Notices by Marcus Jenkins (marcusjenkins@mastodon.social)

@Geri Side note about re-nationalisation that I only just learned about. Just after WWII a whole load of things were nationalised and it didn't cost the public a penny at the time. The shareholders were issued some very long-term bonds (government IOUs) by way of compensation and job done. So the appalling UK water companies could be re-nationalised quickly just after a thorough, realistic valuation to work out the value of bonds to issue.

@Geri The optics are not good for a "left-wing" government, although the sell-off of this particular item of the national silver has been in the pipeline for a long, long, long time. The #enshittification for profit was already underway when I was still living in UK 20 years ago.

@Geri In the case of the UK water utility companies, I expect that an accurate, honest, fair valuation for re-nationalisation would be, approximately, fuck-all. After the (mis-) management has stripped all the money out to shareholders' dividends and C-level salaries and bonuses, the actual infrastructure has negative value down to the outstanding maintenance and renewal requirements.

@arstechnica Apart from repaying Space Karen for his support, what does he, or the nation, stand to gain by pumping crypto? How's this good for the US economy?

@arstechnica Pah, the Kona is *huge* compared to the (almost) Kei-car-sized new Hyundai Inster (Casper) EV which is going to sell like crazy here in Europe!

@arstechnica Sales teams get paid base salary plus some kind of commission, unless I'm mistaken. That is to say, it's very much performance-related pay. I expect, especially after the COVID lockdowns where everybody was working from home to prove that it works, that these sales teams know how to organise themselves, either inside an office, in their cars, at the hotel, at the customer's site or working from home.

@arstechnica Yay for CNC!

@nixCraft Developer in my case. Close to retirement.

@arstechnica I don't know about US, but in EU we're more worried about apocalyptic climate change that is accelerated by people continuing to burn stuff (including, but not limited to, in internal combustion engine cars) than a few car manufacturers having a hard time because they doggedly stuck to designing and making more shitty petrol, diesel & hybrid cars.

#climatechange #evs

@arstechnica Looking forward to Elon going the same way as that other billion dollar grifter.

#theranos

@arstechnica Meh, IMO Sony did them best. 😏

@arstechnica As long as those computers continue to interact with me via switches, knobs and buttons, that's OK. What's not OK is swapping in a giant touch screen to replace all those controls for which we develop muscle memory and can soon use without distraction from, erm, driving.

#userinterface #tesla #distracteddriving

@arstechnica The whole selling point of the TWELVE THOUSAND dollar "FULL self-driving" option is that the car is fully self-driving.

You *should* be able play on your phone while the Tesla is in FSD mode otherwise I would suggest that you are being conned out of $12,000.

And *surely* #SpaceKaren wouldn't be talking bollocks now would he? I mean, we have #Hyperloop everywhere today, right?

#fsd #autonomousvehicles #tesla #grifters

@itsfoss I was running Minix and Coherent then I heard about this new, free OS that ran on 386. I found somebody on campus that was writing the stack of floppies to install Linux. I ran the machine mostly for my email and soon found that I could run an SMB server on it and then I was hooked.

@arstechnica Excellent. Thanks to the European Union for reversing this awful trend. Controlling a car is not like controlling your smartphone. There is no need for the compromise of having no buttons other than cost cutting on the part of the manufacturer.

@nixCraft Darn tootin'. The weeks and months that I spent with my dad's printers. And last night I went to bed early and heard "mum, the printer's not working! ". I'm afraid I just went ahead and slept. I'm betting 1. it's out of paper 2. they're not connected to the home WiFi 3. maybe, just maybe it's out of toner. Whatever, the 14yo wouldn't be able to get to the bottom of it, for sure. But all A grades at school, don't you know?!? Sub-zero practical skills these days.

@arstechnica Oh, pu-lease. There are some in my household on a shared Disney account. I'm *so* looking forward to no Disney, because, fuck Disney, really. And McDonald's, Starbucks, Subway, KFC, Burger King, Popeyes and all the other shit that is clogging the minds of kids outside US&A.

#culturewars

@arstechnica This is a pretty insignificant restriction. You can bet your bottom dollar that this sleazy grifter is making use of her jail time to come out fighting with her next scam.

She needs to be barred from running or owning any part of *any* business - she mustn't be allowed to move any further than burger flipping or janitor responsibilities in her entire life.

#grifters #GriftersGonnaGrift #elizabethholmes

@arstechnica Lead. Chromate. In food, FFS.

How about eating some actual fruit? Like the perfectly portable, delicious banana. Or an apple. Fruit pouches, WTF?

@nixCraft I've been a happy Labrador since a stack of SLS floppy disks in 1992. Ubuntu since 2005.