Posts by RegGuy1 1153 publicly visible posts • joined 20 May 2012
Ah yes, the UK General Data Protection Regulation.[1] Interesting that the link points to Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council. Luckily we were still a member when they thought of this. Phew.
[1] It was and remains a UK law; like all EU law, it is enacted into domestic law. So while we have lost oversight of the ECJ, at least we have some semblance of EU legislation remaining.
I offer exhibit A, your honour: ‘A guy did a runner in a Jaguar’: the petrol theft scandal – and the garage owner struggling to stop it
Since the start of the Iran war in February, there has been a 23% rise in fuel theft, with more than £1.2m stolen from British forecourts each week. Why aren’t the police doing more to apprehend the culprits?
And later in the piece: Regardless of how unpaid fuel is taken from his forecourt, Parekh says when he has reported incidents to the police, they often tell him “it’s a civil thing”.
Well tax those with money then -- the old. Oh my god no! We can't do that otherwise we won't get elected again. That's why IR35, for example, was brought in. Easy pickings, and relatively small group of higher earners. But don't you dare put up Council Tax: 1991 was the last time housing was revalued. No one dare do it again, because you would probably kill millions of pensioners -- cause of death: cardiac arrest.
That's why, IMHO, the Tories have always been good at getting elected. They don't care about anything other than getting into power. Once there they know they won't put up taxes that piss off the old or the wealthy. It's always VAT with them, which hurts the poorer groups of the population. Never taxes on assets. Fuck off!
If we change to a PR electoral system we will dilute the ability of sections of the population to resist and will have somewhat more consensual politics; maybe. Or compulsory voting like in Australia: spoil your ballot paper if you don't want to vote, but you are here now. Who knows? But until someone can find a way to get the old to cough up (coz that's where the money is) the rest will have to suck it up.
PS: Oh and those that say governments are useless cunts that waste money and companies are much better: Meta spent $85Bn on the Metaverse. Just saying.
Here is some information about the UK:
* Every year more and more old people demand the state gives them free money. Some people (but not many) know that pensions are paid out of general taxation; but it won't stop some saying their national insurance guarantees they get paid.
* Every year the number of people who generate the money for the previous point shrinks. The corollary is their future security is more at risk; no worries, just retire later. (Hey, we old don't give a shit, we'll be dead.)
* Every year the fertility rate sinks. (See the previous point; also note, immigration is one solution to this. No, not people with brown skin, just white Europeans; opps, sorry, not those either.)
* Every year the old people mentioned above demand we stop giving money to help those who are not old (but naturally demand that we keep giving them money). Over half the welfare bill goes to old people, therefore if you wanted to bring that bill down you would get the biggest effect by focusing on this group; just saying.
* Every year our infrastructure gets more creaky, yet as demands change we cannot respond: HS2; more pylons to transfer that lovely Scottish energy south; more local solar farms to distribute our energy needs; more reservoirs to better manage water supply.
* We no longer have frictionless trade with our neighbours. Don't talk to me about international trade; I don't understand but above all I don't care.
* Trade has been disrupted because the easy movement of the intermediate goods needed to create a final product is no longer possible. Intermediate goods? WTF?
* The amount of money that has been sucked out of the economy and put into housing is staggering. But we can't use that because that's earmarked for our kids -- no, not your kids. Now you're talking. Hands off our homes!
* No housing for the young. You can bloody well work harder and buy older people's homes, when they've had enough of this world and decided, eventually, to pop their clogs.
* And lastly, when Putin gets bored of pestering Leipzig with bomb-laden drones and moves on to the UK, guess who will be the ones shouting loudest that something MUST be done.
Granted most of these points also apply to many other western states. But there are large numbers of British people who do not care about anywhere else -- nor anyone else, come to that, so lets not talk about those.
Hope this helps.
GitHub parent Microsoft boasted last year that AI was writing as much as 30 percent of the code in some of its repositories, subject to human review, according to CEO Satya Nadella. (My emphasis)
So if you are reviewing the AI-written code you might as well actually write it. I mean, if you can't trust the code, what's the point of AI?
Well, as I say my contact is limited. But every time I have had to find a file, for example, I have to tell the system to stop playing stupid games and show me file extensions. Every system I've come across seems to want, by default, to hid the extensions and pretend it is cool to just have icons to indicate the type. I mean, WTF?
Then I may want to use a spreadsheet. I use LibreOffice regularly, and find it, on the whole, quite straightforward to use. But then again, my spreadsheet demands are not that great; if I need more than a spreadsheet can easily offer I will write a program. (Normally AWK; if there is a god it is thanks to him that we have such a tool.) Every time I come back to MS I seem to have to learn a new interface. I am happy with a menu at the top and the agreed conventions for keys, such as ESC and F1. MS seem to want to change the rules for every new release.
I like to use particular programs -- particularly not MS ones; for example I am writing this text using the Firefox browser (on Linux, naturally :-). I always install Firefox on a Windows box if I have to use a browser (unless I am only using the MS box for 5 mins or so; which to be fair is how I like to use them these days). I know it is not specifically a MS issue, but I am amazed when I use a browser that is 'untouched'. How anyone can work with all those adverts is beyond me: UBlock Origin or AdBlock Plus, supported with No Script, make life far more pleasant.
And why must I store ALL my data on the cloud? Why? I like to have full control of my data, thank you very much.
The whole experience of using Windows is so awful that I am keen as mustard to get off the platform at the first opportunity.
I notice there are some downvotes. Well you enjoy your MS experience -- I have, and will continue to, run a mile.
It landed in 2012? Wow. And I still get confused between it and Spirit and Opportunity. Since the many years when we only knew about the surface from the two Viking Landers the US have been roaming on the Martian surface forever, something we just take for granted, yet it is such an incredible achievement. I know there are no pubs there, but have a beer.
BTW, a typo: "Posisbly cracked mud".
Now stop it. Every pensioner knows their 2/6 per week (2s 6d to the young 'uns) was used to fund their own pot, so after 40 years they could demand their £200 pw for the next 30 years as is their right. (Compound interest; I'm told it's magic.) And it is NOT a benefit, god damned you. It is a RIGHT. Benefits are what are paid to others, especially the disabled, and they are all feigning it anyway.
Just so you know where to look for cuts; and it's not MY PENSION. Grrr.
Oh, and while I think on. Non-pensioners cannot afford this any longer, so YOU LOT will have to work longer, probably much longer. But I don't care, coz I'll be long dead.
...
Now where did I put my pills ...?
Teaser? You mean a rich kid with nothing to do?
Well the IBM AI boat to commemorate historic US Mayflower voyage finally lands… in Canada. Nearly two years late and in the wrong country, we welcome our robot overlords (07 Jun 2022). Someone clearly knew President Fart was on the way back and thought better of going to the US.
There's hope for autonomous shipping yet. :-)
I know, I know. Everyone's busy talking about HMRC, but one fun fact I've always liked is the cal command in Unix:
$ cal 9 1752|tr ' ' .
...September.1752.....
Su.Mo.Tu.We.Th.Fr.Sa..
.......1..2.14.15.16..
17.18.19.20.21.22.23..
24.25.26.27.28.29.30..
(Sorry, had to put the dots there to sort the formatting.)
Quite. Like 'Generative AI', the sort that creates essays, is just a search algorithm. If there is any intelligence, it lies solely in the search code, like any other program. Nothing more, as that link highlights.
Every time I want to do something simple I have to spend hours reading documentation, googling examples, and trying to work out where all this stuff goes. I used to just be able to put some code into /etc/rc.local. Now I have to educate myself about all the shit it does that I don't care about, just to work out what I can ignore.
Apollo 8 were the first to orbit the Moon, therefore the first to leave lunar orbit. They had to fire their rocket while they were hiding behind the Moon and very much alone. (Out of radio contact at the critical time.) I can distinctly remember the tension and the drama -- it had to bloody well work!!
This is from the flight transcript as they popped back into view (my emphasis):
https://apollojournals.org/afj/ap08fj/22b-day4_tei.html
089:34:25 Lovell: Roger. Please be informed there is a Santa Claus.
089:34:37 Lovell: And burn status report: it burned on time; Burn time, 2 minutes, 23 seconds
089:35:23 Mattingly: Apollo 8, could you comfirm your burn time, please? [Pause.]
089:35:30 Lovell: Roger. We had 2 minutes, 23 seconds. Our - wait one. [Pause.] Stand corrected to that; 3 minutes, 23 seconds.
I know it's decades ago, and most are dead, but the beer icon is still appropriate. That one minute before the correction -- I wonder if someone in Houston filled their trousers? :-)
If you use KiCad (PCB design) you might not be happy.
https://www.kicad.org/blog/2025/06/KiCad-and-Wayland-Support/
KiCad and Wayland Support
Written by The KiCad Development Team
Published 2025-06-10
The KiCad development team frequently receives questions about our support for Wayland. Given that Fedora and Ubuntu are both planning to drop X11 support from their main desktop environments in the near future, we want to provide clear, transparent guidance to our users about the current state of Wayland support in KiCad.
Current Status Is Functional but Degraded
...
Why These Issues Persist
These problems exist because Wayland’s design omits basic functionality that desktop applications for X11, Windows and macOS have relied on for decades—things like being able to position windows or warp the mouse cursor. This functionality was omitted by design, not oversight.
The fragmentation doesn’t help either. GNOME interprets protocols one way, KDE another way, and smaller compositors yet another way. As application developers, we can’t depend on a consistent implementation of various Wayland protocols and experimental extensions.
But the BBC is simply a propaganda service. Change the rules so we don't need to send the boys round because you've not renewed your licence and their revenue will fall precipitously. They know that, which is why they are shit scared to change it. The future is rushing at them quickly and will hit them hard in the face -- but they have no answer.
Charter 2027 will probably be more of the same. 2037?
Well Musk says he'll put up one million satellites to provide compute powered by solar. We'll see how that goes, but it could be like the dark fibre era -- every man and his dog laying cables coz the demand will be astronomical, but it wasn't. Opps.
Still if people really believe it's just time to find that killer app, then look forward to cheap compute in about a decades time. :-)
That was an interesting article, thanks.
I remember Slackware and all those floppies. I think the first version I used was 0.85, but I didn't go for X11 because I think you needed 25 floppies. It was definitely a breath of fresh air, and I remember building a firewall with it, because you could define the simplest system to do just what you wanted, and not be bloated with stuff you don't need. Linux was perfect for stuff like that.
Beer for all those early pioneers. Ta very much for letting me have a platform to study and develop my skills that gave me a profitable career. Cheers!!
What utter bollocks. It doesn't do nearly enough. It contracts its responsibilities out to the private sector that is happy to take the money and fuck things up because it won't employ enough to do the job properly. We call this efficiency and state that the private sector is efficient but the public sector is bloated. How stupid, but the punters out there who vote for this stuff all cheer it on.
Whey hey! My taxes are going down! Whoop! Well yes, because you are getting less. If you employ fewer people you get a shitter service. Doh! Why should having fewer people mean a better service? I offer Crapita as my evidence of the wider problem.
And now we have a situation where everyone says fix it, but the government is impotent because it controls nothing. It's all be contracted out and is someone else's responsibility. So the government can't do anything, the punters say they are useless cunts, let's get rid of them and get someone else in who will do it. But they are just as bad as the last lot, because the problem isn't government is too big, it's too small.
But as long as you believe in that magic invisible hand, don't let that worry you.
Brexit did it for me. I always thought the BBC was fair to all sides, but basically it was a coward, refusing to call out the disaster that most people that had thought about it said it would be. No, no, we can't say that and alienate those who didn't think, just 'felt' brexit would be good. I remember somewhere Emily Maitlis saying, when she had left the BBC and could speak freely, that for 'balance', ie not showing 'bias' and certainly not pissing off their core, older, viewers, that they had 30 or whatever economists saying it would be stupid, and one, Patrick Minford, prophesying sunlit uplands.
Well the cowards bowed to the Tory vote and now we are in the shit we find ourselves. That was when the scales fell from my eyes. I no longer watch or read anything from them. No TV and the sky hasn't fallen in.
The more that simply refuse to pay the bigger the crisis. Now if the government shits a brick and forces all of us to pay, regardless of whether we use it, then that could be explosive. And you know that's the way it's going to go. Scum.
The epicyclic 50p coin is a constant diameter shape
Yes, that's how it was constructed. Put the point of a compass on one of the seven points and draw an arc across the two opposite points -- do that seven times. And it became instantly clear why it has this property, because it is always rolling on a circle, it's just seven different circles of the same radius. So the diameter of the scape is the radius of these circles. Fascinating!
when all those wheels are every geometric shape other than round
I always remember at school discovering from one of my maths teachers that the highest point on a (UK) 50p coin -- they were new in the 1970s -- when rolled on a flat surface stayed at the same height above the base. In other words it rolled just like a circle! And I've always remembered the name it was given: an epicyclic heptagon.
Wheels don't always have to be round!
Yep, agree. Russia has forcibly moved the men from this area and sent them to their deaths in Ukraine (so there is no revolt in Moscow). Also this area has lots of natural gas that China needs. What would Russia do if China decided to invade? The great Russian Bear is bogged down in Ukraine -- it couldn't afford to open up another front. And China could simply stop buying Russia oil and gas for a time to put pressure on Putin.
China is in a much stronger position than Russia. And it makes much more strategic sense to go north. After all, Siberia has been a rather tenuous part of Russia but now with its natural resources if there is any serious competition there Russia will struggle. And Putin has staked his political future on Ukraine, as western Russia is more important to the Russian psyche than the east.
Or make retailers sell laptops with either Windows or Linux, but the latter is €200/£200 cheaper?[1] You can then choose. If you really, really are a Microsoft fanboy, then you can pay the extra.
[1] No one knows what markup Microsoft adds to the cost of a laptop. But this is the world of Trump, so just make up a number.
The EU are trying to think outside the box. The 28th Regime is one of these ideas. If this works for business it may become a lightning rod that helps push innovation. At least they are trying different ideas. But it's not without its critics, especially about labour standards:
What is the 28th regime?
The 28th regime is a proposed, optional EU-wide company status that provides an alternative to the national company law models of the EU’s 27 member states.
No they won't. If you work from home for any of the large corporations you will use a VPN into their private network. If you work on a customer site you will use the same technology to do the same thing. They are ubiquitous. They are essential. They will never disappear. Just like encryption people can wish for what they want, but you crack encryption and all of a sudden e-business disappears. No one will bank online if encryption is not trusted.
Encryption and VPNs are core Internet technologies that we can't do without.
If you were to leave you would be in good company:
The number of British nationals who left the UK last year has risen from 77,000 to 257,000, according to revised immigration statistics.
news.sky.com 18 November 2025
