* Posts by Richard 81

1099 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009

Boffins turn timid mice into psycho killers – by firing lasers into brains

Richard 81

Re: Animal abusers

Most of the people I know that do drug trials on animals are pretty normal.

Clone wars: Wrestler sues Microsoft over Gears of War character

Richard 81

...except that he looks nothing like the game character, besides being big and black.

Landmark EU ruling: Legality of UK's Investigatory Powers Act challenged

Richard 81

Re: Appropriate?

But if Food Standards Scotland aren't able to access your browser history on a whim, the terrorist have already won.

Richard 81

But I thought we "took back control"

I wonder what people who voted leave think of the snooper's charter anyway?

View from a Reg reader: My take on the Basic Income

Richard 81

Re: I would love it

...from UBI, paid for by all taxpayers collectively. You know what we're talking about right?

Richard 81

Re: last 400 years

"So I stopped having fancy holidays and nice cars and stuff and paid off the damn mortgage"

Ah but what about the increasing proportion of the population, who don't have fancy holidays and nice cars and stuff, but do have to pay rent? If you can't afford to own your own shelter, you have no way of escaping your serfdom.

Richard 81

Re: I would love it

"So you expect the taxpayers who do work to buy you a house, which you will be able to pass down to your children, as well as feed & clothe you?"

Sure, but then you'll be getting the same amount of money too.

Richard 81

@SImon Hobson

If the plan is to raise the cost of UBI through taxation alone, then you're right it doesn't work. That isn't the plan though; the whole point of introducing a far simpler universal system is that you'd also save a lot in administration costs. Also, the hope we'd have a more productive society overall, and thus generate more taxes anyway. Whether either of those to benefits are feasible is something that needs to be assessed quite thoroughly though.

MacBook Pro owners complain of short batt life – so Apple kills batt life clock in macOS

Richard 81

Re: been doing it for years

"You mean you've been holding it with your hands?"

Blue sky basic income thinking is b****cks

Richard 81

Re: "Radically simplify taxation and benefits"

"A Basic Income scheme would have roughly the same complexity as the current benefits system"

Why?

Richard 81

That's the kind of social engineering that the likes of the author would be appalled at.

Richard 81

Re: Global Depopulation is the answer

"I come in peace. Take me to your lizard."

Richard 81

Re: idleness

Indeed. Someone who doesn't have to toil on 12-hour, 7 day a week shifts on zero-hour contracts just to keep a roof over their head and their children's bellies full, can afford the time needed to improve their own lot in life. OK, some people will choose to do nothing, but so what? They do that now.

Also there are plenty of people who work their arses off without actually getting paid, e.g. people caring for elderly and infirm relatives, who'd otherwise need to be looked after by the state.

I agree that automation probably won't suddenly make everyone unemployed, but attitude expressed by the article is distinctly unhelpful. It just says "no UBI will not work!" without providing any alternatives.

Brits think broadband more important than mobes, cars or savings

Richard 81

Re: Broadband or Foot?

If you work in IT, it's a no-brainer. Broadband or hand? That's another question entirely.

Cyanogen mods self away from full Android alternative

Richard 81

Re: There's a definite market ...

So much this!

Sell a package that figures out what the connected phone is, grabs the latest ROM, sets up the bootloader and does all the flashing malarkey and I'd pay, say, £40.

Jeremy Hunt: Telcos must block teens from sexting each other

Richard 81

Re: "Because there is technology that can identify sexually explicit pictures "

Some poor teenager is going to find themselves banged up for sending a foodie of their bangers and mash dinner.

Give BAE a kicking and flog off new UK warships, says review

Richard 81

Don't know, but you can bet his keyboard would have been drenched in spittle.

Richard 81

Re: USA Ships

@AC: Just stay clear of the new Type 45 Destroyer. They don't work.

UK's Universal Service voucher scheme urged to shift monopoly away from BT

Richard 81

Re: BT Thieves

"Name your time scale for BT to do all this.

Then show us your plan"

Surely we name the timescale and then BT have to show us their plan?

If our timescale is unreasonable, then it can be negotiated.

'Post-truth' beats 'chatbot' to Word of the Year Crown

Richard 81

Re: Is "alt-right" a synonym of "alt-gr"?

I'm for mashing Ctrl-Alt-Delete on the whole damn thing.

WileyFox Swift 2: A new champ of the 'for around £150' market

Richard 81

Re: It's all in the details

@Timmy B: But will it be £150-£200? If not, it's not in the same class as this thing.

A British phone you're not embarrassed to carry? You heard that right

Richard 81

Cyanogen OS

So are they going to be switching to vanilla Android, Cyanogen OS is dying off?

Stiff upper lips and sun glasses: the Chancellor bets on Brexit feeling

Richard 81

Re: What is the purpose of this article?

That's up to the research councils who, as I said, are responsible for approving grants.

Richard 81

Re: So to clarify...

Yeah, well I've met plenty.

Richard 81

Re: So to clarify...

Nobody wants it to fail, just to say "I told you so". The very idea is laughable. That doesn't mean that remainers should just "Put Up or stfu", rather than desperately try to avert what they see as a disaster being orchestrated by idiots and/or those with their own agenda.

Richard 81

Re: So to clarify...

@Phil: I'm pretty sure I did say "some of them will have rational reasons for voting out (honestly there are a few)".

To be clear, I do think there are good reasons for wanting to leave the EU, but on balance I favour the status quo. I don't, however, believe that most of those who voted out did so in an informed and rational way.

Richard 81

Re: The Sky is falling..

"Put Up or stfu"

That attitude is getting much older, much quicker.

Richard 81

Re: What is the purpose of this article?

Government "spending on research" doesn't mean the government directing research, it means the government giving a budget to a research council who issue grants to research organisations that apply for it. The only control the government should exert is in deciding which research councils should get some money and how much of it they get.

The Brexit angle is that, at the moment, some of that funding comes from the EU's central research councils. When we Brexit, we might be cutting ourselves off from that source of funding, so our researches will have to rely on the pittance provided by our own government.

Richard 81

Re: So to clarify...

It's a bit much to call them racists. Some of them were/are, but some of them will have rational reasons for voting out (honestly there are a few). However most will have just been generally pissed off with their situation and had their minds poisoned by years of anti-immigration, blame the EU for everything, propaganda from our media.

Richard 81

"Reflecting on Britain's legacy of Alan Turing and Cambridge research, Hammond reckoned the UK is already a technology world leader."

That's a bit like reflecting on the legacy of Julius Caesar and claiming that Rome is the centre of the known world?

What should the Red Arrows' new aircraft be?

Richard 81

Re: How about...

People will be somewhat disappointed when they go to see the pilots and find a bunch of teenagers with XBox controllers.

MPs want Blighty to enforce domestic roaming to fix 'not spots'

Richard 81

Re: Up yours, Mobile UK

That's my preferred option. It would force phone companies to build more, while also being as price-competitive as possible; they're going to want to avoid having gaps in their network while at the same time having losing all their own customers to cheaper companies.

Richard 81

Re: Stupid

Re. BTOpenreach, surely the problem is that the infrastructure owner is also in the same business as, and therefore a competitor of, its customers? If that's never allowed to happen, then it could work.

Bloody robots! 860k public sector jobs to be automated by 2030, say researchers

Richard 81

Re: Ummm

I take your point. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people end up being left behind though.

...unless we have another big war to soak them all up.

Richard 81

Re: Ummm

Which is why we need to have an objective look at options like universal basic income. I know many people spit angrily when someone suggests giving people money for nothing, but when a huge part of the population is unemployable what else can you do?

Aussie trams equivalent to 30 skateboarding rhinos

Richard 81

Re: Standard Units

...and whether it was carrying a coconut.

British jobs for British people: UK tech rejects PM May’s nativist hiring agenda

Richard 81

In which case, it becomes the government's (with the consent of parliament) job to go for a form of Brexit that would be best for the country. Or, if that's not workable then forget the whole thing. The problem seems to be that government are going for the best political solution (for them), rather than the best scocial and economical solution for everyone.

Richard 81

Re: The elephant in the room - stagnant wages because of the free movement of labour

...plus the employers may just bugger off.

Can Facebook influence an election result?

Richard 81

"If Facebook can control millions of votes [...], is that still democracy?"

This question doesn't seem to bother the mainstream media, so why should it bother Facebook?

The wait is over: MoD releases latest issue of Ship Paint Monthly

Richard 81

I hear grey is in this month.

Narcissist Heidi Powell wants her dot-com and she wants it now, now, NOW!

Richard 81

Lets just call them Heidi Powell #1 and Heidi Powell A.

Self-driving Google car T-boned in California crash

Richard 81

Re: Is there a story here?

That's a fair point Xamol; until we can engineer self-driving cars that specifically identify white vans and BMWs and act accordingly, they'll never be able to prevent accidents of this kind.

Richard 81

Re: Is there a story here?

To be fair, one of them was competently driven but it wasn't by any human.

Brexit at the next junction: Verity's guide to key post-vote skills

Richard 81

Re: I want Gregxit

Gregxit? That would be the independence of a certain inexpensive baked goods shop?

Two Sundays wrecked by boss who couldn't use a calendar

Richard 81

Re: At least make sure your contract include TOIL

"Say what you like about the UK, at least our employment law does something to protect employees"

You just wait.

The next Bond – Basildon or Bass-Ass? YOU decide

Richard 81

Re: a female Bond

Not that the all female Ghostbusters are female alternatives of Ray, Egon, Peter and Winston, they're entirely new characters.

Microsoft thinks time crystals may be viable after all

Richard 81

Re: Time Crystals?

It's all a bit wibbly wobbly timey wimey, isn't it?

UK nixes Land Registry sale

Richard 81

Re: The goose that lays golden eggs

"Only an idiot (or a person with a vested interest)"

That covers most MPs then.

Kaspersky to 1337 haxors: take down our power grid. We dare you

Richard 81

Re: Hacking a simulated power station

Presumably it's so they can be controlled centrally without needing a dedicated network.