Posts by Loyal Commenter

Re: What does "in the top 54%" mean?

"In the bottom 47%". That's what it means.

Re: Googled the answer?

Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. The Three Virtues of programming.

Re: Sure, it'll beat outsourcers

Yup, sounds like "test-first" development. Once you have written the tests that define the behaviour, you fill in minimum amount of code to pass those tests. Since the tests describe the behaviour you are expecting, the actual work has already been done, and all the rest is just keyboard mashing.

Re: Sure, it'll beat outsourcers

I'd like to see how it copes with "come up with a solution, with the client, on how to quote and escape this CSV file sufficiently for it to meet their needs and capabilities, for the cases where the user has entered a name like "O'Reilly" or put a comma, or double-quote in the middle of an address line.

Of course, the correct answer is "don't use a CSV, come up with a proper file format instead," and I'd seriously like to see an AI system that can handle all the requirements gathering, specification work, and back-and-forth with the client via email, face-to-face meetings, and Teams calls, and come up with an unambiguous document at the end which is both technical enough to capture all the detail, but also readable enough for the client to sign it off and know what they are signing.

In other words, I'll worry about my job when the IQ of such an "AI" system exceeds that of your average business analyst, senior developer, and account manager combined.

Re: Lying F****ers

Indeed, the only "legitimate interest" they might have is to place a cookie indicating "opt out of all". WITH NO TRACKING COMPONENT.

Re: Current ads on Amazon are

I've not got a real problem with Amazon using my purchasing history on Amazon to determine what "suggested items" to show me on Amazon. This involves only my data that Amazon might reasonably be expected to have, from my use of their site, to provide functionality, on their own site.

Once you start talking about data gathered from, for example, browsing a completely unrelated site, to target adverts at you from other companies with which you have no business relationship, then this is totally different.

As it happens, Amazon is pretty good at suggesting I buy things that I just bought, usually as a one-off purchase, or suggesting products related to presents bought for other people.

When it comes to Amazon adverts on the Facebook app, when I'm using it on my phone, my wife and I often scroll through these to laugh at how inappropriate they are (they don't show up in the browser version, due to judicious use of ad and script blockers). No, Amazon, I don't want to buy that "men's fashion" item that consists of a pair of shiny gold trainers with light-up soles, no matter how many times you show me the same ad.

Re: Generates annual revenues of €41.9bn

I say we use it to build a giant laser, in order to etch the name "Chairface Chippendale" onto the surface of the moon. At least that will benefit everyone equally.

Re: Agree 100%

Political lobbying by big businesses moves at this speed: >< and possibly faster.

Re: Lying F****ers

It also depends on your definition of "willing" - "can't be arsed to go and deselect 20 separate tick boxes" isn't the same thing.

Re: Generates annual revenues of €41.9bn

Worth noting that this works out at about €6 a year for every person on the planet. I can 100% guarantee that those who would benefit from €6 a year added to their income see none of it, and it is not spread out evenly as an "economic benefit" to the global population, but is, instead, all going into the grubby hands of propagandists advertising brokers.

As you rightly say, this is generating nothing, except obscene amounts of money for very, very few unscrupulous individuals, and everyone else pays for it.

Re: Agree 100%

Exactly. Zero clicks to opt out, and one click to opt into each consent, not one click to opt into all.

As for "legitimate interest", no advertiser has any legitimate interest in me. They can all fuck right off.

Re: Fingers crossed

Wait a minute is that true? Are you saying that Johnson scrapped our pandemic preparedness plans and still managed to get the vaccine roll-out achieved while the EU sat and watched as the US, UK and Israel left them in the dust!

No, I'm saying that Johnson scrapped our pandemic preparedness plan, which led to the urgent need to acquire lots of PPE because we'd run down the existing stocks, or allowed them to expire. As everyone can see (except perhaps you), this was an unmitigated disaster, leading to such glories as nurses having to use bin-bags as makeshift equipment, and billions of pounds lost from the treasury to fraud, as widely reported.

As for the vaccine development and roll-out. Besides allowing for safety trials to be fast-tracked (which was also done elsewhere), and chucking some cash at it, our government has absolutely nothing to do with this, despite Johnson's repeated claims that it was all enabled by the government. The someowhat inferior Oxford AstraZenica vaccine was developed in partnership between the University of Oxford and the multinational pharmaceutical company AstraZenica, hence the name. I doubt there is one single member of the government who could give a decent explanation of vaccine science to the layman, which is why their claim to be intimately involved in the process is so laughable.

as for the Pfizer vaccine, well, we got that first because we overpaid for it. The price we are paying for it has since gone up even higher, as reported a few weeks ago on Dispatches. That's money that's leaving the country as well.

All of this is, of course moot, as there would have been nothing preventing our government from doing the exact same thing whilst still being an EU member (see also: free ports, which we had at one point whilst in the EU). Member nations just chose to use the EU mechanism for doing it, to gain the economies of scale, which we could not as a third country. Don't allow yourself to be duped by gaslighting from someone who has been sacked more than once for lying.

As it happens, several EU countries have since not only caught up with our vaccination rates, but overtaken them, largely because of the number of ill-educated absolutely idiotic anti-vaxxers in this country. It seems allowing yourself to be taken for a ride is a national pastime.

Anyway, the tl;dr; of this post is, if you can find a way to twist and misrepresent a total fuck up and incompetence, caused pretty much directly by brexit as a brexit win, then there really is no point in discussing this further. People who wilfully ignore facts cannot be swayed by them.

Re: GDPR? How can their planned changes make things worse that it already is?

My apologies, I missed the bit where you mentioned health bodies and only noticed it on re-reading afterwards.

The problem is the nature of the ICO, which, whilst nominally an independent body, in reality is just about as independent from government as Cressida Dick is. (I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine how independent they think that is)

The other problem is, of course, the other political trick of under underfunding inconvenient bodies that provide oversight of their actions (or those of their mates). See also underfunding of the environment agency so that they can't monitor river pollution properly, so that water companies and large landowners can get away with polluting them.

I'd surmise that there is more than a little of the politically led element to this, given that it was our current government who were hell-bent on hoovering up everyone's health data. They're probably responsible themselves for the categorisation of such data being changed in order to do so, and it wouldn't surprise me that, under the letter of the law, you are screwed as a result.

Re: Fingers crossed

You do know that London is now not regarded as the financial centre of Europe, entirely because of brexit, right? If you google the term "financial centre of Europe" you'll find a lot of results talking about London in the past tense.

Yes, I know googling it isn't proper research, but it's better than claiming that Tim Worstall articles are unassailable facts, and getting your posts deleted for making sexist slurs against Gina Miller.

Now, please list some of these real "blatant and readily available" benefits, or just finally admit to yourself that brexit is a complete dog's dinner of benefitless nationalistic bullshit.

Re: Fingers crossed

It's "you are" or "you're". See, I did bother to skim-read your drivel.

So, the only benefit you can come up with, is slightly speedier vaccination against a pandemic that arose some three-and-a-half years after the brexit vote. Well, I suppose claiming clairvoyance isn't beyond the bounds of the sort of nonsense I have come to expect.

It's probably worth noting at this point that our pandemic preparedness plans were scrapped by Johnson in order to pay for brexit, about a year before the pandemic hit. How's that for reading the future?

Re: Fingers crossed

Another well argued and erudite response from Mr Downvote-Magnet there.

Please do enlighten me to the numerous and myriad benefits I should be seeing from having my citizenship, protections and rights stripped from me, which I am clearly too dozy to have noticed. And no, "sovereignty", or other bullshit conceptual nonsense that has no real-life impact doesn't count.

I probably actually won't bother to read your response, but consider this an intellectual challenge to actually engage your brain and think about all the damage you and your ilk have done to this country.

Re: Marmite

And, of course, Norway isn't even in the EU, so even less of a "blame the EU" thing.

Re: Marmite

It's definitely a thing in the South. My wife's family has ancestors in the area around Kilkenny, and when we took a trip over to Thomastown to find some family graves, we enjoyed a very nice lunch of Guinness, bacon, and mash in the local pub, which was exactly what we needed after driving down from Dublin. I'm pretty sure I've seen it on the menu in Cork, and in Dublin as well, so pretty much across the Republic.

Re: GDPR? How can their planned changes make things worse that it already is?

Without knowing what data they hold on you, or for what "public task" they were processing it, we have no idea what your long, and meandering post is on about.

It could equally well apply to some marketing company holding onto your data unlawfully, as it could to you complaining about your local tax office knowing your NI number.

In any case, poor enforcement of a law isn't justification for changing the law; it's justification for changing the enforcement mechanism, in the same way that widespread racism, homophobia, and misogyny in the Met isn't down to those things not being illegal under employment law, it's down to lack of political will from the top to address them.

Re: Good job!

The Speakers (who exercise executive power within the Lords or Commons) decide on the order of proceedings and as we have seen often in the last few years, the PM doesn’t get a veto.

That's not quite the whole picture. As I understand it, the "Leader of the House" sets the agenda for the government's business (so the agenda on all but "opposition days"). The Speaker can "hear" Urgent Questions - i.e. interrupt that agenda, and they are in charge of overseeing the proceedings, i.e. picking who gets to speak next in a debate, and making sure that the Rules of the House are followed (such as not allowing any member to accuse another of lying, even when they demonstrably are), and enforcing them (e.g. expelling members, as we saw yesterday with Ian Blackford).

Re: A Cool Billion ! Roll Up, Roll Up !

It's just not as simple as that.

Well, true, you need to measure a stoichiometric amount (which IIRC, works out at a 3:1 ratio by weight) and stick a short piece of magnesium ribbon in the top.

I've seen it done, at school, done it myself, at university, and taught others to do it as a demonstration of the thermite reaction to school students to pique their interest in chemistry. It really is pretty simple. It's also pretty dangerous (especially the safe handling and storage of aluminium powder), so, in all seriousness, don't.

Re: Some points

A shortcut to all the benefits of brexit can be found here:

/dev/null

Re: OK.

I don't know about you, but I grow all my own pepper. /s

Re: OK.

Salt liquorice is popular throughout the Nordic countries, not just Finland. Particularly so in Sweden, I believe, and also in Iceland where they enjoy lots of variations (sweet / salty, soft / hard, and so on).

Re: Marmite

Well then, I stand corrected. I was under the impression that it was banned due to the salt content, but this must have been mis-reporting at the time from the notoriously accurate British press. The point stands that it was never banned EU-wide, and only by Denmark. And, as it turns out, temporarily, on a technicality.

It seems that Unilever have also, so far, held off on moving their headquarters wholly to Rotterdam, which was also reported in the press a couple of years back. I'm happy to "correct the record" here!

Re: Marmite

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against bacon, it is delicious. However, one of the defining characteristics of bacon* is that it is preserved by curing. That curing is done by adding salt (along with other preservatives, such as sugar and nitrates), and quite a lot of it too, or the meat would turn bad.

Bacon is a major export in Denmark (in 2019, 47,000 metric tonnes, which is a lot of pig bellies). I'm pretty sure it would have all been cured prior to export, otherwise, it's not bacon, it's pork belly (or back, depending on which cut of bacon)

*We are talking rashers of bacon here, not "bacon joints", which can cause some confusion, e.g. in Ireland, where what we call bacon is known as rashers, and "bacon" refers to the often uncured joint it comes from.

Re: A Cool Billion ! Roll Up, Roll Up !

I'm not sure anyone's claiming that Grenfell was an aluminium fire, and, as you say, aluminium has a high ignition temperature largely due to the oxide layer. I've seen the aftermath of finely divided aluminium spontaneously catching fire in a fume hood at room temperature, so can very much assure you that it will happily catch fire at the temperatures involved at Grenfell, but as you rightly say, the conditions have to be right.

The claim, though, that aluminium doesn't burn, is demonstrably false. Under the right conditions, it will give its electrons away like it has just discovered covalent bonding.

Under some conditions, it will probably act as quite an effective fire block as well, because of that oxide layer. I don't actually know what form the aluminium cladding in Grenfell took and whether it aided or retarded the fire. It sounds like it may have acted like a chimney rather than burning. The structure and thickness of the panels would be the governing factor in how it acted. For example, if it was sintered with a thin foil layer (to make it lighter) it could conceivably have burned quite well. Solid 5mm thick plates, on the other hand, would probably not.

I do know, from the reports, that the cladding wasn't properly fire tested. That's all that can really be said.

Re: A Cool Billion ! Roll Up, Roll Up !

Of course, redox reactions are not necessarily the same as burning. Fire requires fuel, an oxidant, and heat. Unless you involve elemental fluorine, of course, then all bets are off. Given half a chance, it will probably try to burn itself.

Re: Fingers crossed

I thought satire was supposed to be, you know, satirical. Newsthump appears to have taken on straight reporting of the news...

Re: OK.

You do know that "E numbers" indicate food additives that are deemed safe to eat (some have been withdrawn when new evidence has come to light, such as tartrazine,E102, and then reintroduced for specific uses, when shown by the available scientific evidence to not be harmful).

Many "E numbers" are pretty innocuous things, such as E300, which is L-ascorbic acid (and its salts E301, E302, E303, E304). Sounds nasty? That's vitamin C, buddy.

I'd much rather have E numbers, which can easily be looked up, than a list of ingredients longer than your arm that may or may not established to be safe to eat, or, worse still, no ingredients at all.

The competing "standard" in the US is to allow anything in food until it is shown to be harmful. Yum yum.

Re: Marmite

I always found it mildly ironic that Denmark would ban the sale of Marmite on the grounds of "too salty so bad for your health" whilst one of their main exports is the notoriously good-for-you and healthy, non-salty foodstuff, bacon.

Of course, the whole thing was about national politics, and probably also about the influence of multinational producers like Unilever (now headquartered in the Netherlands, not in the UK, due to... checks notes... surprise, surprise, brexit). As you correctly point out, nothing to do with EU regs whatsoever, despite the FUD from some obviously pro-brexit fans here.

Re: OK.

I'm pretty sure that "anti Marmite low salt directive" was national law in (checks notes) Denmark. Nothing to do with the EU, guv'.

Re: A Cool Billion ! Roll Up, Roll Up !

Basically, anything that isn't fluorine will burn, given enough fluorine. Bastard stuff, sitting there in its little perch in the top right of the periodic table waiting to destroy anyone foolish enough to come near it.

Re: A Cool Billion ! Roll Up, Roll Up !

Once ignited, aluminium will be as destructive as thermite.

Thermite is, in fact, an aluminium fire. It's just that rather than using the easily available oxygen from the air, it's stripping it from iron oxide, so it could be argued that thermite is less on fire than an aluminium fire (which will also happily burn underwater).

Re: OK.

Which is where competition as good regulation comes in.

If competition as regulation worked, we wouldn't need regulations.

If you think we don't need regulations, you probably also think we don't need any laws (which are essentially regulations with criminal penalties), and that "the market" will stop knuckle-draggers from beating their wives, unregulated banks can be trusted to not run off with our money and need bailing out again, etc. etc.

I'm reminded of the UKIP councillor who was imprisoned because he thought safety regulations were unnecessary, and someone died as a result whilst digging his swimming pool.

Unregulated "free market" competition leads only to a race to the bottom with the most unscrupulous taking all.

Re: A timely reminder

You can ration by price or ration by scarcity (i.e. queues). Pick one.

Actually, like most things in life, this is being presented as a binary choice where it is not.

The NHS has NICE, which weighs the cost/benefit ratio of individual treatments / medications and decides which can be afforded, essentially rationing by price.

A&E departments triage people, depending on the urgency and seriousness of their conditions, and so on, essentially rationing by urgency.

GPs offer appointments on a mix of first-come-first-served and seriousness, to fill their capacity, which is kind-of rationing by scarcity.

The NHS is not one big homogeneous blob that does everything the same way.

Re: A timely reminder

It's been happening under everyone's nose, by dictate of EU policy that required contracts to be offered to all member states.

This is the first time I've heard NHS privatisation being blamed on the EU. Can you point to the actual relevant regulations that state this, and the acts of parliament whereby they were brought into UK law, or is this entirely hearsay?

Of course, if it is the evil EU to blame, then our current government would be reversing that privatisation as a benefit of our glorious brexit utopia, n'est-ce-pas?

Re: A timely reminder

...oh, and what you are describing is basically the function of NICE, which is effectively the safety valve which weighs cost vs benefit within the NHS. They are responsible for working out whether that expensive cancer treatment that might extend your life for six months is worth not funding an entire obs and gynae ward for a month.

Re: A timely reminder

There will always be new, innovative and often expensive treatments coming down the line which could benefit patients.

This is true, but wait until you see how eye-wateringly expensive old, non-innovative, and otherwise cheap treatments can be under private provision. When you provide the same product or service, but add in the means to extract profit from it, it is always going to be more expensive if provided privately, rather than publicly. Just try being diabetic in the US.

Re: A timely reminder

This is exactly the stealth privatisation that I'm talking about. The NHS is underfunded (the government habitually gives budget increases that are below the increase in demand, and often below inflation, whilst crowing about "record funding"), so private health care is going to be quicker. Demand outstrips supply in the NHS to such an extent that "outsourcing" of things like routine scans is often done to private establishments by necessity. This takes money from the publicly funded NHS and transfers it to private hands. That's a nice little earner for those who invest in the companies providing the privatised healthcare. You won't have to look very hard to find their connection to government.