Posts by CountCadaver

BBC bumps telly tax to £180 as Netflix lurks with cheaper tiers

Dog licencing has been debunked multiple times - all it does is penalise dog owners on a low income, while those with money but are "bad" owners are ignored and those who cause issues don't bother buying one in the first place.

If the BBC was a person it would be Boris Johnson - Socially very conservative with a mindset of the 1950s, anti europe, pro environment, pro wealthy, anti poor and anti disabled

The BBC litters its daytime schedules with utter dirge like faked "antiques hunt shows", umpteen various flavours of property shows "Hi this is Bob and Sue, Bob works part time in a pub and Sue is a retired part time cleaner in a supermarket, their budget is £3 Million but they can stretch to £5.5 Million for their dream home" and various other shows to make hospital waiting rooms even more tortuous.

They could turn off their daytime output and it might well improve the country

TVL Crapita Contractors != Enforcement "Officers"

TV Licencing like to name their outsourced heavies from Crapita as "Enforcement Officers" to imply they are police empowered professional investigators, they are nothing of the sort. They are just whoever Crapita can find this week to go knock on doors and try induce people to incriminate themselves.

They have no powers of entry and can (and many would say should) be told to go away.

New hire fixed a problem so fast, their boss left to become a yoga instructor

Re: Quite a rare sight

Or perhaps "MariuszZbigniewPudzianowski"?

Re: Quite a rare sight

write english right to left ala several other languages?

Not sure if bonus points for writing it in a mirror form to normal english or writing right to left but still producing "normal" english characters....hmmm

Re: Posher

My current (and not top of the range) 27" 4K Coolermaster IPS with MiniLED HDR1200 backlighting (576 dimming zones vs 1100+ on the higher end ones) was £750 and that was an ouch purchase but it has a fantastic image quality with minimal blooming. Shame the firmware onboard still has quite a few bugs around switching sources where coming out of a fullscreen game can at times result in a black screen (something I believe to do with HDR particularly in windows)

I know someone who had a 21" or worse 23" Trinitron monitor, which weighed some ridiculous amount, not to mention the sheer depth of a CRT monitor of those dimensions

Re: "I did a spot of Artexing"

Apparently one of the old school routes was using a wall paper steamer to soften and remove it

Re: "I did a spot of Artexing"

somehow my maternal grandfather has made it through growing up in poverty, working 60 years with plaster, asbestos, ripping down ceilings and being covered with bird shit, rat droppings and worse, much of this being before ppe and masks were a thing and is only slightly out of breath with no signs of asbestosis or mesothelioma. He's now 90 years old and *hopefully* will be 91 in late spring.

Summer in Australia means beers, beaches, and bork

Re: NativeErrorCode 1801

Or the hellspawn known as the Irukandji Jellyfish

https://www.barrierreefaustralia.com/info/reef-dangers/Irukandji/

Love the beach also + suggestion

perhaps a side thing the register could do - send us your best pics of <theme> we've mentioned or included a photo of in the article

DWP considers chatbot work coaches as AI-fueled job losses loom

Re: What's the joke about regexes ?

People said the same thing about the NHS, People said the same thing about providing social security (which the right attempt to destroy by cutting taxes and thus wilfully undermining it so they can brand it "unsustainable")

The biggest problem is that politicians are a parcel of rogues in a nation, bought and sold for billionaire's gold (paraphrasing Rabbie Burns)

If the techbillionaire's faced 1950s levels of taxation (you know the time period so many wax lyrical about, where everything was "milk and honey") then society and public services would be far better off and their tax contributions would be far higher.

Re: What's the joke about regexes ?

so basically your argument is "the devil makes work for idle hands"?

Mass Dickensian destitution inbound?

As I cannot see big business tolerating the threat of having to pay even a minor modicum of taxes nor the religious right in both the UK and the USA nor the DWP itself (who sees poverty as a mortal sin to be punished) ever allowing something so eminently sensible as UBI which would lead to people leading better and more fulfilling lives

Where people will be denied support, charged with "vagrancy" after being homeless is criminalised, then given the "opportunity" to enter an AI controlled modern day "workhouse" (so something worse than a Chinese factory dormitory) or jailed and subjected to modern day hard labour - perhaps refuelling a (data centre powering) nuclear reactor minus protective clothing as prisoners are expendable and the AI has been trained to see them as "valueless"

Ghost gun legislation casts shadow over 3D printing

Re: So restrict ammo?

Or banning trenchcoats to prevent school shootings

Re: Maybe...

Or side step the constitution - it says keep or bear arms, it says nothing about ammunition nor about propellant charges. If the courts can ignore "as part of a well regulated militia" then this just a sensible response to conservative judges meddling with semantics.

So just ban possession of ammunition or institute a $500 per round tax on all ammunition in our your possession (whether purchased in or out of state)

Then tack on a very large fine /.jail time for tax evasion / making false declarations on an ammunition possession form.

British military to get legal OK to swat drones near bases

accompanied by a yell of "PULL"?

Uncle Sam dangles nuclear campuses for states while watering down safety rules

The world of Fallout to literally come to life?

Musk distracts from struggling car biz with fantastical promise to make 1 million humanoid robots a year

less skynet and more Faro Automated Solutions

Yep Elon grows ever more like Ted Faro every single day....

https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Ted_Faro

France to replace US videoconferencing wares with unfortunately named sovereign alternative

The french govt 20+ years ago tried to mandate people use the french term instead of email, which worked to a degree for civil servants but a french friend of mine put it succinctly - everyone else just calls it email, same as Spain where email is easier to say than correo electronico and well...everyone knows what you mean worldwide when you say email.

Re: "Allo, allo!"

Because our lack of skill in our own language was being so glaringly exposed by other nations?

Re: Deja vue all over again

According to an grey beard university lecture of mine circa turn of the millennium - It's why the Americans pronounce SQL (which Brits pronounce as S Q L) as sequel as that was apparently the original name for it, until it came to light there was an existing language or product called sequel and the name was then changed, however the Americans love their pronounceables.....

Except the french govt can quite easily alter the laws of France and this is something that few politicians are going to fight as it would make them open to being branded as poodles of the American govt.....

Marching orders delayed: Veterans' Digital ID off to a slow start

Re: What do they expect?

Like the Scottish civil.service who have a hard on/damp spot for the concept of a "universal citizen reference number" assigned at birth and to pull in the already living - pilfering the NHS database.

Which then opens the threat of random depts/staff building disturbing profiles on you and perusing your private medical information under some bullshit reason

Re: What do they expect?

Corruption?

Trump promises nuclear datacenter permits in 3 weeks, calls Greenland 'big beautiful ice'

Re: Truth is a malleable thing :o

I'm reminded of "Solomon Gursky was here" by Mordecai Richler. Trump very much reminds me of the titular character's older brother Bernard, who desperately wants to be everything his younger brother is and lies, cheats and swindles to try and get there.

Its a good read

Re: (The UK is) sitting on top of the North Sea

Whale oil? /s

Re: (The UK is) sitting on top of the North Sea

yet people say "no no no he would NEVER invade Scotland, your just being silly and delusional now" - ignoring Prestwick is effectively leased to the US military (so already air strip at the US disposal), his 2 golf courses, north sea oil, chance to rip down all the wind turbines etc....

Grounded jet engines take off again as datacenter generators

Re: So, what's the conversion process for an engine from Jet-A1 to Natural Gas?

sticking a heat exchanger on the exhaust flow to warm any areas inhabited by meat sacks would seem a sensible move but tech bros operate under a "fuck you I got mine" mindset

Notepad will now tell you all the ways Microsoft has enshittified it

by then RAM won't just be unaffordable it will just be unavailable and the *only* way to use a "computer" will be via a subscription plan to a "cloud" computing plan via a "terminal"/"telescreen"

Google office apps should have been a wake up call, ditto Chromebooks of where big tech aimed to send us.

Child safety or age-gating for all? UK social media ban plan draws fire

Re: Just ban all SM platforms

I on the other hand apparently look haggard as shop staff take one look at my face (dark circles, wrinkles around eyes) and decide I must be old enough.......shame being carded might stave off the inevitable awareness of being closer to death than birth.....

Re: Parenting?

there have been parental controls for years, today's parents were on the whole either digital pioneers or digital natives who either came of age when computers went mass market or computers were mass market when they were born.

They choose not to use them, mainly as they are addicted themselves, and parrot whatever tripe they read on antisocial media and do zero research into the topic - my younger brother being a prime example who posts every piece of BS about dog thieves, child kidnappers, hobo marks and when confronted "better safe than sorry, so what if this one isn't true" and he's a manager at a university........

politicians don't want to do anything about this because its a useful "opinion shaping tool" which through the use of agencies etc can be used to heavily push a narrative without it being traceable back to the govt.

Schools again demonstrate that "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach" where a large number of primary and secondary teachers, despite being in their 20s and early 30s still have absolutely no clue about computers and at times less than their predecessors in the 90s would have had, total naivety about online manipulation, habit of telling kids to "just click yes to everything, no time to read that, just do as I tell you and click yes, on the next screen click accept all, no don't open that or click reject" - because their colleague's friend's sister's workmate's husband's uncle's workmate saw something online and said it would break everything if you didn't click accept all and he knows lots about computers (cleaner in curry's/best buy)

Re: Chicken Little would be proud of the Open Rights Group (ORG)

Also being fair, not being hypocritical and using terms like "don't do as I do, do as I say", have family meetings and calmly discuss things that have happened this week and demonstrate to children how to resolve disputes rather than screaming, shouting, threatening assault or worse committing assault with weapons such as belts and paddles, stop trying to turn your children (and dogs) into mindlessly compliant and unquestioning automatons. This teaches kids fairness, ability to resolve conflict, how to voice things are getting too much and they need breathing space (and let them have that space to calm down).

Which is better than the alternative of "might is right" which results in child abuse, abuse of other vulnerable groups - disabled people, elderly people, those with mental health conditions - where all of the above for years were abused and subjected to violence and other abuse, while it was justified because "I have NO other option, they WON'T/CAN'T understand as they are too young/old/feebleminded/stupid, there is NO other way, THEY will thank me for it later, I need to do this now, there is no time to think, I'm being cruel to be kind" - known in psychotherapy as operating within a punitive schema mindset where someone has to be to blame and punishment is the only way to achieve something.

Engineer used welding shop air hose to 'clean' PCs – hilarity did not ensue

Re: BS

russia uses similar concept in their fuel air bombs

Re: BS

common science experiment, gets kids attention.

I always wanted to do it with a 2.5/5 litre paint tin inside one of the old school galvanised steel dustbins - see icon lol

ERP isn't dead yet – but most execs are planning the wake

*Flavor-aid

Also fyi the evidence suggests people were duped into drinking it and shot or otherwise killed if they tried to refuse or flee aka a mass murder

S Twatter: When text-to-speech goes down the drain

Reminds me of "an Italian in Malta" where an obstensibly Italian recounts his terrible holiday in Malta and the rudeness and abuse he faced over simple and reasonable requests

I.e. - I go the desk and tell them I want two shits (two sheets), she says "you wanna shit you use the toilet" I say you no understand, I don't wanna the toilet I want two shit, two shit on the bed, she then tell me "you dirty son of a bitch you no shit on our beds"

I go to the restaurant and they give me a spoon and a knife but no fork, I go to the waiter and I say I wanna fock, he looks at me and says go down to the street corner and you'll find a girl who will give you a fuck,.I say no no no, I wanna fock on the table. He tells me "you dirty bastard, you no fuck on my table get out of my restaurant"

Re: Was't Twatter…

I think images of that would count as "extreme pornography" surely???

Though I do recall a compilation book, that someone I knew was reading from, which was a collection of inadvertently funny or dubious letters i.e. a letter someone wrote to a newspaper about council indifference complaining that their elderly father had slipped and got his foot stuck in his back passage

as Manuel from Fawlty towers was want to say

Qué???

Google can't make it's mind up whether it wants to read out digits individually or read it as a whole number so you get order numbers read out as 11 billion, 269 million, 472 thousand and so on....

(Car invokes google whenever I get a message on my phone and no matter what options I set, ford keeps resetting them....including and very annoyingly setting the tyre pressure display back to bar no matter what other unit I select....)

BOFH: Every computer system eventually serves ads

Re: Good episode, but take note:

Blergh....coins are height of filth and grime. Have you ever counted money or even handled it as an occupation?

I know someone who bought white gloves, they lasted one morning counting coins and notes before they were black and utterly filthy, fit only for the bin.

Said when they washed their hands the water just went black as black could be...

Plus people putting money in the socks, bras, underwear, dropping it on floors etc.....

*Shudder*

Re: "we worry about hallucinations in AI, but not world leaders"

Instead of spending trillions (or whatever comes above trillions) on "AI", we should built a device to bring Nigel Hawthorne back from the dead, but where he is locked into the character of sir Humphrey Appleby

Now where do we get the money you may ask?

Well someone should pitch a concept for a resurrection machine to the tech bros - when they scoff at it and say due to enemas, Lima beans etc they are going to live forever, then the reply "what if your plane or helicopter suffers mechanical failure? What if it's shot down? What if you are the next one after Charlie Kirk someone is gunning for?

Wouldn't you sleep easier knowing that it wouldn't matter, that you could be brought back from the dead to continue to provide irreplaceable visionary leadership for all time no matter what?

Then a few phonecalls playing them off each other, where "I can't say who, but one of your fellow multi billionaires is planning to go all in on this and they make allusions to having buy in from others also, however they wouldn't name names but when I mentioned your name they gave a rather derisory laugh and said, and just so you know I don't agree with this at all, I think they are very much out of order with these comments, yes yes I'll get to the point, they said when your name came up that you had "neither the intellectual capacity, vision or frankly genius for something of this importance and the world would be better off without you "

Stoke paranoia and petty rivalries heavily and see them try and exclude each other so that they and ONLY they will live forever and escape death

Dell wants £10m+ from VMware if Tesco case goes against it

No it's because SUVs and crossovers are priced higher and vastly more profitable....

And Fords board is under the delusion that they can shift from being a high volume low margin manufacturer to a boutique low volume high margin manufacturer and people will happily fork over high end Audi money for a low end ford.....cue ford sales figures tanking, vehicles sitting unwanted on forecourts, dealers screaming blue murder at ford

Hence the sudden scramble to build a "crossover successor to the Fiesta" which will still be over twice the price of a fiesta and still won't sell...

Budget smartphones will be hit hardest as memory prices rise

another great recession 2/great depression 3 inbound?

Smells like AI is the latest face of disaster capitalism

Woman bailed as cops probe doctor's surgery data breach

Re: What for?

USA it's a breach of HIPAA

UK would be a report to ICO and the health board the drive came from and cite the data breach.

Where the health board WILL want the drive back fur secure disposal

Wine 11 runs Windows apps in Linux and macOS better than ever

Using excel as a database seems even more of a weird way to have done something when MS Office business editions (even the small business one) came with Access, which despite being....well.....sub optimal was still an actual database and not a spreadsheet being misused.

I'm reminded of this (obligatory) XKCD webcomic

https://xkcd.com/763/

Ofcom keeps X under the microscope despite Grok 'nudify' fix

Re: Cold milk poured over 'spicy mode'

Likely going down the "extreme pornography"+++ route where since the site is hosted outwith the UK, they will just criminalise end users and in such a badly worded and frankly brain dead way that people even reading news stories about this or in possession of images of themselves, consensual nude images or actual artistic nude photographs/artwork will be arrested, prosecuted and jailed and the govt will hold firm that their legislation was perfectly worded and this is an operational matter for the police and courts, this will go on and on and on until it touches someone high up in central command of whichever lot are in power this week.....

UK backtracks on digital ID requirement for right to work

Re: pressganging

and if we are going that far back - reinstate the napoleonic war tot - something like half a pint of rum or 8 pints of beer a day BUT you weren't permitted to be drunk.....

We will be cruising at 35,000 feet and failing to update our Apache HTTP Server

Re: lThales?

Thales are one of the biggest defence contractors out there.....their stuff in that realm at least works