DoubleGlazing

I think a bigger problem which these services don't get is that if you live in a reasonably sized city then you will have a huge range of takeaway/delivery food options.

The amount of people who want to cook and prepare a nice meal is probably a lot less than the amount of people who just want to buy, eat and enjoy a nice meal.

I live in Dublin, not exactly the biggest of cities, but I can't think of a single type of food that I can't order through one of the various home delivery apps available to me. No need to cook food or be constrained by a predetermined set of menus.

It's hard to make the case for a meal in a box service when you can order just about any food imaginable from your phone and it will be delivered within 30 minutes.

In this company's case the PCs were the cheapest of the cheap. Bottom end Dell and HP stuff.

when they were life expired they were given over to a recycling company, whom I assume would take the time to pick the epoxy out of the USB sockets or probably just replace them. I think buying new USB sockets and connecting ribbons to the motherboards is probably quite cheap these days

I was at a financial software firm that dealt with USB security issues by filling the USB sockets with epoxy. The keyboard and mouse could not be removed from their USB sockets as they were held in place with a metal collar bolted to the case.

Simple and effective, although it destroyed any resale value of the PCs.

I think that points to a bigger problem with solar and that is that it is a horribly mis-sold concept.

Most solar dealers have a one-size-fits-all product that they fit to nearly all homes without much modification. The homeowner thinks they are buying something that will save them a fortune and eliminate their need for grid power. In reality they discoverer that solar is persnickety and they will get nowhere near eliminating their grid reliance. And when you do the math you realise that it might take 10+ years to recoup the high cost of installation and by that point your batteries will need to be replaced and your solar panels will have lost some of their efficiency.

I know people who have gone fully off-grid in Ireland, but they don't just rely on solar. They supplement with wind turbines and in some case hydro power from streams.

Arqiva. Owned by an Australian investment bank. They also own the old IBA transmission network that broadcasts ITV/C4 and co-owns the Freeview service. I.E. They hold a monopoly on TV and radio transmission in the UK. Plus with the roll-out of 4/5G mobile all those hilltop sites are making them a fortune for providing microwave relay feeds for data services.

RTÉ still owns their network as 2rn Ltd (the callsign of Irelands first radio station - phonetically 'To Erin') and they are making decent money from providing the same mobile services. Making the BBC sell off their transmission network was shortsighted.

I'm a radio and love all this. The head engineer of 2rn is a member of my radio club - he really knows his stuff.

My fear subsided somewhat when I realised that a modern passenger plane costs at least $100 million - circa $400 million for an A380.

The owners, insurers and operators do not want to risk that investment.

I think the BBC would probably run cap in hand to the MOD to pay for a new transmitter in that case. The BBC transmitter is getting on for 70 years old, once it fails repairing it will require custom made equipment or complete replacement - both of which will be very expensive.

One other curious issue with radio 4 LW is that it carries a data sub-carrier for the National Radio Teleswitch. Basically the signal that controls the Economy 7 and Economy 10 heating systems. If Radio 4 LW goes off-air any renaming E7 and E10 systems will just stop working.

One crazy proposal that went nowhere was for the BBC to move Radio 4 LW to RTÉs Clrakstown transmitter in Ireland. That used to be the Atlantic 252 transmitter (remember them?) but has been carrying RTÉ Radio 1 since that venture failed and RTÉ really wants to shut it down. The transmitter at that site was built in 1998 which makes it a very young in radio transmitter terms.

There is something nice about listening to it over long wave though. The crackling and the fading adds a certain charm. I kind of want to enjoy while it lasts, the BBC has said that when the LW transmitter valves fail they won't be replaced signalling the end of Radio 4 long wave.

As for the iPlayer the BBC has started to mess around with geoblocks on radio shows. For example I can listen to the News Quiz and I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, but Dead Ringers is geoblocked. Also, the shows I can listen to now contain adverts along with a voice at the start telling me that BBC radio shows and podcasts are ad-supported outside the UK. This mildly disappoints me.

When I was a student, doing lots of late nights, the shipping forecast helped lull me off to sleep. It's rhythmic, without being too repetitive.

It's an aural duvet that makes you feel safe and conformable. Not just because of the way it sounds, but also the fact that you know there are lots of people doing all the work needed to bring us the forecast and help keep mariners safe.

Even though I now live in Ireland, I still tune in to BBC Radio 4 on long wave every now and again to hear it. It's a unique and wonderful thing which I fear won't be around in a decade or two.

My best mate has a PhD in naval architecture. He now runs a small chandler business. Still boat related, but in no way mentally or academically challenging.

He spent seven years getting his PhD at a Russell group UK university. He did the work in two, but because he was being used by his university as a cheap lecturer/researcher/marker/invigilator it meant his work was stretched out much longer than it should have been. On one occasion the university's IT systems automatically locked him out of everything - his email, network logins, swipe cards etc because it was a assumed a PhD student would be all finished up after four years. Getting the PhD burned him out, so he took a year off considering his options. He was found by a company in the US that did research for the US Coastguard and Navy. They promised him an easy research job in Norfolk, VA. When he got there he found a company on its death bed and they completely failed to appreciate the complicated citizenship requirements to work on government research projects. So after three months he was out of a job and getting ready to head back to the UK, but he met someone, and they dated for a bit. She had a bit of money put aside and basically set him up with a chandlery business with him as an employee to satisfy visa requirements.

He's in a much happier place now, and earning more than he would as an actual naval architect.

Basically the PhD did him more harm than good.

A friend of ours gave us a painting of Cú Chulain for our wedding. That painting was her specialty that went through many prototypes. She put prints of it on Amazon and within a few weeks hand made copies were being sold from far eastern sellers. She spent two year battling to get those sales taken down. In the end it only stopped because the sellers moved onto other pictures and not because Amazon took any action.

The problem for me is feature creep. Someone may create a facial recognition database for worthy reasons, but once that database is created it doesn't take a lot to allow the usage criteria to change.

In Ireland the government is obsessed with issuing everyone with a "voluntary" Public Services Card, the photo on it being biometric. Officially it is voluntary, but you need one to get many public services, including getting a driving licence or passport - so not really voluntary.

The system has been used to catch a handful of benefits cheats - single numbers - so naturally the government hails it as a major fraud fighting tool.

Now catching benefit fraud is worthy, but where do you stop? You may think the GDPR protects the system from abuse, but that counts for nothing where the authorities pull the crime prevention and detection card. The protections provided by the GDPR can be cancelled out by a court order if Gardai claims it will solve/prevent a crime.

And once that has happened a few times it will start to become normalised and eventually abused. E.G. Applying for a civil service job and being turned down for going on an anti-government rally ten years ago.

If you create something that can be abused, it probably will be abused.

I used to work for a company whose setup was super simple.

ADSL Modem > Firewall > Router > Web/DB servers

It was basic, but it worked. Our web servers were mission critical, but as a B2B business they, and the ADSL connection, didn't sustain a heavy load. The only issues we had over several years were with the ADSL modem. Everything else just worked.

When we moved office we moved our servers to a co-hosting centre with an upgraded network setup with all sorts of backup and redundancy. Every week something went wrong. Sometimes simple is best.

Or just an email message mentioning the person. That's why I brought up the GDPR in the first place. My wife knew someone who was complaining against his insurance company, they were blanking him. So he put in a subject access request and in all the stuff he got back was an instruction sent to all customer service staff via email telling them to block him if he ever tried to contact them via social media.

The above happened under the 1995 DPD regime, the GDPR would probably be even more useful.

IANAL But as I understand it if they have any internal records/messages/emails etc about why they blocked a user on twitter then that would be classed as personally identifiable information and would have to be revealed to the user on demand.

Of course if they just spontaneously clicked 'block user' whilst browsing twitter because they just didn't like something he wrote then the above would be moot.

Personally I'd walk away, life is too short to care about why a twitter user blocked you.

But seeing as this is in the EU, the author could use the GDPR to find out why he was banned.

Having so many database choices is something of an embarrassment of riches. So many options, but also so much stress for the software architect who hopes to make the right choices. Its impossible for someone to be so familiar with each option so as to anticipate future issues that may arise because of a missing piece of functionality or other strange quirk. Something made worse when you go down the proprietary route.

I prefer to stick with one single reference data store, be it MySQL, Postgres, SQL Server or whatever. If we need to add some kind of search optimised database or big data analysis database they should replicate from the reference data store and be treated as non-mission critical add-ons.

I spent the best of a weekend putting it together. I could have done it quicker, but my son was helping. It was his mainly his idea.

I don't really save much time. The real benefit is knowing that the food won't burn. Growing up my mother would make soups and stews, she'd leave them to simmer for 30 mins without checking. The food on the bottom of the pot would burn and make the whole thing taste nasty. I wanted to make a system that would prevent that, whereas my son just loves building robots and playing with motors.

It was as much a project for me and my son to mess around with as much as an actual kitchen time saver. But we have plans to develop it and just see where it goes.

That's impressive, really impressive.

My system looks like it was put together by a drunk person. That is somewhat true.

I have semi-automated cooking for the week ahead.

We recently started cooking meals for the week ahead on Sundays and then freezing them. The aim was to give us more time with the kids and to cut down on housework.

To save time on the Sunday cooking session I have cobbled together a very clunky, and I mean VERY clunky semi-automated cooking system. It comprises a Raspberry PI which controls a couple of WiFi mains switches attached to the induction hob and the slow cooker. A wooden spoon attached to a 360 degree servo motor hangs above the pot on the hob and can be activated by the Pi for stirring. Initially I tried to use one of those cheap three-legged novelty vibrating pot stirrers, but that didn't work out. Thermocouples feed back to the Pi to help control cooking.

The whole thing is controlled by a messy Python script and 'recipes' are JSON based text files. They just define how long each device should stay on, a max temp to turn them off and how often they should be stirred. I get an email when cooking is done.

I plan to add some functionality over the summer to tip in ingredients as needed. The biggest issue is that it doesn't handle chunky food, it works for soups, chili sauce, pasta sauce etc. I'd love to figure out a way to fry and separate mince as you would with a spatula..

For me it answered so many questions. His lack of attention, impulsiveness and constant wriggling was stressful for us, but also made people think he was just badly behaved. His scout troop threatened to throw him out at one point and he has been sent home from birthday parties and summer camps.

We always suspected ADHD and now that we have the confirmation we can deal with it properly.

On the flip side his IQ is 140 (SB5 test) which is nice, but also adds an extra burden on to how to manage his condition. Luckily he loves coding and building things - but we have to always be looking for something new and stimulating for him to do.

We've been lucky to get him accepted in to a number of schemes to help him manage his condition and harness his abilities. He's only eight so its early days for good quality intervention and help.

Of course the bullying is inevitable. Kids at his school call him autistic, plus he has two different coloured eyes which just makes him more of a target. Luckily his younger sister is a bruiser and sticks up for him.

I have tried, but the opinion of everyone I speak to locally about the affair is "what did you expect?" The process for speeding fines is pretty much a production line in the states favour. The law was changed a few years back so that the speed camera data is not the primary evidence in a speeding case, now the Garda swears that he/she believes a driver was speeding using the speed camera data only as advice. This was to stop people demanding the source code for the equipment. A bad law that favours the state IMO since you can cast legitimate doubt on the accuracy of the equipment, but if the Garda insists you were speeding then its up to the judge and whatever mood they are in to decide who wins.

When my wife stated her defence the prosecuting Garda sergeant said, under oath, "We don't use that American GPS we have our own GPS!". My wife though she had him at that point, but the judge believed the Garda.

I have kept all the documentation in case we can do something about it in the future, but that's unlikely. What is really grating is that the lady before my wife admitted to doing 120kph in an 80kph zone, the judge dismissed the case because of her "honesty and frankness".

Currently An Garda Siochana (Irish police) is undergoing huge turmoil and a number of public inquiries due to corruption and bad management. When the police are found to have faked 1 million breath tests in order to hit targets our little issue becomes very low hanging fruit.

I've been seeing this trend for a few years, but it was only in the last year that I said to myself that enough was enough.

Over the last ten years it has gone from no overtime to "Can you do a wee bit of overtime?", then "You are working this weekend" to not even asking me and just expecting me to be in the office working late.

It came to a head last August when I was at a big-4 consultancy. The usual email about ordering dinner went around, that was code for we are all working late tonight. I said "Sorry, I don't need any I'm off home". Within a minute the project manager was at my desk saying "Well, we clearly have a problem and you need to fix it now." They were always so careful to not actually say the word overtime, it was all code such as asking us what we wanted for dinner or telling us that the security man would be locking up late and the like.

That was the point when I knew that I had to change things.

The worst thing was that I had told that company I could not work late as my wife worked evenings and we have kids. I got a note added to my contract acknowledging this, but they wouldn't honour it. They even went as far as suggesting that I hire a babysitter or ask my wife to give up her clients. They were oblivious to the fact that I would rather be with my children than earning €100k.

I should have done it sooner. About five years ago I was a company that claimed to be family friendly, but was anything but. During my annual review I was marked down for not "Giving Time to the Company" basically not doing overtime. I said that expecting me to give away my skills for free was unprofessional. I was told that I was unprofessional for even thinking that. That is when I should have taken the plunge to go it alone, but I held out hoping for a better employer.

Exactly this. I brought in maps from three different mapping sources and loads of research papers on the subject of GPS, but the judge said it was irrelevant and found guilty. This is despite the fact that the prosecuting Garda could not produce the calibration certificate for the van.

For challenging and losing my wife got 5 points instead of 3 for just paying the fine without a fuss.

This situation hit me hard, made me really doubt the impartiality of the courts.

For me I have learned that there comes a point when you need to work differently in order to protect your health and family well being. Big salaries are great, but when the price for that is massive amounts of overtime that takes you away from your family it just isn't worth it. Now I work for myself and I love it.

Hobbies are vitally important to keeping you happy and healthy, don't neglect them.

When you get a speeding ticket and the GPS co-ordinates in the photo imply the camera van was miles away, the court won't care.

My son was diagnosed with ADHD. A relief to know what it was, but also a burden in terms of managing it.

Falling down the stairs after slipping on a Nerf gun hurts. It really, really hurts.

Family comes first, always.

I have two reasons for wanting privacy. For practical reasons, the less info that is "out there" about me reduces the attack surface for scammers, ID thieves and the like.

But leaving aside crime and misuse concerns a more fundamental reason why I want privacy is simply because that is my personal preference. And that is a preference I shouldn't have to justify to anyone. I suppose if I were pushed to provide some kind of a justification I would say that I get comfort from knowing that I am privy to information that no one else is - it helps to define me as an individual.

The article mentioned the Irish chain Smyths. This is a company that has grown from one store in a small Irish city to expanding in to and dominating the UK market in just over 30 years. Having shopped in both I can see the difference.

Toys 'R' Us felt like it wanted to be part of the toy experience with their whimsical logo, mascot, jingle and colourful in-store decoration.

Smyths on the other hand is just a toy warehouse. They forego the mascot, jingle and colorful stores instead focusing on making sure they always have what the children want. In other words Smyths knows that the toy is the experience, not the store.

The Darth Vader quote rings true with me. I was working at a logistics firm in its in-house dev team. There was a constant push to increase employee tracking. Toilets were fitted with swipe card readers, we were encouraged to "give time" to the company for free, and we came under huge pressure to install various apps on our phones so that we were always "connected in" to company operations. Some people accepted this, some refused. When there was too much push-back management just implemented it anyways.

For example, I wrote the performance monitoring web application. Each employees manager would rate them 1 (good) to 4 (bad) on 10 criteria (e.g. punctuality, quality of work etc). The scores would be averaged and you'd end up with a 1 to 4 rating. I was asked to change it so that an average score greater than 2.2 would automatically become a 4 and also a manager could arbitrarily lower the overall score if they wished. So someone getting a 1 average could be moved to a 4 if their manager felt like it. This formula was baked in to everyone's employment contract, so legally the company would have had to notify all staff and get their approval to make the change. I raised ethical concerns but was told to implement it and not tell anyone, or risk getting fired. I told people anyway, I knew I wasn't going to be working there much longer.

I interviewed for a C# dev job at their new Dublin offices in the old Irish Nationwide building. I had to attend a recruitment open day watching presentations about why Amazon is so great and then come back a few days later for a surprisingly easy technical and HR interview.

Despite being refurbished their work space looked very basic and clinical, but at least there were good views on the higher floors. No free food, just tea and coffee.

The package they offered me was pretty poor. Salary was above average for my skill level, but zero perks. No share options, no flexi-time, and a PRSA pension scheme instead of a real one.

I asked about perks only to be told they weren't offering such generous packages at that time. I found this odd as I didn't contact them, they found my details on LinkedIn and approached me. In those circumstances I would have expected some perks to sweeten the deal.

I declined the offer.

My old employer, a phone retailer, would check how long the user had been browsing the site and what they looked at.

We noticed that legit customers tended to take their time on our site. They would look at several pages and not immediately add something to the basket and checkout.

Of course, some legit customers would demonstrate the same pattern particularly when a new phone was launched - but that wasn't too common.

So if the user spent less than five mins on the site before checking out, or if they only looked at one product page then that order would automatically be flagged for manual review. 60% percent of those orders were rejected.