* Posts by LucreLout

3039 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jun 2014

Software development slow because 'Most of our ideas suck'

LucreLout

Isn't this essentially the same idea that if you put enough monkeys in a room with typewriters that eventually one will create a master piece?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

So what does that say about developers that are proponents of this idea?

I think, emphasis on think, because trying to obtain a fact from the guys river of verbal bs isn't easy, this idea is that your customers might not know or be able to express what they want, and iterating over new features quickly and gather their feedback should allow positive change to occur incrementally and rapidly.

However, it seems to me there might be a few flaws in that plan. Lots of customers don't enjoy chnage - they know how to work the existing interface and if you force them to learn a new one, they could just as easily learn a competitors.

I'm generalising here, but: The young want change, the old want stability. Its a progressive scale.

So, where are your users on the scale? If you have a monopoly you might be in a position to force upgrades, but if you're a commodity, then you can't. If your 'upgraded' users aren't self selecting then you're really just pissing on their chips over and over and...

LucreLout

Re: Do you know why?

Because scrum teams are flat, its not acceptable to critique peoples code in review, we can only point out things that are actually incorrect, and not stylistic or complexity related.

Why not? It is in my team. Moreover, it is expected.

If you can make my code better, do it - just explain why it is better. If I can do the same for yours, then it may be done (depending on priority etc). Ego has no place in software development - its what leads people to behave like assholes and expect to get away with it, while producing software that may not be all it can be.

LucreLout

Re: What's missing in this commentary

The difference between good and bad ideas is whether or not they bring benefit to the customer.

That should always be the primary focus. If you aren't focussed first and foremost on your customers, one of your competitors will be.

However, you can bring benefit to your business without it specifically adding advantage for the customer, such as by reducing your run cost you can increase your profitablility (if you don't want to pass the entire cost cut on to your customer). Depending on where you sit in the debate, that might be migrating to the cloud, or bringing cloud back on prem, for example.

Off with e's head: E-cig explosion causes first vaping death

LucreLout

I wonder...

... if we added up everyone hurt or killed by vaping, even those attempting the most cackhanded of mods, if those inuries and deatsh would have reached the total number for a single second of cigarette smoking. I'd bet good money the death toll per minute from cigarettes exceeds the to date total from vaping.

I don't smoke, and I don't vape, but I have lost enough relatives to smoking that I wouldn't have had vaping been an alternative at the time.

Lawyers for Marcus Hutchins: His 'I made malware' jail phone call isn't proper evidence

LucreLout

Re: What is he actually guilty of?

something that used to be quite legal last year but has suddenly become illegal without anyone telling you

This, in spades. The last labour government passed new laws at the rate of 7.5 per day for every day they were in power. Apologies for the guardian link, but it came up early on google:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/jun/04/houseofcommons.uk

LucreLout

What I mean is, if he has written code that would habitually scrub data, be that passwords, or any old crud, and he then sold that to an unknown purchaser, what is he actually guilty of? What if the buyer was a sysadmin who had taken over an old system after loss of staff, and needed to route out old service account passwords etc. is that criminal? If he has sold code built to a specification, but the specification isn't "please write me some code so I can nick a load of dosh from some banks", then I can't really see what he has done wrong, apart from being a bit stupid and selling some sniffing code in a chat room.

Hmmm..... if you take a look on some of the pay by gig sites such as oDesk, you'll find opportunity after opportunity to write some code that spiders a video provision site and downloads the contents. It should be self evident to anyone reading it that the purpose is not "backups for the sysadmin", rather it is to steal the content, possibly for redistribution for profit.

At some level we all have to consider the impact, and potential impacts, of our actions. We can't just skate on by unless someone has given us a clear wirtten statement that they intend to use our work to break the law. Society, such that it is, simply cannot work that way.

LucreLout

Erm....Ok....so you took a guy from another country who was drunk at the time. Then you let him waive his Miranda Rights while drunk and sleep deprived.

Not to piss on anyones chips here, but the only evidence I've seen for that position is his lawyers assertion. Given that lawyers lie for a living, and to a man freely chose their 'profession', then I think we should give zero consideration to that statement unless and until some evidence emerges.

LucreLout
Joke

Are you one of the FBI agents?

He wasn't pretending to be a child, so probably not.

Julian Assange said to have racked up $5m security bill for Ecuador

LucreLout

The question is why are they still putting up with him.

Presumably protocol and future proofing.

Its generally frowned upon to grant someone asylum and then hand them over to their persuers. Assange is, if the reports are true, a horrific guest, but handing him over to the UK, then Sweden, then possibly the USA would diminish the likelihood of anyone ever claiming asylum in Ecuador again.

There's no question of the UK not arresting him and sending him to jail for bail jumping. So either he comes out and faces the music, or he dies on that couch. I just wish he'd do it without all the fuss.

Gradually, Ecuador might choose to make his stay progressively less comfortable in the hope that he eventually decides to man up and face the consequences of what are indisputably his own actions.

LucreLout

Re: 'There once was a time when [INSERT NAME HERE] were heroic figures'

Once the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Dr. Strangelove Kissinger, it lost all meaning, IMO.

If not then, then when it was awarded to Obama, who at the time had done literally nothing as President other than not be George Bush (either of them). Now, whether or not he deserved one for later works is a seperate debate, but at the point of its award, he literally hadn't done anything.

Navy names new attack sub HMS Agincourt

LucreLout
Joke

A bit pedantic, but it's "we happy few" not "we merry few".

Check again at last orders and you might find its "merry few".

LucreLout

Re: So sad

But it is hopeless for Agincourt unless you are a medieval historian.

Or you've ever gleaned the smallest understanding of why instead of sticking one finger up at transgressors, the English traditionally hold up two.

Latest from the coming AI robot apocalypse: we're going to be fine

LucreLout

This? Again?

Could we end up creating an army of digital James Damores? A group of closeted intelligent machines with narrow experience but access to just enough information to develop and reinforce prejudices? Yes, we could. Very easily.

Seriously, give the guy a break. What is it with this millennial inspired desperation to silence dissent and figuratively if not literally crush the dissenters? Damore did nothing wrong; he did nothing immoral; and in the main his points are well researched & reasoned. That is not to say they are correct, but he has taken a reasoned positiona nd should be reasoned against (if you believe he is wrong), not tarred & feathered.

The Register used to be better than this. Where has it gone so wrong?

Hey cool, you went serverless. Now you just have to worry about all those stale functions

LucreLout

Re: We are like lemmings...

The result will be one TSB and RBS after another. This will not end well.

Those are both a result of cheap offshore developers and support staff. When you choose to offshore, you choose to have that happen. It might sound crazy to us, but that isn't a fuck up, it's a feature of their management plan.

And, to be frank, it matters not what tools, languages, or technology cheap offshorians use, they're going to give you the same piss poor result time after time after time.....

LucreLout

Re: "Many of the most significant breaches were caused by unpatched servers"

..patching servers have never have really been an issue in any half decent organisation, even the likes of the NHS could do it.

Yes, but here again we meet the real world difference between could and did.

In theory I could get Kylie Minogue in bed, but really, will I? The odds of that are magnitudes better than the odds of the NHS patching its estate. With serverless, they no longer have the opportunity to screw it up.

There are draw backs, as the author points out, but most of these are readily manageable with a credible CI/CD pipeline and capable developers.

Serverless isn't a panacea, but it is the future. It just takes too long to have a server provisioned, installed in a DC, and available to developers. Yes, that might be more a function of organisational politics than technology, but serverless drives a coach an horses through that too.

As a dev, serverless moves problems from beyond my control, to mostly under my control. And as we know, things WE can change always change faster and better than things we have to rely on others to change.

AWS won serverless – now all your software are kinda belong to them

LucreLout

Yeah of course all enterprises are going to embrace a technology that puts them firmly in Amzon's pocket eternally.

The one I work for pretty much is. They have a two provider strategy (AWS, Azure) which varies by project or team. The cost of expanding our data centres proved too high. The cost of maintaining the existing ones has continued to be considerably more expensive than AWs or Azure.

The code (serverless functions) really isn't the problem, given the lifecycle of most IT systems is between 10 and 15 years at my current gaff. The real potential for lock in is the data. You'd not believe the battles I've had to ensure there is an on prem copy of anything we have in the cloud. If we have our data, we can rewrite the systems at the next upgrade and walk away from any provider.

So, while I'm busily preparing us for the future, when a cloudy provider tries the lock in shizzle, we're currently enjoying vastly lower TCO for our run book in the cloud, and much quicker time to market - thanks to politics and procedures and so very many teams involvement, it used to take 6 months to get new hardware fired up.... now it takes me about 6 minutes.

Make masses carry their mobes, suggests wig in not-at-all-creepy speech

LucreLout

Presumably anyone who gets hauled before the beak and is found to have put their phone on airplane mode will be hanged immediately, just in case they did something naughty while the state couldn't see them.

Quite. It's almost like he expects criminals to obey the law and carry their phone with them to make their activities easier to identify.....

Criminals are stupid. Not only did they commit a crime presumably expecting to not get caught, but they didn't undertake even minimal preparation first. For example, the number of criminals identified via fingerprints annually is not zero, despite their existence being common knowledge for over 100 years and gloves being available freely at most gas stations.

Criminals, however, aren't completely incapable of putting 2 + 2 together and some of them make at least vague attempts to avoid detection..... like leaving a phone at home, or turning it off (and extrating the battery + sim). Some might even, shock horror, nick a phone to use for tracking, commit a crime, then replace the phone, having incriminated someone innocent. "I wasn't there your honour" "Well, your phone says you were, so you were. Guilty!"

Robo-callers, robo-cops, robo-runners, robo-car crashes, and more

LucreLout

Re: Uber is at fault, but...

Any human driver would have seen and avoided here, the uber vehicle saw and ignored her, the uber driver was screwing around on their phone.

The main problem was the meatsack in the drivers seat was looking at the road for maybe 1 second in 10, which isn't enough for them to take over. First you watch the road, then when there's a spare second, you glance at the laptop, not the other way around. If they can't make that work thent he vehicles need to be double crewed - driver in the front ready to take over who does nothing but watch the road, and the nerd in the back tinkering with the lappy.

Bombshell discovery: When it comes to passwords, the smarter students have it figured

LucreLout

How about: smarter people may have a larger vocabulary or a greater imagination to come up with and then remember more complex passwords?

Or, to shorten that for those without good grades: Smarter people are less dumb.

I guess we can add a lifetime of getting pwned to the list of self inflicted harm stemming from f***ing around at school, along with crap grades, crap education, crap jobs, and crap salaries. I am of course, widely generalising here.

Work hard at school kids, or you'll have to work a helluva lot harder after it.*

* Based again on a sweeping generalisation that manual low skilled jobs are harder than more cerebral career jobs. I've done both, and while manual work was boring, it wasn't specifically hard - you just got paid crap all per hour so had to do a lot of hours.

US border cops told not to search seized devices just for the hell of it

LucreLout

Re: The obvious solution

The obvious solution

is to avoid going to that country in the first place.

I get sent for work a few times a year. america is a great place, filled on the whole with polite, friendly, and decent people. Judging the people of a country by their political leadership is a dangerous game - I certainly don't want to be judged on the basis of that most bloodthirsty of former prime ministers, Tony Blair.

Virtue singing – Spotify to pull hateful songs and artists

LucreLout

Bye Bye Hip Hop

The service has defined hateful as “content that expressly and principally promotes, advocates, or incites hatred or violence against a group or individual based on characteristics, including, race, religion, gender identity, sex, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, veteran status, or disability.”

Given near all hip hop songs glorify violence, misogyny, drugs, and hate, I can only presume Spotify has now delisted the whole genre? I expect rather a few skinhead favourites will also disappear.

Scrap London cops' 'racially biased' gang database – campaigners

LucreLout

Re: its a tough one.

The point is that there's a large number of people on the database who are there because they are black, not because they are gang members.

That simply cannot be true. There are around 800,000 black people in London, and only around 3000 black people on the gang database, thus people cannot be being added to the database just because they're black - it'd be 10x the size it is and growing fast.

Facts people, use them to form educated views. Emotions aren't worth anything in a rational debate, and only lead to opinions, which as we know are like assholes - everyones got one and most of them stink.

LucreLout

Reading again, it's saying that 27% of offenders are black.

Yes, agreed. The full para to save anyone else having to back track to the article and check is "In contrast, the black population of London is 13 per cent, while the percentage of black people actually identified as being responsible for serious youth violence in the capital is 27 per cent."

The problem here is the confusion of statistics. Gang violence isn;t all youth violence - they used 20 (I think) as a cut off for youth.

The real crime level due to blacks in london, whcih this database purports to realte to, is between 54% and 67%, and yes, I have a citation right here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_Kingdom

I quote "Of the recorded 18,091 such accusations against males, 54 percent accused of street crimes were black; for robbery, 59 percent; and for gun crimes, 67 percent."

Further it states "Black males accounted for 29 percent of the male victims of gun crime and 24 percent of the male victims of knife crime.[27] On sex offences, black men made up 32 per cent of male suspects. Similar statistics were recorded for females. On knife crime, 45 percent of suspected female perpetrators were black; for gun crime, 58 percent; and for robberies, 52 percent."

And in an attempt to show the colour blindness of the policing of this, we have the final quote from the link - "Between April 2005 and January 2006, figures from the Metropolitan Police Service showed that black people accounted for 46 percent of car-crime arrests generated by automatic number plate recognition cameras"

Now, as I've said earlier, white boys don;t get a pass - they may be under represented in the statistics, but they are still represented. Its just that statistically, black people in London commit most of the violent crime according to the evidence in wikipedia, despite making up just over 13% of the population of London. That, is one hell of an over representation, and by denying it because it is uncomfortable reading, we deny ourselves the opportunity to confront it, and we deny tomorrows victims any chance at a better future - remember, of the 62 (time of writing) murder victims in London so far this year, most have been black or asian. Again, citations follow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_London#Black_population_of_London

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5251268/london-stabbings-2018-knife-crime-statistics-woolwich-dlr-kensington-greenwich-twickenham/

It should be self evident and go without saying, but in an attempt to prevent the usual suspects drowning out a grown up debate on this subject, none of the black people I work with is involved in crime. None of my black friends (I only have 3) is involved in crime. Being black does not make you a criminal, but being a violent criminal in London does mean you're probably black. If we can just use statistics, numbers, and facts rather than emotion, the race card, and ideological (magical) thinking, we can begin to confront and so resolve the problem.

As a middle aged white man, my odds of being murdered in London are so low as to be almost non-existant, but I'd rather the hard of thinking shout racist at me than we simply continue to pretend that there is no porblem when all evidence to the contrary shows there is.

LucreLout

Re: Sadly

The argument seems to be "Most gang members are black, therefore we should target all black men".

The problem is its very difficult to target only the guilty. Investigations require questions and answers - if you don't ask them then you can't have results. If we could stop and search only those people with gang affiliation, then everyone would support that, but its simply not possible in reality.

I've been stopped and searched twice in my youth and each time walked away with an apology and a thank you from the officers. It is literally nothing to be afraid of. Yes, it is inconvenient, but since most kids carrying knives do so for protection from other people with knives (all surveys seem to show this), then the only answer is to search enough people that everyone stops carrying knives.

It won't be popular, but that stop & search IS going to have to be targetted disproportionately (though not exclusively) at young black males. Anything else would be racist - you'd literally be condemning them to disporportionately die in gang related violence because you didn't want to stop & search people because they were black.

LucreLout

Re: Sadly

Now this does NOT mean if you are black you will be a gang member; what it does mean if you are in a poor area, you are more likely to be black (as one example) and you are more likely to be in a gang.

While I agree with most of your post, this bit isn't quite right - there is a correlation but it is not causal. The whole of the North is a poor area compared to the south, but I grew up neither in a gang, nor black. Economics is not the driver for gang membership - broken homes and lack of fathers is, though this also has economic consequences too, which explains the correlation you highlight.

https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-297135944/relationship-between-broken-homes-and-academic-achievement

https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/report/how-broken-families-rob-children-their-chances-future-prosperity

https://www.ifs.org.uk/wps/wp0505.pdf

https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/core/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/causes_of_crime.pdf

https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/the-real-complex-connection-between-single-parent-families-and-crime/265860/

"criminologist Franklin Zimring, using the sort of careful regressions missing from Cohen's analysis, concludes that improved policing is the only plausible explanation for New York City's record drop in crime" and "there is no disagreement that the majority, and perhaps the large majority, of inmates grew up in fatherless homes"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8109184/Children-from-broken-homes-nine-times-more-likely-to-commit-crimes.html

"Seven out of 10 offenders come from broken homes"

LucreLout

Re: Sadly

Until we're able to discuss this stuff openly, we're condemning a generation of black boys/men to failure.

Absolutely.

As a society we have to accept and acknowledge that violent crime has serious distortions around age, gender, and race. It's no good the bed-wetters polishing up their deck of cards and getting ready to holler. Denying there is a problem with young black males assaulting and killing people, mostly each other, is condemning more of them to die, and that actually IS racist.

If most people on a gang database happen to be young black men then that is more likely than not because gangs more often than not consist of young black men. Self evidently, not all blacks are in gangs, and not all gangs are blacks, and nobody is suggesting otherwise.

Solving the problem is very much going to require targetted intervention and that very much is going to have to include policing, amongst other measures, and that is going to have to include stop and search. Or we can be racist, and just let more black boys die.

Hacking charge dropped against Nova Scotia teen who slurped public records from the web

LucreLout

Re: "no grounds to lay charges"

but it still shows as a an arrest on an enhanced DBS in UK, and you know what the say about smoke and fires eh?

Potentially more problematic is the inelligibility for the USA visa waiver program that is a requirement of many employers, including mine. In fairness to my employer, they utterly rely on that scheme due to poor planning at the admin tier.

The steaks have never been higher: Swiss Lidl is selling local cannabis

LucreLout

Re: Not just Lidl

Game, Set, and MATCH for high-THC pot.

Game, Set, and Munchies, surely?

I've got way too much cash, thinks Jeff Bezos. Hmmm, pay more tax? Pay staff more? Nah, let's just go into space

LucreLout

Re: @ jpo234

I have given you an upvote but I must disagree on one point. N.Korea is the only example of a socialist country working in this world so far.

Nobody sane could read any of the Times articles about North Korean death camps and make a statement like that. The current Kim is estimated to personally spend 20% of the countries GDP on himself, while the people starve.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/kim-jong-un-spent-over-600m-in-a-year-while-north-korean-citizens-starved-to-death-9145059.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_North_Korea

If you think North Korea is a working socialist country then I have a bridge to sell you.

LucreLout

Re: Another economically illterate article....

Then they are not getting a fair wage

Ahh, bleating about fairness. The first fall back of the economically illiterate. Ok, define fair. Then explain why everyone else should use your definition of fair rather than their own.

its even less fair to raise MY taxes in order to pay for the welfare

Ok, so you don't like paying taxes to find welfare, but you expect someone else to. Is that what you mean by fair? Because I'm fairly sure the dictionary defines that as hypocritical, not fair.

I might want my tax money to go on things like the NHS/roads/etc

You don't get to choose where taxes get spent. It's part of the moral hazard of paying them. Some people want to deprive the military of funding and spend it all on adminstration in the NHS. Some people want to fund the military so the staff don't get killed defending the country in preference to paying someone more to do a job that arguably doesn't need doing such as most middle manager roles.

"But people can live on the min wage" comes back the bleat

If you can't live on £16k then you aren't trying. If you want a better standard of living you need to get a better job. A better education has historically been key to that. Fucking about in school instead of knuckling down and learning has consequences, some of which are life long; those people don't deserve pity because they chose their life. Actions have consequences; they just do.

If you're prepared to live 2-3(or more) to a room in communal house with no hope of ever escaping that life, you can live nicely on the min wage

What diseased fantasy is this? Most people on minimum wage do not live 2 or 3 to a room. Provide a citation or accept that you're shitting your feelings all over the internet instead of forming a coherent position using facts.

As for the tax dodging...... he who pays the piper calls the tune.... and if your politicians can be bought and sold that easily, perhaps its time to change the system....

Change the system to what exactly? And what evidence have you that it would be a better system? We've already forever more ruled out any form of communism or socialism - they have failed literally everywhere they've ever been tried. There are no successful socialist countries and no successfull communist ones either (yes, I have been to China and their brand of capitalism makes ours look like a fluffy pet bunny).

LucreLout

Re: It all seems so futile

To be honest it all feels a little futile. The challenges to colonising space are beyond our capabilities I think.

Today, sure, but then 200 years ago the telegraph hadn't beeninvented so communicating with China meant sending a letter on a slow boat. Today I can video conference in high definition wihtout ever leaving my sofa.desk.

Land transport was limited to a few horsepower (literally), but today for not a lot of money I can buy a 2nd hand car with 500 horsepower and be in Italy for dinner.

Travelling to South America would have been a long arduous voyage that not all passengers would reasonably be expected to survive. I can leave now and hop on a plane and be there tonight.

Nothing has been achieved without incremental advancement, and colonising space can only possibly be brought about in the same manner.

LucreLout

What else do you have? China with it's turbo charged capitalism? North Korea (no comment needed)? Cuba?

There is no example of a working socialist country, none.

Even that most capitalist of socialist countries, France, is propped up year in year out by the CAP scheme.

LucreLout

The real problem is a legal system that allows the tax minimisation

But YOU minimise your taxes too. Why not show Bezos the way to go and simply write a cheque for say 20% of everything you own to the tax man. It'll fund stuff you know. Yeah, I'm not sending a cheque either, but at least I understand my position as a fellow tax minimiser.

LucreLout
Happy

Re: What to do with surplus money?

What would be the point of El Reg having votes if everyone was supposed to post reasons for their vote?

Upvoting saves lots of "I agree" or "Me too" type posts. Downvoting without explanation equates as "I feel you're wrong but don't have a reasoned position for why that might be". At least, that's how I htink about it.

*cough* downvoters have small willys.

LucreLout
Joke

Re: What to do with surplus money?

For people who like publicity like Bezos or Musk, saying "I'm going to make sure everyone in the world has a toilet" probably isn't the publicity they're looking for.

Sorry boss, I've gotta go take a quick Bezos....

"Where's Chikeze going?" "He's gone for a Musk before lunch"

I'm not sure I can wholly blame the billionaires.........

LucreLout

Re: What to do with surplus money?

Space tourism, or improving the lives of billions? Tricky choice.

The idea is that space tourism today saves the species tomorrow. Its no good saving lives today if a space rock obliterates the planet tomorrow. Both are laudible goals, but we really shouldn't be doing one to the exclusion of the other.

LucreLout

Another economically illterate article....

... how El Reg has fallen. And how it continues to sink.

"I am very lucky that I feel like I have a mission-driven purpose with Blue Origin that is, I think, incredibly important for civilization long term. And I am going to use my financial lottery winnings from Amazon to fund that."

Ok, so which part of this precisely does the author disagree with?

"What he neglected to mention was that German workers are paid so well because they held multiple strikes to force Amazon to actually pay a decent wage, and were supported by strong national employment laws that allowed them to do so."

If as the author posits, unions are the key to being well paid and driving an economy forward, can he explain how the 1970s were not the golden age of the British economy, what the phrase "Sick man of Europe" means in relation to the British economy, and what it was changed that made the 1980s one of the greatest economic periods in British history?

Your humble hack can't put it any other way. Wages in Amazon's warehouses, and in its other facilities, are low.

Well, yes, because its literally unstacking shelves. That type of work, which I have done myself previously, is never well paid by any employer in any city. Why Because the staff can be replaced in a day, and after a week they cease to become materially better at their job than a new starter. Sorry, but that is what warehouse work is.

Several large companies, including Walmart, are infamous for paying wages so low that the taxpayer sometimes has to fill in the gap.

And why does that state arise? It occurrs because the welfare system tries to bridge the gap between dependence on welfare and the world of work. The overlap can be removed at a stroke, but not without creating a significant disincentive to work. Take this job and keep some benefits (16 hours in the UK), or do nothing and keep them all.

And no doubt someone will chime in to say that if Amazon pays more in taxes and wages then its prices will rise and everyone loses, and obviously this is a moronic train of thought.

You think its moronic because you don't understand economics very well and because this little factoid undermines your entire screed.

You can't spend a dollar twice. If you spend an extra dollar on taxes you can;t spend it on R&D, wages, or business expansion that brings in more dollars. So unless you want to hamper your future growth, you need to minimise the amount of dead money you throw into the tax pit and maximise the amount of R&D you do, which is how come Amazon has been a success.

LLVM contributor hits breakpoint, quits citing inclusivity intolerance

LucreLout

Not sure, but when you have an occupation which is 90% men, you have to ask questions about whether there is an effective block on women.

When the occupation is 100% self selective, then you can only rationally conclude that there is no block on anyone.

LucreLout

Re: Good point but .....

This is NOT personal against the one BUT against the 'Many' that cannot be addressed in any other way. Unfortunately, there are victims to this stategy but it is for the long-term and greater good as all these things tend to be.

So let me see if I have this right. Todays straight white men, whose careers you are deliberately trashing by creating bias against them, should just shut up because hundreds of years ago some other straigth white men did something wrong. And you feel, because clearly no intelligent thought has been applied, that this is justice? It isn't; it really really isn't.

You feel aggrieved and 'Hard done by', please bear in mind that this is not a new experience for so many non-whites that can follow this back for generations and they know so well the feeling you are experiencing.

Obviously they don't or they wouldn't be so keen to inflict it upon others. Their ancestors might have, sure, but there's no real discrimination today. I look around my team and we have two straight black guys, one gay white woman, two indians - one batting for each team, and two straight white guys. I hired everyone in the team. All I did was hire the best developers that came for an interview. Their skin colour, sexual preferences, age, physical ability, and whether or not they sit down to pee simply weren't relevant. They could all have been straight white men, or all one legged black lesbians for all the difference it would have made to me - physical characteristics bear no relationship to code quality.

A little bit of patience would be appreciated as the wait has been so so long !!!

But it hasn't. You;re attempting to claim some hereditary disadvantage. Most SJWs tend to be in their 20s or early 30s. You've not waited for anything. Ever. That your great grandparents might have been discriminated against does not imply disadvantage to you or that you have waited for your perverse form of justice.

If we're going to be racist, then everyone should be free to be racist. If we're not going to have racism, then we can't have what you propose because it is just racism.

LucreLout

Is white male the wrong type?

It increasingly seems to me that the right-on crowd regard balls as a birth defect.... especially if coupled with white skin.

I hate racism & sexism, and positive discrimination is just that. There's no good racism and bad racism, there's only racism.

TSB's middleware nightmare: Execs grilled on Total Sh*tshow at Bank

LucreLout

ROFL...

.... bet all that outsourced and offshored IT isn't looking such a bargain now is it?

Any company of scale is now an IT company - you might be in banking, or insurance, or car production, or shipping; it doesn't matter. You are an IT company. If the CEO doesn't turn up nobody bar his PA will notice for a few days or weeks. Everyone notices within seconds when the technology doesn't work.

I trust that clarifies the "paying for talent" myth for any budding MBAs reading this.

No top-ups, please, I'm a millennial: Lightweight yoof shunning booze like never before

LucreLout

Re: They'll grow up

£143K will buy you a flat? That's nice, I guess you live somewhere where that'll get you a flat that isn't so far away from where you work you might as well just change jobs.

No, 143k will get you a house. It might not be in central london, but it will get you a house in or near almost any other city in England.

I've already demonstrated at length why a minimum wage couple working a full time week can afford to buy it. That you don't want it to be true doesn;t change the facts as demonstrated.

Except that the jobs close enough to affordable housing don't pay enough to reach the £143k mortgage.

And yet they do. Two minimum wage earners can reach that house with just 18 mnths of saving for a deposit.

As others have pointed out, saving for a deposit isn't exactly possible in less than a decade eithe

Except that it is, as I've already shown with crystal clear maths, and citations to back this up. Everyone else has just whined that it isn't so, but can't disprove a single word I've said. Why might that be I wonder.

average rent on a single bed flat round me is £700+, so assuming you don't eat much, and have nothing else at all to spend money on, you could maybe save £1000 a year. It's normal to only go on holiday once every five years right?

If you're a minimum wage earner then go earn minimum wage somewhere cheaper. If £700 is the cheapest place you can find to rent then you must be in zone 1 London, or you simply feel that you're too good to rent a cheaper gaff. And, as I've already explained, facts matter, your feelings don't.

If you want to prioritise going on holiday over saving for 18 months to buy your own home, then whose fault is it really that you can't afford to buy? Find a mirror and look in it; what you see if the cause of all your problems.

LucreLout

Re: They'll grow up

Minimum wage jobs within walking distance:

The job market isn't that lenient.

Yes it is. It absolutely is. The commuting cost for a minimum wage job is a short walk away from almost every single address in England. £0.00

As far as I can tell, you are saying that it's damn hard to build a deposit even if there is right house in the right place near the right job and it's the buyer's fault if these three options don't line up.

Saving for 18 months isn't damn hard. Its a very short time to need to save a deposit - many people save for several years, I know I did.

Its the buyers fault if they think they should be able to buy a modern family home in a nice area "because they're worth it" when they haven't applied themselves well enough to have the income that would fund it. Who elses fault could that be?

All buyers can afford to live somewhere. Some buyers can afford to live where they wish. It's always been that way. It always will be. The main difference is Millennials moan about it like no other generation before or since, because they seemt o expect to have instant gratification for their least little whim. Why is that, I wonder?

Finally, you made me doubt myself enough that I put this through a calculator, but I can confirm that 1200-(400+100+150+40+40+30+80)=360

See, you've gone wrong. One of those 40s is the nonexistant commute you keep demanding someone do for no other reason than it makes your argument £10 a week less wrong. If you think you can name a single town or city in the UK where there are not minimum wage jobs within an hours walk, name it. There isn't one.

LucreLout

And to those that say, oh, anyone ca can still afford a house, that wasn't my point, people can still have housing, they just have less money left over to spend on other things than that of previous generations.

Well yes, because assets appreciate over time. Try buying 10,000 Apple shares now and it'll cost you more than it would have cost your mam & dad.

Proving with numbers that buying a house is theoretically possible doesn't really address the point.

You've been born at a time when houses are expensive. Other things are cheaper - travelling the world has never been so cheap or accessible. Owning a car or a computer has never been cheaper. Getting laid has never been easier. Education has never been more accessible.

Its swings and roundabouts - you can't take the good without the bad. If you want a house, buy a house. If you'd prefer to spend you money on crushed avocado toast then have at it. Just don't complain when you find you can't spend the same pound twice.

LucreLout

Re: They'll grow up

Hold on a second - playing with a 40 mile radius is a whole different board game

Yes, it is. It opens a whole world of possibility and opportunity.

Before I got a car, commuting 5 miles on public transport was an hour each way (this is where I got my transport costs from). Anything over 10 miles on public transport would be intolerable.

And yet I do so every single working day and have done for decades. Pretty well everyone that works in London but does not live there (about 3 million people) endure this, so I'm afraid there is no reason why any of us would consider that unreasonable.

Further, as explained, we're talking minimum wage - just get a job where you live, or find out where you can afford to buy and get a job there. It's minimum wage - by definition literally any job will do.

Your argument with a 40 mile radius is only valid if you accommodate for owning a car in which case available money plummets due to the running and maintenance costs of the horrible little rustbucket that you'd be able to afford.

Nope, wrong. See above.

Also, I use a 40 mile radius because that's pretty much MY commute, and I do it on public transport. Commuting is not required for a local minimum wage job, but I thought as its a distance I and millions of others commute daily, it'd make a simple example for how anyone could buy within a reasonable proximity of almost anywhere in the UK.

Not impossible but very hard and even then you need to find the right house in the right place which doesn't necessarily exist.

Of course its hard, but I've deliberately made the 'buyer' as far down the income scale as is legally possible to show that even then, property may be bought with as little as 18 months of hard saving. A few hours overtime a day would have that well under a year.

The right place is whatever place you can afford to live. For minimum wage there will be jobs within walking distance for almost any town or city in the UK.

LucreLout
Facepalm

Re: They'll grow up

The sums also do not account for putting money into a workplace pension.

That's because its entirely optional that you do so..... much like a coke & hookers budget it can be foregone for a period of time sufficient to accrue a deposit.

https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/opting-out-your-workplace-pension

LucreLout

Re: They'll grow up

What's overtime? When I was on the minimum wage, I wasn't able to claim overtime for anything. If you don't claim overtime then you're looking at working evenings in a supermarket or something similar.

And working overtime in a supermarket is a problem why, exactly? Its a job I've held myself many moons ago.

Please also explain where you get £400 from as my maths is clear.

Add up the left column. Either you've done your maths wrong or you're not being realistic about which number you should be adding.

Libraries may be free but good luck finding one near you.

https://www.statista.com/topics/1838/libraries-in-the-uk/

Well, there's over 4000 of them in the UK. Someone must be living near them.

Same with museums.

https://www.museumsassociation.org/about/frequently-asked-questions

There's over 2500 of them too. Are you suggesting they are all in places nobody lives? has anyone told their directors?

There are many reasons not to buy a flat, most of which have been extolled by other commentators so I won't repeat it here.

There are many reasons not to buy anything. You're talkinng about minimum wage first time buyers here - if they aren't supposed to be buying the cheaper properties then please advise who it is you think should be? It'd beillegal for someone to be in a worse financial position and yet still they can own a home if they choose to do so.

While I agree that it's not impossible for a single person to successfully save enough money to get onto the housing ladder, it's damned hard.

'twas ever thus and thus it will ever be.

Having recently been through the pain of buying my first house, I can guarantee that you'll need more than 7.5k in the bank to successfully buy the house too through conveyancer's fees, survey costs and moving costs.

Ok, chuck on another 2k for costs and move yourself (I did). You're still talking about a deposit for a first home in around 18 months on minimum wage. That just is not a problem, not a real one anyway. The expectation gap between what is affordable and what is desireable is where the real problem lies.

LucreLout

Could the answer be anything to do with the proliferation of buy-to-let landlords, privatised housing associations and/or foreign millionaires investing their wealth in a burgeoning property market?

It almost certainly is SOMETHING to do with it, just maybe not quite as you imagine.

BTL makes up 5 million of over 26 million properties. Its not nothing, but its not driving the market in the way many people assume it is - its just too small a group.

https://homelet.co.uk/letting-agents/news/article/how-many-landlords-and-tenants-are-there-in-the-uk

Foreign ownership makes up only about 100k properties, which is frankly a rounding error.

https://www.step.org/news/nearly-100000-properties-england-and-wales-owned-foreign-entities

Socialised property (housing associations etc) makes up another 5 million out of over 26 million.

https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2015/nov/18/who-lives-41-million-social-housing-homes-england-wales

So the entities you describe collectively make up less than half of the market. They ARE responsible for some of the current price level, but probably less so than the advent of women joining the workforce in huge numbers and the ballooning population caused by longevity increases, immigration, and birth rate. That, and the increasing trend to live alone.

LucreLout

I pretty little chart:

https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/5568/housing/uk-house-price-affordability/

A pretty little chart that ignores societal changes over 40 years, such as women moving into the workforce, and mock-shock-horror obtaining educational qualifications and careers rather than just doing low level shop work.

Mortgage payments as a percentage of income looks unchanged over the period of your graph and is lower than when I left school.

Affordability is basically unchanged over the data series in the graph provided.

There's something for everyone in the data in the link provided, but none of that alters the fact that literally anyone in the UK can afford a home of their own - they only have to prioritise the deposit for a year or two, even if they earn minimum wage and refuse to work a single hour of overtime to help themselves.