* Posts by LucreLout

3061 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jun 2014

UK armed forces fast-tracking cyber warriors to defend digital front lines

LucreLout

18 to 39

Why the ageism?

If you want to attract someone good, and retain them for that level of comp, you're better off targeting folks who's mortgage is done, career is on the back swing, who want to serve their country.

It's not like we're going to be sprinting through obstacle courses or routinely getting injured.

I'd be well up for a 5 or 10 year stint but not until I'm 55ish. Chances are very good that I already know everything on their bootcamp starter course and plenty more besides.

UK Home Office silent on alleged Apple backdoor order

LucreLout

Re: Same old labour...

You do realise that doesn't mean they have to apply it, right? There's absolutely zero compulsion forcing labour into their same old tired rut of privacy invasion.

Must try harder.

LucreLout

Re: Human Right

I've lived for over half a century without ever being vegan. It doesn't mean some people don't choose to be vegan.

If some lass wants to send her fella pictures of her tits, its really not Mrs Balls business to let everyone in her department see them.

LucreLout

Clearly Apple could copy your key at the time of its creation and storage on your device. You only have to break maths if you don't go to the source of the key generation.

LucreLout

Same old labour...

Taxes up, growth down, criminals free, privacy invaded.

No you cannot have access to all my data because I very clearly cannot trust you with it. Apple may hand over the keys to the kingdom but much of what I store in their cloud is encrypted elsewhere first. All this will do is see some very dodgy people sideload 3rd party messaging apps that neither Apple nor your Telecoms provider can see, while the rest of us enjoy a fappening moment courtesy of Mrs Balls.

Musk's move fast and break things mantra won't work in US.gov

LucreLout

I love that Americans say 248 year old democracy as though that means something. My house is older. My local pub is older. I've lived for nearly a quarter of that time.

Musk’s DOGE ship gets ‘full’ access to Treasury payment system, sinks USAID

LucreLout

Trump is absolutely nowhere near the calibre of Abraham Lincoln

While I agree with you (Who wouldn't?!), it is worth remembering that Lincoln's greatness comes in the main from the fact that he won. Had he lost, history would have looked very different, as would his reputation, regardless of the calibre of the man.

Whatever we might think about it on our side of the pond, Trump is doing what he said he'd do, what he was elected to do. Whatever colour rosette you wear, our government cannot hope to make such a claim.

Silk Road's Dread Pirate Roberts walks free as Trump pardons dark web kingpin

LucreLout

Re: Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79 (1915)

If honesty was a factor in most criminals actions, they wouldn't be criminals. You've spent longer reading this than they'll spend weighing your argument.

Why is Big Tech hellbent on making AI opt-out?

LucreLout

Re: Maybe it's because...

They don't care what's best for you. You're not even an afterthought. They know what's best for them, and that people rarely opt into things, but also often fail to opt out, which is why they prefer opt out - more free fuel for their business.

Tool touted as 'first AI software engineer' is bad at its job, testers claim

LucreLout
FAIL

Amusing

The thing that will kill most peoples software engineering careers isn't AI, its the same thing as has always killed them. Ageism.

I'd rather hoped that would change as Gen X, the original digital generation of professionals, hit our late 40s and 50s, but unfortunately it hasn't. People who's entire careers rest upon our work still compare us to their technophobic parents and jump to low value conclusions.

UK tax collector's phone service 'deliberately' bad to push users online, say MPs

LucreLout

Easy answer....

... just prove you waited for 60 mins in the queue or until otherwise cut off and any tax discrepancy is found to be in your favour and paid from HMRCs budget the following year. Problems will disappear like a fart in a hurricane.

Pornhub pulls out of Florida, VPN demand 'surges 1150%'

LucreLout

Re: Governments should stick to being rubbish

I've voted in every election since the mid 90s and never, not one time, have I been offered an opportunity to vote for someone I liked.

AI spending spree continues as Microsoft commits $80B for 2025

LucreLout

Re: the skills needed to use AI to pursue higher-paying jobs and more successful careers.

Both statements can be true, to some extent at least.

Its highly likely simple administration roles, such as those found in call centres and much of the public sector back offices, will be replaceable with a suite of AI agents. Its equally likely that doing so will throw off some much better paid much higher skilled roles in training and tuning those agents, just in lower volumes.

If you're one of those people that can "complete the assigned tasks in 2 or 3 hours" then netflix the day away, then this is your comet.

LucreLout

Re: So is it a tax writeoff?

Even if there really is a market for this kind of 'AI', it's nowhere near large enough to ever pay back this kind of money.

Of course there is. If we assume AI only replaces call center jobs, and it clearly can start to do that now, then the spend discussed in this article gives roughly a 31k break even cost cut per former employee. If we deprecate that over a 5 year shelf life, then anything over about 6k per year in wage costs is all cheddar. Just from call centers.

I'm not a fan of AI, I think we're going to prematurely push a lot of people out of work with it, which will predominantly affect Gen Z (just finished racking up uni debt for questionable degrees to do jobs that won't exist for long), though clearly not all of Gen Z. In the future it'll just be a productivity tool, but between now and then, lots of jobs are going to vanish in lots of fields.

Are you better value for money than AI?

LucreLout

Re: From Omni magazine, 1982...

One way would be to allow the workers to own the robots that replace them. As owners, they could lease the robots back to their former employers for use at their old jobs. The plan is highly speculative, of course...

Why would an employer lease a machine from a former worker rather than buy their own which would always be cheaper?

However the post work for money future plays out, the transition from here to there is incredibly unlikely to be peaceful, or enjoy evenly distributed challenges and rewards.

LucreLout

Re: So can AI wire a plug?

They will use AI for 'customer service' reducing it from poor to completely crap.

My local doctors surgery staff could be replaced by a pleasant sounding machine and it would definitely be an improvement. Even one that just treated you as benign, rather than actively considering you a nuisance because you need to book the appointment the doctor literally just told you to book.

LucreLout

Re: OpenAI chief financial officer (CFO) Sarah Friar

Friar seems to be saying that if you replace humans with "AI" then the company will save money. She then goes on to say that OpenAI will generously relieve you of the savings by charging you more for the product.

There would still be many cost savings, even if the AI and the human had the same "dollar cost".

The AI can work 24/7. It won't go on strike. It won't leave for a better job. It won't get sick, or die. It won't start slacking and watching netflix instead of working. It won't get handsy at the office party. Its unlikely to ever need a pay rise - costs of these things tend to fall over time. It can be scaled with demand instantly. It doesn't need an office. Or training. Or even managing.

The simple fact is that a lot of the work done in an office actually isn't very complicated at all. Its not about automating 100% of 1 role, 10% of a role 10 people do is just as good.

You don't need to buy the hype. I certainly don't. But your manager or their manager or their manager will. And then your job will go anyway.

LucreLout

Re: Given that AI currently does not exist...

I'll just remind the audience of the various lawyers who relied upon AI to write their legal briefs. The AI went off and happily made up citations and cases that never existed. Hilarity ensued when the judges discovered that and asked the lawyers for an explanation. Much backpedalling and apologetic noises were the result and several lawyers barely escaped with their licences intact.

The irony of your post is that the made up citation pointed to a specific peddler of legal data/software that has last year released its very own AI that it claims is "free of hallucinations". I make no such claim, of course.

Lout's law of AI states that "AI will take your job when someone above you in the hierarchy can be sold the idea that it can". Whether or not it can actually perform your role will not be a salient fact involved in the decision making process.

LucreLout

This will hit the public sector like a tsunami under whichever government comes next, in just 4.5 years time. Productivity of their homebased clerical staff is so low, while the unit cost because of the solid gold pensions, so very high. Everyone in the public sector needs to start spending serious time and effort in delivering much more value in order to make themselves harder to automate, because once it begins, and begin it shall, it won't stop and will become a time play for most of the lifers there.

The advantage is that having automated the lowest tier of workers, you then won't need any of the very deep hierarchy above them either, which is why the cost savings vs the more efficient and productive private sector will be so much greater.

25 years on from Y2K, let's all be glad it happened way back then

LucreLout

Re: Well, we have 2038 to look forward to

While I'm pretty sure that (eg) an energy company will have patched/tested any critical systems and will be fine in 2038, I'm less confident that small cheap devices will be; eg the smart meters said electricity company has sent out to all it's customers.

You make a good point. While many "small cheap devices" would be thoroughly disposable and could just be thrown away with a compliant replacement bought, its the more integrated systems that become a problem. Small cheap computers built into things that aren't small, or cheap.

The main saving grace for Y2K ended up being Gen X arriving as the first generation of professional software engineers, by which I mean we had been taught how everything worked, down to fetch execute cycles, memory, OSI, the lot. So we could see the depth and scale of the problem, fully understand its ramifications, and quickly work to fix it. Contrast that now with a code camped web developer raised on an iPad - the planes would indeed be falling from the sky.

Fining Big Tech isn't working. Make them give away illegally trained LLMs as public domain

LucreLout

Stop fining the companies, fine the board members directly, and use the Norwegian speeding fine approach, with a substantial percentage of their annual income.

While this is certainly an interesting idea, there's just one or two reality bricks to smack it in the face before we can see if it still has teeth.

Firstly, what do you consider, presumably British, legislative reach to be? While its often news to the Americans, a nations legal reach is generally taken to extend to its territorial waters and not beyond - would you really wish to follow say, Saudi law here in the UK because they decided you should? Fining American tech CEO's for what they do in America, from England simply isn't going to work. It has no reasonable prospect of success.

Most board members would simply take the Philip Green approach and have the assets and income derived from their work held elsewhere by a spouse, thus negating the power of any fines available. As they're not our citizens, again, you're going to struggle to actually see any of that fine income.

I do like your thinking, but unfortunately its not remotely achievable in the real world.

Student's flimsy bin bags blamed for latest NHS data breach

LucreLout

Lol.

The first head that should roll is the person in charge of data security. There is no need for people to be taking patients data off-site and beyond the network boundaries. It's not 1970. This is beyond lax and falls far below the standard a reasonably competent person would expect.

It shouldn't have been possible for the student to mess up this badly.

For the student a last and final with a clear understanding that any further casual attitudes to patient data will result in dismissal.

There's no excuse for this and hopefully everyone here knows it.

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel green-lights Mike Lynch's extradition to US to face Autonomy fraud charges

LucreLout

Re: He has 14 days to appeal

Which I expect him to do before undergoing top level training in appearing autistic, suicidal and desperately sad.

Shouldn't really be required. I mean, until Anne Saccoolas is enjoying a stint at Her Majesty's pleasure we should be declining all extradition requests to America whatever the facts of the case.

Bored binge-watchers bork beleaguered broadband by blasting bandwidth: Global average speeds down 6.31%

LucreLout

Re: Not bad,

Moaning millennials mangle mobile middle managers making massive maladministrative mess most mornings.

Architect of tech contractor tax fraud scheme jailed for at least five years

LucreLout

Re: Better stay in jail

I'd imagine the odds of that will increase markedly if the taxman decides to make the contractors pay the tax they've not actually paid to date. I realise its not the individual contractors fault, but does the tax collector?

Someone made an AI that predicted gender from email addresses, usernames. It went about as well as expected

LucreLout

Re: The complaint seems confused

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that gender-targeting ads works (I'm not so sure about that).

Lets polarise things for a minute to show that it might.

Most people buying tampax will be women (some men buying for female relations or fringe reasons). Most people going to strip clubs will be men (some women do go but I have a friend who assures me its mostly guys).

If you could differentiate between genders with a better than 50% accuracy, you can make your advertising more effective. Spam everyone and half of the tampax adds go to waste along with half the titty bars.

If the 'AI' could get gender right 60% of the time I could get 20% more bang for my buck with the advertising provided those misidentified did not become angry with my brand enough to bad mouth us and damage the brand. A bit like advertising the local strippers in the gents toilets while the tampax are sold in the womens bogs.

For most products there would be less polarisation and so the required accuracy would be significantly higher and so harder to achieve. I mostly agree with what you're saying but I think you've overlooked where gendered advertising does work.

Muddying the water slightly comes the idea of how do you sell a car, say a ford focus, to a guy or a girl. Do they on average care about the same things, or do you want to give greater prominence to different features to each gender? Do more of the people that care about the horsepower have penises, or boobs? Same for the parking sensors or reversing camera etc? Note I'm not implying or giving answers to those questions, simply showing how subtle targeting along gender lines does work at scale.

And it's off! NASA launches nuke-powered, laser-shooting, tank Perseverance to Mars to search for signs of life

LucreLout
Pint

Roll on the test flight....

... I'm stupidly excited abut the helicopter drone, almost as much as about the science the main vehicle will be doing.

Well done NASA!!!

USA seeks Moon and Mars nuke power plant designs ready to fly in 2027

LucreLout

Sounds cool though....

..... probably a very interesting project to work on.

How big a heat sink do commentards think this puppy would need?

What do you do for a living?

I built a nuclear power station on the moon. You?

Erm, accounts....

Brit unis hit in Blackbaud hack inform students that their data was nicked, which has gone as well as you might expect

LucreLout

At this point they know they are definitely dealing with a criminal who sees intrusion, theft, and blackmail as being legitimate means to acquire wealth. It rather begs the question of why lying about destruction an reselling the data would be seen as verbotten, doesn't it?

Suspected armed robber’s privacy was not infringed by cops’ specific cellphone tower data slurp, US judge rules

LucreLout

The upcoming election is going to be democracy's final test.

Sorry Pascal but I have to disagree.

The problem isn't Trump or Biden, its the total outright polarisation of politics being caused by the losers refusal to accept the winners legitimate democratic mandate. We can see this behaviour all over the globe.

What happens is that we then begin lurching between extremes, and sooner or late one extreme just really doesn't fancy letting go the levers of power and so they stage a coup of sorts and become an effective dictator for life.

The Republicans should have accepted Obama as President rather than kicking off the birther movement. The Democrats should have accepted Trump as President rather than planning a revenge impeachment for Clinton before ever he set foot in the White house. So it goes.

The only way to salvage democracy is for the losers to wind their necks in, swallow hard, and to accept they lost the vote and that the other outcome - whoever or whatever that may be - is democratically legitimate and must be enacted in good faith.

In that regard Trump & Biden are mostly irrelevant. The real danger is that before the dictator comes the civil war.

LucreLout

The problem is that what is not a "crime" today might be one tomorrow.

The converse has been shown to be as likely if not more so. My only reasoning for not liking Turing's posthumous pardon is that a pardon implies wrongdoing that has been forgiven, when it is the UK that should feel guilt for its appalling treatment of one of our greatest geniuses.

Generally what was not a crime in the past cannot be prosecuted once it becomes illegal. See the criminalisation of Marijuana and Opium but no retrospective prosecutions by way of my evidence.

LucreLout

This is just one more reason not to carry a phone, let alone one that's turned on all the time.

I can't take the battery out of mine so its pretty much always on.... at least, that's the only safe assumption.

ever increasing punishments

Evidently you're not in the UK. Tough on crime, tough on the victims of crime.

Sorry, but I have no sympathy if an armed robber is caught and convicted and then jailed for 30 years. Good. Thankfully I've never had a firearm pointed in my face by an angry stranger, but I can only imagine its terrifying and deeply traumatic. What I wonder is how the hell their defence was considered before the courts when it essentially amounts to "Well, yes, my client did do the armed robbery but Officer Wiggam may have been lax on his paper work so my client shouldn't be punished". In a reasonable system Officer Wiggam may also face sanction but that shouldn't absolve the scrote of their played for and got justice.

For those of a criminal bent, having the phones location tracked may be problematic, but for the honest citizen it can also be useful. I can prove that I wasn't speeding through Wales in a car with my cloned number plate on it last week because my phone records show me as visiting family in Edinburgh at the time and they're backed up by witness statements.

I'd prefer not to be tracked all the time, obviously, but I've never worried that so being would fit me up for a crime I didn't commit. Does anyone here really worry about that? If so please can you explain why in rational terms?

UK surveillance laws tightened up as most spying demands to be subject to warrants

LucreLout

???

anyone trying to spy on your communications data must now get the permission of your telco or postal service - or convince a judicial commissioner to sign off a warrant forcing disclosure

Wait, what? Permission of my telco should be trivial to get - the council can just clag them on the PSL and they'll bend and receive. Permission of the postal service.... so just ask Royal Mail? WTF have those dinosaurs got to do with anything? I'm not sure what I've missed here but I hope its something....

The judge bit is a good move.

UK formally abandons Europe’s Unified Patent Court, Germany plans to move forward nevertheless

LucreLout

@Intractable Potsherd

I'll give you that, and an up vote, it may well be the reason. But then why would they value a "benefit" they never use? That some of those that used it view it as a loss doesn't convey upon those not using it any requirement to seek to retain it.

The flip side of freedom of movement, particularly in the North East, was that much factory work went to flat rate overtime rather than time and a half, because so many Eastern Europeans were willing to work at that rate. Now most of the shift to which I refer held no complaint for the Poles coming to do the work - it was after all just "Auf Wiehdersehn Pet" in reverse. They do however blame successive governments for not implementing better protections before opening the borders.

The benefits I've enjoyed of free movement came at their cost. It seems fairer to me that I complete some small amount of paperwork before emigrating to another country in return for their not having their livelihood cut out from under them.

Not everyone will agree with what I've written, but the usual refrain of "thick Northerners" and "racists" simply holds no water, and is why Brexit remains anathema to so many remainers. Leavers have been patient, more than patient, since the vote but its time to move on now and those remainers still clinging to an often confused vision of what the EU was are going to have to be forced to move on.

The thing I've never understood is if freedom of movement is so important to them and if the EU is such an overwhelming positive force in their lives that they would rather wreck our democracy than accept the vote, why do they not simply use that freedom and move to another EU country?

I still intend to learn Spanish and retire to Spain (with blocks of time in America & the UK, and some time travelling) and I expect zero problems in doing so when the time comes.

LucreLout

You obviously don't want to talk about the number of civil servants and the EU budget. The UK has almost spent the same on Brexit now than was ever paid into the EU.

Well yes, it turns out that 4 years of delay, obfuscation, court cases, and increasingly desperate attempts by Remainers to overthrow the result IS expensive. Who knew? Nothing to do with Brexit, that's just the losing side refusing to accept defeat.

So, yeah, higher tariffs all round. You won't be offsetting anything against that.

At best you may find a few increases in tariffs with non-EU countries where we won't have trade deals, but all of those countries will be signing trade deals with us - we were the economic jewel in the EU crown - because trade with us is why they signed up with the EU in the first place. Maybe, maybe at best, you have a temporary blip while we sign the new agreements, but for sure it ain't going to take 7 years to do them.

Do you know why there are no deals with USA or China deal yet? Because the EU refused to be bullied.

ROFL. No, its because the EU couldn't bully them. They had to trade as equals, well actually in those cases the junior partner. It's the same with the UK now - they can't bully us anymore so they don't want to do a deal. Unfortunately, they have to do a deal (just maybe not by December) because their entire economic edifice is predicated on selling stuff to and in the UK.

It is a region jointly administered by two countries. These are all facts.

Sorry but you have that wrong. There are two separate legislatures one in NI and one in the Republic because they are not a jointly administered region at all. It's a fiction Republicans tell themselves because it sounds better than "surrender", which is what happened.

By the way, equal pay for men and women was in the Treaty of Rome in 1957 whereas the UK had to wait until the Equal Pay Act 1970 as a condition of entering the EU.

Revisionist nonsense. The Referendum Act wasn't passed until 1975 to enable the referendum to join to take place later that year. The EU wasn't formed until 1993. At best you lack the knowledge to distinguish the common market from the european union, in which case you need to study more, and at worst, you're lying to yourself and all of us here.

I'm comparing and contrasting the visa process and FoM and there appears to be no basis at all to what you say, I really don't understand why you believe there is no benefit to having FoM in EU countries.

You still have all the registration hassles. The only difference is an extra form to complete before you move there. More Brits live and work outside the EU than ever have within it (there's more just in Australia alone) and yet they find no insurmountable obstacles. You're assuming problems where the people that do migrate find none.

The fact that you're a person who considers not learning the local language is an advantage says loads.

Mostly it says you have appalling comprehension skills. I speak (not great) Swedish too which is the only one English speaking country I've lived in. What I said what being able to move about where you already speak a common language benefits the EU more than the English, which is why there is considerably more of them in the UK than Brits in all of the EU.

Pretty shitty retirement though, as the UK won't be uprating pensions for new retirees.

Unsupported speculation.

Unfortunately UK Citizens' healthcare costs will go up over 7%... shame about that.

Speculation again.

Freedom of movement is the biggest paper tiger you could have raised. SMH.

And yet it was the bogeyman that delivered Brexit.

Gordon Brown delivered Brexit, and Junker brought it screaming into this world. Both by their own behaviour. It is, after all, the "thick Northerners" who voted for Brexit (and usually for labour). Gillian Duffy was their awakening and the Islington set of lefty loons was their driving force.

Is it unsurprising wonder the honourable member for the 18th Century said that it would take 50 years to see the benefits of Brexit.

Maybe. I think it'll take 10 for the EU to implode and for even remainers to see we're better off out. Maybe another 10 to see clear economic blue water over where we'd have been if the EU doesn't implode. By the time we're 30 years out we'll be so far ahead of where we would have been that the EU will have shrunk to a handful of nations.

The EU already cannot keep pace with the changing world and its going to go into warp speed after Covid blows through. There's no chance of them evolving in time to keep pace, so they will continue to slide into irrelevance.

I know you're scared, but frankly this display of cowardice in front of the enemy is most unbecoming of an Englishman.

God help me, that there are people on this planet who post this nonsense let alone believe this it.

Mostly people believe it because its true. If you're shitting your pants on the way to the negotiating table or the battle, then you've already lost it. Stiff upper lip old boy, there's a good chap.

LucreLout

OK, I'll bite...here's just one reason...freedom of movement. I worked in the EU half of my working life. It was great, financially and culturally.

Fair enough if you made use of it then it would be valuable to you as it was to me when I did it. You do know that puts us in a very small minority of the country though right? Probably around 2-5% at the very most will ever live and work abroad and much of that won't be in the EU. You can't really complain that people gave up a 'benefit' they weren't using for one they will (free trade agreements with the ROTW).

It's not like we can't go work abroad, there'll just be some more paperwork this time, same as when I lived and worked in the USA. The additional complexity of moving abroad for work outside the EU is not substantial compared to the complexity of doing so in the EU regardless of previous rights - you still have mountains of official and unofficial paperwork to wade through and much to organise. Its a marginal inconvenience to be completed before you depart and then its no different unless you commit a crime and get deported.

LucreLout

Re: Why people voted Br(exit|emain)

Interesting survey, so in 30-40 years when the majority of leavers have died out there will be an increase in calls to rejoin ?

Not likely because the same thing will happen as happens with labour voters. As they age, some might say grow up, they drift further away from the left. Its a demographic drift that has been going on since the formation of labour.

The same would have happened to the remainers - had the vote been held in 30 years, they'd have been voting to leave. Today's remainers are tomorrows leavers in the same way as today's lefties are tomorrows Conservatives.

What is likely now is that in 30 years there will A) not be an EU to be a member of, and B) nobody will remember what all the fuss was about, we'll have moved forwards economically and socially and nobody will want to go back. Yes, you do get the union baron or treehugger wanting to go back to the 70s but the rest of us don't want dragging back to the past and the same will be true 30 or 40 years hence. It's one of the reasons nobody voted for Corbyn but the halfwit Starmer actually does have a very good chance if he can sell a positive vision of change rather than carping from the cheap seats.

There's no going back. People that are gearing up to waste their lives campaigning for this would be better advised to spend their energies achieving something of value, such as abolition of slavery from the world.

LucreLout

Re: Why people voted Br(exit|emain)

One of the benefits of brexit is we finally get unlimited (by number) immigration.

I expect to see a number of new citizens thanks to the offer to residents of HK. Young, educated, hard working, etc..... whats not to like?

LucreLout

I'm no international trade economist, but it strikes me that the reason the "share" (size in relative terms) of the UK and the EU in global GDP is falling could be that the emerging economies are getting bigger in absolute terms, rather than UK/EU getting smaller in absolute terms.

This is undoubtedly true but it is only part of the issue.

I'm going to make up some numbers to keep things straightforward. Lets say 100% of Global GDP (GGDP hereafter) is £1000. The EU have 25% of that so £250. Lets look at some examples of what could happen:

GGDP rises, EU share is static. GGDP rises to say £2000 our 25% becomes £500. Sort of good, sort of not because things of finite quantity (eg gold) now also cost twice as much. We're not really better off or worse off, though some things of infinite replication (eg downloads) may now be cheaper.

GGDP rises, EU share falls (your case). GGD rises to £2000 and our share falls to 15% or £300. That gold price has gone up again and we can now buy less of it. Downloads we might be ok on.

GGDP rises, EU share rises (best case). The gold and the downloads are both more available to us in the EU at the expense of their being available to everyone else.

Reality is pretty much as you described, but as we're about to see this year, a falling GGDP and a falling share of that will make for some difficult choices.

The real question is can the UK increase its share of GGDP faster inside or outside of the EU. Well, trade deals follow trade and lubricate it, and trade increases GDP. So provided we can do deals faster outside than inside the block, we should grow our share of GGDP vs the EU.

Our GDP is the same as the smallest 18 nations in the EU added up. Its second only to Germany within the EU. Most of the EU trade deals landed because places wanted to do business with Germany and or the UK. They didn't land because people wanted to sell to 6 million Danes or to export to Poland. We will have no problem signing trade deals but nobody will want to finalise any until our position with regards to the EU is finalised, which is the secondary reason there must be no extension to the transition period - the primary reason is that remainers have demonstrated their duplicity (see the various Gina Miller cases "Oh no, this isn't about Brexit its about parliament..... until its about a campaign to overturn Brexit") and as such they cannot be trusted with any further opportunities to frustrate the will of the people.

GDP is the best measure of human happiness and wealth

GDP is a poor measure of wealth (I pay you to dig a hole and your mate to close it, GDP goes up but nothing is achieved). Its a worse measure of happiness, though there is some correlation which intensifies at the extremes.

LucreLout

It is the leavers who have never been able to justify leaving, to give one good argument for it.

I've given you two good ones already this very thread - ability to sign our own trade deals in a fraction of the time it takes the rEU to do so, and freedom from their courts insisting we obey the letter of their law while the rest reinterpret the rulings to suit themselves.

Share of global GDP for the EU has been falling fast for decades. That has dragged our economy down with it. The only way to increase our share of global GDP was to leave, because reform was not possible (see Cameron's road trip for details).

LucreLout

Lucrelout is outright delusional.

Coming from you I'll take that as a compliment, since you're one of the slowest posters adding the least value.

ust like there is "No evidence" of Russian interference in the referendum.

Less than there is fromt he General Election and Corbyns Dodgy Dossier he downloaded from Reddit where it had been planted by Russian hackers. So yes, we know for sure they have meddled in our politics, via Comrade... what was his code name that spy bloke claimed he had again?

I can always tell when they are back on the site, as my recent posts all acquire an extra down-vote, regardless of topic.

Not me, but I'm happy to start.

Do you think they automated that, or are they really that petty?

My JavaScript ain't great but I could probably figure out how to do this.... I just can't see the point. I automate trading worth billions (gross), not downvoting nutters on the internet. Downvotes are meaningless & painless, and I'm not sure why you're wetting the bed over them. Pretty sure I have more than you as they're going up about 100 every time I log in at the moment!

Maybe its a case of the lady doth protest too much and you're responsible for them all. If so, bravo, but I truly don't care.

LucreLout

_only_ being able to sign sign our own trade deals, for which no other country is rushing to negotiate

Half the world is lined up waiting to get their chance to do a deal. We're the 5th biggest economy in the world - all of the rest of them want a deal. IT just won't take 7 years to do each of them, you get that right?

the Irish situation is dire: either we have a hard border between NI and the South, or we have a hard border between two parts of the UK.

The border would be between Northern Ireland and the Republic, yes. That will be an inevitable consequence of no deal. It'll be interesting to see how the terrorists respond though, because this time it will be the rEU installing the towers and border not the UK.

Another great problem is the fact that London has ceased to be the financial capital of Europe.

You simply could not be more wrong. There is nowhere else in Europe the financial capital could possibly go - frankfurt doesn't have neough people even if they all worked in finance. Nobody in the City is the least little bit worried about Brexit related cuts - we'll be busier than ever thanks to the new rEU slush fund because they will be coming to London to get their bonds away.

Similarly, as of January 1st, certifications for goods issued by the UK cease to be valid in the EU, which is going to cost British businesses over their European counterparts.

The balance of trade deficit means we can pay our suppliers costs out of the net tariffs we receive from rEU and still make money.

We just saved 250 Billion Euros that we'd have had to put in the bailout fund (since we used to make up 1/3rd of their net budget and the bailout is 750 billion EUR). That's on top of the £350 million a week we save by not being in. Keep adding it up at this rate and it'll start to look like a lot of money, even to a labour chancellor.

Brexiteers claim that Britain will not be subject to foreign courts, but just a lie: if we want to trade, foreign courts will be part and parcel of any deal, including (obviously) the WTO tribunals.

WTO tribunals are part of the deal now. Nothing changes int hat respect. What we won't be subjected to any further is rulings from the ECJ. Do you not understand the difference and when each is used and why?

Lastly, the claim that "we're never going back" is suspect and inherently naive: Northern Ireland is the closest to "going back", but the Channel Islands and Scotland both recognize a different balance of probabilities...

NI is going nowhere, but is the only part of your paragraph that possibly could. Scotland can't afford independence and the ultimate irony is that they can't be independent in the rEU. Their moaning is akin to that of a bitter ex-wife depending on her ex husband for financial support - she may not like him but she very much needs him more than he needs her.

There isn't going to be an EU in 10 years from now. Certainly whatever crumbled edifice may remain will look nothing like it did when we were members. Remainers may have been happy to bow and scrape before a Franco-German rEU alliance, and Scotland certainly is (though more people voted for Brexit there than ever voted SNP), but fortunately most of us have ore sense.

Be honest with yourself for a moment as you'll never be honest with us. The disgusting behavior of the rEU towards Greece in the financial crisis, Italy in the Covid crisis, and us when we voted to Leave (and before).... is that really a club that you want to be a member of? Does their behavior really reflect your values? Really?

Its a morally and now fiscally bankrupt cesspit and we're well rid of it. Our future is so much brighter outside than it ever could have been held captive within. You've lost so many arguments and votes now that I've honestly lost count - it must be one for each EU President by now. Its time to accept the result, accept that you were wrong, and move on. You don't have a choice about doing it, so you may as well do it in good graces and in a dignified manner instead of parroting delusion after delusion, lie after lie, no?

LucreLout

a value-for-money bureaucracy that is smaller than many UK city councils

Value for money? Really? How many presidents does it have now and what does each one do? No Googling. You don't know, nobody does, because they do so little of any actual value.

companies will now need to spend a lot of money on imports and exports)

Sort of like trading with the rest of the world, whose global share of GSP is growing where the rEU is shrinking fast? We can offset their costs by using a fraction of the net tariffs (absent a trade deal) to compensate their costs.

the ability to take part in trade negotiations representing an area of approx 460 million people meaning you generally get your own way and get to set standards

No, no you don't. You get to bully weaker trading blocks like the African Union, but you don't get to set sh*t with important parts of the world like USA or China. And for that you waste 7 years negotiating a very small trade deal with Canada, who are probably the most reasonable nation on earth. 7 years!

creating an all-island economy between Ireland/NI based with the single market and customs union to help bring peace to the island

No it didn't. We joined in 1973 and the Irish were still bombing the piss out of each other and the mainland for several decades to come. Best case you could claim the rEU helped the IRA lie to themselves about already having a unified Ireland inside the rEU, but that was never true and was never going to be the case. Its just more deception.

high food and environmental standards and strong consumer laws

So your view is that these only exist in the rEU? Pathetic. Truly pathetic.

laws to protect everyone from discrimination in the workplace which went back to 1957

Sure, go try being not white in Poland and then come back singing the praises of this.... I've had 3 different mates marry Polish girls and relocate - the white guys had no problems and were accepted into their community and workplaces. The black guy not so much - spat at in the street, regarded with suspicion, subject to hate. He had a breakdown after 18 months and came home.

freedom of movement to live, study, work, and retire in all EU countries.

Ah, that theoretical freedom again. And yet, nobody did any of this. If we net them all up you're talking about around 500,000 people, of which more than half are retirees in Spain. British people live, work, and retire the world over - the rEU conveys no particular benefit in this regard to most people because they'll never use it. I've lived and worked in two foreign countries and found it no easier in the rEU. This is a classic example of a paper benefit - something you think you might value because you think you might use it, but you never do - sort of like the spare pack of bogrolls in the airing cupboard, no?

The fact that you only barely managed to go on holiday to the EU doesn't mean that other people don't think the EU was useful.

Yeah, my wife is Swedish and unlike you I have have lived and worked there. I've lived and worked outside the rEU too. The much vaunted freedom of movement was always far more important to Europeans because they had English as a shared second language, than it ever has been for us Brits.

London is France's 6th biggest city.... Paris, in terms of British population, would barely pass for an English village. Spain, where half of all British expats in the rEU reside, makes up a place about the size of Swansea by population. And you'll still be allowed to retire to Spain after the transition period expires. You don't really think that Greece offering a competitive 7% tax rate on all income if you retire there is going to refuse you right of entry? Freedom of movement is the biggest paper tiger you could have raised. SMH.

Do you actually believe this stuff or are you just repeating what you read in the guardian? There's nothing at all to fear from no deal. We have no deal with America or China, and yet I type this on a Chinese keyboard, wearing American jeans and trainers, and sipping a Coke.

There are none so blind as those that will not see. I know you're scared, but frankly this display of cowardice in front of the enemy is most unbecoming of an Englishman.

LucreLout

Not even the most insane brexitters claim there are no benefits to staying in the EU.

I never said they didn't exist, I just said Remainers don't know what they are.... looking at your post I was right.

Jobs, inward investment, being the European base for English speaking multinationals.

This is a key benefit of leaving - its why multinationals are increasingly moving their work here out of Europe since the Brexit vote. You've not understood global commerce properly and as a result hold a view completely contrary to the reality of what is happening - see closing European car factories to bring the work here, McDonalds new shinny HQ etc etc for details.

Great trade deals with other countries (due to the might of the EU being the biggest trading block)

Sorry, no, you've not understood this correctly either. It took 7 years to do a very limited trade deal with Canada. It took 20+ years to not do a trade deal with the African Union. Trade deals shouldn't take as long as they do and that is purely because the rEU does them wrong - little Belgian provinces that nobody has ever heard of suddenly refuse to ratify without bribes, for example. We need to be out of the rEU so we can do global trade deals much much faster than they do and with greater clarity.

Independence ... Yeah. We were a sovereign state with a huge influence in a powerful block.

Perhaps the best example of cognitive dissonance I've seen all week. We're so powerful that when we sent the PM to negotiate an options list of utterly trivial changes, they not only insisted that each member state's negotiator made space for a "german chair" in the room, but they sent him packing like some naughty school boy. That's how "huge" our influence was in the economically increasingly irrelevant EU.

Now we're going to be Americas bitch. Of course, that means lower food and working conditions.

More remainer lies. Not one single change has been proposed by anyone to employment law, the vast bulk of which the EU adopted from us in the first place when we became a member.

So far your reasoning amounts to misunderstanding a whole array of issues around which you have no competence, and lies about the path independence will take. In short, you have nothing. As a Leaver I could give you a more realistic list to want to stay a member that would be based on fact rather than emotion, but I find it too entertaining to watch remainers flail around like chicken little. The sky isn't falling, we're going to be just fine, better than fine.

LucreLout

And yet you still don't give an answer. Not one. One might be given to consideration that it is because you don't have one? Lots of downvotes, but never an answer.

It's always the same old remainer nonsense. Afraid of change. That is your whole argument in 3 words. The biggest lie of all was always that the rEU had kept peace in Europe since WW2 - only for Russia to annex half of the only country to be a member of the rEU and not be a member of NATO. Quite honestly how you can keep a straight face while accusing others of lies is beyond me - you should be ashamed.

Either way, we're out now and we're never going back. Onward and upwards.

My life as a criminal cookie clearer: Register vulture writes Chrome extension, realizes it probably breaks US law

LucreLout

Re: Contempt

Why should anyone residing in the civilised world beyond USA borders give a damn about the DMCA?

Well, I've no prior experience with any custodial establishment, however I have seen a few on TV, and without exception the worst seem to be in America as opposed to say Sweden where they seem almost nice.

America regards its judicial law as having global reach, which may or may not amuse you, but its quite difficult to avoid having anything to do with either the USD or an american company - for all I know El Reg is hosted on AWS and so we're interacting within the bounds of American legal oversight.

Idealism is one word and reality is another because it is something else. I'd not fancy a decade or two in Terror Hut or San Quentin because I wanted to watch something for free. Ripping off Sweden and stuffing it through google translate if you don't speak the language is far safer :)

LucreLout

I don't generally believe in skipping around pay walls but I do understand why some folks do. Many of the major print titles simply took their old print budget as profit rather than sharing the cost reduction of digital with the consumer, leading to some quite large subscription costs.

Much as I might malign the BBC and its telly tax, it is remarkably better value (if you ignore the insufferably left leaning slant) than most of the publications listed on that github page.

Germany bans Tesla from claiming its Autopilot software is potentially autonomous

LucreLout
Joke

Stop arguing with your Anonymous Coward of a wife.

LucreLout

Re: "prepared to take over at any momen"

a "driver" using Tesla "autopilot" is never going to be prepared to take over - they're always going to be unprepared.

They're far more likely to be drunk, asleep, on the phone, fiddling with the radio / passenger. Self driving only works if its FSD. Anything less is a dangerous distraction.

LucreLout

Re: But...

The Fanboi's are gnashing their teeth and ranting at this. How dare some ignorant judge in the home of BMW rule against the lord Elon and his disciples?

ROFL.

I'm a petrolhead, always have been, and I'm a massive "lord Elon fanboi", so I'm not sure how you think I'm supposed to feel about this. I'd quite like a Tesla model 3, or better yet the roadster, however I'm equally happy to tool about in a V6/8 bimmer.

The ruling itself seems perfectly sensible to me - Europe is not America, and has a very different style of road network with very different hazards (many many European cyclists for example). Self driving cars, as in there's no steering wheel because we don't need one, may only come about on sealed roads containing only FSD vehicles. Or Musk and others may crack the problem. Whichever. The thing is, they haven't yet, which is why this ruling makes perfect sense to me.

Let me explain the Musk fanboy thing for a moment, though the chance of anyone reading to the end before the red arrows fly is virtually nil. I don't believe in man made global warming, in my view it is a political outlook and not a scientific one. Now, I know many of you will disagree with that, but just hang fire a second... Lets assume I'm wrong. Very wrong.

All transport needs to decarbonise, which means it'll have to go electric and that electric will have to be some shade of renewable energy (I'm not getting into the nukes are good/bad argument here). Musk has done more than all of the climate committees, all of the pressure groups, and all of the Greta's to make that a reality. Why? How? Well, if he can make an electric car that appeals, and they do, to a petrolhead, then he can make one that appeals to the average Joe too. And he has. He's made the end of the ICE age possible.

Putting aside the stoner culture, the ego cult, and the "Ironman is based on me" stuff, he's moved the world view of what is possible with an electric vehicle and made them not just acceptable, but desireable. Now, how long have Ford, or VAG had to achieve that in, and how much progress had they made? Nobody really wants a Nissan Leaf, right?

If I'm right about MMGW, we get some cool cars out of it. If the environmentalists are right, we get some cool cars that can be carbon neutral. Its a win-win in as much as anything ever is.