Executives likely to use such a device aren’t using public transit.

Yes they are. Probably not in the country that calls it transit, mind. And lots of people would like to be able to have more private conversations in public, whether or not they’re travelling at the time.

Plus, I’ve seen a lot of threads over the years from gamers, or the people who have to live with them, looking for something exactly like this.

Install HP Smart without permission.

I checked when I saw this story a few days ago, and there it was. I uninstalled it. Today it asked for permission to install itself again. I suppose at least this time it asked and could be refused.

Is this another thing that the rest of the world didn’t know the US doesn’t have?

I know that. I did add a disclaimer, I’m not trying to sell the things.

Still haven’t had it

You almost certainly have. A substantial minority never develop symptoms. It’s one of the things that makes it spread so easily. If it made everyone very sick they’d all be safely tucked up in bed and not spreading it.

There is no useful answer to your question. Some people develop symptoms very quickly, some people are asymptomatic for a period, others remain asymptomatic throughout.

If you think you’ve been exposed and you could put others at risk, do a test. False positives are common but they’re better at picking up people who are very infectious so that’s something.

If you want to know if you’ve had it, there are antibody tests which check for antibodies from infection rather than vaccination. (Example for information, not a personal recommendation.) They’re not 100% accurate but a positive is most likely a true positive, given that the vast majority of people have had it by now. They test for two types of antibody, IgM and IgG. IgM should only show up during or immediately after recovery from an infection, IgG turns up later in the course of an infection and sticks around after recovery.

You don’t need to register a company unless you need to employ people yourself to get the work done. You can just register as self-employed. The details will vary depending on where you are. You’ll most likely have to convince the tax authorities that it is genuine self-employment and not your employer dodging taxes. If you have an actual job with an employer abroad, you’ll need to ask your local tax authority how to handle it.

Your hourly rate when self-employed should be around 2.5x the equivalent salaried hourly rate. This is because the employer is not paying for your admin time, training, equipment, office costs, holiday pay*, sick pay*, or contributing to your pension, or doing your taxes for you*. And because you don’t have the security of a salary and will need to spend a lot of time bidding for work that might not pan out, while they get the benefit of having you on tap with no long-term commitment.

*these are not USian things but as a European you will still be losing them

It depends a bit on the field you work in but self-employment is not generally a great idea for a fresh graduate. Your degree qualifies you to become qualified and you can’t easily do that on your own. Lack of experience will also make it hard to get the kind of work you need to develop your skills and get better work.

How Oxford Street is being reclaimed from American candy shops

Westminster Council has been cracking down on US sweet shops after many were discovered to be fronts for illegitimate businesses. In November 2022 one third of the stores had been shut down and by March 2023 the Met Police had seized £1 million worth of goods from the shops.

The solution is pretty sweet (pun intended):

A new initiative by Westminster Council called Meanwhile On: Oxford Street will allow up-and-coming businesses to open in the sites of closed-down candy shops without paying rent, while also having their business rates cut by 70 percent. The free rent will last for the first six months of the stores opening. It comes as part of a scheme to regenerate central London’s waning high street.

Then you’re in a perfect position to help him out.

Make sure he gets a say in it. Invite him into your life, don’t just make sure you’re the next dumping ground for him, if that makes sense. Kid needs a sense of agency, I’m sure. And he needs to know that someone wants him around.

And make sure he has trusted adults outside your household he can talk to if things get difficult at any point. Your brother sounds perfect for that. Weekly phone calls or something to check in with him. It’s important that he knows he can tell someone if he’s being treated badly. Not that you will, but he needs to know that f anything goes wrong, he has someone he can tell about it.

This will not be easy. But if you’re in a position to do it, it’d be a great thing to do.

Good luck.

I used to live round the corner from a strange little place that sold cassette tapes (what we used for music and sometimes even data before CDs, for those too young to know). Everyone was convinced it was a front but it turned out it was a world famous tape supplier. Just happened to be based in my quiet little back street.

The newsagents next door to my last place have to have been a front though. Shelves were half bare, only ever stocked with stuff that doesn’t go off. Always two or three guys hanging out in the back room, looking slightly surprised if you wanted to buy something. Cash only, no cards (not that unusual round here but they usually have a minimum purchase rather than just no card machine at all these days).

They were absolute sweethearts. Took loads of deliveries for us, always really nice about it. And that’s more evidence that it’s a front. Proper criminals are the best neighbours anyone could ask for because the last thing they want is complaints bringing the police to their door.

Do you live close enough to his school to offer (effectively) childcare during the week plus any time she is working at the weekends?

If so, you don’t need to take him off her or present it as that kind of threat. Just give her some space to get her shit together without forcing the kid along for the ride.

If you don’t live close enough to his school, it gets a lot more complicated.

(Apologies if I’ve missed this detail somewhere.)

An easy non-tomato pasta is a tin of soup as the sauce.

Butter and black pepper is as easy as it gets; get some fruit for afters and that’s not a terrible meal. You can chuck in extra bits and pieces to make it more interesting (cold meats, salad veg, cheese, anything tasty you can get to bite size).

Corner stores have trouble keeping fresh produce in because it goes out of date so quick. It might be worth asking them if you could pick up any past their best items for cheap at the end of the day.

You can quarter an onion or a potato (no need to peel) and get through most soft veg with a butter knife. But you could do with a better knife. Ask around some charity shops, they’ll often have stuff like that come in and (depending on where you are) many of them still function as both fundraiser and provider of cheap stuff for people who need it.

Good luck. Hope things get easier for you soon.

The Huawei Talkband series does it. It’s a smartwatch which turns into a bluetooth headset. For some reason, most reviewers struggle to see why anyone would want that but I struggle to see why anyone wouldn’t…

They’re different sorts of foldables. Hence Samsung calling one of theirs “Fold” and the other “Flip” (because the latter is the same form factor as older clamshell designs).

The cases do make them larger, as for every phone. But they still fit in your back pocket without threatening to fall out of it. The bulk of the case makes it even safer to pocket without making it any harder.

Secure pocketability when I’m not wearing a big jacket is the reason I have one, obv.

Every right-wing accusation is a confession.

many years now

This appears to be an escalating fraud, affecting newer models more than old. So I’d guess that’s ^^ the answer.

It’s not just a Reuters investigation, they’ve been fined by a few jurisdictions and they absolutely do have the ability to pay lawyers to defend those charges if they’re false.

And are we not animals just doing the same?

If you know what “man made” means you know this question is pointless?

They don’t seem to list the instances they trawled (just the top 25 on a random day with a link to the site they got the ranking from but no list of the instances, that I can see).

We performed a two day time-boxed ingest of the local public timelines of the top 25 accessible Mastodon instances as determined by total user count reported by the Fediverse Observer…

That said, most of this seems to come from the Japanese instances which most instances defederate from precisely because of CSAM? From the report:

Since the release of Stable Diffusion 1.5, there has been a steady increase in the prevalence of Computer-Generated CSAM (CG-CSAM) in online forums, with increasing levels of realism.17 This content is highly prevalent on the Fediverse, primarily on servers within Japanese jurisdiction.18 While CSAM is illegal in Japan, its laws exclude computer-generated content as well as manga and anime. The difference in laws and server policies between Japan and much of the rest of the world means that communities dedicated to CG-CSAM—along with other illustrations of child sexual abuse—flourish on some Japanese servers, fostering an environment that also brings with it other forms of harm to children. These same primarily Japanese servers were the source of most detected known instances of non-computer-generated CSAM. We found that on one of the largest Mastodon instances in the Fediverse (based in Japan), 11 of the top 20 most commonly used hashtags were related to pedophilia (both in English and Japanese).

Some history for those who don’t already know: Mastodon is big in Japan. The reason why is… uncomfortable

I haven’t read the report in full yet but it seems to be a perfectly reasonable set of recommendations to improve the ability of moderators to prevent this stuff being posted (beyond defederating from dodgy instances, which most if not all non-dodgy instances already do).

It doesn’t seem to address the issue of some instances existing largely so that this sort of stuff can be posted.

You want to see a forum full of people whining about what other users choose to post?

There are exceptions to the rule, and this is one of them.

The rule works so well because journalists who can make a statement of fact, make a statement of fact. When they can’t stand the idea up, they use a question mark for cover. eg China is in default on a trillion dollars in debt to US bondholders. Will the US force repayment? .

This is an opinion piece which is asking a philosophical question. The rule does not apply.