Notices by Andy Wootton (woo@fosstodon.org)

@steve @OneInterestingFact @StarkRG @10tothe22 @holdenweb @NormanDunbar @kibcol1049 It is an expensive choice but we can't yet live without it under certain weather conditions. Dark, windless days are bad for solar and wind generation. We don't have sufficient energy storage capacity.

@steve @OneInterestingFact @StarkRG @10tothe22 @holdenweb @NormanDunbar @kibcol1049 Yesbut: maintenance is expensive, particularly for a company asset that brings in very little income that's reducing but may provide other services. "It's complicated" and will require massive re-negotiations of market rules with negotiators who understand the markets much better than politicians. I heard a senior manager say it takes 5 years to educate an energy minister and they don't stay in the job that long.

@holdenweb @steve @OneInterestingFact @StarkRG @10tothe22 @NormanDunbar @kibcol1049 The Far Right in the UK have spent the past few years blaming immigrants for everything, particularly Muslims, to distract the ignorant from the failure of Brexit. This probably feels familiar. The same people protect Israel, to make sure nobody accuses them of anti-Semitism. Our xenophobes don't do analogies.

@thomasfuchs The UK is planning to drill for more North Sea oil and gas to burn. :-/. Our current political parties must have been bought.

@inthehands I believe I have ADHD so, more than most people, I depend on the connections between items, even when I can't remember what the items are called. I think and make notes in graphs of connected ideas but I've noticed that others think, or perhaps communicate, in trees or in linear narratives about any 'subject'. I don't accept that there are separate subjects. "Everything is deeply intertwingled", as Ted Nelson wrote in 1974.

"Naughty" Nige has reacted to falling popularity by calling in the Neo-Nazis, if anyone still doubts that he's willing to be 'a bit fasch' to win:
https://bylinetimes.com/2026/06/03/the-neo-nazi-and-far-right-coalition-that-converged-on-southampton-over-henry-nowaks-murder/
He actually "rage" bated his trap to dog-whistle them in.
Are British voters ashamed of betraying those who died in WW2 to see off Nazis yet?

@janneke @ekaitz_zarraga When I started coding there was only proprietary code, so I worked on it. Was that unethical? :-)

@ekaitz_zarraga You are arguing with something I didn't say. FOSS doesn't have to do good. Proprietary software vendors don't have to be evil.

@ekaitz_zarraga @janneke Writing software is unethical?

@janneke John McCarthy's original definition of AI wasn't very ambitious, so yes, we have. Machines can do things that look like a human might have done them.

@lankohr @martinlentink @kibcol1049 I learned from Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu Linux that patents were invented, in Italy, to encourage the sharing of ideas after 'idea hording' within families caused several chemical processes to be lost.

@davep @gareth @naturepunk @kibcol1049 That's still a finite energy source though the time-scales are much longer than I'd bothered to think about :-).

@Infoseepage @ZackPolanski Have you served on a jury? Most people I know who have are astonished at the prejudice and lack of listening and thinking skills displayed some other jurors. Be careful what you wish for. I'd like to see graduates in something other than PPE and Ministers who understand their brief. MPs need to know about more than politicking. They don't need to be experts but they need to ask the right questions of experts.

@dick_turpin I just remembered my second job. My team had to demo/teach some Civil Engineers how to do something computery. My boss told me to leave one, the head of department. In my innocence, I asked why. He said 'they' would be afraid of someone in my position witnessing that they didn't know something. My mind was blown by that fragility of confidence.

@dick_turpin Talking to "technicians" is below their pay-grade. They have a person who does that sort of thing for them. I'm not a big fan of hierarchy either. :-)

@aral Yesbut: I don't think that would stop Right Wing propagandists using your toot as evidence that 'All Lefties are anti-Semites'. It doesn't need to be true to re-enforce prejudices and prevent people listening to you. They aren't looking for truth or logic, just ammunition.

@aral I don't think you mean "Israel" but "Israel's government and anyone who supports it". There are good Israelis; to think otherwise would be anti-Semitism.

@aral Yes, but no. It should be possible to organise capitalism so people are rewarded for having and risking capital, without punishing those who don't have it, we just didn't choose to do that because our electoral systems are 'winner takes all" too.

@mattly This is also my experience of "Uninteruptable", unless you include UTP tests, which failed.

@bmacDonald94 And "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_Samuel_Johnson (a young lad local to me, though on a different timeline.)