at least when telling us they know the answers to problems), our prelates likewise.

NASA to pull an IKEA by dropping tons of plastic, metal, and glass on the Moon

Re: But why?

"Because it's there."

George Leigh Mallory

https://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2024/03/because-its-there/

Experts pour cold borscht on Farage's Russian hack claim

Re: Blatant attempt to distract from the fact that...

Indeed, but Farage just wants to distract from the £5 meeelion 'gift' and the fact that the vast majority of the the UK population can only dream of ever having that much money*.

The Russians are just a convenient baddie to blame, IMHO. Putin would probably love Farage to become PM as the incompetence of the Reform UK's councillors brought to international politics would be a disaster Vladimir would benefit from greatly. As, I think Napoleon said, 'never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake'.

*Including yours truly. Contributions welcome and need not be declared as I am not a politician or public servant at this moment in time :o)

The SaaS-pocalypse can wait, Salesforce still has customers where it wants them

Costs of moving

Add the cost of moving data and the difficulty of replicating security, and the threat to the big SaaS application vendors looks minimal.

Just replicating the required functionality of an existing legacy application on a new platform can be a nightmare, never mind moving the data and preserving the security (and I write as a former security consultant). All those modified OS function calls, minor 'upgrades' in 'functionality', compatibility with the existing hardware like terminals, staff laptops etc that are to be retained, and the fact that many of the people who wrote the original code have probably moved on means that porting to a new environment is a major effort.

Just look at all those articles on this site about hardware and applications 'borked' by a Windows OS update. I worked for one customer that intended to 'lift and shift' its main software application from old to new hardware as the software was supposed to be 'portable'. Timeframe estimate 6 months. Two years later, they were still working on it.

A Russian speaker and jailbroken Gemini went on a hacking spree and emptied at least one MAGA victim's crypto wallets

Re: The campaign targeted the QAnon and MAGA communities

The problem is that now the MAGA and QAnon 'faithful' will be even more paranoid and untrusting of 'mainstream media' that has warned anyone who would listen that Cryptocurrencies and 'Get rich quick' schemes on the Internet are often scams. (And, yes, that does include The Register, sadly.)

(I do not invest in 'Crypto' as I do not understand what basis in actual real money it has.)

ESA boss tires of being dragged around by NASA mood swings

Contracts?

I suspect the problems are partially political. In the USA Congress actually decides on NASA's budget and priorities, irrespective of any agreements it has with the ESA about missions. Europeans do not get to vote in the USA, so they may not all care very much about international agreements to build things in space, unless industry in their state is involved. Some of them may event resent the idea of 'assistance' from foreigners. (Left pondians, please advise.)

I wonder if there are actual legal contracts between NASA and the ESA, but frankly, they are not going to take each other to court to settle any differences, are they? The suggested re-purposing of a proposed lunar satellite for the gateway into use for a Moonbase recently did not receive overwhelming support on this august web site, IIRC.

Man jailed for packing printer with something more expensive than toner: Cocaine

Aside: Smuggling

Or highly trained ants:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/may/13/smuggled-illegal-global-trade-giant-harvester-ants-kenya-asia-europe

And no, I did not believe it until I read it, either.

Laser printer or Ink-Jet??

Printer ink for ink-jet printers is, by volume, more expensive than high quality champagne, I believe, how does its price compare to cocaine?* (Asking for a 'friend".)

* I have no idea what is traded on my street. I have seen on several occasions a 'gentleman' waiting on the pavement near my home, and exchanging a small wad of money for an even smaller package (definitely NOT an Amazon or UPS delivery), but never asked the price or determined the nature of the 'merchandise'.

NHS England confirms: Palantir staff can access patient data

Re: Don’t look Ethel

Thank you, kind Sir, I very much enjoyed that short 'documentary' to which you provided a link, and am now knowledgeable regarding the aforementioned 'Ethel'.

Have one of these ---->

on me.

Re: Don’t look Ethel

Ethel? Who is Ethel?

It is: DON'T TELL HIM, PIKE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YMVPXmaKds

London’s BT Tower to get rooftop swimming pool

Re: Do you remember when...

I was recalling the following item and paragraph in chapter 6, section The Challengers, between tables 27 and 28 (on pages 297-8 in my edition), which rather stuck in my mind:

(Concerning Mussolini's Italy) "... Dominated by its cautious and inadequately trained officers and lacking a backbone of experienced NCO's, the army's plight in the event of a Great Powers war was hopeless and the navy (except the enterprising midget submarines) was little better off. .. there was no chief of staff committee to coordinate plans between the services or to discuss (let alone settle) defence priorities.

In 1939 and 1940, the western Allies frequently considered the pros and cons of having Italy fighting on Germany's side rather than remaining neutral. On the whole, the British chiefs of staff preferred Italy to be kept out of the war, so as to preserve peace in the Mediterranean and Near East; but there were powerful counterarguments, which in retrospect seem to have been correct. Rarely in the history of human conflict has it been argued that the entry of an additional foe would hurt one's enemy more than oneself; but Mussolini's Italy was, in that way at least, unique."

Re: Do you remember when...

In his book, 'The rise and fall of the great powers'*, Paul Kennedy remarks that the German Navy put forward exercise plans one year that would have used 90% of global annual oil production. He also claims that the Allies were considering that the addition of Mussolini's Italy to the opposition was actually good, as Italy and the Italian armed forces were somewhat of a drain on the third reach's resources.

As for operation Sealion plans, you have to remember that the first rule in a vicious dictatorship is that you must have someone else to blame when it all goes tits up. The planners were merely making sure that failure could not be attributed to them or the Wehrmacht. ...

"Well, mein Führer, had the navy and the Luftwaffe done what we asked and delivered the 40 divisions according to the plan you approved, it would have succeeded. Doenitz and Göring will, I am sure, explain their failure. ... "

* ISBN 0-040909019-4

Re: Just be cause you can do something ...

OR, they could use it as an energy store? Use 'free' solar power to pump the water to the top of the tower, and then let it flow down through turbines to generate power quickly when wanted?

Like that place in Wales:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station

"The Dinorwig Power Station (Welsh: Gorsaf Bŵer Dinorwig, pronounced [dɪˈnɔrwɪɡ]), known locally as Electric Mountain, or Mynydd Gwefru, is a pumped-storage hydroelectric scheme, near Dinorwig, Llanberis in Snowdonia national park in Gwynedd, north Wales. "

Re: Do you remember when... re: Copyright

During WW2 the BBC broadcast Beethoven's symphony number 5 quite frequently from an excellent recording. (The opening was alleged to include the morse code of 'V' for victory.) After the war they had to pay royalties to the orchestra which owned the broadcast rights - the Berliner Philharmonic.

Re: Do you remember when...

Nah, just get the postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail for the public opening. I went there when I was 5 years old with my sister and grandparents and got a 'presentation pack', probably still got it somewhere.

https://www.collectgbstamps.co.uk/explore/issues/?issue=71

Young evil genius forces hamster to run on wheel to power his gadgets

Re: Motor as a turbine ?

Cambridge Dictionary

https://dictionary.cambridge.org › dictionary › turbine

29 Apr 2026 — a type of machine in which a wheel is driven by the movement of liquid or gas so that power is produced:

GENERATOR | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary

Cambridge Dictionary

https://dictionary.cambridge.org › dictionary › generator

GENERATOR definition: 1. a machine that produces electrical power

The network password was a key plot point in one of the most famous movies of all time

Re: World Password Day

Aaaaarrrggghhhh!!!!!

You are correct.

I am an idiot.

(Puts on tin-foil Dunce hat, stands in corner until school ends.)

World Password Day

According to the BBC Radio 4 and 3 presenters, today, 7th April is 'Password Day'*, when we are all supposed to think carefully about password security, and, according to the head of the UK's NCSC, change to passcodes where possible.

* https://www.infosec.ox.ac.uk/article/celebrating-world-password-day-strengthening-your-digital-security

Mars rover hits rocky snag with power tool

Aside - Home 'D I Y'

"just like drilling into a wall at home: a bit more wall than expected came away"

It is like those 'Do It Yourself' manuals from a few decades ago. Everything looks great in the pictures in the book*, until you discover that 'Do It Yourself' is often more 'Do It TO Yourself' as far as personal injuries are concerned. I once decided to re-tile my bathroom. All was going really well, I had bought some tiles, adhesive, grout, and had a really good tool to remove those tiles that had not already fallen off the wall. I even had some stout boards to protect the bathtub from any tiles and debris that I dropped. Then I started removing the tiles. The image in the book of what I was supposed to have - a beautifully smooth plastered wall was more like a war zone IRL. So I needed some plaster. Now I was not buying enough raw plaster to redo my entire flat, just some ready-mixed stuff that sets really quickly and really stinks. Only use in a well ventilated area - fat chance, the bathroom has no windows just an extractor fan. Cue the worst headache I have ever had, and that includes the one I got from drinking 'Carling Special brew' once (I'm a cider man). (hence D'Oh icon.)

So yeah, I feel for the NASA team, well done and all that.

As for sticking it in and 'jiggling it about a bit', see The Amnesty International sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYlaoSZSndg , Enjoy!

* Picture books are not just for children**, you know.

** Also known as 'kids' these days which term is more correctly used for juvenile goats, by pedants such as yours truly.

Brit mathematician lets AI agent loose with credit card – cue password leaks, CAPTCHA chaos and more

Mistakes and 'learning'

"learning from its mistakes"

I have often wondered what that actually means in practice . Do these things learn to make fewer mistakes, lesser mistakes, or just much, much bigger ones? I have lost count of the times a government official has claimed after the publication of yet another damning report on official failures concerning child care, building regulations, health care, government procurement, corruption, racism, homophobia, misogyny, anti-semitism, regulation of public services etc. that "lessons will be learned", But the only lesson that actually seems to be learned is that getting caught doing naughty things is embarrassing (for a while), and then you get a peerage and all is forgotten.

Re: Wrong woman

If you want to know a bit more about some of the women in Greek Myths, try reading 'Pandora's Jar' by Natalie Haynes, ISBN 978-1-5098-7311-1 (hardback). Has some interesting things about lots of the more famous ones, although no chapter on Cassandra. Also, after the fall of Troy, Agamemnon took Cassandra as one of his 'prizes' back to 'meet the wife', Clytemnestra. (Spoiler alert: It does not end well.)

If the vote you rocked, your personal info can be grokked

Re: Which country?

Here in the UK the results are declared by a returning officer, I don't know what other information is available publicly, apart from the electoral roll, which registered voters can decide to have their details omitted from the published version. We get told the number of votes case for each candidate and the number of spoilt ballots.

Of course each voter gets a card with their Electoral Register number in it, which is recorded with the number of the ballot paper you receive when you go to vote. The authorities can therefore determine how each person voted, if they really want to. This is to enable the investigation of illegal acts, such as selling your vote, or other shenanigans, I think.

NASA boss: make Pluto a planet again

Re: At the time..

the issue is that we want to have strict definitions with clear distinctions between what is and what is therefore not within the definition. But the Universe is very complicated and often produces examples that do not fit in with our conceived notions of what is possible.

The word 'planet' is derived from a term meaning 'wanderer' as they were originally stars that wandered about the sky and this distinguished them from the 'fixed stars'. Pluto is definitely a 'wanderer', but whether it is technically a 'dwarf' wanderer is for others to determine, not me, but I would like to know what scientific difference it makes.

Despite proposed science cuts, NASA boss says 'We haven't canceled anything yet'

Re: Disturbing statement

The thing is that the US and Israeli military had already spent the money on the weapons, so it counted as 'sunk costs'. NASA's budget is future spending, so can be reduced to produce 'savings' in the next financial year's budgets, which will be constrained by having to pay for replacement ordnance and military vehicles (those aircraft destroyed when the downed US airmen were rescued are not, to my belief 'repairable').