Posts by elsergiovolador

Windows 11 movable taskbar edges closer to general release

Re: Progress I guess?

Search on Windows 10 would find anything but what you were looking for. Isn't that on Windows 11 it just throws random stuff?

Could

Could not they just ship Windows 10?

Scottish prosecutors cast eye over leaky supplier after staff data exposed

Re: make hay while the sun shines

to someone on the cheap

You mean the actual worker is paid scraps, but company sending them gets minted.

Russian missile uses Nvidia AI chip to help target Ukraine

Nvidia

For everyone but us peasants.

TalkTalk Business and ARO to borg into UK tech services giant

Funny

In the middle of the article:

Vodafone Business and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)

and then:

"UK businesses are looking for partners who understand their market, their customers and the pressure to modernise quickly,"

VodafoneThree apparently understand the British business so well, they decided to team up with Indian consultancy.

LOL

This JCB doesn't dig – it does 406 mph

Digger

Anything can become a digger if you are brave enough...

Rent-a-GPU outfit Nebius promises rapid 1 GW powerup plan isn't nebulous

Parasite

This business model should be outlawed.

It serves no purpose apart from getting rich richer and makes actual, real businesses struggle to acquire computing resources they need.

Exposed: Woeful security at UK criminal records office that led to sensitive data leak

Re: what is the point of the ICO?

What if one stops being invited to wine and steak dinners? That's what at stake. Likely.

ICO function is to let people vent and then give up. GDPR was constructed to protect corporations and normalise data trade.

Brit rail cops bring live facial recognition to the London Underground

Fascination

It is fascinating why such roll outs always involve foreign corporations.

One could think that this is precisely so that any audits become difficult (legally and politically).

UK puts £14B cloud framework in place with SMEs promised a bigger slice

Re: will believe it when I see it

If only the ISO certificates meant anything.

It's just a compliance theatre with no meaningful consequences.

Luck

With IR35 in place, designed precisely so that SMEs don't compete with usual suspects, good luck with the slice.

Contrary to popular belief, IR35 doesn't apply just to "one-man-band" company, but to any company where workers participating in the delivery are also shareholders (over 5%).

Give Palantir up to $244M through 2028, says internal Defense Department memo

Re: To paraphrase Ike

Clownplex

Cheeks

Just give them direct access to Treasury's bank accounts and spread your cheeks.

Morons.

Anthropic pledges to embed watermarks to help discern AI slop in sop to EU

Re: So that's what the em dashes are for...

Great comment—and honestly? You've absolutely nailed it.

Let's dive in.

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, the conversation around text watermarking isn't just about technology—it's about trust. And here's the thing: you can't hide a signal in plain text. There simply isn't enough noise to work with. That's not a limitation—it's a fundamental truth.

Let's break down why you're spot on:

The Technical Reality

Plain text isn't an image—it's a sparse, low-entropy medium. Watermarks don't just degrade when content is edited, fragmented, and reworked—they vanish entirely. That's not a bug—that's mathematics.

The Legislative Landscape

This isn't regulation—it's wishful thinking. Lawmakers aren't solving a problem—they're performing the appearance of solving one. It's not oversight—it's optics.

The Implementation Question

Vendors aren't building safeguards—they're building checkboxes. It's not compliance—it's empty tokenism, plain and simple.

The Human Cost

And who pays the price? The poor old customer—who doesn't get safety, doesn't get traceability, and doesn't get quality. They just get crappier output. It's not a trade-off—it's a lose-lose.

At the end of the day, this comment is a masterclass in cutting through the noise. You didn't just make a point—you started a conversation. And in a world of empty gestures, that's not just refreshing—it's essential.

What are your thoughts? Can you see the watermark? Let's keep this conversation going!

London still dominates Britain's datacenter map, but the regions are powering up

Re: We don't need datacentres.

Show water reservoir to a shareholder. It's not yacht shaped, cannot get escorts in and is too boring to snort anything near it.

Re: We don't need datacentres.

The problem with building reservoirs is that it redirects money from shareholders.

Re: Stop latency being a problem

Even when throttled, the latency will still matter.

Re: Insane

God forbid that businesses in the UK should be able to build and grow.

Which businesses? UK data centre capacity is almost entirely foreign owned. The notionally British operators belong to overseas funds, and the one sovereign cloud provider we had was liquidated in 2022. British firms rent this infrastructure back, through a market the CMA spent three years on and found broken: two providers on 30-40% each, returns "substantially above their cost of capital", a 5% overcharge alone costing UK customers £430m a year. The profit does not stay either. One of the two books nearly 40% of global pretax profit where 3% of its staff sit, under 2% across the whole of the rest of Europe. Meanwhile 73GW of the 125GW grid connection queue is data centres. National peak demand is 45GW. Every British factory, lab and housing scheme queues behind that, and pays for the reinforcement through network charges, at the highest industrial electricity prices in the IEA. The return on £150bn of pledges, per the government's own forecast: 7,600 jobs.

Re: Insane

Wait until they'll reframe data centres as affordable housing for AI agents.

Power cuts

Probably that's why there is no month without a "unplanned" power cut in London.

3rd world services, 1st world bills.

Where is the money going?

The Future is for Billionaires – the rest of us will get open weight AI models, maybe

Cattle

Remember downvotes for saying this ages ago. Why would the rich give the cattle the good stuff.

There is a reason why working class is not taught financial literacy, law, how to run business, value vs cost and many more.

AI makes that knowledge too accessible.

When the rich see the unwashed knocking at their members' clubs, they have corrupt politicians on speed dial to regulate whatever the pleb used to amass some wealth.

As datacenters expand, so does public opposition to them

Scalping

Data centre business model is to remove ability for business and people to buy computing they need and instead make renting the only available option - at massive mark up.

Any government that is not corrupt should have banned the practice.

Smart glasses are only smart if we train them to be good. Then they'll be fantastic

Or people allergic to other people?

Scot NHS trust probes access to medical records of 9-year-old girl after man arrested on suspicion of murder

Re: just idiots at this point

That can be resolved with access privileges.

Re: just idiots at this point

That means the system is also the problem. Correctly designed software would have prevented this from happening.

Correctly designed system would also easily flag access of people not involved in direct care, without having to do a "probe".

South Korean satellite spots SpaceX lunar impact

Search

Was Elon searching for Nazis?

Brit boffins boast of beating barriers to building fusion power

The way

If I researched this right, the whole thing had less than £200m of funding. Given how it could transform our energy it is bizarre government prefer to sink billions into foreign consultancies that don't even have to deliver anything than this.

I'd much rather have this properly funded than rent another ERP system that doesn't work.

‘Humans will be a rounding error on the internet’ says Cloudflare exec

Old trick

Send the AI agent to the other machine and immediately pull the ethernet cable at the destination and then quickly at the source, then plug both ends to a network switch that is not connected anywhere else. Now you have your AI agent in the closed loop and you can safely dispose of it at your nearest recycling centre.

Humans in the loop miss a third of dangerous AI coding agent requests

Re: Barely science

Gone are the days when manager could go round the desks and smack unruly developers with a wooden spoon if they don't accept the AI request quickly enough...

Azure CTO pastes Doom into Paint one frame at a time

Re: Next

I don't think you can have saints working for satan.

Next

What's next?

CTO prints hello world on recycle bin icon?

I am on the edge of my seat.

Cloud startup Volta claims $10B AI lab deal for Norway bit barn

Parasite

In other words buy up all stock so businesses cannot, then rent out at high markup.

This business model should have been outlawed. It serves no purpose other than to make the rich richer at the expense of everyone else.

As for: ""AI factory" is the industry's preferred term for a datacenter dedicated to training and running AI models."

Delusion of grandeur

UK mulls making employers ask before installing bossware

Re: Par for the course

I read it, which is why I said it.

Look at what is actually on the table. Non-statutory guidance, a statutory code of practice, or a duty to consult unions or employee reps before rollout. Not one of those prohibits anything. The most stringent option under consideration is that workers get told first.

And telling them first is worth very little, because the existing remedies are already out of reach. A course of conduct causing alarm and distress is unlawful now. The employee who wants that tested funds litigation against the organisation paying their wages, while still working there. Report it as harassment and see how far it gets past the front desk. The regulator, meanwhile, discovers workplace surveillance largely when it stumbles across it.

So the practice continues, not because it is permitted, but because nobody subjected to it can afford to find out.

A department serious about this would prohibit categories outright and put enforcement on someone other than the person being monitored. Consulting on whether employers should send a memo first is not that.

Re: The Department for Business and Slave Trade

You say the difference is real but not quantifiable. It is quantifiable, and you named the variable yourself without noticing. Purpose.

Emergency calls and FCA-regulated order calls are recorded because a regulator requires it, or because a life may depend on what was said. Those recordings evidence the transaction. They are not fed into KPIs, and the operator is not scored on them.

Ordinary customer service recording has no such purpose. It exists to assess the person on the headset. That is the equivalent of taping your wife to review her performance in the relationship, and calling it quality assurance because you wrote a policy first.

So I am not defining everything as abuse. I am giving you the line you said could not be drawn. What is the recording for, and who is it held against. Evidence, held against the firm, is legitimate. Continuous measurement, held against the worker, is not.

Your warning about overreach applies better to your own post. You have taken the two categories that pass the test and used them to argue that no line can be drawn at all.

Re: Par for the course

Surveillance is the new kink in the Civl Service. Economy is not growing, we need to see what proles are doing at all times.

Re: Another..

"How am I supposed to keep my slaves obedient?"

Re: The Department for Business and Slave Trade

Abuse does not stop being abuse when you swap husband for employer and wife for employee.

"Completely different relationship" sounds like an argument until you look at what the offence actually requires. Section 76 asks whether the parties are "personally connected". Married, civil partners, relatives, living together, or previously in an intimate relationship. That is a category, and it is the whole test. The law never asks whether the pair are close, whether there is affection left, or whether anything remains beyond a shared address and a mortgage. A marriage that died a decade ago qualifies. Since the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 removed the cohabitation requirement, ex-partners who no longer live together qualify too.

By the time the offence is engaged, the relationship is invariably hostile, transactional and lopsided in power. Which is to say it looks a great deal like the one you are insisting is completely different.

Correct, and that is the point.

"Personally connected" is a jurisdictional test. It says who Parliament could reach. It says nothing about whether the conduct stops being harmful once the person doing it signs your payslip.

You have identified a gap in the law and mistaken it for a justification.

UK productivity is not at an all time low. It is at roughly an all time high. Output per hour in Q1 2026 was 3.5% above the 2019 average. What collapsed is the growth rate. Historically productivity grew around 2% a year, and it has risen far more slowly since 2008/09. GDP per hour has grown 0.6% a year since 2010, against 1% in France, Germany and the US.

UK business investment runs at 11.1% of GDP against Japan's 18.2%, France's 12.7% and Germany's 12%, and the capital gap against peer economies is 38%, rising to 47% in manufacturing. British workers have 38 per cent fewer tools at their disposal than their counterparts abroad. That is the productivity puzzle. Employers declined to buy machinery for thirty years, and are now buying keystroke loggers instead. A webcam is cheaper than a lathe, and it lets you blame the operator.

On side gigs, you have the causation backwards. A record 1.35 million people hold second jobs, up 121,000 or 10% in a year, and the Work Foundation treats second jobs as an indicator of financial insecurity, with one in six workers struggling to pay bills each month. Average weekly earnings sit £278 below their pre-financial-crisis path. People are not moonlighting for the thrill. They are covering the shortfall left by the employer.

On the unions and the 1970s. Private sector union density is 12.1%, up from a record low of 11.7%, having almost halved from 21.4% in 1995. Membership peaked in 1979 at 13.2 million. We are as far from the 1970s as the series can measure. Whatever is wrong with this country, Arthur Scargill is not doing it.

Then the part that matters. None of it is an argument. Suppose every word of your case was true and the British worker was idle, entitled and permanently on a beach. Installing spyware on their devices is still the conduct the Home Office lists as domestic abuse. Bad workers do not create a right to abuse them. They create a right to dismiss them, which employers already have, and use.

The Department for Business and Slave Trade

The Department for Business and Slave Trade consults on whether abuse should require a covering letter

The Home Office already publishes a list of behaviours amounting to controlling or coercive behaviour. It includes controlling or monitoring the victim's daily activities and behaviour, for example making them account for their time, and the domestic abuse statutory guidance names use of spyware or GPS locators on items such as phones and computers. Do that to your wife and it is an offence carrying a maximum of five years. Do it to four hundred contact centre staff and it is a productivity investment, and DBT will run a twelve week consultation on whether you ought to mention it first.

The consultation is written as though the evidence is still open. It is settled. Ravid et al. meta-analysed 94 independent samples covering 23,461 people and found no evidence that monitoring improves performance, while increased stress showed up regardless of how the monitoring was done. Siegel et al. pooled 70 samples and found job satisfaction down and stress up, with performance targets and feedback making it worse. Measurable harm, absent benefit, and the department still types "productivity, investment and economic growth" into the opening paragraphs.

So the actual question on the table is whether the employer must circulate a memo before installing the spyware. Lawfulness never comes up. We are consulting on the leaflet.

DBT has concluded that the line between abuse and management is the size of the org chart. There are countries where the state's job is helping employers watch people at their desks. The people who drafted this would be happier in one of them. Sack them.

UK wants datacenters to pay a fee for grid connection requests

Re: £1m per application, non-refundable.

Not only that. They should be required to be fully sound insulated. Sound pollution should be illegal. Perhaps they should also have to pay extra levy on generated revenue (not profit) that would go to National Trust directly.

Grid

Data centre should build their own power grid if they want to operate in the UK.

Otherwise F Off.

These eye sores have no benefit to society. ZERO.

Their business model is hoard the compute resources and resell at huge markup draining the economy and making ordinary lives more miserable.

I'll vote for any government who will ban this business model.

Samsung warns memory crunch will last through 2028 as profit rises 19-fold

Re: Delay

> even if you take your prices down a bit, than if you just take the existing sales.

Good luck convincing the board with that.

> But if they reduced production when they didn't have to, they would get a lot less in total, even with a higher price, than if they continued to make and sell as much as they could while demand is high.

Or you can reduce production (spend less money - on staff, customer support etc) and charge even more for doing less. The demand for memory is not going down.

Delay

Why would anyone want to expand production if profits rise 19-fold. If anything I would expect existing fabs to go offline "for maintenance".

Americans give all-day school phone bans a ringing endorsement

Re: What about workplaces?

In reality phones should only be allowed during holidays.

Sense

Make sense, when there is an active shooter on school premises, the children will not bother their parents with nuisance calls.

Brighton gig screen goes One Step Beyond with an update pop-up

Re: Code

If presentation in the calendar is due now then trigger full system update. You shouldn't be doing presentation on an outdated system. The audience will see you as diligent and prepared.

Code

The code is probably

if customer is doing something important then it is a good time to check for new updates to help them.

Signals are grim for Jodrell Bank Observatory after UK science funding decision

Re: criminal

Why would I complain about Civil Service doing their job for once?