contracertainty

What's a check? As the saying goes, 'I'm too European for this'.

On a more serious note, the last time I saw a cheque in the UK was my grandfather balancing his cheque book in the mid 80s. It really has been that long since they were in general use in the UK, at least.

Just like with the prevalance of Apple/iPhones, the US banking system is global outlier.

Things you can't do with my banking app you can do with the web site:

- Extract your transactions to excel/csv

- Use OpenBanking

- See all my accounts on screen at once

- Sharedealing

- International transfers

But people are right, banks trust the mobile app more, and realy on it as an MFA device, so even if you use the website you still need the app.

Unfortunately iPhones aren't ubiquitous outside their home market. It would have to be on Android to be really useful in the places this would be really useful, i.e. places where regimes turn off the internet when things go badly for them (current situation in the US notwithstanding). That's not to say iPhones shouldn't have it, I'm all for that.

You are absolutely right, and you have indavertebtly hit the nail on the head. This legilsation is supported by parents who would like their children to be able to use the internet, all of it, without any effort on their part to police their children's online habits. There are many parents who give their kids smartphones at 10 years old, or younger, and create Google and Facebook/Insta accounts with fake ages for their kids to use, and let them at it. No supervision, no discussion, no parental controls. This renders any action on the part of the tech companies moot, as parents are proving that their pre-teen kids are adults by providing false information. Kids then go online, go into Snapchat or whatever, cue torrent of DPs and grooming. Quelle surprise!

Schools in the UK spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with this, and in almost every case it turns out parents have no idea what their kids are sending/seeing online.

So the result is that bad parents demand bad legislation so that they can, in their minds, transfer responsibility for parenting their kids to the state. The state, well meaning rather than malicious, massively overreaches in its attempt to provide an answer. As a result everyone else suffers. And the 'majority of the public' think parents should parent, rather than making it the government's problem, and butt out of their internet.

Hey, privacy is a vald concern. I could just as easily say 'When you say "privacy doesn't matter" most of us hear "moron".

Try being a bit more civil next time.

As a European I have to ask - do you really need another argument? If I stand on a platform for government in Europe with an arguably fascist agenda I will get called out as a fascist and will lose. Never mind if I am a convicted felon, rapist, and probable russian intelligence asset. Seriously, what are you guys thinking here? Americans would actually vote for an extreme right wing candiate just to prove a point to the dems? Just to get one over on the libs? Please explain.

My company ('systemically important' bank, ~100k enployees) is trying furiously to get us into the office 2 days a week. For many people this is more than was required of them pre-COVID.

What is actually happening is that people come in 1 day but there is nowhere to sit appropriate for development or any kind of 'engineering' work unless they are on site before 8am (no good for those of us with school runs to do). If there's no desk we're being asked to sit at benches or refectory style tables with our tiny laptop screens. The actual result of this is a day of no work, and, being europe, it means a bunch of people filling in the accident book saying they have a neck injury at the end of each day. This is going to get worse as they pressure people to come in without adequate desk numbers. The unions are swamped with complaints (yay for unions!).

If people can find a desk they are surrounded by project manangers or non-technical staff from other teams who are on calls all day with people who are remote, and they themselves are on calls with people who are remote, at home or in another EU country, India/US/etc. No synergy, no quick chats by the water cooler/kettle.

##Remote, virtual global teams do not benefit from being in the office.##

On a more personal note, I'm also finding it's a very noisy, distracting environment. For neurodivergent people (ADHD, Autism) the office is actually really challenging. I find I have to go and close myself in a meeting room to get some quiet at several points throught the day, and I leave early. It's exhausting.

I'd estimate that 80-90% of my team are neurodivergent engineers, cryptographers, or architects, and are actively seeking remote positions. I wholly support their efforts.

I am 100% sure this drive to get people in is because senior management are bored and lonely at home and don't want to come into empty offices. They've paid for these giant offices in London, NY and elsewhere, which cost a fortune, and need to see bums on seats. The way they stay up to speed on what's going on is chatting to people in the halls and corridors, so they don't even really need a computer! They live in a different world.

Screw banks, anyway.

I'm gonna second gp, I don't know anyone who does photo/video editing, cad/cam or 3D modeling.

In fact, I know more people with > 3 pi's than I do coders. People love them and use them for all sorts. But I don't know anyone who does any of those things.

This is an incredibly silicon valley centered viewpoint. I'm sure the guy makes some good observations, but how can you take anyone seriously that starts with a comment like this? Apple is insignificant outside of the English speaking first world: North America, UK, Aus/NZ. I wish some of these people from those markets would get outside their bubble from time to time. There's a huge market out there that has never used nor wanted an iPhone or any other Apple product.

Not that they are bad, they just aren't all that special.

The UK doesn't have an NHS, nor NHS app. The UK has four national health services, one for each country. IIRC only England has an NHS app. And we have no id cards. It's not looking good.

The key HashiCorp use to sign downloads of such popular tools as Terraform and secrets management tool Vault has been compromised after a 3rd party tool used to scan code was compromised. The key, which doesn't appear to have been held in a hardware device, was exfiltrated to by and to persons unknown.This was a week ago but has received surprisingly little coverage.