Posts by Sub 20 Pilot

The Roomba failed because it just kind of sucked

Agree 100%.

I would rather pay a local human who then pays tax and who I can talk to over spending money on crap where no tax is paid in the UK and where the tech is nowhere near as good as the cleaner.

Too many people splatter their money on this type of nonsense, claiming that it saves them time etc, but most of that saved time is spent slumped on a sofa posting shite on social medai about it.

As an average working UK resident who has a lot of activities outside of work and with a basic grasp of technology, I am struggling to think of anything in the last 1o years or more, that has actyally led to an inprovement.

Software gets shittier and more complex and more prone to problems.

Cars get too complex to do anything with but end up going wrong all the time.

AI in everything - as shit as it can be.

Seems like the West has sold out and swallowed the party line that all tech is wonderful and must be shoved into all aspects of life.

I have a number of friends who will always spaff out on the latest shiny then spend a lot of time trying to persuade me how great it is and how it makes life better etc. I sometimes think they are trying to persuade themselves and not me.

Have a good week all.

US freezes $42B trade pact with UK over digital tax row

Seriously, the world needs to tell this vicious orange fuckwit and his crowd to fuck off and die. It is obvious that their own people are to fucking dumb to do so.

If they were serious, then the Democrats would sail in at the mid terms and they would not hesitate but jail the convicted criminal and his whole entourage on day one. All of them, every single twisted fucker that is doing what trump wants to the detriment of their own nation and the rest of the world.

Also line up the tech billionaires and nail them to the wall until they start to behave. It may not be the way they are supposed to do things but every single rule has been broken by these arseholes so what is good for them is good for everyone else.

To all the EU fans on here, you slag off the UK for leaving your precious club but in reality, your constituent nations couldn't fucking wait to roll over individually and agree to the fucker's insane tariff nonsense.

The EU is a sponging, inefficient way to line the pockets of a bunch of suit wearing nonentities while doing absolutely sod all to help each nation's tax paying people.

As a trading bloc of at least twice the population of the US and a lot of money, why do they nnot stamp on the fucking insane crap that is thrown at them rather than prevaricate.

Even if we had stayed in the EU, the UK would be the first to roll over due to the continued belief of EVERY SINGLE FUCKING GOVERNMENT since the 2nd world war that we have a ''special relationship'' with the failing nation across the atlantic.

No doubt this post will be removed as the reg is now a mouthpiece for the US and criticism from outside in not supposed to happen.

DVSA's clapped-out booking system gets bot slapped as new boss rides in

Why the merry fuck does a government agency not have the ability to enforce the log in and application to require the user's name, license number and possibly date of birth in order to book a test. This is hardly rocket science.

Instead the government can waste time and effort on making it difficult for adults to access legal pornography and pissing about looking like they are being assertive

Are we getting as dumb as the US now, where sex is seen as being immoral and dirty and not for the eyes of children but watching films full of death and violence is OK.

As usual, any government use of technology more complex than a pen gets messed up.

Denmark takes a Viking swing at VPN-enabled piracy

Another nation following the bonkers UK government.

Will they do things to promote censorship - yes.

Will they do things to help large US corporations who are not happy unless financially raping the whole world - yes.

Will they do anything to prevent the endless online and email scams, scam phone messages and all the other shite that annoys and cons it's electorate - no fucking chance.

British Airways fears a future where AI agents pick flights and brands get ghosted

Re: Haggle

If there is one thing that is one hudred percent guaranteed, it is the fact that not a solitary fucking single AI product will be an useful feature for the end user. For the company paying for it, maybe,

Microsoft research shows chatbots seeping into everyday life

I have to use outlook for one company I work with who have given me log in to their system and emails. One of the volunteer first responder roles I have enforces the use of gmail and gsuite.

The sheer ammount of fucking useless prompts and bollocks is relentless. Almost every actions results in some shit popping up asking me to use some bloody ai app or other. Every second email or so outllook brings up a fucking dialogue box in mid email writing asking me to rate it.

Simply fuck bloody well off the whole parasitic shitshow.

This is not seeping in, it is a fucking cancer.

EU metes out first-ever Digital Services Act fine, dings X for blue check deception

Re: Tariffs

In reality, most of the greedy bastard multinationals in the West, UK, US etc. gave over manufacturing of everything to China to save money on staff, proper regulations etc. China did not siphon anything.

UK tribunal says reselling Microsoft licenses is A-OK

Re: Other replies

Stll the best response to most stuations.

Respect to a fellow Private Eye fan....

Win10 still clings to over 40% of devices weeks after Microsoft pulls support

Re: Bloat like never seen before

What is ''unpolluted Windows 11.'' Surely the whole bag of pointless telemetry and ad ridden, AI shovelling guff is pollution.

Europe preps Digital Euro to enter circulation in 2029

I went away for a week a while back and I forgot to take a pile of cash (sterling) for exchange locally. I ended up having to use a credit card to pay for some bills and took out money for others which would not take a card. I ended up paying about 15% of the total in charges.

Absolutely fuck the providers of credit cards utterly. Even more so the fact that they are run by the US. Been using more cash and taking it out of my account for local use and will do more in future, particularly when there are more outages and problems with online payment services. I am not a huge fan of the EU but if they bring out a credit payment system I will use them any day over providers that are US based.

Elon Musk's Grokipedia launches, filled to the brim with plagiarism and AI slop

Re: Already more accurate

The big point is that both are true.

Smile! Uncle Sam wants to scan your face on the way in – and out

Can't think of a single reason to go to the US any more than I can for North Korea. They have shown that they fucking hate everyone who is not an USian and even then only if not black or a woman.

I will spend my money in other countries that welcome foreigners not treat them worse than criminals.

You have one week to opt out or become fodder for LinkedIn AI training

Re: Am I paranoid, or....

I looked at it a long time ago and it was full of self regarding wankers back then. I doubt it has improved over the years.

I know of a few people who use it regularly and they are the sort of person I would expect to be on it.

From what I read on various forums it is full of ''thought leaders'' and such wank.

AI and them are made for each other.

AWS outage turned smart homes into dumb boxes – and sysadmins into therapists

Re: First world problem

Fucking hell. If that is true then we are genuinely dead as a species. I know Americans can be this dumb but normally NZ people are on the ball and quite normal.

Microsoft puts Office Online Server on the chopping block

Libre Office works for me. I do a lot of complex engineering and heat loss stuff on top of my normal work and it has never failed. I have to send a lot of reports to clients in a stupid format that MS Office recognises so I save them as docx etc files. Absolutely no reason for me to give these fuckers (Microsoft) any money for any version of their office, hell if they offered to pay me to use it I would tell them to piss off.

I expect the usual horde of ''power users'' to tell me how stupid I am as they could not possibly live without some excel function or whatever.

Microsoft suggests temporary registry hack for stricken smart card users

I agree to a point. A lot of us have no choice. It is not a matter of not caring. I use several engineering programs that will only run on windows, I run autocad. These will not run on Linux. I have spent a lot of time trying to get things to work with emulators etc over the years. That costs me work and money and still does not work.

What boils my actual fucking piss on most forums like the Reg, Ars etc is the number of ignorant smug posts from people who use Linux as their OS and basically pick up email and watch youtube so assum it should do for everyone else.

I am not criticising your post by the way, I read most of your post as you are one of the normal people posting here whose opinions I respect and that I enjoy reading. This is a rant against the whole trope of assuming that all of us who use windows do so because we are stupid and lazy.

Tariff threat plays havoc with US PC market, economy not helping

Not sure if the reg's continued use of ''middle kingdom'' to refer to China is meant to be derogatory or refers to their historical reference. If, as I suspect, it is meant as a derogatory term, I insist you refer to the US as 'dumbfuckistan' for balance and fairness.

Boeing warns of more financial hits from strikes, costlier parts – and Starliner, of course

How long before the orange faced twat decrees it illegal for any airline to fly to the US unless it is using a Boeing ? My apologies if this is an idea he has not had yet.

China claims major fusion advance and record after 17-minute Tokamak run

Re: Sounds really good...

No, because science and scientists are usually working towards a goal and a common good.

It is the politicians and the greedy fuckers in most nations that would want to sabotage things unless it was something their nation did. The US is typical of the sort of nation that does this. I await the nonsensical bullshit that emanates from the orange crook and his evil overlords as to how China must be stopped from doing this research or to give it away to Musk etc. so that the US can do their bit and then hold the world to ransom with it.

The cooperation of all nations and people of different religions within organisations such as CERN and ITER should be a model for everyone. Russian scientists in the main want their science to suceed like the ones in the EU, the US and other countries, it is their bad luck that their country is run by a bunch of cunts. Same for scientists in the US.

Brits must prove their age on adult sites by July, says watchdog

Same victorian dad / US shit.

Blah blah blah...pornography is bad, needs to be stopped, same shit different twats in charge.

Does anyone else think that this victorian / US atttude towards sex is fucking bonkers while there are billions of sites and tv programmes showng all manner of graphic volence, murders, death etc in fictonal tv or internet shows ?

Sex is natural, nudity is natural despite the relgious morons teling us it is perverse. Killing people, even fictional, is not fucking normal but this is considered OK for children to see ?

The aliens or the world killing asteroid can't come soon enough if the majority of people disagree.

Scammers exploit UK's digital landline switch to swipe cash

Re: 'Safely Switched'

With you 100% on the 'dumb useless elderly' trope which never goes away in mainstream media.

Rapidly heading towards 70 and although we are all able to be caught out, I suspect I would be less likely to be scammed than your usual teen, 20's social meeja junkie who may use tech but have no idea how it works. Being able to access netflix or instagram is not a sign of understanding technolgy, any more than the ability to have a shit and flush your WC makes you an expert on human biology or waste disposal technology.

What the precious arrogant little dumbfucks don't understand is that the tech they are using is platformed on technology that was designed and built by my generation and the one before.

The number of times some obnoxious little turd has told me 'you wouldn't undertstand' in some discussion is incredible. Depending on mood, I may bite and when I do I just throw a pile of questions on the tech and then sit back as they splutter and I end up telling them how it actually fucking works.

Anyway, rant over, I enjoyed your comment. Have a good weekend.

Parker Solar Probe set for blisteringly hot date with the Sun on Christmas Eve

Re: Nine solar radii -- just wow!

Sadly, there are a lot of people out there that believe this sort of shite.

I am working with someone, luckily not closely or I would have walked off the job, who not only thinks the world is flat but is religious and claims all this bollocks about the sun being a few miles away within some dome, no proof needed, his god said so. Gravity, speed of light, eclipses, weather - no - his sky fairy states that this is nonsese so he believes it. In a just world he would be out of a job and unable to eat and breed - Darwinism as it was called but we keep him alive for no fucking reason other than to dumb down the gene pool.

When you look at the brilliance of the engineers throughout NASA and the other space agencies you have to wonder why the fuck are we going backwards. Again, in a just world, all the anti vax morons would be the ones that die out rather than normal people dying through the increase in curable diseases beng allowed to strengthen.

I somehow doubt things will improve in the next 4 years.

Brits are scrolling away from X and aren't that interested in AI

Re: It's not just Brits...

I would have walked out of the restaurant as soon as I saw that you had to use some shite app or QR code to get you food. Fair enough if it was pointed out at time of booking, that is by huge full web page or being verbally told of it at booking, not some tiny text somewhere on the website. Then I would have found a more sensible place to eat.

Places like these, run, no doubt, by some wanky hipsters so fucking dumb that they can't see just how stupid it is to make your customers install some crap on their phone just to pay for their meal deserve to go under.

Ransom gang claims attack on NHS Alder Hey Children's Hospital

I am far from being wealthy but would happily throw a £1k or so into a pot that would actually destroy these fucking parasites.

Find these cunts.

Spend the money that would be handed over to them in doing so.

Nail them to a tree and burn the fuckers.

Film it and put it out there as a warning to others.

There is a lot of bad in the world and a lot of good.

Evil cunts that target a childrens hospital is about the lowest you can get.

I do hope the bastards have a slow painful death whenever it happens.

Microsoft preps big guns to shift Copilot software and PCs

Re: Meaningless Buzzwords

This seems to be standard everywhere now.

Wanky soundbites from any tech based company, response from any government agency is a jumble of pointlessly made up shite that means nothing.

....is our top priority.

... are our laser focused targets

...tirelessly striving to achieve...

Fucking dullards the lot of them. Have a good weekend anyway.

EU buyers still shunning pure electric vehicles, prefer hybrids

I am a part time emergency first responder so understand what training you have done for blue light training etc.

With regards to acceleration of EV's - I can see why some people would see it as a problem but I used to mess about and modify motorbikes - 180 kg bike with a 225 BHP engine was my best one so an EV feels pretty sluggish after that..

Put your usernames and passwords in your will, advises Japan's government

Re: deathbox

My response, when these arseholes have contacted me previously, was to tell them to fuck off then block the number. Now I give them a random postcode and house name and if they stay on the phone without questioning this,then I tell them to fuck off etc.

I have had conversations such as ''This is your bank, your account has strange activity and you need to confirm your login etc..'' My reponse - ''which bank and which account?'' then when they can't answer, tell them to f... etc.

Sometimes I will ask ''HSBC or Natwest?''Neither of which I have an account with and whatever the response, unless they say ''no we are XXXX which I DO have an account with, then tell them to f... etc.

If ithey say it is a bank I have an account with I ask them to give me details of two or more direct debits or payment I know I have made. If they won't I will tell them ..etc.

Worst case scenario, I assume, is that if there is a very faint chance that they sound genuine, then I would tell them that I will phone the bank back on a number printed on the back of it's associated account card. If they try to stop me doing this it is a scam so...

Same when they say ''your computer has a virus..., I ask them which one and what OS are they referring to as I have a number of differnt machnes and a variety of Linux and Windows boxes.

I am pretty certain that it is worth following this type of routine and never to deviate, whatever they say to keep you on that call. While not the stupidest or the brightest person in the world, I am well aware that we can all fall foul of scams if we are under stress so for me, this is my strategy. Would be good to hear what other people do.

Wish all honest people a good weekend and all scumbag scammers a painful death.

Airbus A380 flew for 300 hours with metre-long tool left inside engine

Re: Multi-Fail

I have always done the same with my parachute repacking. A set number of tools, straps, weights at the start then the same number at the end. Not good to need a reserve chute or an issue with your main canopy because there is a holding strap keeping the risers together.

Darwinism in a way - you only ever make this mistake the once..

Your air fryer might be snitching on you to China

As usual, it is only China and other 'foreigners' spying on us. Never any mention of the countless US products and companies doing exactly the same if not more.

Do try to be a little more fair and unbiased in your articles please.

I know that this site is sadly owned by the bloody americans but for fuck's sake don't take us all for morons just because a huge percentage of your country are.

Voice-enabled AI agents can automate everything, even your phone scams

Might not work for everyone but I will NEVER buy anything or try anything or respond to a cold call or email. Anyone phoning me out of the blue is told to fuck off as I am on the UK do not call lists.

I currently receive a few SMS a week from sume cunts pushing investment scams so I bin them and block the number.

Any emails trying to sell me something or offering a service that I did not actually ask for is binned and the address added to my junk list. Persistent offeders I pass the details on to OFCOM although I know that they are worse than fucking useless at anything involving anything apart from protecting the big companies such as mobile phone co's, BT and ISP's.

I hope that the fuckers all jumping on the AI bandwagon face a painful death because it will do nothing except make scams and advertising easier, dumbing down everything and fucking up the envirnonment.

Humanity is fucked.

Ryanair faces GDPR turbulence over customer ID checks

Bunch of cunts that will do anyone over if they get away with it.

They stiffed me for £1200 over flights during covid. I could do nothing about it, tried everything I could to reason with them but their attitude was 'tough shit we don't need to give you your money back so we won't.'

Since then I have hopefully cost them a few £100k of lost business due to what I was doing and the number of people asking my advice on travel to different destinations to undertake those activities. Since then I have told people specifically to get any airline other that these cunts and will do so as long as I can.

Everyone is entitled to make a living but don't be arseholes just because you think you can.

CrowdStrike apologizes to Congress for 'perfect storm' that caused global IT outage

2024 and this shit is still allowed to happen.

In my industry, you fuck up, you lose money or get put in jail when a building collapses or does not work.

Why are the cunts running anything to do with software still allowed to get off free when they fuck up big style and cost other people billions.

A revolution is needed worldwide where these people are made accountable. Until that happens this shit will go on and on.

UK government's bank data sharing plan slammed as 'financial snoopers' charter'

The state pension is NOT a benefit. I have paid full tax and NI contributions, on employment, self employment and other income for 43 years to date and will have paid the same for another 6 years until I actually get to 67 which I think is when I can get my state pension.

The minimum payment period for NI is 38 years after which you are eligible for the full state pension. By then I will have paid an additional 11 YEARS of conrtibutions for fuck all extra.

Anyone who tells me my state pension is a benefit will get their fucking head caved in.

Re: Training & safeguarding measures to protect vulnerable benefits claimants.

If you are a midwife and you are looking at their face, you are doing it wrong...

But..seriously. I agree with you, just had to make a pointlessly dull comment.

Best regards.

Re: Seems a bit odd

True. I had to set up a new account for personal use, at a bank where I have had a current account, a savings account, a mortgage account and a credit card account. The current and credit card accounts have been there for over 45 years.

I had to go to the local branch in person, sign a paper form, show them my passport and two household bills in my name and address, all of which they photocopied.

So it begs the question - how the merry fuck do these scammers get away with opening and emptying bank accounts then disappearing without any way of tracing them ?

UK law gives green light to self-driving cars from 2026

Re: UK self driving car

To which my response would be to fuck right off.

My car is road legal, I drive within the law, I am very careful around cyclists and horses as a matter of courtesy but any horse rider telling me what do do will be told to get off your unstable animal and take it off the road, where it is obviously the source of danger, not other road users.

I have seen too many entitled fuckers on horseback who think they own the fucking roads. Ride off road and on bridleways unless you have full control.

I can be prosecuted for not being fully in control of my vehicle so why should it be different to someone in charge of half a ton of muscle and a miniscule brain.

A lot of these are no doubt the entitled wankers insisting on the right to have an uncontrollable killer dog on a bit of string and it being everyone elses' problem to not get attacked by it.

Destroying offshore wind farms is top priority for Trump if he returns to presidency

Re: What's your point?

Yet per capita, the US still uses / wastes more energy than China by a huge margin. Something conveniently ignored by all americans.

Biden cranks up the heat on China with wall of tech tariffs

In the real world the choice is between giving your money to China for cheap goods or giving a fuckload more money to US companies that sell you the same stuff which they get from China cheaply while exlpoiting the slave labour and human rights abuses they criticise China for, then make a fucking obscene profit from.

Fucking hypocrites.

GhostStripe attack haunts self-driving cars by making them ignore road signs

Re: I suppose its not possible to fool eyeballs

This has been going on for years and is getting worse. ''Caution fatigue'' similar to the over abundance of warning signs on construction sites, which I have taken up with the APS and the HSE to no avail.

Add this to the total clusterfuck of 20mph limits in most villages and towns in Wales and people inadvertently break some law or other because rather than have their eyes on the road they are scanning all the unneccessary signs, their speedo, the fucking moron six inches from their back bumper.

Having three stes of warning signs that you are approaching a speed limit is fucking nonsense. You need a speed limit sign, that is it, if you can't cope without the big huge fluorescent sign each side of the road every 100 metres for 300 metres then you should be off the fucking road.

Open source versus Microsoft: The new rebellion begins

Re: The 3 assistants with fantastic people skills who effing hate computers

We need to stop delaying progress because some people are too stupid.

Re: I predict.......

Simple answer is to mandate an open standard and provide a date for it's implementation. Huge fines on MS or any other closed source outfit that doesn't toe the line.

There is no reason why MS Office should be the de facto standard. I have to use 3 programs for my work that will only run on Windows and this should be illegal.

The US will do nothing about it but the rest of the world need to get their act together and start to push for open standards.

Also it may be a chance to simplify a lot of stuff - most office based stuff is not complex and there is no reason to tweak things so that they do not work in open source alternatives while doing fuck all about the security.

On another issue, it is time all online meeting software had to follow an open standard as well. I can speak to anyone in the world using my Huawei or Samsung phones and I can pick up emails from anywhere using my choice of email client so how come Teams, Zoom, Meet etc. can't talk to each other ? I know why but governments need to make it so. They need to take back some control from the profiteering bastards that hold us all to ransom.

US senator wants to put the brakes on Chinese EVs

Re: Popcorn icon needed

They may do but like a lot of others you need to recognise that they do not suit everyone.

I may do 400 miles in a week or I may need to do 300 miles in a day all, depends on my work.

As an emergency first respoder volunteer I can not afford to come back home after 200 odd miles or more of work related travel then miss out because my car is not charged.

Where I live and the hours I work you can guarantee that my wipers, demisters, heating and lights will be on most of the time due to the shit weather except for a few months. This all reduces the travel distance.

I have never spent more than £15k for an used car, never bought a new one and will never splash out £50 - 80K for a top end tesla or one of the vehicles that do several 100 miles per charge.

Where I live, a very rural location, hence the first responder bit - there are almost fuck all publicly accessible charging points.

Even if there were I will not sit in my car for an hour or so and pay a premium for a fast charge.

EV's suit a lot of people but not everyone. I would love to be able to get one within my parameters but it looks unlikely for the foreseeable future.

You need to understand that everyone's case is not the same as yours before commenting.

Re: Popcorn icon needed

Please have a pint on me Sir. The most sensible comment by far for a very long time on the subject of EV's = particularly here in the UK.

Space Force boss warns 'the US will lose' without help from Musk and Bezos

One possibility that will obviously never be looked at - the US could get off their fucking high horse and assumption that they own everything.

Try to work with other countries instead of threatening anyone and anything they don't like.

Look at CERN - a fantastic multi national operation where politics and religion don't count. How shit would it be if it was located in the US ?

Everyone is entitled to make a living and do the best they can.

Many nations, including the Chinese, are leading on many industries andenvironmental proection despite the twats in power in the US trying to prevent them doing so. Sadly your democrats are no better than the moronic Trump and his republicans in this instance. Would be quite funny if the Chinese asked for their $3.5 trillion loan back.

Will look forwards to the downvotes, threats of violence etc. that is the normal US response on a once great UK site.

EU tells Meta it can't paywall privacy

Re: It's Zuckerberg

Him and his sort really need to be hit with multi billion fines, non negotiable, payable now, not allowed 20 years of appeals, and them beng put in prison.

If not, the whole farce will just carry on. ''Yes we were caught, sorry, won't do it again honestly'' does not work. It has been tried and it does not work so go for the only thing that will, asset seizure, immediate billion dollar level fines and jail.

Anything short of that is just the various governments fucking their people over.

Hillary Clinton: 2024 will be 'ground zero' for AI election manipulation

Re: Photo ID in UK

No, what it does is to provide free ID for anyone who does not have any of the dozens of acceptable forms of ID. If the 'young and the minority people' can't be fucking arsed to pick up a widely advertised free ID then they are the ones too stupid to vote. Westill have personal responsibility here in the UK.

We must stop pandering to the dumb and lazy in the UK, that way leads to the sort of fucked up state of affairs in the US.

Uncle Sam tells nosy nations to keep their hands off Americans' personal data

Re: My irony meter just broke

Fucking hypocrites. Always been the same with the US. Do as I say not as I do.

Chinese 'connected' cars are a national security threat, says Biden

Re: Are the United States

And you think the US is not doing exactly the same ? Time that bloody nation got slapped down and told to behave,

The morons that run the US, much like the fucking idiot looking to have another go at it, are just running protectionist scams to keep China at bay. What would they do if the rest of the world said the same about US cars and all their other tech. After all it isn't as though they haven't been caught out spying on their ''allies'' is it.

One day China will bite back and it will hurt you fuckers the most and to be honest you deserve it. (US, not you personally.)

The west has thrived by expoliting the Chinese slave economy for as long as they could, now they see it as a threat they are running scared and claiming that everything is a threat, even though nothing in any Chinese tech is any different to the stuff they sell on to their so called allies. Fucking hypocrites and parasites.