It always seemed weird to me that most companies just discontinued their traditional sugary variety and went diet only, instead of having a diet version and the sugary version just at a higher price.

The death of original Irn Bru is a bit of a tragedy, and I’m not even sure what the point of low sugar Lucozade is supposed to be.

A small set-top box (essentially a Steam Deck with the screen, controls and batteries removed, and with components that don’t have the space restrictions that come with a mobile device) would still be an interesting proposition. Particularly if they partnered with the main video streaming services to port their apps across, and implemented Chromecast/AirPlay support.

I can see a market for it, as a “Chromecast and Apple TV competitor that also plays all your games”.

To send things in the post?

It’s a command that pulls a whole bunch of useful system information and sticks it on one page.

Really, the biggest use of it is for showing other people your system- especially showing off. It’s a staple of “look at my system” brag posts.

But to be generous, there are (small) legit use cases for it. If you manage a lot of machines, and you plausibly don’t know the basic system information for whatever you happen to be working on in this instant, it’s a program that will give you most of what you could want to know in a single command. Yes, 100% of the information could be retrieved just as easily using other standard commands, but having it in a single short command, outputting to a single overview page, formatted to be easily readable at a glance, is no bad thing.

The Government has abdicated its duties; for the they who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains themselves and anxiously hopes for just two things: meat and crumpets.

• Juvenal, 100 AD (mostly)

The barristers the CPS employs to bring prosecutions are the same barristers used by the Post Office, using the same courts and the same judges.

That’s actually not entirely true. Although the CPS does engage “free” barristers via chambers for some cases, most CPS prosecutions are handled “in house” by salaried barristers working directly for the CPS.

CPS’s in-house barristers are (as a rough rule) extremely experienced at prosecuting common-or-garden cases, but lack the specialist experience of barristers available to hire via chambers, who they will usually bring in for the more complex prosecutions (or ones involving a specialist area of expertise).

All barristers are only as good as the evidence given to them, though, and one of the real strengths of the CPS barristers is experience in working with the police- both in terms of knowing how to get the best evidence out of them, and knowing a police wild goose chase when they see one. This is the part that really breaks down in cases like the Post Office, where it’s private corporate investigators throwing complex technical evidence over the fence at random barristers who have mostly not worked with them before.

If a machine is going to have multiple users (all my computers have multiple profiles for family members) all those users have to be called something, and I’ve not got the energy or the creativity to come up with fun and funky usernames for every system when my actual name is more than good enough.

Britain and Australia are two distant cousins separated by a planet but united in their love of that bitter black goop.

Simple question: what would your employer say if you asked them?

My contract has a standard “no using company computers for personal business” clause. However I feel entirely confident that my employer doesn’t mind me using it to do personal errands using the web browser (on my own time). And I know they have no problem with me using Zoom or Teams to join meetings for non-work things in the evening. How do I know this? Because I asked them…

I’ve never asked them “can I install a new hard drive in my laptop, install an OS I downloaded off the internet, and boot into that OS to do things which I’d rather you not be able to track like you could on the main OS”. But I’m completely confident I’d know what the answer would be if I did ask.

If you think installing a new SSD etc. is acceptable, ask them. If you’re not asking them because you’re worried they’d say “no”, then don’t do it.

Try asking them instead if you can use your laptop to look up directions to the dentist on Google Maps. See if you get the same answer.

Literally the first paragraph:

The Budgie desktop team announced today the release and general availability of Budgie 10.9 as the latest version of this modern desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions.

If you need more than “modern desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions” to figure out what the project is, then you’re probably not the target audience for 9to5Linux.

but isn’t your national post serving an important competitive function, keeping other (fully private) mailing and courrier services in the pricing ballpark?

private companies would fill the void - at the consumer’s expense, no?

Royal Mail is fully private; no part of it is nationally owned.

It was sold off on the cheap a decade ago (while it was still profitable) with a major “caveat emptor” stipulation that the universal service obligation would remain as it was.

The private owners have since hived off the profitable parcel delivery arm (GLS) into a legally distinct entity, and have started whinging that the now isolated letter delivery business is unprofitable without degrading the service obligation.

It’s a cynical move.

“Unfounded fears about spooky microwaves makes using them unhealthy. But take my advice and add extra salt into your diet in new and inventive ways because it might make things taste marginally, subjectively better.”

1. You don’t fill a whole kettle, you just put in the water you need.

2. British kettles legitimately boil faster than ones stateside because of our higher mains electricity voltage. A quick boil kettle in the UK is far quicker than a standard domestic microwave.

Edit: I just timed my kettle (I was craving a cuppa anyway); one cup of water, 53 seconds. I bet your microwave can’t top that (mine certainly can’t).

The Firefox snap is published directly by Mozilla too; it’s not a third party snap.

If you want to announce your disapproval or approval of a certain post, there’s this great mechanism built right in to do so. There are a couple of little arrow buttons; just click the down arrow on anything that you don’t enjoy.

Personally I find it dead easy just to not click on any posts that don’t pique my interest, and it’s not like this community has so much content that “high quality” posts are getting buried under the sheer volume.

If you want to start a new community which is just Linux news aggregation, you go right ahead though.

Valve’s Proton is open source but is it also free to use and distribute in commercial software?

Yes.

Valve’s Proton code is licensed under the BSD licence, which is a “do anything you like with this code” licence.

Wine code is under the LGPL. You can ship this in commercial software as long as you “make the source code available” (which, assuming the distributor isn’t modifying the Wine code further, can be achieved by just linking people back to the main Wine project code repository).

DXVK is licensed under zlib, which is functionally the same as the BSD licence.

What do you need vim for when Emacs has everything (including vim)?

(jk, I don’t care about Emacs or vim; I’m a nano peasant)

I also usually buy cod in Tesco. But probably not in quite the same way.

Keep your filthy Cex parties to yourself, you degenerate.

He’s already refused an OBE.

I was under the impression that he refused it because Vennells had one. As she’s now handed hers back in disgrace, presumably that objection is resolved.