Ed Davies

Programmer who likes science/astronomy, etc.

For the last 8 years I've been building an off-grid house in NE Scotland but have since given up on the project.

#yes #stopBurningStuff

#nobot #noindex

Home: https://edavies.me.uk/contact.html
PGP: 92533CA2D4DDE4CD9C6524830071582E53798481
Pronouns: He/him/they/them
Blog: https://edavies.me.uk/blog/
Location: Caithness, NE Scotland, Great Britain (and, regrettably, UK)

Public Key

npub1ku0c67gpqzec8urrqlyh6cmseychy0vlqtg0d2vtfraxplf4q9jsak9y9f

NIP-05 Address

edavies_at_functional.cafe@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqstw8ud0yqspvur7p3s0jtavdcvjvtj8k0s958k4x9537nql56szegpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dspc4hh3

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

atlas.nostr.land

Author Public Key

npub1ku0c67gpqzec8urrqlyh6cmseychy0vlqtg0d2vtfraxplf4q9jsak9y9f

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Last Notes

2026-06-22 21:33:38 UTC

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The PM doesn't actually have to be an MP so long as they are, like any other minister, directly answerable to parliament so they can be a member of the House of Lords (as David Cameron was as Foreign Secretary).
When Nevil Chamberlin resigned his obvious replacement was his Foreign Secretary (whose name I forget) who was also in the Lords. Though, technically, he could have done the job he didn't think it would really work so let it pass on to Churchill who was sort of next in line.

2026-05-31 15:10:41 UTC

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Is it not a case of bytes is bytes and ed(1) don't care, it just passes them though to the terminal.

2026-05-25 18:59:07 UTC

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Thick stone walls here almost line of sight from you (well, the furthest E along the Moray coast I can identify for sure are the hills behind Buckie though I can see a bit further along). Temperature in my study (the warmest room in the house) peaked at just less than 21.5°C about an hour ago. Cloud only broke for an hour or two this afternoon.

2026-05-09 10:45:13 UTC

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The press coverage of this is pretty spotty. I don't care how wet that field is, it's not a “ditching” ;-) Some reports say it landed in the water and was recovered to land which sounds more plausible. Any idea what the sequence was?

2026-04-19 13:43:51 UTC

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You're thinking of @npub1sv0…rq9x @npub1ydw…yrfd
Founder and managing director: @npub12hz…ynw4
General manager: [@bloor](https://bloor.tw/@bloor )

2026-04-15 17:03:06 UTC

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OTOH, isn't a Japanese boat in Canada particularly vulnerable to metric/US-customary-unit muddles?

2026-03-20 10:05:59 UTC

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This is something which causes me not a small amount of resentment. Surrounded by wind farms here but the most expensive electricity in the UK, even when it's blowing a hoolie.
The government insists on keeping a single wholesale electricity price for the whole of the UK because regional pricing would harm consumers. What they probably mean: it'd harm consumers in the south of England who are likely to vote Labour or Tory rather than those in Scotland who'll probably vote SNP or LibDem anyway [¹].
[¹] Yeah, around where you are the Tories have a chance, sadly, but that' a bit of an exception.

2026-03-17 20:47:14 UTC

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So the conclusion is that it only works when you're there, so you're part of the crew now?

2026-01-13 16:58:27 UTC

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Great to have an influx who aren't all going on mastodon.social.

2025-12-14 11:50:22 UTC

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Remind me why the UN headquarters should continue to be in the US.

2025-10-29 12:53:39 UTC

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“An SSH config file is compromised…”
ITYM “comprised”. A compromised SSH config file would not be good.

2025-10-11 09:42:54 UTC

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Interesting. Your pipe must be very shallow. Still, it doesn't seem to get above 20°C much or for very long so I imagine most of the spoors are dead on arrival.
(The pipe from the road into the house I'm renting in the north of Scotland, which runs round the back of the neighbouring house, is pretty shallow. I can feel what the temperature has been for the last day or two when having a non-thermostatic shower and need to adjust the flow accordingly.)

2025-10-11 09:24:22 UTC

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It doesn't so odd to me.
Legionella in domestic plumbing is largely theoretical anyway (AIUI, there's never been a case that's been proven to come from private domestic plumbing - obviously there might have been unproven cases but they must be very rare) but there is a possibility.
When researching the plumbing system for the off-grid house I was building I looked into the maximum temperatures for storing cold water. The only rules or guidance I found were from the Hong Kong health authority which said a maximum of 20°C.
The cold supply underground in the UK would never come close to that temperature so the chances of even comatose Legionella spoors arriving in the supply would be minimal. In Queensland, however, I could imagine the supply being warmer than that so there might be a sufficient load of spoors arriving that weekly pasteurisation wouldn't be sufficient. At least in theory.

2025-07-24 19:10:54 UTC

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Any idea if/how much they'll modulate their electricity demand to match supply/price?

2025-06-30 19:49:58 UTC

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Do you know Teulu? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g41jkjq0MiI
They're just over the arbitrary line from you and likely on your way to anywhere: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/shipid:7480034/zoom:10

2025-04-25 08:01:50 UTC

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Bit surprised by your assumption later in the piece that there was only on e-Id provider. I'd think that in an international context there'd need to be multiple acceptable providers. Perhaps even multiple providers for one person: e.g., government and bank(s).
@npub1yct…n02a

2025-03-19 16:26:43 UTC

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What is the practical difference?
Don't get me wrong, something like passkeys is pretty much essential given that passwords as originally envisaged basically don't work any more (almost no humans can remember enough and long enough passwords not to be crackable if there's a leak of the server's key material) so password managers are required at which point using cryptographic keys becomes sensible.
But the implementations matter. Anything more complicated than the TLS client keys used by the Gemini protocol, for example, requires justification.
@npub1afm…5gp4

2025-03-19 15:59:42 UTC

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From the little I've read there's all sorts of complications with moving passkeys around which don't seem to serve the user's interests so presumably serve somebody else's.
@npub1afm…5gp4

2025-03-19 14:38:58 UTC

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“I don't know (enough) about them” but from the little I have read I'm deeply suspicious that the design has (maybe not so) hidden motives not compatible with a secure system which is convenient for users, which kills any motivation I might have had to find out more.

2025-03-16 10:03:13 UTC

@npub13dg…khqg Your stream of Elon posts, while individually quite reasonable, are just getting tedious. Unfollowed.

2025-02-13 16:28:54 UTC

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If you just want to run a light-weight service accessible from outside on static IPs (v4 and/or v6) you might consider @npub1sv0…rq9x 's L2TP Business Light for 2/3rds the price.
https://www.aa.net.uk/broadband/l2tp-service/
There might even be security benefits from keeping that traffic separate from you day-to-day browsing, etc. Can still access the net to sort things out if there's a DDOS on your static address(es) or whatever.
@npub1huw…c5x7 @npub1lwg…0wty

2024-10-07 12:20:49 UTC

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Something I've not seen mentioned explicitly in this case but maybe you, having taken more interest, might know: did the original contract the train operating company signed for these trains specify any obligation to get the maintenance work done by Newag?
I assume not as it should have been mentioned but most of what I've read has been anti-Newag so I'm not sure.

2024-09-07 10:23:22 UTC

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Andrews and Arnold: https://social.aa.net.uk/@aaisp
Managed by https://toot.me.uk/@revk and https://bloor.tw/@bloor
Little bit more expensive than most other ISPs but very good service - if you call or email them you get to communicate with somebody who actually deals with the matter rather than just reads a script. E.g., when I moved into my current rental house things were a bit complicated with the previous tenant not cancelling his BT connection and the exchange being out of ADSL lines and being in the process of being upgraded but they spent quite a bit of time on getting it all sorted out for me as quickly at BT's bureaucracy could plausibly allow.

2024-09-06 16:01:58 UTC

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Yes, currently on an A&A wires-only VDSL connection which gives 21 down/1.6 up which is fine for current use but doesn't really do for running any servers at home or anything like that.
Also, 100 Mb/s fibre would be cheaper by a few quid/month, even from A&A.
Looking a Highland Broadband's site a bit closer, they're accepting pre-orders but I don't think I'll do that for now but might register an interest. Other things being reasonably equal, though, I'd rather stick with A&A if practical - i.e., if OR put in fibre here not too much later.

2024-09-06 09:02:23 UTC

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Thanks for the “Highland Broadband” name - apparently they have “exciting plans” for fibre where I am in Caithness. Will look into it more later.
(A tiny bit of the regret on giving up on my house build was that they'd already put fibre in to the entrance to that site: https://edavies.me.uk/2022/04/fttp/ )

2024-08-27 13:22:50 UTC

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No, the flight plan does not list the people on board, just the number of people (for search and rescue purposes).
The passenger name record stuff is separate and, AIUI, only applies to commercial flights.
@npub1ay2…exel