* Posts by Loyal Commenter

5761 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jul 2010

£99,999, what's your emergency? Paramedics rush to OAP's aid after shock meter reading

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We see our pensions go up in pennies, the bills go up in pounds.

Maybe, oh I don't know, stop voting Tory then, and some more money might start going towards pensions, rather than tax-gifts to the rich. (the amount going on state pensions this year is apparently £96Bn, which isn't very much in the scale of things, a little over 10% of the total spending in the UK's budget, although it's still more than 7 times the amount that we actually "send to"* the EU).

*"send to" is a misleading term, as any competent economist will point out that the benefits to the economy (i.e returns on that investment) are estimated at anywhere between 5 and 15 times that amount. In other words, when (if) we leave the EU, the benefits we'll lose would probably have paid for those pensions...

EU's top court says tracking cookies require actual consent before scarfing down user data

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Re: That was nice

Why does my local paper have tracking cookies from Greece and Switzerland?

Because they are paid by scammers advertisers in Greece and Switzerland to throw malware laced spam adverts at you.

This won't end well. Microsoft's AI boffins unleash a bot that can generate fake comments for news articles

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Trollface

For example, oppressive regimes could implement such a model to automatically dump a load of fake drivel to drive propaganda. The comments could also kickstart toxic arguments between bots and humans to sow discord and misinformation. Perhaps miscreants might even use it as a way to advertise products or post spam.

Well, that's half the commentards here out of a job...

The mod firing squad: Stack Exchange embroiled in 'he said, she said, they said' row

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Re: Is this just an English thing ?

Some Nordic languages, such as Icelandic never lost the letter Thorn, or Eth for that matter.

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Re: Is this just an English thing ?

sounds like a teenager of any sex/gender/self-identification to me.

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Coat

Re: Is this just an English thing ?

Which dwarf are they then?

We're all doooooomed: Gloomy Brit workforce really isn't coping well with impending Brexit

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Great, so people who didn't go to university are footing the bill for those that did

Yes, just like those of us without children are footing the bill for those who do, or those of us who have never been burgled are subsidising victims of crime, or those of us who have never smoked are subsidising treatment of COPD on the NHS, or ... well, hopefully you get my point.

FWIW, those who have been to university are more likley to be higher tax-rate payers, so on the whole, they are subsisidisng those who didn't, but don't let basic factual literacy get in the way of a good misanthropic outburst on t'internet.

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Re: "Well the OAPs who voted for it to keep Johnny Foreigner out are doing fine with Brexit. "

Despite the obvious troll accounts on twitbook that claim they voted remain, but now want leave, I find it very unlikely that there are many people who voted remain who now thing leaving the EU looks like a good idea, especially now the reality of the challenges this involves are now much moe apparent. I do, however, know at least one leave voter who would now vote remain (and campaign for it) and at least one leave voter who has since died.

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Facepalm

Re: Come and have as much discussion as you like, off the record, for as long as you want."

Especially as typically the EU response to adverse referendum results...

The EU doesn't hold referendums, and also isn't in any way responsible for the way member nations hold them or act on the results. This is all down to the fact that every member of the EU is a sovereign state...

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Re: When to move abroad

Don't confuse Parliament and Government. No doubt Parliament contains many odious scumbags, but they appear to be more concentrated in the relatively small number that make up government.

Either way, I downvoted you for the intestine-strangling comment. Adding more violent imagery and hate-speech to a situation that already has more than enough isn't helpful.

Thanks-thanks to TalkTalk teen hacker: UK cops' first auction of ill-gotten Bitcoin nets £240k

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Bitcoin is, however, quite volatile

Around a month ago, it was sat at nearly £10k. I'd be very surpised if it didn't go above that at some point in the next 12 months, so to someone with the money to gamble on it, it doesn't sound quite so daft.

BOFH: We must... have... beer! Only... cure... for... electromagnetic fields

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Re: Glastonbury

Its always an outsourced service which can only be accessed via a portal which insists that you have to sign up for an account of some sort, presumably for the purpose of harvesting your personal information and pushing advertising at you.

I've never found one of these that can't be defeated simply by giving a false name and email address. Presumably because, to verify the email would require that you can access your email, which would require access to the wi-fi, which would require that you verify your email...

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Re: solution

Fluorescent tubes can have two separate effects:

Firstly 50/60Hz flicker (depending on the mains frequency in your country) which can be more detectable in peripheral vision - parts of the retina away from the fovea contain more cone cells which are apparently sensitive to flicker right up to around 60Hz. Incidentally, LED lighting that uses an unsmoothed power supply may produce a more noticeable flicker, because the LED response time is much lower than that of flurescent or conventional lighting, so the light curve follows the voltage more closely.

Secondly, the high-voltage "starter" on some fluorescent strip bulb operates at a much higher frequency (in the multi-kilohertz range), and vibrations from cheap transformers at high frequencies can cause a high-pitched hum. Generally speaking, transformers shouldn't give off a "hum", and it is often a good indicator that the power supply for a bit of kit is on its way out if you can hear a high-pitched hum from it.

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Re: solution

If suggestibility were considered to be a mental health issue, I've a feeling that the vast majority of people would be locked up for their own good.

It's a personality disorder, at best.

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its the normal heat from the circuits.

Probably the screen, since that's usually by far the most power-hungry component in a phone.

Now that's integrity: Bloke sinks 7 beers, turns himself in. Cops weren't looking for him

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Headmaster

Re: Don't drink Budweiser.

Pedant point - I think the tipple in question is a pilsner, not a lager (although technically pilsner is a type of lager, a distinction is usually drawn...)

Hacker House shoved under UK Parliament's spotlight following Boris Johnson funding allegs

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FAIL

Re: Based in the UK?

Yes, of course, how silly, they should have bought those buses from British Leyland!

And as for "being subjugated to Germany", presumably you're all for the elimination of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha from British politics then? Of course, you'd need a vague twinkling of historical knowledge to have a clue what I'm talking about, rather than spittle-flecked uninformed opinion, along with the mental capacity to understand irony, which I suspect you don't.

UK Supreme Court unprorogues Parliament

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Re: We're heading US style dysfunctionality

Possibly they want to try to humiliate Johnson further by making him seek the extension he has sworn he will never do.

I think it's probably for (legitimate) political gain, just as an election now would be for poltical gain on Johnson's part. Johnson is currently riding high in the polls (helped at least partially by a sympathetic mass media). His opponents know that the longer he is allowed to carry on, the more this "honeymoon period" will be tainted and disillusionment will set in. Nobody on the opposition benches wants Johnson to be able to call an election at the point that most suits him, so they are holding off, in the knowledge that when he is finally forced to go cap-in-hand to the EU to ask for the extension, his far-right support will drop off and go back to the Brexit "Party" (quotes here, because they are technically a private company not a political party). At this point, the right-wing vote will be split between Tory and BP, Parliament will call a vote of no confidence, an election will be had and Johnson will lose. His opponents know that this is the best way of unseating him from power, in the best interests of the country. Even then, he'll probably still refuse to resign, because above all else, he is ruled by his ego. If he does refuse to extend A50, then there will be a VoNC at that point, and a caretaker PM (probably Ken Clarke, although Corbyn will want the job, it won't be appropriate for someone with long-term goals of leading the country to be a short-term unity PM) will do the notification-to-the-EU thing, before calling an Election. Johnson will have broken the law, be in contempt of Parliament, and possibly also in contempt of Court. He may even get a custodial sentence; whatever the result, he won't be making politicla capital from his actions.

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Re: Correction and Apology

It's also worth reinforcing that law based on precedent can be superseded by Parliament by the passing of a new Act in Parliament, in exactly the same way that a law based on an Act of Parliament can be.

For the purposes of an IT-related analogy, think of laws based on precedent as new documentation on previously undocumented software features (possibly those that have emerged as side effects of other features), and of laws based on Acts of Parliament as software updates (secondary legislation could be thought of as minor patches).

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Re: My take

It's certainly an "interesting" take on the history of the island of Ireland with respect to its people's relationship with those of its nearest neighbour...

One might even go so far as to say, "woefully ill-informed".

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Re: What another day to close schools?

...or it's one of the (conspicuously absent) usual suspects, posting anonymously.

Can anyone guess who it is I'm talking about?

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Re: Remain MPs all broke the law and should all be in prison anyway.

"said in leaflet" != "made it law"

Go back to school!

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The high blood pressure from being angry about everything printed in the Daily Mail not only makes their faces an attractive rosy red colour, it also causes glaucoma which affects their ability to see, and therefore double check, not only the spelling and grammar of what they write, but also the factual accuracy.

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52% of people decide they want to buy cheese from Betfred. A lot of influential people told them they could buy cheese from Betfred, so they thought they'd give it a try. It turns out Betfred don't sell cheese, they're a betting shop and only sell misery, but those influential people are continuing to egg folk on and demanding that Betfred sell them some cheese. They send a stooge to negotiate a cheese sale with Betfred. Betfred says they have a small amount of mouldy cheddar in the back of a fridge, but the people would really be much better off buying their cheese from the local cheese shop. The stooge goes back to the people and asks if they will accept that, but no, they are demanding that Betfred now sells them all the cheese that local shop sells, but for a lower price, and while we're at it, we have some losing betting slips that we want paying out for. One of those same people who told the lies in the first place then takes over the 'negotiations' in an attempt to prevent people from changing their mind and going to the cheese shop instead, promising a glorious future of unlimited free cheese, in the hope that they can drive the local shop out of business and flog off a load of gone-off processed 'cheese' slices that they've been stockpiling in the hope of making a massive profit. They don't care if the people all get food poisoning after this, becuase they'll have fucked off to the Bahamas.

that's a more accurate analogy

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MPs were elected on a promise to leave the EU.

Mine (a Labour MP) most definitely was not. Her opinion about brexit is clear and well-informed and quite comprehensively against leaving the EU. She was elected with an increased majority (by about 30,000 votes - I'll spell that out for you, an increase of thirty thousand votes), so your rhetoric about votes for Labour being votes in favour of brexit in 2017 is, to put it politley, uninformed bovine excrement.

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I take it you're not a fan of representative democracy? Again, the people voted 'Leave'. But the judiciary has decided Parliament can bind it's successors.

Where to start with how wrong that is...

Firstly, a referendum is not representative democracy, if the enabling act states that it is advisory, it is technically and legally an opinion poll. Representative democracy involved electing representatives (the clue's in the name) to represent a constituency; note that it is their duty to represent the interests of all their constituents, not just the ones they agree with, or who voted for them, and it is their job to represent the interests of the country as a whole above that. Loyalty to a political party comes third, and to opinion polls, somewhere much further down the list of priorities in the land of what is personally politically advantageous.

Elected politicians are expected to weigh up the facts in a way that normal people don't have the time or expertise to do (which is why it's a paid full-time job), and call on expert opinion to support that decision making process.

Secondly, I'm not sure where you got the idea from that Parliament can bind its successors, or that the judiciary decided this. What the judiciary demonstrated is that Parliament has supremacy over government, not the other way around. Parliament is perfectly free to pass any Act of Law amending this position, if they can get a majority for it, and any subsequent Parliament (or even the same Parliament) can pass further Acts to supersede, amend or repeal that original act. If there's no explicit Act of Parliament dictating the position to be taken, then it is perfectly well within the remit of the Supreme Court to look at precedent and constitutional convention and make a ruling, which in turn becomes precedent. None of this restricts the laws that a Parliament can bring in the future - all it says is that the government cannot sideline Parliament when it is inconvenient, for purely political purposes, because it is the constitutional role of parliament as a whole to make policy, not the government of the day. Normally, of course, a government would command a majority in parliament, and woudl expect its business to pass the House with a majority as a result, unless they try to do something that both the opposition, and enough of their own MPs object to.

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Re: IANL but...

Probably Ken Clarke (the 'Father' of the house, not Bercow, who as the speaker, is duty bound to be impartial)

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As long as we can join with the exchange rate set at the level it was prior to the referendum in 2016, then we can reverse that bit where we all became 20% poorer on the world stage, overnight.

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Paris Hilton

Which one of those people is Jewish? Arron Banks? Nigel Farage? Viscount Rothermere? Rupert Murdoch? Vladimir Putin perhaps? Iain Duncan-Smith? Michael Gove? $prominent_quitling_of_choice? Sorry, drawing a blank here...

I think your tinfoil hat needs retuning.

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Re: Regardless of which side of the fence you are on.

It's a convention based on ignorance of what Godwin's law says.

This is true; it is a convention nonetheless, so I felt it appropriate to point out that the convention does not (conventionally*) apply in cases where the comparison is accurate.

*metaconventionally?

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Re: #Sarcasm?

what you fish (if you even get to keep a fishing boat)

haha - maybe the fishing industry in this country should have thought about that before they sold off the quotas? Or are you advocating having no fishing quotas, and as a result, no fish?

FWIW, Iceland is not an EU member (although is in the EEA) for a couple of reasons relating to fishing - firstly, until recently their principle industry was fishing (now tourism), opposed to a tiny part of the UK economy, so they didn't want to apply fishing quotas, and secondly, they still have whaling for the tiny number of backwards areseholes who eat cetaceans, and all killing of cetaceans is forbidden in the EU.

So, the question here is - what part of EU fishery policy don't you like? The bit where we don't destroy all the fish stocks, or the part where we don't murder whales and dolphins?

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Re: Regardless of which side of the fence you are on.

It's a good question, and can be answered by pointing out a couple of things - no government can bind the hands of a future government (i.e. nobody can pass a law that says a future government must act in a certain way, not least becase any future government can repeal such a law), and the government has no authority over the House - Bills are passed and become Acts in law by getting a majority vote in the house from all MPs, not just those in the government, or the government's party.

What Porky Boy was actually promising was that his government would enact whatever result the referendum came up with. As soon as it didn't go the way he expected, he resigned, effectively ending that government, and breaking that promise, which was nothing more than a personal promise from him, and in no way binding on anyone else.

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Re: Regardless of which side of the fence you are on.

Slthough not strictly in the original wording of Godwin's Law, the convention is that when the comparison to Nazis/Hitler is made, the discussion is over; exemptions apply for when this doesn't occur.

Godwin himself said, in Dec 2015, "If you're thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler when you talk about Trump, or any other politician."

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Re: Regardless of which side of the fence you are on.

Then set fire to the Reichstag and find a convenient Dutchman to blame?

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To be fair, I blame those who spent a lot of time and money convincing people who otherwise had no opinion on the matter, through a carefully constucted set of lies, to vote to leave, against their own better interests. People like the tax exile owners of the gutter press, unscrupulous insurance moguls, and gravy-trainers like Nigel Farage.

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and that didn't really turn out well for anyone involved, unless you're all for banning Christmas...

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Re: born in Guyana

I'd second the suggestion of DBE. It would be good to see Honours going to people who have earned them, rather than bought them (with either cash or political capital)

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Yes I do understand how your laws work. Someone says it's not illegal, someone else says it is illegal.

Incorrect; in lower courts, someone says a law was broken, and another says they didn't break it, or, rarely, that this law doesn't apply, or even more rarely, a case is not about a law at all, but about a constittional precedent.

In this case, there was no law as such (no law based on an act of parliament), it was a case based on constitutional precedent. When the lower courts are unable to reach a verdict, or there is an appeal, it gets passed up to a higher court, in this case, all teh way to the Supreme Court. They generally only hear cases where there is ambiguity in the law (due to badly worded or contradictory Acts, in which case I believe the later Act takes precedent), or where there is no legal precedent, in which case they have to weigh up the existing constitutional and legal precedents, and make an appropriate judgement.

IANAL, of course, but clearly, neither are you.

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Then the court made a political constitutional decision anyway.

FTFY, no charge!

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Re: Summary

the fact that this parliamentary session is the longest since the Civil War and we're so far overdue a Queen's Speech it's embarrassing

If you'd be paying attention, you would know that the previous government explicilty decided that pariament would run for two years, not one, so that May could do a proper job of sorting out brexit. The fact that she failed to do so was irrelevant, the current Government still had unconcluded business in Parliament when Johnson illegally proprogued it, such as the Domestic Violence Bill, that was shamefully dropped.

There is absolutely nothing that would ahve stopped the tories from proproguing parliament for a new Queen's Speech a year ago, for four of five days, according to normal conventions, and to be honest, there was nothing to stop Boris from doing the same for a sensible amout of time, and he still could. A Queen's Speech doesn't take five weeks to prepare unless the governemnt is planning some pretty radical stuff, and if you think our government has any such plans, you are living in a fantasy land.

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Re: #Sarcasm?

There are two questions here; who was trying to "take back control", and from whom?

If you think about who used to have control, and no longer does, and who control currently rests with, then the only logical conclusion here is that it is the rich backers of brexit trying to take back control from Parliament - is their true goal to reverse the Parliament Act perhaps?

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Re: Regardless of which side of the fence you are on.

I believe your Duty was to deliver Brexit

Oh dear.

In short; your belief is wrong. It's a good thing our system of government is based on constitutional conventions, not the facile beliefs of an anonymous coward, eh?

Quite apart from the fact that the referendum was explicitly advisory (read the enabling bill available on Hansard if you don't believe me, which unabiguously lays down in law the rules for the referendum in question), the duties of a Member of Parliament are as follows, according to Winston Churchill:

The first duty of a member of Parliament is to do what he thinks in his faithful and disinterested judgement is right and necessary for the honour and safety of Great Britain. His second duty is to his constituents, of whom he is the representative but not the delegate. Burke's famous declaration on this subject is well known. It is only in the third place that his duty to party organization or programme takes rank. All these three loyalties should be observed, but there in no doubt of the order in which they stand under any healthy manifestation of democracy.

Nothing in there about brexit - and furthermore, even though the government of the day appeared to promise to be bound by the result of the referendum (as Porky Boy Cameron did), it is recognised constitutional convention that no government can bind the actions of any subsequent government, and the government has no authority whatsoever over other members of the House (even within their own party, although tehy can threaten to withdraw the Whip, effectively expelling them from the party, if they don't vote the way the government wants).

The fact remains, that the individual members of Parliament are elected primarily to represent the best interests (note, interests, not wishes) of the country first, their constituents second (and not just the ones who voted for them), and their party last. This is, of course, after their oath of faithfulness and allegiance to the Monarch. One would think that this oath would preclude lying to the Queen about your reasons for wanting to stymie the legitimate democratic processes of the nation.

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Stop

Re: Regardless of which side of the fence you are on.

The courts have been granting themselves greater and greater political power.

Did you lift that drectly from one of Hitler's speeches? Our system of government is very clear - Parliament makes the laws and the Courts adjudicate upon both the laws of the land and on constitutional precedent. The Weimar republic had a very similar system, and the Nazis didn't like this, as it prevented them from doing whatever they liked, so as soon as they got a whiff of power they began to undermine the role of the courts. We all know how that ended up, so be more careful about the sort of bollocks that you post in duscussion groups online, because it sounds very much like you are advocating more of the same.

(This comparison is exempt from Godwin's law because it is an accurate and relevant comparison to the Nazis)

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Re: Regardless of which side of the fence you are on.

This judgement imposes substantial constitutional change

Only isofar as we now have a constitutional precedent that didn't exist beforehand, because nobody had been foolish enough to try and test it before now.

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Re: Regardless of which side of the fence you are on.

Are they Brits unaware of the constitional law of their country?

In my experience, a good number of brits appear to be ignorant of a number of important distinctions; that between government and parliament, between representative democracy and mob rule, between the role of the police and that of the courts, between the concept of justice, and that of vengeance, and many many more.

I put it down to a lack of education in such matters, and mis-education from a diet of tabloid newspapers and biased TV news reporting. I'm not sure the remedy is an easy path, as I see it it requires root-and-branch education of the masses in difficult subjects such as critical thinking and social responsibility which are hard things to instil in people who have gone their whole lives with them absent.

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Re: Regardless of which side of the fence you are on.

it says the Supreme Court has authority over Parliament

No, the courts have no power over what hapens in Parliament. What they ruled on was the constitutionality of parliament being shuttered by the government, so what they have actually demonstrated is that Parliament is supreme over the governement - in other words, 650 or so MPs have collective authority over the nominal head of the house, which is exactly how it should be in a representative democracy, otherwise what you have is an autocracy (elected or otherwise).

Match.com? More like Match dot-con, claims watchdog: Cyber-lonely-hearts 'lured into forking out to view bot spam'

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Re: Why bother with a dating site?

To be fair, I'm sure I've met plenty of people of many sexual persuasions (except probably not the A in LGBTQIAP) who'd use that as a dating "strategy" - in other words, get drunk along with other people getting drunk and make a choice which probably seems less sensible in the morning (including with people of a gender they'd not normally be interested in).

I'm pretty sure the OP was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek about it being the proper way to go about things, I took it to be more an illustration of how alcohol clouds judgement, especially when you're young and impressionable...

If you have enough of this type of gut microbe, you can get drunk for free after eating carbs

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Re: OMFG...

The thing that sparked my interest here is that, fromt eh report, this strain seems to be particularly efficient at converting starch, not sugars, to alcohol. Yeast doesn't have ths ability which is why beer is made from malted barley, which contains amylase to convert starch to sugars - the malting process involves germinating the grain so that it produces this enzyme. The patient had not only measurable blood alcohol content as a result of the bacterial action, but a high BAC, and this was obviously going on long enough to cause fatty liver disease.

It's also worth noting that yeasts that produce alcohol also do it as a byproduct to something else (anaerobic respiration). To any organism that produces ethanol, this is a waste product. In the presence of oxygen, yeasts will respire aerobically, and produce only CO2 and H2O as waste products of burning sugars.

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Re: OMFG...

The most important non-clickbait bit in this story is that the strain of bacteria causing grief to this particular individual was also causing other health issues.

I'd hazard a guess that the fatty liver and organ damage was caused by the alcohol, not directly by the bacteria (those are after all, classic symptoms of alcoholism).

I'd say that the most important bit is that this was caused by a bacterium, not a yeast (which is why an anti-fungal treatment didn't fix it, and it required a course of antibiotics).

I'm surprised, and somewhat intrigued, to see this sort of fermentation from bacteria, rather than a yeast. I wonder how different the biochemical pathways are to those used by yeasts for anaerobic respiration - have the genes been picked up wholesale and transferred naturally by a virus (nature's gene editing), has the bacterium somehow acquired them from a yeast cell, or has teh pathway eveolved independently? Does this produce CO2 as a by-product, as with yeast-based fermentation, or something else? Could the bacteria be used practically in fementers for industrial alcohol production in place of yeast (e.g. for fuel production)? How tolerant to high alcohol content is the bacterium? Could it be used to brew past the 14% ABV or so that wine yeasts will tolerate before dying? So many questions...

Pizza prankster's prisoner plea plot perturbs police, Norks invading and Uber woes

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Re: This error message inconsistency allows attackers to infer

On a serious note, I wonder if such information leakage can also happen through timing attacks. How careful have MS been to ensure that a 'file not found' message takes the exact same time to arrive as a 'file access denied' message? In other words, can you infer the existence of a file by the differnece in time it takes to report the "cannot access" message when the file exists, and when permissions are denied? Presumably if the file doesn't exist, it requires only a directory check for it, but if it does exist, but is inaccessible, some sort of security check is required (with additional reads) that may take longer. Have MS countered this (for example by randomising response times, or adding a delay to existence checks)?