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Comment Re: Switched to paper bags? (Score 1) 197

Any question which does not address the full lifetime of the bag is stupid, and probably intended to be misleading.

This.

The 10p light weight one-time use plastic bags which were then used for rubbish disposal, going neatly into the "recycling" process have been replaced by £1 "bags for life" with about 100 times more plastic in them, hang around for a while being used two or three times, and then split along the seams, then hang around a bit longer waiting to be returned for a free replacement before they go in the trash because no one is going to take a torn bag back and argue with the shop stuff that they are entitled to a replacement.

The net result is at least 4 times more oil is consumed to make four times more plastic to go in the rubbish cycle.

The main beneficiaries are the supermarkets who get you to pay for expensive plastic bags instead of giving you free ones, and the green lobby who get to gloat over their "success".

For the rest of us, it is a daily proof that politicians cannot be trusted to deliver a working policy on anything, anywhere, at any time.

Why are my GBP turning into Australian pounds?

Submission + - Death to mouse-overs 1

Anne Thwacks writes: Let us demand a block of the idiocy that is mouse-overs: they are normally over large, constantly hide the thing you are trying to click on, and are a generally a bloody nuisance . They most certainly should never be on by default. If they are, then the first mouse-over popup on each side, and for each opening of a browser, should ask "do you hate mouse-overs and wish evil things befall their creators?" or at least allow them to be disabled (the mouse-overs, not their evil creators).

Comment Re:Finally, a Brexit bonus! (Score 1) 98

It's been chucking it down with rain here in the UK, and cool enough to think seriously about wearing a coat if you have to go out.

Still rates as a heat wave in the UK, though.

However, when it does get cold enough that you actually do have to wear that coat, public transport and pensioners will collapse from the cold.

Comment Like the Evil bit, but different ... (Score 2) 98

We need a "Porn" bit that is defined by user user login, and sent with TCP/IP packets to say that the user is OK with receiving adult content#. The Administrator who creates accounts can then say which accounts have the bit set. By default it is not set.

If someone is able to hack their account settings, then either* :

  • They are old enough to watch adult content
  • They are perfectly capable of bypassing any other protection divisible by humans

Alternatively, packets containing adult content could have the Porn bit set, and the recipient's machine machine do the censorship.

Notes
# Defining adult content is a fraught issue. In my experience, Europe and America have totally different ideas of what is adult material. * "protection" devised by AI is unlikely to work as intended.

It might also be worth having a GDPR bit. If set, your data must be protected according to the GDPR laws. If your Locale is in Europe, this should be set automatically.

Comment Re:Contaminated Control Sample (Score 1) 249

This is the UK, not the US. It is a different world.

People with little or no income receive "benefits" through an amazingly complicated network of rules that is mostly incomprehensible, and as a result, so I was told, it costs GBP30 in bureaucracy for each GBP1 paid in benefits, if any one person is earning significant money.

Consequently, on the face of it, a system based on "just give them the f'ing money, damn it!" would likely be massively cheaper

The present system has the highly undesirable side effect of demolishing families where one parent works and the other does not, and splintering family houses into houses of multiple occupancy because if a large number of adults live in the same "family" (as determined by nameless government officials) no one gets any benefits.

Also, with the present system, if you take a short term job because your employer went bust, then you will end up with 5 weeks of no income before, and another five weeks with no income after the short term job, so, unless the pay is incredibly high, you won't take the job, because the consequence is likely to be you and your children starving.

in short, the present system sucks in every possible way, and something must be done. "Just give them the money" is something that is very cheap indeed to any realistic alternative in the UK.

The objections come from people who are told by the right wing gutter press that people on benefits are "scroungers" and remain on benefits most of their lives. Such people do exist, but the vast majority are people whose employers went bust as a result of stupid government policies, or people whole family has suffered an adverse event (eg breadwinner sick or dead), and will soon be back at work - but probably much sooner with UBI, as they can spend time looking for jobs instead of in government offices facing interrogation or filling in irrelevant forms.

The real "benefits scroungers" are companies whose rate of pay is so low their employees need to receive benefits to survive. While other companies are taxed to support them. It should be illegal for a company to pay dividends if their employees cannot live on their wages. (We have a government defined "living wage", which is higher than the "minimum wage"). I think it would be perfectly acceptable to pay the minimum wage provided you pay no dividends to shareholders especially if the UBI ensures they won't have to go shop-lifting for bread, bacon and cheese (currently most frequent shoplifted items - according to a newspaper I probably would not trust with second hand Royal Gossip.

Comment Re: Wow (Score 1) 168

Right now a car's infotainment center must include coding for both of these standards.

Proprietary infotainment systems are a major cause of depreciation in second hand value. After three years, they are worse than useless because of failure to comply with all known standards and software update costs that exceed the value of the car.

If only you could rip them out and replace them with generic ones like we used to do, at least they would not have negative value, but in many cars they are linked to functions like heater controls.

Does the auto industry actively seek to be hated or what?

Comment Re:This will fail (Score 1) 243

33% of the time in a show like it is on TV is excess.

Commercial TV in the UK used to be restricted to 6 minutes of ads per hour, which was OK.

I have no idea what happens on TV now, because I don't watch it.

If I could not use an ad blocker I would not watch Youtube at all. If they die, I will order several crates of beer to celebrate.

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