Not my problem, I just want to get to work on time.

The maintenance stuff? Maybe if you closed after the rush-hour evenings (instead of daytime at weekends when MILLIONS of people travel on the Tube), you might get closer to fixing it.

But, to be honest, I'm 35, and the same arguments were being spouted by politicians and unions even before I was born. Fact is, in that time, we've added whole new lines covering vast swathes of London that were never covered before and are now spending billions to connect Birmingham/Manchester by a slightly faster line. The money we've spent pissing about over the last 50 years could have rebuilt the Tube system twice over.

And why are we running trains from the 70's still? Because no fucker will replace them, it's always "cheaper" to just keep patching them and reupholstering them every few years. It's excuses all the way.

And still, my personal "uptime" with the London Underground / Overground is actually closer to 80% than anything else. And that's being generous.

For 20+ years all I've heard is "We're shutting this down / spending this money" in order to make things work better in the long-run and cope with increased demand that we expect. And yet the trains are more crowded than ever, the platforms are too small for the amount of people waiting on them in rush hour, and still we get atrocious amounts of delays and cancellations (and, worse, can't even be bothered to announce such delays/cancellations until about 30 minutes after the train didn't arrive anyway - very useful).

Sorry, the system is old - that means we should know it inside out. It's underground, that means it shouldn't change at all over the years. And yet it gets more expensive every year to have a less reliable system. Remember when "the Circle Line" was actually a circle that you could go all the way around in both directions? Remember when you could change at the large interchanges etc. without having to wait YEARS for them to change an escalator?

That's when you get past the strikes of whatever-group isn't happy earning more than I do for pushing a lever forward or having a computer print a ticket. Which, honestly, add up to WEEKS over the last few years? And at the moment, the Tour de France has brought some stations to a grinding halt already.

There's no point in a mass transit system that isn't transiting people en masse. And that's the one thing we don't actually have happening. If it's that bad, throw it out and start again, and you'll find that - actually - a new system would probably cost you a LOT more than 100-year-old pre-dug tunnels that everyone knows where they are, where they go, and how to get to every one of the entrances.

And the problem is?

What you're suggesting is that we should choose the inefficient methods because it's more expensive but involves unnecessary humans. Quite where the logic of that lies, I can't tell.

If they'd hired some smarty who did the same for their company, and gave 99.9% up-time by their work, surely the same would still happen - except maybe they'd pay that guy a lot as well?

The case for "sabotaging" (look up the origin of the word) technology really died out hundreds of years ago - when we proved that actually it meant that everyone else in the world did better, got cheaper shoes, or - in this case - got to work on time. They've found a way to get the city to work on time, reliably, without the previous reliance on expensive humans to make the wrong (and maybe even politically-motivated in the case of worker's unions) decisions. The city probably makes more money as a result than the transport system COSTS, even if it's not in direct $ figures on some spreadsheet somewhere.

The only consistent, ongoing factor in automation is that it does more, faster, more reliably, cheaper at the expense of staff who did less, slower and less reliably but cost more. Sure, people need jobs - but nobody but the government is obligated to create them.

And, to be honest, if the guy who commissioned and oversaw the system gets a raise as part of that? Good on him. He did a fucking good job by the looks of it.

Anyone want to have these people come do the same to the London Underground so we can sack all the striking drivers that earn more than I do, the useless ticket-office issuers who never know what to do even when the machine TELLS them, and actually get to work on time? I do!

This isn't at all unusual. However, what really gets my goat is how were they allowed to do what they did for four years?

That's four years of some accountant falsifying accounts. Four years of tax not paid or properly checked (if they were earning what they claim, a lot of tax would be due - if they were lying about it, they'd not want to pay that tax). Four years of operating without anyone questioning.

And, most importantly I feel, what's happened to the directors and accountants of the company now ( I highly doubt just one person was in knowledge of this)? My guess is that they've already fled with a nice bundle somewhere.

Happened like mad to the software houses in the 80's, still going on. Why is it compulsory that I have to be sat down like a child when I want to take out a £1000 loan but nobody questions businesses or enforces them to give enhanced accounts or audits in their first few years of operation. It would stop an awful lot of such outright fraud as this if someone from government was poking through their accounts, and they wouldn't even be able to set up a "new" company, transfer the assets and then declare bankruptcy as is also common.

Okay, dial it back. 30 years ago instead of 30 years in the future. 1985.

Sure there are large changes since then, but nothing approaching the kinds of things he's talking about. And AI / machine learning / human-machine interfaces? Not that different. Computers have come on leaps and bounds in speed, size and ubiquity. In base capability? Not so much. The pacemakers, hearing aids, etc. we use now aren't even really any different to those 30 years ago. Better, sure, undoubtedly, but quantum leaps of usefulness? Not really.

If you're going to make crazy predictions, do it for 100 years or more. 30 is just not worth the embarrassment. In the 60's they were saying we were going to have robot servants and flying cars and meal-in-a-pill. That was nonsense even then, but this sounds just as insane And that's nearly TWO lots of 30 years behind us. And all the technology in between that has been hugely drastic and "changed the way we live", hasn't actually changed that much overall - we still work, pay taxes, die of cancer, have starving people in the world, and blow each other to pieces on a regular basis.

And, sorry, but AI hit a stumbling block many years ago. In terms of how it scales, it hasn't changed much in decades. And it won't scale forever, as the computers just aren't scaling at unstoppable rates either (and probably won't for a long time).

The pinnacle of AI that we have is being able to beat a human on a quiz show, and making a robot walk if it can think about it for a few seconds and nothing too drastic happens.

Self-conscious machines? Fuck off. We'll be lucky if we're even closer to making them work things out on their own. At the moment, anything worked out by computer is pretty much a massive human input exercise with massive human verification. We can't even trust them to do simple calculations without checking them. Them "evolving" into some kind of intelligence that we can't even define? Not a chance.

And to be honest, the MOST DANGEROUS machine is one that's dumb and reliable. See this door? You detect it open, you shoot. No matter what. Infinitely more dangerous than some run-away intelligence.

I'd be suspicious of anything under a year. That doesn't mean I wouldn't hire, but I'd want to hear why you left so fast. Hell, I'd even accept "My last employer was bad and made me do X, Y, Z, and thus I left".

The longest job I ever had - 5 years... and I left because they changed overnight and culled all the decent staff - fulfilled my promises, got screwed over, left the next day. Before that, I don't think there was anything under a year but I was working freelance for a while and there not having a client with under a year of service means you're doing well. They just kept buying me back.

What worries me is not serial job-hoppers, it's people with unexplained gaps. It's also people who stay where they are forever (it's easy to know when you're onto too good a thing and just coast... and I've met plenty of coasters who never want to progress and, when they move on, they only have their way of doing things). Sure, again, if you can explain yourself and you come across as so passionate for that job that's probably the reason you stayed, but anything out of the average range needs an explanation.

For yourself? Always look at jobs. How else do you expect to know what the going rate is, what the growing trends are, where the industry is moving, what your competitors are up to, etc.? And every now and then one of those jobs you're casually browsing will seem so much more your kind of thing, and there's NO harm in just applying and seeing what happens. If and when you get the job, that's the time to weigh things up.

I work in independent schools (I'm not a teacher, I do the IT). Once in, as a teacher, your job is pretty much guaranteed for decades so long as you don't screw up. Would you like to know how many jobsites I pick up in my web filtering logs? People keep on top of what's happening, what the competitor schools are doing, where's not a good place to work (you could tell my old workplace was going downhill by the fact that they advertised for an Assistant Bursar, then another Bursar, then another Bursar three months later, etc.), how much you should be earning, what else is about.

Keep your ear to the ground. It helps if you need to leave. It helps with comparisons should be need to go and ask for pay-rises. It helps with knowing what's out there. And it doesn't take any time at all to do.

But time-limits? You leave when you have a reason to leave, and not before. Someone who leaves EVERY year? That's bound to make me wonder why.

I avoid using cabs, despite the fact that two of my family members drive them for a living.

Sorry, they are expensive, inflexible and provide little advantage in somewhere like London. When you do need them (Tube strikes, etc.,) they are impossible to use.

I've spent an evening walking home from the theatre with a lady with severe knee problems trying to hail a cab. We'd had to help them them to the underground station before we found one that would stop (even when they were showing as available). We were sober, well-dressed, just stepped out of the Royal Albert Hall, had a lady in obvious pain on our shoulders, had waited 20 mins to avoid walking / crowds and in the end made it to our destination before we could hail one.

The last time a train of mine was cancelled, I was on my way to a filming of a TV show in the afternoon. I came out of the train station 30 mins after I should have been on a train further into London, and there were four cabs waiting. All refused to take two people deeper into London because "they'd have to drive back" - it was the middle of the afternoon, so it wasn't like they wanted to get home. In the end, we ran home, got in our car, drove to the place and got there just in the nick of time.

I just don't see the cab in the future of a city like London. We're famously rude as a nation, and cabbies are probably among the worst. They are only there for gullible tourists, from what I see. Sure, there will be exceptions, but the fact is that I've avoided cabs for 15 years and when forced to use them, haven't been able to.

Last time I used one was when my boss was paying for me to come to a meeting with him and we went about 800 yards in one. I'm just glad I wasn't the one paying, and if I remember, we walked back.

There is a distinction between "Hackney Carriage" and just a private mini-cab in terms of service - the mini-cab will generally turn up when you book them and will know where they are going to and not refuse it. But London taxis? Forget it. All this is is confirmation that some guy who wants the job tries harder to help you than someone who has a protected living and specialist privileges.

"UK Government / celebrated top-notch British mathematicians create encryption that's still fit for purpose decades after their death."

An encryption scheme that can be cracked by teenagers, camels, mathematicians, governments, police, military or the guy down the road? Not an encryption scheme. Certainly not one for large-scale deployment in public security projects.

Works as intended. The fact that it may, unfortunately, be a tool used by miscreants as well as law-abiding citizens is an unfortunate side-effect, like hammers being useful for smashing windows AND doing carpentry.

Don't think I've ever cooked anything in an oven at over 220C. Even less if it's fan-assisted.

To be honest, ovens are one of the few things that just work and shouldn't be messed with. I don't want an oven as complex as some microwaves can be... as soon as you move from a thermostat to microprocessor control, there's something too complex about heating up your dinner.

We're no longer bound to PAL standards like we were - the MPEG decoders in whatever you're using nowadays can handle any framerate you would find, but yes, a lot of content is still in legacy formats and used without changes.

But there's no REASON to any more. Any display device you find will do 50 or 60, whichever you throw at it.

That just proves (poorly) that the boundary lies somewhere between 24 and 60. Not that 60 is required.

And, to be honest, a lot of things affect it - hell, even the local mains frequency can affect what hardware does and how it reacts at 50 or 60Hz.

You could have just used a codec that's not designed with 24fps in mind, or a poor implementation of that codec.

But, that said, the difference is minor, and on an animated "slew" rather than real-world video (YouTube isn't going to be showing much left-right 3D animation, more likely home video and recorded gameplay). Certainly for a web video, 24fps is good enough. Otherwise YouTube would have been overtaken by a competitor by now. The artifact you've got there (possibly exaggerated by other factors) is not something you often see on YouTube videos, for instance. Even animated ones. And they AREN'T running at 24 fps.

And even if you're right, the argument doesn't necessarily hold past 60. In fact, it quite likely stops dead at that point. And for some people it will stop dead long before 60 (British TV was only ever 50Hz, with sometimes 25fps, until digitisation).

Fact is, it's subjective and subject to bell-curve. The sweet-spot of storage versus optimal number of people seeing it is likely below 60. Certainly there's little point moving towards 100-200Hz like some claim for monitors. And for the vast majority of the bell-curve, 60 is higher than necessary.

By all means do it. But, outside of announcement videos, if YouTube were to just randomly make half of the videos 60fps and the rest 30fps, the chances that there would be any kind of detectable "preference" for the 60fps one is slim.

That's alright. It'll just point out those people who think they can see a difference on their PC screen anyway - when they all start yelling baout "how much better" it looks, and then are told that it was only 30fps because of the Flash issue, we can just write them off as idiots anyway.

Definitely feel a Peter Molyneaux coming on - before you know it the hype will go so mad, you won't even notice that the game's actually been released, and then we'll find out it's as dull as hell as a game.

But aside from that, a team of 10 isn't exactly tiny. A lot better games have been written with a lot less people.

And front-page of Slashdot before release? I'm guessing at least one of those people works in marketing...

- Cookies aren't remembered properly.
- The font cache corrupts and requires restart of the browser at regular interval (unless you like Chinese Unicode squiggles taking the place of your normal page text).

The original coding team were ditched, the replacements were all new - the forums/blogs describing this were purged but you can still find them if you try really hard.

People who start on new versions? If there are less of those than your ENTIRE existing customer base, you're losing out. See replies to this post - a lot of old-time supporters, people who were buyers of the software over a decade ago and still using it, have left it behind.

Bug reports used to be answered. Your snarky answer is precisely the problem - nobody cares about replying to them now. And most of them are literally WILLNOTFIX.

They removed the entire mail and chat clients, the integrated Bittorrent download, the bookmarks, the entire UI customisability (the strongest point of Opera), the kiosk modes, all the stuff that made them unique. Go download a 12.16 and look how many features there are that just aren't there. Nobody uses them? The bug reports, the cries for their return, and the fleeing users suggest otherwise. Don't say they didn't remove features.

Nobody knows that the Desktop version grew. The only numbers you have are from Opera themselves. It was already a niche player.

The dev team CHANGED. It was announced several times on the forums. The old ones were shown the door, the new ones only broke the old codebase and couldn't advance it. It was part of the reason they "started again" - they didn't know how to do anything else (and Linux, etc. clients were left in the wake of the change).

Breaking it? See bugs at top of page - not present in 12.13 (before the dev change), present after and getting worse until 12.x branch was abandoned.

And I used Opera since before 3.6. The number of bugs that weren't replied to, fixed in the next minor and never affected much (except the occasional rendering bug) were few and far between... or I wouldn't have paid for it, wouldn't have used it, wouldn't have fought for it, wouldn't still be mourning the loss of it.

Opera dev team were shown the door, new dev team can't get close to replicating their functionality even after - what - a year or so with NO HTML engine to worry about (Chrome handles all that now)?

If you don't know this stuff, you probably weren't using old Opera or weren't on the forums at the time all this was announced (before the new versions even existed).

Tiny market share?

You mean the Wii Channel?

Or the Opera Mini which sold in millions on app stores and tablets?

Not to mention thousand of no-name kiosks (Opera has a /kiosk switch on it).

It may have be MORE niche than their competitors but their biggest selling point was that they weren't those competitors, they had the smallest, faster, most portable, most customisable browser which was *sold* as part of the Nintendo Wii launch (you call it The Internet Channel...).

I'm suggesting that a company that makes MONEY by having users use it, should strive to keep those users. Rather than become yet-another-Chrome that even less people use.

What is their revenue stream now? They are just making a browser. With no-one to use it, they don't even get the Google Search premium. And, in case you missed it, at one point they were a profitable company selling a product so good that people bought it rather than use the free competitors.

They got bought out, they shipped off the developers that knew how to program, they ended up with a Windows-only Chrome frontend dependent on someone else to do the hard work of making them money. And in the process lost a LOT of users, who are really their only revenue stream now that they DON'T pump out versions for other platforms like the Wii any more...

"like what Unity has"

And... I stopped reading.

Honestly, as a life-long Opera user and supporter, Opera is dead on all platforms. They refuse to make it work like it used to (or are incapable of that), and there hasn't been an update since the 15 series that actually did anything, and most of those updates broke stuff.

They are trying to play catch-up from an unnecessary code-base change to what they used to have. The coding team has changed. The company has changed. There is no interest in preserving users any more. Bug reports get answered with "We haven't got around to that yet" or "We never intend to put that functionality back in.

I was there in the pay-for days. I was there in the ad-supported days. I was there right up until last year, when the company that I defended against others changed and the software I used everyday became unusable. They removed every major feature that did something useful, so it's now a very, very poor Chrome clone.

Opera supporters will tell you to stay on the old codebase. We hoped the company would see sense and start re-using that codebase after they realised their catastrophic mistake. It never happened. The only patches they ever put out to the "real" Opera codebase broke it along the way, presumably because they just don't understand the code at all.

Save yourself the effort - find another browser. There's even a "Let's rebuild Opera as it was" open-source effort doing what Opera SHOULD have done if they wanted a Chrome renderer in there. But, sorry, despite my best attempts to resuscitate it and even exhume it, it's dead.