Posts by LucreLout

The girl with the dragnet tattoo: How a TV news clip, Insta snaps, a glimpse of a tat and a T-shirt sold on Etsy led FBI to alleged cop car arsonist

Re: The lesson for today

Exactly, with all this protesting we will end up with women being allowed to vote!

I'm not having a fucking polling station in my kitchen! ----->

Re: @LucreLout - Tut....kids today....

Why would they need unfettered access?

I'm not suggesting they *should* have it.... Just that with it they would be able to track in ways they can't now.

The criminals know me better than I do

Criminals think in a different way to law abiding people, and that includes most police and government officers of whatever nation state.

An example. I secured my garden by putting two bolts on the gate and a lockable clasp. I had 2 locks on there and another one on the shed. The burglar crow barred some planks off the fence to make a large hole, then crow barred the window frame out of the shed to remove the window, all in near silence (next doors dogs didn't woof once). The locks were all just fine, but my lawnmower was gone.

Honest people think locks keep dishonest people out - in reality they keep out other honest people and lousy locksmiths. The burglars never bother picking locks when they can boot a hole in something instead.

How does that relate here? The hackers may be able to quickly assemble a data proxy for you using shady means, but it doesn't follow that John Q Law can do the same. Again, I'm making no statement on whether the state should create such obstacle free access to private data for itself, only that the consequences of it doing so escalate - you decide whether that's good or bad for yourselves according to your own world views.

Re: See

So... you want my phone? Get a warrant.

Honestly I'm fine having a LEO take a warrant free squiz at my phone provided they allow me to have a warrant free look through theirs. I know I don't have anything to hide and it'd be all kinds of interesting to see if they did.

They will want to use anything incriminating for a prosecution. I'll just send anything incriminating to their spouse.

Re: Tut....kids today....

Rioters today eh?

Being stupid enough to be one of the rioters was the first warning.

Being stupid enough to not cover individually identifying marks was the second warning.

The third came by visibly going prepared with goggles and oven mitts such that no claim of being caught up in the moment is possible.

The final warning was being stupid enough to think that burning public (or private) property is a proportional and reasonable action.

That she did all of those things in full glare of video cameras only confirms that in every respect her incoming jail sentence is played for and got - she's literally too dumb to be free.

Does make you wonder though..... if all of this could be done with some google searches, just what would be possible with unfettered access to state and commercial information? The ability to snoop on someone would be near total, and in real time too.

GitHub to replace master with main across its services

Re: Let's go through this point by point

You think this change is stupid? Suggest something better!

Ok, how's about.... master?

Re: Let's go through this point by point

It's just picking a word that is more inclusive.

No, its attempting to map woke culture over the top of all others. Basically fascism with a hint of tyranny.

Re: Master copy

Pick a more welcoming, inclusive word... or stick with the word that reminds some people of past and present acts of inhumanity. Such a tough choice.

It's bollocks though, isn't it?

There's no slave branch in git because the term has no relation to the ownership of one individual by another, and is much more akin to either an audio master track, composed of various parts, or a martial arts master who has students, or even master as in craftsman.

As someone else said, what's the harm in making the world a little better?

This doesn't do that. It's just more excessive woke nonsense that achieves nothing of value.

Infosys turns pandemic experience into ‘Return to workplace solutions’

And yet....

.... one of our outsourcers has guaranteed for years and years that all staff could work from home if the city their office was based in flooded or something else happened. As soon as the pandemic kicked in it transpired that only 1 in 10 of their employees was telling the truth.

It wasn't within my authority to audit their claim and I will admit it would be very expensive and difficult to audit unless you provided the equipment and training and tested it regularly. Which is why I'm thankful I in-sourced the critical parts of my division as soon as I could. The whole outsourcing model is in jeopardy now that remote working works as its just as easy to hire in Leeds, China or India directly unless volume is your specific concern, which massively undercuts the day rates charged by the big body shops.

Return to work is easy, if you have an office job. When there is a vaccine or a treatment that stops C-19 killing people, then I'll ask my teams to come back to the office. Until then they work from home. My devs are other peoples kids and we owe them a duty of care - how would you want your child treating in a pandemic?

Huawei's latest smartphone for the UK market costs £1,299. And yes, that's without Google apps

Re: Nearly spat my tea out

That’s a lot of dosh for something that will be practically worthless in about 2 years, even if you can stomach the epic inconvenience of a hobbled ecosystem. I wouldn’t even be tempted at half that price.

That's a very premium price for a phone that won't have premium residuals.

I dislike iPhones and prefer android, but I understand when I buy the phone that it'll be near worthless later, so I don't buy anything near that price. I think my most expensive android was over a grand cheaper.

Huawei make good phones (I've had a few of them), but for this kind of price I want the apps I use and I want no dicking about to get them. I might be tempted if they knocked a grand off, but that is really about the only way I would.

California bigwigs rule Uber, Lyft dial-a-ride drivers are employees, not contractors

Re: I know many people who work so-called "gig economy" jobs here in California.

They don't need, nor do they want, multiple different "employers".

I wonder where the balance is regarding unemployment benefits here in the UK. At some point it may be better to be able to close a failing business making yourself redundant and claim welfare, which may be difficult if you're an employee of many firms.

I have one employer. Anything happens to my gig there then there's a certain amount of state support that kicks in. I'm just not clear how well structured our welfare state is for modern working practices with potentially limitless employers - its easy to see how this could be extended to a builder, an outsourcer, TV / celebrity employment, so it may readily cause problems beyond this specific case.

Frenchman scores €50k compensation for suffering 'bore-out' at work after bosses gave him 'menial' tasks

Re: Sooo....

I've seen 80% of current salary until retirement age and a fully paid up pension offered to anyone in their mid 50s

I grab that in a heartbeat!

Re: Sooo....

instead of just doing the normal thing of offering compensation and making him redundant. They employed him at full pay for 4 years to do nothing.

In Japanese organisations this is known as being given a "window seat". Its a role where you have nothing to do all day but look out of the window. It's used as a punishment for serious failure or negligence and because they do not wish to break their social contract (in Japan) of a job is a job for life.

My current bank isn't Japanese but we use the same system here, just less formally. I've had bosses that were useless be transferred to a "similar" role in a different part of the organisation, which meets our employment legislation requirements but in reality is moving them out of the way until they decide to resign for themselves. It's usually cheaper because while they may have a 6 figure redundancy accrual, it usually doesn't take more than 5 or 6 months before they quit.

Developers renew push to get rid of objectionable code terms to make 'the world a tiny bit more welcoming'

Re: Shut it

Just how many Union Jack suits do you have to own to have one on for four years straight?

Between 1 and 4, depending on who I'm trying to impress. Hopefully they dry clean well.

They are both drapped in flags, I don't know what it means.

For one night, probably that they like flags. For four years, probably that they have some mental health challenges. That's not to make light of that, but I wouldn't camp outside Taylor Swifts door for 4 years if she was giving away free love to anyone patient enough to wait, so I can't fathom doing it for a piece of politics.

How do people pay the bills for 4 years? What does it do to your employment prospects? How do you redefine yourself when its time to go home? What do you do when you get there?? What happens when you wake up for the first day of whatever is next? It's..... genuinely concerning.

Re: Shut it

The black guy has a union jack suit, and the white guy has a top hat with stop brexit written on it.

He's been screaming stop brexit for years, make of it what you will, I recalled one and not the other.

Sorry, I honestly can't recall either of them. I know there's some bloke with a comic strip sized megaphone that you hear in the background sometimes, but I've not the first clue what race he is or what he wears. I do know he yells "stoooooopppp Breeeeexxxxittttt!", so is he the white guy in your post? I'm assuming the black brexiteer isn't yelling for Brexit to stop.

Stop press, I followed your link. He IS the megaphone guy (I can see it in his hand). Don't recall seeing him before, but I can still hear his voice, if that helps. I'd not have recognized either of them if I passed them in the street.

I'm not sure what this says about me, or your views, but it just occurred to me that I think of the black guy in the union jack suit as "my guy" and the white guy with the megaphone as "their guy". Make of that what you will.

Re: Shut it

It also is not going to shield you from some arse deciding to vent his spleen on you because you need more sun cream than I do. It just means you don't stick out as much in a crowd, that's not that much of a privilege.

Unless the crowd is a convention for people with a face like a well slapped arse and no dress sense I can pretty much guarantee to stand out somewhere down the line. Picture if you will a time bending collaboration between Michael Angelo and Picasso, after a few beers, and before they'd mastered their arts.

Don't forget, as a white guy there's large parts of London that I've lived in where I was the ethnic minority. I'm not stating that as a bad thing, only pointing out that your hypothesis has a great many holes.

Being white is being white. Being black is being black. There's no difference in experience. Not in the life I've lived anyway. Racists are illogical assholes whatever hue their skin, and they will always find their target, no matter the crowd.

Re: Shut it

quite a lot of the safe spaces objection to shared changing rooms (from women) is the assumption that a man is deliberately using access for ulterior intent. So thank you for unintentionally reinforcing my point.

No, quite a lot of the objects are because of a misanthropic fear that men would use it for ulterior intent. I think you'll find that most reasonable people understand that if a man wants to see a naked woman that isn't his lass, he'll simply go to a damn strip club. They're not hard to find and the women will n the whole be better looking and pleased to see you. Don't let facts get in the way of your beautifully constructed narrative though.

But being a white person in a white country, is to not stick out in a crowd of other people who look the same as you.

Using your logic white people would be disadvantaged in all of Africa, except, they're generally not.

I'll give you an example, there is a very well photographed man of colour who is a big fan of Brexit. I wonder if you can call his dress to mind.. There is an equally well photographed white man who is on the other side of the fence. The pair of them have been shouting at each other for nearly four years now outside the H.O.C. Can you call the white guy's clothing to mind? Can you call any details of the black guy's face to mind?

I honestly can't think of either person. I'll freely admit that I turned off the Brexit coverage for the most part right after the first vote, because I presumed the matter settled, and because by then both campaigns had degenerated into lying echo chambers.

To stay with your idea though... I can readily recall to mind Daley Thompson's face, though for the life of me, not what he was wearing. Same for Bruno, Tyson, AJ, etc etc Equally easy is Fury, but again, not his clothing - which is.... different to my recollection.

I see the person in front of me, not what they drive, not what they wear, and not what job they do. Don't you?

Re: Shut it

Where did I say this?

That's what the phrase "white privilege" means. Its all through your post.

Re: Shut it

e.g. Man walks into women's changing room - he's doing something deliberately wrong. Woman walks into men's changing room, she made a mistake.

I think you'll find both are assumed to have made a mistake. either that or the man is identifying as a woman and so is to be socially recognized as the same. That's how its supposed to work, right?

Which means you are the "default" if you are white in this country, that is privilege.

Your definition falls apart when you consider South Africa, large parts of the Middle East etc. Sorry, but your assumption is clearly and demonstrably wrong.

Because you are not black as a black person in a black country, you're simply a person. Logically that extends to being white in a largely white country.

Or ginger in a largely not ginger country? Or blonde in a largely non-blonde world. Or short in a tallish person time. Or fat in a thin person country (the reverse in other places).... You're manufacturing something out of nothing here.

"if only *some of them* didn't act in a way that lets the *rest of them* down"

That isn't how people think about gingers or black people though. Racists might, but racism isn't a white people thing, its an all races thing.

I've been a victim of racism in this country as a white guy - both verbally on too many occasions to count, and violently (actual violence not made up "micro-aggression's"). There's no monopoly on this and no privilege afforded by being white - certainly it hasn't shielded me from the very worst aspects of racism in the country of my birth. White privilege is an attempt at gatekeeping suffering from racism as being a non-white thing because of the incorrect and wholly untrue fallacy that only white people are racist.

Re: Shut it

Because if you are looking at conviction rates, that is a product of the cases the police choose to prosecute.

Ignorance abounds. The police don't decide who to prosecute, the CPS do.

When a white person is stopped by police, they are far more likely to be guilty of something than what a black person is stopped by police.

Go on then, this'll be good. Why? And what evidence do you have for this?

Re: BTW: How did that work out?

But even given this very low bar you still fail to come up with anything at all to back up your claim...

Asked and answered elsewhere in the thread by another poster.

(Never mind that Canada and Russia are in that list, if those are not major countries the UK isn't either..)

If you seriously think Russia is less racist than the UK then you are delusional and I can't help you.

Re: Shut it

You're misunderstanding the way 'privilege' is used in the context of 'white privilege'.

No I'm not.

Privilege literally means "a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group", in the case of your view that is white folk. What you've not been able to articulate is what particular rights or advantages are ascribable only to white people.

This, you see, is the problem with newspeak and making up utter nonsense phrases; they don't really mean anything. Its a bit like Harry Potters spells in that regard I guess, just for wokies.

Re: Shut it

You're missing the point.

One of us certainly is but it isn't me.

"Privilege" does not refer to your personal wealth or circumstances, it means that given the same situation, say applying for a job, you are far more likely to get the job if you happened to be white.

Except it isn't remotely true. White's make up a far lower percentage of professional roles than should be the case based on ethnic diversity. In medicine go and see your local GP surgery or hospital for evidence - not that I can about a persons skin colour so I don't really give a toss where they originate, but skin colour is apparently important to you. I'm just glad of a doctor when I need one.

Take professional sports. I'd love to see a black man lift the world cup for England, because it means an England has won another world cup. I don't really care about his skin colour you understand, I'm just putting it in your terms because apparently skin colour is important to you.

You are far more likely to be stopped by the police of you happen to be black.

Because they are statistically more likely to be engaged in provable crime. Pay attention to all of those words, not your emotional response to them. Prison populations where they are tracked reveal a far higher percentage of black men being imprisoned, which means a higher percentage convicted of crimes, which is why they get stopped more often. Now, what I didn't say was "black men commit more crimes" which is how you will have interpreted that. The CPS prosecute the lowest hanging fruit only, so the problem is likely to lie there - in economic terms they're creating demand for the police to fill.

On your "everyone is racist" comment, I would agree, in general terms (I'm not applying this to individuals, just as a broad white/black/ whatever brush)

The gang that beat me almost to death a couple of decades back were black. So were half of the doctors that put me back together. Most of my teams are ethnic minorities. There's good an bad in all races. A persons skin colour might be an indication of where their forefathers originated, but that's about all its useful for. Including where it's white.

Re: Shut it

White privilege means being able to go out without being shot at by the police

So basically everyone in the UK, except we're not all white. Quack quack oops.

not being expelled from school for having hair on your head

I used to get in trouble for just the opposite of that oddly enough.

other similar things that you take for granted

Such as what, exactly?

It doesn't mean you are super-wealthy.

No, it literally means a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group, in this case you're trying to couple it to being white, and yet have zero evidence for your view.

What rights do whites specifically enjoy that blacks don't? I'll give you a clue. It begins with the word "Nothing" and ends with the words "absolutely nothing".

So stop being racist and grow up.

Re: BTW: How did that work out?

But I'll bite and name a few: Morocco, Algeria, Philippines, New Zealand, Russia, Albania, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Norway, Jamaica, Panama, Paraguay, Netherlands, El Salvador, Ukraine, Costa Rica, Finland, Ireland, Switzerland, Denmark, Bangladesh, Portugal, Canada, Kenya, Poland, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Nigeria, Singapore, Ghana, Tanzania, Rwanda.

And yet you've fallen at the first hurdle because none of those are major countries. Otherwise I'd have given you Cuba near the top.

Further your source is transparently rubbish. Asking an ethnically homogenous nation how racially equal it is will never produce the same range of scores as asking an ethnically diverse country the same question.

Re: BTW: How did that work out?

No, I think you need to substantiate that claim.

Trivially easy, and yet the data isn't codified into a single metric.

Major countries - lets define that for arguments sake as the G7.

Numbers for racial equality aren't easy to find, but there is a set called the World Values Survey, explained below:

"The World Values Survey asked respondents from more than 80 countries dozens of questions, including one that asks respondents to identify types of people they would not want as neighbors. The researchers reasoned that the more people of a single country who respond that they would not want a neighbor of a different race, the less racially tolerant you could call that society."

So, lets take a look at what the numbers tell us then.

"Generally, the least racially tolerant countries were in Africa and Asia"

From that we can evidence that racism is not, contrary to the current trendy pretense, a white people thing.

Further:

"while the most tolerant countries were Latin countries, Scandinavian countries, and the United Kingdom and its former colonies (the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand)."

So lets map those 4 nations back onto the G7. We can lose Australia. That sees the UK with a top 4 finish at the very least - among a field of almost 200 nations.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/least-racist-countries/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/

Now lets take a look not at what people say but by what they do.

In the UK "the vote was restricted to adult males and also by property qualifications, but never by race. The first black person known to have voted in a British election was Ignatius Sancho who qualified in Westminster in 1774 and 1780."

In America "After 1870 blacks were theoretically equal before the law, the period of time between the end of Reconstruction era and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 showed that racial equality has been inconsistent in American life."

So between 100 and almost 200 years later, just to gain recognition as equals. Bye bye America. That leaves Canada and New Zealand left.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_suffrage

Lets move on to who actually lives there then....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level#List_based_on_Alesina_et_al's_analysis

The UK works out at 54 for ethnic fractionalization vs NZ's 109th. Canada comes in at 181.

NZ literally belongs to the Maori people and yet they are routinely treated as being second class in their own lands. See literally any mainstream media outlet in NZ for details.

Canadians simply killed off almost everyone that originally lived there so its basically white European.

At this point, you're going to struggle to find any evidence to overturn what I've said, so we can probably consider this point made, case proven.

If not, and to all the muted downvoters, state your case. Which major country is less racist than the UK, and why?

Re: Master changed, really?

It's 2020; we may as well go with master/padawan so we don't have to change everything again when Disney buys us.

Racist against the Sith!

How's about we stop the stupid word games and actually take a look at why so many people of all races are racist given its extremely illogical.

Re: Why people are getting so up in arms about this is beyond me.

White privilege.

The only meaning that phrase has is "I'm a bored middle class bore with too much time on my hands and not enough useful things to be doing". It's not a thing and you'd do yourself no end of good to stop pretending that it might be. It's born of exactly the same nonsense that leads the handwringers to the illogical and wrong conclusion that only white people can be racist.

I grew up in one of the least privileged parts of the country during a time when that meant hardship rather than not having the full sky tv package. Black, white, whatever, there was no privilege, everyone faced the same hardships and challenges.

Black people are every bit as racist as white people. They always were. They always will be. Confronting and eventually ending racism absolutely requires that you take that fact to heart and make it part of your thinking.

This demonising the left do of the white folk is exactly the same as the klan used to do of the black folk in the south, and for the same reason. You're racists.

Re: Shut it

How can you be so angry about that?

Probably because its utter fucking nonsense, I guess.

Re: Shut it

I'm a privileged white male who grew up in the south and, since I worked in IT, almost all of my colleagues were privileged white males (at least until H1-B visas became big). Even from an early age I recognized that white /black was meant to be insulting. Substituting good and bad gives the exact same meaning without the racial content (and might actually make more sense to users).

I'm a white male, not privileged you see, because growing up in the working class North East there was no privilege to be found - we were more worried about keeping food on the table and a roof over our heads, just the same as the folks of whatever race or gender next door.

I work in IT and for most of my career most of my colleagues were white, though not in my current teams. Being white is not a privilege, or a blessing, any more than it is a disadvantage or a curse. If you seek to portray it as a privilege then you're choosing to think of it as functionally superior and you are a racist.

Whitelist blacklist etc are not meant to be racist or insulting. If you choose to feel that they are then knock yourself out, just don't be surprised or disappointed when the rest of us choose not to play along.

Playing word games is the very definition of newspeak. I choose not to live in your Orwellian nightmare, and if you choose to be offended by that then tough shit, grow up.

Re: BTW: How did that work out?

My guess: No. REAL developers care about programming and functionality and quality. NOT racism and systemic oppression.

This lazy, ignorant, and wrong headed assumption that one race of people is more racist than another is doing us all no favours. There are two facts that always get overlooked:

1) People of all races are racist. Let me be explicit here, black people are every bit as racist as white people.

2) The UK is the least racist major country in the world. If you think there's another, name it and explain why.

Moaning about terminology, frankly, is a waste of everyones time and smacks of white-savior syndrome. If you genuinely choose to be offended by terms such as master/slave as it relates to coding/engineering/etc then you are the problem. No amount of appeasement will ever be enough for you because you'll just choose the next thing in line to be offended about. You need something else in your life because if you've time to choose to be offended by that then you have far too much time on your hands.

Singapore government boosts tech spend by 30% to pump post-pandemic economy

OK.....

Use of data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and sensors within the public sector.

....but to do what? This smacks of deciding on a solution, setting a budget, then looking for a problem to solve, which is rarely the right way to do anything.

BoJo looks to jumpstart UK economy with £6k taxpayer-funded incentive for Brits to buy electric cars – report

Re: Restructure the Market

Not really, it just goes into the VAT regime, which is the motor trade's problem.

It is, but it shows up in higher residual values because they are a percentage of purchase price - the balance of what that price is has never been seen relevant (manufacturer and dealership profit, manufacturing or shipping costs, taxes etc). That then becomes the poorer car buyers problem because they're getting an older vehicle for a given amount of money which will cost more to run in repairs and fuel consumption.

The difficulty in doing so is that it's pretty damn visible to taxpayers, so the governments of the day (of whatever flavour) tend not to be overly keen on doing so.

Yes, I was lower quartile in earnings when 2 Shjags Prescott was determined to keep his foot ont he fuel duty escalator. It was a difficult few years, racing to get ahead of rent increases, an ever bigger fuel bill just to get to work (public transport wasn't an option) etc. I well recall the fuel protests and blockades of the day that almost brought down the government.

There's no easy answer as with much in life, but penalizing people for going to work or working has never been my favorite way to raise revenues. IHT I quite like if it could be done fairly, VAT to a degree I quite like provided we could tier it - VAT on caviar should not be the same as VAT on potatoes for example.

Re: Restructure the Market

By and large, I would expect that the poorest are not actually buying new cars at all, so pushing up the cost of ICE isn't likely to affect them (at least, not directly).

Residual values are a percentage of purchase prices, so the more expensive the vehicle to buy new the more expensive the vehicle will be to buy second hand. With EVs currently the purchase price all but includes the fuel cost and road tax to run it. Sure, you have repairs and insurance to pay, but a newish vehicle will see few repairs (not none), leaving insurance your only real cost.

This will leave the less well off trapped on ICE, paying VED, VAT on fuel, Fuel Duty etc The residual value of their vehicles will fall away towards zero at a much faster rate too, once EVs begin to arrive in the second hand market.

Don't get me wrong, there are EVs I'd buy tomorrow (2nd hand as I view new cars to be a fools errand), and there are ICE cars I want to own before they disappear forever into the past. I'm not heavily invested in either way of looking at this.

However, the EU countries using road charging seem to be doing so without major problems, and without (AFAIK) totally compromising privacy.

The EU countries doing road tolling are doing active tolling rather than passive. You stop at the booth. That'd be fine, except they have much more space given over to roads resulting in fewer traffic jams - France for example has 3 times the road space that we do, creating lots of opportunities to travel from place to place by a range of roads where we typically have one realistic route. This reduces congestion at the tolls and provides plenty of untolled roads if you would rather reduce costs and have a longer trip.

The only way to ensure transport costs don't hit the poor hardest is to remove them. Either the state pulls in its belt and gets used to living on less, or move the taxes raised onto something else equally unavoidable - just be aware that may also then hit the poor harder.

Take sugar or fat tax as an example, given what I suspect will be a push towards more healthy living post Covid - I've literally no idea what a big mac costs and I've eaten a few of those over the years. One of my friends who is very much lower quartile income definitely knows tot he penny what his big mac meal costs when he buys one. Taxing it more won't really affect me.

Tax a punishment or for behaviour modification may work, but it works first on those with the smallest incomes.

Re: Restructure the Market

If you want to encourage the switch from oil to EV, in a gradual way and not have a mad rush to switch at the last minute, forcing the price of ICE up and EV down is necessary.

Sure, provided you're comfortable with punishing the poorest who are least able to avoid your new taxes. I'm not completely sure I am.

I agree that road charging is probably required, and that's not necessarily a bad thing if implemented sensibly

And yet completely incompatible with privacy. It'll also be very difficult to check that a foreign registered vehicle is attributable to someone you can fine (ie they pay before they can depart the UK).

Passive tolling based on registration requires that everyone obey the law rather than use a cloned plate, that all vehicles are properly registered, and that everyone consents to tracking. Active tolling leads to queues at the barriers which leads to an increase in emissions.

Re: Restructure the Market

Complicated to administer and police. Just keep knocking up the taxes on petrol and diesel and you'd achieve the same effect.

The obvious problem, for those of a lefty persuasion, is that any increase in transport costs will have a disproportionate affect on the poor than the rich. I'm not rich by any sensible definition, but given the mileage I do and that I take the train to work, I could go to £10 per litre because its mostly leisure mileage. The empty roads would offset about 20-25% of my fuel use, which I've factored into my pulled out of my ass litre price. I doubt many of my local Tesco staff could travel far at that price, which seems unfair as they didn't cause the pandemic.

If you want to stimulate the economy then cutting direct taxes has been proven to work better than anything else, provided you cut the basic rate. The easiest change would be to simply increase the tax free earnings allowance then all workers benefit along with the retired.

Buying cars from foreign companies appears unlikely to jump start the UK economy because they are all foreign owned

I expect the idea is that people who've just bought a new car will want to drive it, thereby encouraging them to go places, which means they'll spend money. I'm not suggesting its the best use of a £6k tax cut mind, only that it's not just about the car, it's about the services the new owner uses.

Companies are no longer owned where they're headquartered, at least not exclusively. In terms of car companies, I own bits of several, but none are headquartered in the UK nor I where they are based.

NASA launches a challenge to fund AI systems for future spacecraft – hopefully without HAL-style errors

Yawn

The US military wants AI tech to help find a COVID-19 vaccine

We don't need "artificial intelligence" when the problem looks likely to have already been solved by real intelligence (Chadox1 the Oxford vaccine).

Society needs to start valuing human intelligence a fair bit higher than it has to date. Beauty and power are found throughout the solar system, galaxy, and universe. Intelligence, so far as we are able to ascertain, is found only here.

So why does a model earn more than a scientist?

Smart fridges are cool, but after a few short years you could be stuck with a big frosty brick in the kitchen

Re: Never understood this

It's for the millennials; if there isn't an app 'for that', they're baffled, bless their little (usually bearded) faces.

Get you Grandad!

If its for millennial's they'll not want an app - they'll expect their fridge to follow them on Twitter/Insta such that they can "influence" it.

Moore's Law is deader than corduroy bell bottoms. But with a bit of smart coding it's not the end of the road

Quite possibly it will. I guess there comes a point in any software performance curve where you need to be realistic about a languages relative horsepower. Sometimes Python won't get you there, so you need Java or .NET. Sometimes they won't get you there so you need C. Sometimes that won't get you there so you go for assembler.

The most efficient trick, is understanding that before you start coding, so you can make a realistic determination of language / framework trade offs relating to speed of execution vs speed of development vs cost of maintenance. Lets face it, if I had 25 years assembler or C experience, I'd be wanting to earn more than I do as a .NET/Java/Python dev, which should be a factor.

The ones that will still be around tomorrow don't want to hear any crap about scaling up to accommodate lazy code.

On the one hand I agree with you, on the other hand "Javascript programmer".

Could this finally mean an end to the programmers who get away with terrible code by arguing that they can simply throw more RAM and a faster CPU at it?

As a programmer I do hope so.

While I'm here though, here's a pint for all the generations of CPU designers and hardware engineers who have brought us so far as they have. Top quality work folks!

Could this finally mean an end to the programmers who get away with terrible code by arguing that they can simply throw more RAM and a faster CPU at it?

For the 10x increase you're basically talking about it being freely available. Most programmers who know Python will also know or can learn quickly sufficient .NET or Java to see gains.

To be honest, multithreading the code provided should be within the capacity of any proper programmer in any proper language to do quickly and accurately which will see you hitting way north of the 47x improvement because you'll be able to leverage n cores on the CPU, meaning you should be able to get closer to 47 * n speed increase, depending on what other compute is happening on the box. (ETA: You will of course never actually get 47 * n) Thereafter doing a distributed calculation across horizontally scaled boxes should allow for significant real world gains if you still need more power.... or just learn assembler.

Programmers that require hardware to bail them out of performance problems could do the industry a massive favour and move to another profession.

Brit MP demands answers from Fujitsu about Horizon IT system after Post Office staff jailed over accounting errors

Re: Heads ought to roll

Given the time that has elapsed, in all probability given the turnover of directors and senior managers in corporate Britain those responsible will have either retired or moved onto pastures new at least 10 years ago.

The average tenure of a FTSE 100 CEO is 5.4 years. That, however, should have absolutely zero bearing on the criminal investigation that should now be taking place and the charges filed once conducted.

In the UK there is no statue of limitations of the kinds found in other legal systems.

Legal complaint lodged with UK data watchdog over claims coronavirus Test and Trace programme flouts GDPR

Re: But think of the <s>children</s> patients

20 years retention? WTF.

Quite. I get that they may have some need of it during the pandemic, and that the pandemic may last a few years. But 20? Hmm....

Lets even allow for some beneficial analytics to be done to help manage or improve responses to future pandemics by whatever government of the day we have when they come, surely that can be done and properly peer reviewed in a couple of years, so lets say that gets us to 5 years (3 pandemic, plus 2 analysis).

I'm at a loss to what they could possibly be doing with the data for the 1

Re: Conspiracy time?

1, 2, 3, 4

Ok, sure, but you've missed the biggest reason this was always going to be a cluster fuck. The person in charge. Dido. I mean, really, after TalkTalk this is unacceptable.

As anti-brutality protests fill streets of American cities, netizens cram police app with K-Pop, airwaves with NWA

Re: "Yes, Anon activists are back."

Congratulations on your X Ray vision that allowed you to see through the prison walls.

They were on the roof FFS. Your first clue should have been the facts of the riot, and your second clue should have been the part where I said The ring leaders that made it to the roof were just let be

The security guard from our flats was in Strangeways at the time of the riot, though he wasn't rioting himself. He considered prison an improvement on his economic and social situation outside at that time. The vast majority of the riot was contained the same day it broke out, with the remaining prisoners being ensconced on the roof. Nobody was "beaten for days" per your original fantasy.

I realize it must feel terribly difficult to be engaged in world events when your country is being dominated by wee jimmy crankie, but having wild delusions your involvement with antifa and gatekeeping membership isn't helping you one jot. Antifa is a bunch of bored middle class children that enjoy playing anarchist and that is all they have ever been.

Spending watchdog doubts UK is capable of managing Brexit and coronavirus info campaigns at the same time

Y'see, there are those of us who appreciate both things. And don't buy into the fascist pap that UKIP and others have sold to a largely-credulous electorate..

Yawn. Go on then, pretend for a second the referendum hasn't happened.

Put economics aside because you lost every one of those arguments and it was transparently obvious you were going to from day 1. I'll let you put aside the immediate dismantling of Shengen at the first sign of trouble, and I'll let you overlook the total sacrifice made of Italy during Covid, and I'll even let you put aside their wholly disgusting treatment of our country since the vote, because they hadn't happened yet.

Convince me to want to stay in the EU. What possible value do you think you derive from membership of it?

Massacring the natives, looting a third of the world to keep ourselves afloat. Yeah, glorious..

Abolition of slavery, trouncing the socialists in 2 world wars to the great benefit of the rest of the world and at heavy cost to ourselves.

You obviously don't work in IT or the public sector.

IT yes, public sector no. I tried it once and it was unbearably awful, so I left.

California emits fine-print of its GDPR-ish digital privacy law, complete with Google and Facebook-sized holes

Re: Good start, could do better

It seems that California is taking an evolutionary approach - which is not ideal. We are taking the approach that what flies in the sunshine state will be applied to all us states - I hope that other companies do the same, but the evolutionary changes means that we have to do this again, and again.

Quite. It's getting a little silly now, when you consider a global business will trade in potentially 50 or more legal jurisdictions, trying to manage 50 different data collection and retention schema's plus another 50 from Uncle Sam, and breaches become an inevitability rather than a sign of intentional corporate misbehavior.

Creeps give away money to harass recipients with abusive transaction descriptions on bank statements

Re: One solution...

The solution is to charge the abusers with harassment or other applicable law.

My ex-finance mate and a bunch of his juvenile colleagues delight in settling debts with such messages as:- You were worth it, Coke & hookers, For ya clap pills, Big tip 4a big boy, etc

While it is undoubtedly silly, they're just having a laugh with it because its there.

Tackling electronic/remote must begin with a strong look at social media reforms. Nobody weathering a twitter lynching could be in any doubt the platform does more harm than good; just ask Justine Sacco. One shit joke and your life is ruined.