@ColinTheMathmo Looking at Wikipedia for inspiration: "It was first considered mathematically in the 1930s by Merrill M. Flood, who was looking to solve a school bus routing problem" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem

So... "The School Bus Problem" ?

9 juin 68 : Mort de l’empereur romain Néron.
Déclaré ennemi public par le Sénat, il se suicide avec l’aide de son secrétaire Épaphrodite.
Selon Suétone, il aurait répété avant de mourir : « Quel grand artiste périt avec moi ! » #CeJourLà
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%A9ron

Live stream from LA. Brave people peacefully resisting National Guard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAL88lB_yAY

Keep your eye on Trump's attempts to use the National Guard to put down the protests in Los Angeles. Yesterday he praised the National Guard for doing this - but the 2,000 troops he ordered to the area hadn't even arrived yet!

Instead, it was Los Angeles Police Department and ICE agents involved in the fighting in the neighborhoods of Compton and Paramount.

I have long thought Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act to federalize the National Guard as protests against him grow - thus reducing the power of state governors to stop his actions. Instead, the directive signed by Mr. Trump on Saturday cites another law:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/06/department-of-defense-security-for-the-protection-of-department-of-homeland-security-functions/

This allows the president to control National Guard forces if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States", and use them "in such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion, or execute those laws.”

From what happened in Hong Kong and elsewhere, I'm not at all optimistic about violent street protests being able to stop an authoritarian regime. Instead, the regime thrives on violence, since that's a sphere where it has the upper hand. The regime will also try to tip nonviolent protests into becoming violent by using excessive force and/or propaganda that claims the protests are more dangerous than they actually are.

Here are 198 methods of nonviolent action compiled by Gene Sharp in his book The Politics of Nonviolent Action:

https://www.aeinstein.org/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action

(1/2)

@jimblimey It'll take most of the stream to get past the LensLok

Some #Psion news! #plptools, the open source suite of programs for transferring files to and from #EPOC16 and #EPOC32 devices, has some additional maintainers: @captfab, @jbmorley ... and me!

We're looking into how we can take the project into the future. We do have some ideas, but we're taking a considered approach to future development.

plptools currently runs on Linux and macOS (and possibly FreeBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, AIX and HP-UX, although these haven't been tested in a while). I've started work on porting it to #HaikuOS.

The repo has been moved to a new GitHub organisation, which you can find here. https://github.com/plptools/plptools

#retrocomputing

@fesshole Is "overnight oats" a euphemism?

@yPhil @heapy @neonbubble
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/dandelion_clock

@heapy @neonbubble What time is it? Oh, there's a plant for that...

We hear lots of warm words about GenAI augmenting humans and boosting their efficiency, but I fear too many companies will go down the route outlined in this Guardian piece, where five creatives lost their jobs to mediocre AI alternatives. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/31/the-workers-who-lost-their-jobs-to-ai-chatgpt

Baroque Sunday, and I'm in the mood for some Johann Sebastian –

Johann Sebastian Bach, "Canon a 2 cancrizans" (lit. "moving [backwards] like a crab", and usually known as "Crab Canon"), from Das Musikalische Opfer / The Musical Offering, BWV 1079 (1747)

Performed by Shunske Sato, on a violin made by Cornelius Kleynman, ca. 1684, and recorded on 7July 2020 at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29YwFjE2b1A

#Music #BaroqueMusic #JohannSebastianBach #Canon

@fesshole There can be rare genetic mutations that mean the person feels no pain - see https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-47719718

Researching my family tree. It's worth all the effort when you find someone called "Minnie Tinkler"

@xtaldave You'd think any Tory who remembers Thatcher would support strong punishments for people inciting terrorist attacks on hotels.

I wrote a program to lipsync the shipping forecast in a terminal window, and I have no regrets.

This is not a joke. It’s a look at the future.

#Capitalism #Enshittification

@marioguzman I really began programming on one of these, a Psion Series 3a. It was way too expensive for me but still bought one and loved it ❤️

It even had an Epoc OPL manual in the box!

CDC can no longer help prevent lead poisoning in children, state officials say
Under Trump, the CDC's Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program was cut.
https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/05/cdc-can-no-longer-help-prevent-lead-poisoning-in-children-state-officials-say/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social