Toots for pwaring@fosstodon.org account

Written by Paul on 2025-01-30 at 15:57

The list of sexiest professions has been updated and the top 3 are: healthcare, teaching and emergency services.

I'm sure my legal followers will be delighted that they are in fourth place.

Techies are seventh with 17%! (despite the jokes about undatable geeks, I actually found my profession wasn't an issue for most women when I was using online dating - and I was upfront about what I did / was interested in).

https://metro.co.uk/2025/01/27/singles-arent-looking-a-man-finance-this-sexiest-job-2025-22439366/

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Written by Paul on 2025-01-30 at 14:45

Never really understood people who park on someone else's drive or in their numbered parking slot (and aren't even visiting anyone in the same block) and then get super aggressive when you politely ask them to move as if you're the one at fault. Just been given a stream of abuse and expletives by someone in my space, but can't do anything about it.

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Written by Paul on 2025-01-30 at 08:21

Looks like Ofcom has fallen victim to regulatory capture and has rolled over and agreed to Royal Mail's demands to cut deliveries and targets (proposals are out to consultation, but I doubt they will change as a result).

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/30/royal-mail-should-cut-second-class-delivery-days-says-regulator-ofcom

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Written by Paul on 2025-01-29 at 10:29

I've just been spammed (in a way that breaches the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations) by a firm that is literally down the road from me.

Do I go round to their office and 'sort them out' in person? 😃

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Shared by Paul on 2025-01-28 at 18:10 (original by Yvan)

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Written by Paul on 2025-01-28 at 09:10

For once, the BBC have published a good technology article where they have interviewed people who know what they are talking about (and I think the future of open source is a challenge unless we recruit the next generation - particularly for projects like the Linux Kernel which are hard for new people to break into):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly7n2jm5m5o

[#]OpenSource

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Shared by Paul on 2025-01-27 at 18:19 (original by Attractive Nuisance)

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Written by Paul on 2025-01-27 at 18:15

These lads missed a trick by not naming their brewery Seven Beers for Seven Brothers:

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/greater-manchester-brewery-seven-brothers-30872290

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Written by Paul on 2025-01-27 at 18:09

The command I ran to remove the duplicates was:

find . -name '..~' | xargs -d '\n' rm

The -d '\n' argument to xargs tells it to only use newlines to separate paths, otherwise it tries to use any whitespace and this breaks when you have paths with spaces in them. (2/2)

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Written by Paul on 2025-01-27 at 18:08

Finally managed to fix an annoying problem whereby Nextcloud was sometimes running twice on one of my machines, and had double-downloaded every file (but not uploaded them, so my desktop had two copies of everything but the server didn't, and the duplication only happened on one account). This used up 8GB of space!

I will blog about it at some point, but the root cause was Nextcloud was listed to launch twice at startup, although it only did maybe 10% of the time. (1/2)

[#]Linux #Nextcloud

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Written by Paul on 2025-01-26 at 10:05

Article about local pub owned by some people I know (including Currybeer regulars) is currently the most read story in the Manchester Evening News:

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/tiny-brilliant-pub-shadow-tower-30851367

[#]pubs #Manchester

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Written by Paul on 2025-01-25 at 11:51

Apparently White Van Man really doesn't like it if you respond to his pavement and double yellow lines parking with 'what if I had a wheelchair?'

(I could barely squeeze past and I am about as slender as you can get)

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Written by Paul on 2025-01-24 at 14:23

HMRC: Thanks for filing your tax return. You owe us X.

Me: Erm, what about all the money I've already paid you for that tax year?

HMRC (3 days later): Oh yes. You actually owe us X * 0.01.

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Written by Paul on 2025-01-23 at 15:37

This @lobsters thread on weird, obscure or proprietary C compilers and environments is very interesting. I am currently in the process of reviewing a variety of C books, some of which are out of date but interesting for historical purposes.

https://lobste.rs/s/vhxvzd/tell_me_weird_obscure_proprietary_c

[#]C

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Written by Paul on 2025-01-22 at 18:10

Mild Internet fame is when you join a Discord server and someone says:

pwaring? As in Paul Waring?

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Written by Paul on 2025-01-20 at 13:24

I laughed when I saw Farage talking about his odds of being PM as 25%. Then I looked at the odds on Betfair and they are 100/30, which is... 23% (30 / (100 + 30)).

(this is for the next PM after Starmer, Farage has the lowest odds, and anyone placing/accepting bets has a strong financial incentive to offer accurate odds)

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Written by Paul on 2025-01-20 at 09:40

This article about return to work mandates is ridiculous and biased - they interview bosses who say that they have "a nagging feeling" that remote working isn't effective and is "not doing proper work", i.e. zero evidence basis.

It would be like me saying that I'm more productive when I'm 100% remote (which I am), therefore no one should go into the office.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0qww8xdvnwo

[#]RemoteWorking

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Written by Paul on 2025-01-17 at 12:13

Last night we picked our next two films for film club.

Thursday 30th January: Dune Part 2

https://www.meetup.com/the-post-apocalyptic-book-club-northwest/events/305541961/

Thursday 13th February: A Quiet Place

https://www.meetup.com/the-post-apocalyptic-book-club-northwest/events/305654809/

Remote only, 19:30 UK time (currently UTC). We're nominally a Manchester group but get attendees from further afield.

[#]films #movies #FilmClub #MovieClub

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Written by Paul on 2025-01-17 at 10:00

Haven't looked at the UKHSA dashboard for a while, but it's really interesting seeing just how big a spike there is for flu during winter, and a bit scary how much higher the spike is this year compared with the previous year. Sadly they don't publish vaccination figures.

https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/respiratory-viruses/influenza

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Written by Paul on 2025-01-16 at 12:32

Pondering starting a 'find a tradesperson' website which filters on things like:

1. Prefers communication via email.

2. Will concentrate on the job with no small talk.

3. Has an online booking system with exportable calendar entries.

4. Explains everything clearly and in detail (e.g. why certain components are required).

(okay, what I actually want is someone who thinks like me but has useful physical skills)

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