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18 July 2025

repost: How do people learn to hate?

There's a way to learn to hate and many religions brainwash people into learning how to hate and it always starts with the little things:

  • Learn to hate specific foods. Get fussy. Throw tantrums.
  • Learn to hate colours.
  • Learn to hate topics.
  • Learn to hate people wearing colours that you hate
  • Learn to hate other people for liking things that you don't like.
  • Learn to hate people in restaurants eating things that you don't like.
  • Learn to hate people who are enjoying things that you don't like

That's the general idea… very soon, you will be able to hate anyone you choose to hate because you've forgotten how to like things. Your every waking thought would be about hate and it would consume you. People will use their hate to prejudge others.

23 June 2025

This is actually fantastic

For a very long time, I have thought that if something could be computed at compile time, it should be computed at compile time. 

It looks like C++ is now advancing seriously in that direction.

10 February 2025

LLM Hallucinations

Perhaps too amusing to not share...

>>> In the sci-fi series, Red Dwarf, what can kill a curry?

<think>
Okay, so I'm trying to figure out this question: "In the sci-fi series, Red Dwarf, what can kill a curry?" Alright, first of all, I need to recall the show Red Dwarf because it's been a while since I watched it. It's a British sci-fi sitcom that's been around for decades now. The main characters are two aliens, John and Tony, who live in a spaceship called the B2, which is kind of like their home away from home.

Now, the question mentions "what can kill a curry." Curries are these dishes with spices, right? They're pretty common in many cultures around the world. So, thinking about what could potentially kill a curry in this sci-fi context—maybe something from space or some alien element?

Wait, but curries themselves aren't harmful unless they have something toxic in them. Maybe it's more about the settings or situations on the ship that could affect a curry. For example, if there was an accident involving radioactive material or chemicals, maybe that would make a curry dangerous.

Alternatively, since Red Dwarf is a sci-fi show, perhaps something from outer space could be involved—like a meteorite or some kind of alien organism. Or maybe it's more about the crew's actions, like if they accidentally release something harmful into a food supply.

I should also consider that in the series, there are a lot of gags and funny situations because of the aliens' backgrounds and their interactions with Earth people. So maybe the "curry" isn't a real dish but just part of a joke or a made-up scenario for the show's humor.

Maybe I'm overcomplicating it. Perhaps in one of the episodes, they have a situation where a curry gets affected by something on the ship, like an experiment gone wrong that causes it to become dangerous.

Alternatively, could it be referencing a joke from the show? For example, maybe there's a play on words or a pun related to curries and some spaceship element.

I should also think about the possible answers people might give based on what they know. I've heard it before that in Red Dwarf, something like a banana could kill a curry because of some toxic reaction. But wait, is that accurate? Or was that from another show?

No, probably not. Maybe it's more about the crew experimenting with something that makes curries go bad when exposed to certain conditions on the ship.

Alternatively, maybe it's referencing a specific episode where they have to deal with something like a toxic food spill or an explosion in one of their experiments involving curries.

I think I've heard before that there was an episode where John and Tony accidentally create a dangerous chemical which affects all the food on the ship, including curries. So maybe that's what it's referring to.

In summary, my understanding is that in Red Dwarf, due to various mishaps or experiments involving curries, they become dangerous because of some toxic substance introduced into them by the crew. </think>

The answer to "What can kill a curry" in the sci-fi series *Red Dwarf* involves situations where curries on board the spaceship B2 become dangerous. This typically happens due to experiments gone wrong, introducing toxic substances or harmful conditions that render the curries unsafe. Specifically, in an episode of the show, John and Tony accidentally create a chemical that affects all their food, making it dangerous for consumption.

**Answer:** In *Red Dwarf*, curries on board the spaceship B2 can become dangerous due to experiments gone wrong by the crew, such as introducing toxic substances or harmful conditions. Specifically, in one episode, an accident leads to a toxic chemical affecting all their food, including curries.

26 April 2024

The build process

In my opinion, the build process should be: 

* Compile 
* Build packages
* Test packages. (On a separate instance from the build)

My opinion from reading
SSH Backdoor from Compromised XZ Utils Library https://www.infoq.com/news/2024/04/xz-backdoor/

31 July 2023

Random thought, tweet as a generic verb/noun

Now the company formerly known as Twitter no longer wishes to use "tweet", it is entirely possible for the remainder of the world's population to use "tweet" as a generic verb/noun to indicate an individual posting on some short-message social media service...

Example:
I tweeted on Telegram...
My Facebook tweet ...

Thus completing the dilution and destruction of the Twitter brand.

03 March 2023

Why is Google's blogger so broken?

I can continue to post articles using their Android app but it seems impossible to do it on their revamped web site because it seems to believe that I don't have any sites.

19 March 2022

Review of Amazon order which Amazon rejected

Since Amazon has refused to post review of this product, I shall instead post my opinion here:
This order clearly indicates in the description sold by "Tiago's Store" that the product is 188g total for the full sized product.

The product I received is clearly marked as being substantially less than 188g. It is clearly marked as being 149g.
There appears to be no means to correct this mistake or even provide a pro-rata refund of the missing product to make good the transaction.

For some reason, Amazon's review reviewers believe that my complaint falls into the category of "It appears you reviewed shipping or packaging experience." I'm not complaining about the shipping nor the box that the product arrived within. My complaint is only that I did not receive the product that I had expected and nothing to do with the shipping or packaging experience.

In my opinion, the seller "Tiago's Store" is actively defrauding customers by deliberately misrepresenting their stock and Amazon is doing no one any favours by defending such behaviour.

If I was in the UK receiving this product, I would be at least protected by the Trade and Descriptions Act and the Sale of Goods Act. It is unfortunate that there does not appear to be any equivalent consumer protection laws in the USA. Sure, there are laws with titles which claim to protect consumers but just like this sale, the titles of laws in the USA are purely aspirational and are not actually representative of what the law provides.

01 March 2022

Product Documentation

No closed source product should ever display an error which the docs do not explain how to remediate.


If people or corporations want to be lazy with documenting their product, they should at least open source it.

17 June 2021

Random thought: Fixing Java

If Oracle simply changes Java so that null.toString() returns the string "null" instead of throwing a NullPointerException, they will probably solve the majority of mysterious bugs in Java programs.

08 June 2021

Of blips and blobs...

Random thought . o O ( databases have blobs of binary data... Why not have blips of binary code? Blobs and blips... Blips and blobs... )

18 May 2021

Random thought: False Hope of Extensibility

Common Java anti-pattern is to name some classes as "DefaultFooClass" when there's actually no way to use any other implementation.

I think it should be called the "False Hope of Extensibility" anti-pattern.

01 May 2020

Standards have fallen. Disappointed by IEEE

Personally, I'm disappointed that the IEEE is reporting this as a good idea. It's not and I'll just outline a few of the issues:
- Horribly exothermic, a lot of lost energy.
- Did I say lost energy? Making aluminium from aluminium oxide takes a lot of energy.
- Hydrogen embrittling of the gasoline engine.
- Accelerated corrosion of the exhaust manifold.

Come on! This shouldn't even have passed a basic engineering review. This is basic A Level chemistry!


Photo: Kelly Wilkinson/Indy Star/USA TODAY Network/Imagn Content Services
Kurt Koehler, founder and president of AlGalCo, shows his HOT (Hydrogen on Tap) system, Thursday, April 9, 2020. It sits in a City of Carmel Street Department truck.

25 March 2019

Wooting LEDs from Java


While waiting for things at work, threw together a bit of Java code to tinker with the keyboard LEDs.. Pointless but fun. 😁 Note to self: Should make time to open source it this weekend so that other people can waste their time.
Posted by Antony T Curtis on Wednesday, 20 March 2019

https://github.com/atcurtis/wooting-java
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/wooting/
https://www.instagram.com/wootingkb/?hl=en

21 February 2017

Lazy UPS drivers, again.

#Amazon #UPS #UPSfail Whenever it rains, their drivers are so lazy that they just mark packages as delivered without actually delivering them. Not the first time it has happened.

22 September 2016

Open Source Silicon?

A random thought:

I think it would be interesting if there was an open-source chip, perhaps based upon RISC-V, maybe based upon cores from SiFive, which are as easy to wire together into a mesh network with little-to-no external glue logic, to make massively parallel computing a commodity. Think of it like an open source Transputer. The Transputer processors had 4 I/O buses which could each directly interface with other processors, peripherals or there was a switch.
Today, we should be able to do better. Imagine a processor module which has perhaps 64 interconnected cores per package and 8 I/O channels and perhaps a couple of gigs of DRAM.

Hobbyists will then be able to experiment with different computing topologies:
or even

What makes this interesting is that this has been a largely dormant area of computer science for more than 20 years and I think with the possibility of open silicon, there's a lot of exciting areas for research and hobby tinkering.

07 September 2016

Java Rock Stars

Opinion:
The rock stars of the Java world never stay on a project long enough, departing immediately when it starts to need cleanup. That way, they're getting the accolades for their achievements and of the people left behind, managers think "these guys are so much less productive than the rock star; we were lucky to have the rock star to get the project started."
Discuss.

14 August 2016

Java 8 Streams

This code is certainly more terse from using Java 8 streams but is it more readable than it would be otherwise?
public synchronized void unregister(AsciiString uri, ChannelHandler handler) {
  Optional
      .ofNullable(_handlerMap.get(uri))
      .flatMap(l -> Optional.ofNullable(
          l.stream().filter(p -> p.second == handler)
           .filter(l::remove).findAny().isPresent() ? l : null))
      .filter(List::isEmpty)
      .ifPresent(l -> _handlerMap.remove(uri, l));}

28 March 2016

Upgrading a Rapide Lite 200 with a Smoothieboard 5x

The Rapide Lite 200 originally came with a RUMBA based controller board which is based upon an Atmel ATMEGA based microcontroller. However, I had encountered issues where the board's USB interface would reset during a print and thus ruining a print. The controller board uses a smaller Atmel microcontroller to provide the serial to USB interface and it's possible that there is some instability there.


Original Rapide controller


I had a Smoothieboard from a Kickstarter which I had intended to use for a CNC router project but I decided to repurpose it for upgrading the Rapide printer. The Smoothieware web site does have extensive information on making use of the Smoothieboard.

Smoothieboard 5x

The printer has 5 stepper motors, of which two are used to drive the y-axis. I could have chosen to drive both from the same driver chip but I decided to drive each of the stepper motors from their own driver. To make the two stepper motors step together, a few links had to be soldered onto the Smoothieboard. In order to keep things as simple as possible, I decided to keep the order in which the stepper motors plug onto the controller board the same. I also soldered the same connectors to the Smoothieboard to avoid needing to recrimp new connectors onto the cables.

Three jumpers centered
The were changes in the order of the power connectors. the power for the main board which was connected to the terminal labelled MAIN-PWR was then connected to the main board power input on the right of this image shown as 12-24v:
Be mindful to make sure that the polarity is correct.

The HB-PWR cables was then connected to the PWR IN connector at the bottom centre of the board and JP28 was jumpered for the fan power. The heater bed HB-OUT was then connected to P2_7 connector and the head heater HE0 connected to P2_5.

The thermistor and endstops were plugged in as one would expect.
Thermistor and endstop connections on original controller board

Initial install of smoothieboard
When I had initially set up the smoothieboard, I did not have the recommended 5V regulator installed so I had used a separate regulator board for the 5V power. I later installed the recommended 5V regulator (marked as VBB). I also ended up securing the board using adhesive PCB standoffs.

Cables tidied a bit and heatsinks added
The firmware install and upgrade is simply a case of putting the firmware.bin file in the root directory of a DOS formatted SDCARD. Instructions are available at: http://smoothieware.org/flashing-smoothie-firmware

A copy of my current config.txt is available here: config.txt

I do have my Smoothieboard plugged into my network so I have the ethernet enabled in my config.