Unnamed source
I've always wanted to be an unnamed source with knowledge of a matter.
162 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Mar 2018
Here in the UK HMRC will spend that on creating a 4 page document outlining its strategy to publish a statement of intent showing a roadmap to publish detailed steps in formulating a high level view of the processes involved in changing the shade of green on the logo and its environmental, cultural and social impact. These Indians aren't even trying to waste money.
Tiny print. In the days before modernity (ie the mass use of computers). The Associated Examining Board used to have microprinting on their certificates saying over and over again "Associated Examining Board" thousands of times except for one point at a specific position where it said "Associated Examining Go Bard". Quite a useful use of tiny print to spot forgeries.
Shill 1: In these uncertain economic times it can be difficult to make decent returns which is why a broadening of your portfolio can really help.
Shill 2: What do you recommend?
Shill 1: For me the answer was crypto. I don't work anymore because for my $750 investment I am getting an $11,500 a week return.
Shill 3: Same. I use Crown Prince [redacted] who is authorised by The Nigerian Central Bank.
Shill 4: I do, too and his fees are so low...
On and on it goes.
I'm very computer savvy but I wouldn't even know how to obtain such content so it's good there are organisations trying to stifle it at source. I presume that law enforcement only catch a tiny minority of people in possession of such material so I wonder how big the problem might be.
I, for one, found the Health Secretary twerking as a substitute for giving evidence directly to the Health Select Committee rather unseemly so the closure of this account will bring a little dignity to the functioning of Parliament. If Angela Rayner could close her Only Friends account the voting public could have a new found confidence in our august representatives.
When I was a civil servant 40 years ago hardly any data sharing between government departments was allowed. For low clearance staff departments had no access to criminal records and instead personnel departments collected press cuttings relating to staff with convictions. When I later worked on computerising HR functions of a department I was amazed at the number of people whose careers had been stopped in their tracks without their knowledge because they were unlucky enough to have a local reporter write up their conviction. Now the pendulum is swinging too far in the other direction.
"Netflix remains (very) profitable"
Netflix has only been reasonably profitable for 3 out of the last 12 years. It has accumulated over $15 billion in debt which it services by being a cashflow business. It's incredibly dependent on the US, UK, Brazil and, to a lesser extent, Germany. The US and UK are incredibly overcrowded markets which have only shown revenue growth because of price increases and consumers not being overly price sensitive. That's all changing because inflation is running riot. There's good reason to worry about Netflix because if it loses too many subscribers it can't afford content which means it loses more subscribers. Available content is dwindling because content owners want their own streaming services and unlike them Netflix doesn't have other significant revenue streams.
The BBC renegotiated its Terms of Trade with independent producers that it commissions programmes from. Previously it had a one month IPlayer window now it has one year window with outside commissions which it can then extend non-exclusively in return for dropping its UK commercial exploitation cut from 25% to 20% and its international exploitation cut from 12.5% to 10%.
In Netflix's two biggest markets (the US and UK) it is certainly close to saturation with subscription count being equal to around 20% of overall population. Places like Germany and France hover around 13% so there's room to grow in those places. Unfortunately, Netflix makes over half its revenue from 4 countries even though it has a presence in 190 countries.
What you are describing is the equivalent of old fashioned cfront. When C++ came out there were no native compilers so cfront emitted C and the C was compiled. It was an unholy mess. For example, when templates came out cfront would create a .pty directory and emit often hundreds of C source file to speculatively represent each specialisation possible of the parameterised types. LLVM is a vast improvement on that approach.
Corporates will never shift the hoi poloi to Macs. The vast majority of their users send emails, write Word documents, watch cats being cats on YouTube and order shit off Amazon. Moving to very expensive and very fragile Macs makes no sense.