i.e. the Government and GCHQ spying on members of the general public who have the gall to criticise them
Posts by Dr Fidget
49 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jan 2015
GCHQ's NCSC warns of 'realistic possibility' AI will help state-backed malware evade detection
Why do IT projects like the UK's scandal-hit Post Office Horizon end in disaster?
Ignorance and lack of useful skills
Most members of Government (and this one in particular) have absolutely no knowledge of IT, systems, analysis or anything else besides how to get rich, give bungs to their mates, ancient Greek and Latin etc. We're some what short of anyone with basic mathematical or analytical skills up at the top, just the ability to give orders and dodge responsibility.
COVID-19 infection surge detected in wastewater, signals potential new wave
Well, sod you lot.
Must be nice to be young, healthy without any aged relatives in care homes or other friends or relatives who are at risk.
I do hope you get a nice strong dose of long Covid and then try and get a bed in the overcrowded NHS hospital - or are you in the 1% and can afford private care and you don't give a f*ck about anybody else?
National Grid latest UK org to zap Chinese kit from critical infrastructure
UK government woefully unprepared for 'catastrophic' ransomware attack
Think tank calls for monitoring of Chinese AI-enabled products
Mark Zuckerberg would kick Elon Musk's ass, experts say
IBM's motto is 'Think' – its CEO reckons AI can do that as well as some workers
Why UK watchdog abandoned its Apple monopoly probe
Scientists speak their brains: Please don’t call us boffins
Re: Hmmm
‘I’ll tell you,’ said Vimes. ‘A monarch’s an absolute ruler, right? The head honcho—’
‘Unless he’s a queen,’ said Carrot.
Vimes glared at him, and then nodded.
‘Okay, or the head honchette—’
‘No, that’d only apply if she was a young woman. Queens tend to be older. She’d have to be a … a honcharina? No, that’s for very young princesses. No. Um. A honchesa, I think.’
Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett
Subsidies? All UK chip industry needs is tax, rule tweaks, claims rightwing thinktank
Surely there's a 'chum' somewhere
I thought the Tory way of handling things like this was to find a 'chum' (Eton old-boy, neighbour down the road, somebody I met at the golf club, ...) who may make a decent donation to the party (or the PM of the day) and bung them a few £millions, no questions asked.
Techies ask PM to 'prepare UK chip strategy as a matter of urgency'
Brit civil service claims there's enough money for mammoth ERP refresh project
EU takes another step towards US data-sharing agreement
San Francisco politicians to vote on policy endorsing lethal force for robots
Is it time to retire C and C++ for Rust in new programs?
Your job was probably outsourced for exactly the reason you suspected
Get over it: Microsoft is a Linux and open source company these days
Logitech's MX Mechanical keyboard, Master 3S mouse
UK Home Office dangles £20m for national gun licence database system
Actual metal being welded in support of the UK's first orbital 'launch platform'
Pension cold-calling financial services biz cops largest ever fine from UK data watchdog
Hitting underground pipes and cables costs the UK £2.4bn a year. We need a data platform for that, says government
Intel's €80bn European chip plant investment plan not bound for UK because Brexit
You want me to do WHAT in that prepaid envelope?
It's important, really importan
In 2015 my results came back requesting another sample - end result, positive. Then a colonoscopy showing up a tumour.
At this point I had NO SYMPTOMS whatsoever.
I ended up with a stay in hospital, a loss of 50cm of lower bowel, an incision running from sternum to groin held together with 36 stables and an ileostomy bag for 6 months while the gut healed.
Not a lot of fun but if it hadn't been for this test I'd be DEAD now!
O2 UK overcharged exiting customers by £40.7m over 7+ years: Ofcom slams senior managers, fines it £10.5m
O2 Engineers
Since early January I've had b*gger all phone signal at home and all I see from O2 is a "Looks like a nearby phone mast isn’t working as it should, sorry. Our engineers are likely to be on the case already, and your service might come and go until we fix it." message.
I assume that O2 engineers wear a tutu, have little wings and a twinkly wand - or is that the fairies at the bottom of my garden?
UK.gov awards seats on £2bn 'digital outcomes' framework to suppliers – one of which doesn't even have a website
Arm at 30: From Cambridge to the world, one plucky British startup changed everything
NHS: Thanks for the free work, Linux nerds, now face our trademark cops
Major shareholder: BT CEO Gavin Patterson should step down
Media mogul Murdoch's 'Sky dataset' swallow poses 'grave threat'
No problem
This is Rupert Murdoch we're talking about (News of the World, Sun etc.) - he has a history of being untrustworthy. How can any decent Government, concerned about Democracy and the rights of their citizens, even contemplate allowing him even more control of the propaganda sources? Oh, I forgot, he OWNS this British Government as he did the previous one, and the one before that, and the one before that ...
France and UK want to make web firms liable for users' content
Google's Grumpy code makes Python Go
Apple's CEO Tim Cook declines invitation to discuss EU tax ruling with Irish parliament
Microsoft just got its Linux Foundation platinum card, becomes top level member
Samsung Note 7: Probably the best phone in the world. Yeah – you heard right
Are EU having a laugh? Europe passes hopeless cyber-commerce rules
Re: They aren't entirely mad.
Don't know about other countries but I've got a couple of 14 ltr cans of 'family' olive oil (i.e. from the sister-in-law's olives) sat waiting for me in Crete. When I went into one of the couriers to get some idea of the cost of shipping they just said it just wasn't worth the cost of shipping it to the UK.
Hypersonic flight test hits Mach 7.5
They reckoned with Concorde it took more time to get on and off the plane than it took to cross the Atlantic. With this sort of system it's going to take more time to get on and off the plane than to fly round the world.
Spot the bottleneck here?
Being told to get to the airport ages before the flight is due to depart, queueing up for ages to hand over hold baggage, queueing up again for airport security which is completely inconsistent (on one flight to Crete I went through 3 sets of airport security and got different results from each)
Sod faster aeroplanes, I'd rather not spend most of my trip stuck in the "hurry up and wait" system for boarding and leaving and I'd definitely prefer more comfortable seats, a bit of leg room, larger windows and not having the flight crew keep waking me up to see if I've changed my mind about buying a blow up model of the plane.
Greenpeace leaks TTIP texts, reveals strained negotiations
Microsoft, Google bury hatchet – surprisingly, not in each other
Britain is sending a huge nuclear waste shipment to America. Why?
Now you can tailor Swift – on Ubuntu
Let Europeans sue America for slurping their data – US Senate
Drunk? Need a slash? Avoid walls in Hackney
Rip up secretive patent royalty deals, says new tech'n'biz coalition
Jail incompetent council folk who leak our data, thunders furious BBW
Britain needs more tech immigrants, quango tells UK.gov
Training - what's that?
Anything bar train your own staff.
Once upon a time when there were significant levels of corporation taxes it made sense to put money back into a business to do such things as train staff and invest in new equipment as that was tax deductable. Now it's all based on short term milking as much money from the profits as possible to the shareholders who'll just move on when the business looks like it's failing.
I'll build a Hyperloop railgun tube-way in Texas, Elon Musk vows
It's the track stupid.
The problem with this idea is the same problem monorails have - the track, specifically the points.
It's simple building a special, fancy track to run point-to-point but a real rail network needs to switch traffic from track to track. In fact in a point-to-point system being able to switch traffic between tracks is esssential unless you want to close the entire network when a bit of track maintenance is needed.
There have been lots of designs for amazing vehicles running on tracks but the stumbling point so far has always been building the track when I see a solution for this I'll start taking it seriously, otherwise it's just another fantasy.