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Food & Drink

Oh be still, my beating heart:

High street food chain Greggs is to open its first pub serving exclusive beers and a menu featuring its classic bakes and sausage rolls.

Just when I thought there was no reason ever to visit Britishland again, they do this to me.

Then again, this first (and so far only) Greggs-based pub is opening in Newcastle-On-Tyne, which exists in my mind simply as a railway station one passes through en route to Edinburgh.

But… beer and Greggs sausage rolls?

Back, Satan;  back, I say.

It’s just a Good Thing Greggs didn’t open their first pub in Devizes, Wilts.

The combination of steak bakes, sausage rolls and pints of Wadworth 6x… [exit, drooling]

Control Freaks

Corporate Fuckery, Drive Time

What is it with Germans and their fixation on control?  Here’s the latest from their foremost corporate branch of Control Freaks International:

The 2026 Mercedes-Benz CLA and the 2027 Mercedes-Benz GLC are the automaker’s first truly software-defined vehicles, meaning they have the brains and chips for virtually everything on the car that’s controlled by software to be updated over-the-air. They have the new Mercedes-Benz operating system, known as MBOS, as well as fourth-generation MBUX infotainment systems with fancy touchscreens, all developed in-house.  The new MBOS represents a paradigm shift, says Ola Källenius, chairman and CEO of Mercedes-Benz Group. It’s the gift that keeps on giving, with 100 percent of the car reachable via over-the-air updates. Now, cars come in with an empty electronic control unit (ECU) and then Mercedes loads [the software] into it as part of the production process, he adds. In the past, the ECU came from a supplier with the software already pre-loaded. Not anymore. Mercedes wanted an end-to-end software package it created itself.

Am I the only one who is getting chills from this little exercise as described?  Here’s why I’m both apprehensive and white-hot angry.

“It’s the gift that keeps on giving, with 100 percent of the car reachable via over-the-air updates.”

And those “updates” would include “shut-downs”, all at the behest of MBOS — and if you don’t believe they would, you haven’t been paying attention to the recent history of Germany.

Also, remember that “the gift that keeps on giving” refers to the gift to Mercedes, and not to its customer.

Finally, if you think that these “updates” will remain free forevermore, you really haven’t been paying attention to the history of technology companies — and Mercedes is increasingly becoming more about technology than about engineering.  Which means that at some point, the design of the updates will be left to A.I.

How nice.

Funny, that:  the GLA 250 was always on my list of potential future car purchases.  Not anymore.  I wouldn’t accept one as a gift, because of what I’d be giving up to Mercedes:  my freedom and indepence.

No Surprises There

Management, Technology

It appears that the Mighty A.I. is falling somewhat below expectations:

95 percent of organizations see no measurable return on their investment in these technologies, even as the number of companies with fully AI-led processes nearly doubled last year and AI use has likewise doubled at work since 2023.

Specifically:

Today’s generative AI models are very good at identifying patterns and stitching together bits and pieces of existing content into new compositions. But they struggle with analysis, imagination, and the ability to reason about entirely novel concepts. The result is often content that is factually accurate and grammatically correct but conceptually unoriginal.

“Workslop”, indeed.

Not The Same

Shootin' Time

From SOTI:

“A recent report from a United Nations Fact-Finding Mission paints a grim picture of Maduro’s Venezuela, especially after stealing the election in 2024, asserting violence, torture, arbitrary detentions, deaths in custody, deaths of protesters, sexual violence, forced disappearances, foreigners as hostages, etc.”

Ummmm lemme see:  an actual Communist dictator is doing all these terrible things, right?

Our own Commies just wish that Trump, who to them typifies all the above Bad Things, actually behaved like Maduro so they’d have something to really complain about.  But of course he doesn’t do any of that, despite the many calls from people like myself to start the one-way helicopter service already.

A “forced disappearances” thing sounds pretty damn good from where I’m standing — but no doubt someone’s going to have a problem with this.

All I can say is that if I owned a chopper and had a pilot’s license…