jabjoe
@jabjoe@feddit.uk
- Comment on Mythbusters 2 days ago:
Just because no one else has said, Adam has been involved in EFF for a long time. EEF Podcast episode with him in it:
eff.org/…/podcast-episode-making-hope-adam-savage
Which delights me as he’s more mainstream and so wakes people up to things like the Right To Repair movement.
- Comment on Mythbusters 2 days ago:
But super important and not done enough! Disproving something can save humanity such time.
- Comment on Michael Mosley: Body found in Symi search for missing presenter 3 weeks ago:
They could have just waited a tiny bit.
- Comment on Michael Mosley: Body found in Symi search for missing presenter 3 weeks ago:
Yer I got the update. Just seams odd to go public until they had identified the body. I mean it wasn’t a long wait.
- Comment on Michael Mosley: Body found in Symi search for missing presenter 3 weeks ago:
The body has not been identified. It might not be him. This is a non-story until it is identified. Surprised it was so prematurely reported.
- Comment on Reform UK pulls to within two points of Tories in latest YouGov poll 3 weeks ago:
I think two party systems and FPTP need to go. In both UK and the US.
What I favour is Mixed Member Proportional Representation. Like NewZealand and Germany. But I want it PR mixed with Score/Range voting rather than FPTP.
The UK also needs decentralizing and federating. Maybe break up England into units similar to Scotland, Wales and NI.
- Comment on Reform UK pulls to within two points of Tories in latest YouGov poll 3 weeks ago:
I think the UK has a lot more swing voters than the US. In the US way too many people are Republican or Democrat people. They will vote for ‘their’ party or not at all. In the UK it’s more fluid and not part of people’s identity. Even a raging gammon changes who they vote for, as the Conservatives are finding out. Chasing that vote is losing them moderate votes.
- Comment on The Bill & Ted Trilogy will be released in a most excellent 4K box set by Shout Factory 3 weeks ago:
Randomly yesterday I found out that Alex Winter/Ted is into digital freedoms : podbay.fm/p/…/1716275100
- Comment on Conservatives plan to bring back mandatory National Service 5 weeks ago:
Ah yes, that will make new Torys. Boot camp. Break their will to make them into good/conservative citizens. Don’t see that working… though I can see old voters (who didn’t actually do it either) might think that.
- Comment on Eurovision viewing parties in England cancelled over Israel’s participation 1 month ago:
Yet the UK’s popular vote give Israel 12. The song wasn’t strong and I did think Israel wasn’t popular here.
- Comment on #justgradschoolthings 1 month ago:
You can do it, but you also need to test it all.
- Comment on #justgradschoolthings 1 month ago:
Not just ADHD folk. I’ve had programmers like that, swinging from “I can’t do it” to “I don’t need to test that”.
- Comment on UK has worst rate of child alcohol consumption in world, report finds 2 months ago:
This is any consumtion at any level. This whole story hangs on if any alcohol consumption, at all, under 13 leads to harm. Something they have one quote on.
“People tend to have this perception that introducing children to moderate drinking is a good way of teaching them safer drinking habits. This is untrue. The earlier a child drinks, the more likely they are to develop problems with alcohol in later life.”
To date, in recent decades, each generation in UK, and elsewhere, drinks less alchole issue than the previous.
academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/31/2/424/5981990
statista.com/…/alcohol-units-consumed-by-gender-a…
…biomedcentral.com/…/s12889-022-14760-y
I did find:
alcoholchange.org.uk/…/alcohol-and-your-child
“There is no clear answer as to which approach is best but, overall, there is little evidence that letting children try alcohol makes them less likely to develop problems with it later on. In fact, research has found that children, whose parents allow them to drink at home and/or provide them with alcohol, are probably more likely to drink more heavily when they are older.”
So it could be we are heading for a fresh boozing generation after years of decline. But it is not clear.
- Comment on How is the hydrogen made? 2 months ago:
Some of car industry. Some are dumb or corrupt. Then a lot people/consumers just see the range and zero ‘direct’ emissions. They don’t look at cost per mile, total energy efficiency, fuel storage and distribution, etc.
- Comment on Britain risks becoming dumping ground for ‘slave labour’ solar panels, UK official warns 2 months ago:
98% of anything coming from a problematic country is an issue. Or even anything single country.
- Comment on Public satisfaction with NHS falls to lowest level on record 2 months ago:
Both countries have a better equality score than us. If we were more equal, tax vs insurance might be more a academic. We are the most unequal in Europe and the rich see a insurance health system as an way to pay less. No, no and no.
- Comment on Public satisfaction with NHS falls to lowest level on record 2 months ago:
We have established this already. More money for a long time.
- Comment on Public satisfaction with NHS falls to lowest level on record 2 months ago:
Tax wealthy people and corporations more. There is a lot of wealth untapped and obscene levels of wealth.
- Comment on Public satisfaction with NHS falls to lowest level on record 2 months ago:
All of this won’t fix things (and may well make it worse). What is needed more that anything else is more money. And because it been starved for a decade, a lot more money.
The NHS is not the only thing that was false-economy cut. Lots of services got cut and the result where people ended up, in a worse state, falling into the NHS.
One thing that would help the NHS is to restore those other services, and deal with people before things get so bad it’s their health failing when the state helps them. Spent money on mental health and other care services to take load off the NHS.
- Comment on Public satisfaction with NHS falls to lowest level on record 2 months ago:
Money is clearly the big issue. It’s been underfunded for a long time, so will need more to catch up.
Anything else is almost just fiddling round the edges, or worse, an excuse to sell it to Tory’s funders. Other European more private systems are just a bait and switch because it’s US companies who’ll come in.
- Comment on Smart meter figures: Nearly four million not working properly 2 months ago:
I did maths on a battery with my current tarrif, but agile probably means I should revisit. What I really want is a nice big second life EV battery.
- Comment on Public satisfaction with NHS falls to lowest level on record 2 months ago:
Because it’s nearly always done disingenuously. The Tories say this and then get US health companies ready for a fire sale. They have been running down the NHS, “starving the beast”, to try and reduce public support for it so they can sell it. (To their US mates)
The reality is France and Germany have put more in for longer, so got more.
…org.uk/…/how-does-uk-health-spending-compare-acr…
<iframe src=“data.worldbank.org/share/widget?indicators=SH.XPD…” width=‘450’ height=‘300’ frameBorder=‘0’ scrolling=“no” ></iframe>
- Comment on Public satisfaction with NHS falls to lowest level on record 2 months ago:
That always the argument made, while possible contracted are lined up with big US private health companies.
- Comment on Smart meter figures: Nearly four million not working properly 2 months ago:
You got a house battery? If I a largish house battery I’d certainly move to that and automate the battery use by electricity costs. ;-)
- Comment on Smart meter figures: Nearly four million not working properly 2 months ago:
Yes, but night rate is worth it if you have a EV or house battery. 7p per kWh instead of the 29p per kWh of the day rate. Huge saving.
- Comment on Brexit’s Lasting Damage Is Looking Inescapable 3 months ago:
2008 crash then austerity. Austerity was politically motivated. Most economists I’ve read/heard follow Maynard Keynes. That who country’s credit card nonsense has got to go. Educate the electorate, don’t pander to ignorance.
- Comment on UK secretly softens policy on Chinese firms accused of human rights abuse 3 months ago:
The Tory don’t want to be limited by human right. They want the UK out of human right rules. So this doesn’t surprise.
- Comment on tesco and sainsburys hit with technical issues 3 months ago:
I’ve not worked directly with any of these payment systems, but I can’t believe the only solution is go all 90s style Windows based system. There will be embedded ways that comply to regs.
I can see they are Windows based when there is issues. I’m sure of Tesco and Morrisons but Sainsburys I don’t go to often enough to have see an issue that bring up Windows. I was being flippant, but I don’t hold using Windows to build stuff in high regard. In my experience the software engineers who doing that don’t know anything else.
- Comment on tesco and sainsburys hit with technical issues 3 months ago:
A common way is to have two (or more) system partitions. You update one, charge the boot one and reboot. Typically the system partition is read only use. The bootloader tries the one it is told to try first, if it finds itself back in the bootloader it boots the other. You have a watch dog that resets if not kicked.
Buildroot and Yoctor give you a few update options. Then there is things like: swupdate.org
And it’s not really that hard to role your own.
- Comment on tesco and sainsburys hit with technical issues 3 months ago:
This because their checkout are just Windows PC with what I guess is some big wigs’ nephew’s VB/C# app running?
It’s not just the wastefulness of the overly large software stack, and the massively overblown hardware requirements that adds, it’s the size of the attack surface. Oh and lack of control of a closed platform.
What a grown up would have done is a tiny Linux thing that ran nothing but what was required and locked down. Made with Buildroot or Yocto. Running on some low power ARM thing.
I’m guess they have got some Windows infection.