Having just spent 5 minutes on it...I imagine it gets played because it's pretty good fun (good work!)

The inclusion of showing the trajectory of your previous (failed) attempts is really neat - it means I can refine my shots more accurately.

Genuine question...why would that need to be hand-written?

It makes absolute sense as a general statement and is kinda crazy that this wasn't a built-in limitation, but I'm not quite sure why the code for that bit must be hand-written (provided the code functionally does what you describe).

In my experience, a decent proportion of people have always been nervous about joining in. I'd wager that for many of the onlookers it isn't driven by a creativity/participation thing, it's just a (pretty normal) fear of embarrassing themselves. Scroll back 30 years and I would undoubtedly be one of those awkward teenagers wanting to join in but scared to do so out of fear of embarrassing myself.

That said...There probably is a reasonable argument to be made that in the modern world the potential for everything you do to be filmed and shared with others amplifies those fear more than ever.

Though, we do have to be very careful with interpreting online commentary as representative the collective, when trying to understanding whether something is considered good/bad.

Firstly because only a small proportion of people voice their opinion publicly at all - so only a small proportion of opinions get heard.

Secondly because opinions that are voiced are much more likely to be definitive in nature (it's great / it's terrible) as people tend to be less willing to comment "it's ok" - so vociferous voices tend to dominant online discourse.

Finally, because online communities often represent a niche/specific demographic and so if you only see the views from a particularly online community it's a fair bet they are not very representative.

By comparison it is much harder (and also much more likely to generate negative newspaper headlines) to make 500 people redundant.

> The Fayette County Water System has a total production capacity of 22.8 million gallons per day (MGD).

Source: hhttps://fayettega.org/doing-business/global-access-infrastru...

So...keeping things simple and using months of 30 days:

Using 29M gallons over 15 months = 29,000,000 / (15 * 30) = 64,444 gallons per day avg

Based on 22.8m daily production capacity that's less than 0.3% of the total production capacity per day.

(Happy to be corrected if my napkin maths is wrong / i'm missing something here!)

We're absolutely only talking about it because it's AI.

From about 5 minutes of digging, I found the below which perhaps helps to put the 29m gallons in context.

> The Fayette County Water System has a total production capacity of 22.8 million gallons per day (MGD).

Source: https://fayettega.org/doing-business/global-access-infrastru...

So...keeping things simple and using 30d months:

Using 29M gallons over 15 months = 29,000,000 / (15 * 30) = 64,444 gallons per day avg

Based on 22.8m daily production capacity that's less than 0.3% of the total production capacity per day.

(Happy to be corrected if my napkin maths is wrong / i'm missing something here!)

> the reason is that this is less like painting a wooden fence, which is easy, and more like changing the colour of a carbon-fibre Formula 1 part, which requires re-calculating the weight, strength and aerodynamics.

and

> this is less like making ice cubes and more like baking a complex soufflé where every degree of temperature and milligram of ingredients matters.

Not a problem, but it felt odd enough that I noticed it, so maybe that's what got them thinking it was AI written/assisted?

Money can often just be one part of the equation.

To do things well you also need - available & capable technical resource, suitable facilities, available & capable leadership and management (with engaging at the right level in the business) and a clear vision of what you're trying to achieve/working towards.

Given how Apple appears to operate, I wonder if a strong desire for senior management control/oversight over major developments means they (artificially) limit how many concurrent large-scale things they can work on at any given time?

Maybe not, but that'd be my guess.

Apparently there used to be people who would buy the policy purely for the parker pen. They'd get the pen then cancel the policy for a full refund. There's some weird people out there.

It reminded me of a job nigh on 25 years ago I had - I worked at a large insurance firm as part of a team delivering a specialist service to high value customers...but it was often under-subscribed so if things were quieter we'd get roped into doing all manner of different tasks to keep us busy/help out.

One thing we occasionally got roped into was opening returned mail from mail-shots advertising 'over 50s whole of life' insurance (basically a policy over 50s would take out with guaranteed payment on death that would primarily be used to cover funeral costs).

The mail shots were sent with a pre-paid envelope and a form to fill in to buy the product. It's going back a while now but some days it'd be 100s of letters coming back - my rough estimate would be:

* ~2-3% of the return envelopes were people buying the product

* ~95% were people return the application form in ripped up form

* ~1-2% were people sending something weird back

The weird stuff we got back varied massively, but a few that have lived long in my memory:

* A sheet of paper with a hand written note saying they'd farted on it

* Toe-nail clippings

* A stash of cuttings taken from pretty graphic porn magazines

* Hand written notes, often so apoplectic in their rage that they were hilarious to read

* 'Filled in' forms but where all the information was clearly fake/puns/nonsense ('Mr Hugh Janus' that sort of thing)

* Randomly (to me at least) peeled off labels from jars/etc. were quite common to get back

For what was a pretty dull task (open envelopes, if genuine, scan for the processing team and return a 'parker pen' to the applicant, if not dispose of) the occasional weird responses we'd get made the task much more amusing.

{all mail had already been through some sort of security scan process for metals/etc. so we didn't tend to get anything truly dodgy back}

It's entirely possible that a hack/fraud like this existed at a relatively small scale that was 'tolerable' to the business, but subsequently became more popular to the extent it became unsustainable to continue to offer the guarantee.

I could easily image that happening a couple of ways -

* a 'life hack' like mentioned gets spread around in forums/online, raising awareness of the 'hack' which sees return volumes increase beyond what they had modelled/expected when pricing the cost of the guarantee into their product

* The above, combined with the growth in peer-to-peer used clothing sales (things like Vinted in the UK, or ThreadUp? in the US) means there's money to be made taking advantage of things like this - people could absolutely earn a living/earn money finding used clothes in thrift stores, cashing in on the manufacturer guarantee and then reselling the subsequent items on via peer-to-peer sales as unused/unwanted clothing where they'd undoubtedly make a sizeable mark-up vs. the cost of buying potentially quite used clothing in a thrift-store.

On that second point - I personally know people who supplement their modest incomes by doing similar things - scouring things like Facebook marketplace/freecycle for items they know they can turn around and resell online for a small profit. Feels like way too much work per £/$ earned for me, but undoubtedly it happens).

Of course...you could be absolute right, it could just be a convenient scapegoat to point to when removing a previously offered service that the business has deemed no longer viable/not worthwhile to offer.

It certainly wouldn't perfectly solve things but the further out a prediction is made the more risk there is that the outcome could change - even for someone with insider knowledge.

E.g. I've worked in businesses where an M&A has looked a nail on cert - as part of a small discreet team involved we were being readied for the announcement etc. only for it to stumble a few days before completion.

Obviously there are some markets/situations where a few extra days won't make a difference at all, but I could see how something like that would introduce more risk/uncertainty for those with insider knowledge.

There's was 2 or 3 where i had no idea, guessed and was a way off.

There's was 1 where i did a hail Mary and got it. It was interesting how some even towards the end were really obvious and others were really subtle - I'd say I did better with purple tones and worst with the blue / greys.

From a quick skim around it appears ASHPs can continue to work at -20c even -30c IF they are units that were designed for cold climate operation, albeit they can't secure the same SCOP/efficiency as they can with warmer temps.

It also looks like homes in these colder areas will often install the ASHP + have some form of additional heating as a back-up (e.g. electric heating) to compensate for the limitations of the ASHP in the coldest weather.

I've got a 1930s semi-detached house (UK, north of England) - heated solely by a ASHP for both heating and hot water.

Our Seasonal Coefficient of Performance is currently 3.47 (347% efficient) - even if limit that to just last month (coldest month of the winter so far in the UK) our COP was 3.25 (325% efficiency).

Roughly speaking if you can achieve a COP over 3.2x in the UK it should be roughly on a par with gas, assuming you go 'gas free' (i.e. you can make the saving on the gas standing charge).

Personally we're running at ~£200 annual saving vs. my estimate of what costs would be for equivalent gas boiler - that's thanks in part to being able to do all our hot-water heating at night rates.

House wise - we don't have cavity wall insulation, have 15+ year old double-glazing and probably should have more insulation in the loft (it fills the rafters but I think these days that's considered not enough).

Also with changes to ECO (energy company obligations) and RO (renewables obligations) the differential between gas and electric will reduce further

Anyhoo - added my example to show that ASHP can work perfectly fine in old, poorly insulated homes in (moderately) cold climates.

ECO/RO link - https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2025/11/energy-bill-c...

Here in the UK some electricity providers offer 'smart' charging (e.g. Octopus Intelligent Go).

In that situation the energy provider controls when to charge the car - e.g. you say "I want the car at 80% by 7am tomorrow" and the energy provider controls the timing of charges.

That's how my EV charges - I plug it in, and Octopus control it.

Benefit for me is that whenever the car is charging my entire home's use gets the overnight rate (even if part of the schedule is charged during the day).

Benefit for Octopus is they can use my car to balance grid demand / schedule the charge when it is most financially effective for them.

I can - at any time - override that logic if I just want it to charge at a specific time for whatever reason.

(I presume this sort of arrangement is becoming more common in other countries too)

I'm a little confused by this, aren't AirTag basically circular discs pretty much just big enough to house a CRT2032 battery?

Form factor wise they don't look teardrop shaped at all in the pictures?

I don't have one so could just be missing something obvious here.