* Posts by Danny 2

2212 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jul 2009

Laughing UK health secretary launches COVID-19 Test and Trace programme with glitchy website and no phone app

Danny 2

I want to punch Matt Hancock

He is probably the best of them but he has a resting Nazi face.

Tories with teeth should not be a thing while I miss my dentist more than than my youth.

Made-up murder claims, threats to kill Twitter, rants about NSA spying – anything but mention 100,000 US virus deaths, right, Mr President?

Danny 2

I think it's just author nowadays. Actually I think it always was.

I was outside Pippa's flat in 2006, sleeping and listening to the BBC World Service, expecting her to join me for an action against a Mel Gibson statue, and two drunk guys attacked my car while I was in it. As you do.

And I froze for a minute, because WTF?

I had a big hammer on the passenger seat, because, well I already explained, so I picked it up and gave chase. They had a minute head start on me. I really couldn't catch them on foot but I really could have thrown the hammer and hit one.

And this is gradually going through my mind, weighing it all up, and stop. Accept the car damage from two drunken idiots rather than kill one of them and become a murderer.

Now if I had two hammers that story might have ended differently.

But I really can throw a hammer, I'm a Scot. We practice as children.

Danny 2

Re: Twatter in Chief

Luckily his big red button on his desk only orders a butler to bring a coca-cola.

Nobel peace prize for whichever Whitehouse aide thought up that.

Danny 2

Re: IT Angle?

IT Angle: First time Twitter has had to correct a President, and a President has tweeted his desire to destroy Twitter. Like it or not social media is kind of IT.

Danny 2

Re: Booo-ring

Actually, Andrew has just taken a pop at No.10's nudge unit psychofugue.

Subtle, but definitely /r/politics drivel.

[I notice his avatar is 1979 Orlowski. Not a criticism, ageing sucks big time, only slightly better than the alternative. Someone took a good photo of me in 2004, I looked happy and passable, lived off it for a decade. But it was not me.]

Danny 2

Crap-flinging at an Olympic standard

Brilliant writing Kieren. Some of my US pals are just too wearied and saddened to comment.

"Crap-flinging has become a regular response"

He called it a super-duper missile.

If I Die Tomorrow - David Rovics

5G mast set aflame in leafy Liverpool district, half an hour's walk from Penny Lane

Danny 2

Re: Digital literacy

"This email has failed it's domains authentication requirements. It may be spoofed or improperly authenticated"

On an email from my MP's parliamentary account. Admittedly, she is an SNP MP, but still.

I could tell it was her, I've heard her speak. Parliament is in recess but are their IT folk?

Danny 2

Burn the forests and the churches

I've seen phone masts disguised as trees in Scotland. And sometimes they are hidden in church spires. And burn the IT guys/witches.

Twitter ticks off Trump with new 'Get the facts' alert on pair of fact-challenged tweets

Danny 2

Re: No Cummings please, we're British!

He is a total Scunthorpe.

Danny 2

Re: I would pay full ticket price...

Oh, and my family were never politically connected, I was.

One of the first times I visited the peace camp I drove Fungus down to the Helensburgh Co-op to buy cheap bread. I had two bags of it so I moved to one side to make space as she finished packing and paying. A wee jobsworth pocket Hitler put their hand on my shoulder and warned me sternly not to run. I reached into my jeans and handed her £500, and told her if I ran she could keep that.

For years I didn't realise people were treating me with respect because I was successful, I just thought people were nice. Not so.

Danny 2

Re: I would pay full ticket price...

The idea was to get arrested inside Faslane. Bandit alarm goes off and everyone inside gets locked down for 30 minutes. Which is extremely reasonable behaviour in the face of nuclear annihilation.

Danny 2

Re: I would pay full ticket price...

A long time ago I was with a female activist with MS in a wheelchair, we were breaking into a nuclear military base but caught at the fence so no real threat. And the MoD plod arresting her started hurting her - not me, just her. She said to me, "Don't do anything". The smirking MoD fraud arresting me said, "Are you going to do anything?", obviously trying to prompt a violent response.

I said, "Aye. My family isn't poor, I'm politically connected and my brother in law is a QC. Unless you stop your colleague immediately I will make sure you are both sacked, prosecuted and sued. You will lose your houses and be unemployable".

That worked. It's surprising how reasonable people can be when you reach out on their level.

Danny 2

Re: I would pay full ticket price...

Don't know where your weird version comes from, but the real version is 273 characters at most.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Above The Law - Freedom of Speech

George Floyd, RIP

Danny 2

Re: I would pay full ticket price...

I just checked, the First Amendment is 273 characters including spaces and punctuation.

Maybe someone should tweet it at him to save further confusion.

God, I'm going to do that. Finally I have a reason to register with Twitter.

Danny 2

Re: Ooh, fun!

I'm pretty sure Scots disapprove of Cummings unanimously, even Tories. Well done to Douglas Ross for resigning from the cabinet. He's a referee and that Cummings was a clear red card.

Not going Huawei just yet: UK ministers reportedly rethinking pledge to kick Chinese firm out of telco networks by 2023

Danny 2

Glastonbury Town Council 5G Advisory Committee

Pulling apart a £339 anti-5G USB stick

And Emily Maitlis was pulled from Newsnight after criticising 5G. Sorry, Dominic Cummings. I keep getting them mixed up.

'I wrote Task Manager': Ex-Microsoft programmer Dave Plummer spills the beans

Danny 2

"write this stuff down before I forget it all"

Personal motto, and I think it should be a national motto, or at least an El Reg Motto. Who was I writing about?

cmd.exe is dead, long live PowerShell: Microsoft leads aged command-line interpreter out into 'maintenance mode'

Danny 2

Dot Pat files

I was leaving one Dutch company and my replacement chatted on the phone to a customer about Dot Pat files. My Indian English junior said, "Did he just say Dot Pat?", and I replied, "Aye, noo ye'll miss me".

I'd taught the English Indians a lowland Scots dialect so we could chat alone when the Dutch broke into Dutch - supposedly an English speaking company. I learned a wee bit Punjabi. And also how to freak the Dutch out - just wait until they've finished their chatter then say 'waarom niet'?

If someone could stop hackers pwning medical systems right now, that would be cool, say Red Cross and friends

Danny 2

Re: Haven't they heard of the Streisand effect?

@sad-loser

"The root cause for this is that there is still a mindset in healthcare that good data / information is a 'nice to have'"

Kind of, but I disagree slightly. My take is there has been a bias against security in the healthcare industry because there is a bias, an assumption, that people are basically good and rational and so would never attack healthcare.

It's arguable and perhaps provable that most people are basically good and rational, but it's easily provable that some people are the opposite.

You E-diot! Formula E driver booted off Audi team after getting video game ace to take his place in online race

Danny 2

His fluffer fluffed it

Full disclosure: some of my funnier posts were outsourced.

Unmanned drones to slash NHS delivery times to one-fifth of road 'n' rail transport

Danny 2

Re: I'm curious to know what it has by way of sensing other aircraft

There are pretty much no aircraft over Mull. They have one wee airstrip especially for their one wee hospital. Occasional fast RAF jets to scare the sheep.

What happens on Mull mulls in Mull.

ETA: https://www.isle-of-mull.net/locations/villages/salen/glenforsa-airfield/

BoJo buckles: UK govt to cut Huawei 5G kit use 'to zero by 2023' after pressure from Tory MPs, Uncle Sam

Danny 2

Re: Build it here

Aye, I was homeless for a long while, Over a decade outdoors, far longer depending how you define it. Apart from housing benefit I've not claimed anything for years.

I was planning all winter on signing on for Universal Credit in March, so I could get glasses and dental care and if I did lose my flat at least it wouldn't be snowy so I could save some of my belongings. Then covid, and suddenly the Universal Credit line is more popular than Tinder.

I'm fine, I'm with my parents. I was always fine except twice when I nearly died.

Danny 2

Re: Misuse of Occam's Razor

Like I said, the copy of the design is not what this is about, it's about the supporting test data.

You know, I hate to claim expertise, but I've spent some time chatting in police cells and have a reasonable idea about what thieves steal, and it's the easiest and quickest. They don't miss out an entire floor of goodies just to target a few laptops upstairs.

By your anonymous comment it appears the Chinese are back to steal Occam's razor.

Danny 2

Re: Build it here

"robot wrangling"

I would work for you for free just to hear stuff like that. I used to love lathes but CNCs are the Ms Pacman of the lathe world. Cutting edge, kind of.

I agree with you 100% - I actually agree with you a lot more but there are mathematicians here who'd grumble.

Danny 2

Re: Build it here

"Compare that to Norway, where waiters are being paid ok...The question is, what difference in terms of wages are we willing to accept?"

It's wealth inequality not income inequality that sucks. But yeah, a German ex went to Norway to become a street cleaner and had a far better quality of life than me. Norway saved it's oil money, we gave ours to 'The City'. And Trident.

When I first moved to the Netherlands my managing director threw a garden party because he'd just bought his house. It was a big deal there, but basically just the same sort of home my parents live in. (Not fancy, former council, and they never ran a large company)

In my limited experience the lower the wealth inequality, the happier and more peaceful a society is.

I went on holiday to California in 1986 and turned down a job there because the inequality scared me silly. Beggars outside of skyscrapers. An American ex demanded I marry her when Trump got elected, and I laughed and told her that was no longer possible because I don't earn enough. She has $25k savings, I have £0 savings, and she is terrified - the difference being healthcare.

Someone give me a job paying £20k for a year so I can marry her and bring her here, and I'll pay it all back and you can sack me once I'm married.

I'm actually between the cracks in our social safety net now to mix metaphors. I get housing benefits for a flat but don't want to risk that by going on to the Universal Credit, so no other benefits like dentistry or you know, food. It's easy to get food, but increasingly fraught to get a bottle of malt and a packet of fags.

ETA: Never used a food bank or charity. I meant skipping and growing.

Danny 2

Re: True, or they just read the patent

"Why do a complex breaking"

You mean a complex break-in? Pretty simple break-in. Why ignore all the other goods on offer, including in the different company on the ground floor unless it was targetted? The Chinese thieves will have saved years in development by gaining detailed plans and years of testing data. Occam's Razor. It walks, quacks, and tastes good in orange sauce - it's a duck.

Thanks for providing the link though, lately I've been forgetting some of the things I say sound extraordinary and require supporting links.

Joke:

How do you get a bike in Amsterdam? Wait for cyclists to pass then shout, "Oi, that's my bike!"

Danny 2

Re: Build it here

No offence, but I thought my post was weird and your reply is weirder. I would debate you more if you put your name to it, but for a start I don't think Britain should lead the world. I'm guessing we should be aiming for about 60th. I agree with a lot of what you say though.

My main point, maybe too buried, is that we should be able to be self-reliant in manufacturing and as you say food production. The recent PPE crisis proves that.

I hate it when people say, "British people won't or can't do that job" - we always did. Just pay us or train us, don't undermine our living standards with cheap imported labour.

Dyson in Singapore is not short of a bob or two.

That Virgin scammer, he's about to launch into space while trying to con the tax payer. End that nonsense.

Danny 2

Build it here

We have the engineers and could rebuild our manufacturing. It would do us good to do something techy even if it costs us more. Buy British Built. I was never a fan of globalisation.

Disclaimer: I am a bit, well not racist exactly as I am an anti-racist, but biased to an extreme by nationality. Nationalities do have personalities, and some personalities grate. For example I don't like Italians in general. Love the Spanish and French. I have an Italian friend, a lovely gay guy, but it took me ages to overcome my bias. I admitted my bias, we argued it and now we just joke about genitalia. Don't like Australians and can't even claim to have an Australian friend - in fact the more I meet the less I like them. Oh, I have a brilliant Australian cousin, forgot about her.

I had dealings with a screed of foreign students a decade ago. Hugely different personalities by nationality. Bear in mind they all would be fairly rich to study in Scotland and nobody poor as me likes rich people. Some of them were lovely - the Finns were to die for. The overbearing unbearably condescendingly arrogant ones were US, Chinese and English. No offence to you lot, like I said these were rich kids. I remember one of the Chinese guys said animals are just a resource to be used like dirt. Aye, see where that got us.

Danny 2

Re: Of course

When I worked for Burr Brown they reverse-engineered an Analog Devices VMEbus board. But that was okay because it was Red White & Blue on Red White & Blue violence.

The Chinese are proper dodgy though. There was a Scottish wave generator being developed, the Chinese ambassador was given a tour, two days later their offices were burgled, one year later they went out of business, two years later an exact clone was being sold in China.

India makes contact-tracing app mandatory for passengers as domestic flights resume

Danny 2

Lost in translation

My elderly mum's best pal was reportedly dead due to covid in Udder Pradesh. She's fine. Her phone died and due to lockdown she couldn't get a replacement. She asked a child she cares for to tell my mum and, confusion. She's been pre-mourned.

The longest card game in the world: Microsoft Solitaire is 30

Danny 2

Microsoft Solitaire has done more to reduce worker productivity than any virus or hack.

No, it just helped fill the gaps that were already there. If anything it, and Minesweeper helped keep us alert.

I remember pre-Solitaire days when I'd do circuits of the factory with a bunch of justifying random papers in my hand just to stay awake. How excited programmers would boast about their Minesweeper strategies. When I first rolled out PCs in a council only managers got them, didn't know how to use them so set the clock full-screen. To remind them when they should drink the bottle of whisky sticking out their desk drawer.

Nothing much got done in 1993.

Das reboot: That's the only thing to do when the screenshot, er, freezes

Danny 2

Re: "Or is it only us for whom the days are blurring?"

Decades ago I had a big fight with my live in girlfriend. I wanted to argue it out because I was in the right for once, but she insisted on going to bed because I was in the right for once. I was fuming.

So I changed all the clocks, her watch, her car clock, the alarm clock by two hours. She had a 45 minute drive to work and arrived two hours before she could get in.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, but stealing someone's time is sweet.

Danny 2

This Means War!

Scotsman sent by a Dutch head office to implement a domain policy in the German office, not thinking historically. The manager was great, he insisted everything was in English because localisation introduces errors. The engineer assigned to shadow me, not so great. Late in the evening as I was testing the policy he was briefly locked out of his laptop. Like for seconds, and not deliberate. Rather than saying to me he indicated his displeasure by smashing his laptop on his desk into tiny pieces for five minutes.

"Okay, I'll roll that back and we can call it a night"

Scary mad but it made my Dutch colleagues guffaw.

Huge if true... Trump explodes as he learns open source could erode China tech ban

Danny 2

Re: Joke Alert please

No, that's all. You may have missed the point but anonymous cowards cant expect to have help with that.

Want a song applicable to the situation?

Andy Stewart - Donald Wheres Your Troosers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yw0bLHTOb0

Danny 2

Joke Alert please

The cats haven't had any treats for a couple of days, which was a mistake. Jet is the kind of cat pigeons land beside to feed because he is not threat unless you trip over him in the dark. Miko by contrast is a serial bird killer, a persistent deadly threat within twenty metres. The cruise missile of cats. She caught one in the garden before I was awake and dad went out to stop her, but he's doddery so she brought it into the house and released it.

So I woke up to an injured bird behind the kitchen units. As you do, in a mad house in a mad world.

A nurse was coming to check on my mum and just in the nick of time because my mum had just spotted the cat with the bird and ran after them shrieking just as he arrived. It looked like her third heart attack but I couldn't do anything because it was just too funny to react to. Apparently her blood pressure is 190, so bad. The nurse went looking for a bird, which isn't a service I didn't expect the NHS to provide. Nice young man but not great at hunting birds. Luckily we have Miko, the cause and solution to the problem

My mum was swearing about my dad. I'm never marrying. I don't even care if I survive longer than the bird, because toothache. Birds don't get toothache.

I'm increasingly queasy about death and dying things, I never used to have such qualms.

Fifteen years ago an activist with MS told me she could no longer keep her chickens but she couldn't bring herself to kill them. I replied no problem, I'll kill them for you. I totally misread that, I'm fairly certain she was wanting me to care for them. Our relationship never really recovered from that.

Campaign groups warn GCHQ can re-identify UK's phones from COVID-19 contact-tracing app data

Danny 2

Re: Thank you

@Version 1.0

"Contact tracing is needed until a vaccine"

Don't rely on a vaccine working. We've been trying to develop a vaccine for various other coronavirus for many decades, such as the 'common cold', SARS, MERS. None of them have worked. They all still sneak in through the nose, mucus membrane.

Your gran's advice to wash your hands and not pick your nose is still best advice.

My advice, put toilet paper up your nose, wear a face mask, and gloves and awful smelling hand sanitiser after you've washed your hands. My hand sanitiser is part patchouli oil, which I loathe the smell of it but it keeps my hands away from my face and reminds me I still have a sense of smell.

Oh, and try not to be poor, like age that is a killer factor.

https://twitter.com/WmHaseltine/status/1263590453087055872

Far-right leader walks free from court after conviction for refusing to hand his phone passcode over to police

Danny 2

Re: And the moral of this story is ...

@Evil Harry

bad apples in any organisation but the vast majority are doing the best they can
My nephew, a very nice and intelligent young man, became a 'pig' (his descriptor, not mine) and went away to police training college. When he came out he was complaining about how Human Rights legislation stopped him doing his job properly - that was taught, not innate or rational, he had barely started.

There are underlying common prejudices in the UK most of us aren't even aware of in ourselves, then there are taught institutionalised prejudices.

On the other hand my nephew turned up late to Christmas dinner one year because he'd had to deal with a woman who'd tried and failed to kill herself after successfully throwing her children to their deaths. My worst day at work was due to a sabotaged Unix server - and not on a holiday.

There are indeed good and bad cops, and sometimes the bad ones are bad for sympathetic reasons, but in my experience the ones that get promoted highest are the worse cops.

Doors closed by COVID-19, Brit retro tech museums need your help

Danny 2

freakishly giant house mice that have evolved into merciless killers

It might just be my toothache and lack of dentist but some sentences are still scary. I don't know how covid made freakishly giant merciless killer mice but we are in zombie apocalypse territory.

Danny 2

I'm utterly broke

but I'll use this as an excuse to contact my school computer club members. One of them is a director of a blue chip.

Four boys, one BBC, one Spectrum, one Commodore, one Dragon. Didn't think that through, couldn't share anything.

Beer gut-ted: As many as '70 million pints' spoiled during coronavirus pandemic must be destroyed in Britain

Danny 2

Re: Neil Gaiman moved from New Zealand to Skye

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-52705243

Spoken to by the police!

The local police thought the lockdown was best preserved by going out to question the guy.

I really do know the cops of Skye, and stay home you utter numpties. Protect NHS lives. Neil Gaiman in his house on Skye was not a daft demonstration against lockdown in Glasgow and Edinburgh. He was not as bad as the Duke and Duchess of Rothsay who both fled to their Scottish home.

We're going to face an economic crisis at the end of the health crisis. We could start by firing 90% of the numpty cops and maybe 50% of the numpty politicians.

"New York City cops, they're not too smart" - The Strokes

Sheep on Skye are smarter than cops on Skye. By far. To be honest it is not a bright place overall. Someone put up a sign saying, "Slow Children", and I thought that was cruel. Accurate, but cruel.

Danny 2

Re: Neil Gaiman moved from New Zealand to Skye

Sick sense of humour, Mr Tunbridgewells.

It's basically all English immigrants anyway and Neil gets a free pass anywhere.

Danny 2

Neil Gaiman moved from New Zealand to Skye

After breaking up with his lovely wife. The local SNP MP criticised him for breaking the lockdown protocol.

Author Neil Gaiman's 11,000-mile lockdown trip to Scottish isle

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-52697289

I ken everyone on Skye, and they are all awful, awful people. I encourage every rich sick person to travel there tomorrow. Maybe don't visit the Kirks.

In an unrelated note, I would like to invite Amanda Palmer to Edinburgh, if she doesn't

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVmrBMtKdFE

lick me

Fuck me I've forgotten HTML.

Goodbye world. I fixed it but it's funnier as it stands.

All my love to Neil and Amanda. You were kind of starstruck.

Danny 2

Re: Red Bullshit

I'm a better anarchist than you. Brither.

Danny 2

Red Bullshit

I've just spent twenty minutes cheering on RB Leibzig because I don't know German shirt colours. The British public should have been prepared for this.

I was at a Communist poetry gig in Edinburgh two years ago, and the guy gave the clenched fist salute. I returned with the Nazi salute. To be fair to me, anarchists don't learn salutes. I've promised just to wave in future.

You can't have it both ways: Anti-coronavirus masks may thwart our creepy face-recog cameras, London cops admit

Danny 2

I am much better looking in a facemask

Had to pull two teeth since my dentist disappeared. Feeling like a third tooth soon.

I've been crying too much because news. Last night I tried to pay for my shopping with my library card - that time I laughed.

Vint Cerf suggests GDPR could hurt coronavirus vaccine development

Danny 2

Re: I don't have it!

Ta. Sorry, thanks, you might be English.

Unique Hospital Patient Number.

I'm guessing Identifier.

Danny 2

I don't have it!

My mum is okay, but I've kept her hospital wristband. Slightly curious about the CHI and UHPI numbers and barcodes on it.

She was sent into an isolation room there overnight because someone at a health centre thought she had a bit of a temperature. She did not. Calibrate those meters!

She went in with COPD and could've came out with Covid. She wasn't worried because, "I don't have it!", and I said, aye, not yet. She forbade me from making her laugh.

They were going to make her walk alone from the health centre to the hospital, a death march at her age. And she claps for carers - I'll be giving a slow clap now.

I love the NHS but Germany, the Netherlands, France, Finland have better health care today. This is getting worse, not better.

Even damnation is poisoned by rainbows.

BT suspends shareholder payments as folk forgo pricey sports TV deals for matches that won't happen anyway

Danny 2

Ansan Greeners FC

Three Brighton players down, the whole Dresden team quarantined.

We are going to have to pick South Korean teams to support. I recommend Ansan Greeners FC, second league but their colours are as good as their name suggests.

UK COVID-19 contact-tracing app data may be kept for 'research' after crisis ends, MPs told

Danny 2

Re: Smoking

Thankin' you! I was guessing, as ever, whereas you seem to have actual knowledge.

You seem to agree that it doesn't bode well for the French nicotine patch trial, but I think you've made an argument for smokers to keep smoking until the end of the lockdown, and government taxes to be lifted.

ETA: Ta to The Register yet again. I am always the smartest person in the room, and that isn't a boast, it's a consequence of door policy keeping me out. It's refreshing to be allowed here to chat with far smarter folk.