billyruffian

8 ms·

31.
by billyruffian 5y ago
Funnily enough, I stumbled on this data[0] for Ireland, 2016, total revenues booked by nationality of parent company: China: $2.44bn Luxembourg: $2.74bn Italy: $5.86bn Japan: $8.38bn France: $18.67bn Ireland: $77.95bn US: $364.77bn I know t
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by billyruffian 5y ago
Boredom as a technique for pruning staff. https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/21/boredom_rooms_japan_e...
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by billyruffian 5y ago
Rural person here from Wales where sonic booms from military aircraft were moderately common. Animals panic when they hear the boom: they tend to stampede, fall off cliffs, break legs, trample each other, lambs get separated, break through
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by billyruffian 5y ago
The gherkin language that cucumber uses for its specifications, written well, are brilliant at distilling what the customer wants, what the developer is going to build and how the QA is going to assert that acceptance is measured. But it ha
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by billyruffian 5y ago
My org has mixed teams. We find devs are terrible at being QAs. This is not through lack of willingness but they're always either overtesting or undertesting and usually missing the test boundaries. So we use the SDET model, software d
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by billyruffian 5y ago
I'm studying for another batchelors with the Open University in the UK. It's a good institution and I completed my computing masters with them a few years ago. I'm studing for fun, not for career. I'm so disappointed to
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by billyruffian 5y ago
Why is the hatch hinged in the most awkward way possible? If the hinges were on any other side, it would be so much more accessible, there must be a reason for this?
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by billyruffian 5y ago
The UTC abbreviation was made as a compromise between french and english[1] rather than bloody-mindedness from any one nation. This was back in the day when such compromises could be reached without rancour. For an example of the daft amoun
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by billyruffian 5y ago
Again, for clarity, the Crown Dependencies are the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Bermuda is a BTO. Bermuda has been self-governing since 1620. Britain has very little in the way of exerting any pressure on them short of imposing dire
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by billyruffian 5y ago
Just for clarification, British Overseas Territories are not part of the UK. They set their own laws and manage their own internal affairs while their foreign relations and defence are managed by the UK.
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by billyruffian 5y ago
Paraphrasing 'Yes Minister', civil servants are in government, ministers are in politics.
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by billyruffian 5y ago
> It irks me that there are no links to the laws or even the actual name to look them up This is because it's the Queen's Speech: it's what the government of the day intends to pursue as legislation for that session. It&#x
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by billyruffian 5y ago
You use the dispute mechanism built into the treaty. You don't blockade an island economy.
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by billyruffian 5y ago
What's outrageous? A french minister threatening to cut power to the island, french trawlermen blocking the landing of fish caught by british fishermen and to blockade the island of Jersey or two fisheries protection boats being dispat
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by billyruffian 6y ago
> Country: United Kingdom > In EU?: true How very 2019.
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by billyruffian 6y ago
Partnership (well, joint venture) with Acorn, not subsdiary.
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by billyruffian 6y ago
> Usually you can be over a month late before the water company actually goes to the trouble of sending someone out to turn off your water. What? You can be disconnected from water because you're a month late? That's barbaric,
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by billyruffian 6y ago
I don't think you quite get how Ofcom works. Ofcom received a complaint in Feb 2020[1] which it investigated -- taking a year to reach this conclusion is not 'sudden'. The request to transfer the licence to another entity did
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by billyruffian 6y ago
The UK regulator's (Ofcom) move was because GCTN wasn't apolitical. There was a similar run-in with Russia Today[1]. When it comes to news channels, Ofcom's job is to prevent the Foxification of news. [1] https:/&#x2F
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by billyruffian 6y ago
Let's not forget the Lords Spiritual, the 26 bishops who sit in the Lords -- we are still, just a bit, a theocracy.
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by billyruffian 6y ago
'Effeminate' is an adjective of demeanor.
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by billyruffian 6y ago
The Belgian investigation into the production facility with the manufacturing problem: what did it evidence? I'm curious because I've not come across what the result was or if there was any evidence of dissembling from AZ.
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by billyruffian 6y ago
I vouch for this approach 100%. You could set your clock to the 4am sweat panics that would always wake me up with my head spinning from minor problems that I couldn't put away. I try my hardest to do one hour's vigorous walking a
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by billyruffian 6y ago
it's worth pointing out, for sake of completeness, that the UK has delivered nearly 500K second dose vaccines. https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations
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by billyruffian 6y ago
> nobody who actually lived in London wanted Brexit to happen 40% of the London vote did[1] [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/912939/brexit-major-citi...
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by billyruffian 6y ago
> "Most objects are passsed (sic) by reference" be careful, ruby uses pass-reference-by-value which is subtly different. See this great article: https://robertheaton.com/2014/07/22/is-ruby-pass-by
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by billyruffian 6y ago
I agree. An interview is a like a date, both parties have to be happy with the other and these questions are impossible to answer except from a positon of weakness. I thought we'd consigned this nonsense to the bin ages ago. And people
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by billyruffian 6y ago
I'm a software engineer working in the UK Civil Service for the last 5 years after a 15 year career in the private sector (including a few short stints in Menlo Park). You are right, the money is far, far from the best I could earn but
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by billyruffian 6y ago
I remember discovering Randi while I was at university and I credit him for really strengthing the skeptic in me. I wish we had more public figures who encourage people to think this way and rather less of the screaming consipiracy set. Sci
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by billyruffian 6y ago
So X pays Y for a service (shredding devices). Y takes the cash, doesn't complete the service and flogs the devices instead. Y hasn't bought the devices and doesn't own them. > But many recyclers have figured out ways to e

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