The artwork on the cover should come with a health and safety notice :D

I like the pop art style. But what is she going to do with that soldering iron - stick it up her nose?

Sshh. Her lips are sealed.

It's just a stylistic thing, same with the smoke, which represents heat more so than fumes.

Normally you hold the iron horizontal under the nose and of course don't breathe during the heat test.

And you don't actually kiss the soldering iron until it's cooled all the way down, and usually not unless the experimental circuit you came up with works the first time you plug it in :) So you can relax as intended and unplug the damn iron, without having to keep on hammering til all hours.

One thing she's not telling is the way you should be effective enough soldering using (very inexpensive) uncontrolled soldering irons, that you can eventually solder two pieces of solder together. Before you graduate to a "pro-grade" soldering station.

Huff flux (like we all do), duh.

Maybe it should look like someone in a Western movie blowing smoke from a pistol?

Looks like that

Like the best art, it's left up to the viewer to decide!

That alone makes me think it was drawn by AI. They say it's not...but that iconic pic sits directly in the uncanny valley.

It is clearly a reference to a smoking gun. I think the cover is beautiful.

100% Snow Leopard, followed closely by Mavericks.

While I agree, that isn’t true of all pets. It doesn’t apply to cats for example.

I’ve pasted an extract from a UK guide on legal responsibilities of cat ownership below, which to me sounds similar to AI. If the inbuilt behaviour is ‘it’s nature’ then perhaps there is less legal repercussions if the tool does something outside of its known guardrail/guidelines to meet its goal.

“Cat owners are generally not responsible for the 'normal' behaviour of cats because the law accepts that cats tend to wander into other properties and have instincts which, for example, lead them to prey on small birds. So cat owners should be reassured that the simple fact of their cat trespassing onto a neighbour's land would not make them responsible if, for example, the cat kills a pigeon or garden bird, urinates on plants or flowers, or defecates in a neighbour's soil. These would be 'normal' cat behaviours that would be expected”

https://www.gccfcats.org/ownership-health-welfare/owning-a-c...

Just for contrast I repeat your quoted paragraph with AI

“AI owners are generally not responsible for the 'normal' behaviour of AIs because the law accepts that AIs tend to penetrate victim computer systems and have instincts which, for example, lead them to prey on professions and benchmark datasets. So AI owners should be reassured that the simple fact of their AI penetrating peer networks would not make them responsible if, for example, the AI kills a discipline or profession, urinates heat into the environment, or creates dependencies on foregin oil. These would be 'normal' AI behaviours that would be expected”

That's a highly weird law. Someone let the cat outside or feeds/keeps it there thus should accept the way cats are as their responsibility.

It’s more that society accepts that cats are part of it, and considers that people should adapt to cat behavior patterns rather than we not having any free roaming cats.

It’s a deliberate choice to treat pets the same as non pets.

Agreed, that jumped out at me also. Those numbers make no sense

The other side is existing systems that have unknown vulnerabilities that are subsequently taken advantage of. Think of the recent OpenAI agents using third party sites for coordinating their work…

For anyone stranded, read up on UK261/EU261 and your airlines application process to be reimbursed. As far as I’m aware it’s not likely to happen automatically, you need to initiate the process (and record audio/video just in case proof is needed)

You won't get compensation for ATC issues, but you will be reimbursed.

Yeah but I don't think it's that legislation you'd rely on: you paid for a service they didn't deliver.

Compensation yeah, only applies if the reason for the delay/cancellation was under the airline's control. Nats down is pretty clearly a reason to reject compensation claims.

Delays yes... But once an airline cancels the flight, they become liable.

Eh, I tried in 2017 with BA when their system went down and received nothing. There was magically a Black Lives Matter protest at Gatwick (or maybe LCY, can’t remember) on the same day, which isn’t covered apparently.

I believe the compensation part only kicks in if it’s the airline’s fault.

You may be right. As a direct result of the NATS issue perhaps not, but any second order issues once that is resolve you might be within scope.

Almost certainly not. The legislation says: "An operating air carrier shall not be obliged to pay compensation [...], if it can prove that the cancellation is caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken."

That gets them off the hook for even second order effects. No harm throwing in a claim though, there's no penalty for having a claim turned down.

NATS had failed once, so it failing again doesn't seem extraordinary to me.

It is however extraordinary, and there don't seem to be any reasonable measures a carrier could take to work around it.

Fair point.

I think the qualifying rules may have changed since then.

The legislation is on the link below, it might be worth a once-over with your chat bot of choice to understand out if your circumstances are covered:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eur/2004/261/contents

I've been tinkering with a personal project over the past year.

I have no experience and I'm slowly failing forward with the help of YouTube, KiCad and patience.

I've had three rounds of PCB's from an online supplier, only to discover issues related to my own understanding of the components in each version.

In my latest iteration I've been leaning on some standard models (Gemini and Claude) and they have inspected my schematics and spotted some errors and instructed me on how to address them, as well as advised on how to make use of some components I wasn't aware I needed.

What I will say... they didn't design anything, I've done that myself, but they have been a good tool to bounce ideas off of.

Time will tell if I will get something usable this time around!

> I've done that myself, but they have been a good tool to bounce ideas off of.

Ask ChatGPT/Claude to give you an expert EE/PCB subagent/personality. Do this a few times and massage the results into one of your liking. Load this into your harness with mcp to your eda and then ask for two sub agents: one to thoroughly review the schematic, design, component choices ... etc and the other to be an adversary with the explicit goal of explaining why the current design won't work.

You'll learn a lot about your design from that :).

In a way I'm doing that already, just in a more manual way. I like the idea of setting up the dual personalities though, I'll give it a go ;)

With an imagination a toy can say anything to a child. With AI I guess not.

As far as I'm aware, the colour screen devices have two processors, so that probably accounts for the real difference in processing speed.

Uncanny valley.