Sorry, I might have misremembered the exact process (this was probably three or four years ago), though no need for the nasty aggressive attitude (though my apologies if I offended you somehow).

Maybe it was version upgrades (e.g 18.04 to 20.04) instead of updates, or clean installs/new installs/reinstalls? I expect it was some of one and some of another.

At the time I used to (casually) maintain a bunch of Ubuntu computers for a few community projects, small organisations and older people who live nearby. I don’t remember the specifics, I just remember the phone calls of “the printer isn’t working” “Linux has broken my USB pen” etc, and the fix being “remove the snap version and install the deb version”. It caused a lot of problems.

If you were running a previous version of Ubuntu, where you had deb packages which worked, over the course of a few updates, they replaced half of your programs with snaps (without telling you), which were unable to see additional hard drives, USB pens, printers, scanners or cameras, couldn’t use plug-ins, couldn’t use 3rd party templates or presets, and didn’t respect any system settings for fonts/text size, icon placement and so on.

Snaps were fine for “aisleriot solitaire” or “calculator” (assuming you didn’t mind a 5 minute loading time) or other things which didn’t need to interact with any file or system or device, but for actual programs for people trying to do work? Bag of shite.

Now, I imagine some years later they must have fixed some of this rubbish, and I read recently they might have finally done something about permissions, but no, they didn’t ask anyone before they swapped working programs for completely broken snaps. They forced it on their existing users, and some of us bear grudges.

I think it meant to say “Scrounger Guy Hands realises legislation loophole, which allowed him to steal billions of pounds of unearned money off the British Government and the British people, will be closed, leaving his company with a tiny fraction less of immoral profit, whilst still making billions in profit”

Yes please! Most of the streets near me have been dug up three or four times now, over the last few years, for new companies to put identical cables next to the other company’s cables, because they don’t want to pay the rental or whatever it is.

I’m sure the extra telegraph poles are even more annoying.

“The Darkness Out There” by Penelope Lively.

In short, a “nice old lady” tells a couple of young kids about what they did to a young German who survived a plane crash over Britain during WW2.

I think it was there for the “the nice old lady was actually nasty and cruel and the evil nazi was actually just a scared, fairly innocent boy”.

Any other member of staff or the public would have corrected it with a marker pen in a second.

I enjoyed the joke but disliked the spelling. I think I am experiencing “ambivalence”.

It’s a bit weird, isn’t it?

Technically, the navigational tool is “a compass” and the geometric draw-a-circle tool is “a pair of compasses” (I don’t know why) - but in general use, people just call both of them “a compass”.

We’ve had hundreds of years to rename one of them, but for some reason haven’t bothered.

Sadly, it’s been mildly drifting that way since the 1990s - though the drifting has sped up quite a bit during most of the Tory Governments. Not sure if Brexit specifically sped things up again, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

“YOU. THE ONE WHO IS MOVING NOW.”

Are you The Gatekeeper from the tv/boardgame Atmosfear?

Ms Allen added that in general seagulls do not attack people for food, and that only happens when they are nesting.

Or if you’ve got something from Greggs. In our local city centre (miles from any sea), at least three people seem to get attacked or mugged for food by seagulls every lunchtime, and have done for a few years. I don’t think they nest all year round.

I swear they’ve been getting more aggressive over the last couple of years though - they’ve been killing pigeons in the city centre, and attacking people’s cats in their gardens, and on at least one occasion, killing and half-eating some kittens.

A “consent and pay”, or “paywall” (or even “register-wall”) website is totally fine and should be free to exist - but it shouldn’t be indexed by search engines as a response to a question, and shouldn’t be linkable on any form of social media.

Is it a weird guilt thing?

I hated that song when the programme was new, but now I feel guilty about it, because someone was trying their best, and they wrote, re-wrote, edited and worked on that song and for every instrument and vocal, someone practised and practised and performed, and even if it wasn’t quite to my taste, it doesn’t mean it was bad, and I picture them still crying themselves to sleep at night, twenty years later, going “everyone hates the song I did for Star Trek Enterprise and now I hate myself”, so I make sure to watch the full intro so I don’t hurt their feelings.

That’s what everyone else does too, right?

From the 90s (in a small patch of Yorkshire), I remember Townies, Scallies, Kevs (seemingly a lot of them were called Kev where I lived), Carlings (a drink of choice, perhaps?), and Scrotes (i.e. ballbags). Neds was sometimes used as an alternative, but wasn’t common.

I don’t think I heard “Chavs” until the early 2000s. Never quite sure if they were actually the same thing - as the “Chav” thing seemed to have a class/wealth element, that “Chavs were poor/working class”, whereas the Townies/Scallies/Kevs of my teen years were certainly all from richer families than me and my friends, they just liked to rob people, smash up bus shelters and shops and attack people (especially those who were “gay looking” or “foreign looking”).

This is good, but they could really do with running these for older people too.

Here’s one I heard this week for example:

“My friend down at the bowls club said on Facebook that they’re not even real immigrants, but they’re special forces soldiers from the secret UN Army and they’re bringing them over here to take over the British and they’ve all got really good shoes and mobile phones you see, that’s how you can tell and they’re all of fighting age aren’t they?”

6. Rupert Murdoch
7. The Daily Mail, Express, Telegraph
8. Nigel Farage
9. Elon Musk
10. Putin’s Internet disinformation army

“Phwoar! Most of the people in this hospital are wearing nurse’s uniforms! Kinky!”

Without facial hair, he just looks like a thumb.

If you like Point and Click adventures (are they still called that?), have you ever tried Yorkshire Gubbins? Very silly humour.

I also bought it and completed it over the weekend - about 3 hours I reckon. Certainly laugh-out-loud funny in a few places. Nicely surreal and funny, and very well animated.

It suggests it’s better with a controller, but I played it just with the keyboard, and it was totally fine.

Not sure how well the humour will travel (it’s set in a fictional Yorkshire town, I have mostly lived and worked in Yorkshire) - though I’d imagine it travels fine, because Yorkshire humour is obviously best :)