Posts by anothercynic 2076 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Dec 2014
Correct. Most of them do, in fact. The door is only not installed (and replaced by the plug) if the amount of seating is below a certain threshold. Most European and Asian airlines load them up. United likes their fancy biz class up front, and so does Alaska, so the number of passengers drops to below the threshold.
Funny you should mention Speed Queen...
I have an Indesit washing machine that has just celebrated its 20th anniversary. A washing machine is only as good as you treat it... In those 20 years, the only thing I've had to replace was the broken door handle. Everything else still running as expected. :-)
Ahhh yes, let's blame Biden, when it actually was the orange Trumpet and his cohorts in Congress that started this slide down the slippery slope. And given the current administration is given no choice but to horsetrade with the MAGA brigade in the House of Representatives and the horde of lobbyists that rule Congress by proxy, there's not much left to be said.
And yes, absolutely, this *is* China giving the rest of the world the big middle finger. I don't see why they shouldn't.
Dear Tesla, freedom of speech does not equal freedom from consequences. That's what the DMV (and actually the DoT and FTSB) is for... making sure you don't bullshit people and get them killed.
Sorry Tesla, you're wasting money you should spend on fixing your labour relations, your quality control and your 'Autopilot' instead.
Famously, there was an issue with the Airbus A380 wiring... why? It's claimed by some that the Germans and Spanish were using Computervision, whilst the French and English used CATIA, and two different computer models were in use during early manufacture. However, there are plenty who dispute that story because apparently CATIA never handled wiring bundles (but from all accounts, it's Computervision that was 2D and didn't do 3D models the way CATIA did). Only Airbus knows the truth to this, we only know that the end result was a delay of a few years (and a cost of a couple of billion euros) while all the wiring had to be redone on the early production aircraft. Airbus also quickly ensured that all production sites used the same version of the software for the next project.
Funny that... Germany is full of those entrepreneurs and surprisingly they don't have a problem with this. Why? Maybe because they understand that their workers are fundamentally important to the process of making stuff, and that without workers, you don't get anything done? And they know being an asshole does not get you plaudits from your workers, and they give you the middle finger instead?
And Honda only closed Swindon because of cost pressures (including Brexit, despite their denials that it was not Brexit killing the plant), *not* because of unions. If anything, Honda bent over backwards to try and get their workers in Swindon either reemployed elsewhere or retrained to be able to start a job in a different industry *thanks* to the union.
Yes, the unions in the past were ruinous to the UK automotive industry, but only because the owners of the brands/factories were trying to do things that would have been detrimental to the workers. Wouldn't *you* (not you specifically, Anon) want to have representation that makes sure you get a great deal? And again, yes, sometimes it seems the unions are so stuck in a rut that they don't see the forest for the trees (which then leads to job losses and the like).
There are swings and roundabouts to being either in a union or in an industry represented by a union. Some are good, some are bad. But in the Nordics, unions have been a positive influence because they broadly represent the spirit of Nordic society (looking after one another). Tesla would do well to get over their opposition to unionist movements and negotiate a deal.
If you think that taking the benefits away will induce the likes of Tesco to pay their staff better, think again.
Up the minimum wage to a level that takes into account the benefits needed to live reasonably *and* remove the appropriate benefits, and only then *might* you see Tesco et al shift position. Although, knowing how senior/executive management in the UK thinks/acts, they still wouldn't shift position because their shareholders will demand they continue to pay generous dividends and cut costs (which in turn spirals down to less staff, or more price depression on the supplier end).
You seem to have overlooked the words "taught from home..."
While I agree with you that basic life skills have to come from the parents too, it sometimes is simply not the case. Either the *parents* don't even have these basic skills because *their parents* didn't teach them, or they've fallen into that trap of "yeah, the school'll teach 'em". That in turn leads to teachers being in a virtually impossible situation where they are expected to teach kids things, but all too often the parents then go in and say "why are *you* teaching my kid(s) this, that's not your job" when others expect them to do exactly that... Change has moved so fast that knowledge is simply not passed on between generations.
But that's not what everyone's being taught (by ads or by instructions from dentists). Everyone assumes that everyone can afford the basics. As we've seen, that's definitely not the case (with food banks asking that it's not just food that is donated, but also basic hygiene essentials like nappies, soap and toothpastes/toothbrushes).
Ask yourself why there is an NHS dentist shortage... Because the NHS (well, the government, who set the contracts through the DfH) wants to pay them a pittance to do work, and they're not willing to.
But that said, there is a lot to be said about basic healthcare that should be taught from home and from primary school (or preschool) onwards, but at the same time, if you are on the bread line and can barely afford to keep the heat on, would you rather spend 2 quid on food for your child, or 2 quid on toothpaste? And there is a large segment of people on either minimum wage or just above it who have to make those judgment calls on a weekly (if not daily) basis.
I was going to point this out... The continent is doing a damn sight more than we are when it comes to asylum seekers. And we then try our utmost, thanks to the xenophobes and populists in government, to kill off any legal avenues for seeking asylum, effectively making the situation worse, not better. The only reason why 'illegal' migration has shot up is because we've failed to deal with our obligations as we're expected to. It's easy to point fingers and claim that "those illegal migrants are at fault", when it's actually this embarrassment of a government fails to either help those who helped us (in Afghanistan) or fails to help those who have relatives here and who would integrate here and become taxpaying residents.
They didn't *forcibly* expel people, but the process of a) getting work here, and proving you had the right to work here, and b) continuing to work here whilst you as a foreigner were vilified in the press day in and day out certainly persuaded a *lot* of people that the UK was no longer worth it.
Case in point: The seasonal farm workers that used to come to the UK to harvest whatever we had to harvest, the butchers that used to come over from the continent to slaughter pigs, turkeys and the like that were here temporarily... they all stayed away in recent years. Why (COVID notwithstanding)? Because they needed a visa to get here. And the visa cost money. And they lived in crap conditions, worked for a pittance, and then were unceremoniously told to piss off back to where they came from once their visa would expire. So, they did what anyone else would do... go where no visa was necessary, where the weather was nicer, pay was maybe lower but you were treated better.
There was a period where the NFU and various other industries had to point out that veg and fruit were left rotting in the fields, that pigs and turkeys had to be destroyed because they couldn't be exported to the EU to be slaughtered elsewhere (because the embarrassment that was the Johnson government decided to cut off our nose to spite our face), and things are *not* improving in that respect! Recruiters in Eastern Europe pointed out that when they were canvassing for folks to come over on a seasonal worker visa, they were told "why would I want to do that? I can go to Spain and get paid better, live better, and take more money home!"
You see, *we* in the UK might think that those Romanians and Bulgarians and Hungarians, Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians, the Poles and the Czechs don't read our newspapers and don't listen to what hatred for foreigners our government spews out on a weekly basis, but they do. They follow closely what's happening here. And they voted with their feet. They went to Spain. They went to Portugal and France. They helped out in Germany and Italy. They didn't bother coming to the UK. Why would they? We don't want them! Well, unless of course it's harvesting our veg and fruit and be paid a pittance for it. We gave them the middle finger. They gave us theirs in return.
And don't kid yourself, the NHS has the same problem. Junior doctors are leaving for Australia and other countries. Why? Because a) their working conditions will be better compared to the UK (actual regular shifts, not the current 'your official shift is X, but you're expected to work beyond that to cover for staff shortages'), and b) they are paid a damn sight better. How do I know? I've seen the ads the Australian government aims at them! "Come to Australia! We'll pay you at least 20% more than what you get in the UK, we'll treat you better, *and* you get nicer weather too!!" they say. Nurses are seeing the same kind of thing happening to them! There are NHS trusts running on fumes staff-wise and regularly declare emergencies, because they either have a toxic work environment and their staff have quit in droves, or they've had a lot of foreign nurses at some point who were all effectively told "there's the door, see ya". Of course, there's also the problem with funding in that the embarrassment that is our current government is 'cutting taxes' by cutting NI and NHS supplements that we pay, and refuse to fund the NHS better.
I know several postgrads and postdocs (researchers) who've reacted to the latest announcement with "FU UK!" (I'm sure it's quite clear what they mean) - They've studied here, but can't continue their research because their salaries, once just about above the threshold, suddenly no longer are, and that will have to be justified to the Home Office when it comes to their visa renewal.
This country is on such a self-destructive bender, God only knows what the end game is.
Johnson is no longer a US Citizen. He went through the painful (!) process of having his US citizenship revoked. As you can imagine, the US was not pleased, given that they now don't get a slice of his income regardless of whether he is US resident or not. And that turd swanning about in the celebrity jungle right now has second citizenship of another country. They should've declined him that on the basis that he campaigned for 'taking back control' and wanting to cut off the EU.
Cutting the rate of tax does not help the ones further down the ladder. Raising the limit before the inheritance tax kicks in on the other hand does. As you point out, if your estate is above the lower limit today, and the limit was raised, you might find that your estate completely escapes the requirement for inheritance tax, whereas if they just diddled the rate, your beneficiaries would *still* have to pay inheritance tax, albeit a little less. Of course, if you have a spouse, they would possibly be exempt.
But this is where you start doing some estate planning, using the tools that exist in the law books. You would be an absolute fool not to do so! This is how the high-end protect their assets against being stripped by the government.
It's not just the housing market that is broken beyond repair. It's *everything*.
Pascal taught people structure where in COBOL and BASIC there wasn't that much (other than the really stiff punchcard-style structure of COBOL or the basic stuff in BASIC). That said, if you did play with BASIC, Pascal was a doddle, whereas if you knew COBOL better, Pascal was... an adjustment.
If you knew C, Pascal was... "Why are you stopping me from doing X!?"
Ironically, I found TP7 to be the best thing for anything non-Windows (i.e. DOS and protected mode), because it included the option to write assembler code inside Pascal. For Windows GUI apps, Delphi made a lot more sense, because the GUI was fully OO and you could actually let the GUI handle all its own events while you got on with whatever else you needed. Delphi Standard was pretty good, Delphi Enterprise was of course the dog's bollocks.
Famously, the SRHTML98 tool (awesome for doing search & replaces in Windows on huge files, compared to Notepad) was a Delphi app.
Correct. That's exactly what's being meant. The A380 only started flying in the mid-2000s, and several of the oldest ones have been returned to lessors (by Singapore Airlines) and are either being parted out or have been bought by other airlines (like HiFly, who are a charter carrier, who've also since dropped it from their fleet).
There was a Russian airline (Transaero) that had an order but they eventually dropped out without ever taking delivery.
Debatable. The beta channel is for "we think we ironed out the bugs, can you verify and try stuff that we haven't thought of", not "well, we added support, but didn't really test what happens when you plug in 64 devices at the same time and yank the cable out three seconds later"...
Just saying. Beta testing is to make sure your production-ready thing is... production-ready. And based on my experiences with Microsoft a decade ago, that was definitely not the case then.
Iterative testing led to Falcon 9. It's what got SpaceX off the ground in the first place. That's what SpaceX did differently to other organisations... Musk was willing to fail often (provided the money was there - of which he stumped up a shedload to pay for three launches).
Shotwell had the connections at the USAF (she was the one who got Musk access to Vandenberg, and by extension, to Kwajalein). And she was able to persuade USAF brass that Musk was not a playboy with big toys going boom, but rather someone who was very serious about getting a rocket business started (hence them letting him have a little corner in Vandenberg, and then later the launch pad in the Marshalls).
The fact that SpaceX is doing well and is hauling in money (and has enough spare to have a couple of iterative 'boom' moments with Starship) shows that there's a *LOT* that Musk and his space engineers did right, as much as he deserves to get all the flak he does for messing up Twitter (and maybe Tesla).
There's a lot some of the NASA contractors could learn from SpaceX.
Yes, and that (the fact they almost succeeded) should be a major warning to those who value democracy in the truest sense of the word. The last time there was such a major putsch in a major 'Western' economy, the world quickly was embroiled in a major world war.
And yes, conversely, those who planned the January 6th events now also know what they must change for it to possibly succeed. And *that* should now also be a major warning to those who value democracy.
Since 2008? That makes you a newbie compared to some of us...
The only thing that's chapped *my* lips since 1996 is that El Reg went from 'proppa British' to 'American' - But times change, and their readership has changed, and thus their language has to appeal to their changed readership (read "they went American because more Americans read this site than Brits do"), so it's not something that'd have irked me forever.
But left-wing bias? No, more like "common sense bias". If that is "left wing" to you, then maybe you may want to consider how far on the right/nutcase scale you are to consider their publication of common-sense articles "left wing".
You're always welcome to start a "non-left wing" kind of tech site and see how well that goes.
Cum-Ex is dodgy whichever way you swing it, and various EU countries have pointed this out. It's caught quite a few companies in Germany because they also thought they were clever.
And yes, unfortunately, without a proper root-and-branch review of tax laws in all jurisdictions across the planet, there will always be loopholes between jurisdictions that can be exploited. And it's not just large companies... small companies can also take advantage of these things, provided they have tax lawyers that make it viable.
And it's tax avoidance, not tax evasion. At least not until the scheme is declared illegal, at which point the former becomes the latter if you continue with it.
Bingo, well said, Kristian.
That's exactly it. And also, in the nineties, if you as an individual worked as a contractor to a US company but weren't resident in the US, the US authorities didn't do what you would expect (i.e. do a PAYE-style tax demand on what you earned), but at the same time, if the country you were resident in expected tax paid at source (i.e. in the US), you effectively worked tax-free until you repatriated your money to the country you were resident in. The US authorities went "not our problem", and your country of residence went "actually, it is, please sort it".
Now the EU goes *retrospectively* "actually, Ireland, it's your problem". Ireland has resolved a lot of these loopholes, but the US continues to ignore the ones it has (like the Delaware corporation problem, the Nevada corporation problem, and the tax domicile of nowhere problem) because it benefits the US and its corporations. The Netherlands has a similar attitude to the US because their view is that getting pennies on the pound in tax is still better than nothing per pound, and they've been rather lax/lazy in fixing the 'Stigting' problem that's traditionally been part of the double Irish Dutch sandwich and vice versa.
Sounds like someone's crying sour grapes... so what if you spend nearly a million bidding for a contract... when you win it, you're quids in and you rake in the dosh, as clearly Atos has (74 times the amount they 'spent bidding'). Clearly Tata knows the environment better (or they were deliberately being obtuse to scupper the Atos deal).
Either way, bidding is 'good' for the market, but the way the bidders (and the eventual winners) tie themselves into things isn't really.
And yeah, NEST needs to seriously reconsider how they did the bidding process and see what they learn from it.
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