oldcynic

Credit cards definitely have check digits, pretty sure bank accounts don't, though I'm not certain.

Common enough that there's been a fair bit in the media[0] regularly, ever since instant transfers took off, and warnings from the Financial Ombudsman[1].

There's also been stories of people randomly discovering a few thousand appearing in their account and stupidly going out to spend it that day.

[0] First link in results https://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/current-account... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-22815716

So do I. Made a few very close friends via LJ. All non technical oddly enough.

Up til that point, people would type. If they were having a bad time they'd type A LOT. You couldn't help getting to know them better than you did.

Then Facebook etc arrived, and now it's "Life's shit. Inbox me", if that, or a photo of lunch/cat/coffee.

I think we took a wrong turn somewhere along the way.

They do. If I have someone's bank details I can transfer for free, instantly. (OK it sometimes takes a few minutes at weekends). There's two issues with ever using that for online payment:

1. There is no mechanism to obtain a refund for a mistake - eg I mistype the account number, someone else gets the money. Banks won't reverse but ask the payee to refund. If they still exist and are willing to cooperate. This is the route used for many, many scams like Microsoft calling because they noticed a fault with your Windows.

2. There is no protection under the Consumer Credit Act to obtain refund in the event the company goes bust or the product is defective and they won't refund. Credit cards have to provide that.

I use it with friends in preference to any other method, especially Paypal though.

You've also surely got loads of anecdotes on how not to do it and tales from the coalface from your years in industry.

I'm sure you can sprinkle some of those into the classes to give a little light relief if the students are really finding things too dry. You don't have to go as far as recreating TheDailyWTF. Perhaps use some to provide worked examples of designing yourself into blind alleys and how to get out again, or just to provide awareness of a few real world issues that might come up with whatever topic is the day's lecture.

Great! Glad to help. There's a lot of audio drama on the Beeb, also on R3 (the classical music station) that far fewer know of, and R4 Extra the internet channel. Good luck, and have some more links. :)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tnwj R3 Drama Page

Two old multipart series I happen to remember, just to give an idea of past scope:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03nv05z Listening to the Dead - 5 part series.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07mxgxl Tracks - 9 part SciFi conspiracy thriller.

Not at all. A little glibness aside, I do think we should have replaced many things with better or less polluting alternatives far, far earlier than we do. The market is the wrong tool for many of these choices as shown by some of the current global issues.

At such a vast time distance there's likely nothing whatsoever left of us - except in the geological record as a few rare fossilised artefacts and environmental clues. We have a hard enough time understanding life a couple of thousand years back and religion is all too often trotted out as easy explanation for "we don't know why".

Snark aside, it's important. There probably should be someone adequately numerate on every jury.

Most juries will have around half, perhaps more, who've done nothing at all mathematical since school 10-45 years previously and think percentages are in the difficult part of maths (ie it's more than basic arithmetic). HN is going to be very unrepresentative for numeracy. :)

You want them to achieve "beyond reasonable doubt" conclusions from probabilities, percentages, false positive rates and perhaps standard deviations, well you may as well be making your case in French or Ancient Greek that they can pick a few part-understood bits from.

Or hope for an eloquent statistician on the jury!

Do not underestimate the ability of juries to be swayed by impressive sounding claims. Nor their ability to be swayed, and dismiss clear mitigations, by one dominant or eloquent individual.

"Our facial recognition has over 90% accuracy" from the prosecution's expert can easily become "clearly guilty" in the jury room.

They'll probably wonder why all the fragments they find seem to indicate we preferred damaging technologies over benign.

Then like archaeologists everywhere will conclude it was of religious significance.

1. Is this something you'd be interested in listening to?

Very much. I voraciously consume Radio 4, radio plays and audiobooks, and a few podcasts.

Tried episode 2 at lunch - ooh it's a bit long. Might have worked better as a 2 parter? We're very impressed with your level of quality for a new project. :)

2. Any suggestions how to gain initial traction and reach broader audiences

Random thought and perhaps not relevant or of interest as it's a bit of a tangent.

Have you thought of looking into submission requirements for BBC Radio4 Afternoon Drama? No idea what the rules are, but I know they feature new playwrights and experimental content fairly often. They also often make series of 5 linked daily plays exploring some SF theme or alternate reality. The Beeb are surprisingly easy to have email or social conversations with for an org their size.

Episode 1 honestly wouldn't have seemed out of place had I heard it in that slot. Audience is around 1m I believe. :)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qrzz

When I know I'm asking an SO sort of question I can !so directly. The whole ! system transforms ease of use - I miss them elsewhere!

TL;DR I mostly find what I need quicker with least faffing around changing terms to try and fight them "knowing best".

Google shot themselves in the foot when they removed code search, and "improved" results by constantly knowing better with synonyms and other semantically linked results. It rather broke code searches and led to more of the wrong language turning up instead. Language reference and standard library type searches they do just fine at.

Google spoiled it for the obscure and code when even + and - modifiers and advanced searches became optional. They felt able to give a page of results with only one result having my must-have term. Makes searching for a specific release hellish - not everyone integrates latest and greatest v9 the week of its release. No, I really do want v7. I never fathomed the rationale of that change for anyone.

DDG do the least additional messing with my search terms with helpful expansion, pluralisation and so on. DDG got a little worse at obscure error searches when they started on some "oh you also meant" games fairly recently. They still do the least of this. There's still occasional cases where the content simply isn't there - but they're far better than say a year or two ago.

When I first tried DDG a few years ago I was !g or !sp all the time and it was barely worth the effort. Now I very rarely go near Google and don't feel I'm losing out.

I dislike the "last month", "last six months" way of doing ranges oh so much.

Where are the 2 years or older, 4 years or older options at the other end of the scale or let me specify two actual dates.

Sadly I often need to search for older content - DDG are least worst, but they're all poor to hopeless at it.

Well I must be using it wrong. Very wrong.

I find it better than Google for code / technical searches, and all things work related

I find it better than Google for historic or old content as Google barely acknowledges such content is possible any more. Admittedly DDG is "least worst" in this respect but it hasn't entirely thrown the results out with the obsession with recency and update frequency (I consider this to have essentially ruined Google). Google were better at this and dated searches in their first 2 years than now.

Google then ruined themselves further by feeling it can overrule my keywording attempts and gives a page of results featuring no result with the must have term. Adding insult to injury they proceed to heavily promote brands over small companies and blogs, or anything really.

Once a week I'll try !sp and not find what I need on Google either. The rare times I want video search Bing is orders of magnitude better than Google.

We just listened to ep #1 over dinner.

Great production quality, I was surprised. We both enjoyed it and sat to the end before going to do other stuff, will definitely be checking out the other two.

I'm interested to see how this develops.

Signage in store shows the price you pay at the till.

The till receipt or invoice breaks down the VAT element for you, and most places even pick out what is zero rated or exempt should you care.

No, it really doesn't get forgotten.

Every receipt breaks out the VAT and rate. Food, books and children's clothes (and a few other things) are exempt (UK).

All online purchases show VAT in the checkout and basket, and in the invoice after purchase.

How did they forget when they went out to find and kill the real person?

UK got rid of farthings and halfpennies when they exceeded face value, and the £1 note decades ago.

Pennies and 2p became copper plated steel for the same reason. Pre 92 bronze ones are worth about double.

Coppers can't be worth keeping around much longer. I doubt even penny sweets still exist.

Even on the equator traditional approaches are nicer than air con - not least because AC dries the air so uncomfortably. I'm the one who turns the hotel air con off, opens a window and turns the fan on. :)

If we really get the vast majority of the world using air con we may as well get them to power their homes by diesel generators 24/7 too and be done with the planet, environment and any claims to care for it.

Fully agree - the media is full of the crisis of loneliness, rising suicide, depression, so of course mental health budgets are cut to the quick and wait lists rising again. Even the much needed building programme in the Blair years will have us paying off the public private partnership for another 15 or 20 years. Corbyn seems to have lost the momentum since the election so I'm not sure how that will play out in the next one.

Interesting, I'd always just assumed I was doing them a disservice and not noticing the real issues when seeing stories of no-platforming or focus on redefining or limiting some online language. I think it's far too easy to get detached from reality with the degree the networks keep everyone in their own little bubbles. Brexit was the worst of UK politics in so many respects, especially the amount of racism that came up, not since I was in school can I remember that much open racism. I really thought we had done better on race. I'm not especially optimistic either when we have seemed overdue for a political change for perhaps a decade now yet all sides seem happy to carry on trading insults and lies.

"For another, true multitasking would be possible under Windows, claimed Microsoft"

I had forgotten how terrible the early versions of Windows looked compared to Lisa, Amiga and even OS/2 and DR's GEM.

Even 7 years later Windows 3 only had cooperative multi tasking that in reality was program launcher with background printing. Applications were hopeless at releasing processor and if you tried to multi task you often crashed the whole OS. It was, of course, hugely commercially successful from 3 on. :)

Well, if it was published it was deposited with the national library - British Library or Library of Congress. I think other nations have similar systems. Covered newspapers, magazines and books. The British Library page:

https://www.bl.uk/aboutus/legaldeposit/introduction/

"By law, a copy of every UK print publication must be given to the British Library by its publishers, and to five other major libraries that request it. This system is called legal deposit and has been a part of English law since 1662.

From 6 April 2013, legal deposit also covers material published digitally and online"

I think we're talking past each other here

Distinctly possible!

not referring to political parties and policy-making, but to the cultural zeitgeist ... the range of acceptable political thought and discourse

Hmm. I have never heard it used separate of policy. My understanding is it's the range of policies the public will accept and elect. If a proposed policy is outside the window then it'll be seen as extreme, or you'll not get re-elected. What usually follows are soundbites and helpful campaigns of politicians on message trying to shift public opinion first to render that policy acceptable. Sometimes this works (brexit, though I don't think they wanted to be quite that successful), often it doesn't. Put another way it's a way of gauging if "we'll get away with this".

So whilst said millennial progressives may be pulling back a bit from the accepted norm of neo-liberalism with free market as answer to everything, the individual being what matters (with as little government as possible), the pendulum after 40 years swinging right remains extremely far over on the right. If it's general political discussion outside of any reference to policy then the waters get far muddier with some aspects distinctly more left than others, though often not classic political areas of interest. It probably gets harder to judge the general view too.

Other than on the fringes there's little real discussion of adequate social housing, more public services, government providing safety net, society and community, failure of privatisations (except rail thanks to Corbyn) or even alternatives to austerity when after a decade it clearly isn't working. Mind that was likely a policy to hasten the reduction of government.

UK policy has always been rather reluctant compared to Europe on social matters preferring to stigmatise and pretend it isn't happening. For most social policies, cannabis included, the changes seem inevitable as the younger generation of both right and left are far more accepting. Even my generation seems often more relaxed than policy. I'm actually surprised it hasn't been legalised already - it's more common than tobacco now, and I've thought it inevitable for ages. My generation can't all have reached 40 and forgotten how they spent their youth!

It's quite simple. If the politicians of a particular era were elected their policies must have been within the window of that era. If all the politicians, of all parties, in an earlier era were to the left of today it stands to reason that the range of policies acceptable to the public, ie the window, has moved to the right since then.

It's the reason the Labour party had to shift right or remain unelectable as they were unable to move it to themselves. They shifted far enough right as to be no longer a party of the left. Public opinion had shifted right, and it has moved further right since the 80s.

social issues, I think it's pretty clear that views which were acceptable a few decades ago are unthinkable today

Which is what I said. Still doesn't stop them being issues that differ across generations far more than of the right or left. Young people of the right agree just about as much as those of the left. Older generations of right and left are those holding the previous anachronistic views.

the modern conservative party is also more central than in previous times though

I have to go back to the inter-war years to find them to the right of now on anything substantive. Disraeli's One-Nation Conservatism, the tenets of which still existed and were still somewhat respected under Heath, is resolutely dead, killed with malice by Thatcher's neo-liberal "there is no such thing as society, only the individual". Theresa May briefly using one-nation as a soundbite doesn't mean it actually exists any more.

Both Cameron and Blair were making policy changes and privatisations that Thatcher ruled out as too radical or unthinkable. It was Brown who removed the final remnants of banking control. Both governments were firmly to the right of the Thatcher years. Both would be unrecognisable to the Wilson Labour party. The formerly mainstream One-Nation Tories were redefined as the "wets" in the Thatcher years and it was the radical right of the party who came to the fore.

Similar can be seen on the other side of the Atlantic.

In my eyes, the overton window has shifted leftward so drastically

I cannot think of a single solitary policy that has moved leftward since 1979 and the Thatcher era without requiring a fundamental redefinition of left/right as political terms. "New Labour" was the redefinition of the Labour party as a Tory-lite party. Thatcher notably said in her later years her biggest achievement was New Labour.

On work, unions, welfare, state ownership, tax and redistribution of wealth, even austerity the current Tories are markedly to the right of any previous party since the war. Crucially so are the current and previous (New) Labour party. You could go back further, but prior to the inception of the Labour party it's going to become an increasingly meaningless discussion.

The Labour party of today is no longer a party of the left in the generally accepted European sense but firmly of the centre in the same space as the LibDems. Under Blair (new) Labour were firmly of the neo-liberal right.

The only reason the Conservative party has moved more slowly on gender, race, and LGBT issues, and other orthogonal non left/right issues, is it has always been the party of the older generation hoping for the country to be run as it used to be run. Such is the nature of conservatism (small C), even whilst Thatcher was implementing radical neo-liberal reforms. Those issues are steadily changing on both sides of the political spectrum, and mostly always have with each generation.

That's my preferred answer. We can have magsafe back too. :)

Sadly Apple rate thinness too highly, so I suspect they'll not give it up easily.

Short of fitting a keyboard condom, or iPad (no doubt called TouchBoard) where the keyboard used to be, what can they do? Make the battery thinner so they can get sane key travel back within the case without increasing overall thickness?

So I expect to see a couple more releases of ultra thin keyboards with various fix mechanisms before they accept that rules of physics and dust apply to them too. :)

Leftward? lol

In every respect except gender and sexual politics we have moved massively right since the seventies. The UK Labour party are now to the right of the 1970s Heath Tory party. Yes even under Corbyn. In 1970 he'd have been mostly a moderate. It was Nixon who oh so nearly brought in UBI, at a surprisingly generous rate too.

As far as LGBT rights are concerned that seems far more a generational thing than of the right or left. Here in the UK it's had cross party support in recent years, though of course there are more anachronistic conservative views on the right. It was, nevertheless, the Tory party that legalised gay marriage.

I would too for a technical book or course, to a point. Mainly as so many have managed to successfully sell garbage. ;)

A refund policy and giving away a couple of random lessons or chapters should cover credibility there. Some months blogging in that niche and some reasonably written code over on github should be enough background for casual searching. Build the rest as you go. I don't think it's too hard to stand apart from the Internet Marketer types.

You probably don't need much background for a $29 ebook or video course to sell, you probably do for a $1,999 on site course.

Hard Won Recruiter Bullet Points:

Never, ever, give out a contact unless you want to burn that contact. That means no references until offer, no answering the mid-conversation "oh, I forgot, who's (CTO|your manager) there", no giving them the name of someone more suitable that might be interested. (Forward the role and recruiter to your maybe interested friend)

Send PDF CV only. Word docs will be branded, changed, and in some cases leave you sat in an interview where you don't recognise the CV and skills that got you there. Yes, this happened. We compared my CVs in interview (I always take along a paper copy).

Confirm rates or salary and conditions in interview. See above.