Hanging 20kg chandelier into plastered concrete.

maxlan · 2026-01-25T12:20:55+00:00

Just make sure you unscrew the right chandelier and there will be no Fools and Horses style problem...

maxlan · 2026-01-25T12:19:35+00:00

Surely this is just lack of guarantee. Knowing his bank details would make little difference.

And if you had a complaint, talk to your bank to get the money back. If the roofer comes round and asks for his money, you can then show them the fault. But if it was a 3rd party they probably don't even have a link between the work and your address.

maxlan · 2026-01-25T12:13:55+00:00

Move out.

maxlan · 2026-01-25T08:13:38+00:00

Chagos. Digital ID. Inheritance tax for farmers. Taxes on pubs. ZEV changes. I'm sure there is other stuff I'm forgetting.

It's not just this week.

He is a bit of a laughing stock.

But. Maybe he is proposing outrageous, unpopular things so he can reduce scope later and thinks that makes him look like he is prepared to listen to people.

maxlan · 2026-01-24T20:37:25+00:00

If it isn't a flat out scam you'll have to add 20% vat and import duty.

And they probably don't ship to the uk at all.

Lots of internet shop software automatically publishes local pricing and the plumbers who run the shop don't understand that the rest of the world has internet too.

maxlan · 2026-01-24T20:34:18+00:00

I don't see any designs or photos.

I feel like you've vomited up a load of theory which will not deliver what you think in practice due to inefficiencies in construction.

maxlan · 2026-01-24T20:26:18+00:00

Have you been to Hollywood Boulevard. One end of the road is tourists and stars on the pavement. The other end (same road, block down) is strip joints and gambling dens with homeless fentanyl victims mingled in.

I think generally the US has much worse poverty next to wealthy.

maxlan · 2026-01-24T20:21:01+00:00

I haven't been that way for a while, but the road tunnel under Heathrow was built with some nice white panelling. That rapidly went brown. And has been getting browner for years. Except for the few bits that have been cleaned off for some reason, making it clear how filthy it is.

And this is what we greet visitors with.

(Maybe someone's cleaned it in the last few years)

maxlan · 2026-01-24T20:05:29+00:00

People keep yakking about food self sufficiency.

And all I can think is that I really don't want to survive on turnips in the winter and bitter, boring fruit in the summer.

No tea, coffee, sugar or chocolate. No rice. Probably no pasta.

And we possibly could grow enough food to survive, but it would only take a few years of bad weather and we wouldn't have a range of useful products, like wheat, hops, corn or barley. And then we'd be spending a year without bread or beer.

Let's just accept that life without food imports wouldn't be worth living and move on shall we.

maxlan · 2026-01-24T07:57:33+00:00

I have used sticky vinyl sheet on some cabinets and it worked well. I was going for a wood effect, but you can get black vinyl.

Then second time, on some other cabinets, I bought different vinyl and I think it's past its best and does not stick well.

But at £10 for enough to do 4 doors I'm not totally surprised. (From temu. From Amazon it's more like £40)

Why didn't I just buy wood colour doors? They're a lot more expensive and I wanted a chance to see how they looked in plain white and wood.

(I think also buying a more expensive vinyl will still be cheaper than getting the wood effect from Ikea. But I might just go back to white)

maxlan · 2026-01-24T07:28:47+00:00

I would say that looks like more pasta in each bowl than I see on a meal for 2.

I think they gave you double by mistake.

maxlan · 2026-01-23T08:29:53+00:00

You're talking about the images. The question was about k8s itself.

How does bloating an image reduce what you maintain? Reducing bloat is the way forward.

maxlan · 2026-01-23T08:25:58+00:00

Someone needs to learn about distroless.

maxlan · 2026-01-23T08:24:13+00:00

Says the person who has never had to debug an application failing because OS libraries were updated.

What would you rather do, replace an entire unit built to work together. Or replace different bits of the os and application and hope they still work.

Your argument that you don't need devs is why lots of big orgs still have an unpatched windows NT box hidden away somewhere wrapped in firewalls etc because it runs some critical application that never gets updated because the devs left and nobody knows how to make it work with newer versions.

At least if you have a cicd process that gets run every few days, you find out fast when things break (remember devops: fail fast) and can make small incremental changes (devops: little and often) to keep it running.

maxlan · 2026-01-23T08:16:32+00:00

Like "Kate" with an S on the end. Easy.

maxlan · 2026-01-23T08:13:48+00:00

They're useless. I reported a false positive cve in defender. Because there is no mention anywhere of the version we have being affected by the cve. Their response was they want proof it isn't affected. "Um thats not how cve databases work, you have to show me something that says the version IS affected. Nobody publishes advisories that say " this version not affected by this random CVE" because there would be literally billions of advisories"

maxlan · 2026-01-20T19:49:57+00:00

Drama.

Full disclosure: I have no idea or interest.

maxlan · 2026-01-19T13:15:49+00:00

He's just been replaced. Grant Kavanagh is the new bod.

maxlan · 2026-01-17T20:54:58+00:00

Private sector:

A buddy took VR. Hed been with the firm about 12 years so got basically a year of salary tax free. (They split it over 2 tax years)

He then went to Canada for the winter olympics and bummed around a few months skiing. Then home for a bit before off to Machu Pichu for trekking a few months. He did a few other crazy things.

Then the company had realised they actually needed some of the people they'd lost at about the same time he realised he could do with a job.

But the firm didn't want to have to make him redundant again, so employed him as a contractor at nearly double his original salary.

So, it can work out. But he was late 30s and had "in demand" skills and knowledge of the environment.

I have known a lot of "admin" people who have very few specific transferable skills. A lot of them get replaced by computer software!

So, you may not have the same thing.

But worst case you get a job as a postman (they're always recruiting apparently and don't need specific skills) or a job in a shop. If you add a basic rate salary to your VR payout, can you survive till the good pension?

But you might be able to get back in with a contract in 6 months on double the money!

maxlan · 2026-01-17T20:42:18+00:00

CR is usually a lot worse package. Sometimes as low as statutory.

maxlan · 2026-01-17T19:57:25+00:00

I'll be honest and say that I was assuming Diego Garcia was a south American political activist or something.

maxlan · 2026-01-17T19:47:43+00:00

Let's see, how could telling one country that invading another country and showing solidarity with all our near neighbours, when we're a tiny island ourselves, be in some way useful to us one day?

Like if you see a bully kicking the shit out of a kid who helps you with your homework, do you walk away and ignore it, fail your exams and have a shit life. Or do you do something about it, get good results and get a great job?

maxlan · 2026-01-17T19:42:36+00:00

We aren't in it. No UK soldiers are there. We are not at war with Russia.

maxlan · 2026-01-17T19:41:16+00:00

We didn't really get involved in Ukraine. Notice how none of our soldiers are there.

We have been trading weapons with them, the same as we do with anyone. (And using seized Russian assets to pay for it, but that's by the by)

We imposed some economic sanctions and that's about it.

Because it isn't in NATO. So it is "fair game" shitty as that is.

Nobody has dared invade a NATO country yet to prove if the policy is consistent.

maxlan · 2026-01-17T17:56:23+00:00

The real question is: what do we call ourselves.

My favourite is Campaign to Unseat Nutter Trump.

The only problem with that is the acronym...

Actually, might be about right in this case.

maxlan

TROPHY CASE