I did, but that’s not something that can easily be used in the wild… As for plans and layouts… those plans are located with local planning depts anyway. Proof of concept and a practical use for them are often very different… But yes… criminal charges need apply, not civil ones… and as I’m in the UK, perhaps they could bring terrorism charges against them too… they like doing that to people not actually committing acts of terror these days.

People will go to great lengths to excuse and justify their own idiocy, rather than suffer the simple acceptance they they could have been wrong… and one of these idiots suggested it was me who had ‘hubris’ :)

Morons buying moronic ‘smart’ devices, unable to understand that they’re the product, not the consumer and they have sold away the rights to their eyes and ears with their purchases.

My house contains no smart devices that can harvest data from me (my mum does use a samsung smart TV from 2016) and all devices have everything disabled and other things installed to block data collection and tracking… I can’t stop 100% of it, but what little trickle they do get is basically worthless.

My eyes and ears are not for sale, nor is my privacy.

Put them all in a mansion with 1 chair, 1 bed, no doors to the outside, no windows, no entertainment and force them to pay a mortgage with not enough income… and live stream it on the internet.

Or better still, take the drives from the servers their consciousness is stored on and put it into a grinder.

The last time there was a general strike in the USA that generated real change… it took just 11 million people… about 10% of the working age at the time. These days, you could do it with a few choice professions… air traffic control, truckers, dock workers… the people that move the people and the goods would cripple the country in a week, maybe 2.

Let’s give this classic poem a tweak shall we…

First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trans community (The UK is currently here) And I did not speak out Because I was not trans

Then they came for all people of colour (The USA is now here) And I did not speak out Because I was not a person of colour

Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me

Not caring because it doesn’t directly affect you is how you end up on this road to fascism to begin with. It’s why there have been thousands of arrests of innocent people in the UK for simply protesting about a ban on a group of people who threw paint on some RAF planes and vandalised some genocide supporting israeli weapons manufacturer… because some people do care about others, because they have compassion and a conscience.

If the UK goes ahead with plans to ban protests entirely as they saying… those numbers will increase because it won’t stop the people and the numbers continue to grow and if you try to stamp it out, there will only be one way it ends… with state authorised violence and death against people protesting the killing of innocent civilians.

That’s the road you are on with that attitude, and then you’ll be screaming that last line and playing the victim.

No, it’s because imgur has refused to conduct the simple ‘are you over the age of XX’ when people create accounts, which is required by law… there’s no verification of anything involved. Just a tick the box exercise… they couldn’t even be bothered to do that and that’s why they’re being investigated and are facing massive fines for years of refusal to do what every other site has done for probably 2 decades now… It’s got nothing to do with the draconian online safety act that was recently brought in… it’s imgur throwing their toys out of the pram and screaming ‘LALALALALALALA’ we can’t hear you now. it will have zero effect on the investigation and fines for their previous failings to follow the law… it’s literally cutting of their nose to spite their face.

You’ve failed to understand the problem entirely… the entire internet asks users to confirm they are above a certain age when creating accounts… and that happened because the USA demanded it. There’s nothing authoritarian about it… it’s a simple ‘Are you over 13yrs of age’ and you tick yes… that was it.

Can you just browse other peoples uploads on there looking for funny pics and memes?

You’re not being asked to, the UK govt hasn’t done anything to them… they did this to themselves by failing to do anything about age verification long before the online safety act came in recently. This is about their failings over the prior years to do basic age checks that have been common on the internet for decades now… going dark in the UK doesn’t affect the ongoing investigations or the fines that will be imposed… they’re basically throwing their toys out of the pram and shouting LALALALALALALALA we can’t hear you anymore.

Imgur had gone to dogshit anyway, it’s no real loss and the new owners keep making it worse and after the last round of protests from users, went on a mass banning and censorship campaign to further alienate and anger the users they desperately need to shove an ever increasing amount of ads too.

Blame the right people… the greedy, ignorant techbros who want to extract every ounce of ad revenue they can to line their own pockets at the expense of killing the product they bought.

It’s been dying for a long time, the vpn blocking started ages ago and the UK block entirely was recent as they’re facing massive fines in the UK… nothing to do with the online safety act that recently came into effect… but due to an ongoing investigation over imgurs failure to do basic age checks at all… and blocking the UK is tantamount to them throwing their toys out of the pram and going LALALALALALALA we can’t hear you now. It won’t affect the investigations and fines over the years of failings prior to that.

After the last wave of protests over the shitty new owners and their repeated firings of staff and the degredation of the service… they went on a mass banning and censorship spree and further alienated the users. I can’t imagine there are that many left there now.

Not worth the effort trying to get around it… there are alternatives that are actually better.

I lay in bed at night looking up at the stars and the only thing I’m thinking is ‘Where the fuck is my ceiling’

I’m not an electrician, but all ‘new’ electrical work here in the UK requires a certified electrician carries out and signs of on the work. They can inspect and test existing electrics, but only to say if it meets minimum standards or not and is safe to use.

On my current house, we converted a garage and utility room into a bedroom and ensuite for my mum. Even though there were some electrics (2 sockets and 3 lights), we effectively had it all redone from scratch, with the electrics for that entire job placed on it’s own ‘breaker’

I then had another bedroom and ensuite reworked, not really much in the way of new wiring… mostly just moving existing stuff around (sockets, switches and isolators for extractors), but still signed of and certified by an electrician.

Redoing existing electrics is fine, so you can replace switches and sockets, light fittings and so forth without any issues.

Sounds familiar… my previous house had old storage heaters at some point in the past. Before I bought it, central heating had been installed and the old storage heaters removed.

I found they had installed a secondary consumer unit for the storage heaters, and so had that disconnected fully. But they’d left all of the old boxes on the walls with old cabling in trunking when the house was rewired before proper standards banned running it all down the walls.

So when I did the bathroom, I had to remove one of these old disconnected boxes and patch some tiling. So I got the box off, went to cut the wires with my wire cutters… and thank fuck I was using insulated ones… Because… BANG!!! sparks and a very shocked (not literally) expression on my face.

For some reason… this box was still wired into the main consumer unit. I pulled the fuse to it completely as it was only for that and nothing else. And was having a new consumer unit fitted anyway as the house was going to be sold and I wanted it all sorted.

Then the electrician fitting the new consumer unit… found that the entire ground for the whole of the houses electrics… had been disconnected at some point in the past.

I’d lived there for over 12yrs and could have been killed at any point.

I still occasionally pick up CD’s, as I do for blurays… I’ll check out charity shops if I pass them, go to car boots… it’s why I keep an old BDrom in my server, so I can rip the files from them, convert and have them available to stream around the house.

I roast mine

About 12yrs ago, I picked up a Tassimo machine that made coffee from pods… over the next few years, I added a milk steamer, so that I could heat and froth my own milk as the pod milks were vile.

I was used to buying lattes at shitty coffee places like Costa and Starbucks in the UK… then some one made me an amazing latte at an independent coffee shop… and I realised how good coffee should taste.

I tried switching to my own ground coffee and buying some re-useable pods for the machine… they were garbage.

So a few years ago, I invested in a decent bean to cup machine with steamer by Delohngi, and started buying a variety of beans to try in them.

I’ve settled on Lavazza crema or intenso beans (8/10 & 9/10) as they’re quite strong and reasonably priced… Occasionally when I visit one of the food fairs in my area (about 5 or 6 a year) I’ll pick up a bag of extra special flavours for xmas and so forth. I’ve even tried a few of the supermarket varieties and found them disappointing.

With the price of coffee rising due to climate change and poor crops, I’m having to rethink my purchases… 4x 1kg bags of beans used to cost £60, and are now more like £100… So I’ve switched to a different lavazza now as they’vce changed packaging and these are labelled 11/13 and 10/13 for strength.

Whilst I was saving a lot of money each year by ditching pods… it was more about the waste than the expense for me… the cost of the machine meant I didn’t actually save any money for about 2yrs really due to the upfront cost, but the savings each year on beans vs pods is about £125-150… and the machine was £320.

But with prices of coffee beans rising, the cost of the pods is rising even more… so those avg savings could be more like £175-200 a year now.

All I know is that the coffee beans work out cheaper, give a far better drink and the grounds help keep the cats of the garden and the soil fresh and fertile.

I just licked my UK passport and it tasted like Xenophobia and Zionism.

Takes me back to 2008 and Rockstar claiming that GTA 4… was designed for hardware that didn’t exist yet after that shit show of a shitty port to PC… It would be a further 6yrs before I could play that game at a reliable 19080p, 60fps… then GTA5 came out a year later.

I never thought I’d hear of a positive school shooting story coming out of the USA