Posts by RegGuy1 1102 publicly visible posts • joined 20 May 2012
You have to laugh that they put the customise toolbar on the next page, when you click on the settings hamburger at top right: you must first click on more tools.
The very first thing I always do with a new instance/profile is to get the bloody menu back. Which idiot thought that removing the menu was a good idea? Just coz those numpties at Google did it doesn't mean you have to copy them.
With 'probably' doing a lot of heavy lifting. :-)
‘The money machine is misfiring’: City blames Brexit for UK’s £20bn productivity headache
The UK has been losing market share since 2016 to the Netherlands, Ireland, Spain and Italy. Government analysis shows Britain’s share of the global pie has slumped to 15%, down from 21% in 2010.
“You would have expected the UK – given the size of its finance sector – to have done at least as well, if not better, than other countries,” says John Springford, an associate fellow at the Centre for European Reform.
“But financial services output has been pretty weak since 2016. And there hasn’t been a great deal of investment in the sector either.”
Defo worth an up vote.
Wasn't that the point? You have all these drugs on the Silk Road and no one to sell them to. Then some clever 'Japanese' comes up with the idea of the block chain, and bingo! it all takes off.
The lack of regulation is what attracts so many ...
See also: Starship has failed again, coz it blew up. (Ie they pushed the envelope to get data at the extremes and it blew up so we know tha's too far)
Or the perennial: Brexit is a success coz the economics don't matter (to me, I'm too ignorant of what it means, and too arrogant to improve my understanding, coz it's _obviously_ a corrupt, shit, communist/capitalist super power...)
Every person has a brain: it just seems not everyone wants to use their own and instead wants to gawp at their preferred media, to reinforce their world view.
Just stop and think: you need to challenge yourself!
Flight 1: Booster failure. Ship flight termination system proved inadequate.
Also it didn't separate, so they decided on the fly to try hot staging, something that had been done by the Russians. That meant a design change, adding the heavy staging ring to the build which made the first stage unstable -- hence why it has always been jettisoned. SpaceX are happy to change their plans based on the results they get from their test flights. Rather than spending ages tweaking a computer model they take the view of build it, launch it, see how it performs and fix the problems. That's why they can do what they do so quickly. Hardware rich. Someone up thread called it agile. Remember Musk got much of his money from Paypal.
AI is not intelligent, it is just search:
I've said this so many times before. Why do you need apps?
FFS. They exist simply to track you, to get more data out of you. Just use a browser -- and preferably not Chrome, as that sucks data too.
Why do you think EVERY bloody website wants you to download their app? It's not about them offering a better service for you, it's about them collecting data on you. Every time you then use their app they KNOW it's you. You have no control.
Plus, web browsers have bookmarks. So you open that one program and find what you want there. With apps they pollute your desktop and, looking at my kids phones, you can't even find the thing.
Still, if you're happy with these scum taking all that free data, then enjoy ...
I remember being involved in the national negotiations of the government license agreements with Capita, SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft in the early 2000s, which secured much better value than individual organisations could have achieved on their own.
I didn't quite understand this. Was this one project that used all these providers? If so that could make sense. But only if there is a provider managing the whole project -- ie a single point of contact. Otherwise, at least in my experience, when you have problems you get nowhere.
* 'Whose fault is it?' Theirs;
* 'Who can sort it?', They can;
* 'Who do we go to to solve it?' Somebody else, not me.
But change the question and ask, 'I'll pay money to get this solved', and they will all to a man say 'I can solve that'.
You need a single point of contact, through whom you bill. Then they will negotiate with all the providers on your behalf and you should just get a solution.
You will only get real change when you tax everybody more. Why Denmark is the Happiest Country in the World. The 'paying tax is bad' and 'we can do it cheaper using businesses' are some of the biggest cons of the last 40 years or so. Why? Just look how divided our society has become. Does that suggest good governance?
Well if you want to make brexit better the single biggest change you can do is for the UK to become a full member of Schengen. Remember Barnier's staircase chart? We've left the EU, which was the given question. Schengen would give us access to many projects and programmes that we are currently excluded from. We wouldn't be back in the EU -- so that would please all those dead voters. And we would be able to make large steps to improve the trading situation with our nearest and most important trading partner.
Don't blame the government, blame those that put them in. We have too many different groups with different desires. The Tory group wants things to go back to 1950 when we were, allegedly, a world power still. Labour have never really known what they want; they were born out of the trades union movement but with de-industrialisation an the successful denigration of union power their traditional base is significantly eroded. Then the Lib Dems, who like to see themselves as moderate Tories or moderate Labour, but shape-shift where ever they are to garner votes.
Then there are the Greens. A rising power, especially among the young, but as their electoral base grows, their principles come into conflict with the desires of the electorate -- so they sometimes don't want pylons in their constituencies. And then we come to Reform. This is the very bottom of the barrel. They don't think. They hate foreigners, well unless they are white, oh and speak perfect English, oh and come from those English foreign lands (you know, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, USA even).
None of these groups actually want to pay for anything. They all want someone else to pay. We must keep our services going, but don't ask me for more Council Tax or more Income Tax or more Road Tax or ... Get the 1% to pay for everything.
So until you look at all the scum who are voting for someone else to take the pain to fix their lives, NOTHING will get better. And as long as there is -- hey look, a rabbit -- things will not get better.
My local pharmacy has a sign up that says they refuse to accept notes from the Bank of Scotland. Is that legal? That's one reason why I emphasised England over the UK. Of course I didn't mention that England has 85% of the UK's population. And that is not relevant to anything, no siree.
Edit to add: mind you I got some cash out recently -- the first time I've had to use cash in months. It looked wrong -- where's the queen gone?
"National prestige and the "soft power" projected by culture and technology have delivered incalculable benefit to the US"
It was Bretton Woods what did it. They told that has-been, England[1] that they were the big boys now, and to step aside and let the dollar take the strain. No other currency was convertible to gold apart from the dollar (you could, of course, get dollars for your Marks, Francs, Pounds, but not gold). Then they could happily print dollars and the US allowed large imports and their economy bloomed.
They made a secret deal with Saudi Arabia that gave the Saudis military support on the back of only selling their huge amounts of oil in dollars. Opps. That put far too many dollars into the global economy, and after the US decided they wanted to bomb the shit out of Vietnam -- and printed yet more dollars to pay for it -- inflation took off.[2] This had the result that a certain Mr Nixon in 1971 took the US off the gold standard, meaning _no_ currency was backed by anything. And we have been living in that make-believe world ever since. All currencies are now fiat currencies -- just pretend money that we all agree not to call out.[3]
[1] Or is that the UK, is there any difference? Pounds are produced by the Bank of England.
[2] Note that the 'oil price shock' of the 1970s wasn't the cause of the high inflation and low productivity ('stagflation') of that decade, but the consequence of these oil-producing nations getting less and less for their oil. So they put up the price. What would you have done in their shoes, one wonders, if you have nothing else you can sell?
[3] So will crypto finally upset the apple cart? After all, who controls that?
Yeah, but RIPA says if you don't tell 'em any encryption key they can lock you up, until you do.
... so he throws them in the Ukraine meat grinder. Not quite: it is those who live in the east who are mainly being sent to Ukraine. He knows "public support" would crumble if the one million lives were all from the west of Russia.
He HAS to keep on fighting. If it stops and he loses the area he has taken in Ukraine he's out of power, and probably soon after executed -- defenestration seems to be the most popular means. The "mighty Russian Army" is no more, stopped by the brave response from the Ukrainians. That's rather amazing. He chose Ukraine because he thought it would be easy, like Crimea, but it's tied him up in knots.
Of course the orange prat in the White House is neither use nor ornament.
'no ta' to Palantir-run data platform – for now
Care board defers decision to adopt national system
Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board (ICB) has decided not to adopt a national data platform – prescribed by the UK government and run by Palantir – until it has more evidence of the benefits and risks.
Ah, but would you want to buy a Tesla?
‘The vehicle suddenly accelerated with our baby in it’: the terrifying truth about why Tesla’s cars keep crashing
Elon Musk is obsessive about the design of his supercars, right down to the disappearing door handles. But a series of shocking incidents – from drivers trapped in burning vehicles to dramatic stops on the highway – have led to questions about the safety of the brand. Why won’t Tesla give any answers?
Er, because if we don't have any kids we'll be fucked, and there will be nobody to pay the pensioners' pension. ('I've paid my stamp all my life, I'm 95 you know. Don't you dare stop paying me.')
Workers, via their NI payments, pay for pensions. When you retire those currently working pay for your pension. That's how the system works. Remove the flow of new workers and the old are suddenly fucked. Mind you, given how they have shafted the country in recent years it's perhaps not a bad thing.
... with a hopeful future Conservative leader watching a video being shown to him by a known pornographer, helping him avoid millions in tax. The person I'm talking about is, of course Robert 'hey, have you bought a tube ticket?' Jenrick. What did he call himself during the last leadership race, BobbyJ?
Well Gibraltar has already got its free movement back again.
The Germans have das Deutschlandticket. I don't mind the delays when I can visit and use the (second class -- no ICEs) trains, and buses and trams with one €58 payment. Whoever came up with that idea needs a medal. (Although Luxembourg is even better -- all their public transport is free!!)
Now I know many here will not like what I'm going to say, but...
It's the politics (mainly) of the old. They don't like foreigners, so we have to stop immigrants -- remember brexit? But they also don't want to pay more tax to fund investment and development in the country, and simply expect the working population to pay. Yet, for the first time ever in the history of mankind, we have a huge and rapidly growing older generation who have been led to believe that their 2/6 NI (National Insurance) payments ever week were enough to pay for the NHS and their pensions. Now when there were far fewer of them and they only lived for a couple of years after retiring that was affordable.
But times have changed; drastically. Now the old can expect to live 15 to 20 years into retirement. An ever growing proportion many years more. They think their NI payments were for them. And that is not true at all, their NI payments have always been to pay for people who were already retired, not for their retirement. But don't let ignorance spoil their selfish world view.
Where does this leave universities? Well, they need to be funded, and as no political party is prepared to put up the main taxes because the old (whose vote you need to gain power) would not touch them with a barge pole, so they need alternative funding, and foreign students have always been a go-to place. But while the crinklies don't want to pay any more tax (eg a tax on their homes when they die, which would be painless), they also don't want anyone who isn't white and whose diet isn't fish and chips (at least here, up north) from coming into the country.
If you want our country to get better someone will have to pay for it. And the best people to pay are those with the money. And the old have (most of) the money. We can't tax, coz you won't get elected, we can't grow our economy, coz we're not allowed to talk to Europe, and we can't get on in the wider world, coz everyone is still laughing at is for the self-inflicted wound of brexit.
Even Japan, that also hates foreigners, is being forced to address their ageing population by considering immigration as their robot carer policy is not actually providing a solution. Somebody needs to tell our (alas often racist) old folk, that either we have immigration or they pay more.
If they don't pay more and we stop immigration we are fucked.
I offer you this challenge. If you are going to down-vote me, please also provide your prescription to what needs to be done.
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