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Richard Harris

Richard Harris

@beeblebrox.com

630 followers 640 following 1.7K posts

Climate, complexity, data & cats Climate & Ecosystem Data Intelligence. Born at 315ppm, now 426.6. Social tech innovator/entrepreneur, writer, photographer, ecologist, motorcyclist, cyclist, skier. Ex-CTO of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Owned by cats

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Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · Oct 21

With lots of new folks coming on board, a brief summary of me: I'm co-founder of BlueGlobe, a geospatial data intelligence platform, focussed on data-driven understanding, planning, forecasting and monitoring for environmental resilience & Climate Change response. More at: blueglo.be/news/everyth...

3D BlueGlobe Computational model of Highland Scotland, showing maximum monthly temperature

BlueGlobe topographic model of Norway, with Slartibartfast references…

Reposted by Richard Harris

Euromaidan Press @euromaidanpress.bsky.social · 11h

After months of Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy, Ukraine hit power grids deep across the country

Zelenskyy had warned Ukraine would retaliate proportionally. Belgorod now faces blackouts while authorities ration fuel for generators

euromaidanpress.com/2025/10/24/f...

Frontline report: From victim to retaliator – Ukraine targets Russian energy grid across multiple regions

After months of Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities, Ukraine has launched massive retaliatory strikes on Russia's power infrastructure, plunging regions like Belgorod and Kursk into…

euromaidanpress.com

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 13h

Apple? That whirring noise you can hear is Steve revolving in his grave. Anyone heard from Woz?

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 1d

No. Just no. Treating Scotland like a remote colony. Again.

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 1d

Douglas didn’t anticipate this one. His most common refrain, whenever a large learned treatise on the significance of 42 landed on his desk, was to put his head in his hands and mutter, “It was a joke dammit - a joke…”

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 1d

TIL a new word - thanks! But shouldn’t it be bivalvometry? 😃

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 1d

I’m glad to see that the Cat Distribution Network wasn’t affected by the AWS outage 😁

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 1d

I’ve spent part of my career in cybersecurity, and more of it running my own companies secured systems, and am not remotely surprised. Quarter-driven corporate culture, combined with a continuing refusal by technology- and strategically-illiterate boards to take it seriously make this inevitable

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 1d

Altman & co claim that ChatGPT is solving hitherto unsolvable maths problems? So how about we start with the basics: exhibit A - the AI summary of my Apple TV invoice: £11.65. Exhibit B - the actual content: £9.99. Apple “Intelligence” has failed to distinguish ‘VAT inclusive’ and has added it on.

Screenshot of AI generated email summary of an invoice, showing a cost of £11.65

The actual invoice: £9.99, showing that Apple ‘Intelligence’ is DAF, having failed to parse the ‘inclusive of VAT’ bit and added it on to the total.

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 1d

Some of us were. But the world wasn't listening. Not sure if it is yet.

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 2d

Warsaw’s water supply is monitored and controlled by crack clam teams: ecologiclife.com/does-poland-...

ecologiclife.com

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 2d

an elderly man wearing a hat and a jacket is saying `` i don 't believe it ! ''

ALT: an elderly man wearing a hat and a jacket is saying `` i don 't believe it ! ''

media.tenor.com

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 2d

If you needed definitive proof that the drugs don’t work, they just make you worse…

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 2d

Wow. I’m in…

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 2d

Looking at the data (and we were doing some very detailed Covid analytics and forecasting) it’s not unreasonable to suggest that he and his cronies are responsible for the negligent - and wilful - manslaughter of >40,000 UK residents.

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 2d

In the sense of a very, very small puddle evaporating in the first light of dawn…

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 2d

Same here: I got a 24 hour ban for quoting Pete’n’Dud (the acerbic British comics Peter Cook & Dudley Moore) at a troll. Took me ages to work out which reply it might have been…

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 2d

ChatGPT did something useful today: I used it to query the Torx screwdriver size for my Asrock motherboard. "Probably T8", it came back with. "Bugger", thought I - "I don't have a T8 driver". ChatGPT then added, "Remember that Asrock motherboards ship with a T8 screwdriver? No I hadn't. And it had.

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 2d

I’ll have “Do not disturb” on for the next couple of days…

#philippullman
#bookofdust
#therosefield

Image of the cover of the new Philip Pullman novel, The Rose Field, which has just landed. It shows in silhouette, a couple of figures on camels, crossing a desert against a flame-coloured sky

Reposted by Richard Harris

Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · Apr 22

Another report on how our high visa costs deter top R&D talent
www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

"The UK's upfront immigration costs now vastly exceed other leading research nations, so the UK is struggling to compete.
EU countries can more easily attract talent from the EU due to free movement, and from non-EU countries due to their relatively low visa costs.
"Non-EU countries are also attractive to global research talent due to lower comparative immigration costs than the
UK."
British scientific institutions are having to spend huge sums on visa costs for cancer professionals they wish to attract and recruit.
The Francis Crick Institute, one of the world's leading biomedical research centres, is now spending more than £500,000 a year on visas for cancer scientists. Cancer Research UK institutes are spending almost £690,000 a year, up 44% from £470,000 in 2022-23.

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 3d

Exactly: anyone who understands LLMs would realise immediately that any such claim is bullshit. That these are being made by execs of OpenAI demonstrates either terrifying ignorance of their own product or a willingness to blatantly lie, and believe that everyone else is too stupid to notice

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 3d

No apology required - and, although it’s difficult to express without sounding trite - bad things do pass, sunlight and starlight reappear and your world turns again. In the meantime though, here’s Oakley in Zen mode. All the very best…

Oakley, an improbably-sized Maine Coon, demonstrates the noble art of feline relaxation.

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 3d

An impressive level of seismic activity today for Scotland: a 3.6 magnitude at 0825BST today, & even bigger shake at 1807BST - our house is built on quartz bedrock and the whole place leapt around. Which is going it some for a 200-year-old stone house with metre-thick walls! The cats are unamused.

Data from the Comrie Seismograph today, showing the big (>3.5) shocks this morning and this evening.

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 3d

This government is almost entirely composed of snivelling cowards and apologists for violent bigots.

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 3d

Needs to be Four Eyes (with no disrespect to spectacle wearers ;-)). Hopefully the security services have been in less denial than the politicians ahead of this

Richard Harris @beeblebrox.com · 4d

My issue isn’t with their engineering teams, but with handing data and service to potentially malign companies and the regimes of which they’re sycophants. But it keeps me on my toes - as co-founder of a startup, I’m having to relearn the sysops tasks I’ve been delegating to others for decades!