Notices by Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE (timwardcam@c.im)

@kibcol1049 Yet another proposed bonkers technical solution to a people problem.

It's the guns. Get rid of the guns.

@Huntn00 @lankohr @kibcol1049 It's also differing understandings of the world "freedom", as to whether it means "freedom to" or "freedom from".

Americans take it to mean the "freedom to" shoot whoever you like.

Most other peoples take it to mean the "freedom from" getting shot by other people.

@Robbins @steter 'Cos they're doing a really good job of distracting the meeja from the endless Trump rallies that are going on at the moment?

@libreoffice I'm now using the latest LibreOffice with hardware acceleration turned off. I'm working with a large (for me) spreadsheet, not quite 100,000 rows, and doing a lot of scrolling up and down. Compared to the previous version of LibreOffice, with hardware acceleration turned on, the scrolling is faster, smoother, and overall less clunky. In fact scrolling now behaves pretty much as I'd expect, whereas the previous behaviour was rather disappointing for someone used to Excel.

@libreoffice Is there any logging or suchlike that I could add to the bug report?

@libreoffice And then it works with "disable hardware accelerations".

Hardware accelerations?? - this is an office suite, not a high performance game. Shouldn't broken flaky experimental features like that be opt-in for techies, rather than default on for innocent word processor and spreadsheet users?

@libreoffice It does run in safe mode (from the command line, of course, as I can't get at any menus).

@libreoffice Windows 11. A couple of days ago I was running the then latest version. On starting it, it said it was updating to a new version (I wasn't asked whether I wanted it to - I didn't want it to, I just wanted to open a file).

Having done that, or failed to do it, I don't know which, it now doesn't work at all. Open the application or open a file and nothing visible happens. As I happen to be a techie I tried looking in Task Manager, where I saw two, or sometimes three, processes get started, but they apparently sit there doing nothing at 0% CPU.

The shortcut on my desktop is labelled "LibreOffice 25.8, which presumably failed to get updated on a previous update. There is a file called "C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\LibreOffice_26.2.4.2_Win_x86-64.msi" dated 30/06/2026 (again, not something a non-techie Office user would know to look at), which is presumably something to do with the attempted update that broke everything.

@libreoffice I have filed a bug report but it doesn't look as if anyone has looked at it. https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=172644

@libreoffice Given that the last update broke my LibreOffice so that it no longer runs, I'm interested in (1) whether the August update will fix whatever was just broken, and (2) how I will update to the new version given that LibreOffice won't load?

In the meantime it's just as well I haven't yet cancelled the MS Office subscription, isn't it.

@jwildeboer Why would an AI company need millions of copies of the same data?

@Em0nM4stodon No, their goal is not to show their content. They don't give a shit whether you read their content or not. Their goal is to make money, by whatever means.

@Em0nM4stodon If competently done (which I agree is a bit of an "if") they'll have numbers which support the way they're doing it.

@Kimberley Back in my day, one didn't seem to have to apply for a PhD place, I was just told that one was open to me (in the same institution where I was finishing my first degree), with X as supervisor.

Then I was chatting to Y, another academic in the department. "Y'know, X's students don't usually end up with a PhD" he said.

I was too politically naïve to understand what he was saying, and did nothing in response. I started the PhD course with X as supervisor and dropped out after a year.

I realised some considerable time later that what Y was suggesting was that I should request a change of supervisor, presumably that Y should be my supervisor instead. But he couldn't say that explicitly - it would be unethical to poach someone else's student - it would have to look like my idea.

So, to answer your question, I should have asked "can I have Y as my supervisor?"

@datenwolf @dalias @aeva It was ever thus. A typical three year academic contract consisted of (and still does for all I know)

* one year scrabbling around to get the grants to buy the necessary kit

* one year doing actual work

* one year applying for the next three year job.

@freci @aral Same with Twitter. So my account there still exists but has been abandoned for some years.

@skinnylatte Hadn't noticed that, although I've probably cycled past it numerous times. But then the shops along there pop up and disappear again quite rapidly.

@adammoe2022 Oh, might that be a flaw in the American Dream?

@adammoe2022 Weird. I thought the USA was The Land Of The Free, where you could have anything you liked. Provided, of course, that you were willing to pay for it.

@ccferrie Farmers have only used fuel for tractors for a tiny fraction of the industry's history. I'm not saying that they could all revert to horses overnight, but hey, some contingency planning perhaps?