This is based on the theory that it is easier for an advanced civilisation to adjust the orbit and/or rotation of their planet than it is to program computers to correctly deal with fucking leap-years.
SETI is the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. They use massive radio-telescopes to search the sky for signs of intelligent life. But the sky is big. Where should we point the telescopes to improve our chances of detecting a signal?
Rather than point at random stars, or promising looking constellations, I propose a more scientific approach:
Find a planet where the length of the year is an integer multiple of the length of the day.
@Gargron oh yeah. And every time they say sorry and pay it a few days later. I don't need the hassle, so will drop them as a client. Life's too short to work with people who aren't professional.
I'm trying to get my head round HTTP Signatures as they're used extensively in the Fediverse. Conceptually, they're relatively straightforward. You send me a normal HTTP request. For example, you want to POST something to https://example.com/data You send me these headers: POST /data Host: example.com Date: Sa…
Any computer program can be designed to run from a single file if you architect it wrong enough! I wanted to create the simplest possible Fediverse server which can be used as an educational tool to show how ActivityPub / Mastodon works. The design goals were: Upload a single PHP file to the server. No […]
We live in the future now. It is OK to use Unicode everywhere. It seems bizarre to me that modern Internet services sometimes "forget" that there's a world outside the Anglosphere. Some people have the temerity to speak foreign languages! And some of those languages have accents on their letters!! Even worse, some …
@drdrmc@neil I think you slightly misunderstand what it means to be an advisor inside Government. When I was there, we produced "negative" advice all the time. We pointed out the limits of what was possible, what didn't work, what the risks were of implementing something.
But, ultimately, elected officials make those decisions because they're the ones answerable to the electorate.
Longer hair than you.Got the ⏻ symbol into #Unicode.Open Standards / Source / Data geek.Known as @Edent on most social platforms.Did an MSc in using the Metaverse for analytics.Bit obsessed with #SolarPower but not quite a #SolarPunk.