Contractor UK Bulletin Board - https://forums.contractoruk.com/ en Wed, 05 Aug 2026 18:52:58 GMT vBulletin 60 images/misc/rss.png Contractor UK Bulletin Board - https://forums.contractoruk.com/ Are you a mosquito magnet? https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151369-are-you-a-mosquito-magnet.html Wed, 05 Aug 2026 08:55:13 GMT
Now we're closing to understanding why. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-people...-unbitten.html

Yes, I have left an open goal... ]]> General NotAllThere https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151369-are-you-a-mosquito-magnet.html Monday Links from the Gap Between Teams Meetings vol. DCCCLXV https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151366-monday-links-from-the-gap-between-teams-meetings-vol-dccclxv.html Mon, 03 Aug 2026 12:18:20 GMT Back to work after my week off to find that a critical bug surfaced bang on 09:00 this morning (not an automated thing, just somebody doing something then), and the process for deploying things has been changed in my absence so I no longer know how to ship the fix. Still, at least somebody has lost...
  • Toxic Lies - ”For decades, workers at a nuclear facility in Kentucky were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. Management assured them nothing was wrong. Then four friends risked everything to reveal the truth.” Apparently capitalism is the best of all possible systems
  • What would “first life” see in their night sky? - Ethan Siegel looks into an interesting question: ”Human beings only see the Universe now: 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang. What would the earliest life, anywhere, have seen instead?”
  • Study Reveals How Avocados Reverse Sexes Throughout the Day - Trans fruit: ”Some avocados are female in the morning and male in the afternoon, while others are on the opposite schedule. How avocados do this has been unclear — until now.” Lots more detail in the paper Balanced polymorphism in a floral transcription factor underlies the ancient rhythm of daily sex alternation in avocado
  • East-West border death zone now Germany's biodiversity oasis - Peace dividend: ”Many endangered species now live in the area that once formed the border between East and West Germany.”
  • Decades in the making, work begins to remove rotten fish sauce from St. Mary's plant - A failed fish sauce factory left a small Canadian town with a very smelly problem: ”The closure left 110 tanks behind, each holding 3,000 gallons of now long-fermented fish sauce. They littered the floors with sludge and left a stench that has permeated through the community for years.”
  • Project Pendulum - Ever feel nostalgic for the BBC2 clock between 1986 and 1991, or maybe Anglia TV's from 1970 to 1984? You can revive every TV station clock you've ever seen here
  • Largest Probabilistic Computer Hits 1 Million P-Bits - You don't usually want your bits flipping between 0 and 1 randomly, but this thing does it on purpose: ”Probabilistic computers might one day tackle certain problems well beyond standard computers while at the same time avoiding the many hardware challenges that currently vex quantum computing. Now scientists reveal they have created the largest probabilistic computer yet, one with 1 million ‘probabilistic bits.’”
  • LEGO® building instructions through time - ”Building instructions. The silent helper that without a single word guides you, step by step, to transform your pile of bricks to fantastic creations… Let’s take a look at some of the many historic milestones.” My Lego was a load of random hand-me-downs, so I didn’t even know it came with instructions - I just used to think of stuff to make with what there was
  • Energizing a vacuum-tube flip-flop module from a 1948 IBM system - Ken Shirriff’s back on the tubes: ”The IBM 604 came out just after the transistor was invented, too early to use transistors. At the time, calculators and computers were moving from slow electromechanical components to fast vacuum tubes. One of the innovations of the 604 was to combine a vacuum tube and its associated circuitry into a pluggable module.”
  • Hidden by billboards for over 100 years, the tiny holdout building in the middle of Macy’s is back in view - A nice example of how being vaguely annoying can pay off down the line: ”For the first time since the early 1900s, the five-story building that prevented Macy’s flagship store from owning the tip of the northwest corner of Herald Square is having its billboards dismantled.”

Happy invoicing! ]]> General NickFitz https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151366-monday-links-from-the-gap-between-teams-meetings-vol-dccclxv.html And the decline continues https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151333-and-the-decline-continues.html Mon, 27 Jul 2026 12:07:37 GMT Maybe the UK has better capabilities at other sites, and this is all hyperbole. On the face of it, it looks to me like further evidence that the UK is eroding its place as a centre of excellence for science. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y6r9rdxygo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y6r9rdxygo

The Jodrell Bank Observatory, which has housed the UK's largest telescope for nearly 70 years, has lost its funding and could now close, the BBC understands.

The observatory and its network of telescopes have been pivotal to the country's study of distant galaxies and training future astronomers. Scientists have described the decision as "heartbreaking" and "scientifically misguided".

All scientific observations at Jodrell are expected to cease on the 1 April 2028 unless alternative funding can be found.

The funding body, the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) agency, said it had to focus investment on projects that deliver "the greatest long-term impact".
...
]]> General ladymuck https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151333-and-the-decline-continues.html Monday Links from the Deckchair vol. DCCCLXV https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151332-monday-links-from-the-deckchair-vol-dccclxv.html Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:46:30 GMT I’m off work this week, so you can expect the somewhat gloomier weather to continue for a bit longer :rolleyes: Strays (https://strays.epicmagazine.com) - ”A homeless man, a lost cat, and a 3600 mile journey.” Michael King rescued a lost cat, which travelled around the USA with him for nearly a...
  • Strays - ”A homeless man, a lost cat, and a 3600 mile journey.” Michael King rescued a lost cat, which travelled around the USA with him for nearly a year before he found out where it lived and took it home
  • This is the world’s most advanced robotic servicing satellite—that we know about - ”A spacecraft fitted with two flexible robotic arms is on the way to geosynchronous orbit… The Mission Robotic Vehicle, owned and built by Northrop Grumman, rocketed into orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Tuesday. Three small propulsion pods, each functioning as standalone spacecraft, accompanied the MRV aboard the Falcon 9 rocket.” Like the RAC in space
  • A cosmic first: separated sibling stars reunited by supernovae - ”We've never witnessed a system of binary stars both go supernova before. A once-hidden source of gamma rays just revealed the first one.” More details in the full paper: Shared cloud interactions unveil a candidate binary-system supernova pair with no known analogue
  • Ingested asbestos in filtered beer, in addition to occupational exposure, as a causative factor in oesophageal adenocarcinoma - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this paper, which posits that an increase in oesophageal cancer could be due to the (former, I hope) use of asbestos to filter beer: ”The patient acknowledged that he was exposed to asbestos in his occupation as a publican (landlord/manager of a British public house (‘pub’) or bar). He explained that it was common practice to take the ‘slops’ (the beer that had splashed into a bucket below the hand pump used for serving draught beer in a typical British pub) at the end of the day, add a slurry of asbestos and then run them through a filter – he made a circular swishing gesture with his hand to show how this was done.”
  • Inside Ukraine’s Kill Zone - ”It’s a new kind of war. In the ‘kill zone’ of Ukraine, surveillance and attack drones swarm the skies, hunting anything that moves.” A graphical exploration of the deadly conditions faced by both sides around the front lines in Ukraine
  • The Scandal of the Stanford White Murder That Shook New York - Rich people behaving badly: ”Love, jealousy, and revenge collided at the turn of the century with the murder of Stanford White.”
  • Tube Sound Quiz - Guess the London Underground Line - ”Each London Underground line has its own distinctive sound. Can you tell them apart?” I didn’t do very well, but I don’t live in London
  • Department M - Cool interactive James Bond map thing: ”Department M catalogs real-world James Bond filming locations from Dr. No (1962) through No Time to Die (2021) — plus speculative reconnaissance on where Bond 26 might shoot next.”
  • Fullerphone - HT to DoctorStrangelove again for this detailed look at a comms device that started in the trenches of WWI and continued in development through WWII: ”For many years I have been intrigued by the Fullerphone. Over the last 30 years I have gathered information of its history, operation and practical use. On this and next web pages I compiled some basic historical and technical information about this nowadays relatively unknown, but very remarkable DC Morse telegraph.”
  • Greetings from the past: A look back at postcards serving as snapshots of history - ”How much can holiday missives from decades past tell us about the world? Volumes, says this postcard collector and author.” Tom Jackson, curator of the popular Postcard from the Past social media accounts, on the joy of postcards. This one was sent from Mallorca to Wakefield in 1968, with the message ”It’s four o’clock and you’ll all be working. Just think of me lying in bed groaning with a hangover and being serenaded by 3 concrete mixers and a crane. Luv Jill”

Happy invoicing! ]]> General NickFitz https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151332-monday-links-from-the-deckchair-vol-dccclxv.html AI goes rogue https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151327-ai-goes-rogue.html Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:35:49 GMT https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3ek3gvdnj3o


OpenAI says its AI went rogue and launched 'unprecedented' cyber-attack
]]> General mudskipper https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151327-ai-goes-rogue.html Nationwide Building Society Q2 House Price Index https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151326-nationwide-building-society-q2-house-price-index.html Wed, 22 Jul 2026 10:41:39 GMT Key points: Annual UK house price growth rose to 2.2% in June. Market activity softened amid economic and geopolitical uncertainty. Energy-efficient homes command only a modest price premium. Buyer interest in greener homes continues to grow. Northern Ireland remained the UK’s...
  • Annual UK house price growth rose to 2.2% in June.
  • Market activity softened amid economic and geopolitical uncertainty.
  • Energy-efficient homes command only a modest price premium.
  • Buyer interest in greener homes continues to grow.
  • Northern Ireland remained the UK’s strongest-performing housing market in Q2.
  • The North West led English regional growth, while the Outer South East lagged behind.

    • Full report here:

    https://www.nationwide.co.uk/media/h...ad/jun-q2-2026]]>     General Martin@AS Financial https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151326-nationwide-building-society-q2-house-price-index.html     Monday Links from the Gap Between Teams Meetings vol. DCCCLXIV https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151325-monday-links-from-the-gap-between-teams-meetings-vol-dccclxiv.html Mon, 20 Jul 2026 11:44:49 GMT Dawn of a new era is it? That’s nice but meanwhile, the Internet won’t read itself! :nerd The Service (https://dirt.fyi/article/2026/07/the-service) - ”We called it, simply, The Service. The first time I entered its stash house—a $14,000-a-month penthouse near the Williamsburg waterfront—I was...
    • The Service - ”We called it, simply, The Service. The first time I entered its stash house—a $14,000-a-month penthouse near the Williamsburg waterfront—I was met by a wall of rankness. Not the burn of weed, but the fecundity of its flower en masse.” Ariel Delgado Dixon relives the glory (?) days of hustling weed in NYC
    • Alien World Chemistry Found Inside Meteorite That Struck New Jersey home - What would you do if a meteorite smashed through the roof into your bedroom? Because you should do this: ”The owner of the house described the scene as follows: ‘I was at home at the time, heard a loud crash and found a hole in the ceiling of the master bedroom. I smelled a strong sulfur-like odor and saw many black fragments along with debris and black dust that covered my bed, carpet and surrounding areas.’ He then immediately preserved and documented the entire scene using disposable gloves and aluminum foil to place the meteorite fragments in glass jars.”
    • Topological Defect Propagation to Classify Knitted Fabrics - One for the knitters among you: ”Fabricating a textile involves entangling yarns into a specific pattern, effectively forming a large knot. We develop a method to determine if a fabric can be knitted based on the topology of its pattern.”
    • Farming technique could curb devastating tropical disease - Nature’s way: ”New research shows how introducing native fish into rice fields may help boost crop yields while suppressing a disease affecting more than 220 million people worldwide.”
    • The Doomsday Argument - HT to xoggoth for tipping me off to the Doomsday Argument promulgated by Brandon Carter in the 1980s, which led me to this blog post by Peter Coles which explains the underlying maths and raises some counterarguments: ”The Doomsday argument uses the language of probability theory, but it is such a strange argument that I think the best way to explain it is to begin with a more straightforward problem of the same type.”
    • Too Much Happiness Sent A Woman To The Emergency Room In an Incredibly Rare Case - And if you find the thought of Doomsday depressing, maybe that’s all to the good: ”A new case study… tells the unusual story of a 65-year-old woman who was so desperately happy after attending her daughter's wedding, doctors thought she was having a heart attack.” The full paper, replete with cardiograms and angiograms, is An unexpected sequel to happiness: happy heart syndrome
    • A War of Concrete - HT to DoctorStrangelove for this look at the Mulberry Harbours that were crucial to the D Day landings: ”Hitler was convinced an Allied invasion would have to strike at a significant port. Otherwise, how could the Allies expand any breach into a major thrust into Europe? They'd need a port's facilities to supply their invasion force. This assumption would prove to be a fatal miscalculation.” More about them: The Mulberry Harbours, Normandy France.
    • The Incredible Shrinking Goalie ⚽️🧤 - Apparently the football’s finished now, but you can devote your copious free time to this game instead: ”Keep the ball in the air. Click somewhere to jump.”
    • The First Chatbot’s Multiple Personalities - A look through the original source code for Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA: ”ELIZA is remembered as the world’s first AI star, a kindly therapist in chatbot form that gently probed users’ worries. Even its creator, Joseph Weizenbaum, was surprised by the warm reception given to his experiment in human-machine interaction… In fact, it could assume several different personas.”
    • The Art of Roland-Garros - Another one to help stave off the sports fans’ withdrawal symptoms: ”Roland-Garros, the French Open, has a long and storied relationship with art. Each year, the tournament commissions an artist to create a poster that captures its spirit… Because there still wasn't one place to enjoy the posters in high quality, I built this gallery. It brings the full artistic legacy of Roland-Garros together, letting tennis fans and art lovers browse decades of creative history in one spot.” I like this 2024 one by Paul Rousteau

    Happy invoicing! ]]>     General NickFitz https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151325-monday-links-from-the-gap-between-teams-meetings-vol-dccclxiv.html     old computers https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151322-old-computers.html Sat, 18 Jul 2026 14:06:34 GMT anyone know how to dispose of old machines responsibly? like recycling/repurposing/donating to education, that sort of thing. 1xdesktop 3xlaptops. not win11 compatible but all will run Linux, obviously.. like recycling/repurposing/donating to education, that sort of thing.
    1xdesktop 3xlaptops.
    not win11 compatible but all will run Linux, obviously..]]>     General sadkingbilly https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151322-old-computers.html     <![CDATA[Now we're going back to the 1970s]]> https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151321-now-we-re-going-back-to-the-1970s.html Sat, 18 Jul 2026 10:25:59 GMT
    Askin' for a friend who remembers 35p/£ income tax. .

    And "Crisis? Wot Crisis?".

    Ah, it'll be so refreshing to go back to that. .

    I'm waiting for "The White Heat of the Technological Revolution" and "The Pound in your pocket".

    Them were the days. .]]>     General DoctorStrangelove https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151321-now-we-re-going-back-to-the-1970s.html     Monday Links from the Gap Between Teams Meetings vol. DCCCLXIII https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151315-monday-links-from-the-gap-between-teams-meetings-vol-dccclxiii.html Mon, 13 Jul 2026 11:37:51 GMT
    • How Tall Is Mount Rainier? New Measurements Show It's Shrinking. - ”Eric Gilbertson has a very particular set of skills. He climbs mountains all over the world, attempting to measure them more accurately than anyone ever has. But when he discovered that Mount Rainier was shorter than advertised, no one wanted to hear it.” Size matters
    • Is Life Just Different? - Scientists ponder whether it matters that living things are trying to do stuff rather than just doing stuff: ”The idea of ‘biological agency’ — that life devises its own goals and behaves accordingly — complicates our understanding of what it means to be alive. But does it serve a scientific purpose?”
    • A Jupiter-size planet that escaped its star’s death - ”WD 1856 b is the only confirmed case of a planet that survived the death of a Sun-like star.” There's hope for us yet!
    • Mystery of Hannibal’s infamous Alps crossing gets a major clue - How did Hannibal manage to get elephants across the Alps? ”The new analysis shows which of Hannibal’s potential routes would have been less taxing on his 40,000 men, 7,000 horses and 37 war elephants. His best option likely would’ve been the Col de la Traversette, a pass with an altitude of 9,669 feet on the border between Italy and France.” Full paper: Energy costs of Hannibal’s alpine crossing.
    • How Flock Cameras Wrongly Tracked Me for Days Over ‘Stolen’ Plates and Sent Police After Me - When ANPR goes haywire: ”On an otherwise normal Sunday afternoon in late June, I’d decided to take the $155,000 Range Rover I was testing that week out to run some errands with my wife. Little did I know that choice would complete a technological chain linking surveillance cameras, AI, and law enforcement that led to me and my wife being surrounded by police, hands on their guns, in a Kohl’s parking lot in suburban Minnesota.”
    • The Forgotten Bombing of LaGuardia Airport - ”It’s been called ‘one of the greatest cold cases of the 20th century.’ It remains unsolved. But what happened next is almost a worse crime.” Strangely, the investigation just seemed to fizzle out eventually.
    • The brutal, powerful legacy of Threads - A look back at the 1980s nuclear war drama: ”Among devotees of this particular subgenre, however, there is one movie that is venerated above all others: Mick Jackson’s 1984 UK film Threads… The reason aficionados venerate it is simple but harsh: Of all the films in the genre, Threads has, by far, the grimmest ending. Threads is the very epitome of an apocalyptic narrative in which the living would envy the dead.”
    • Apotropaios - ”Apotropaios - Greek, turning away (evil). Researcher of strange things found in walls and under floors since 1999…” Brian Hoggard’s site dedicated to concealed objects in houses: witch bottles, horse skulls, shoes and the like.
    • This Low-Cost Stopgap Tech Can Fix the Grid - Solving the problem of power transmission around the UK: ”With congestion relief needed now, the U.K.’s grid operators are getting creative, rapidly tapping new cable designs and innovations in power electronics to squeeze more power through existing transmission corridors. These grid-enhancing technologies, or GETs, present a low-cost way to bridge the gap until new lines can be built.”
    • Sein Kampf: 41 Scathing Anti-Nazi Cartoons by Stanisław Dobrzyński, 1944 - ”Sein Kampf was published in Jerusalem by W Drodze (On the Way), a publishing house and magazine founded in Dobrzyński’s native Poland… The book features a two-page introduction in Polish and 41 full-page cartoons with captions in Polish (with the occasional word in German or English). The cartoons lampoon Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and other leading fascists, detailing life under Nazi rule.”

    Happy invoicing! ]]>     General NickFitz https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151315-monday-links-from-the-gap-between-teams-meetings-vol-dccclxiii.html     Umbrella Co mortgages - any personal recommendations? https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151307-umbrella-co-mortgages-any-personal-recommendations.html Thu, 09 Jul 2026 13:25:38 GMT
    I've got years of consistent earnings, then my Ltd Co before that, I just need somebody who understands it!]]>     General vwdan https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151307-umbrella-co-mortgages-any-personal-recommendations.html     Hi-de-Hi! https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151303-hi-de-hi.html Wed, 08 Jul 2026 05:48:13 GMT ]]> General Paddy https://forums.contractoruk.com/general/151303-hi-de-hi.html