In the UK employers have to provide eye test vouchers for employees who use screen display equipment. I keep thinking that if the government knew anything about dev environments they'd be providing us with free hearing tests instead.
Regarding the policy being set at national level - I've seen mention of the Western Cape seceding - how realistic was that, and has this had any effect on that? I'm ex Durban/Johannesburg, abandoned the rainbow nation 20 or so years ago with zero confidence in its future, and I'm afraid it was the right call; part of me would love to return, and the WC (there's a pun there) seceding would interest me for a move there.
Well, there's an exodus from the rest of the country to the W. Cape. They call it 'semigration'. Property was up 12% a while ago when all other provinces saw a decline I think (except Gauteng; they were up 3%). As a young person of the wrong demographic here though, myself and most of my friends are preparing for possible departure for a few different reasons. If you are already established in a field with an overseas nest egg that can't be touched by SA inflation though, then Cape Town is probably one of the best cities to live in on the planet. If you know what you're doing, living here is fantastic.
To answer your question, I haven't met anyone in Cape Town who takes a WC secession seriously. There is a very small political party that advocates for it, be its treated as one of the joke parties.
Agreed entirely. Used to live in Durban and left >10 years ago now with zero confidence in the nation. I won't be surprised to see the whole country descend into chaos soon.
The apartheid government may have been morally reprehensible, but at least it knew how to run a country. Either option is kind of shitty…
The apartheid government no longer exists because it caused the country to descend into so much chaos that the rulers gave up trying to continue.
So, by the standard you imply with your comparison, the apartheid government—even more certainly than the present regime—did not know how to run a country.
The apartheid government no longer exists because (1) open racism was no longer tenable in the face of an evolving society, and (2) the worldwide sanctions placed on it became too great.
That's fine, but that's also completely orthogonal to the point, which is that:
1/ By most standards, the effectiveness of government has plummetted since the end of apartheid. Crime is up; corruption has increased; resources are running out (nation-wide electricity blackouts last decade, now water); etc.
2/ Open government-sponsored racism still exists today, but most of it is considered to be commendable under the banner of affirmative action.
If we were to take race entirely out of the picture, the apartheid regime would be considered far more effective than the ANC regime. That, of course, is neither realistic nor fair… But we should aspire to a post-racial world where we race is no longer relevant, where both apartheid and affirmative action are considered revolting abominations, but also where we judge governments based on their net effectiveness.
It's imposible to divorce the effectiveness of government from global phenomenon and long-term knock-on effects from previous governments. For example, the brownout crisis - was it because the ANC government mismanaged funding and refused to repair, renew and build electrical power plants, or was it because the situation left by the apartheid government was unsustainable, and the ANC was left with a "you deal with it" post-it note? It's difficult to know without getting into the specifics of each issue.
My point is that comparing government effectiveness is not as easy as looking at results. This was exemplified by many of the communist satellite states to the USSR, which it sponsored for political gain to its own economic detriment. The satellite states flourished under communism, and as soon as the regime collapsed they suffered - was it the newly-elected democratic government's fault that industry had collapsed and there was rampant inflation, or was it just a long-term effect of previous government policy?
Fair point, but choosing the electricity crisis as an example is not helping your claim - the Apartheid lot left us with something like 50% overcapacity and almost the cheapest electricity in the world at the time. We actually have less electricity generating capacity right now than at that time. The lack of generting capacity has severely constrained our economy since. When the crisis first bit in the 2000s, many mines had to shut down for the first time in 200 years of continuous operations.
The government had an initial plan to redirect overcapacity in many areas (not just electricity) to rolling out services to those neglected by the Apartheid govt, and then after that to start building infrastructure again (not sure of specifics, maybe 5 years on?). The problem is that in most cases, this never happened. Hence the limits of most infrastructure are gradually being hit, with a knock-on effect for the economy.
It was a different time - my understanding is that having a multiply redundant system was important for an isolated pariah state. Think of it like the strategic petroleum reserves in certain isolated states of today. Of course none of that was necessary once SA rejoined the global community. This extra capacity could have been carefully mothballed for later use; instead we are now building 2x brand new coal stations, each of which will be the largest coal plants in the world.
>But we should aspire to a post-racial world where we race is no longer relevant, where both apartheid and affirmative action are considered revolting abominations, but also where we judge governments based on their net effectiveness.
Hear, hear. While "the better angels of our nature" should inform our aspirations, the political, social and economic facts-on-the-ground should inform what action should be taken in order to bring us closer to the ideal.
Affirmative-action is a symptomatic treatment (that could be argued as being punitive) which achieves little-to-nothing in solving the root-problem, while creating a whole new set of problems. Successful integration of former-colonial and indigenous peoples in ZA would have been an unprecedented achievement, but adopting policies that are so obviously regressive will not bring that into reality.
Natwest is RBS - there is no point interacting with them - useless. Same with many UK household names, once they reach a certain size you are not a person and what's in your head is of no interest to anyone.
This can, sometimes, work in you favour though since it is possible to get a county court judgement against these organisations for trivial reasons because the original claim isn't responded to.
Exactly, and "...the 1% took 85% of income growth and the situation has only worsened since. During that time, however, homicide rates showed nearly the opposite pattern". This is dishonest Guardian agenda. Even before getting to that dismissal the article never mentioned the word poverty which is often confused with inequality, probably deliberately by the likes of the Guardian who won't be happy until the UK has re-created the Venezuelan economy.
UK pushing hard on the multiculturalism agenda yet haven't even managed to unify Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland. More variables - biting off more than they can chew.
Not sure what you mean? A big plank in Brexit rationale is restricting freedom of movement. I think some hope for a scale back on multiculturalism.
Due to once owning an overwhelming empire, I think a lot of people forget "British culture" is inherently "multicultural". A national British dish is chicken tikka masala, a curry, and nobody can tell if it was invented in India or the UK.
"It's just as illegal to threaten someone with murder on the internet as it is on a street corner" -- this interests me. On a street corner the face-to-face threat is far more real and the threatened outcome more likely than on the internet where the lack of physical presence leads people to rant and vent in offensive ways that don't amount to much. Half the time the people engaged are on different continents with made up names, so even if someone got sufficiently worked up to pursue another s/he wouldn't get very far unless he was so psychologically divergent that frankly s/he's going to kill someone else soon enough that twitter policing is irrelevant. I think twitter, and possibly the net, should possibly be at least partially treated like MMA - sport, not taken too seriously, get in, take a beating, give a beating. I haven't give this much thought, but basically there seems to be no acknowledgment of the fact that the virtual world is not physical, and it seems to me that we interact with the two differently and that should be considered.
I have an HTC bootlooped by an OTA, hence my now having a OnePlus3. Getting fed up with all this nonsense. Seems to me the android ecosystem is just too wild west, especially for such an important device, and may now have to head to apple. I see I also have this EngineerMode, data usage 1.4MB since Aug 7, modify system settings enabled. When I tweeted them about the recent data collection issue they replied with "it's standard industry practice".
It hasn't been released yet, but Purism recently smashed their fundraising goal for the Librem 5. From the description linked to below:
> Librem 5, the phone that focuses on security by design and privacy protection by default. Running Free/Libre and Open Source software and a GNU+Linux Operating System designed to create an open development utopia, rather than the walled gardens from all other phone providers.
Are you asking about "linux" meaning a non-Android linux phone?
If you include Android -- I have had a satisfactory experience with both the Samsung Galaxy S6 and LG Nexus 5x. The 5x did bootloop recently but Nexus repaired it (and upgraded to 32GB) beyond the end of their warranty.
I was thinking something related this morning, that one of the reasons uptime is important to google, apart from the usual reasons, is because if they were switched off for a day people would realise the extent to which they have so many of their eggs in one basket, and a basket over which they have no control. I would expect that would trigger some concern, and significant numbers seeking alternatives, and building them.
For me it's the jarring noise. A coffeeshop tends to have consistent levels of muddied noise, whereas the office might be quiet and then suddenly a clear, loud voice starts, and another couple of clear, loud voices arrive - jarring. Also, office lights are too bright, they switch me off somehow. Then the erratic temperature - freezing for a couple of hours, then tropical for a few, then back to icy. The office is, ironically, the worst possible environment for getting any work done.
