thehatfox

thehatfox , 4 days ago

Yet another reminder that “the cloud” is really just “someone else’s computer”. The end users of cloud based products are controlled by “someone else’s” rules and whims.

thehatfox , 4 days ago

The Cravendale adverts have escalated a bit I see.

thehatfox , 4 days ago

“There’s a snake gun in my boot!”

thehatfox , 4 days ago

There was a similar thing done as an art installation between London and New York called the Telectroscope in 2008. Apparently it was the site of a few marriage proposals.

Look how far we’ve come…

thehatfox , 4 days ago

Well it’s a step forward for efficiency at least. Now I can see the LLM generated crap straight it in the search page, rather than having to click through to an automated blogspam page.

If they are really going all-in on this, it almost feels like Google admitting defeat on search, having now been drown by the (partially self inflicted) deluges of SEO and now “AI”.

thehatfox , 4 days ago

Rental auctions are an idea worth trying, but rates on high street locations are only part of the puzzle of dying high streets. There need to be people willing and able to set up viable businesses, and the locations need to be both affordable and desirable.

Confidence in the economy is not exactly at a high at the moment, and the £500,000 bung is drop in the ocean considering the decade plus of local underfunding and inefficient spending practices of local government (my local council recently somehow burned through nearly 100 grand putting up a couple of benches and a flower bed 🙄).

That’s all before thinking about the broader cultural changes we’ve seen recently, from the shift to e-commerce to effect of COVID.

thehatfox , 4 days ago

It’s that daft haircut, he’s adopted a different style recently and suddenly looked 10x more human.

No amount of barbers can disguise the blokes behaviour though.

thehatfox , 4 days ago

Platforms like Facebook have an incredible hold on some people. I remember a few years ago when the "Momo" hoax happened, an older coworker arrived at the office and started warning us about the danger of "Momo" they'd seen on Facebook. I'd already heard about the hoax (and was aware of the original creepyasta origins), and brought up a few news articles explaining it, including an official statement from the police. Everyone seemed satisfied by the truth, except for the Facebook addict. They just gave me a blank stare, and a few hours later I heard them telling another group of colleagues to beware of "Momo" getting to their children.

I have family members and longstanding family friends who have succumbed to this. Interestingly almost all of them were decrying the internet as something that couldn't be trusted before the age of social media.

thehatfox , 4 days ago

2018 according to Wikipedia, so 6 years ago!

thehatfox , 5 days ago

Firing EMPs in urban areas does not sound a great idea at all. That's a lot of potential collator damage on top of an already potential dangerous police action.

There are already methods police can use to stop moving vehicles, which would work on electric vehicles as well as existing ICE vehicles. These are still bikes, not magic carpets or something. Stopping a moving vehicle is also dangerous in itself, and it doesn't sound a great idea to add to that the chances of frying everything from police equipment to vital medical devices that happens to be in the blast area.

thehatfox , 6 days ago

There’s poo in the rivers and it’s now going to be illegal to be homeless, did I wake up in the past?

I think it’s time the Conservative Party had a rebrand because they really don’t seem to be conserving much these days. Except for established wealth that is.

thehatfox OP , 6 days ago

Sadly I think all we’ve got coming for us is the return of cholera and typhoid.

thehatfox OP , 6 days ago

I lived near a small artificial lake that was that was a popular unofficial outdoor swimming location. But the local authorities were always trying to keep people out. It eventually became a bit of a party spot and there was a couple of drownings, which lead to big fences and security patrols going up. Last thing I heard the place had been redeveloped into an expensive private leisure resort.

I gets there's always a balance between access and safety, but there's a real lack of free and open places in the country these days.

thehatfox , 7 days ago

There’s a lot of these in the UK, I can think of a bunch just in my own town. We seem to really dislike corners.

thehatfox , 9 days ago

I’m currently using O2 and their coverage is definitely patchy. Great in some areas, not in others.

The only reliable way to choose the “best” network is to get PAYG SIMs for each and try them all in the places you will most often be. The online coverage maps are not always that accurate and up to date, and can’t account for factors like the construction of individual buildings.

thehatfox , 9 days ago

Smart meters were never going to be a real benefit for energy users, only a method to extract more revenue and impose more control over them. Being co-opted as another method of government surveillance is yet another problem they have caused.

following the highly-politicised appointment of the new Information Commissioner, the ICO adopted a new strategy for public sector enforcement that relies on public shaming and “very angry letters” rather than legally binding enforcement actions and penalty fines

Oh look, it’s another regulator being kneecapped. I really hope Starmer will consider giving these groups some teeth again.

thehatfox OP , 12 days ago

iPadOS feels like a real bottleneck for the iPad Pro line now. All that horsepower but limited room to gallop.

I’m not an advocate of putting macOS on iPads, but iPadOS really needs to expand more, especially for things like file management and multitasking. Multiple audio channels when?

I’ve seen some people speculating based on the new Magic Keyboard having an Esc key that something dev friendly is coming so who knows.

thehatfox OP , 12 days ago

macOS is really not optimised for touch though. macOS on a 13 inch iPad with a keyboard and trackpad attached would probably be usable, albeit with limited IO. But trying to use macOS with just fingers isn't going to be much fun, especially for more complicated software.

Personally I'd rather see Apple further develop iPadOS as a touch first productivity OS, and leave macOS for the Mac.

Maybe if Apple opens up the App Store rules (willingly or not) more eventually virtualisation will be possible on an iPad, allowing people to DIY a macOS-on-iPad setup if they really wanted to.

thehatfox , 12 days ago

This is how I take pictures, I take pictures of the things I am seeing so I can look back at those moments later. I don’t experience life in third person, observing myself from overhead like a video game, so why would I want myself in the pictures?

thehatfox , 15 days ago

There’s satisfaction to be found when labour results in a tangible and lasting result.

Some of the people I know who quit the IT industry did so because they felt all of the effort they put in never seemed to achieve anything. Too many jobs at startups who exist only to be bought and shut down by bigger fish for some IP etc.

For some work is not just about wages or challenges, it’s about building something useful and meaningful, whether figuratively or literally.

thehatfox , 16 days ago

I’ve still got a 3310 in a drawer, it still turns on, and if I had a SIM card for it would be fully working as the UK still operates a 2G network (for now at least).

There’s even removable fascia plates still for sale on eBay.

thehatfox , 16 days ago

There was an ID card system in the works in the UK a few years ago, but it was scrapped. There was a lot of opposition to it ok the grounds of civil liberties and privacy.

There’s a lot of wariness about a “paper’s please” society in the country, there hasn’t been a national ID system since just after WW2. Driver’s licenses and passports are used a sort of substitute, but even the UK drivers license doesn’t have to be carried to actually drive.

The proposed ID card system was also attached to an identity database system that was considered to have a lot of features creep and be too invasive.

A free, simple ID card system would probably make a lot of sense (the existing drivers license system could be repurposed/expanded for it), but there’s just a lot of uneasiness about it among the British for better or worse.

thehatfox , 16 days ago

Voting ID requirements have not been universally seen as a good thing in the UK, there’s been a lot of opposition to it.

There is no national ID in the UK, instead there is a patchwork of secondary ID systems such as passports, drivers licenses, travel cards etc. In most cases they have a monetary cost or are not universally available.

It’s been seen as an attempt at voter suppression as many poorer British people may not have suitable ID. The rules also reject many forms of ID commonly held by younger voters, while accepting a wider range of ID held be older voters. There is supposed to be a free voting ID available but implantation has been left to local councils and has been criticised as hard to access.

thehatfox , 16 days ago

That’s a big part of the Boris Johnson myth. The “Boris bike” system in London was actually created by his Labour predecessor Ken Livingstone. The system officially opened shortly after Boris became mayor, who then took the credit for it.

The guy does ride a bike, but not as much as other’s coattails.

thehatfox , 17 days ago

I’ve had some failed alarms this week, my iPhone alarm had been fairly reliable before. Not sure why it’s suddenly gone awry.

Thankfully I have the bedroom lights set to turn on at the same time as the alarm is set, so I still get woken up. Yay home automation!

thehatfox , 17 days ago

Using nano as a vim user is a lot less clunky than trying to use vim as a vim non-user though.

Or so I would imagine, all of the vim novices are still too busy trying to exit vim to share their experiences.

thehatfox OP , 17 days ago

I was a bit surprised the service launched with no web or app support at all, even if with limited functionality.

Freely seems to be aiming for quick adoption from what I’ve read, the aim is to have it replace broadcast Freeview entirely. Most people don’t buy new TVs very often, but many would likely start/try using Freely if they could access it on devices they already have.

thehatfox , 17 days ago (edited 17 days ago)

There is an open source implementation of BBC Basic for modern systems that’s being actively developed - BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0.

thehatfox , 17 days ago

There are so many weird and wonderful BASIC dialects found on all sorts of platforms.

In Europe the PlayStation 2 shipped with a version of Yabasic on the bundled demo disc. It was an attempt to avoid some of import taxes by claiming the PS2 was a computer instead of a games console.

thehatfox , 17 days ago

The right-leaning people I know mostly think the Rwanda policy is performative and futile. They want stronger border controls but don’t seem convinced by this approach.

Opinion polls apparently put support for it at around ~40%, but that was only when the policy was still hypothetical.

thehatfox , 18 days ago

Youtube has made similar changes a while back. YouTube recommendations feature small/tiny channels with few subscribers a lot more often.

It’s mixed results for viewers but it does help to good small channels to not be drowned out by the bigger players.

thehatfox , 18 days ago

All of the apps on the rabbit run in the cloud anyway, as well as the AI bits. Nothing is running locally on the device. There’s nothing the rabbit device does that couldn’t be done via an app or web portal to those cloud services instead.

At least with the Humane AI Pin it was an attempt to create a new class of device. The rabbit r1 however is effectively just an oddly shaped Android phone locked to running a single app. The only reason it seems to exist is to allow an existing hardware company to jump on the AI bandwagon.