* Posts by Dan 55

15449 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jun 2009

You think the UK coronavirus outbreak was bad? Just wait till winter: Study shows test-and-trace system is failing

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Really?

An addendum as I read this today:

UK to plunge into deepest slump on record with worst GDP drop of G7

What happens when a country takes too long to lock down.

So there we have it, the economic indicators for Sweden are in the same area as their neighbours only they didn't lock down and they had more deaths.

The economic indicators for the UK which was late into locking down and never really had any strict lockdown rules when compared to European neighbours had the worst economic indicators in the G7 and the most deaths in Europe.

So the data proves locking down means a lower economic hit and fewer deaths. Your waffle and pontificating does not change this.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Really?

Countries with severe lockdown are doing worse than a place with no lockdown.

What? I just highlighted the difference between Sweden and its neighbours which demonstrates exactly the opposite.

Instead you seem to be defending a strategy of causing deaths by lockdown then we have the covid deaths.

No, I'm defending a strategy of saving people's lives by reducing contagion, you know, the strategy used by most countries around the world and recommended by the WTO.

People are not seeking medical treatment because they dont want to go to hospital and get infected with covid.

Would no lockdown mean more people would be going to hospital because there would be less chance of getting infected with Covid-19? No. Quite the opposite, lockdown was to stop the NHS getting overrun.

That is not certain at all as Sweden demonstrates. It could easily be as bad but without the lockdown damage

Once again, I compared Sweden with its neighbours. The economic hit was about the same, the deaths were reduced. Having the option to go for more deaths or fewer deaths, you go for more.

Why am I reminded of this speech? We've just degenerated yet again into another dead-end thread and exercise in futility sponsored by our resident contrarian in chief. I think we'll call it a day here.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Really?

I just can't...

So I post something which shows that Sweden is doing worse than its Scandinavian neighbours both in deaths and in the economy, you follow up with something that shows Sweden is 8th worst in the world for deaths per million and Finland, Denmark, and Norway are waaay down the table at 65, 45, and 73. Thanks, you saved me some work there.

Aka you are not stopping deaths you are postponing it for some and causing more deaths for others

Would you like to hasten people's deaths? That's rather psychopathic of you.

How are deaths being caused by locking down? The only deaths are caused by failing to test and have the correct PPE in e.g. care homes. If the NHS decided to jettison e.g. cancer care during the first wave, then that's an indication that they were indeed overrun, but it would have been worse if there was no lockdown.

Dan 55 Silver badge
WTF?

Re: Really?

Actually no. Vaccination is an option when you have a vaccine. However your link kicks your point in the nuts damned hard-

A vaccine could still prevent the illness or reduce its severity, but it's likely even that won't wipe COVID-19 from the globe.

Er, yes, you must be vaccinated before you have the virus, not after, that's exactly how vaccinations work.

Simply right now the only real option is to let those healthy people get on with their lives and build up immunity to reduce the spread. Otherwise those who are vulnerable are more at risk. Otherwise those who are vulnerable are more at risk.

How do you determine the healthy from the vulnerable until people get it?

And [Sweden is] still doing better than some of its heavy lock down neighbours.

This is not true.

No, Australia should not follow Sweden’s approach to coronavirus

By the end of July, Sweden had the 7th highest per-capita death rate in the world, and about ten times larger than its Nordic neighbours. Outbreaks spread to aged care facilities and the vulnerable.

[...]

Even with its lighter lockdowns, Sweden has suffered economic losses almost as severe as its Nordic counterparts.

The Swedish labour market has been hit hard. Unemployment is expected to peak at between 9-11%, cushioned by a fall in labour-force participation as Swedes leave the labour market entirely.

So Sweden is not doing better either in number of deaths or the economy.

Back to my point about lasting immunity:

Very true. And so making my point that lock down would have been a terrible waste if thats the case.

You have an interesting definition of waste, as if deaths somehow don't figure in this measure.

I imagine the goal will to be get an area as free from Covid-19 as possible then vaccinate everyone within that area, and open up travel with other vaccinated areas. Meanwhile there would be testing and quarantine for people from outside a vaccinate area, such as Taiwan does.

Dan 55 Silver badge
FAIL

Re: Really?

That's how we managed to eliminate smallpox without ever needing to develop a vaccine or a global immunisation program.

That's a whopper of an "alternative fact" you've got there:

WHO: Smallpox

It was declared eradicated in 1980 following a global immunization campaign led by the World Health Organization.

Dan 55 Silver badge
FAIL

Re: We are not discussing pneumonic plague, Ebola, or smallpox

If you link to RT (or Ruptly or Sputnik) then that's an auto fail.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Really?

Remember those Nightingale hospitals? Only two out of the seven constructed saw any patients.

The referring hospital has to provide staff too and they can't spare it, so these large empty buildings didn't get many patients:

Inside NHS Nightingale: Staff speak out about the reality of care in London’s coronavirus field hospital

“It’s pretty well acknowledged that staffing is the issue. Not many people have been able to get released from their trusts. There is no shortage of people who want to send patients to the Nightingale. Everyone here knows some hospitals around London are on their knees, but unless you have staff you can’t expand the capacity. That is the limiting factor.”

Another says: “The Nightingale just doesn’t have the staff. Many of those who volunteered are stuck with their main employers.”

They say that to expand the number of patients, staff would need to be pulled from across the country, adding: “We are all fishing from the same pond and we started this crisis with significant ICU nurse shortages.”

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Because the modelling has been so accurate thus far.......

Yes.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Really?

If you think herd immunity is achieved by lots of people catching a virus instead of being vaccinated, you're understanding it wrong. Sweden follows a herd immunity policy and has been stuck at 6% for months.

In fact, lasting immunity from Covid-19 may not even exist.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Really?

People need to catch it.

You first, then.

Whoops, our bad, we may have 'accidentally' let Google Home devices record your every word, sound – oops

Dan 55 Silver badge

the writing lacked any substance

Success is therefore guaranteed. We don't want any of that substance stuff confusing the readers.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Or more likely ...

I'd actually prefer Amazon as they are so useless at it. All their advertising is is a record of the stuff I bought last from them, which is probably the thing I'm most unlikely to buy as I've just bought one.

Trump administration labels WeChat, TikTok ‘threats’ to national security, bans transactions with both

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Trump is a moron

It's CHY-nah's fault nobody wanted to come to his travelling shitshow when it landed on Tulsa, if he came to any other conclusion it might be an uncomfortable truth for him.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Gimp

Re: The DeathStar analogy is apt...

Why am I not surprised that the Trump administration likes the baddies in Star Wars? It's probably the authoritarianism and the gimp suit uniforms which do it for them.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: i have an idea for an app

Er, Google already does.

TikTok might go the route Epic Games did with Fortnite and provide an installer and instructions for sideloading, until they took that as far as they could and came across the barrier of non-technical users who were unable to do this and went crawling back to Google Play.

Come to think of it, Epic is backed by Tencent. Things could get interesting for Fortnite players, people who use the Epic games store, and all those games publishers which use Unreal.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas: Fondleslab sales shoot up to festive season levels as folk work from home

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Working from home? I wonder

Possibly (Linus' Tech Tips, 14 mins).

If I'm in the market for a dirt cheap device which allows online classes, I think I would try my luck with a tablet.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Working from home? I wonder

A cheap fondleslab is cheaper and works better than some God-awful cheap laptop running Windows 10 with only 32GB of storage and the kids can use it to connect to classes online, freeing the laptop for parents.

Trump bans Feds from contracting H-1B workers and makes telehealth the new normal

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Finder's fee or mafia-style shakedown?

Left click/tap to open, right-click/tap and hold then Copy Link if you need to. Easier than highlighting text than opening it as a link, isn't it?

Dan 55 Silver badge

Finder's fee or mafia-style shakedown?

You decide (Newsnight, 10 mins).

University of Cambridge to decommission its homegrown email service Hermes in favour of Microsoft Exchange Online

Dan 55 Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: MS' deep pockets

The paper shows Exim is technically better than Hermes and cheaper. Exim is also "made in Cambridge".

Naturally, manglement goes with Office 3xy.

Doctor, doctor, got some sad news, there's been a bad case of hacking you: UK govt investigates email fail

Dan 55 Silver badge
Dan 55 Silver badge

All together now

Lock him up! Lock him up!

Anyway, the government doesn't talk about Russia, except when it's convenient in this case because it means they don't have to talk about their plans for the NHS.

Linus Torvalds pines for header file fix but releases Linux 5.8 anyway

Dan 55 Silver badge

Not really. There may be many different files in a project that may need just one part of a single .h file, and it doesn't always have to be the same part, but if the compiler says "I'm not going to look at that again, I've already done it" then something is missed.

Dan 55 Silver badge

The reason is this.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: Google Sharing

Have they committed anything to gcc or llvm recently?

Reflections on Trusting Trust

Dan 55 Silver badge

Your Makefile could (should?) set up INCLUDE_PATH to sort that out. Whether or not you want to include all subdirectories under /usr/include is your choice. But at least you've got it.

If you don't like Makefiles, what about CMakefiles?

We give up, Progressive Web Apps can track you, says W3C: After 5 years, it decides privacy is too much bother

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Optional

Browsers already know that abc.com is a domain under the .com TLD and abc.co.uk is a domain under the .co.uk TLD. If you don't believe me check the address bar and see how the something in something.abc.com and something.abc.co.uk are either in gray or hidden.

Therefore it could enforce this so that something.abc.com and something.abc.co.uk aren't allowed, as well as banning parameter passing using ?.

There, not too difficult. Perhaps the issue should be reopened on github again.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Stop

Re: Looks likes...

Well, it's true.

Google takes sole stand on privacy, rejects new rules for fear of 'authoritarian' review

Google's vote nixed the W3C privacy group after members rightly stated that Google's so-called "privacy sandbox" was a load of old nonsense. In Google's objection they gaslighted all a bit suggesting that with no "authoritarian" review body 1000 flowers can bloom, but they know Audrey II (Chrome) can come along and kill them all off.

In the market for a second-hand phone? Check it's still supported by the vendor – almost a third sold are not

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: I like how...

Don't know about the new Nokia dumbphones but the old Nokias (smart, feature, and dumb) only had one OS which did everything.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: I like how...

There are replacement 6310i cases and buttons from your favourite online tat bazaar at reasonable prices.

Is El Reg georestricting stories?

Dan 55 Silver badge
Childcatcher

Is El Reg georestricting stories?

So, I connect via US VPN and I notice two stories aren't on the front page:

Elite name on Brit scene sponsors retro video games preservation project at the Centre for Computing History

Couldn't come at a better time as Cambridge museum remains closed

13 – lucky for some, but not BT because that's how hard pre-tax profits crashed in Q1

COVID-19 ravages former state monopoly as nearly all divisions shrink

Then I disconnect, refresh, and the two UK-centric stories are back (along with another cookie popup).

Is there/will there be an option to turn this off, I quite like reading about stuff happening elsewhere in the world... or, indeed, my part of the world if I'm using a VPN which many people working for corporate behemoths will have to do.

Elite name on Brit scene sponsors retro video games preservation project at the Centre for Computing History

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Screenshot

How about this one?

And you'll probably need this.

Glum Alphabet execs look up from red-ink ad figures. What will we do, they ask. Ahem, coughs Google Cloud

Dan 55 Silver badge
Devil

Re: Could not have happened to a nice company (sic)

I thought Facebook was ahead of Google when it came to evil. Perhaps Google's evil PR has worked its evil spell on me.

At historic Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google CEOs hearing, congressmen ramble, congresswomen home in on tech market abuse

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Only Jeff bothered to find an interesting room for the video-chat hearing ...

Thing is every person was named and their question described. You came to the conclusion and didn't like the answer.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Alien

Positronic brain cascade anomaly.

BT: 'Because of the existing underlying supply of the 4G equipment, most of our 5G (NSA) so far is with Huawei'

Dan 55 Silver badge

Let alone the continuing bizarre inisistance that any UK government is going to "sell off the NHS".

Well it seems like they want to, otherwise they wouldn't have voted down this amendment:

Here's the Lowdown on that Viral Tweet About the UK Government Selling Off the NHS

The government has repeatedly said it will not sell off the NHS – but nevertheless it voted against the amendment. And although every opposition party (even the DUP) voted for the amendment, not a single Tory MP rebelled and so it passed easily.

It's been five years since Windows 10 hit: So... how's that working out for you all?

Dan 55 Silver badge
Meh

Meh

The past five years have not been particularly good in any measurable way and Windows 10 is in line with that trend. Still, I managed to fend it off my home computers, so there is that.

IDE like an update, please: JetBrains freshens IntelliJ, adds improved GitHub integration, Java support

Dan 55 Silver badge

Well I guess it must be pretty galling to see something eat your lunch because it's being given away for free by a multinational, when if it were paid for at market price it would appear in the "Others" column.

Cabinet Office takes over control of UK government data: Mundane machinery or Machiavellian manoeuvrings?

Dan 55 Silver badge
FAIL

Re: You know you're in trouble..

Ah, you mean the journalist who investigated the Cambridge Analytica scandal and won the Pulitzer prize, amongst others?

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Keep it out of parliamentary scrutiny

Normal rules of procurement, scrutiny, etc. are suspended due to the Covid legislation. Stuff is already being farmed out to mates at an exorbitant cost and little in the way of results.

SpaceX to return NASA 'nauts to Earth with a splash

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Splash

Reusable rockets...

So this century.

Only EU can help us, pleads Slack as it slings competition complaint against Microsoft Teams

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Slack... pricing is a problem

That's pretty much what does Teams as well, only fewer people have discovered Teams' bots because they don't work properly (couldn't get Jenkins, Jira, or even RSS integration to work).

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Slackbot is the worst

Teams is shit too, but even so, if you lump Teams with Office for free you kill off Slack and any other kind of collaborative IM tool.

Have we forgotten IE already?

UK formally abandons Europe’s Unified Patent Court, Germany plans to move forward nevertheless

Dan 55 Silver badge

The Treaty just described a principle, the first Equal Pay Directive was 1975.

There was no such thing as a directive in 1957, but the article 119, specifying equal pay, had just as much force as the rest of them.

Each Member State shall during the first stage ensure and subsequently maintain the application of the principle that men and women should receive equal pay for equal work.

Principle means rule. What's unclear with with the word 'principle'?

Yes, nanny. I prefer the freedom to choose.

Laws for everyone should be crafted around your set of happy circumstances which allows you to have total choice and your employer to not coerce you.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Why people voted Br(exit|emain)

Support for Brexit is falling, I guess Russia's busy with the US at the moment.

Support for Brexit is collapsing as poll finds big majority of British people want to be in the EU

A newly released survey found just 35% of British people supporting Brexit, with 57% wanting to rejoin the European Union.

The nearly 60% of people who told the European Social Survey that they wanted Britain to be in the EU was far greater than the 48% who backed Remain in 2016.

Support for EU membership has risen across Europe, the survey said.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Meh

Welcome to El Reg and thank you for creating a handle and posting your very first post under that handle.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Ah yes, only one way to do it and everyone must do it that way. Whether it actually fits their needs or not. Not a recipe for success.

Yet it seams the Single Market and the Customs Union does work and saves businesses a lot of money. We'll find out how 'freestyle' customs controls work next year on the UK side.

Hmm, like the way they won that court case over Apple last week?

Was that a trade negotiation with a country or a court case?

Or the UPC that's the subject of this article, or...?

The UPC is not an EU organisation. Why is this not sinking in for many posters?

What the members actually get is the ability to do things the way a bunch of politicians think it should be done.

Who are voted for by the people. Do you have a better way?

Are you sure? The EU directive against racial discrimination in the workplace dates from 2000, that for male/female discrimination from 2004. The equivalent UK laws long predate those, as do most UK consumer and employee protection laws.

Treaty of Rome is 1957, Equal Pay Act is 1970.

UK employees have a 28 day minimum holiday allowance. the EU minimum is 20 days.

Yes, but 8 of those are public holidays anyway. I think you can work out the rest.

Sure, we opted out of the working time agreement because it was too restrictive. I work in an EU country today and the only way I can get my work done in an international environment is to ignore the rules. It's my choice, why should I be prevented from working the hours I want to, in order to be successful?

Very often, people don't work the hours they want, but the hours their employer wants. It's there to protect people.

Aaaaand there it is, the snide remainer ad-hominem attack when you run out of arguments. Some of us Brexit supporters have lived and worked in other EU countries for decades, we at least have seen and understand both sides of the discussion and can make our choices based on the facts.

You should have perhaps read your fellow Brexiteer's post which prompted that reply before being so bold as to claim that. It seems every advancement which has come from the EU is useless, only good for holidays, or both. Does that say more about the EU or the poster?

That's the same crap that was produced before the withdrawal agreement was signed, and it wasn't true then either. The only people who don't want one are the remainers, so that they can have something else to complain about. There will be a trade deal, no-one wants otherwise, UK or EU.

I really would like to live in a world where everything is so certain.

Speaking of trade deals of another kind (US-UK), yesterday the Tories voted against against protecting the NHS from being sold, against the protection of agriculture and food standards, and against parliament having oversight of any trade deals. You can already tell what kind of trade deal the Tories want with the US, but even if Trump still manages to win the elections, the House has to pass it, which is more oversight than the UK currently has as of yesterday.

Dan 55 Silver badge

What do you expect, silly statements get a silly analogies.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Value for money? Really? How many presidents does it have now and what does each one do? No Googling. You don't know, nobody does, because they do so little of any actual value.

You obviously don't want to talk about the number of civil servants and the EU budget. The UK has almost spent the same on Brexit now than was ever paid into the EU.

Sort of like trading with the rest of the world, whose global share of GSP is growing where the rEU is shrinking fast? We can offset their costs by using a fraction of the net tariffs (absent a trade deal) to compensate their costs.

It's perfectly reasonable for British companies to trade with their neighbours, over of trade is done with the EU, and for them all that's going to happen is costs are going to go up. The whole idea is that the SM & CU don't have tariffs, and as the UK won't have deals with most countries in the world (please don't say "Go, WTO"), the tariffs for non-European countries will also be higher. So, yeah, higher tariffs all round. You won't be offsetting anything against that.

No, no you don't. You get to bully weaker trading blocks like the African Union, but you don't get to set sh*t with important parts of the world like USA or China. And for that you waste 7 years negotiating a very small trade deal with Canada, who are probably the most reasonable nation on earth. 7 years!

Do you know what Everything But Arms is? No, of course you don't. That's why you believe Africa is bullied when it's quite the opposite.

Do you know why there are no deals with USA or China deal yet? Because the EU refused to be bullied. I'm sure there will be a very quick USA-UK deal, but it won't be to the UK's advantage.

No it didn't. We joined in 1973 and the Irish were still bombing the piss out of each other and the mainland for several decades to come. Best case you could claim the rEU helped the IRA lie to themselves about already having a unified Ireland inside the rEU, but that was never true and was never going to be the case. Its just more deception.

Good Friday Agreement 'wouldn't have happened without EU' - George Mitchell

People in Northern Ireland can choose to identify as British, or Irish, or both. There is an all-island economy, so much so that you can cross the border without realising. The health service is shared. It is a region jointly administered by two countries. These are all facts.

So your view is that these only exist in the rEU? Pathetic. Truly pathetic.

No it isn't, my view is high food and environmental standards and strong consumer laws exist in the UK too. Not for long, though. By the way, equal pay for men and women was in the Treaty of Rome in 1957 whereas the UK had to wait until the Equal Pay Act 1970 as a condition of entering the EU.

Sure, go try being not white in Poland and then come back singing the praises of this.... I've had 3 different mates marry Polish girls and relocate - the white guys had no problems and were accepted into their community and workplaces. The black guy not so much - spat at in the street, regarded with suspicion, subject to hate. He had a breakdown after 18 months and came home.

Anyone would suspect Poland (and Hungary) have even more problems than the UK at the moment.

Ah, that theoretical freedom again. And yet, nobody did any of this. If we net them all up you're talking about around 500,000 people, of which more than half are retirees in Spain. British people live, work, and retire the world over - the rEU conveys no particular benefit in this regard to most people because they'll never use it. I've lived and worked in two foreign countries and found it no easier in the rEU. This is a classic example of a paper benefit - something you think you might value because you think you might use it, but you never do - sort of like the spare pack of bogrolls in the airing cupboard, no? Yeah, my wife is Swedish and unlike you I have have lived and worked there. I've lived and worked outside the rEU too.

I'm comparing and contrasting the visa process and FoM and there appears to be no basis at all to what you say, I really don't understand why you believe there is no benefit to having FoM in EU countries. Brits who try to get residency from next year onwards will be treated as third-party foreigners instead of EU citizens but I'm sure as always there will be people to who this will come as a complete surprise.

The much vaunted freedom of movement was always far more important to Europeans because they had English as a shared second language, than it ever has been for us Brits.

The fact that you're a person who considers not learning the local language is an advantage says loads.

London is France's 6th biggest city.... Paris, in terms of British population, would barely pass for an English village. Spain, where half of all British expats in the rEU reside, makes up a place about the size of Swansea by population.

I think you're comparing apples with oranges. 1.2 million Brits have taken advantage of it yet you maintain FoM apparently means nothing, yet 3 million EU citizens coming the other way (i.e. net 1.8 million influx) means Brexit must be happen.

And you'll still be allowed to retire to Spain after the transition period expires.

Pretty shitty retirement though, as the UK won't be uprating pensions for new retirees.

You don't really think that Greece offering a competitive 7% tax rate on all income if you retire there is going to refuse you right of entry?

Unfortunately UK Citizens' healthcare costs will go up over 7%... shame about that.

Freedom of movement is the biggest paper tiger you could have raised. SMH.

And yet it was the bogeyman that delivered Brexit.

Do you actually believe this stuff or are you just repeating what you read in the guardian? There's nothing at all to fear from no deal. We have no deal with America or China, and yet I type this on a Chinese keyboard, wearing American jeans and trainers, and sipping a Coke.

Things are a little more complicated than having a trade deal and not having a trade deal. The British government is seriously planning to reset the clock on all the trade agreements and deals it has and return to a state that very few countries have (basic WTO tariffs) as if it were some kind of good thing and people actually believe it. Is it unsurprising wonder the honourable member for the 18th Century said that it would take 50 years to see the benefits of Brexit.

There are none so blind as those that will not see. I know you're scared, but frankly this display of cowardice in front of the enemy is most unbecoming of an Englishman.

God help me, that there are people on this planet who post this nonsense let alone believe this it.