Recent submissions

Comment · 13 days ago
The mountain hare (Lepus timidus) is native to England. Brown hare (Lepus europaeus) was introduced.
Comment · 24 days ago
I accept the premise on the math, but "better off" is subjective. I'm in the UK so that's my context.

When your renter informs you of the boiler breaking, or a roof needs replacing, that's going to get thorny - "It was fine when I was using it/living in it, did you break it?"

Perhaps the latest round of updates to property law for renters come along and suddenly as a landlord you have to above and beyond what you need to as an owner; you both have to do X, Y or Z to your properties because they're rental and not a basic owner situation.

Comment · 25 days ago
Comment · 1 month ago
Hard to know with council works. Sometimes the work is great, sometimes it is a horror show. This sounds like more of a mis-managed tree that got too big, created too much liability in terms of legal risk and had to go. Rather than remove it from the landscape, leaving the stems does actually provide some green infrastructure benefit.
Comment · 1 month ago
I'm an arborist since 2022 in the UK and yes, never top trees. But...

There's three scenarios that come to mind in which it's somewhere between "acceptable" and "totally fine for some reason".

One, it's conifer hedge (the types popular in the UK) as these typically respond very well to being topped. It's what makes them a nice tidy hedge. I'm specifically referring to hedges above 3 meters in height. If you ever worked a hedge like this you'll quickly realise the topped stems are the platform to work off. These hedges can be maintained like this for years. For some reason, topped hedges are completely fine with being topped.

Two, it's either topping or removing. Arguably neither is ideal, but some retention is better than no retention. Topping puts the tree on senescence pathway and gives the ecology time to transition from alive to dead and dying. Whereas removal just makes the local fauna get confused about where the tree went.

Three, veteranisation in woodland settings. If there's a distinct lack of standing deadwood and age variation in a population of species in a given woodland NVC type, the topping and verteranising could be a positive management approach on a sample of trees.

This advice is very specific to the UK and especially on point three to the NVC woodland types. Generally though, prune properly at the correct locations, using proper technique being mindful of the structural loads and balancing of the tree. Topping generally, "because reasons" isn't an ideal approach at all.

Comment · 1 month ago
> The cabinetry is just a bunch of wood, cut into fairly large pieces. Maybe a few screws and hinges. Whereas the computers in total contain more than a trillion transistors, each of which had to be carefully etched in the right spot connected correctly to all the others. A trillion! That's 1,000,000,000,000!

Really cool house, but describing the cabinets as "bunch of wood, cut into fairly large pieces. Maybe a few screws and hinges" shows little understanding of what goes into building something like that.

It's hard to tell from the pics if the cabinets are made of sheet goods with veneer or solid boards glued into panels. But at the very least, the trees need to be grown, they need to be managed, they need to be felled, sent to processing for sheet goods, dried and milled for solid wood. Even then you've got to get everything cut to size and square, then build the cabinets with all the specific sizes, then finish them, transport to site and install everything and the trim.

It's two ends of the manufacturing scale. For transistors, you've got mass production at an impossibly difficult level of accuracy for a human and for cabinets you've got single production (at the install level) at very difficult level for a human.

But again, very, very cool house. I especially like the cat doors but not nearly half as much as I imagine the cat does.

Comment · 4 months ago
I don't see why they have to be mutually exclusive. Assuming the vendor risk profile is acceptable to the infosec people and procurement are happy with the AI tools vendor relationship, then it's a tool inside the information security perimeter.

As long as there's evidence that work meets quality gates for any required customer audits, and your customers are happy and in the loop that AI is a thing that may or may not be used to produce the service, then those engineers that want it can have it and those that don't, don't.

Feels like a revision to an SDLC rather than a new one. Without seeing the SDLC it's hard to find common ground though. It really depends on how it's written and implemented and of course: culture. In the example we're working from sounds like the tools are being forced on people, and that's less infosec, SDLC and more unbearably bad leadership.

Comment · 4 months ago
I see the point but, I'm not really sure the analogy holds up here. If i was in a cabinet shop and had to joint, plane and resaw and cross cut a pile of timber fresh from the saw mill for the next job I'd be very grateful for the jointer, the planer, the bandsaw and the table saw. I'd also be very grateful for the dust extraction.

In in total agreement with you though, forcing tools on employees is very dumb and is terrible leadership. Ask your people what they need to be optimally exceptional and go get them it. Then let them get on with it.

Comment · 4 months ago
Comment · 4 months ago
Comment · 4 months ago
and the table based approached stayed pretty relevant for email marketing because it took a LONG time for email clients to drop the table based approach.
Comment · 4 months ago
formmail.pl transformed my life.

I was tinkering with making websites for the band I was in (learned html through htmlgoodies.com) but I needed a contact form. I'd never really touched a computer before and I expected formmail to be some wall of incomprehensible binary. I was amazed when I opened it and found plain english.

It was the moment I stopped being a drummer and started being a web developer. That was 1999. I've never stopped writing code since.

Magical.

Comment · 4 months ago
Comment · 4 months ago
Totally, "the city" (EC1/2/3/4) as the GP says is pretty barren, especially the newer built areas.

My guess would be that the bio-diversity net gain calculations put the ecological investment off-site where it was more practical.

It's a shame though as trees and architecture can happily co-exist with each other. Living walls and well kept green areas are entirely possible.

Comment · 4 months ago
Yes! keep up the good work :)

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