21 karma · joined February 26, 2025
Many regulatory bodies seem to constantly fall short of what they are supposed to do and then demand more money and powers to continue to fail at what they are supposed to do.
At what point would you accept that they maybe not fit for purpose and other solutions should be considered?
It maybe better to put resources into educating people on how to protect themselves from privacy breaches or minimise the impact.
The only thing I've ever seen from the ICO is a letter saying that if I have customer data I have to pay them a fee or pay a fine. Then I have to go through the inconvenience of telling them I don't have any, so I don't have to pay this fee.
It has a nice sync feature so my bookmarks / extensions are sync'd. The developer tools are exactly the same as Chromes.
It has some controversies in the past, but generally it has been ok IMO.
Turning off the "crypto-crap" can be done quite easily (you literally right click on the BAT icon and it is gone) and the new tab ads are removed again with a couple of clicks. I've found it also runs much better than Firefox on older hardware.
The bikes I had stolen would be about €2000 today. I ride a second hand mountain bike that is old and isn't a target for thieves.
> About the weather, I just wear warm clothes. I'm about ten minutes away from my children's school, not 2 hours. It rarely gets lower than -5°C though (23°F).
I am in North of England. The temperature itself frequently isn't the problem. It is the wind chill factor. You can literally feel it chill your bones. I have fenders on all my bikes and tbh that reduces how wet you get by about 30-50% but affects the bikes handling a lot IME.
There is a similar environment variable for Steam on Linux and I would argue that it should be an application setting but for whatever reason it isn't.
Both of these are hacks around how Xorg (doesn't) handle fractional scaling.
* If you are using Xorg, you put environment variables in ~/.xprofile
* If you are using Xorg on Debian, you put the environment variables in ~/.xsessionrc
* If you are using Wayland, you make a file in ~/.config/environment.d/ and set you configuration variables there.
> I use a decent U lock. Always lock the frame to something metal and solid. Additionally I have a ~100USD insurance to cover my several thousand dollars bikes. Never got stolen any.
You are lucky. I've had two bikes stolen. I ride a very old and battered looking mountain bike (Marin Hawk Hill 97). My anti-theft measure is that it isn't worth stealing.
> If your bike is super uncomfortable there is tons of different sattles and options. Even bike fitting to fit your bike perfectly to your body.
If you haven't cycled in years it is just painful on backside and your nether regions. I hadn't cycled in over a year and I was saddle sore for about two days afterwards. I was expecting it btw. The bikes I have fit me perfectly, I use a good saddle (roll).
Generally people buy the cheapest POS bike from a store, the fitting probably isn't right or they just get their friends bike that they no longer want and put up with it until they can afford a car. They aren't going to a proper bike shop to get fitted up.
BTW it was a form of transport to me. I used to cycle everyday to work and I used to cycle after work and at the weekends.
When I say it was infected by the green crowd, I am not including people that simply use it as a means of transport. I would have thought that would be obvious.
I am talking generally about cycling as a whole. I got into it because I thought mountain biking was cool when I was 12. Now almost every discussion about it is about building whole cities around it, carbon emissions etc. That is pushed by people primarily by people in the green crowd. I used to personally know these people. I probably still have their email and phone numbers hanging about.
There are a lot of extremists in the cycling the movement that want to totally ban cars, think pet ownership is akin to slavery and they are very vocal and some are involved in planning transport infrastructure. I know this for a fact, because I used to know these people personally.
You only think this is all silly because you haven't encountered these people.
> Would you be happy to be associated with aristocracy, now that you drive a land rover, because many "old money" people drive those?
Most Defenders are driven by Farmers I would wager. You are confusing a Defender with a Range Rover. Defenders are very bare bones, mine doesn't even have a Radio. I also have no issue with the aristocracy. They don't interfere with my hobbies or my life in any meaningful way. In fact many of them that I have met are very nice.
> While in your first comment you gave lots of reason why you dont ride a bike, now youre saying you stopped mostly due to perception of others..thats to me just as silly as all the tesla drivers who are now oh so afraid to be associated to musk and going so far to putting stickers on their car claiming they didnt know musk is unhinged.
To clarify, it was a combination of all the reason I listed. You are focusing in on this particular issue because you took exception to it.
The primary reason is one I didn't list (as it was only relevant to myself). I am in my early 40s now. My left ankle has issues, my right knee has issues. My right shoulder is slightly deformed from breaking my collar bone 3 times. When I was run over (the second time), I broke all my fingers on my right hand, some of the fingers didn't set correctly. I don't want to go through that in my 40s again and the roads are less safe than they were 15 years ago.
As for the Musk stuff. I believe it is largely astro-turf'd on the net. If people wish to sell their Tesla or adorn it with Anti-Musk slogans because of his current involvement with the Trump Administration, they are free to do so. I see nothing unhinged about it at all.
If they were to engage in acts of vandalism or violence because of anti-Tesla sentiment that would be unhinged IMO.
I actually prefer working on and driving my 97 LandRover Defender these days and Making Youtube Videos.
I am an ex-avid cyclist. Bikes are easily stolen, You can get soaked if the weather is poor, If it is bitterly cold it can literally take you hours to warm up (especially if you are older). If you have to ride in traffic it can be very frightening especially if you haven't done it before. Other people find cycling simply uncomfortable, I've been told it more uncomfortable for women.
* Theft. I have to carry a lock and cable (for the front wheel). These are heavy and get dirty.
* Storage. I have to haul my mountain bike up and down the stairs in my apartment. Additionally I can't put the bike on my right shoulder and I cannot carry things on my left as it "feels wrong". So the whole process is a PITA.
* Being run over and accidents. I've been hit by cars hard enough twice to send me in and out of hospital for months. I had other less minor collisions with cars. I do not like cycle lanes either because there is even more chances of collision (read below).
* I am also normally dodging people's dogs and/or children while on a cycle even on the "cycle" lanes. This makes any cycle frustrating.
* Cycling has intertwined itself with the insufferable green crowd. I used to enjoy cycling for the act itself, I am not naive enough to think I am saving the planet.
It was just me. However it works for people who aren't single and do have kids e.g I know a woman who does deliveries and she can work as little or as much as she wants, while her husband has a full time job. You can't do that with mandated hours. She prefers it and thinks it is great.
You are making a bunch of assumptions about people's needs. People are individuals and they know what is best for them and not you.
> 2. It is baked in at this point. People with zero hour jobs are at an extreme disadvantage. It's not adversarial government, it's business choice. There are many countries with larger burdens placed on business that have businesses that aren't forced into the zero hour practice.
You keep on asserting this as a truism, I know plenty of people doing zero hour jobs and they do just ok. Most of these people are Students, Younger people or people who wish to work part time.
As for burdens. In the UK and Europe economic growth is dead because of these large burdens.
> There companies that chose not to adopt zero hour practices. Stating that the government forced business into it doesn't make it true, and the fact the above businesses exist observably shows it's not a direct law of unintended consequences but a choice by business.
I never claimed that governments forced business. I said government regulation could have created the incentive. I made no definitive statement. People constantly put words in your mouth in these discussions. Businesses will generally follow incentives. Not all will adopt the same practices if it doesn't fit in with it business model.
> 3. This position is outside the norm.
Yes I am aware. That doesn't mean that the norm is correct. I can explain exactly why I think this and give exhaustive examples to back up what I believe.
> Both Star Trek and the bible are moral parables used to shape people's ideas. I'm guessing you are younger and don't understand the 90s tech ethos around Trek. Where I worked Trek was always playing in some room during lunch. Zero people were reading the bible. But I'm from the 80s/90s bay area (ish, Santa Cruz). Trek was definitely a parable that gave people something to aspire to.
You make a lot of assumptions. I am in my early 40s. I understand the feeling at the time. I've moved on from the 90s, I didn't stop evolving my beliefs, they changed when I realised my previous beliefs about how the world operated was incorrect.
Just because people aren't reading the Bible in your break room doesn't mean it isn't important. Star Trek just isn't and will be all but a curiosity in a generation or two. The Bible I wager won't.
> Yes, differing views exist. You are the one that seems hostile to them, writing off your entire society because of your personal interests ("I don't view it as "our" society"").
No I am not hostile to the normal people. You have no idea what I think. Taking one phrase I said and then turning that into how I view everyone is disingenuous.
I had previously lived outside of the UK for many years and it isn't unusual for expats to have a bit of a culture shock when coming home. Travel tends to open your mind to new ideas and when you come back home you see everything with a new set of eyes.
> Most people agree on what improvement should be (people should be able to afford to raise families and live in some level of dignity and freedom from scarcity, people should not have to fear crime, education should be encouraged) they just don't agree how to fund it nor make it happen.
No they don't. That the entire divide in both the US, The UK and Europe. There also will never be freedom from scarcity.
1) People take zero hour jobs for various reasons. I worked on minimum wage for 8 years, I wasn't condemned to a life of poverty.
2) You have no proof of it being "designed in" because zero hour contracts exist. Repeating the statement does not make it true. The fact is that the law of unintended consequences is a thing that has been observed repeatedly.
3) I don't view it as "our" society. I don't even really know what people mean by that. I don't see it like that at all. I live in a country (England) and I see the government/state as adversarial to my interests generally. Many of the people in England and the UK don't share many of the same values as I do.
> Star Trek's a cool show. The bible's a cool book. They are guides on how to do better, not reality, not true events.
The fact that you equate Star Trek with the Bible is very troubling. Star Trek is an entertainment show with a fanbase, it is not a guide to do better. The Bible on the hand is much more important (even if many here don't recognise its importance) and this is coming from someone that is an Atheist.
> That doesn't change that they can be used to reflect on ourselves/our society to improve them, nor does that condemn us to accept immorality/lower standards as inevitable.
The point I was making that many people don't agree on what the improvement should be. What you believe is an improvement / moral etc. maybe seen by others as regressions and/or immoral. The writers in DS9 understood there were those that had this different point of view.
You seem to be of the belief that if you "tweak the nobs" just right, things will be magically be fixed, this is naive. The law of unintended consequences has been observed countless times throughout history when people have tried to do exactly that. This is extremely naive.
Even Star Trek itself that you appear to be a fan of. The Earth is post scarcity, they show that the Federation isn't the benevolent force that they pretend to be (This is hinted multiple times in TNG and shown outright in DS9) and that there are others that are negatively affected by the Federation and its policies e.g the Marquis.
In any-event. It is objectively more expensive to buy junk food, that includes the cheaper junk. Once I cut out the trips to the takeaway and the deli, I was surprised at how much more money I had per month.
The fact is that people tend to want to eat junk.
Most kitchen equipment except for the white goods is dirt cheap and even the really cheap stuff can last for years. Most meals take me 30-40 minutes to cook maximum.
No it isn't. Eating poorly is often (much) more expensive that eating properly. Non-processed food is actually reasonably priced for the most part. Fruit and Veg is reasonably cheap. Premium cuts of meat can be expensive.
Just looking at my recent trip to the supermarket:
* A 6 pack bag of apples (Pink Ladies) was less than £1.50
* A bag of easy peeler oranges was less than £1.50
* A bag of new potatoes £2
* Large Bunch of Bananas are about ~£2
* 12 Pack of Large Eggs - ~£2.50
* 12 Rashers of Bacon - ~£2.50-4
* 1kg packet of Chicken Thighs (Raw) are ~£3.50 (2 chicken thighs a day).
* Broccoli ~£1
* Spouts ~£1
* Beans ~£1
* Berry flavoured Tea Bags ~£2
* Bag of Italian Ground Coffee ~£3-4
* 240 Pack of Yorkshire Tea Bags (will last me a month or two) ~£6
* Store brand Olive oil based Margarine ~£2
* Premium Wholemeal Loaf of Bread ~£2-3
* 4 pints of Semi Skimmed Milk £2.50
* Various table Sauces ~£1-2
That is less than £50 and I don't need to buy some of those weekly. Each day I am eating about 1800-2000 calories (I've put myself on a calorie controlled diet to lose weight) and this will last me most of the week if not the entire week.
If I buy ready meals they are £3-6 each. Premade Pizza is £4-6. So much more expensive and objectively worse for your health than cooking yourself.
One takeaway meal from the local Chinese will cost me £22 (a main and a side), Noodles will cost £7-11 depending on the dish. A pizza from the local pizza shop is £8-10. This excludes delivery. The local deli will charge me £4-5 for a meal deal (Chicken Wrap, Snack and Drink).
McDonalds is about £7 for a Big Mac Meal. KFC is similar for one of their Box Meals.
Most people wouldn't. People prefer leisure. While I like programming, most of the work I do is tedious. I would rather spend my time riding my mountain bike, working on my Land Rover, or programming a video game.
> Wouldn't the incentives to get money you don't need vanish if you had something like UBI covering the basics of food, clothing, and shelter?
No. The vast majority of people don't just want the bare basics in life. Thinking otherwise is simply naive.