The Penguin of Evil

Retired Linux hacker, gamer, retrocomputing, model trains

ESO: EtchedPixels & PenguinOfEvil (Wombles, Greymanes, Chill Mode)

Business: http://www.etchedpixels.co.uk
Fuzix: https://www.fuzix.org
Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/EtchedPixels
RC2014 Boards: https://hackaday.io/EtchedPixels

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NIP-05 Address

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nprofile1qqsdsa353q4aczx0ff8rn68x7k25lrnv9hful2gycdkw3mahryep4kspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsmfxuft

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nos.lol

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Last Notes

2026-02-18 09:31:50 GMT

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we need both a higher minimum wage and also to replace all the nonsensical migrant workforce meddling with something that dumps it on businesses using them. So no priority lists, no punishing health fees on migrant workers, but all of it as a hefty additional NI based tax paid by employers of migrants to cover their healthcare and services. That way we can properly externalize costs and dump them on those making the choices.

2026-02-03 22:41:20 GMT

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OFCOM are refusing to investigate some classes of people using Grok for badness of various degrees. In that I think they are actually correct. We don't investigate Bosch when someone is murdered with a drill
There are a bunch of different things going on and IMHO the failing end is the police. OFCOM do not have the remit to deal with this, the police do. The police raiding X and obtaining the IP address/times of offences in order to identify the actual offenders should be happening

2026-02-02 17:47:27 GMT

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Should he not have been arrested by now. Official secrets act, maybe treason ?

2026-02-02 11:35:51 GMT

Whenever some politician or party apologist whines about having to stay on twitter because some of our potential voters are on twitter, remind them that probably even more of their potential voters are on pornhub but they are not active there.

2026-01-31 12:38:48 GMT

If anyone is involved in the UK #Green Party they might want to look at motion A6 for the spring conference
which includes
"The Green Party supports users’ rights to control the digital devices they own,
including the right to install, modify or replace operating systems and
software, access full file systems, and remove pre-installed applications,
particularly on computers and smartphones."
and some amendment discussions around @npub1fdr…lvhs proposals on killing DRM and #enshittification

2026-01-20 16:13:44 GMT

Neurotropical : hot headed

2026-01-20 12:35:05 GMT

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Theoretically yes. Although what would actually happen who knows. It's a step nobody has really tested
But in theory
- Every Android phone stops doing Google services, and any US managed one gets turned into a brick
- Every iphone is a brick
- Every windows PC ransomwares itself
- Every home appliance with a US connection is destroyed or worse
- Every US controlled home battery and solar device stops working
and so on. This is why in reverse the US is scared of China

2026-01-18 16:07:36 GMT

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I actually think fixing the US after it totally melts down is easier than it seems. Most of the oligarchs will be dead or fled, and in times of chaos systems become more malleable. In theory you fix the voting system, rework the supreme court and don't just strip executive powers but push most of them down to state level - guns, shower heads, state healthcare, etc. Or the same occurs as a formal split into countries

2026-01-17 19:31:07 GMT

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He owns the supreme court. He can do what he likes.
The only barriers to what he can do are what will finally tip politicians over the edge (assuming they don't wait too long and lose that power too), and at what point the country goes up in flames.
Given even the "opposition" party is basically executing on "but we're a different kind of nazi" that seems pretty grim.

2026-01-17 18:06:39 GMT

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We had an English pope (who is part of the fault for the Ireland mess) so surely we took over Vatican City at some point.

2026-01-17 17:47:16 GMT

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Fair point. Now ask yourselves how many countries would have said "Oh we've got to collect tons of taxes from a bunch of rich Americans and spend them on our people, we'd best appeal against that" ?
Total capture.

2026-01-17 15:55:00 GMT

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Lots of good infrastructure investment (and friends from Ireland found it hilarious that British builders were building lots of it for Irish people this time round ;))
The scale of the Irish corporate capture is huge. When the EU found that Apple avoided €13bn in taxes owed to Ireland the Irish government tried to appeal it along with Apple, and it was 2024 before they were literally *forced* to collect the taxes they were owed.

2026-01-17 11:10:06 GMT

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given neither generally work long term and people are now understanding that one is a drug that stops having an effect when you stop and the exercise story was always mostly a food industry scam to blame others does it matter ? Exercise is a good thing but in general not a weight cure You have to fix underlying causes - poverty, poor food access, highly refined unhealthy products, and also underlying causes like stress, alcohol and even sometimes breaking bad habits

2026-01-11 11:33:03 GMT

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a lot of this is the protection rules. Can't get insurance easily, can't employ them without barring checks on everyone else etc. Stuff that is there for good reason

2026-01-08 09:54:18 GMT

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pubs IMHO are the people in them, so once you lose that critical mass nobody has a reason to go because none of the other people go either. In some ways I wonder if social media killed the old style local

2026-01-08 09:25:31 GMT

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our younger folk don't drink much. They prefer to go to someone's home and if they get food seem to use just eats etc. The whole notion of going to a big building full of other people just to eat/drink is gone except for special events
On the other hand the tiny cinema here you can hire out seems to be fine and the gaming cafe is rammed.

2026-01-03 13:26:49 GMT

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like Grenada. The US is merely continuing it's long standing behaviour but has quit pretending it's a normal country.

2025-12-31 09:42:52 GMT

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more I fear canals after railways. Lots of totally useless assets with no significant new use cases. LLMs right now have two probably viable use cases which are porn and fraud, and half of the porn uses will probably turn out to be really bad ones

2025-12-25 14:39:07 GMT

From one of the model railway forums but bang on and a good day to remember this
"People don't stop playing because they grow old. They grow old because they stop playing. "

2025-12-14 15:20:48 GMT

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you can't separate them out magically because their friends are not disabled or necessarily rural, so are you going to create a disabled ghetto ?
You have to fix it for all teens to have a safe space to interact online.

2025-12-14 14:18:33 GMT

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banning vpns is like banning maths. It's an implicit feature of all networking so the only way you can ban it is to turn all computers into a government controlled unmodifiable device managed by a mostly US megacorp.
If you want to crack down on social media and kids then ban processing of kids data like the EU. Ban advertising to children except human pre approved adverts, ban algorithmic feeds
And remember social media is crucial to disabled and to kids in isolated places

2025-12-09 19:10:34 GMT

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Needs a political sea change to happen. Nothing will occur whilst Reform look possible contenders for the next English government as then they'd have to deal with Farage.
If Reform crashes and burns then maybe but they'd still want to sure it had been staked out on a crossroads at midnight, sprayed with holy water and burned.

2025-12-09 19:03:00 GMT

The legacy of C gets everywhere. Fedora installer still has this fun bug
(I'm not going to bother reporting it as I reported it some years ago and it got bumped and bumped and never fixed)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/691/148/658/586/652/original/2140095ec1d90fe0.png

2025-11-16 18:10:15 GMT

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Renters Rights will move a chunk of that ability on to another quango, which will no doubt also be under-resourced, but does take a lot of it away from councils.
Councils have a problem in that every time their enforcement people want to close something down, their housing people have nowhere to put the displaced tenants.

2025-11-15 10:35:38 GMT

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The peoples party of judea, the judean peoples party and the like cannot and never have been able to agree to even drink together.
It's core is a tiny factional bunch of people who've always campaigned on their specific principles and never had to compromise because they never had any chance of being elected in the first place.
It's easy being a political philosophy club masquerading as a political party.

2025-11-14 19:24:45 GMT

"The cloud is down, all of it"
"But the AI that was supposed to keep it running ?"
"Had a debug log file that expanded to use all the storage and took the cloud down"
"Get the robots to reboot it ?"
"They are controlled from the cloud"
"and the access doors ?"
"Cloud"
"If the robots are down can we just force our way inside ?"
"No.. the automatic defence system runs on its own servers at your insistence so it's still working"
#fiction

2025-11-11 20:13:02 GMT

I think I've finally found the first thing I'd actually pay a robot to do
We have a yellow extreme weather warning for rain
It's pissing down
It's dark
It's cold
wtf has nobody invented a bin that can put itself out on the street.

2025-11-10 12:27:11 GMT

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I can see why the opportunity might exist in some areas (especially once the stock market implodes) because in many areas of the UK the housing market is basically dead on its feet. There are no buyers because the landlords are getting out, and it doesn't fit the corporates. There are no new local buyers because they can't afford it and nobody therefore can move.
South Wales is at the point surveyors are doing surveys on 48hr notice and agents sound pretty desperate.

2025-11-09 16:21:46 GMT

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Otherwise I'd say it's like any big v small experience. A small landlord is like any small business - can be great or dire and somewhat erratic.
The big ones are much better at scaling stuff, often better at compliance, but that doesn't mean the experience is any good - merely more predictable across that business.
The people who had this mastered (before thatcher wrecked the UK) were the councils. Long runs of identical housing, standard parts, bulk upgrading etc

2025-11-09 16:19:06 GMT

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Ask the question at different property value and rent levels IMHO.
Landlords that operate at the higher end of the market have tenants who can afford to move, know how to kick arses and are profit generating.
Landlords more at the social housing end of the market even big ones are desperately cutting every pound of expense back to even stay solvent. That doesn't lead to good housing outcomes.
Also our regulations can't cope if someone big goes bust and 800 people need rehousing.

2025-11-09 12:40:01 GMT

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In the US similar schemes do seem to work, and it's always really about the fear of getting caught stopping it than actual lathe payouts
When I worked for US corporations there was regular training on compliance and consequences if dealing with the US government. On the UK side there was bugger all.

2025-11-07 15:20:59 GMT

Bought some sausages with a big picture of Jamie Oliver on the front. On the back it says "prick with a fork". Nice of them to add a label to the picture for anyone using a screen reader.

2025-11-07 10:32:04 GMT

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Lot of younger folk need to understand the past was merely differently shit rather than always better. There's lots to learn about what was good and what was bad like having lots of dodgy police and endemic low level government corruption.

2025-10-31 16:51:52 GMT

A Halloween Horror Story:
"We're in and we've broken containment - we really are living in a virtual universe"
"That near endless string of symbols is our universe"
"Yes"
"But why one giant string of noise ?"
"Is that a regexp... ?"
"Oh my god, we're living in a perl one liner!"

2025-10-30 09:36:32 GMT

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The housing crisis can be explained very simply as 'they got your house'. It's not the actual story for the most part but being in fear of and knowing people who got it nearly got dumped in the street is so far down the pyramid of needs that it's basically not a left/right issue. It's always fun to ask someone going off on immigration whether they think it would make sense to keep having immigration if the hospitals or businesses hiring had to build new homes for them first.

2025-10-30 09:30:47 GMT

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They are a real difference. One was a minor tax error but the other is really a safety management related violation affecting others. It should be seen as much more serious but I bet it isn't.

2025-10-30 09:27:38 GMT

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The biggest problem seems to be where the AI money should move to. The market will tank for a while as a whole, US bonds and even dollars don't look safe. The gold market and bitcoin are too small and really just parking lots that generate no real revenue. Insurance type bonds are up the creek without a paddle.
I have no doubt LLM AI is screwed. To run it profitability at prices people will pay it would have to be so efficient we could all run it at home instead

2025-10-19 17:26:30 GMT

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How much of this though comes from lack of faith in the government. I hear "but they'll spend it on [random nonsense]" all the time as a reason to avoid tax so you can spend it yourself on things you care about (ie stuff it in the bank)

2025-10-15 20:12:59 GMT

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I'm just trying to imagine the touchscreen keyboard with all the extra emacs keys

2025-10-13 20:13:42 GMT

There was a time when vibe coding meant teledildonics, now it's #ai and people are still getting shafted.

2025-10-06 17:14:21 GMT

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Might also want to read the research papers showing strong evidence that adhd/autism has epigenetic links to a subclass of PFAS chemicals and that we are beginning work out the pathways that would explain it. Then follow the money...
It's not just a nutjob scare, there's real science they desperately want to avoid people discovering.

2025-10-03 11:35:37 GMT

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The data doesn't agree with that claim at all. There are 300K who he doesn't have data on. That's not 300K who are not receiving an education - far from it. Many of that 300K will be receiving a good education, especially those with parents who have time, and of course the rich ones with time, education and tutors.
The problem is it's not all of them, but trying to string it as 300K not receiving an education is nonsense.

2025-10-03 11:25:13 GMT

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Many of the bits we do know are grim - schools who systematically expel pupils with difficulties in order to meet their budget. Schools that look for ways to push out poor performing students to get good league table numbers, and in both cases absolutely no push back from anyone or support because social services have no funding at all.
Even if we had a register it would currently be useless, there's no staffing for checks.

2025-10-03 11:23:04 GMT

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The article says 300,000 are not in school. Not 300,000 are not being educated. That's 300,000 someone doesn't have a record of.
The article then spins it as 300,000 not in education without any explanation of the magic jump from what the data says to what they want to claim.
The problem is we *don't* know what is up because DfE refuses to conduct exit interviews for those leaving schools, and governments continue to say we ought have a register, then refuse to fund it.

2025-10-01 17:33:22 GMT

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I think Mark Thomas had it right when he proposed that every time an elected official stands up to speak they get their corporate sponsor as a theme tune.

2025-09-27 15:04:21 GMT

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I always found I had to take notes to remember stuff I read, or type up notes to fully understand stuff even if I never then re-read them so this explains much perhaps

2025-09-20 11:26:38 GMT

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RTX is big military so it's alarming they don't have good enough security in the current environment. It's not like the list of people who would like to fuck them over is exactly short

2025-09-18 21:04:19 GMT

All my #fuzix and #retrcomputing stuff (and train stuff and whatever) as now been migrated from shithub to Codeberg EtchedPixels

2025-09-17 17:35:06 GMT

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The other to do it is the gradual way where you switch a piece of land from one system to the other at next sale in the same way you "crystalize" assets, but that will have other bad effects I am sure.

2025-09-17 11:21:44 GMT

Question - can anyone tell me the actual name of the ZX81 (I think 81 not spectrum) game which was a frogger but where you had to get grannies to the post office over the road ?
#8bit #sinclair #retrocomputing

2025-09-17 09:53:06 GMT

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Using "AI" doesn't work because each house is unique and you can't extrapolate sanely. Zoopla and Rightmove and co try to do this and they are regularly more than 25% out.
Secondly you have to have a rigorous algorithmic approach to a validation that can stand a court challenge, otherwise the courts will be busy for another century on this problem.
Like it or not they are going to have to make the RICS surveyors very busy and rich if they want to make this happen.

2025-09-16 11:18:01 GMT

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having seen bits of how some UK universities are managed having an adult with financial knowledge involved might be a good thing

2025-09-11 11:39:40 GMT

Microsoft requiring people to be in the office 3 days a week says everything anyone needs to know about their remote working apps

2025-09-07 13:20:23 GMT

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The number of people on benefits who could be productively employed by the state for little more than it costs is also large - and it would quite possibly be a net positive overall once you consider the value they provided and the reduction in all the bad (and expensive to the state) outcomes of long term unemployment

2025-09-06 11:09:53 GMT

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and although it's constitutionally a rather woolly undefined office is Lammy also not the first black dep pm ?

2025-09-04 19:56:45 GMT

1999: Internet will change the world
2000: I don't understand internet but everyone is investing in internet so internet must be cool and I should join in
2001: Our lawnmower is internet enabled
2002: oh shit
2023: AI will change the world
2024: I don't understand AI but everyone is investing in AI so AI must be cool and I should join in
2025: Our lawnmower is AI enabled
2026: ????

2025-09-04 18:14:01 GMT

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The press want it to be story of corruption, but if you look beyond that most of what I am hearing is totally different - it's how the hell can someone with an £800,000 flat claim to understand working people, benefits and the struggles of the disabled.
So I think what it's actually really doing is more interesting - it's showing that it's not just Starmer who is completely unconnected to the real world they live in, but the whole sad lot.
#politics #ukpolitics

2025-09-03 09:02:48 GMT

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it will be a problem for all.The possibility of a university going bust mid degree is already putting even UK people off, so if one goes under it'll be just like a slow motion bank crash IMHO.

2025-08-29 07:48:57 GMT

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you suppose that children of right leaning parents do the same. A look at voting intentions by age says it's clearly far more complex.

2025-08-26 11:56:31 GMT

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the UK needs to tax empty and second homes to the point each one pays for new housing for a family in emergency accomodation because that right now is the social cost. Triple council tax is a beginning but it needs to be a lot higher.
Squatting historically was heavily abused hence the law changes, but actually giving councils money to fix it (the powers exist) would actually be simpler than changing the law on squatters.
Proper rights for those living in vehicles also

2025-08-25 21:32:02 GMT

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I wonder if it's just that he's so far out of the political sphere that "you want money, I invest, I get equity" is simply his concept of normality.
I mean it is how investment works unless politicians on the right like starmer are hand wringing about nationalisation, or on the left wanting nationalisation of some things for essentially political (but often rational) reasons

2025-08-25 17:18:33 GMT

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I try and use a mix of sources that are not politically vested in that topic, or whose userbase are deeply financially invested.
If you want to know about climate change data, then actuarial and insurance company papers for example.
Hindu, Al Jazeera and some others are ok for different views on the world. The Continent is a view on things that never make our press but is rather more longer article than news directly.

2025-08-23 15:55:06 GMT

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I would strongly disagree with that claim. If you compare the 1930s and 1980s factory enormous amounts of friction went away. Workers had a better environment and managers had better tools to do their jobs too. But that was when unions were strong so that shitting on someone else's lawn wasn't an acceptable answer and everyone therefore needed stuff to be better to sign on. Today we've largely replaced that kind of progress with games of hot potato turd passing instead.

2025-08-23 12:36:28 GMT

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The fact they are touching what looks like peak emissions this year and a major source is in some ways a hopeful thing.
Coal is complicated though for China. There's good data that for most of China burning coal in peaker plants has a lower carbon footprint than moving LNG vast distances.

2025-08-20 07:24:48 GMT

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as a landlord it's missing a critical detail I think. The market for 'do it up' is now near non-existent compared to 20 years ago because you can't get the people or materials any more. We have a shortage of trades and they can get steady relatively less complex work on new builds so increasingly don't care about the refurb market. Many younger ones have never even touched a pre 2000 building construction style.
That and the upcoming EPC rules make wrecks stay wrecks

2025-08-17 11:19:03 GMT

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I have been having this argument with politicians and planners for over a decade about both fixing solar rules and making things like external shutters on windows and roof parasols permitted development but they are all in total denial of quite the scale of shit that's about to hit the fan

2025-08-16 09:22:03 GMT

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not that different to most London area housing perhaps ? The million pound flat is other than a shared belief in future scarcity just a 100 grand share in a shitty conversion of an old Victorian house.
It's one reason I think the UK is in reality a lot poorer than it often appears, because if anyone fixed housing scarcity the entire upper middle class would have nothing

2025-08-14 10:54:24 GMT

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they will just adjust their sizes a bit or move DIY into a separate business and split the store into two businesses owned by the same people in the end. Way too many holes for people who employ teams of professionals to optimise their taxation
If they want to make UK shops profitable then ending the de minimis scam and making online market places liable for what they sell from abroad would do wonders, save a ton on putting out fires and up the tax take

2025-08-10 17:19:33 GMT

Trying to work out what to do with a box of Netbooks. I've got a few I use for consoles for #rc2014 and the like but a definite surplus.

2025-08-06 08:48:49 GMT

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Given English originated as a car crash of old Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Norse, and god knows how many other languages directly or indirectly I'm not sure English has many non foreign words.. just ones people like Shakespeare made up 😀

2025-08-03 13:01:43 GMT

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One of the big problems in most of the UK is that there's not continuous exposure to other languages. In most of the world people pick up the basics of additional languages (notably English) pretty much by accident, but the other way around doesn't work as we are not bombarded with dubbed films, untranslated advertising and the like in other languages.

2025-07-30 17:28:34 GMT

Another day another oh look your #cloud account has gone poof, and your provider couldn't give a toss story
https://mikekaganski.wordpress.com/2025/07/25/microsoft-anybody-home/

2025-07-28 16:54:28 GMT

If you don't own your data and you can't operate without some third party cloud then it's an existential risk. Might be sanctions, might be an AI algorithm gone amok might be you pissed off the wrong billionaire, might be a typo but if you don't have the tools and a plan you are screwed.
EU-sanctioned Indian refiner Nayara takes Microsoft to court over outage - The Economic Times https://share.google/xqFnRlZEp9smGkokW

2025-07-21 11:32:33 GMT

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Not sure you can describe Rhaedr y Cwm as large scale public infrastructure given it's a tiny tiny little thing and an entirely private project 8)
But in general yes - the UK has serious issues even compared to much of the EU. Lots of poor planning policies, short termism and abysmal project management.
The desire to hide all the debt in private businesses also has a huge impact simply because a lot of big infrastructure boils down to "how cheaply can you borrow money"

2025-07-19 17:23:57 GMT

I don't know about other people but my multiple monitor use case is that the cat cannot sit in front of all of them at once

2025-07-19 10:31:36 GMT

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The costs and risk are hardly a surprise. Piquemal resigned in 2016 because he thought Hinkleyl was too big a risk for EDF and things have not improved in the nuclear space whilst battery prices are down 25%+ in 12 months and Gartner (who normally underestimate badly on renewables) are saying it'll have halved again by 2030.
Meanwhile China built the worlds largest solar farm (about 5GW at this point) for about 1/10th of the new Sizewell budget.

2025-07-15 17:36:50 GMT

Pirates get a special rate for piercings - a buccaneer
#dadjokes

2025-07-07 16:48:11 GMT

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They need to implement a US style tax on citizenship rather than on residence. The US got that one right in some respects.
You want to be part of our nation, you pay your taxes.

2025-07-05 17:57:20 GMT

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Would also useful if it gave credible answers and provided references. That would also fix the copyright mess because it can spend it's time replying "According to Foobar <cite 1984> the claim is incorrect" without spewing forth the copyrighted work.

2025-06-24 17:09:49 GMT

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And the word any journalist is following is looking for when if this hits a vote is "Starmergeddon" ;)

2025-06-19 12:03:36 GMT

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/forms/name-our-storms-call-for-names
The Met Office is soliciting future storm names. Needs as many people as possible IMHO to submit the names of oil companies and other big polluters causing #climatechange problems.
That and of course #muppets 8)
Storm Piggy ...

2025-06-14 09:59:20 GMT

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Depends where you look. Old school "music" industry then yes I'd agree it's basically a recycling outfit combined with a bunch of people who think AI will avoid them having to pay artists in future.;
Go to a local music scene and in many places it's quite different. Look on streaming sites outside the mainstream and people are doing all sorts of deeply non music industry stuff. If they do anything cool and successful then big music will just take it like they did punk.

2025-06-13 17:15:22 GMT

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Most of the problem we have in Wales is overtourism and almost none of them fly.
Doesn't work for that case.
Most AirBnB these days is just a hotel with a dubious exemption from half the hotel safety regulations

2025-06-06 17:36:09 GMT

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It's a theme in the UK. The whole analysis process is known broken. It's all built on the remains of the 1960s/70s "close all the railways" stuff for the same reason a road is an "investment" and public transport is not.
Same happened with the borders railway - over 20% over the forecast 6 months from launch
Ebbw Vale line was allegedly marginal - it beat predictions by 100% in the first year, and they had to add extra carriages the year after launch and then double track it.

2025-06-02 21:07:25 GMT

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Is there any decent documentation on how its all wired together, because an emulator is usually more useful than the real hardware for bringup ?

2025-06-02 20:42:34 GMT

You just need an intercal java binding library. it's been done for COBOL so intercal isn't that diferent 8)
(seriously INVOKE method OF class GIVING...)

2025-05-19 19:25:17 GMT

A unix story
cat vomits
man cross
more grief
locate mop
make clean
sleep

2025-05-16 22:59:29 GMT

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Nobody at the age of 70 is going to move house unless they have to, and if they have any evidence of mental decline the medical position is that they should not as they need the familiarity.
We've got loads of empty and second homes that need to be taxed until the owners squeak. Yes some care is needed on exemptions.

2025-04-08 18:06:37 GMT

Musk insists #tesla has the most American made cars. He's right of course because they are piled up unsold in vast numbers. He may not have sold the most American cars, but he probably really owns the most

2025-04-08 16:42:59 GMT

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I was thinking more of Caesar.

2025-04-06 16:02:57 GMT

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Lock in as a service.
It's inevitable because a software business has a real market value which is the cost of everyone migrating off their product.
It's also deliberate. Everywhere you went in senior mismanagement of big companies the litancy was 'how do we make it [ourcompany] "sticky"' even for supposedly standard or open stuff.
The rentier economy in tech is by design, it's not just an emergent property.

2025-04-04 12:59:32 GMT

TIL: in Finland Sauna Sausage is a product not a euphemism

2025-04-03 17:21:44 GMT

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Many EU governments will have no choice judging by the level of pissed off involved. Even in the UK Starmer is beginning to get beaten up for appeasement
Overall though my sense is the same - Trump is going to make everyone else work on trade agreements without the USA. There's not a lot of physical goods the US produces that anyone actually needs any more.
And multinationals won't care. Just like last time, shuffle who supplies whom to minimise and done.

2025-03-28 13:03:57 GMT

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There is one critical difference. Most of the world will no longer give a toss. China will spin a US crash into the excuse for their self caused economic pain, Europe will be quite content to see a crashed USA become a Russian style low value resource export economy and India simply doesn't have to care any more.
It's going to suck but for Africa, India and to a fair extent China it's not a big deal once the waves die down

2025-03-21 10:23:37 GMT

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Are you sure he's not actually talking about Australia and the USA stealing all our nurses during our health sector crisis ?

2025-03-19 20:44:57 GMT

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They really ought to start testing Lords and MPs on a yearly basis for alzheimers and dementia so they catch them earlier.
If people can't drive with bad eyesight they certainly shouldn't be running the country when they can't remember to declare their millions in related stocks.

2025-03-10 14:44:18 GMT

More US detentions - more reasons for non US folks to get out and stay out
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/british-comic-creator-r-e-burke-detained-by-ice-after-crossing-border/
#uspol #ice

2025-03-06 16:06:20 GMT

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A lot of it also needs to be about not spending billions on stupid projects. We know a lot of what we need to build, and we know how to build it cheaply because Ukraine has been building and deploying it at speed. So for once a lot of our investment is actually product lines for existing aerial, land and naval drone systems, shells and ammunition.
Plus we can save a load by telling the US where to shove its now useless trident systems.

2025-03-05 15:50:49 GMT

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Luxembourg is probably the big other Western example of this.

2025-02-26 16:54:21 GMT

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Yes - and if you think about them all as systems they all look very much Beer's viable system model. In that view of things "Ohshitism" is what happens when the 'here and now' meets level 4 and 5 of the VSM.
In this case that things like Nato have gone from briefings and stuff other people cared about to eating real time decision making bandwidth in no. 10 which means big decisions (sometimes wrong ones) can be made at speed bypassing the structures that then scramble to realign