I am spending ever less time on social media.

This is because I have come to specifically distrust SM. Twitter was useful until Musk bought and trashed it. FB was interesting but overfull of people in the USA who thought their country was the only free one in the world and anyone rational wanted to be a US citizen. Not much useful conversation there then.

I commented once just how awful Mrs Thatcher was and the harm she had done to the UK.I had some people try and speak to me like I was 5 and tell me how I was ungrateful for what she had done for us!

X is brimming with tabloid hate press and fake news. No thanks. Its getting harder to find the news. Even the BBC has not recovered from the Conservative donors who were placed in its management. I had hoped that when w got adults in government in July, they might get rid of them but they haven't yet.

With social media so far down the tubes, where can I get my news now?/p

Every few years, whoever is in government decides they like the idea of a national ID card. Whoever is in opposition states that this is a horrible idea.

Bear in mind that this will have absolutely no effect on the number of refugees. The conservatives would have forced them on people as they got out of their boats. The current lot will have to think of something else...

Sometimes they copied Apple before they had the idea.!

The only innovators at Apple were its legal team and it hasn't changed. Sorry.

I am probably intending to retire in a year. This means that I will not be affected by the horrendous security implications vomited out by Windows 11. Nobody wants their built in security holes and nobody wants fake AI on every PC!

I suspect that, like many IT workers, my first/last IT project on retiring will be to remove Windows from my home PC and putting some sort of linux on it. My current work was over the last few years forced to remove working systems and install, less functional, Windows 10 ones. Presumably this nonsense will continue until their new president crashes his country beyond repair.

AI is a scam. I have it on my Chromebook, my phone, smartwatch. I don't need.want them. If I want a fake AI, I can get an Alexa.

After our conservatives were very strongly rejected at our recent election they have been getting nuttier and crazier.

One of the biggest failures was their default loathing of healthcare. They keep coming up with ideas to damage it. They have driven our healthcare up to nearly half what is spent per person in the USA!

One of their latest bright ideas is to use IT to translate the many languages patients need. If you have ever used Google Translate you will not be too keen to trust it with your life. If someone manages to get AI up to a clinical safety level (unlikely) it would cost a lot more than Translate!

I once went to help a friend at the Emergency Department. E We all had Google Translate I had very rusty Farsi. My friend's English was better than my Farsi and the Triage nurse only spoke English. That is not the future! That is a good way to kill people!

Edinburgh is a LOT nearer the middle of this island (just north of Newcastle> What stopped him? It would have meant that our government actually knew where things are in the UK. instead of being horrified at the idea of "north of watford"! London is as central to the UK as Inverness!

Being outside the USA, we call in summer time. It doesn't save any daylight..

We tried permanent summer time once. It was an impressively stupid idea that made life very difficult for half the country. The sunrise where I come from was after 10 o'clock. This idea had to be the result of having our capital in such an insane place as London! Towards the end of the year, there is over an hour difference. Perhaps, as the USA is entirely south of the UK it won't be so bad?

The logical answer to all this is to keep the same time on the clock and businesses can have the option to open when they want!

Perhaps everyone should use UTC. This would be technically simple and the only difficulty would be people in the USA would have to learn the 24-hour clock.

I used to work for a (very) small IT company. We provided equipment and support for Businesses in our area. I remember owners and senior managers assuming their superiority because they DIDN'T understand IT!

I was an anomaly to them as I had what they considered a "proper" education - Latin, Greek and a number of other, useless, subjects but I worked in IT. They were proud that they had little understanding of how the products they sold worked. A couple of decades later those companies are gone. That the managers thought they were better because of their lack of knowledge is insane. I remember one sneering at staff because they knew how to use lathes and he didn't!

A complex society like ours will always need engineers and mechanics. It does not, even now, need people who think they are better because they are unable to understand technology (not just IT).

The more they do, the funnier it gets!

I use the same charger and wire for my phone (pixel7), BT earbuds and my Chromebook. Unsurprisingly, it charges (the little box for) my earbuds the fastest and phone the longest but it works fine on those plus any random item plugged in by family members. Seems pretty close to universal. Nothing gets warm (indicating too much power. I tried the phone on an old wallwart and it took several times as long but it worked.

The fun thing about USBC now is that it now annoys people who still insist on pretending Brexit was a good idea! If they are going to avoid it, they can avoid all smartphones - even Apple ones!

It is very interesting if irregular.

I have dropped several podcasts that consistently got too long."

How long is too long? I prefer no longer than 30 minutes but am unlikely to choose much longer than 15. I listen to podcasts for fun and don't need them as long as a badly run business meeting!

Of the next items in my queue, one is 1 hour and 15 minutes and the next longest is 28 minutes

Multi-hour podcasts? No thanks!

I have never come across anyone who used a track point other than a support call who had to because the touchpad had failed. They were very thankful when I gave them a wireless mouse as the reason for the failure was coffee and it was outside warranty!

Has anyone ever encountered someone happily using track point?

The obvious question is was it the cause of this

I know that the obvious cause was Microsoft. We need to know what vulnerability was activated this morning!