* Posts by Dan 55

15337 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jun 2009

Brexit could further harm woeful rural payments system

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Food imports which may see a 20% import duty after Brexit

Worry not, DEFRA estimates that global commodities will cost 11% more when imported to the UK and that will translate into a rise for consumers of 2.9%.

Apparently there's a lot of margin on those lettuces which food producers will be only too happy to soak up for us.

Planned Espionage Act could jail journos and whistleblowers as spies

Dan 55 Silver badge

It's odd because May doesn't seem the imaginative type. I suppose the army of civil servents and three letter agency people behind her are.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Handy timing that

Only they're not exempt, their data will be hoovered up anyway but not shown when searched for later, because it's extremely difficult to record everything everyone does inside .uk except for 650-odd people.

As this data is held by the ISP, they need something big to threaten then them with.

All of Blighty's attack submarines are out of action – report

Dan 55 Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Ok, what's the Trident money really been spent on?

Because all this money seems to have given us missiles going off the wrong way and submarines which all break down at the same time, which is difficult to achieve with the billions thrown at it every year.

ISIS videos, adtech, and the 'smartest guys in the room' (Google)

Dan 55 Silver badge
Unhappy

My flabber is agast

Google put forward a challenge to the advertising and marketing executives to help populate YouTube with more content that combats ISIS propaganda. [...] "We don't believe that censoring the existence of ISIS on Google, YouTube or social media will dampen their impact really," Google's David Drummond told the same audience.

So the bedroom jihadist is going to watch a beheading, an targeted ad will pop up which reads "PSA: Why beheading people is a bad, mmmkay", and he's going to click through to another YouTube video which explains why all the people he's just watched have a part in killing someone are naughty?

This is better than removing snuff videos? Stop the world, I want to get off.

Grumpy Trump trumped, now he's got the hump: Muslim ban beaten back by appeals court

Dan 55 Silver badge
Alien

Not liking this regeneration of the President, maybe he'll be the War President that future Presidents forget about afterwards, as if they had amnesia. That would explain the off-by-one error.

Dan 55 Silver badge

The new.man who called Trump's attacks on the judiciary 'demoralising' and 'disheartening' and is known to be a constitutionalist is supposedly going to turn this ban around?

Nope. Not going to happen. No way.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: "SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!"

Just were do you think you can find even 'half-way neutral' reporting?

Perhaps they are neutrally reporting that this is a clusterfuck?

Neutral means publishing articles based on the complete range of facts available, not bending the article's text to be neutral even though the facts don't back this up.

Explained: Apple iCloud kept 'deleted' browser histories for over a year

Dan 55 Silver badge

Translation from legalese

"Apple does not retain deleted content once it is cleared from Apple's servers."

means

"Apple does not retain deleted information once it is deleted from Apple's servers."

which means

"" (nothing)

Prepare your popcorn: Wikipedia deems the Daily Mail unreliable

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: time for a new Masthead on the Daily Flail?

No, it was Mosley in 1933 and Hitler in 1938.

I think I prefer Wikipedia.

That's cute. AI and IoT need 'ethics regulation', mumbles Lib Dem baron

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Nooo

I can see I should have set the joke alert icon instead.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Facepalm

Nooo

We can't regulate ethics. Never been done before. Never in professions and never between people.

Luckily Baroness Buscombe managed avoid another Digital Economy Bill by deciding they weren't going to have anything to do with technology.

Brought to you by UK.gov: 'Most ambitious programme of change of any government anywhere in the world'

Dan 55 Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: 2027 Headline prediction

I wonder how letting some HMRC tax return program automatically calculate everybody's tax and raid everybody's bank accounts will work out. What could possibly go wrong?

Dan 55 Silver badge
Devil

Bizarrely, Gummer also described GDS head Kevin Cunnington as a "modern-day Che Guevara of digital".

I expect May's government would be rather partial to a racist totalitarian who executed people without proof of guilt.

Poorly defined projects with limited funds never work out well.

More tech companies join anti-Trump battle, but why did some pay for his inauguration?

Dan 55 Silver badge

Everyone from (7 predominantly Muslim countries) except religious minorities. Are you really unable to work out what that means?

If you are, congratulations, you're qualified to vote for Trump!

Euro bloc blocks streaming vid geoblocks

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Move along

Well, maybe there will be for three months where the BBC will set up glorious 60p streaming on iPlayer for the rest of the EU.

Big blues: IBM's remote-worker crackdown is company-wide, including its engineers

Dan 55 Silver badge
Holmes

Re: Obviously downsizing - everything else is flannel.

Be interesting if we could find out how many managers suddenly got moved across to the other side of the country before this was announced.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: First they came for...

Nonsense, there's plenty of years left in flogging the same old snake oil. Cut R&D to the bone!

Biggest Kodi sweep: Brit cops nab five, bag some dodgy sticks

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: This concerns me....

However selling a machine with kodi + plugins + hardware becomes illegal... why?

Aiding and abetting.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Too late.

Hilarious. Search for it on Google and you get a bullet point list of how to install in the search results.

Will Google get their wrists slapped?

Vivaldi and me: Just browsing? Nah, I'm sold

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: "Microsoft’s Edge browser keeps stealing the default browser setting"

Perhaps you need to unset the Google options in Tools > Settings > Privacy?

(Or just type Google in the settings page search box to get all the Google options, which is nice.)

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Still need more

One thing that's surprisingly missing in Vivaldi (or I haven't found it) is the web page language settings. Not even Firefox has knocked that on the head yet... touch wood.

Why is all software sabotaged by its devs? Perhaps there's no handing down to new programmers of 'things we rejected because we found out they were crap'. Then 20 years later we get Windows 10.

Who's behind the Kodi TV streaming stick crackdown?

Dan 55 Silver badge

The point is, if this ends up happening, you'll have a new intermederiary for streaming services who will end up just as hated as the traditional ones.

However I doubt this will happen as it's easy enough to sign up to as many streaming services as you like, or just sign up to watch Stranger Things (perhaps the first month is free) then stop.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Said it before, will say it again

Well I don't know where you are, but where I am songs suddenly turn grey in my Spotify playlists (only happens if you set it that way in settings, otherwise they just disappear and you probably wouldn't notice), entire albums disappear, and there are region lockouts too.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Sky and Virgin both do on demand.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: I'm worried they'll outlaw Kodi in some unenforceable way...

What's going to happen next is the stick will be sold with a bare version of Kodi on it and the shop will give an address that you stick into Kodi which downloads everything else.

That'll be when they decide just go for TV sticks loaded with Kodi.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Said it before, will say it again

Amazon, Netflix, Google Play, iTunes, Hulu, and HBO Now are some that immediately spring to mind. Have you had your blinkers on for the past few years?

Dan 55 Silver badge

If they could come up with one shared service, with all the content, and they received their money by content watched (like royalties to different artists/labels with music on spotify) it would be a much better solution.

Ah, like a cable or satellite provider like Virgin or Sky you mean. Hang on...

IBM's Marissa Mayer moment: Staff ordered to work in one of 6 main offices – or face the axe

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: The beatings will continue until morale improves...

So good being shoved into a shoebox and unable to work because all the ESFPs in there love the sound of their own voice. Really helps you follow your train of thought.

Streetmap loses appeal against Google Maps dominance judgement

Dan 55 Silver badge
WTF?

Re: The bitter taste-

You are definitely doing something wrong. Probably some add-on.

Link and link, both from December. Firefox uses less memory than Chrome.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: The bitter taste-

How do you think Chrome got where it is today?

Yes, by being pushed by the search engine.

Android's February fix-fest flings 58 patches

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Blackberry

I wonder what Nokia's going to do with patching. Hopefully something to make the stand out from the likes of Samsung.

China announces it wants more immigrants, better diplomats and science-led industry

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: okay, but...

At least you can usually count on one per town. You don't even get that in some countries.

Cut off: Big government IT wallets snap shut on BT's fingers

Dan 55 Silver badge

Mayhem

Perhaps the entire government has fallen victim of May's "do everything and something more with no money" budgeting methodology that she pioneered at the Home Office.

Google gets smooth early Android releases. OEMs are struggling

Dan 55 Silver badge

Thanks, I wondered why K9 battery usage had shot up.

Now I need to disable battery optimisations for just for K9 to bring it back down.

Welcome to Google, where this even makes sense.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Devil

Pixel is the reference phone, code works for Google, OEMs sort out the mess on their hardware

I can't see a conflict of interest there at all.

Trump's cybersecurity strategy kinda makes sense, so why delay?

Dan 55 Silver badge

"two regulations are torn up for every new rule introduced"

Which ones? Pollution, electrical interference, workers' rights, drug testing, medical standards, building standards, vehicle construction standards, aeroplane construction standards, food standards, education standards, equality, animal welfare, telecoms regulation, etc... etc...

You can't just travel back in time to 1970 by ripping stuff up, the world is more complicated 50 years later.

People who should know better are saying it's a good idea. It sounds good for five seconds until you think about it.

Police drones, robo surgeons and chatbot civil servants. What could go wrong?

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: It's too late...

They probably all watched Elysium and thought it was cool. UK.gov is never knowingly one to shy away from a dystopian future so the consultancy were only telling them what they wanted to hear.

Update or shut up: Microsoft's choice for desktop Skypers

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Skype as a free alternative to H323

"I'll call you on Skype."

"Is that Lync or Skype?"

"Lync."

This conversation happened more than once while using IM on Lync. Pure genius at MS' marketing.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Any practical FOSS Skype-alternatives?

Wire (www.wire.com) does Win, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and Web clients. The Linux build has source code.

There is also Jitsi.

BBC and Snap. But, why?

Dan 55 Silver badge

Snapchat

After rocking up in London, they did actually declare they were worried about doing business in post-Brexit Britain. Incredible as it may seem, they've got more attention deficit than Google.

US government agency pops 16 years of solar weather data online

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Space weather

Indeed. The sun flares when Our Lord and Savour Jesus Christ is angry with us because We Have Sinned.

This ungodly data will be struck from the website by Executive Order.

Javapocalypse soon! Oracle warns devs to bin plugins, fast

Dan 55 Silver badge

"IE gave up ages ago"

Did it? You can still use Java with Intranet Explorer 11.

Brexploitation? Adobe gets creative with price hikes

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Does not compute

"As part of doing business globally, Adobe monitors currency exchange rates in order to make adjustments to our pricing up or down as needed."

Have Adobe ever lowered prices? Maybe it wasn't "needed".

Microsoft foists fake file system for fat Git repos

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Proves Git is unsuitable for commercial dev work

There is some change to git, TFA says at the end that it requires a protocol change.

Who do you want to be Who? VOTE for the BBC's next Time Lord

Dan 55 Silver badge

Can't really imagine him running, can you?

UK defence secretary: Russian hacks are destabilising Western democracy

Dan 55 Silver badge

He might have a point

But then again I mentally send whatever Michael Fallon says to /dev/null on the basis that if he's actually right for once then someone more credible will repeat whatever it is he's saying.

Would you like to know why I get a lot of action at night?

Dan 55 Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Spaced!

That's silly. If it's available of All 4 why block it on UK YouTube?

Dan 55 Silver badge
Pint

Spaced!

Has there ever been a better series?

For completeness, Tyres at a pedestrian crossing.

Brexit White Paper published: Broad strokes, light on detail

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: We DID vote to leave the single market

The leave campaign were busy dropping Norway (EEA), Switzerland (EFTA), and "single market" into the narrative. To pretend otherwise is just a blatant lie and rewriting history of the

Click here.

So anyone who voted leave on that premise is now being used as a useful idiot by Mayhem & Co to push her agenda of burning the country down to save the Conservative party.