Posts by af108 70 publicly visible posts • joined 13 May 2025
did "not believe this issue was unavoidable."
Translation: was told otherwise and very much believed it. Because absolutely no expertise in the field that was being discussed so couldn't argue otherwise.
See also: every other MP when discussing something technical.
I feel like some people don't understand this, even though it's absolutely awful that this is how it works.
UK passenger compensation law generally makes the airline responsible for fixed compensation only when the disruption is within the airlines control.
That's it. They're saying that because it's not something which airlines have directly done wrong they are essentially blameless.
But there's an interesting problem here. The fact that NATS caused the problem doesn't automatically settle the legal question. UK261 asks whether the circumstance was extraordinary and whether the airline could have avoided the consequences by taking all reasonable measures. So, for example, there could potentially be an argument over whether a particular airline's own subsequent cancellation, crew-management problem or failure to mitigate the disruption was really caused by NATS, or whether it became an airline-controlled problem.
There's also the angle that airlines have a 42% stake in NATS so suggesting they have no control over any of it is frankly a half truth.
If we got attacked by air in 2026 we would be royally fucked.
That really is all.
It seems that reliance on aircraft like the F35 is a partial admission of this. We could in theory have built something as good - if not better - and used that. We could have significantly stronger defences all round. We could do a lot of things. Yet, we have not.
The only people who seem to disagree with this stance are men (yes, it is mainly men) who are of a certain age and think because of how things went for Britain in WW2 or even the Falklands we're still some kind of world power when it comes to defence. We aren't.
The DWP went on to claim it had not "instructed or authorized" anyone to make the Comparison Document.
Except they did.
Followed by it being shared partly due to poor information security controls, or so it would seem.
Good job the DWP isn't a serious organisation handling serious information then.
This sounds to me like a case of an employee making notes for their own reference which they've then - inadvertently or otherwise - shared with the wrong people. Meanwhile their employer, DWP, is trying to fall back on an excuse of... well, we never asked them to make those notes!
“The price of oil has very little to do with it,” Lovelock said. ... The only other effect that we could be looking for is business confidence change, and we don't see that occurring either.”
In other words the vast majority of people are just trying to get on with their lives whilst some orange moron causes whatever destruction he sees fit today.
Humans don't sit still. Fuel prices could go up by 10 times and people would still drive. It's just that more might, you know, steal as has been reported recently (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2drmm1mglo)
A small handful of idiots trying to control the whole world badly will never work. The majority will always find a way around it. It's just sad that we're having to live in a world like that when it could be so much better.
While geographically located in Berkshire, Slough is considered part of the "Greater London" datacenter market – as are other outlying areas like Redhill and Hayes. Altogether there are over 200 DCs in Greater London
Translation: There are far too many people in London and as such every square centimeter of space matters. There isn't any more room. But we want to pretend London is a market / centre of excellent for everything. So we'll just pretend other nearby areas are "London" for the purposes of this conversation!
@katrinab I think it'll go full circle.
For the short to medium term lots of humans will find what they did being replaced by AI. Once it's whipped up an inevitable shit storm humans will be brought back in to sort the mess out.
We've no way of knowing. It just seems grimly predictable.
@doublelayer "I also don't understand this part"
Clearly not. Because what you've suggested next is mathematical bollocks.
"That's why everyone who contributes to their own pension does it."
Except not everyone does. In the case of the Civil Service job the employee doesn't have to contribute anything like what's required to get what they're promised later on. That's very different to someone in the private sector having to do so, in order to get anything (whilst also having no guarantee of what they'll get). Both people have pensions but one has paid in significantly more themselves.
"you could compute the matching salary by adding the £162k salary and the 28.97% pension contribution* and considering it a £209k job..."
Wow. No though. In either case you're not earning anywhere close to £209k so that's a pointless number to use. The comparison you should be using is simply this: keep £162k, versus keep £30-40k less due to making equivalent SIPP contributions. Irrespective of your example not being mathematically sound, I doubt the job would be equivalent for 2 people earning £162k vs £209k respectively.
"With respect, I'm a civil servant"
Ah that tells us all we need to know.
I'll put it this simply: The argument of "Hands up everybody here who can't survive on £131k gross" is stupid. It's not about survival at that level and it damn well shouldn't be either! Anyone in a role on that kind of money is usually doing something which demands serious responsibility and often comes with a poor work/life balance. Why should they forgo even a single pound of their earnings?
When it comes to pension contributions there are only 2 possibilities for who pays
1. You
2. Not you
In the case of this civil service job you get to keep the whole £162k whilst still getting an excellent pension with certian guarantees. In contrast to someone in the private sector who may be performing an equally demanding job and having to a serious drop in that figure to invest it, with far fewer guarantees of how they may end up in the future.
I get why you're doing it. Try to be a bit more respectful to others who don't have that kind of pension arrangement though. That was actually the point of my original post - the main reason for taking a job like that, it would seem, is the pension.
@Like a badger, if you click through to the job ad it says
A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
There's no way anyone's getting that in the private sector.
To contribute £47k a year yourself into a SIPP or equivalent is well beyond the realms of what most people can afford to do.
I accept your point about some people spending their disposable income on flashy items and not investing for the future. If you were to take £47k out of a salary to do that - be that salary sacrifice or otherwise - it's still a hefty difference in what you personally are paying out versus an employer.
I'm having this conundrum with a lot of job listings over the last 5 years.
At first the math isn't math-ing
"take responsibility for a budget of £140.7 million ($188 million) and 400 staff.
... the annual salary of £162,500 ($217,000)"
My salary is approx 1/3rd of this however I have a responsibility for 0 staff and a budget of just under £1 million to worry about.
At this point it's an immediate no. Even if you got past the AI-vetted recruitment process and regulatory bullshit that comes with jobs like this.
Then you read
" the MoD will contribute £47,076 to membership of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension."
To get that in any form of workplace or private pension such as a investing into a SIPP yourself you'd need to be on double the base salary.
At this point it becomes "worth it" only just, and still absolutely only for the pension. The job/responsibility would probably be a nightmare for a relatively shit salary.
Palcuie reflected that having engineers on call is "a tax on humans because our systems are not good enough to look after themselves." Palcuie spoke of the stress of being on call.
This bellend is someone working for an organisation which is basically going to create metric fuck tons more of this in the future.
All of this shitty AI generated output is, at some point, going to get "dealt with" by real humans. There are an increasing number of people using it to manage ever more critical infrastructure. What could possibly go wrong?!
The sooner AI - and the morons behind it - get in the bin the better.
@doublelayer do you actually have a Neo, or not?
I do.
I also have a Windows 11 laptop, Google Pixel and many other devices. That's how I'm able to make a comparison of actually using them. If I was purely in the Apple camp then it's unlikely I'd have any Windows or Android devices. But that's not the case.
Your response seems very frosty for no particular reason.
@doublelayer this is The Register so irrational hatred of Apple products is unfortunately something you get here from certain people. There's a linked article on The Reg which describes the Neo as "bursting with compromise" when it really isn't.
Regarding the speed comparison I'm literally comparing my own experiences of using a Macbook and Windows 11 laptop side by side. I haven't gone as far as getting out my stopwatch as that seems a bit pedantic. The point here was that 8 GB of RAM is a very different story on macOS versus Windows.
> There are also people who do need more than 256 GB of storage inside their computer, not hanging off it or across a network connection they might not always have. Evidently, you either aren't one of them or are just making assumptions, but either way, learn that not everyone is like you.
Not everyone is like you either. Evidenced by the fact Apple have already shifted a load of these with 256 GB of storage and will continue to do so.
I have one of these and also an iPhone 16e. Both of these are products that were/are ridiculed.
I'd like to give a quick comparison of them against a Windows 11 Lenovo gaming laptop I have as well as a Google Pixel.
- 8 GB of RAM is plenty to run macOS even Tahoe. My Lenovo laptop has 16 GB of RAM and a faster-on-paper CPU, and it's slower.
- Never seen a single error message on either my phone or Mac. Not true of either the Windows laptop or Pixel.
- £599 for a laptop or phone is mid range. Therefore if you consider what you're getting with the Neo or iPhone 16e isn't premium, that's correct, as it's not supposed to be.
- I've never needed to upgrade or replace any component in any Apple product ever.
- External and cloud storage is cheap. 256 GB local storage and can't cope? Sort your life out.
- The hardware looks and physically feels nice. The hardware lasts, and is usually still worth more when you trade it in.
- Loads of other reasons
In the past people bitched at Apple for not offering "affordable" devices. They then launched them and some people still didn't like it. Wow, that's a real shocker!
Basically this is a decent laptop at a reasonable price. Don't start making stupid comparisons like "it only has 8 GB of RAM" as though that's a meaningful comparison to anything. If you've used macOS for any length of time you'll understand why that - as well as many other criticisms - don't stand up.
"Meanwhile Zorin or Mint will keep that old laptop running with an up-to-date OS for quite some time longer."
Whilst I agree with you, the problem with this standpoint is it's best suited to those technically minded / average Reg readers.
The moment you give someone an old laptop with an unfamiliar OS installed they might use it... up until the point where they can't do something that they were used to on their old Windows or macOS machine. As soon as that happens their stance becomes yeah I need to go and buy a new (Windows or Mac) laptop.
To put it bluntly: the average person doesn't care about their OS, unless or until it changes to one they're unfamiliar with!
Surely in 2026 there is an abundance of devices that could be used just a bit longer? You know, like the concept of re-use.
The main thing killing this off is batteries that can't be (easily) replaced. RAM, storage, and processing power of a phone 4-5 years old isn't the issue.
You do realise that the majority of IT infrastructure used in airports was built in the 1980s and hasn't really been updated much since?
Some modern Windows terminal for a service like a shuttle should be the least of our worries!
As a friend pointed out recently, a lot of critical infrastructure in both banking and travel was essentially developed at least 4 decades ago. By people who are either now dead or long since retired. I wonder for how long it'll all just "keep working"?!
There are 2 scenarios where people really "care" about passwords.
1. If they can't remember them. Queue rage about "it fucking IS this password I'm entering" or "ffs why do I have to reset it". Get out of my way, Auth, and let me do what I want.
2. If they get compromised.
For many people 1 happens a lot more frequently than 2.
The trade-off therefore becomes - I'm ok with slightly shit security (writing down my passwords, re-using the same ones, using weak passwords, etc) *unless or until* something bad happens. If nothing bad does happen it just reinforces this as being the "correct" perspective.
If you try and have a debate with an average non-technical user about using different passwords or a password manager you can fully expect them to have switched off before you get to the second sentence.
Unfortunately convenience will always outweigh security. It's very convenient that your face and the phone in your hand are always near each other, and there's nothing to remember, and your face is unique etc etc. / SIGH.
Agile and vibe coding solve a similar problem.
The problem being an entire generation of people who want everything "now". They don't want to do the work that comes beforehand. They just want the result.
Instead of scoping out a new product/service? Let's make it up as we go along. That's agile. No really, that's all it is. It affords people the privilege of being able to change their minds on a whim about what's needed. Simply because they never knew to begin with. They try and claim this to be in the name of efficiency and constantly delivering something when the reality is quite the opposite.
Vibe coding is similar. Can't be arsed learning how to program properly? Just want output without any hard work? Easier if "someone else" does the heavy lifting. Except in this case that someone is a machine.
@Like a badger, I feel like we're making the same point in a round about way.
My main point was that it's somewhat ironic talking about whether a plane can be jailbroken. Whilst simultaneously acknowledging that reliance on other countries is almost a pre-requisite to being able to produce such machines.
Whatever your view of America they are almost always going to be involved in one capacity or another, which IMO is a bigger weakness than just whether its software can be jailbroken (which in itself is hypothetical, for all of the reasons given in the article and more besides!).
It's almost like each country should build their own military aircraft domestically and share nothing about them with the rest of the world.
What's that, they can't? Oh ok we'll have to rely on America then.
Before you downvote this 1. I'm British (minus the "we're the best at everything" false pride bullshit) and 2. We haven't come up with anything better than an F-22 and neither has anyone else really.
18-month or 24-month contract, at, say £50 a month, and then, when the contract expires, up this to £100 a month,
That works both ways though. If you come to the end of say a 24 month contract then by definition you no longer have to pay £50/month. However you cannot reasonably expect to keep the service indefinitely at the same price otherwise people would just never move.
What they should be doing is making clear ahead of time what your options are once it ends. That might include a new better deal with them, whilst making clear you can - and should - shop around to check. Rather than what they actually do which is remain as quiet as possible then put you on some "default" arrangement that's very much in their favour (doubling the price in your example, which isn't unheard of).
A savvy customer knows when their contract - for anything - ends and they plan ahead to get a better deal than being shoved on to the lazy/default option.
@Roland6 Regarding "favourable roaming options" most networks are also shafting people with that now irresepctive of whether they are PAYG or contract.
For EE I think unless your contract predates 2021 you have to pay for EU roaming. For their PAYG it's either £2.50/day, or pay £10 for a 7 day pass. Again, people can't work the maths out when they're on that week long holiday in Benidorm!
As far as I know O2 are the only major one where they give you "free" EU roaming meaning you can use your UK allowances whilst abroad.
Vodafone operates like EE in this sense.
Customers should be able to understand, in plain pounds and pence, what they are signing up to and what they can expect to pay.
Except some of them can't understand, or so it would appear.
This is a real example. On EE's website in January they were offering a no contract Pay As You Go SIM for £15, reduced to £13.50 / month if you set up recurring card payments to cover it. At the same time they also offered a £19 / month "SIM only" deal which had a length of 24 months. Both had unlimited minutes and the same amount of data (25 GB).
They will of course still have plenty of customers signing up to both. Why is that?
The terms of each - as far as I could tell - allowed them to put prices up at any time. But even if we assume they didn't do that, the cost difference between the no contract vs contract option is £132 over 2 years.
It still baffles me that people can't (don't) do basic maths like this when choosing a plan.
No one is going to give you one or two 9's of availability as an SLA.
Well they might not give it to you in an SLA but that doesn't mean it won't actually happen.
Some organisations accept that breaking an SLA and paying for that is often "cheaper" than fixing the real source of the problem. It's an uncomfortable truth.
if you believe that everything is about money, that money is the one-and-only motivation behind any form of creativity
Well sorry but it kind of is! If you consider any truly *successful* musician they wouldn't be able to do what they do (e.g. stadium tours, reaching the masses at scale, etc) without a fuck ton of money behind them to support that. They would only get so far.
That is exactly the point I was making about Linux in this particular article. It's got so far but when it needs a bit of oomph it would help significantly if money could be thrown into the equation as that persuades a lot of people to... do stuff. You also need the reach, the appeal, etc. It has none of that for the average person.
Disagree and downvote if you want but the evidence is simple: ask 100 people on the street if they've heard of - or give a shit about - Linux. Unfortunately when you have anything like that it's hard to get a new generation to buy into the concept of taking it forward. This applies to anything (not just an OS).
> The basic problem is that nobody values "free".
Sigh. Yeah, I outlined exactly this in my earlier comment but as soon as you mention making money someone will always downvote you. The entire problem with Linux is there's no commercial model that's ever worked to the advantage of the ecosystem overall.
To your point
> Capitalism at its finest: "Screw you, I got mine - AND yours!"
Consider this statement from the article
> In its early years, Linux looked like a hobby project because it was. Few saw the potential it had to release the world from the baleful embrace of Microsoft and a massively compromised Unix sphere of confusion.
As I recall, 20+ years ago Linux proponents were going round telling everyone how their OS was "superior" to any Microsoft offerings. Particularly for applications such as web servers which were becoming increasingly important.
Whatever thought was given to the technical brilliance of Linux they gave little to zero though on how to, you know, make money and use that to their advantage! Whatever your views are on Microsoft one thing they've always been good at is making money and then using that to support their goals. Which is why despite Windows still not being technically brilliant it's very much alive and kicking.
Microsoft don't have any problems recruiting young people and actively go out to colleges and unis with big banners shouting from the rooftops. They can afford it. People work for money. They already have the next generation ready and willing to work on their products. Is that really true when it comes to Linux?
Amazon and Oracle (and many others) used this premise very much to their advantage. Blaming them for that is a little bit ironic. Could have been a very different story if the Linux mindset had factored in an incredibly important angle which it vastly overlooked, particularly in the early days. It's never caught up.
> Why is there even an app? If there's a functioning website, they simply aren't needed.
Because it costs less for them to maintain either an app or website than both simultaneously.
The industry view seems to be that the average person "prefers" using a mobile app. I'm not sure what the evidence for that actually is but it's widely regarded that "mobile first" is the way of the world. Personally I find reading a bank statement easier on my 24 inch monitor than a phone so I can't say I agree with the status quo but here we are!
Edit: I've just checked the app and it's worse than I thought.
To make a payment in it simply gives you an account number, sort code and reference on an info screen. Which you then have to instruct your bank to use. Pay by card or any other means? Not possible. Website only.
Payments out? Still website only.
It's 2026 ffs.
Up until maybe 12 months ago the NS&I mobile app didn't even let you pay money in.
They have updated it so you can now make a bank transfer to top up an account. Prior to this you had to use the website to do that - or use a card. You still have to use the website to withdraw money because the app doesn't support that either.
What kind of over budget bollocks is going on here when the basics of a bank (money in, money out) aren't even a function of it's digital service??
For those wondering the older version of the app literally let you see your accounts & balances. That was it.
> How is that allowed?
The devil is in the details.
They aren't working directly with AWS.
You'll have seen there are certain consultancies which provide various digital offerings which are often tied to one of the big 3 cloud providers (AWS, Azure or Google Cloud).
If the powers that be decided they wanted it to be AWS - for whatever reason - they simply need to use a firm that uses them as a service provider. There are quite a few like that where they only work with 1 of the 3 effectively meaning a one horse race.
That passes the buck from HMRC deciding who to use because "someone else" specified it for them. That's how it works. Really.
As a novice investor who has done reasonably ok - and someone with several decades of tech sector experience - I'll say this. I have approximately 2-3% of my portfolio invested in AI and even that seems a bit much.
Might I miss out on big returns? Yes.
Do I care? For once, absolutely not.
I think to invest you have to believe quite strongly that what you're investing in is worth more than the paper it's printed on. Believing in it with some conviction is essential. I would describe myself as someone in the "medium risk" profile (not that that's really a thing. I mean somewhere between super cautious and moderately adventurous, erring on the cautious side).
AI has a few limited uses and it's really only a matter of time before world + dog accepts we've probably peaked.
With tan-tastic buffoon Trump thrown into the mix I feel it's better to be somewhat cautious.
Feel free to disagree. The title says it all. Each to their own.
See title.
This is the same stupidity as people who used to put things on web servers and say only they could access it because only they had login credentials.
Ignoring the fact the hosting company always had root SSH access to every machine.
Developing a missle Britain can use, whilst being able to test it in action elsewhere then?
If something goes spectacularly wrong (no chance because we're British and get everything right) then at least it's all happening within a country that's already been blasted to bits.
This makes my piss boil
Under the terms of their licences, mobile operators must take "appropriate and proportionate" steps to identify and mitigate risks to network availability and performance, and to prevent or remedy any adverse effects when things go wrong.
What a load of bollocks. Consider earlier this year both AWS and Azure had outages which had a knock-on effect of taking down loads of other services. Consumers are then left with providers using their services (e.g. Ring) telling them they can't do anything because of an issue beyond their control. The likes of AWS and Azure don't need to answer to anyone because, well, who else are you turning to?
Let's go back to phones. The idea that POTS was infallible is nonsense. But for every advancement in digital comms there is always, ALWAYS, some disadvantage that comes with it. We're seeing more and more of this whether it's a single point of failure, a software configuration "error", or just a general blame game culture in which everyone points the finger at someone else.
I think a much better message to the general public is you can't (and shouldn't) rely on any of this shit. For services like Netflix, Ring or discrescionary services that's somewhat acceptable. Anything such as emergency services or loss of life associated with some digital fuck up isn't - in any way, shape or form - alright. Not a single part of that is in control of Joe Public though and so here we are. Ofcom issuing fines doesn't solve problems.
@Peter2 I think the issue is highlighted where the article says
> spot and share vulnerabilities if they met certain safeguards.
Take the M&S hackers for instance. If they had identified vulnerabilities in M&S' systems and privately disclosed them, that's very different to a group of people trying to hold an organisation to ransom off the back of the same information.
But it does raise the question, would that group of people still been prosecuted even if they'd done the former?
Note that this is in a scenario where no permission had been obtained either way. I suspect they could (and would) still have been prosecuted.
> Tell me you haven't worked in web for the last 25 years without telling me you haven't worked in web for the last 25 years.
I see this a bit differently. The point here is that 2 decades ago people were building websites using server side rendering (e.g. PHP), styling web pages with CSS and applying JS for small and basic client side interactions. It worked pretty well and guess what? It *still* works well even to this day. Remarkably you can build a fairly decent web page / app using exactly the same set up, which is quite something to say 20+ years have passed. It's even more remarkable when we're talking about the field of computing where things move quite fast. It seems to bother people when something that worked a long time ago still works now.
Contrast that with something like React. Where will that be in 2 decades I wonder? In a bin where it belongs hopefully.
We've had at least 2 serious incidents this year for AWS and Microsoft respectively.
Where despite claims their infrastructure was resilient to a single point of failure type of incident, pretty much that happened.
We don't need a fourth cloud player. We need to stop and take a serious look at how reliant we're becoming on shovelling everything on to it and then moaning when it goes wrong.
> also it's off cheaper to get a 24mo contract for the phone you want (and throw away the SIM) than it is to buy the phone outright,
This is never the case.
There are no phone contracts where the overall contract cost is less than just the phone itself. Prove me wrong if you want to share a link to such a deal.
> Maybe you're effectively renting the handset, rather than buying it, and so it's never paid off?
I've already been downvoted for my original comment but I think this proves that people just don't get how it works.
Here's a real example.
If you wanted to buy say an iPhone Air you can do that directly from the manufacturer. You can either buy it outright (£999) or pay £41.62 monthly. Doing it via the manufacturer in this case is 0% interest which is very different to how it works with the major networks. After the 24 months is up you've fully paid off the phone at which point that goes down to £0 per month (it's paid off). The total you'd paid is still £999 (41.62 x 24).
To get airtime and data you'd just need to slap in an eSIM which you could get for say £5/month depending on the plan. So approx £46 / month for 24 months. Then £5 / month after the end of that 24 month period.
How this works with a major network is that you'd typically be paying £60-70/month for something broadly equivalent. But when the 24 month term ends some stupid customers just carry on paying £60-70 / month without understanding most of it was just a loan for the handset plus interest, which after the 24 month term they'd fully paid back.
"The contention is that customers who continued using the service after the minimum term ended were charged the same monthly fee, and not a SIM-only fee for continued use of the network."
As much as I like to be on the side of a consumer, if you're this thick then you deserve to be penalised.
When you see some contracts now which are in the £60+ per month region you must surely realise that it doesn't cost that for just the airtime/data!
You're paying for the handset plus an amount of interest on top. Then a relatively small amount covers the airtime/data plan even though it's bundled into 1 monthly figure. After the handset (and interest) are paid off, you own it, in the same way as if you'd bought it outright. So no need to carry on paying so much per month.
The cheapest way to buy any phone is to simply buy it outright and then get a cheap SIM deal separately. Even the likes of Apple do interest-free finance on iPhones so there really is no need to pay more than the cost of the actual handset.
Goodness me.
