Andrew

I'm kind of a Marmite person, in that I'm essentially a byproduct of the brewing industry.

Manchester MathsJam regular and occasional tamed programmer for the Nerds. Bi/polyam

Website: https://www.andrewt.net
Pronouns: he/him/any
Old account: https://mastodon.social/@andrewt
Art account: https://mastodon.art/@andrewt

Public Key

npub1p33ym3zu0v8qahqnnsfgudlkz486t8r3deupsa8wyua0nvfg89vqqyl877

NIP-05 Address

andrewt_at_mathstodon.xyz@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsqccjdc3w8krswmsfecy5wxlmp2na9n3cku7qcwnhzwwheky5rjkqprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntffae44

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Author Public Key

npub1p33ym3zu0v8qahqnnsfgudlkz486t8r3deupsa8wyua0nvfg89vqqyl877

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Last Notes

2026-09-07 12:49:15 UTC

Every time I hear someone say "the one thing I do use AI for is", it's always followed by the worst imaginable use of AI

2026-08-18 23:07:21 UTC

What if the gender critical movement was started by Russia to eliminate all our cybersecurity experts?

2026-08-14 20:03:40 UTC

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👋🏻

2026-08-11 12:42:18 UTC

I wonder why the silly QR code thread has been popping off lately
https://mathstodon.xyz/@OscarCunningham/115049490241833844

2026-04-11 14:29:26 UTC

The seven-year-old did not enjoy my artwork of medieval videogame characters
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/116/386/534/157/021/471/original/853da13fd4f2635a.png
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/116/386/535/888/362/799/original/9f1769f23bec48e6.png
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https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/116/386/539/950/331/624/original/ab4200b3359c57c9.png

2026-03-02 13:44:35 UTC

As much as I'm all in favour of blaming AI bros for the RAM shortage, there was always going to be a squeeze on RAM prices for some reason eventually, and we really did make sure it would be maximally painful for ourselves when we started treating RAM as functionally free.
RAM prices in 2026 are about the same as they were in 2008 when the original MacBook Air launched. It had 2GB of RAM and it ran like a goddamn dream. There is absolutely zero technical reason we couldn't ship an even better computer with 2GB RAM today — except everything these days is a JavaScript app running in a dedicated Chromium instance and needs at least its own gigabyte to run around in.
That said, it's probably pretty safe to blame AI bros for everything being a Chromium instance — I'm willing to bet it's largely the same people trying to ship something that just about works with the absolute minimum of time and effort now as it was then

2025-12-29 19:21:03 UTC

https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/115/804/470/345/230/933/original/313d05398d69e9ed.png

2025-11-27 00:01:51 UTC

App theme:
🔳 Light
⬜ Dark
⬜ Follow system theme
⬜ Do the opposite of the system theme

2025-10-11 18:31:52 UTC

Morrisons really knows what I want from a supermarket in October
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/115/356/957/275/185/232/original/501ebf92cd4a80bc.jpg

2025-09-27 00:50:10 UTC

Just a quick check

2025-09-14 19:43:20 UTC

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ah, right, yes, that makes more sense

2025-09-14 19:38:48 UTC

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ok but what is the unconventional sense? do we just turn up at offices and tell people "hey I was supposed to get my fob last week, can you help"?

2025-08-31 17:34:44 UTC

Someone should make a game with an alchemy mechanic that just never does anything. Imagine the Reddit threads.
"I can't get alchemy to work"
"well yes"
"Ok but it's in the game so it must work???"
"why"

2025-08-26 17:59:31 UTC

Dance Dance Incremental Reform

2025-08-19 17:51:17 UTC

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a logical extension of this idea is...
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/115/056/693/484/728/147/original/8534c64e772af32d.png

2025-08-16 21:34:48 UTC

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I've put this into a more user-friendly interface so you can make your own silly QR codes.
(Watch out, they scan less well than regular QR codes so bear that in mind if you want to use one for anything important. Don't blame me if nobody who gets your flyer can visit your website.)
https://www.andrewt.net/dithered-qr-codes/

2025-08-16 00:29:34 UTC

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ok I did a bug fix and added gamma correction and can confirm: this works really well
all of these scan just fine on my phone
anyway the code is at https://codeberg.org/andrew-t/dithered-qr-codes but it's not good code, it's something i threw together in an hour or so and then tidied up like 15%
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/115/035/578/514/228/954/original/00133982280022ec.png
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/115/035/580/579/274/333/original/4c6cbefc7777664d.png
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/115/035/583/582/554/302/original/8a77b31dfd712ff7.png

2025-08-15 15:56:12 UTC

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I had a go at improving the error diffusion and I *think* it's an improvement but honestly it's made less difference than I expected
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/115/033/588/371/812/986/original/24121551adf3fed1.png

2025-08-15 13:28:11 UTC

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weirdly this is the second time i've solved the problem of "what if error diffusion but the central point of each 3x3 subgrid was constrained", the last time being when @npub1g3p…jcyf was looking to build a double-sided picture out of rubiks cubes

2025-08-15 13:26:12 UTC

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it works!!
the images is still kind of messed up but if i was spending real time on this i'd handle the fixed points first and i think i could clean up quite a bit of noise that way
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/115/032/997/359/684/394/original/c15627d604b7f95c.png

2025-08-15 11:49:44 UTC

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If each cell of the QR code is a 9x9 block of image pixels and only the centre one matters for scanning, it feels like we should be able to error-diffuse around the others and get a really good looking image?

2025-07-20 13:34:51 UTC

getting a lot of pushback from organisations when i pitch my new inclusive bathroom sign design
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/114/885/513/638/201/212/original/a4d5ebd2d56747f8.png

2025-05-13 13:23:19 UTC

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honestly i blame microsoft word
that shit taught people that "wysiwyg" is a useful and meaningful concept, when in fact it is nearly always a huge, pointless barrier erected between the user and any kind of understanding of what the hell they're actually doing

2025-04-23 19:53:25 UTC

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anyway so bluesky continue not to fix this nonsense so i am going to keep abusing it until someone does something about it
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/114/389/001/317/535/131/original/f8dc89c940e856d2.png

2025-03-30 14:45:00 UTC

using the power of ai, i have created the world's most helpful* general-purpose utility library
does lodash support _.isAllowedInWordle("VALUE")?
does jQuery include $.isAnAnagramOfAPrimeNumber(24601)?
no! no, they do not! but mine does, along with literally any other function you can imagine (as long as it's serialisable to a chatgpt query)
this is a real thing you can use (although i haven't tested it because i refuse to pay for openai credits):
https://www.npmjs.com/package/@andrewtaylor/util-ai
https://github.com/andrew-t/util-ai
___
*actual helpfulness may vary

2025-03-22 12:39:00 UTC

I think people reporting this kind of thing would do well to learn how to switch these numbers around, because the percentage really masks the scale of the problem.
Say your website gets 1,000 human visitors a day.
If 90% of traffic is bots, that means you get 9,000 bots per day.
If 95% of traffic is bots, that's 19,000 bots.
97% is 32,333 bots.
98% is 49,000 bots.
99% is 99,000 bots.
99.5% is 199,000 bots.
The number of bots can go up to infinity, in theory, but that would still only be 100% of your traffic. 99% is *twice as bad* as 98%, but you won't see that unless you convert the numbers from "percentage of requests that are bots" to "bots per human user". "97% of traffic is bots" sounds bad, but does it sound like "this website costs 32 times as much to run as it would without the bots" bad?
https://swarm.coiloptic.org/brettm/p/1742493505.453839

2025-03-06 13:49:15 UTC

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it could, but it sounds like bluesky don't want to do that kind of solution because "the server" could be anyone. you know, because bluesky is """decentralised"""

2025-03-05 23:20:09 UTC

So it turns out the geniuses over at Bluesky trust the client app to fetch, and honestly report, webpage metadata for preview cards, so with a little tinkering in the debug tools you can post whatever news stories you like and they look exactly the same as real ones.
https://bsky.app/profile/andrewt.net/post/3ljo2dja62224
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/114/112/374/066/842/856/original/8d37d3189185b1e4.png

2025-01-11 15:58:15 UTC

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In 1770, Wolfgang von Kempelen claimed to have built the world's first chess computer, however it eventually turned out that the machine was using humans to make moves via the AWS Mechanical Turk API

2025-01-11 01:06:03 UTC

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In the eleventh century, the easiest way to look up your friends' birthdays was on Domesdaybook

2025-01-11 00:48:01 UTC

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Surnames exist because medieval peasants would find a bread seller they really liked but already had a "Dave" in their phone, so they put the new one in as "Dave Baker"
follow me for more history facts

2025-01-09 22:44:15 UTC

Thomas Becket is often mistakenly called "Thomas a Becket" after a medieval scribe hit the "a" key instead of "shift" on his phone keyboard

2025-01-02 15:49:35 UTC

from https://www.tumblr.com/nex3/771522130582044672
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/113/759/536/033/990/834/original/5bf8d67962979aef.png

2024-12-26 00:24:07 UTC

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OK! This is it, your reward for staying up until midnight, it's #Ronin #1 officially joining the #CellTower cinematic universe!
There may yet be bugs, there are a *lot* of permutations of options so it's likely I haven't properly tested all of them in Safari, the worst browser. Feedback appreciated!
https://www.andrewt.net/puzzles/ronin/

2024-12-02 22:09:35 UTC

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andrew invent a puzzle that's a reasonable level of difficulty challenge 2024, level: same as all my other puzzles

2024-12-02 21:55:47 UTC

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So @npub12mg…udy3 pointed out that there were too many pre-filled squares in these, so I added some code to remove redundant ones and suddenly this puzzle is: markedly harder.
I'm *pretty sure* these are all still uniquely solvable but this is starting to feel like it'll need some thorough playtesting before I turn it into something Proper.
Also I am thinking of calling this game Ronin, because "sudoku" is Japanese for "single digit" (kind of) and Ronin is a Japanese lone warrior.
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/113/585/386/051/346/257/original/d445c2cc12af657c.png
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2024-12-01 23:31:47 UTC

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some cursed source code I used to generate these:
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/113/580/155/421/688/809/original/6b4dcff5913770b2.png
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/113/580/155/718/621/863/original/7b7fdc5b7fcfb6f1.png

2024-12-01 23:19:16 UTC

I heard Cracking the Cryptic had a "Chess Sudoku" game so rather than engage with that in any way, I invented my own Chess Sudoku game. Each 3×2 minigrid must contain one of each type of chess piece, and no piece may attack any piece of the same type, ignoring anything that's in the way — so, no two rooks in the same row or column, no two bishops on the same diagonal, etc.
(If anyone at #alt4me has any idea how to supply useful alt text for this kind of thing do please let me know)
#puzzles #sudoku #chess
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/113/580/076/622/301/063/original/a0b6aff686dbb029.png
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/113/580/077/062/002/081/original/6dca130eb53db102.png
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2024-11-11 20:17:20 UTC

https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/113/466/158/714/636/561/original/62aa6cb07a200dec.png

2024-11-10 11:47:07 UTC

Welcome to new people joining from 𝕏!
Remember, posts are called toots here, likes are called florps, retweeting is technically a cross-account posting exploit that they can't fix because we're using it, and our version of Grok is called Garfiald.
There's no algorithm here! Literally none. There is no computer code behind Mastodon. Each http response is typed out by hand by your server admin in real time. Sometimes this means you won't see replies from other servers, but that's ok, other servers are full of losers anyway.
People here make a point of using alt text — if you can't find an image you want to post, just post a picture of your cat and describe the correct image in the alt text. Nobody will notice, or at least nobody will mind.
The first thing you should do is make a pinned toot with your pronouns, political affiliation, and favourite Linux distribution. Cisgender people are welcome on Mastodon but aren't officially supported, so some features may not work properly.
But most importantly, have fun! Users found to be not having fun will be given a written warning in the first instance and banned if the behaviour continues.

2024-10-03 00:01:29 UTC

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I notice also that "fizz" is always 0011 cycled around (0011, 0110, 1100, 1001) and "buzz" is 0101 cycled (just 0101 and 1010), I'm reasonably sure this has no particular significance
Although having said that "I'm reasonably sure this has no particular significance" sounds like the kind of sentence people say immediately before becoming a side character in some famous maths anecdote where a quirky genius uses it to prove P=NP or something

2024-10-01 18:20:07 UTC

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yeah, I think there are people happy to just grow their business at a sustainable level and make themselves a reasonable amount of money for it, and while the system tolerates that, there's really nothing to stop a billionaire "disrupting" your cozy little niche by operating at a loss until they dominate the whole space, at which point maybe they jack up the prices and enshittify all the benefits away or maybe they sell the thing and let it implode, but either way your company is dead.

2024-10-01 16:08:57 UTC

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I don't think that's a fair analysis — Square is jsut an elaborate way to charge people the same amount of money and they're "worth" forty billion dollars.
The thing I'm talking about is less technologically elaborate than a Square terminal — it used existing, cheap tech in a smart way to solve a real problem, and that's what's missing.

2024-10-01 15:36:48 UTC

Here's the current state of the tech industry:
A week or so ago I went for a big group meal and at the end they brought the card reader machine for us to pay and it had an option for us to go through an itemised bill, check some options, and pay for just those options (plus an equivalent fraction of the service charge). It was amazing! This genuinely saved us about half an hour of talking at cross-purposes and poking numbers into our own phone calculators and hoping nobody did the sums wrong and accidentally stole someone else's tip. I genuinely would consider going back there for future group meals despite the fact that I'd finished my food before Alec's arrived and he'd finished his before Darren's came, so thoroughly do I dislike the traditional bill-splitting process.
And yet in terms of technology, it was nothing but a low-end smartphone running an app built entirely from OS-standard UI components. No AI, no invasion of privacy, no adverts, and I have to assume no VC funding or elaborate toolchain. Just a good idea implemented well, and genuinely we all went away commenting about how clever and useful it was.
And I don't remember the previous time I experienced that. We know what people want. They want you to use the massive technological advances we've already made to build useful things that work. But apparently there's no money in that 🤷

2024-09-02 09:35:18 UTC

the cybersecurity training that work wants me to do is presented by a fake AI. they're trying to do a cute bit but honestly please don't, but also, presenting your class about why you shouldn't believe anything an AI tells you as coming from an AI pretty strongly undercuts the message
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/113/067/181/285/564/567/original/6e8e5815a4368b6e.png

2024-08-27 10:57:08 UTC

pop quiz, hotshot
what happens if you press "enter" on this screen?
to be clear: this is how the dialog opens, i have not pressed tab, this dialog has two conflicting default behaviours
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/113/033/618/145/075/432/original/dbbd49a095db5f2f.png

2024-08-18 10:27:13 UTC

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do you know if there's an exception for the shadow dom, or have we just all agreed to keep doing the error until there's a real spec?