News Snippets


...I’d just love to see the numbers behind that assertion — especially when compared to likely “tremendous numbers” of job losses to this new magical fad.


only actual humans can qualify?  Buzz Lightyear and Woody sue for anthropocentric bias.


...can’t wait to see the MTBF* numbers on this little trend.  If we’re ever allowed to see them, that is.


...from bad to terrible, or from terrible to really horrible?  I report, you decide.


...let me know when the orange jumpsuits are issued.  Otherwise… [yawn]


...see above.

And in Show Biz (I think) News:



*MTBF: Mean Time Between Failures

Proportionate Response

See, here’s the kind of statement that makes me want to reach for the old nail-studded cluebat.  (I know I know, it’s a Brit ergo a fucking dumbass / ideologue, but I’ve heard the same drivel being spouted by our Lefty assholes Over Here.)

British Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy has said that not all ethnic groups should be treated the same by police in the wake of the murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak, who died in police handcuffs after officers refused to believe he had been stabbed by a Sikh man.

Wait, it gets better:

Lammy, who also serves as the left-wing Labour Party government’s Justice Secretary, said that while the “starting point” should be equality before the law, it is not always appropriate to be treated “the same”, noting the disproportionate arrest rates of certain ethnic minority groups, such as Roma travellers [Gypsies] and black Britons.

…and as we all know, the reason that gypsies and Black Britons get disproportionately arrested is — wait for it — because they commit a disproportionate number of the crimes.

It stands to reason (except to people like this twerp) that if you go fishing in a pond where 80% of the fish are yellow-colored, you’re going to catch a disproportionate number of yellow fish.

I’d like to give tits like this Lammy the benefit of the doubt — i.e. that they’re just statistically ignorant — but the truth of the matter is that for them, everything is viewed through the RAAAYYYYYCISM! lens.

Which is what led to the horrible outcome for the Nowak kid, above.  (For those who don’t know what that story was all about, go here.)

The Story So Far

# Active accounts (starting):  47,244

# Active accounts (current):  27,290

That’s after twelve solid hours.  Over 8,000 Russian bots, and 7,500 identified spam email addresses.  I did get through all the “A” accounts, so there’s that.

Now to tackle the rest of the alphabet.

One last thing:   Reader 0007 and Reader Paul W. (from our Powdered Wig Department), please email me because I inadvertently deleted your accounts, and I’ll reinstate them ASAP.  Also, anyone whose username begins with A/a, please check in case I did likewise harm to you.

I’ll try to get a little blogging done today, just to escape the tedium of looking at lines and lines of code.  How programmers do this all day every day for years without going postal is a mystery for the ages.

Housecleaning

No, this is not the housecleaning as Sarah Hoyt indulges in.  This is the attempt to fix the Comments/login nonsense, which first involves clearing the ten thousand-odd spammers and bots, to name but some.

I’ll be busy for a while…

Quote Of The Day

Concerning the inconvenient facts that confront the Climate Screamies:

Equatorial island chains stubbornly refusing to disappear below rising seas, the Great Barrier Reef hitting record coral levels, animal populations thriving, with higher CO2 levels (almost entirely from natural geological emissions) bringing record greening to parts of the planet that desperately need it. But then again with atmospheric CO2 levels of a scant 420ppm (with industrially insane mankind providing just a trace proportion of that), which in our distant past were as high as 6,000ppm, and which would witness the end to life on earth if they fell below 180ppm, reality, sadly for the cultists, is dawning. — Danny Lockwood

So long, losers.  First it was the Population Bomb, then the New Ice Age, then Glueball Wormening, then (unspecified) Climate Change.  Sprinkle liberally [sic]  with Pandemic Fairy Dust, and you have a near-complete list of bullshit that has been used to frighten the global population into some kind of societal regression.

And sadly, it’s mostly worked.  Except, of course, in places that are contributing the most towards the befoulment of the planet — that would be China, Southeast Asia, Africa and other Third World shitholes — but we can’t say anything bad about these people of course because RAAYYYYCISM! (And there’s the final item on the list.)

A pox on all of them.

Future, By Subscription Only

Reader Stephen S. chimes in with this little piece of technological bastardy:

The rapidly approaching future of the Windows PC is no longer just about what’s on your desk, but what you’re permitted—by subscription—to access from the cloud. Microsoft promotes this as inevitable and, to some, the advantages are real. Yet for those uncomfortable with their digital world being defined and priced by a faraway corporation, alternatives remain.
What is worse is that Microsoft will have your data on their cloud (OneDrive) and you will need to continually pay to have access to it.   On the flip side, because it is on “their” computer systems (1970’s Supreme Court Decision), they will be able to scan it and use it for training their AI.  They will also be able to sell your data to 3rd parties, again because it is on “their” computers.  [Microsoft has already changed their EULA to reflect this]
How does the medical profession make sure the patients’s data is secure.  Although on a personal level, I’m sure Microsoft’s AI would love finding out about illness discussions, personal behavior, etc to be sold to 3rd parties.  That kind of info is what insurance companies would love to know, and the users would be paying Microsoft to provide it to them.
But a larger point occurs to me.  Microsoft would be getting the financial data for people and businesses smaller than the DOW 50, and that is a gold mine for them (Wall St spends millions to collect it).  Again, the users are paying Microsoft to provide their financials to Microsoft, and then Microsoft can then use it.

How nice.

It has taken me a Herculean effort to stop this OneDrive bullshit from imposing itself on my paltry online existence, and I’m not even sure that I’ve been that successful.  I get the occasional “warning” email that my OneCloud subscription has expired or my storage allocation is full, and that they can no longer store any more of my data — to which, of course, my unspoken response is:  I never wanted you to store my data anyway, so fuck off.

I have no idea how this is going to end, or if it ever will.