Alan Harrison

Had a great time last week delivering one of the A-level residential days for the NCCE @wearecomputing.bsky.social at the STEM Centre in York. I had the joy of explaining the origin of the phrase "2's complement", and doing lots of floating point binary exercises.
#TeamCompSci #STEM #NCCE #Computing

Have you subscribed to At the chalk-face yet?

At The Chalk Face is our YouTube home for teachers, by teachers – where Craig’n’Dave’s magic comes to life!

👉 www.youtube.com/@thechalkface

#TeamCompSci #CraignDave #AtTheChalkface

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." - Frank Wilhoit crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/l...

If I set up a projector aimed at Big Ben, and projected political posts, current affairs, recipes, opinions, child sex abuse material and cat pics on rotation, how long before it gets shut down? Asking for a nation.

The X Effect: How Elon Musk is boosting the British right For nine months, Sky News' Data and Forensics team has been investigating whether X's algorithm amplifies right-wing and extreme content. It does.

They get almost no reach there any more. Musk saw to that.
news.sky.com/story/the-x-...

In the spirit of brotherly love, could I gently enquire why the almighty **** are government departments, government ministers and Labour MPs *STILL* using X?

It is unconscionable to use X. To do so gives succour to Musk and all he represents.

Let's hope that 2026 is the year we start to disensh*ttify the internet!
pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/3...

When I was a kid it was mimicking The Fonz (thumbs akimbo, "Heyyyyy"), or Yoda impressions. Yes I'm that old. Yes I still do these.

R.O.F.L.

O.M.G.

The struggle is real. (I'm a computing lecturer and teacher educator, currently working on AI policy. Called Alan.)

Great info thank you. It kind of backs up my point though, which is complexity adds risk.

There are also the hashtags #UKEd and #UKTeaching but it's fairly quiet there too.
#Edusky

Compute isn't the problem, it's complexity. The recent Cloudflare outage shows how hard it can be to diagnose a fault in millions of lines of code scattered over thousands of instances.

I think you're holding up "1066" as an example of a "fact" which is irrelevant, but in this discussion you have alluded to many facts which are indeed relevant. You are mocking a common parody of "useless facts" (dates of battles) while admitting that facts in general are valuable knowledge.

How can you think creatively about things you don't know (facts)?

Let me tell you a story (before the ship explodes):

Image of the progress pride flag flying at our ESAC site in Spain.

Image of the progress pride flag flying at our ESRIN site in Frascati, Italy.

Image of the progress pride flag flying at our ESEC site in Belgium.

Image of the progress pride flag flying at our ESOC site in Darmstadt, Germany.

Today is #LGBTQinSTEMDay 🌈

ESA proudly joins the STEM community in celebrating the unique contributions of LGBTQ+ individuals.

The Pride Flag will fly across ESA sites as a reminder of how far we’ve come, and how much more there is to do.

#SpaceForAll

Ah Dan Hodges, never knowingly correct about anything, indeed impervious to any desire for the truth.

Screenshot of downdetector.com being down

Downdetector is down because it’s on Cloudflare

Want students to take great notes?

Use the Cornell Note-Taking Method ⬇️
https://www.innerdrive.co.uk/blog/effectively-use-the-cornell-note-taking-method/

Can't read that, cloudflare is down!

The irony of a DDoS protection service going down is off the scale.

It's all fun and games until the Serious Crime squad comes knocking because your shed has become a ransomware botnet.

"I could definitely answer that but you're out of tokens for this month. I think Brian the wine cellar might have a milk alternative you'll find refreshing, until your fridge account is back in credit"

You should definitely get them on a Conference call.

Wow this has taken off. The screenshot was sent to me by a friend, not sure how to credit the original author. I don't have a soundcloud 😁, so instead please thank me by checking in on someone vulnerable today, because the billionaires won't. Thank you.

I like ordering groceries. And booking a holiday. And sketching and writing songs and walking the dog and

Thanks Siobhan for contributing so much to the session, and your kind words here. Good luck in putting all the ideas into practice!