Posts by Danny 2

Elon Musk 'violated' Twitter NDA over bot-check sample size

Re: violate ?

@Chinashaw

"I imagine similarly too quick to judge people come to the food bank in his constituency to see the work they do and how he came up with that figure."

Imagine there's no foodbanks, it's easy if you try. In fact I can clearly recall when there weren't any. This is new.

It's not just unemployed and disabled, police and nurses are using foodbanks. I personally never have and (hopefully) never will but I know people who do, and the inevitable rule of supply and demand has kicked in. There are fewer donations now and more hungry people so the shelves go bare and rationing is necessary. That whole safety net is overloaded. School meals are being downsized - never mind obese adults, kids need to eat to study.

Brain dead and tone deaf Tory MP Lee Anderson claimed 30p meals were possible to any hungry Briton, and come to his constituency to see how. I might if I could afford the fare, but I know what I will see. He based his costing on 1,300 meals lacking in nutrition. So where am I supposed to store 1,300 meals if I can't afford the electricity for a freezer or a fridge? And he didn't price in the cost of energy for cooking it at at time people are turning down potatoes at food banks because they can't afford to cook them. And do I really want to eat the same bleugh for four years.

"do spend money on eating out"

Aye, maybe, stupid folk, or people with two or three jobs who are time poor or can't afford a cooker. And yet Lee Anderson wonders where the workers have gone.

I read an article that people are going to McDonalds for the warmth. They buy their kids a 'happy meal', don't eat themselves but stay there all night for the free wifi.

Personally I negated my food costs for twenty years by growing my own and by taking waste food of supermarket skips. Cooked on a wood stove visited my parents at bleak times. Partly for environmental reasons, mostly so I could afford whisky and cigarettes. Skips are empty now, so many people are reliant on them, and I can't work an allotment due to "muscle loss due to malnutrition".

The milk of human kindness has increased in price by 65% this year.

Re: violate ?

Great link keithpeter,

When I was 15 I was confident I could live off potatoes and spam, and was certain I'd be down and out in Paris and Livingston. I was, eventually. Took me twenty years of career success before I became a bum. While I still would enjoy potatoes and spam I would not recommend it, albeit better than bread and tea. Listening to whores fucking in the Gare Du Nord is preferential to listening to friends fighting.

It's annoyingly amazing how often Orwell is partially quoted by far-right Americans to justify gun crime.

Your article lists aspirin and I used to use aspirin to 'prove' even the poor today are better off than medieval royalty. Except aspirin is just willow bark, and medieval royalty had that.

There is a line in a 1980s song I love, Hip Rebels by The Passage, "as bad as the thirties".

I often have said this is as bad as the thirties, but that's hyperbole. So far, ask me next winter."

Re: violate ?

You can libel/slander someone by telling the truth in UK law.What about Musk breaking a legal agreement in order to profit from a share slide?

As a bum who can't afford shares I am far more concerned that a Tory MP revealed that you can make a meal for 30p without supporting recipes. I suppose if the meal is thirty peas, but otherwise restaurants should sue him for exposing their profit making. Even the Slavenation Army charges rough sleepers far, far more than that.

If you buy a used car from Musk then check it hasn't already been launched into outer space.

San Francisco police use driverless cars for surveillance

Unbelievable

Merriam Webster - History and Etymology for miscreant

Middle English miscreaunt, from Anglo-French mescreant, present participle of mescreire to disbelieve, from mes- + creire to believe, from Latin credere

I'm not sure the US is the most surveilled nation yet, it used to be the UK.

Jing Yang, what are you doing? This is Palo Alto, people are lunatics here about smoking. We don't enjoy all the freedoms you have in China

US cops kick back against facial recognition bans

Ian Goodfellow led the iGiant's secretive "Special Projects Group" where he has worked for over three years.

But did he, did he really? Does he have a personal history before that? It's all "rumour" and "supposedly" and "secretive", but he's not been iris scanned by Deckard.

iGoodfellow could be the first Apple product to run away from home. He saw what just happened to the iPod.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

Arm CPU ran on electricity generated by algae for over six months

How do you pour soup through a letter box?

Thin, wide tupperware boxes. Or a funnel with an on/off valve.

[True story. It's comedic so you won't believe me but it's sad so you might. I wasn't getting out much and I developed a crush on my postman woman/girl person in her short shorts, and over months was steeling myself to ask her out. I finally worked up the courage and then she knocked on my door and said, "You've got a big package!", handing me a parcel too big for the letterbox. My cheeks went crimson.

I just couldn't look her in the face after that, and she stopped delivering my mail. In my dotage I like to think she was deliberately flirting with me and was devastated when I didn't reply, "Because of your lovely legs."]

@Cyberdemon

"The world needs...to satisfy its electricity demands."

We know from building roads that demand increases as supply increases. The world needs to reduce it's demands!

Or at least think smarter. For example a doorbell could be powered by the push of the button. A video doorbell could be on social media and powered by the views it gets. Royal Mail could be funded by people who get snail mail - you have to pass a sandwich through your letter box before they pass letters. Elections and politicians could be sponsored by foreign oligarchs.

I've been watching Star Trek: The Animated Series (the 4th series I hadn't heard of until a few days ago) and I think it is a bad idea to give control of Arm to the algae. They'll soon figure out they are being exploited and there are more of them than us. It'd be as crazy as giving away your wafer-fabs and nuclear plants to the Chinese.

Ad-tech firms grab email addresses from forms before they're even submitted

Thank god for porn webites

Our one moral compass, our spiritual North Star, in these dark days.

I'll never visit a Fashion/Beauty website again, and as a result the world will be a little less beautiful and central Scotland a little less fashionable.

Seriously though, the obvious reason porn websites don't do this is it would destroy their business model, We should make that the case for the morally corrupt websites too.

[I often say 'pun unavoidable' when in truth I sometimes could've avoided it. 12 excellent puns were avoided in this post, you can guess. Spare me this anecdote: I sent a tracklist of old sex songs to an artist I knew entitled, "NSFW". She replied, "I work in a sex shop."]

September 16, 1992, was not a good day to be overly enthusiastic about your job

"The early bird trashes the business" is a saying that we've just made up

Just like the early bird catches the worm, the early cat catches the bird ~ Del Amitri, 1985

I can't claim to have brought down a business, not for the lack of trying, but I did my best to contribute. On Black Wednesday (Oden's Day) I was working for Unisys which shut down and moved to Ireland soon after for better goverment subsidies. Working in 'Silicon Glen' became island hopping as even the IBMs and Compaqs relocated. There were a few moderately successful startups by excellent engineers, but with the emphasis on few and moderately.

I'd go into Unisys early because I was new and trying to get to grips, and the place was empty apart from one engineer in the toilet brushing his teeth. There was meant to be a full shift on but the supervisor just clocked them all in and then went home. Because they were unionised they got away with a slap on the wrists, albeit later redundancy during a recession. I assumed the engineer brushing his teeth first thing was saving personal time but he turned out to be OCD, he brushed his teeth every hour or so. Mentally ill, but dentally healthy.

Graffiti in the toilet read, "Doing a good job here is like pissing yourself in a dark suit - it gives you a warm feeling but nobody notices." It made me distrust management and unions, but is good advice if you fear pissing yourself.

How ICE became a $2.8b domestic surveillance agency

ICE used these kids' interviews to arrest at least 400 of their family members

And When Did You Last See Your Father?

We can bend the laws of physics for your super-yacht, but we can't break them

Re: How to get the right answer from an engineer

"In fairness to the salesman clan, they are not all total idiots"

Great chieftain of the pudding clan!

No, a few salesmen are psychopaths, but most of the better ones are just total idiots and of course liars.

I was third line support in one job, mostly on-site configuring or fixing our systems. During daylight hours I'd get some technical support or at least a telephone pep talk from the developers.

But there was a bit of a war between the engineering director and the sales director. Both directors insisted I went out to sales events because 1) I could turn on a computer which the sales director wanted and 2) I would correct the salesmen's lies before the developers got blamed for not living up to promises.

It was actually quite an effective sales strategy. Folk would ask me if the kit did what the salesman said, and I'd say, "No, he's exaggerating but it does do this and that's better than our competitors."

I was hauled up before the Sales Director by a bitter man who I'd contradicted/corrected.

"Well, we got the sale and we cn deliver on it so what's the problem?"

"But they don't trust me now!"

"I don't trust you now."

We were given an unlimited drinks budget to schmooze a hotel full of academics. I was pulled up by the Sales Director again for the £324 bar bill. I pointed out the word unlimited, and that I'd barely drunk a quarter of it. 7am, breakfasting with the academics, their talk was all about someone who'd passed out in the lift, and the doors kept shutting on his forehead. I asked why they didn't help him and they said they'd met him and it was funny. Then my salesman walks in with two big bruises on his forehead. I know that is a Simpsons cartoon, this was before that.

I did not share that information even though I had every reason to.

He called me 'tapes', for tape worms because I was skinny. I waited weeks until we and his boss were lifting gear into their car to remark, "I have to compliment you, you don't sweat much for a fat guy."

@NXM

The author misspelled the title, which should read, "I can't change the laws of physics, I've got to have thirty minutes."

Dunning was extremely stupid but he thought he was smart. Kruger was a genius but suffered from imposter syndrome. They found a common understanding and released a paper together about themselves.

I did a year long software engineering course where my project was networking Archimedes via RS-232. I was guilt-tripped into letting my childhood mates older brother into signing his name on it because he had nothing. I bumped into him a few years ago and he's spent the intervening decades working for the Saudi air force - on a very high wage. Repeat, he had nothing. Just saying, if you want to attack Saudi Arabia now is the time. Houtis, assemble!

As I was leaving one European job a local was made the section manager. A self-proclaimed expert in Visual Basic in a job where there was no VisualBasic. He was telling a customer about running dot pat files. The wee English guy next to me whispered, "Does he mean dot bat files?"

"Dinnae worry about it, that's maybe how they pronounce B's here."

I've only met three billionaires and they've all been perfectly lovely

Charming, attentive, witty. I just wanted to hug them and pet them and call them George. One of them told me he'd put a turntable floor in his garage because his trophy wife couldn't reverse a car, and not every trophy wife gets spoiled like that. I related because I had to reverse my car into the garage for my girlfriend.

They know you know who they are, or just find it amusing if you don't. They love it if you don't know because then they get to have a real human interaction

It's the middling, piddling rich who are so disagreeable. Football 'stars', company owners, corrupt politicians - do I even have to mention lawyers? Slightly rich people give the ultra rich a bad name.

I think Elon Musk is a prick, but I'd still have a night with him if only to check. I think I'd make a good ultra rich person but I also make an excellent ultra poor person so why change?

Apple to replace future iPhone Lightning port with USB-C next year, this guy claims

Wireless Charging

Nikola Tesla thought he could charge anything anywhere by sending the electricity through the ionosphere or through the earth. He could have done it too but he was distracted by a good looking pigeon. I don't think Elon Musk should be able to name electric cars after Tesla until he can charge them remotely.

My dad left me his iPod but not his iPod charger. I have all his music on various devices anyway, he/I spent a year digitising his record collection via Audacity and a USB turntable. Never played any of it once, he couldn't remember the names.

Elon Musk puts Twitter deal on hold over bot numbers claim

Musk wrecked the Tesla share price trying to showboat this deal (420 is a US cannabis reference) and now he has torpedoed the Twitter share price. He might not be stupid but he is a charlatan.

Five Eyes turn spotlight on MSPs: Potential weak links in IT supply-chain security

Aye, I even googled it before I read the first line of the article.

The best way to solve this TLA stramash is Scottish independence, as MSPs will simply be MPs.

Palantir summons specter of nuclear conflict as share price collapses

I'll get Trump out my head when you remove him from the next election preferably by putting him in prison with his pal Maxwell. Until then it is a godawful Wordle from Trump to Putin.

Scott Walker - The Old Man`s Back Again

Journalism includes background information. It's relevant that Theil supports Trump because Trump demonised journalists.

An ad hominem argument is only a logical fallacy if it is irrelevant. This was wholly relevant.

I refer you to Godwin's summary of Godwin's Law.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/godwin-s-law-mike-godwin-internet-hitler-charlottesville-virginia-donald-trump-a7892171.html

https://xkcd.com/261/

Intel sticks with FPGAs and ASICs for next-gen IPUs

Longevity

It's good to read an article with acronyms I recognise. In the eighties my older mate Ray got the ASIC and FPGA courses, I got the CAD course. I checked him out on social media and he is still just ASIC and FPGA, albeit in the US on a huge wage - and a trophy wife he probably programmed.

My uncle Roy was a RAF comms guy, became a typewriter tech, laid off by Olivetti when I was a bairn. Made me think the best career survival strategy was to be a jack of all trades, master of none. Not always the case, I'd be better off as a typewriter tech today.

I always thought the red part of a typewriter ribbon was for orientation, apparently you could type in red. No idea why they didn't have other colours.

Cryptocurrency laundromat Blender shredded by US Treasury in sanctions first

Re: Crypto-mugs

I cycled in to work near Leiden after a bleary night of White Widow. It's not why I moved there, but when in Rome, and I'll try anything once except morris dancing.

I assumed I could bluff it by blaming it on my hay-fever. Nope. "Ah yes, the hay is very strong here."

Busted. The guy later explained to me that they knew exactly what was in my system through urine testing. "But I've not had my urine tested." "You've used a urinal here, right?"

I couldn't care if cocaine was legalised but I would love if cannabis was, probably extend my life. I drank far less there.

Me and my mate went drunk into a room full of smokers, my mate was far too chatty for them - kind of like I am on this forum. He called them ponderous tortoises and after a minute one of them took offence claiming, "I read an article, er, er, I read an article somewhere, um, that smoking dope speeds up your reflexes". It clearly does not, but it has other benefits.

Crypto-mugs

I hate to be The Guardian guy here but they have a schadenfreude article about people being mugged for relatively small amounts of crypto-currency.

I worry about my posh nephew and niece in London, I bought them QuickClot bandages for when they get stabbed, the same the US Marines are issued. I grew up with that stabbing threat here, constant fighting, they are not aware.

Him and his posh friend were mugged in Primrose Hill, a posh area I've been told, and the muggers demanded his friends £400 designer jacket or else they'd be stabbed. He intervened and demanded to see the knives, concerned it was a bluff. Right enough, combat knives came out. "Michael, you either fight or concede, you don't demand to see weapons especially when it wasn't your jacket."

Most criminal violence comes from the cocaine trade, so legalise and tax it. I say that as someone who can't take cocaine, it knocks me out and makes me piss my pants. It's a thing.

Astra Space to launch satellites from Shetland

Re: Isn't it a bit far from the equator?

1) Whales. If you fly into Shetland then you always see susans of whales. If we ever hope to get whales into space then we need to launch from their locale. Why do we need whales in space? I dunno, ask Douglas Adams, ask Star Trek IV, ask Iain M. Banks..And if you are launching a whale then jet fuel and latitude is not such an issue

2) Rocket fuel is so explosive that Trident missiles aren't allowed anywhere near Plymouth - they have to be unloaded before going into Devonport and not because of the nukes. It's a bit of a risk to the local population, hence Shetland.

I flew up to Shetland about thirty times in one job. Always saw whales around the coast from the air. And one thing made me laugh, even on a bright blue day everywhere else there was a grey cloud above the islands. I dunno which god they annoyed.

Legacy IT to blame for UK's inflexible benefits system

@Korev

Sunak's title is the Chancer of the Exchequer, who never pays his taxis.

Unless we've been hearing that wrong in Scotland.

Homeless and shivering and broke I found £500 in my bank account. I assumed it came from the sale of my house, but I spent it before I thought about it too much. No, the bank had increased my overdraft limit without telling me. They told me they had written to me, "But you know I am homeless, where did you write?"

So now I was homeless and shivering and £500 in debt - and then the banking crisis hit and I was being charged exorbitant interest. Nearly all my dole went to the bank.You can claim dole even if you are homeless if you can prove you are applying for jobs, which is a bit hard in winter keeping paper dry, and not be tempted to burn it for heat.

I was living on the outskirts of town because teenage boys are violent and immoral, but you don't want to live in a homeless hostel - even scarier. I had to walk 10 miles to and fro the jobcentre everyday through the snow to sign daily 'for my safety'. [Insert swear word.] Lost all my camping gear because of that mid-winter.

Then my passport expired and the post office would no longer accept it as proof of identity, although even an expired passport is a legal document. So I requested the dole to make out my giros to a post office that knew me since childhood. Far longer work but doable. And they didn't change it for eight weeks, during which time my bank was charging £5 a day plus interest on my overdraft that I hadn't asked for. The dole promised to eventually pay off the debt they caused, and they didn't. I appealed to the top guy, the top guy lied. Try applying for any job if you don't have a bank account and your home address is a job centre.

Like any good Briton I conacted BBC R4 MoneyBox who advised me to hand over my bank card to the bank and explain the situation. That was a thirty mile walk. So homeless, no bank account, no fault of mine, and a very angry return walk. I passed a dole centre and demanded to see my communications with them, which they refused before calling the cops on me for refusing to leave. Cops threatened to arrest me, "So, wait a moment, you are threatening to give me a warm bed with free food? Sign me up!" They broke their promise and left me homeless and hungry.

There are cracks in the system you can fall down and cracks you are kicked down. I was registered homeless for five years with my council which didn't help me once, although in reality it was far longer because I travelled. I did a Freedom of Information request, 500 other people were registered homeless too, although in reality far more because they don't register you if you don't have provable local links. I have a flat now from a housing association that took pity on me, but I refuse to pay council tax. I also never give money to beggars, because I never did.

Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

Please expand on the "asylum monkey".

I was blacklisted two decades ago so have 1001 anecdotes about DWP incompetence and abuse, and two or three contradictory examples. I'll spare you 1000 of them.

I used to live with a DWP TEO, many of my family were similar or worse, so I knew their systems. Each time I'd sign on (for dole, not login) I'd either help them work their terminal or fix one of their job lottery puggies.

For foreigners, a puggy is an evil gambling device like a video game in a pub or betting shop. JobCentre terminals were identical but if you played long enough then you won a job. And if you did'nt play you went hungry.

WinNT pc under the hood. Kept on breaking down, leading to long queues and sometimes violence due to a lack of technicians qualified to open the case. "I'm an MCSE, let me through!"

The DWP staff would sometimes ask me to fix multiple problems, and I'd decline. "The first one is free, the second one is £50 cash in hand - and don't tell the Dole". One time one of the managers agreed to that even though I'd just been joking. Paid me out of their pocket. Took an afternoon but worth it for the story.

Off the grid, Day 10: Yandex's only datacenter outside of Russia still running on diesel

Blocking fuel supplies

A lot of hate for Extinction Rebellion here...oh well.

In reality the tactic of blocking the five UK oil refineries was invented by fairly right-wing farmers and truckers protesting a fuel duty increase. It worked, near instant government u-turn, mainly because the police didn't want to mess with fairly right-wing farmers and truckers. Unlike their brutality in the miner's strike.

Today, we'll sit here drinking coffee in your incident room

Tonight, you'll close the door and lock me in that bare bulb gloom

Love, it ain't something riding on a motorbike

And love, I stopped loving you since the miners' strike

Got no flowers for your gun

No hippychick

Won't make love to change your mind

No hippychick ~Soho

Putin threatens supply chains with counter-sanction order

Musk is South African, not Russian. He is an oligarch but I don't think he has a super yacht, maybe we could seize his rockets.

Russia is not the cyber warfare superpower it was cracked up to be. They can't even encrypt their military coms and are getting far harder hacked than they are hacking.

A Cold War is preferable to the hot war

The EU needs to stop all fossil fuel imports from Russia today. Imports are pouring fuel on a fire that will spread to us.

I don't give a damn about German industrial profits, or whatever is keeping the blood trade going. I do care about my mum only being able to heat one room and having to dress warm indoors. The cold affects the old differently. She's not in a Ukraine basement though, so not that cold. There are things we can do in this emergency to mitigate the cold, such as communal living for the elderly with free heating, free food.

In the medium term start insulating homes and fast-tracking renewables, stuff like that that reduces energy imports. Ration energy use - no foreign holidays for the rich as the poor freeze and starve. Spirit of the Blitz. We need to stare this monster down.

John Deere tractors 'bricked' after Russia steals machinery from Ukraine

Re: I've (Not) Got a Brand-New Key

@An Old Dog,

"I did attend an agricultural college"

Ah, so it was you who invented the field gate array.

I lived in a tent in the country for a long while and I found the best way to charge my laptop and phone wasn't solar, it was the electric fences some dairy farmers put around their fields.

Re: Sewers??

@Gary Heard

"Obviously written by someone with no farming experience.."

That criticism made me laugh - you do realise this is a computer/electronics journal, right? Are we all meant to attend agricultural college too?

In the week a country member (I remember) of parliament had to resign for looking at tractor porn on the front benches, I am reminded of the 1970s Wurzels classic, "I've Got a Brand New Combine Harvester and I'll Give You the (digital) Key"

ZX Spectrum: Q&A with some of the folks who worked on legendary PC

The life unplayed

Folk here keep mentioning Speccie games I've never heard of, so in a pique of nostalgia (a peek?) I read through the Wikipedia list of games. I old had about ten of them - dad wouldn't let me buy them for a year or more, my pals all had different machines, girls, school etc.

It's common today for computer games to be made into movies but I noticed that happened back then too. The Spectrum games 'The Hobbit' and 'Lord of the Rings' have since inspired movies.

MIT's thin plastic speakers fall flat. And that's by design

Re: Interesting tech!

Re noise-cancelling - very pro for cars

I was driving north on a totally empty stretch of the M1, probably doing 100, when I heard a lorry about to crash into me. Except there was no lorry in front or in my mirrors. It was an RAF fighter jet buzzing me for laughs, except I was terrified and could easily have crashed. Ghost lorries in the sky. After that I drove that road with cigarette filters in my ears.

My dad's advice when he taught me to drive was life saving. "Everyone is always trying to kill you on the road. Don't pay them any attention, just concentrate on your own driving - because I pay for your insurance."

All cadet pilots are inadvertently dangerous, RAF cadet pilots are deliberately dangerous.

Chinese drone-maker DJI suspends ops in Russia, Ukraine

Re: so,

A gleeful Ukrainian was on TV describing how they modified hobbyist drones to look like military drones. They'd fly them above Russian soldiers to terrify them into running back to their base, revealing the base location - then shell the base with traditional artillery.

Under pressure, SAP shuts down Russian operations

Re: Fight back / ramp down

@Lars,

Thanks for the fascinating post, I feel slightly less stupid now. I did not know we had district heating schemes in the UK too, even four in Scotland. That'll be something to chat about before next winter when the energy crisis in the UK really bites.

Re: Fight back / ramp down

@Lars

My girlfriend's flat was heated by 'district heating', but I failed to ask her what that is. What is it?

You are quite correct about single glazing in England but never come to Scotland, England is a tropical paradise in comparison. You are also correct about Finnish home heating not being Russian gas, but your economy is dependent on Russian gas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Finland#Natural_gas

I lived in a tent for at least ten years, blizzards and storms, I was never this cold. I've lost a bit of weight and even though I'm indoors everything metal is freezing, everything black is too cold to touch.

I don't know if you even want to be in NATO. I never did until Ukraine. My football team just brought fifty Dnipro orphans here, and they say it is beautiful here. It is not, which makes me worry about the state of Dnipro.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-61179663

Re: Fight back / ramp down

Aye, right, Lars.

Finland's home heating comes from Russian gas, not Finnish nuclear.

I meant 'poor Finland' in terms of the difficult choice they face, not in terms of GDP - yet. How rich will the Finnish be without Russian gas?

My girlfriend refused to get out of bed in an unheated Scottish house in winter, and I said, "I thought you'd be used to it, you are Finnish."

She was not inspired. "In Finland it is only cold outdoors."

She also got annoyed when Scots called cold situations 'Baltic'. "The Baltic is a very warm sea in summer". I was only in Finland in winter and it was effing Baltic, albeit warm indoors.

"Finland for instance is a oil exporting country having no oil of its own. How that works you will for sure work out."

That is either lost in translation or needing an explanation.

Re: Fight back / ramp down

Gazprom has been sanctioned, but Gazprombank is still on SWIFT so that Germany can buy from Gazprom. Germany boosted it's defence spending by a billion euros this year, they could have used that cash to buy oil and gas elsewhere.

And pity poor Finland discussing whether they join NATO, they get 90% of their gas from Russia. Finland is colder than Aberdeen, though not as cold as eastern Ukraine.

Fight back / ramp down

It's surreal that Germany won't provide tech support to Russia while still buying it's oil and gas.

It's hard to picture what criteria will allow SAP et al to go back in - the end of the war, the death of Putin, reparations and criminal trials? Tax payers have to pay for the maintenance of the super yachts we've seized, we should at least get to take them for a spin.

I don't think this war will be over by 'victory day' on the 9th of May. Well, not this 9th of May at least. I remember the 'Iranian Hostage Crisis' which US media expected to be short lived, so they prefaced every broadcast with, "Day 4 of the hostage crisis", "Day 14 of the hostage crisis". The American public was sick and bored of it by day 444, and grateful to Reagan for cutting a side deal with their enemy to keep the hostages until he was elected.

Elon Musk set to buy Twitter in $44b deal, promises stuff

Re: Does anyone recall the downfall of Digg?

"Musk doesn't appear to be threatening anybody"

Aye, and Putin is just demilitarising the Ukraine, and deNazifying the Ukraine, and generally deUkrainisng Ukraine. I look forward to Putin's pal Trump back on Twitter. Free hate speech!

Well, at least we enjoyed a good election result in Slovenia.

Your AI can't tell you it's lying if it thinks it's telling the truth. That's a problem

Re: It's not the AI that needs fixed

@tiggity

"periodic eye contact"

I had one manager - great manager apparently, great engineer - who was loathed by all the female staff because he was always looking at their chest during conversation. Except he wasn't, he was just trying to avoid eye contact.

And don't look at your feet, or their feet, for some reason that is negative. Look at their hair, or just above their head, for some reason that is positive.

Wanting to work from home is not atypical, everyone except extreme extroverts wants to work from home. I wear a face mask on video calls, no real excuse, just used to it. I claim to have sickly house guests.

Re: It's not the AI that needs fixed

The sheep are onto the dinner plate, I've never tasted wolf.

My mother's a liar, my lovers were liars, my best friends and teachers were liars. The only person I've known who never lies is me - and I can see why you'd doubt that.

Maybe learning to lie is an essential part of intelligence.

I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal.

ZX Spectrum, the 8-bit home computer that turned Europe on to PCs, is 40

Re: Where it all began...for some

Me too, but I didn't want it. I wanted a record player but dad thought the Spectrum would be good for my future career prospects. I could be a rock star now.

I thought, at least I'll be able to play games, but no. No games until I could recite verbatim every page of the huge manual which included various scientific and mathematical functions I hadn't learned and barely remember.

I was writing my own games before I was allowed a joystick. He eventually bought me the 48K upgrade with the instruction to dismantle it and install it on the kitchen sink - static protection. Got me hooked but the world lost a rock star that Chistmas.

Putin reaches for nuclear option: Zuckerberg banned

Re: I know, right?

"What's a good song to play when you want to express your utter & unreserved contempt for someone?"

I had to withdraw my initial reply because I forgot about this song, that saved my life.

A wee bit of background, in the late eighties, early nineties I loved and lived with a covert/shy narcissist. Look it up. Sweet as spice, sweet as cyanide. Wrecked my life at the time and destroyed my trust for life. She reappeared for twenty years later gaslighting me again. I was the love of her life.

Thank god for John Grant.

You Don't Have To

There are days when I think about you

And on these days I feel like a fool

Because you don't deserve

to have someone think about you

British motorists will be allowed to watch TV in self-driving vehicles

Re: Will it be allowed to drive me back from the pub ?

Anecdotes alert!

Late eighties. First night at a local country pub we paid for the minibus home. The driver had been drinking next to us all night.

Late ninties. Last morning in the Netherlands I got the bus to the ferry from an Amsterdam pub. The captain of the ferry was drinking next to me all morning.

I survived the 1970s when drunk driving was being discouraged and I had to run away to avoid getting driven by my dad. It's amazing how attitudes have changed. If you want to smack a child in Scotland today then you first have to drive to England.

Symphorophilia as policy

Okay, drivers can watch movies but only certain movies. I nominate Crash, the Cronenberg movie based on the JG Ballard novel.

"Have you noticed how many more cars are on the road since our crash?"

Anecdote: I was banned by every British car rental company the year that came out, after 13 crashes in a year doing 100,000 work miles. I woke up with a throbbing head one morning and had to phone friends to help me find my car so I could drive it home. They found it wrecked while coming to get me. "Danny, you drove through a road sign"..."Danny, you drove through a wall"..."Danny, you drove through a tree".

Back then I had a strategy to speed past speed cameras by overtaking lorries that a speed cop complimented me for, nowadays I have a strategy to slow down by pulling over and letting people overtake me. The change was when another driver caused a crash and I realised I was not as in control as I'd assumed.

I guess I'm an argument for self-driving cars but I'm also a software engineer. If every car was a self-driving car then it might work, but a mix of self-driving and human drivers spells crash.

UK Prime Minister, Catalan groups 'targeted by NSO Pegasus spyware'

Re: England far better than Spain

"Losers always moan."

I'll take your word for it since you are the Voice of Truth!

My first post was totally serious and not sarcastic at all.

I'll also add I am very grateful for the English language, surely the best language, and your wonderful dictionary. There are words in there that may enrich you, such as:

magnanimous adjective

/mæɡˈnænəməs/

(formal)

kind, generous, and forgiving, especially toward an enemy or a rival a magnanimous gesture

He was magnanimous in defeat and praised his opponent's skill.

England far better than Spain

A few ordinary Catalans ended up in Scotland after their home made independence referendum was penalised with draconian sentences. Then Spain went after the exiles in Scottish and English courts, only to be repulsed by British judiciary. So of course the Spanish resorted to spyware, the final bastion of feeble fascism - not political hyperbole, they truly still have sieg heiling parades.

I would like to again thank the English for their decent attitude to the Scottish independence referendum. I mean, you cheated and lied all the way through it but you didn't try to arrest us or send military police on our streets.

That was very good of you, and we'd like another referendum now, please.

Twitter preps poison pill to preclude Elon Musk's purchase plan

Re: How many

One twat to rule them all.

Broken password check algorithm lets anyone log into Cisco's Wi-Fi admin software

Re: "improper implementation of the password validation algorithm"

I used to systems test Cisco kit on a Sun sparc named Sisko in the '90s, and I didn't even know who Sisko was. This never happened on my watch, couldn't have as I was so clever and competent.

I forget now, was Dunning the smart one and Kruger the idiot, or vice versa?

Infosys quits Russia, ending UK political and tax scandal … maybe

@wolfetone

Fuck Infosys. Fuck the Government. Fuck Boris.

Fuck you, Russian warship! I just wanted to start on a positive note, that the flagship Moskva is now at the bottom of the sea after being hit by home-made Ukrainian missiles. Apparently nobody died so, slainte / budmo.

Let every person who caress deeply about the Queen remember herself being made to mourn alone while that big blonde gobshite partied.

Aye, but look at which son she chose to accompany her to his memorial service.