The real and meaningful astronomical event

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.

Cursing all day long like a drunkard

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.

Water is life

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.

High-profile publisher

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:

Outsourcing of the work to the customers

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.

think there are many people in society that are imposters and very well know they are imposters. So what bothers them most are critics and people who expose that they’re imposters, as those latter people represent a risk to them. Sometimes those are colleagues.

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.