All posts tagged: worked

America’s founding promise of religious freedom has long coexisted with prejudice, even as many Christians have worked to confront it

America’s founding promise of religious freedom has long coexisted with prejudice, even as many Christians have worked to confront it

Published by Sam Flores

(The Conversation) — As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its independence, old questions have returned about who belongs and whose religious practices are truly protected in the country. At the start of the year, an arson attack significantly damaged the oldest synagogue in Mississippi. Two days later, local officials in Oklahoma rejected a proposal to build a mosque after opponents declared Islam “hostile to our Constitution.” A Texas GOP congressman complained on social media that a Hindu festival was a “third world” practice. These incidents come amid resurgent claims that the United States is a Christian nation. All this has happened even as President Donald Trump has emphasized a particular idea of religious liberty throughout his second term. In his proclamation for Religious Freedom Day in 2026, he emphasized familiar ideas of Americans’ “God-given right to practice their faith, follow their conscience, and worship their God freely and without fear.” But the statement also seemed to reflect a broader project of lending government support to Christianity. The proclamation linked support for religious …

I had Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini each build the same Chrome extension, and only one actually worked

I had Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini each build the same Chrome extension, and only one actually worked

Published by skeptic

Vibe coding is everywhere now. When most people hear the term though, their mind instantly defaults to building full-stack CRUD apps, polished websites you can whip up within minutes, or portfolio sites that somehow all have the same hero section (and gradient background). Now, as someone who always has dozens of ideas floating around in my head, I’ve been doing some version of “vibe coding” since OpenAI launched ChatGPT publicly. That said, the very first thing I vibe-coded wasn’t a website, landing page, or an app. Instead, it was a Chrome extension. I don’t quite remember what it was supposed to do, but I remember it working. So, I decided to go back to the beginning and put three of the biggest LLMs (Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini) through the same test: build me a Chrome extension from scratch. Chrome extensions are the easiest vibe coding stress test Load it, click it, pray When you’re using an LLM to vibe code a full-fledged app or website, chances are you’ll eventually reach a stage where you’ll need …

I’m out of a job after issues at the schools where I worked. Is it my fault? | Family

I’m out of a job after issues at the schools where I worked. Is it my fault? | Family

Published by Sam Flores

I’ve been a teacher for more than 20 years and loved it. I had promotions every couple of years and was happily making my way up the ladder. This year, however, I was made redundant because of restructuring and this has thrown me into a feeling of complete confusion. I have tried to find roles at the level I was working at, but have not been successful. It has left me feeling lost and unclear. The last five years within education have felt fraught. I left the previous school I’d worked at because I felt the headteacher was unable to support me following the death of my mum. The school before that I left after whistleblowing on a senior leader for bullying. I am worried the repeat issues and feelings of being unhappy all come from me, and somehow I am seeking out conflict or issues. I have a happy life with my partner and three children, as well as fantastic friends and siblings. But work is important to me and being out of it …

Do Walking Pads Improve Your Fitness? I Tested 2 While I Worked

Do Walking Pads Improve Your Fitness? I Tested 2 While I Worked

Published by skeptic

Walking pads, or under-desk treadmills, are still popular among those who work from home. They’re an effective way to get movement in at home, even on inclement weather days. Another plus is that they take up less space than a treadmill. As CNET’s resident fitness expert, I’m familiar with treadmills and was curious to see how walking pads hold up. Specifically, I wanted to see how well they helped me maintain my step count. I was sent two different models to test, and this is my experience putting them through their paces. My experience testing under-desk treadmills I underestimated how fast these treadmills can go. I assumed that under-desk treadmills capped at 3 mph, but the treadmills I tested can go up to 5 (Egofit) and 6 mph (Costway). That’s a jogging or running pace for some people, so it’s something to consider if you plan on owning one.  Although I don’t have a proper ergonomic desk set up to use an under-desk treadmill while I work, I was able to use it on its …

I tried this free Windows cleanup tool to see if it’d speed up my PC – and it worked

I tried this free Windows cleanup tool to see if it’d speed up my PC – and it worked

Published by skeptic

Lance Whitney / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways Winhance helps remove Windows bloat and unwanted apps. It surfaces hidden settings to optimize performance and privacy. It also makes Windows customization faster and easier. Does Windows increasingly feel sluggish on your PC? The more you use it, and the more apps you install and changes you make, the more cluttered it gets, which can hamper performance. Several Windows utilities claim to be able to declutter and optimize Windows so that it will run more smoothly. One such tool is Winhance. Also: If Microsoft really wants to fix Windows 11, it should do these four things ASAP With Winhance, you can see all the installed programs and built-in features in one shot, and then choose the ones you want to remove. You can review and change your privacy and security settings, battery and display options, notifications, and much more. You’re also able to customize and clean up the Start menu, Taskbar, and File Explorer. To …

How to holiday as a single-parent family? A back-to-nature retreat in west Wales worked for us | Wales holidays

How to holiday as a single-parent family? A back-to-nature retreat in west Wales worked for us | Wales holidays

Published by Sam Flores

Holidaying as a single parent is a tricky balance. You want to ringfence the kind of extended one-on-one time that can be difficult to find during term time; but too much of that and you know you’ll drive each other a little crazy. Kids need other kids, and you could do with some adult company too. You also need a break. It’s a nice idea to pack the car with camping gear and head out into the wilderness, but it can be a lot of work – and you end up in a field, attempting to put up a tent, alone. Friends of mine have suggested holiday parks, some of them with bars and restaurants and a daily schedule of kids’ activities. That all sounds a bit overstimulating. I’d been dreaming about sinking into a quiet landscape. But would there be enough to do? The potential answer came in the shape of One Cat Farm, a small nature reserve tucked in a remote valley in Ceredigion, west Wales, which may have the balance just right. …

Michael Socha ‘worked his arse off’ for new Sheridan Smith drama The Cage

Michael Socha ‘worked his arse off’ for new Sheridan Smith drama The Cage

Published by Daniella Wilson

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. You did a two-hour audition for the role of Matty in The Cage. Surely, that isn’t how long they all last? Normally you get 15 minutes to half an hour, if you’re lucky. But I’ve known [director] Al McKay since we worked together on This Is England, so we’d had a chat about the intricacies of the character beforehand, which helped me figure out who Matty was. I take every audition seriously – I make sure I’m off-book [don’t need a script], make sure I understand the character – but I worked my arse off for The Cage. So in the audition itself, I got to play, to try stuff, to mess around. It was my favourite ever audition and when I left, I knew I’d done my best. Have you ever done an audition in which you felt you didn’t do your best – but were offered the part anyway? Yeah, and I don’t understand how – and that always gives me anxiety on the first …

I asked Gemini to write my Home Assistant automations, and it actually worked well

I asked Gemini to write my Home Assistant automations, and it actually worked well

Published by skeptic

Home Assistant is one of the most powerful pieces of equipment out there for anyone who has smart-home electronics. It’s also one of the most complicated. Many people are willing to try it out for a while, and then will quickly bounce off in favor of the simplicity of Google Home or Alexa. Rather than tapping a few simple buttons, Home Assistant is best used by those who are willing to dive deep into their smart home ecosystem and are willing to learn YAML or Jinja2. However, rather than scouring forum boards in search of my next smart home addition, I’ve learned that Gemini is surprisingly capable of making new Home Assistant additions. As long as I explain what I want and when I want it, HA and Gemini work hand in hand rather nicely. Related Gemini isn’t as useless as it was when you tried it two years ago AI that I first despised is now my Google Assistant replacement. YAML and Jinja2 are complex Gemini helped me get my stuff straightened out quickly …

How we worked out a fossilised ‘pterosaur’ was actually a fish – new research

How we worked out a fossilised ‘pterosaur’ was actually a fish – new research

Published by skeptic

Georges Cuvier, the 19th-century French anatomist who first recognised pterodactyls as flying reptiles, wrote that “of all the beings whose ancient existence has been revealed to us, [they are] the most extraordinary”. Now known as pterosaurs, this extraordinarily diverse, highly successful group lived alongside dinosaurs for more than 150 million years, occupying habitats around rivers, lakes, coasts and even the open ocean. While some species were quite small (no bigger than a pigeon), a few evolved into flying giants with wingspans exceeding ten metres. The Upper Jurassic pterosaur Rhamphorhynchus (Bürgermeister-Müller-Museum, Eichstatt Germany). David Unwin, CC BY Pterosaurs are unlike any other animal, living or extinct. Despite this, a surprisingly long list of fossils have been misidentified as pterosaurs – including a specimen of the earliest bird, Archaeopteryx, and an extinct aquatic reptile, Tanystropheus, which had extraordinarily long neck vertebrae like some pterosaurs. One of the most renowned misidentifications occurred in 1939 when Ferdinand Broili, a Munich-based palaeontologist, described a new pterosaur, Belonochasma, based on what appeared to be the remains of jaws bearing hundreds of …

Contributor: Trump’s empty bluster worked until he took on the pope and Iran

Contributor: Trump’s empty bluster worked until he took on the pope and Iran

Published by Sam Flores

Until recently, President Trump always found a way to fail forward, through a combination of spin, threats, payoffs and bluster. OK, that’s the simplistic interpretation. The fine print tells a less-glamorous story: a man born on third base who spent decades insisting he’d hit a triple. Still, it’s hard to argue with success. When Trump entered politics, he redefined the rules of the game. Rivals who tried to outflank him on policy detail, ideological consistency and institutional norms found themselves either vanquished or assimilated by the Borg. By my lights, only once during Trump’s admittedly chaotic first term did he run into something that his playbook couldn’t at least mitigate or parry: the COVID-19 pandemic. For the final year of his presidency, reality refused to negotiate, and political gravity reasserted itself. It turns out, viruses aren’t susceptible to the Art of The Deal. But then, miraculously, Trump wriggled through legal jeopardy, bulldozed his way past more conventional Republicans and Democrats, and re-emerged victorious in 2024. If anything, that comeback reinforced the idea that Trump could …