@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

pwaring

@pwaring@fosstodon.org

UK Whovian, railway & politics geek and event organiser. Freelance PHP developer and Linux system administrator. He/him/Paul

Most toots deleted after 3 months

Book reviews and updates: https://ramblingreaders.org/user/pwaring

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pwaring, to random
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

Tried to find some vegetable stock for soup at the supermarket. 1g salt per portion. Well, tinned soup is >2g so I guess that’s an improvement. Oh wait, a single stock cube is 4 portions and therefore 4g of salt?! It’s worse than the tinned version! (I checked every single option on the shelves, the lowest was 0.6g per portion).

pwaring,
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

@heapy yeah I’ve found loads online but none were in stock at the big Asda near me (they also didn’t have any small bottles of milk so I think I will be trying Tesco or Lidl tomorrow…)

pwaring, to UKpolitics
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

Interesting result in Greater Manchester mayoral election: Andy Burnham (nominally Labour but really running in his own name) gets 63.4% and the remainder split fairly evenly between the remaining parties. Next closest was 10.4% (Conservative) and the Lib Dems came last on 4.3% (behind Con, Green, Reform and an independent).

pwaring,
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

@kinnison That was basically my feeling, and given that we switched to FPTP you couldn’t even pick your favourite as your first choice and then Burnham as your second.

mrdalesmith, to UKpolitics
@mrdalesmith@toot.community avatar

To be fair, Boris Johnson has previous for apparently not understanding laws he introduced.

pwaring,
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

@mrdalesmith @mindfog That was my immediate reaction too. Anything that keeps him in the news and perpetuates the 'lovable buffoon' image.

pwaring, to random
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

Fun* issue that's been on my radar all week due to one of the industries I work in: the Motor Insurance Database was migrated to a new platform on 26th April (mainframe to cloud) and it is not still fully operational.

This is used by the police to check if you're insured when they stop you, even if for an unrelated reason.

If you're a UK driver, it's probably a good idea to have a copy of your policy documents with you, just in case.

pwaring,
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

@damien They're aware of it, but the problem is that from their perspective they'll still get a response, it will just be out of date (the API they use to check the database is online). So it might look like you're not insured if you renewed your policy in the last week.

pwaring, to random
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

Unexpected price cut this month as a UK company (which charges VAT) sold a service provider I use to a US company (which doesn't charge VAT).

Not entirely sure if that's allowed as the point of supply is where I am (UK) but there's an exemption for B2B (as a sole trader who is not VAT registered it's not clear if a digital service supplied to me is B2B or B2C).

pwaring,
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

Well that was a fun 30 minutes on a web chat with a HMRC VAT adviser. It seems like:

  1. It's a B2B transaction.
  2. The supplier is responsible for collecting VAT.
  3. Standard rate (20%) applies (the supplier is currently applying 0%).

I guess the question now is whether I bother to report them and whether HMRC can actually do anything about a foreign company not collecting VAT on UK supplies.

pwaring,
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

Also it's another example of US companies not really having a clue about stuff outside the US. They talk about if you're located 'in the European Community' (not the EU or EEA or Eurozone, and in any event the UK is in none of those now) for VAT.

Almost as good as the US company who didn't have Northern Ireland on their list of countries (they assumed it fell under Ireland, which is wrong from a tax point of view and extremely sensitive from a political point of view).

pwaring, to random
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

Pondering getting a robot voice app for my phone to get past the voice recognition systems that companies use to identify / route you which obviously haven't been trained on regional accents (e.g. 'please say your postcode').

pwaring,
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

@nCrazed This particular provider couldn't even identify 'yes' and 'no' responses correctly...

(I sometimes get around it by saying nothing at all, which usually redirects to a human).

pwaring, to random
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

TIL: If you try to manually INSERT a row into a MySQL table and set an AUTO_INCREMENT column to 0, MySQL ignores the provided value and assumes you want the next increment amount.

Found this whilst migrating a legacy database to a new structure, where the legacy database had foreign keys (not actually defined as constraints) with 0 values.

You can control this with NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO in sql_mode (it's on by default I think).

girlonthenet, to random
@girlonthenet@mastodon.social avatar

Who's excited for the elections tomorrow? I just learned that although we need photo ID (which is BULLSHIT), even if your ID has expired you can still use it as long as you're recognisably the person in the picture.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/london-mayor-local-elections-photo-id-may-vote-b1154903.html

pwaring,
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

@girlonthenet Not massively excited about polling day due to having a postal vote, but I will have multiple tabs open on Friday so I can watch the carnage as the results come in.

(I miss the days of being a student when we could stay up and watch the results overnight)

jon, to random
@jon@gruene.social avatar

Just showed my Standard Multi (Liège-Visé) and regular ticket (Visé-Maastricht) to SNCB train manager. All fine.

Doing that - two tickets for different parts of a trip on one train - is not allowed in France. Although I just got a ticking off when I have done it in France, not a fine…

pwaring,
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

@po8crg @jon You can definitely still split tickets in the UK if the train stops at the split station (and passengers can get on and off, but I don't think we have any stations where you can do one but not the other which aren't a terminus).

https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/tickets-railcards-and-offers/buying-a-ticket/split-train-tickets/

pwaring, to random
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

An old UKUUG contact got in touch today and that reminded me to see if anything had happened recently.

UKUUG website: Either hacked or domain lapsed and taken by someone else, now points to gambling info.

: Found out that Simon Riggs from PostgreSQL has passed away in a private plane crash (he was always up for giving a talk and was great company in the pub).

🙁

pwaring,
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

@rogerwhittaker I'm not sure what has happened - the IP addresses are Cloudflare which UKUUG never used (everything was on a Bytemark VM). So unless Council have moved everything somewhere else or put Cloudflare in front of it but left flossuk.org broken...

pwaring, to random
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

Ages ago I read a really good blog post about UK National Insurance Numbers and why they're a terrible idea for identification, including a detailed breakdown of all the edge cases (e.g. people having more than 1 number).

Does anyone know what I'm referring to? I cannot find it via searching.

pwaring, to random
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

One thing I find odd about privatisation vs nationalisation is how strongly some people think about it, as if services are magically better when delivered by the private or public sector, and moving from one to the other will fix / ruin everything.

IMO, it's the size of organisation that matters more - large orgs are often badly run regardless of ownership (which is why I'd be cautious about working full time for one again).

pwaring,
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

@johnl In the few cases where the organisation has to be large, I agree with you. But I am generally in favour of stopping organisations getting that large to begin with (e.g. I would like rail services to largely be run by independent but co-operating regional bodies, rather than one huge nationalised British Rail).

pwaring, to DigitalNomadHub
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

I don't tout myself much on here, but from 1st July 2024 I'll have some capacity to work with new clients on a regular basis (an existing client is gradually moving work in-house due to increased volume). If you know anyone who needs a PHP app maintaining on a regular basis (3-10 hours/month), please point them my way. 😀

UK only, and I work remotely

https://www.phpdeveloper.org.uk

pwaring,
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

@jemjabella I've always avoided WordPress - I think you need to specialise in it really and I'm more of a generalist, plus I found that WP jobs were often massively underpaid because you're competing with low-wage countries on platforms like Fiverr.

(but thanks for asking 😀 )

pwaring, to random
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

Good job I've moved pretty much everything over to 2FA using KeepassXC, as it looks like my Yubikey has stopped working. 🙁

(I have multiple keys but not all accounts allow you to register more than one - some don't even let you have more than one 2FA device)

pwaring,
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

@rushtone USB-A (it's one of the earlier FIDO ones, I've had it for a very long time).

pwaring, to random
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

Triumph of the small local shop today: all the chain stores (B&M, Argos, The Range etc.) didn't sell shoe brushes. Thought of giving the local market a go, found one in less than a minute and at a bargain price - so cheap in fact that I'm not sure how they make any money after deducting the wholesale price and card processing fees (I hope they were legit as they took payment on a mobile phone rather than a machine).

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