All the things they said

Pinboard went down for the PHP Apocalypse. Everything seems to be back to normal now, thankfully!

1. Games with loot boxes and other "paid random items" re-rated PEGI 16 as new rules come into force, hopefully cutting down on kids gambling somewhat

(tags:games children regulation europe gambling )

2. Ofcom Concedes Defeat in the 4chan Case

(tags:UK USA freespeech 4chan regulation )

3. Upcoming Facebook changes would charge me $500/month to post my links. Obviously, I won't be paying.

(tags:facebook links OhForFucksSake business )

4. Failings allowed Covid 'to spread like wildfire' in care homes, inquiry finds

(tags:UK care pandemic OhForFucksSake death )

5. If you've ever wondered what the inside of an AI datacenter looks like, here's a ridiculously detailed description of a giant one

(tags:ai technology Facebook )

6. Report: Musk ordered Starlink slowdown in Ukraine, then blamed it on Trump

(tags:ElonMusk Ukraine Russia war OhForFucksSake )

There's some work we want to do on the house, preferably in the next year as the gas boiler is getting old.

I want to do underfloor heating in two rooms, a heat pump, presumably a hot water tank, and a new kitchen. And possibly insulation.

Ideally I'd find people who can do all of that, rather than hiring in multiple groups and managing them all myself. But if people have really solid recommendations for someone who can do just the underfloor heating and heat pump/tank then I'm willing to sort out the kitchen on top myself.

Any suggestions?

Gideon first started having an upset stomach in 2023, aged two and a half. It took us until late 2024 to get him to see a specialist, who wasn't able to spot anything, and we were left baffled, but with medicine (Mebeverine) which helped a lot. And so things carried on with that making his life okay for the last two years.

About 3 weeks ago his stomach started getting worse. He was completely attached to the microwaveable fuzzy giraffe that he clutched to his stomach, he was crying intermittently from pain, and it was clear that we were going to have to go back to the doctor. We'd made a half-hearted attempt at an exclusion diet when he was 3, but excluding food from the diet of a very picky 3-year-old is...not easy. But at age 6 he was capable of understanding what we were doing, and once we explained a couple of times he was entirely on-board with us trying a week without milk and then a week without wheat, to see if we could at least exclude the most common foods before we went back to a specialist.

4 days without milk did nothing to fix things. But I did notice that Gideon was regularly feeling just fine before dinner, and then rubbish afterwards (highlighted by me getting him to score his pain out of ten several times a day) And, as his evening meal is universally fish-fingers, potato waffles, and beans, and as wheat sets off my IBS, I decided one night to substitute his fish fingers for my gluten-free fish fingers. Which, again, made no difference.

Somewhat baffled, but with all of the obvious options excluded, I switched his beans out for peas the next night. And he felt fine. His stomach was rated a "9.5" at bedtime. So I did some research and discovered that baked beans are a prime source of galacto-oligosaccharides - part of the O in FODMAPs (which I am very aware of because of my own IBS), and a common source of food intolerance.

It's now been a week since then, and 4 days since he has had his stomach medicine (which was previously thrice daily) and he's been fine. I am relieved, delighted, and ashamed for not having worked it out years ago. I've let his school know that they should stop with his lunchtime dose, and we'll see how it goes.

One interesting point along the way - when trying a milk-exclusionary diet at home we tried him on almond milk in his cereal, and his lips got all puffy and he felt all weird. So we've dropped that very quickly, and at some point over the next few weeks I'll take him to the GP and ask for advice on allergic reactions to nuts.

I just noticed that there were a cheap pair of earbuds - £24 reduced from £50. And I noticed there was a new model out this year, so out of pure curiosity I checked the last time it had cost £50. And the answer, according to Amazon's own AI, was basically never. Their data only went back a year, but it was never above £32.

That seemed weird to me - I thought that if you showed something as reduced then it had to have been on sale for the full price within the last few weeks. So I went and checked some more detailed data where I discovered that it had been £50. For lots of very short periods - for example literally between 1:41 and 3:03 in the morning. Which strikes me as not actually compliant. Certainly not in Europe, where the comparison price is the lowest price in the 30 days before the "sale" started.

1. Israeli settlers attack European diplomatic cars in West Bank and beat French mayor

(tags:Israel terrorism Palestine )

2. 9 of my more formative albums

(tags:music history )

There's an article here on the fact that Labour has promised to build seven new towns and there are no sign of them.

And I would actually like to be sympathetic, because that kind of thing takes an absolute age with huge amounts of upfront work to get the legalities and purchasing in place, dealing with consultations and reviews and inquiries, before you finally get an actual new town.

What doesn't take an actual age is putting up a web page saying "We promised X. The steps are A, B, and C. We've done A. B is due in November 2026, and C will be done by May 2027." and adding in a bunch of FAQs about it.

It doesn't need to be perfect. But that level of transparency is the kind of thing that would make a real difference. Rather than getting newspaper articles saying "Labour promised a thing! Where is it? The opposition say it's never going to be done!" you'd have a single place you could go to to see what the government has promised and what's happening with it.

Searching for official statements on the New Towns programme all that is available is the original proposal and a consultation that closed in May. Give me a project page and a list of tasks completed, or with due dates, and it would absolutely change the conversation.

1. Arthur's Seat gallery begins construction at Dynamic Earth

(tags:edinburgh volcano science museums )

2. Man nostalgic for simpler times when his fridge didn't need protection from international cybercrime

(tags:satire funny technology hacking )

1. Secret of Orange Cats Finally Revealed After 60-Year Search

(tags:cats colour genetics )

2. The people who use AI to deal with difficult family members (and ex-members)

(tags:ai society communication )

3. A majority of Brits want a rejoin referendum within 5 years (and what they think of the various options)

(tags:uk europe polls GoodNews )

4. We're finally unlocking the biggest mysteries of the clitoris

(tags:clitoris )

5. French supermarkets suffer refrigerator shutdown after 'unprecedented' cyberattack

(tags:hacking security )

6. Did Ukrainian strikes on Yandex data centres cause Russian bot activity to plummet?

(tags:Russia propaganda technology Ukraine war )

7. Trump's Message to Ukraine Is Now Crystal Clear

(tags:politics corruption USA Ukraine Russia war )

8. Epic Games reportedly pivoting to "AI first" game development model

(tags:ai games art software )

Gideon hurt his neck this morning. He was in enough pain that going to holiday camp was clearly out of the question, so Jane looked after him this morning, and when he was still screaming at 11am I called the doctor, who said to take him to the Sick Kids. They've said it's just a pulled muscle, so when they come back with painkillers I'll wake him up and we'll get a taxi home.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

A couple of months ago I started getting the occasional 15 minute gaps to myself in the evening*, and felt up to returning to my play-through of Dark Souls 3**. And I reached the point where I was fighting a very-late game boss, who arrives on a dragon, and got stuck. After a dozen or so attempts I could defeat the dragon, and eventually, about a month a go, I reached the point where I could defeat the dragon without taking any damage. But I was darned if I could beat the rider.  I recorded this to show Jane at the time:



As you can see, I do a pretty good job of defeating the King Of The Storm (although I can now do it about twice as fast) and then I last 25 seconds of not doing any damage before being annihilated.

Well, *today* in an attempt I sadly didn't record***, I killed both of them.  And then sat there trembling for about 30 seconds while the adrenaline wore off.

Next up: the DLC. I hear that the land is peaceful, its inhabitants kind.  I'm sure everyone will be lovely to me.


* I'm not at the moment, as Gideon wants me to play either board games or Roblox with him every evening.
** Technically a re-play, as I restarted with a strength build after getting 95% of the way through with a Pyromancer and realising that I was leaning too much on help for the trickier bits.
*** my 6th, I think, while Jane took the kids swimming - we're alternating who gets a couple of hours with no children each week.