lans changed after the weather decided to become nice and sunny (blue skies), at least for about half an hour. We went to feed the birds, squirrels soon joined them, and even a crow came (which is highly unusual). Then the drizzle started and we got back.

I recently decided that coverage related to online abuse against my family and I, especially the lawfare, merits two parts per day.

Why two?

We just have so much material and I don’t want it to take us decades to cover. I want to move on and covers science/tech.

Years ago the plan the plan was to cover this 2-3 times per week, now it’s more than 5 times faster.

Recent:

think I was about 3 when I was in a particular place and time and can still vaguely remember that place and time. I also think that psychologists deem this to be normal, based on the belief people cannot have any vivid memories of them being 1 or 2 (belief; we cannot “read” brains). I don’t know why, but it’s something to do with memory retention in the brain as it ages. I also think that recollection requires rehearsal, so in order for me to remember some moment from age 3 I’d need to recall that at age 5, then 7, 10 and so on. It reinforces that memory.

The same is true for adults in their professional lives. Without exercising some skill regularly, that skill will be lost.

This is one strong argument against using slop, either in a business (collective skills/retention thereof) or as an individual.

Also see this new blog post: If you don’t have the factories, you lose the expertise

Ignore how he uses for slop for images (hypocrisy when it comes to LLMs for code, too). To quote: “If you have the factories, sooner or later, you get the designers. If you don’t have the factories, you lose the expertise. Or you never get it. There aren’t that many people left in the Silicon Valley capable of working on silicon. You can design a chip from California. Making one is done where the fab is. You can get a PhD in robotics in Quebec City, but you won’t be designing robots unless you fly over to where they are made. Zoom calls won’t cut it at scale.”

realise that the 2026 autumn equinox is upon us (Source: BBC) and it’s not the same as solstice. Quoting the article: “The equinox will occur at 01:06 BST on 23 September, according to Royal Museums Greenwich. It is a precise moment in time when the Sun crosses the celestial equator and neither hemisphere is tilted towards or away from the Sun, meaning day and night are roughly equal in length across the world.”

Goodbye, summer.

think that based on my records, I started my Ph.D. on “Tuesday 23rd September, 2003″ or maybe that was just my first meeting (21st September was likely my first day). I wrote this report a week later. Prior to that I had met or “interviewed” – if that’s the right term – 3 people in that department regarding a project and/or supervisor (I think that was Jim, Sue, and Chris).

I’m glad, in hindsight, that I chose Chris. Despite him being a demanding perfectionist (months later a student of his, Gareth, committed suicide), he did inspire or encourage certain traits I still have. I remember a prior student, Kate, complaining about his attitude in a dinner, saying he’s “always right” (cynically, something to that effect), but his track record or credentials compensated for this attitude.

Having high expectations can be a burden on others.

23 years later Chris is still alive (in his 80s) and shows up in fairly new videos of the same university where he studied and worked for about 60 years. He’s still professionally active, at 80 or above. That part of him I really appreciate. I hope that I too can do the same things 40 years from now.

Chris was always a heavy drinker of coffee, who clearly didn’t get enough sleep. This seems not to have shortened his life. He did what he loved.

he irrelevant loser who sends my wife and I veiled threats via social control media (all he ever does to people is threaten them; he does so even to his own spouse) is talking to himself again. Nobody bothers reading what he says, yet he insists that he has reputation. When it comes to technology, 2-3 days were not enough for him to fix a laptop and he simply gave up. This means that his lack of reputation in tech is also self-evident. He has no publications in that area because he is a pretending-at-best socialite and a thug, a bully.

Dealing with bullies is a common problem. There are ways to deal with it.

Having become known for restricted boot infamy, he is not popular. As a purveyor of restricted boot (who landed restricted boot in Linux), he’s known for sucking up to monopolies. He acts like them, too.

ast month our government formally advised people to prepare for climate problems (natural or man-made disasters) and/or war. I think it meant the latter, but officials tried to avoid causing panic or panic-buying. It basically urged stockpiling, focusing on things like water, canned food, maybe essential (life-sustaining) medicine.

Putting aside food and the NHS, let’s focus on water today.

In the UK, rain-catching barrels (or very large plastic containers) are unlawful. I didn’t check why, but I think it’s for sanitary reasons (people drinking from it, getting ill, asking NHS to intervene, i.e. becoming a burden on the state’s capacity/budget).

Suppose a war broke out, water supplies got disrupted, and people here would rather die than recycle and drink urine (a feasible survival strategy by the way).

In a country like ours, for two adults, you can assume 1) no tap water, no sewer, but waste can be managed another way/s (liquid absorbed by soil if you’re not in a high-floor apartment); 2) about 5 litres per day for a couple or 150 litres consumed per month; 3) water is preferable (over other liquids); 4) insulation needed (for all liquids). Boiling not an option if power is out.

For a typical household, water usually runs out first; food is less critical than water because we’re about 80% water. People tend to underestimate how much water they consume (digested, not washing/bathing related usage) and people can consume their own muscle and fats (the body metabolise its own mass). It’s all OK, except for water…

No doubt water is essential.

I am not saying we’ll 1) have a war soon and 2) it will disrupt the water supply.

I am only describing a scenario where people stockpile the wrong thing/s. Or prioritise (weight-wise) what’s more expensive and less critical.

n some sense, today was a special day.

It’s about science, not football.

I did not watch this London match, I only followed the score, hoping both teams would lose points (more so Arsenal).

While keeping an eye on the score I noticed having been cited in a major publication. As it turns out, an old article of mine has just been cited in ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and it’s about Gemini Protocol where my writings became more prominent in recent years:

t is arguably bizarre that some of the more/most computer-literate people are trying hardest to avoid computers where those computers objectively introduce risk.

In the case of banks, I still receive statements in the post, I never use a bank’s “app” (I don’t have a “smart” “phone”) and when something important needs to get done, I’ll quite likely go to a local branch of the bank.

Before computer ownership and Internet connection was simply assumed (now the same for “smart” “phones”) banks provided actual services and were held responsible for mistakes they made.

So we’ve lost something.

Each time Garrett is called out on his lack of qualifications in security he’d post some circle-jerking self-praise and buzzword-dropping in social control media. To be clear, asserting that work on ACPI trains you at security like insisting that writing a CS thesis trains you to be a good physician.

The skills of physicians are very different. They need not write theses. Diagnosis is very important.

“It’s worse,” a friend has told me, as “the “security” degrees in the EU, even the PhD theses which I have seen, don’t cite any of the recognised, foundational articles or authors. It’s all a circle jerk of bullshit. But Microsoft likes it that way.”

Nowadays they call back doors “security”. Real security experts get marginalised.

Don’t claim to be what you are not. It won’t end well.

ianne’s birthday is 4 days away (ahead) and we plan to go travel to be merry. A week later it’s Bank Holiday, then it’s end of summer and end of our holiday based on the “meteorological summer” definition.

We won’t let inappropriate communications interfere with our holidays, we’re instead getting on with our lives while keeping productive.