I’ve been pondering the weird collection of sets I cooked up in this post. In this post, I’d like to take a crack at defining the sets.

I’m going to bow to my ego and call these the MattSets. MattSet Prime is the set of all integers found in all the other MattSets.

MattSet₀ is the set of all powers of two. As such, it is an even set. All members of MattSet₀ are even.

There are two types of MattSets – even and not even (odd) sets. Each set is generated from the set before it.

MattSet₁ is the first odd set. It is the set of all the numbers when multiplied by three that the numbers in the previous set is one more than. Another way to say this is – make an intermediary set of all members of MattSet₀ (MattSet_n-1 in general form) that are one more than a multiple of three. Take all the members of this intermediary set and apply the function (x-1)/3. This will give you MattSet₁ which is an odd set.

MattSet₂ is two be an even set. MattSet₂ is the set of all integers that are twice a member of MattSet₁ (MattSet_n-1 in general form).

Each subsequent set is generated in the same way such that MattSets with even indexes are even numbers and MattSets with odd indexes are odd.

As far as I have, so far, tested each odd MattSet has half the number of members as the preceding even MattSet.

In theory: As n approaches infinity, the size of the MattSet_n approaches 0. At least I think that it does.

The question I am looking to answer is does MattSet Prime contain all the positive integers? If I can’t prove that one way or the other, is there anything interesting about these sets that can be proved?

A better-defined series of sets, 8^th October 2024, by Matt

Note: I’m not sure I was all that clear the first time, but only integer values can be members of these sets.

You could add some other series of (empty) sets for completion. MattSet_nx. A member of the MattSet_nx is an even number not found in MattSet₀ that is twice the value of a MattSet₀ member. MattSet_n+1x. Would be all the even numbers not in the preceding sets that are twice the value of one of the previous nx sets. In theory, all MattSet_nx sets are empty, as twice a power of two is another power of two.

Prove me wrong.

Bury me with some weird shit

If/when I pass, I want everyone who attends the service to bring things to fill my coffin with. These must be unique or unusual and of no discernible purpose. Things like stone polyhedral dice, an assortment of random but purposeful-looking glass counters, and a whole bunch of well-made but meaningless things (cogs, geometric shapes, handmade fantasy coins with fictional glyphs, etc.). Ideally, they should obtain or make two. One for my coffin and one for theirs. That way, far into the future, we will confuse the hell out of a generation of archaeologists. They’ll spend decades trying to work out what or who I was to all these other random dead people. It will be one last prank from me to the future.

Bury me with some weird shit, 2 June 2025 by Matt

So, you’ve written a blog post and want feedback from the rest of the team? Great to hear. I guess you will now want to set it to Pending. Here’s how.

Look right. You should see something like this:

This screenshot was taken from my editing screen as I wrote this.

If the Block tab is highlighted, click the Post tab.

If the sidebar is missing or showing something else, click the sidebar button. Show here in a black square.

Look for the Status thing. Yours, like mine, probably says “Draft”. Give it a click.

You now have a bunch of options. The second one down is the Pending setting.

You are almost done.

Click anywhere to close that floating menu. Your blue Publish button at the top right should now have become a blue Save button. Click it.

When it then says Publish again, your post is now saved as pending.

This post you have been reading is, as I write this, now a pending post. I’m going to go ahead and hit publish so other people can read it.

I hope this was helpful.

No, it is not just you, the terribly built Universal Credit website appears to have unalived itself. As of now (2210 on Monday, 19th May 2025), the site is down (again).

This is not the first time this month that the Universal Credit website did this. About a week ago, the site went down. And a week or so before that.

According to isitdownrightnow.com, the Universal Credit website has been down for 5 days.

This says to me that the system has been struggling for a while now. All reports say the site and app are only down for some users. Given the lateness of the hour, this could be schedualled maintanance. If it is, this raises the question of why that was not conducted over the weekend when usage would be lighter due to no staff in the office to reply.

Here’s some reporting from previous outages

The Universal Credit page on Gov.uk is down this morning, leaving claimants unable to access essential information about their benefits and entitlement.

Issues began to be reported from around 5am this morning, with users citing issues with Universal Credit, Gov.uk, and HMRC.

Universal Credit down: Users unable to access benefits accounts as gov.uk not working, www.independent.co.uk

Around six in 10 users encountering issues said they were struggling to log in, while four in 10 couldn’t access the website.

Government website down for hundreds of users trying to access Universal Credit, metro.co.uk

The outage also affected HMRC, the Government Gateway, and other GOV.UK login services, leaving users unable to complete tax returns or access child benefit information.

Universal Credit website DOWN leaving hundreds unable to access accounts, gbnews.com

Universal Credit users were locked out of their accounts this morning after the government website crashed without warning.

The outage, which began before 6am, left claimants unable to access payments or update their details — and also hit other key services like HMRC.

More than 150 users reported issues on the government’s service tracker, with many taking to social media to vent their frustration.

Some claimants warned they could miss deadlines for jobcentre updates or face delays in receiving vital payments.

The Department for Work and Pensions has yet to confirm the cause of the outage or when full service will be restored.

Universal Credit website DOWN leaving hundreds unable to access accounts, msn.com

Is the Universal Credit website “all that bad”? (Yes)

Put it this way – one user of the Universal Credit site has been waiting over three weeks for a reply regarding housing benefits.

Internally, the Universal Credit staff are tasked with reviewing submissions from users, such as Change of Circumstance forms. If there is a problem with the user-supplied data, the system will accept the submission but then refuse to allow staff to apply any discretion. Essentially making the human review process pointless busywork.

Industry best design is to verify at submission and reject bad data offering the user a chance to correct the information to comply. Instead, they have this system that is so inefficientt there should be a stronger word for how lacking in any form of efficiency it is. Admittedly, I only have the word of one Universal Credit manager, but it sounds about right.

The IT system on which Universal Credit is built is so riddled with design flaws and process faults that it is practically guaranteed to generate mistakes and push people into financial crisis, according to whistleblowers.

Universal Credit ‘broken’, turn2us.org.uk

I said as much in my review of the site back in February of this year.

There is so much wrong with the UI of the UCW that it is hard to know where to start. It is clear that the site has been created for the benefit of the UC’s management and agents without any consideration for the people it is supposed to serve. This is a common failure by businesses that are all set to fail – they create things for their needs and not the customers’ needs. You’ll see some clear examples of this soon enough.

Why is the Universal Credit website so bad?, Matt, lordmatt.co.uk

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has come under fire for having a ‘culture of indifference’ to claimants and ignoring basic errors that have led to thousands of people being underpaid.

One whistleblower said many of the design problems with Universal Credit stem from the failure to understand claimants’ needs.

Universal Credit ‘broken’, turn2us.org.uk

When will the Universal Credit website be up again?

Nobody knows.

I’ll update this post if I learn anything new.

Is this scheduled or an error?

I can’t find a satus page that says one way or the other.

What do you think?

Thoughts?

There was a recent story in the local online news about a council using AI to stop fly-tipping.

The article talks a good game about how WasteWatch scheme reduced fly-tipping. I notice that they don’t actually say how this is done because I don’t think they know. It seems they think AI magic happened or something.

Dartford council had cameras installed at two fly-tipping spots and paid (I have no doubt) a lot to have this come with AI for some reason. Do they know they get the same deterrent effect and enforcement evidence with boring regular CCTV?

What do they think the AI does? Go over to the fly-tipper and tell them not to be so naughty, perhaps.

The fly-tipping was reduced because there were cameras there. That’s how cameras work. You put them where people break the law a lot, and then people see the cameras and make a better choice. If they don’t, the police can look at the footage and use it to track down the lawbreaker and then arrest them.

You don’t even need the cameras. Empty camera shells are effective at reducing crime to almost the same degree. And I bet they’re cheaper too.

What amazing law-enforcement breakthrough has a bit of AI added to the process, exactly? If you say facial recognition, you do know we’ve had that for so long that we have a name for that technology. Calling it AI sounds more like PR than actual useful product.