Yep, pretty much this.

When you have a physical datacentre, you take backup off site in case the site fails, when you're in the cloud you're really just in one physical location unless you're paying through the nose for co-location.

"Cloud" has pretty much taken the LCC (Low Cost Carrier, A.K.A. Budget Airlines) model to compute and Amazon is the Ryanair of that world. Sure, they advertise a £19 flight to Magaluf but want a seat that isn't shit, pony up, want to take luggage, gonna cost you, don't want to take the red eye flight from "London" Isle of Skye airport... you get the idea and before you know it that £19 flight is a £190 flight. Amazons price structure is the same, cheap headline price, what you actually pay is much, much higher.

A good manager would... Sadly there are a lot of bad managers out there.

There is a grey area here.

Yes, following someone around in public can be considered harassment if it were done with the intent of harassing or disrupting the person in question. A journalist with a legitimate interest can use that as an excuse provided they were not intentionally being disruptive or harassing in order to get a story. If a "reporter" starts getting in your way to force you to react and does so repeatedly, this is harassment.

Intent has a lot to do with it, if you're following someone around without cause then you're pretty much on the wrong side of it.

Also, a good investigative reporter (or private dick) doesn't want to be noticed by the person they're surveilling. It tends to taint the results of the investigation (and here in the UK the police can use the results of a journalists investigation in court) and this affects their livelihood as no legitimate news agency wants to deal with a reporter who is a well known nuisance (as they can be sued as well as the "reporter" in question).

In most countries, taxi services automated their dispatch years ago... This is not an excuse to support illegal services that are both against competition and seek to reduce the rights of workers.

Ever since I've lived in the UK, you've been able to book taxis and minicabs online. It is more recent to Australia but Australia is hopelessly stuck in the past.

Yep, get caught posting company secrets online, expect to get marched out the door immediately.

Employee protection laws simply mean I can't be fired because the CEO wants to make themselves look scary.

And your saliva filled fellatio of Musk makes you oblivious... I mean in general, not just about Europe.

I could get fired today if I did something illegal, dangerous, or blatantly stupid (like sexual harassment or threats). Hell, you can even be fired if you're bringing the company into disrepute, like becoming a far right thug (the freedom of association which is enshrined in the UK and Europe includes the freedom not to be associated with something).

What I can't be fired for is when the CEO is having a bad day, wants to get their jollies or if the company wants to cut costs (in that case, they'll need to make me redundant, which has some legal responsibilities).

You're saying that like it's a bad thing.

A CEO in Europe is expected to act like an adult, so they are expected to deal with disagreements with colleagues and employees as an adult. Often this means compromising and understanding the other side. This has the unfortunate side effect of making the CEO better informed and thus leading to better decisions being made. I know this is hard for many Americans to understand as it seems that emotional maturity isn't a requirement for leadership positions over there.

Yep, Australia went fully card mental in the 2000s and wonders why everything became so expensive. Sadly they'll never put two and two together because the answer really is 5, 2+2 is 4 but the extra is made up by merchant service fees that the merchant is legally obliged to hide in their prices.

What about the brave soldiers on the Floating Fortress Winston Smith.

It's only criminal if you get caught.

That being said, why do you think so many companies are trying to demonise laws like the GDPR... because they have real teeth to protect ordinary people.

You're thinking too smart... cars need a mobile connection because they're mobile, TVs are stationary so all they need to do is look for an open Wifi network. WPS can allow access easily enough these days and then all you carefully slurped data can be uploaded to the mothership.

Never forget it's easier and faster to use a $5 wrench to beat the password out of someone than to spend hours cracking it.

This, they're banking on not being caught and even if they are, get a slap on the wrist and keep doing it.

Yep, however I'll expand on the last point.

It's not that Trek isn't "woke" (or whatever word bigots use for "something I don't like" in the future) it's that Discovery tried to draw too much attention to it. Trek was always about presenting a world where being different or having a disability didn't matter, not that it didn't exist. TOS was aired in the 1960s where some states still acted like Jim Crow was the law, there was a black woman on the bridge of a military starship, out ranking two of the male crew on the bridge and everyone just acted like she belonged there.

I've been meaning to go back and watch the later seasons of Discovery but haven't really felt compelled to. I think they might have jumped the shark in S1. The older series (TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT) were slow burners, they didn't really get going until the 3rd seasons. The alternate universe thing in the latter half of S1 might have gotten too exciting too quick.

I also watched the first few eps of SNW on a plane and felt it was way too dark... I mean literally not dramatically, the sets were far too dark to see what was happening. Surely by the 23rd century we could make reliable lighting.

You mean to say car dealership run by car dealer.

In the UK this would never fly as it wouldn’t stand up in court as being a reasonable charge and that would even be if this made it to court as such suprious charges usually get laughed at and thrown in the bin, especially if it were not clearly signposted in advance. OTOH, British people are generally polite enough not to assume that anything that isn't nailed shut is available for their use. OTOH this is EVWs we're talking about (the W stands for Wanker).

I should be grateful to EVWs for some things, I can finally get an Audi S5 all the wankers have sold their Audis and bought Teslas.

This is what a lot of people who can navigate by themselves already do, I call it a long cut (as in the opposite of a short cut) and even though it's a longer drive than the direct route because it travels through faster roads with less traffic it takes less time (and less stress/annoyance). There's a small motorway near where I live where people line up for ages at an off ramp where as I go up to the next exit, do a U turn on the roundabout and come back beating the queue... I thank all the gods, old and the new for people being too dumb to figure out how to do the same thing.