Posts by G R Goslin

EU tells Twitter 'you can run but you can't hide' from disinformation policy

Whatever

Whatever are the Politions going to say to the electorate, comes Election Day. Apropos the old saying, that you can tell when a Polititian is lying, by observing whether or not he has his mouth open.

UK watchdog still not ruled on Openreach wholesale fiber discounts

Fiber? Where did that come from?

Fiber? What is this stuff. Can we have a bit of proper English. Fibre it is and always has been. Look in thje dictionary.

Space dust reveals Earth-killer asteroids tough to destroy

It's a handful of gravel

if this is a loosely bound collection of rocks, it cannot be considered as a solid object. On entering the atmosphere, it is more likely to expand as would a thrown handful of dry sand. Meteorites only reach the ground if they're a solid object of sufficient size to avoid being ablated to nothing, on the way down. . The shock wave (sonic boom) of the collection, is a different matter. That, as an aimed object might have a far better chance of causing damage.

Brit MPs pour cold water on hydrogen as mass replacement for fossil fuels

A hydrogen fuel economy? Nothing new here.

For probably more than a hundred years, Britain ran a domestic hydrogen sourced fuel supply system. It was called Coal Gas, or Town Gas. which ran to about 55% hydrogen. As a child, at the time, my greatest interest in it was that it was lighter than air, and if you could fill party balloons with the stuff, you could make your own. Unfortuantely, at the time, about the only thing with which to compress the gas to fill a party ballon, was a bicycle tyre pump and there was no way you could, as a child, modify it to do so. I did manage to produce raw hydrogen, by adding scrap aluminium to a solution of caustic soda. But caustic soda does terrible things to fabrics, skin, and many other materials.

Firefox 106 will let you type directly into browser PDFs

Re: Oh, for God's sake

M4 it was. I'm surprised (or possibly, not) , that it hasn't gone up in issue for the past twenty years. As a draughtsman, it all went wrong, for me when they made a windows version. Not THE Windows, since it still ran on Solaris. The original, and best ran on a tablet, which held the instruction sheets, selected by a puck, rather like a passive mouse, with a joystick for navigation about the 'board'. A separate monitor and keyboard ran manual entry. In the 'windowed' version, everything was on the main monitor, where it severely restricted the amount of 'paper' space. A definitely nogo for a draughtsman. They did, too a free version, which at that time ran on Linux, my OS of choice. later they moved it to Windows, and I lost interest.

Re: Oh, for God's sake

Thanks, sanity returns afte rfinding the entry in 'settings'. Firefox really needs a formal user manual, but, unfortunately it would have to be re-written, cover to cover after each update. I worked for many years, in IT support and it continued to amaze me, why the dev's continued to add pointless changes to the system for no practical purpose, other than to give them something to do (and presumably continue to get paid). I was the administrator of an advanced CAD package, largely since I had thirty years experience as a draughtsman. The CAD package (Medusa) , was that rarity in software, being absolutely perfect from the word go. Cambrige University, the designers didn't sell the product, merely licensed it out. Our licencee, took it on themselves to add bells and whistles to the package, which no draughtsman would ever want or use. Sadly I never saw the most wished for advance, that of an A0 high definition monitor.

Oh, for God's sake

Ahhhhh!. How do I get Firefox back to a rational colour system, from this garish new appearance?

Scientists use supercritical carbon dioxide to power the grid

Re: recuperator == heat exchanger

Oddly, going back through the ages to my ONC/Heat Engines. The practical Stirling Cycle engines always referred to "The Recuperator", as the name for the efficieency raising pack between the Hot End and The Cold End.

Our software is perfect. If something has gone wrong, it must be YOUR fault

I had to laugh at this. A couple of days ago, occasioned by the unusual fine weather, I got out my drone fleet. (Two of the ilk) I was a bit discomitted to find that the drone controller software crashed a second after loading, for both drones, using different apps. A bit of research revealed that the Android 12 update had broken DJI's software, some months back. There, seemingly had been no action by either party to correct the situation. Dji had already been paid for both devices, and were loth to do anything, since it was not their fault, and who can blame them. A positive outcome for them, was that many people will simply buy the letest offering, which, hopefully, is not affected. In addition, they are bringing out controllers with built in video. So, win,win. Google, on the other hand do what they always do, and ignored the situation, as a take or leave it action. My own solution was to go back to an old Android that is too old to update. But, another solution occured. My usual tablet is fast approaching the time when it has to be permanently plugged into mains power. So, I looked around foe a new tablet running Android 11. Duly, having purchased same, i plugged it in, and before I had any control of the tablet, it dashed off and automatically updated itself to Android 12, and therefore became useless at controlling the drones

Amazon to buy Roomba maker iRobot for $1.7b

Re: Oh crap!

Perhaps they could develop a vac that looks like a dog, but picks up hair, instead of shedding it. Does not require 'walkies' in the rain, but annoyingly gets under your feet. I can't think of a single disadvantage. They could even have it bark when needing the 'bag' emptied.

I paid for it, that makes it mine. Doesn’t it? No – and it never did

Re: You know you're old when...

The Goblin "Teasmade", was really a terrible product. There was so much mass and losses in the system, that the end result was a lukewarm, weak, cuppa with little strength, due to the lack of sufficient heat in the system. In addition to that, it did not need a 'wake up' alarm, since the thuds, hisses and various noises of pre-boiling water, woke you well before the alarm time. In addition to that the various sounds of the machine hawking up the last dregs of the hot water, would wake up all save the long dead. I still have mine, tucked away somewhere, not having found a use for it past the few weeks of it's use.

IBM's self-sailing Mayflower suffers another fault in Atlantic crossing bid

Well, that's a relief

The Mayflower, is once again safely moored in the same place it has been since it's triumphant arrival at a place it was not supposed to be, [powered by systems it was not supposed to have. Towed there by a boat which no-one seems to have mentioned.

Here we go again!

I see that the Mayflower, is once more out at sea, once more under tow, and once more heading in the wrong direction. I noticed, the other day, that there was some action on board, in Halifax haebour. So, it was likely that more action was planned, to grasp ridicule, in the face of continuous disaster. I meant to keep an eye open for progress. Unfortunately, I missed the departure (Bands playing, people cheering?). When I got to open the story, a familiar sight. The Mayflower under tow. It was a while before I noticed the the ship was heading back to Halifax, rather than the open seas. It's a laugh a minute with this ill fated expedition, on it's way into the record books as the least successful crossing of the Atlantic, since The Titanic.

Yer, 'av to larf!

Once again, the Mayflower is under tow. The last I saw of it under power, it was 303 miles from it's destination, and doing 2 knots, in, for the Atlantic near perfect conditions. A glance at it now, and it was doing 9 knots, unprecedented. A look at the camera view revealed that a tug was towing it, and it's own power was off. Oh, dear. Hardly a successful operation. Perhaps, next time, a cargo ship could tow them the whole way, and they could claim not to have burned a gramme of carbon, on the passage.

Where the F are we?

For those anxious for a better indication of progress. if you tap on the ship symbol in the map, then a pop-up will give you the current lat/long of the ship, it's speed and heading. Tranferring this to Google Maps (sorry, no cut and paste), the distance tool will give you miles-to-go. Given the seeming inability of the AI navigation to keep the ship aimed at the US/Canada continent, never mind the destination of Halifax, and it's lamentable speed, the AI estimation of landfall on the 4th/5th of June seems a trifle optimistic. My own personal view is that the AI Captain is merely a name card on someone's desk, who is charged with issuing misleading and erroneous information.

Re: And another thing...

Re, the power required for propulsion. You can actually assess the power required at any given thime. On the page marked "Mission Control" is a line marked "Propeller percent", which is a measure of the power to the propeller shaft. taking the declared continuous power from the main diesel engine, of 21.9KW, you can work out how hard the engines are worked to provide the speed indicated. Setting that against the declared output from the solar panels, if anything, will give the lie to the claim that the ship is driven by the power from the solar panels.

Re: And another thing...

They did, at first, display the actual course sailed. But then, so many things went wrong, with the ship drifting, powerless, they seem to have abandoned the display of something which invites ridicule. Rather like concealing the fact that the ship is entirely powered by diesel engines, and by the wind and waves when it is not, when even the simplest calculation reveals that it is entirely impossible to power the ship from the output of the solar panels alone.

Yodel becomes the latest victim of a cyber 'incident'

It rather beggars belief...

...why anyone would pick Jodel for delivery. But then, the customer does not select the courier. This is a function of the supplier, who goes for the cheapest, and easiest. It is, however the customer who pays. Double in this case. The price for delivery is buried in the purchase price, and the uncertainty of delivery, timely, or even ever, is bourne by the customer. I recently suffered from Jodell's terrible service, waiting a whole week, for the parcel to leave the local depot. They were terrible before the re-badging, and even woese, now.

IBM AI boat to commemorate historic US Mayflower voyage finally lands… in Canada

The PR storm arrives

I see that the PR exercise is well under way. I googled the event, and found numerous articles, all praising the "successful" crossing of the Atlantic. Some of them even claiming that it is the first such crossing, ignoring the BOTH ways crossing of the saildrone, some years earlier. Which inconveniently did not require to be rescued, mid ocean, and be towed to the wrong destination. A fact, conveniently omitted from all the congratulations of this ill fated attempt.

I'm rather sad at the ease by which the truth is so easily covered up, and the lies so widely propagated.

I see, now...

That the camera view has been relaced by a short loop of recording, of the same group of people, endlessly pottering about on the pontoon. Is there anything real, about anything on this web site?

Look at that!!

You really should look at www.saildrone.com to see how the job should really have been done. And has been done, without the lies and hype.

The Scam of the Year

I had to laugh. The Mayflower400, team have been leading their public, by the nose throughout this lamentable charade. The nwebsite is a farrago of lies and misdirections. In fact, the craft is not propelled by the output of solar cells. The maximun output of the solar array, at the very best, is about 4% of the power required to propel the boat at the general speed that it attained.. The boat, in fact is propelled by two diesel/electric sets. One for propulsion, and the other for general power. The solar array, is merely to provide green camouflage. The boat is fitted with a FischerPanda AGT-DC-22000-48V, main drive supplying power to two 48 Volt Fischer Panda 20KW 600rpm EasyBox Shaft Motors. The diesel provides 21.9KW (continuous) power, from a Kubota 4cylinder 1498 cc diesel. The orher engine, a Fischer Panda AGT-DC-4000--48V. Nowhere in the website are these mentioned. Only vague, and very carefully written allusions to the solar array being able to provide power for propulsion and to power the electronics and services.

As to it's successful crossing of the Atlantic, it broke down about a hundred miles short of the Azores, and drifted free for about a week, until a boat from The Azores took it in tow to Horta Harbour, where repairs were made From there it had to be towed out into the open sea, but that might have been a regulation forbidding crewless boats from navigating in coastal waters.

It's progress across The Atlantic was nothing to commend it. It was erratic in course keeping, at times pointing ian almost any direction but America. Then it's speed dropped from the 7 knots which it had so far maintained, to 1 or 2 knots. At which point, it would have been many,many deys getting to it's declared destination. It was announced that the destination had changed to Halifax, Nova Scotia,. hardly mimicing the original Mayflower. The same continent, but not even the same country. It limped on for a while, until finally being, once more, powered off and taken in tow for the final 300 miles. The helmsmanship of the towing boat was certainly better that that of the AI, holding exactly, to the couse for Halifax, rather than the erratic couse under it's own control

Then, they have the gall, to claim a successful crossing of the Atlantic, by a boat driven by the output of an inadequate array of solar cells. On that basis, perhaps we should re-write the record of The Titanic, citing it's successful crossing of The Atlantic.

Nothing is said for an earlier crossing of The Atlantic, BOTH ways by an autonamous boat, the Saildrone, which did it without engines of any sort, and did it without problems. Driven entirely by the wind, with control power from a more effective solar array

As, I said, a Scam from end to end

Buoyant tech sector bucking the UK trend, says consultancy

So?

So? So, only 80% of the ship is sinking. So, why did the passengers of the Titanic, take to the boats. The lights were still, on, the band was still playing. The horizon might have been getting closer, but the sea was a long way down, from the promende deck.

IBM-powered Mayflower robo-ship once again tries to cross Atlantic

'Ello, ello?

They seem to have changed course again. heading now for halifax NS. More trouble causing a dash for the nearest bit of hard ground? Or has the AI decided to opt out of the US, and who can blame it? And head for Canada, instead. Perthaps, they're running out of sunbeams to keep the solar panels fed. It sure is exciting, but hardly a re-enactment of the original mayflower extravaganza.

Re: The Scam of the Year

If you watch the wattage output for long, you get an idea of the maximum. particularly if the battery is partly run down. And it 'aint very much.

Re: The Scam of the Year

BTW, If you're thinking of buying one of these invisible engines, the bigger version of the two, The FISCHER PANDA AGT-DC 22000-48V, comes in at a handful less than 29,000 Euro's. So not cheap. But, who cares, when it's someone else's money, you're spending.

The Scam of the Year

I've been following the Mayflower 400 project for some time now, with increasong doubts in regard to it's credibility. Reading the projects web pages, one is given to believe that the entire project is powered by the small number of solar panels on the hull. I quote;-

Power supply- Lithium Phosphate batteries, in addition to solar panels on the ships exterior, provide power to the computer systems on board, in addition to supplying energy to the motors for propusion.

And:-

Dual 20 KW permanent magnet motors help (help?) to propel the ship at nearly double the speed of the original Mayflower, while producing less carbon than traditional diesel burning engines.

If 20 KW motors are required for main propusion, then the meagre one KW, at best, for the limited hours of daylight, of the solar array are hardly going to be enough. Given that my home PC uses aroud 300 watts, the requirements of the Mayflower, 24/7 are unlikely to be met from the output of the solar array, never mind propelling five tonnes of ship through heavy seas.

There are a number of factors which give a clue to reason. The very high internal temperatur of the hull, generally about 43C, indicates a heat souce somewhat higher than the one KW, max output of the solar arrays. Particularly in a presumably uninsulated aluminium hull in the 12/13C temperature of the North Atlantic seas. Then there was a mere mention, that during the enforced stay in The Azores, the opportunity was taken to re-fuel. Boxes of sunbeams, perhaps? Then there was the shaft power indications, on the web site , which tended to be about 72%. 72% of the 40 KW capacity of the motors, comes out at about 26 KW, which seems about right for the size of the ship. Unforunately the full output of the solar array, at best, only meets about 4% of the required power. It took a lot of digging before the truth surfaced. The ship is fitted with two marine diesel engines. Both are Fischer Panda AGT motors, one four cylinder machine of 21.9 KW (continuous) and the other, a single cylinder version of 3.2 KW (continuous). Not by a single word, does this information appear in the Mayflower web pages.

As I said, a scam from end to end.

Nvidia brings liquid cooling to A100 PCIe GPU cards for ‘greener’ datacenters

It's still the same heat

It's still the same amount of heat that you have to get rid of. Whether you extract that heat, at source, with cooling air, or with a liquid coolant, you still have to get that heat into the air. Being the final dump in all but a few locations. So, all you have added is yet another power requirement. Albeit in a slightly remoter location. So, a more complicated system, with higher power requirements.

Dell trials 4-day workweek, massive UK pilot of shortened week begins

Re: I'm not sure I understand how this is going to work.

It's a rather unfortunate fact, that living costs and taxes function on a seven day week basis. Earnings, as the generation of wealth, on the other hand operate on a daily, hourly basis. When I was much younger, seven day weeks, on the factory floor, tended to be the norm to generate a reasonable family income. If it had, oddly, not been, legally possible to work on Saturday afternoon, it would truly, have been a seven day working week. Since none of this foolishness affects our far, and near east competitors, our costs will rise and even more of the wealth generation will move overseas

EU law threatening 'commercially painful changes' for tech out tonight

Black and white rules?

"the rules are pretty black and white with limited scope to reduce their impact once they are in force; ". Whatever are they thinking of? This is big business and the government, forever joined at the hip. There'll be tears before bedtime.

Comparing the descendants of Mandrake and Mandriva Linux

Nice OS, shame about the graphical workspaces environment.

I've been using Linux and its Mandrake successors ever since being able to afford my own PC, with a few trial installs of other OS's. But I've always come back to the Mandrake, as a 'proper' Operating System. I used to be the system admin for a SunOS setup, and have always considered that multi-user and root were an essential part of any computer system. However, I've sort of fallen out with Mageia. Not from any fault in the OS, of which there are still too many, but from changes to KDE. So, I'm still using Mageia, but staying with release 5 for anything important, as on the machine I'm using for this. My biggest complaint lies with the virtual disembowelment of Konqueror, the very best file manager that I've come across in more than thirty years. What finally did it for me was the removal of the side bar to Konqueror, which held, for me, the bookmarks listing. I know that I can use the bookmarks menu, but each entry, holds the complete title, and soon eats up even a wide screen display, and then any new bookmarks are dispatched to a limbo, and not easy to use. As release followed release, even more disappeared. I noted in release 8, the file search option in Konqueror had gone. iI had gone in an earlier release, but that was simply that the search function was not loaded by default, and simply fixed. Yes, I know that it's there, but it should be a function within the application. I's rather a shame. I have a moble runningAndroid which has no problems at all finding and using printer/scanners, remote filesyttems, etc., while Mageia still refuses to handle them without a lot of hastle.

5G masts will be strapped to lampposts and traffic lights – once £4m project figures out who owns them

That's all very well

Where I live, there are no street lights, traffic lights, CCTV , but then there is no signals from any of the G's. So, Situation Normal.

Yule goat's five-year flame-free streak ends ignominiously

And!

And, there'd be many more pre-lit fires if it were not for the fact that, in this country, a bonfire prepared some days before, becomes almost impossible to set afire, even at the appropriate time.

Well

Well, an large number of Nov 5th bonfires get anonymously lit, well before the 5th!

When it comes to renting tech kit, things can get personal, very quickly

not an unexpected result

My experience with department heads, or supervisors, is that they're only too pleased to hive off responsibility for anything under their control, and then just bask in the glory of management, in the full knowledge that the blame for anything will not land at their door. I once worked for company, where the higher management actually got it written into their contracts, that any failure of equipment that they'd signed off as being 'fit for purpose', was not their responsibility, since they had no idea of what they were signing for. It really made me wonder what the company was actually paying out large salaries for.

Government-favoured child safety app warned it could violate the UK's Investigatory Powers Act with message-scanning tech

Why

Why is snailmail not being included in this farrago? Email, is only the electronic application of the ordinary mail system. Whatever can be sent by email, can just as easily be sent by snail mail. An SD card can hold an enormous amont of data, and attached to a piece of card in an envlelope, practically undetectable to sight and touch. It doesn't even need to have to have a source address.

I only wish that something was done about spam. I'm tired of shovelling the stuff out of my inbox, on the PC, and have given up running an email mail client on my phone, since I've never found a spam filter that works on Android to any real effect.

Sweden asks EU to ban Bitcoin mining because while hydroelectric power is cheap, they need it for other stuff

Re: I second that request.

How can a heat pump be rated for efficiency? It doen't create heat, other than it's own working losses.It merely concentrates the heat it processes. The total amount of heat from the sorce remains the same. Some years ago, before the madness took over, I did some research for a neighbour, whose house lay over some old lead mine workings. Workings that some of my fellow cavers and I had dug out even more years back. Sited at the uppr parts of the mine, in winter a howling gale would emit from the workings. In summer, the reverse. The air was at a constant 10C, which gave a nice margin , such that you could get plenty of heat out, without the risk of ice buildup. A bonus, was that the high water content of the air, simply condesed, adding it's heat to the output, before running back int the workings. The workings were quite extensive, and the stored heat capacity was huge. He never pursued the project, whivh was a pity. Since he wanted the heat for undderfloor heating, the concentration ratio was quite good.

You forced me to use this fancypants app and now you're asking for a printout?

Holidays

I think the Saturday afternoon off was not something offered by a generous employer. I think it must have been through an Act of Parliament. Curiously, when I was an engineering apprentice in a factory in the South of England, you were allowed (if your were lucky), to work overtime on Saturday morning, but only if you'd already worked overtime on at least three days of the week. if you were even luckier, you might be offered overtime on Sunday, at the even better return of double time (time and a half, on Saturday). It was explained that overtime on Saturday afternoon was 'Against the Law'. So, if it had been ordained that Saturday afternoons were 'holiday', it would equally apply to overtime, too. Since Sunday was God's day, Parliament didn't consider the need to enact a Law regarding the Working Day, so overtime for the whole day remained an option. One did not turn down an offer to work overtime, ever. Turning down an option, we were told, would, most likely, result in one not being asked again.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it an Electron rocket descending to the ocean?

Downdraught?

Has anyone considered the effect of the helicopters downdraught, on the parachutes slowing down the booster? I can see the controlled fall translated into an instant free fall, as the parachute is folded around the booster

Earth's wobbly companion is probably the result of a lunar impact, reckon space boffins

A fragment? I think not.

Planet sized objects tend to act as liquids, more than solids, The strength of the crustal materials are as nothing to the forces available in a collision. What comes out of the collision is either liquid, gas or comminuted debris. Given time, since they all tend have a common velocity, they could coalescs under the common gravity field, but it would not be a fragment in the sense of being a broken off bit of either the impactor, or the impacted

System at the heart of scaled-back £30m Sheffield University project runs on end-of-life Oracle database

Ah, the happy days of megaspend are not over

Ah, for the Victorian days. The Victorians, in the main were a very pragmatic breed. Their spend was on the basis of how much the money spent earned. There's an old saying, that goes "As a shipwright, if I hire a hundred shipbuilders, I can build more ships, which I shall sell for profit. If I hire a hundred accountants, not one extra plank will be laid". Where is the profit in a database of students. I used to be a Design Draughtsman. My eqipment spend was on an advanced, for it's day, draughting machine. As an apprentice, my draughting machiene was bought in the ninteen thrties, and worked perfectly, without a penny being spent on it in the meantime. I ended up with CAD. Easy to work, and more comfortable than standing on my feet all day, buut the number of designs that left my board did not markedly increase, despite the spend being millions, and the annual maintenance in the thousands, department wide.If my old companies had not been bought up, asset stripped and closed down, my drawings would still fill plan chests. As CAD, my designs, were on software not compatible with later systems and so, no longer exist, and while they did exist cost money to maintain, on a continuous basis.

Investment app Robinhood: Extortionist tricked our support desk and made off with customer information

Re: On the upside...

On the other hand, for you to have gained 8k, someone else has had to lose it.. It's a zero sum game. The only winner in a gamble is the bookmaker. If he's a good bookmaker.

Oregon city courting Google data centers fights to keep their water usage secret

I don't think we're seeing the whole story, here

Water for cooling can be used in at least three ways. The first to use the water for the transport of heat, as in a car engine/radiator scenario. In this the net use of water is at, or near zero. The second is to dump the heat into the water, and discard the lot, The third, to use evaporative cooling to carry away the heat, where the quantity of water is indicative of the net energy discarded. Again, the quality of the water is another point. In many cases, the water supplied by the authority, is of high quality, and potable, at considrable cost, over water gained from rivers, etc. with minimal treatment. A company that I once worked for, used vast quantities of water for cooling. It was not unusual to find three taps above a sink, hot/cold/non-potable. Large customers, such as in this case are keen to buy treated water, but at the un-treated price. The common taxpayer, in effect subsidising the commercial user

Real-time crowdsourced fact checking not really that effective, study says

Re: However, groups of people are universally fucking stupid

I think that a better way of putting that would be to say "A few of their people got to the moon and back despite the efforts of a large group"

Microsoft surpasses Apple as world's most valuable biz, by stock price at least

I think you have to look into history, a bit more

Here, in the UK, most of the old industries have gone. Not particularly because they were no longer making things, but that the companies were being bought and sold. They were bought with borrowed money, which meant that output was further burdened with paying the interest on the loan, never the capital! To finance this, development was strangled, more efficient methods were rejected as too costly. The carried on, for a while, until the customers walked around them to a better product, from a new maker. I used to work for such a firm in the East Midlands. Exciting days, new and better products came out of Design. The future was assured. The value of the companies went up, making them a target for takeover. After being bought and sold a few times, the drive went out of the window, and it was a long drop into ruin. I left, just in time, and watched as once proud companies died The last time I looked, the factories which had covered most of the city had gone, replaced by a couple of "Industrial Estate" units peddling spare parts. Such successful parts of the enterprise that remained, had been shipped off to other countries, leaving a mere token behind. It was a bit like the "War Reparations", in the other direction.

US nuke sub plans leaked on SD card hidden in peanut butter sandwich, claims FBI

Restricted?

I don't know whether the US has the same document classification as the UK, but over here "Resrtricted" is the lowest security classification commonly in use. Documents under that heading hold no confidential informatio whatever, of any use to a potential enemy. About the best you'd get out of it is that it's about so long , and so far around.

Waymo, Cruise get green light from California's DMV for self-driving taxi services

--As-a-service is nothing new

In the UK, in the very early parts of the Industrial Revolution, the makers od pumping machinery for pumping water out of mines, realised that selling a stem driven pump, outright only brought in one profit. Given that the machines would run for years, they would lease ot the machines, so gaining a running income. It ran even to installing pendulum driven counters, which would count the number of pumping strokes, so that they could charge for the gallonage of water pumped. It will be interesting to see if the car-as-a-service also includes a cost per mile charge.

Maker of ATM bombing tutorials blew himself up – Euro cops

Re: Pretty much standard

Ah, iodoacetate! I remember it well. The favoured substance for the toilet seat humorists

Labour Party proposes raising UK Digital Services Tax (so Amazon can pass the hike on that, too?)

Re: It's really just begging the question.

No, it really is as simple as that. Where, pray, do you think the seller gets the cash to pay the tax? Does he send his wife and children out to work, to raise the money to pay the taxman? or sell off his assets, his car, the house, his wife and children, to the same end. No. It all comes from the price charged to the buyer. The seller might consider it an unwanted claim on his profits, like shoplifting, but the money, ultimately, comes from the customer. All of it. Without exception.

It's really just begging the question.

ALL taxes are paid by the unfortunate individual at the end of the line. All stages on the route to this individual simply add their notional tax onto the price of the goods or service. There is no exception to this principal. If there was, it would simply be a case of the supplier paying the tax out of his own pocket, with no redress, and that is not going to happen. And as Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), observed, so long ago, "Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed". Nothing has changed since then. Or will.