grok_mctanys

73 Yards

2024-05-26T23:39:47Z

That didn't work for me.

I've been enjoying this series so far, and there were a bunch of individual things I liked about the episode, but overall it left me just feeling WTF.

I liked the UNIT segment, and was especially amused how it ended: "We know how to handle weird situations." Lol, no. I liked that Ruby came to see the woman as a benevolent companion, and not as someone to be resented, feared or hated - I think that says something really interesting about her. I liked that we never found out what the woman said to the people who noticed her. And (as an English person) I was amused by the "prank the English tourist who thinks we're a bunch of yokels" shtick.

Also, I'm generally not opposed to having a mystery that's never solved. Midnight is a great episode along those lines, which I really enjoy.

But this one? Something about the ending didn't work for me.

Maybe because the bit they kind of explained - who the woman was - didn't make much sense. Knowing who she was doesn't help explain anything about why she was acting the way she did - it just makes it weirder. But also, we end up with a paradoxical time loop that erases itself from existence. So... Ruby, having found out about the terrible future PM, finds a way to avert disaster... but only in a closed-off timeline which never actually happens? Meanwhile, in our current timeline where Ruby didn't step on the thing and the woman doesn't exist, the future PM will still do the terrible thing? So what was the point?

comments

Is Mastodon tolerant of long posts, or isn't it?

2024-05-14T14:18:12Z

I recently joined a Mastodon instance.

I've been meaning to for a while. I was never on Xitter because it always seemed inane, and some of the people who I follow in other contexts on the internet, who are good long form writers, posted reams of uninteresting micro-guff on Xitter. But maybe Mastodon would be better?

However, within a week of getting an account and following not-that-many people, I came across EMFCamp's toot in my timeline:

https://social.emfcamp.org/@emf/statuses/01HXRZ1PRXCPNPDSFQSCMED9TB

reposting their first blog announcement from 12 years ago. The post is too long for Mastodon's 500 char limit, and presumably just linking to it wasn't "immediate" enough for their needs - they wanted to actually put the post in their followers' timelines. So instead of posting 1KiB of text, they posted a 330KiB image of text, and put the 1KiB blog post in the "alt" attribute of the image!

Also, there's Cory Doctorow's feed of 30+ toot threads most days:

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

I don't mean to pick on EMFCamp and Cory specifically, but they are the examples I ran across. And actually, EMFcamp and Cory are great examples to use as people who aren't going to be acting in bad faith, or trolls, or whatever. They're good people.

Because I've come across these posts so quickly, from such a small sample size of posts I've actually seen, I am concluding that this kind of posting behaviour is not particularly unusual. It would be very unlucky for me to have done so otherwise, right? But, you know, I could be wrong.

So, for anyone who's been on Mastodon a while, does this seem like "perfectly reasonable behaviour" to you? Do you look at this and think "Uh huh. Nothing strange or unusual about that. That's just how things work"?

Does, in fact, the Mastodon hive mind simultaneously think a) an arbitrary, artificial, self-imposed 500 char limit is a good thing; and b) posting massive threads, or images of text with a copy of the text in the alt attr, is not "weird" or "abusing the system" or just "bonkers"?

(I wonder - if someone habitually posted a 20x20 blank image, with what they wanted to say in the alt attr, and the post content being "text in alt" to get around the 500-char limit, would that be best characterised as "a neat hack" or "burn it with fire"?)

Xitter had a short character limit because it was originally SMS-based, which forced a max tweet length of 160 chars. And even when it gave up the SMS limitations, short messages were part of its DNA.

But Mastodon is supposed to be a break from Xitter, right? So, why the 500 character limit? Why "federated microblogging" and not just "federated blogging"? If someone's posts tend to be too lengthy, and you only have a 500-char attention span or hate seeing a couple of paragraphs followed by a "[Read more ...]" expander, just don't follow them! (Exactly like the current advice for if you don't like long threads is "well, just don't follow people who post them")

FWIW, I tried putting this together as a Mastodon thread. But there's no way to draft a thread. Or even save a draft of a single toot. Either you post it, or you don't. And you can't make a post "Mentions Only" (closest thing to "Private") and then change the visibility of all parts to "Public" once the thread is complete, because making posts more private might be an avenue for harassment.

Somewhat ironically, while searching for a way to draft a toot thread in a sane manner, the best result I came across was Cory Doctorow's How To Make The Least-Worst Mastodon Threads where he talks about how bad Mastodon threads are, but why he still likes them, and therefore approves of the 500-char limit. As if he couldn't post threads the way he currently does on a blogging platform that allowed unlimited characters (like on his own blog), if he wanted to?

sigh

comments

Parkrun blocking RSS readers from accessing its RSS feeds? WTF?

2024-02-23T16:42:22Z

Parkrun has a news/blog page. This news blog has an RSS feed, at https://www.parkrun.com/feed/. Which I subscribe to with Akregator, my RSS reader of choice.

Searching for some info on Parkrun recently, I came across a couple of recent articles which hadn't shown up on my news feed. And looking at the feed closely, I noticed that the most recent fetches had failed with some kind of error.

I normally ignore feed errors, because sometimes feeds aren't available for some reason (including my computer not being connected to the internet occasionally), and it's not a problem because I'll pick up any missed posts on the feeds the next time a feed is downloaded. But these articles were a week or two old, and so I should have got them recently.

I checked the page sources to see if the feed URL had changed (which happens on some websites sometimes) and couldn't find it listed at all. Interesting. Maybe the feed had been deleted altogether? I tried accessing the feed in Firefox... and there it was. Present in its original location, and seemingly free of errors.

So I tried downloading the feed manually, in order to have a closer look at it, to see if there were any issues that might cause my feed reader to think it was broken - which would be one reason why it didn't show up.

$ wget https://www.parkrun.com/feed/
--2024-02-23 12:00:00--  https://www.parkrun.com/feed/
Resolving www.parkrun.com (www.parkrun.com)... 34.248.148.22, 52.210.236.124, 54.171.25.67
Connecting to www.parkrun.com (www.parkrun.com)|34.248.148.22|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 403 Forbidden
2024-02-23 12:00:00 ERROR 403: Forbidden.

Huh.

That's weird. Reload in Firefox, feed is fine. Re-run wget command, 403 Forbidden. Let's try...

$ wget --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/123.0" https://www.parkrun.com/feed/
--2024-02-23 12:01:00--  https://www.parkrun.com/feed/
Resolving www.parkrun.com (www.parkrun.com)... 54.171.25.67, 34.248.148.22, 52.210.236.124
Connecting to www.parkrun.com (www.parkrun.com)|54.171.25.67|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 39816 (39K) [text/xml]
Saving to: ‘index.html’
index.html                    100%[==============================================>]  38.88K   200KB/s    in 0.2s    
2024-02-23 12:01:00 (200 KB/s) - ‘index.html’ saved [39816/39816]

It does the same thing with curl. So, Parkrun is blocking access to the RSS feed of its news blog by User-Agent.

It's allowing Firefox, a web browser which doesn't actually provide a useful view of RSS feeds (unless you have an extra extension installed), but blocking actual RSS readers (like Akregator) or home-grown news-reading scripts which use standard cross-platform utilities like wget or curl.

W. T. F?!?!

Edit 2024-03-09: The feed seems to be working again. Yay?

comments

Tonight's special winner...

2023-06-24T14:50:48Z

Ladies, gentlemen, and other honoured attendees, in tonight's website awards we are introducing a special combined presentation for four separate categories. The awards for both Content and Presentation categories in the fields of Terms of Service and Privacy Policy all go to...

... drum roll ...

... unnecessary pause ...

... plaintive call from the audience of "get on with it" ...

... Nebula!

I'm sure their webmasters and legal team would like to come up and say a few words. Meanwhile, tip your wait staff, and try the veal.

Seriously, if more TOS and Privacy documents read like those, I'd probably be signed up for a lot more services on the web.

comments

The way inflation is measured and reported makes no sense.

2023-06-16T09:36:43Z

Measurement and reporting

Inflation is measured using a basket of goods:

Consumer price inflation is the rate at which the prices of goods and services bought by households rise or fall. Imagine a large "shopping basket" containing those goods and services. As the prices of the various items change over time so does the total cost of the basket.

Inflation (or deflation) is then the amount that the total price of that basket of goods goes up (or down) from month to month.

Fairly typical examples of reporting are:

Inflation set to ease...: The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is set to reveal Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation dropping to 8.2% in April from 10.1% in March

Inflation falls to lowest level...: The Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday inflation fell to 8.7 per cent in April - down from 10.1 per cent in the previous month.

UK Inflation down...: The UK's inflation rate fell to 8.7% in April, down from 10.1% in March, [...] Core inflation - which strips out food and energy prices - rose to a 31-year high of 6.8% in April

What I thought inflation measured

Given the typical reporting of "The rate of inflation in April was 8.7%", I had always thought this meant that the amount prices had risen in April, i.e. from the start of April to the end of April⁰, was at a rate of 8.7% per year.

Although the rate of inflation is often described as being "over a year" or "for a year" or "in a year", that sounded to me that while the rate was being measured for a given month, it was just being expressed in a per-year unit. This made sense to me for a number of reasons.

You don't have to have been travelling for an hour to describe your speed in miles per hour. If you want to calculate your (average) speed along a given stretch of road, you just need to measure how long that stretch of road is, and how long you took to travel it. You don't have to go further back than that. And there's nothing odd about expressing a rate in units of time that differ from how long the measurement took.
Inflation expressed as percentage points per month would normally only have fractional values, which isn't as easy to communicate. We could measure speeds in miles per second rather than miles per hour, but then a speed limit of 30mph would come out as 0.0083mps, which is awkward to convey or put on speedometers and signposts. Using a unit where the values typically fall from 1 to 100 is easier to get across. (Inflation could be measured using per mille points or basis points per month, but then those units would probably also need to be explained, whereas most people already know how percentages work.)
The interest rates for loans, mortgages, bonds, and other lines of credit/debt are also normally expressed as percentage points per year. Being able to compare inflation rates to interest rates, and to other annual monetary changes (e.g. salary changes) is incredibly useful.
Months are different lengths. If a smooth constant rate of inflation caused a basket of goods to go up by 31p in January, the same smooth constant rate of inflation would cause that same basket of goods to only go up by 28p in February. Expressing just the amount of inflation in a given month would give inconsistent rates.

After all, Economics is, like, a science¹. It uses maths, and tables, and graphs, and equations. I'd expect it to use the word "rate" in the correct mathematical sense - the slope of the graph of measurement vs. time over the interval described.

Therefore, the "rate of inflation in April" surely should be most straightforwardly interpreted as "the amount that prices rose during the month of April", expressed in "percentage points per year".

What "the rate of inflation in April" actually measures

I recently came across a few bits of reporting where the way inflation was being being described didn't align with how I understood it. There might have been a number of reasons for this, one of which was that a reporter had either misunderstood inflation, or understood it but was communicating it poorly. If you've ever read an article about which you have first-hand knowledge or expertise in, you'll recognise how feasible this is. Another, of course, is that I might have misunderstood inflation.

However, given that these separate reports seemed to have got inflation wrong in exactly the same way, I thought it was worth double-checking my understanding.

From the ONS Consumer price inflation, UK: April 2023 glossary:

Annual inflation rate

The most common approach to measuring inflation is the 12-month or annual inflation rate, which compares prices for the latest month with the same month a year ago. In any given month, the annual rate is determined by the balance between upward and downward price movements of the range of goods and services included in the index.

So "the rate of inflation in April" (or, as it is more accurately but only occasionally reported, "the rate of inflation in the year to April") actually measures "the amount that prices rose between one April and the previous April", rather than "the amount that prices rose in April".

Huh.

I learned something. Great!

Now I have a better understanding of what the reported "rate of inflation" is, that's going to help me navigate the world more effectively, right? This is a good thing.

Except...

...the more I thought about what the reported rate of inflation actually measured, the less sense it makes to me.

A thought experiment

I'm going to give an example that plays out over three years.

The first year is calm. The price of the basket of goods rises at a steady "inflation" rate of around 2.4%/year, which is roughly what modern western governments target.

In the second year, a shock at the end of April causes prices to rise suddenly between May and July, before (due to some sound government policy intervention and strong consumer protection laws against greedflation profiteering(!)²) they stabilise and fall back down to near previous levels by the end of the year.

In the third year, prices go back to rising steadily at around the original target rate.

This is a work of fiction - any similarities to actual rates of inflation (living or dead) are purely coincidental.

Yr/Mon	Price	Infl	Yr/Mon	Price	Infl	Yr/Mon	Price	Infl
(202)1/Jan	£100.00	?	(202)2/Jan	£102.40	2.40%	(202)3/Jan	£105.00	2.54%
(202)1/Feb	£100.20	?	(202)2/Feb	£102.60	2.40%	(202)3/Feb	£105.00	2.34%
(202)1/Mar	£100.40	?	(202)2/Mar	£102.80	2.39%	(202)3/Mar	£105.25	2.38%
(202)1/Apr	£100.60	?	(202)2/Apr	£103.00	2.39%	(202)3/Apr	£105.50	2.43%
(202)1/May	£100.80	?	(202)2/May	£106.00	5.16%	(202)3/May	£105.75	-0.24%
(202)1/Jun	£101.00	?	(202)2/Jun	£111.00	9.90%	(202)3/Jun	£106.00	-4.50%
(202)1/Jul	£101.20	?	(202)2/Jul	£112.00	10.67%	(202)3/Jul	£106.25	-5.13%
(202)1/Aug	£101.40	?	(202)2/Aug	£111.00	9.47%	(202)3/Aug	£106.50	-4.05%
(202)1/Sep	£101.60	?	(202)2/Sep	£112.00	10.24%	(202)3/Sep	£106.75	-4.69%
(202)1/Oct	£101.80	?	(202)2/Oct	£110.00	8.06%	(202)3/Oct	£107.00	-2.73%
(202)1/Nov	£102.00	?	(202)2/Nov	£108.00	5.88%	(202)3/Nov	£107.25	-0.69%
(202)1/Dec	£102.20	?	(202)2/Dec	£106.00	3.72%	(202)3/Dec	£107.50	1.42%

What is the relationship between price changes and "inflation"?

If prices fall, inflation can stay positive.

The UK Inflation down... article makes the claim: A slower rate of inflation does not mean prices are coming down - it means they are not going up so quickly. It is not the only piece of reporting to do so. I have heard similar statements by a number of other genuinely respectable commentators in the past. Those comments stood out to me previously, as they seemed so self-evidently, blindingly obvious that I was surprised that the point needed to be expressed at all.

The thing is, based on what "inflation" is actually measuring, it isn't necessarily true. I mean, it might be true, but it might not. Looking at the example from September of year 2 - prices fall every month for 4 straight months, yet "inflation" remains positive the whole time.

The reverse is true for the 7 months in year 3 where "inflation" is negative. Prices rise every month during that time.

There can be sudden shocks in inflation, even if everything is stable.

Looking again at the period in year 3 where "inflation" turns negative, it goes from a "healthy" +2.43% in April to suddenly diving to a shocking -5.13% in July! What caused this sudden, unexpected shift in "inflation" in year 3?

Nothing.

There was no change in the rate prices were rising between April and July in year 3. Prices were under control, and rising slowly and steadily the whole time. The apparent change in inflation in year 3 is actually entirely due to the sudden rise in prices in year 2. But because that sudden change in prices was not repeated in year 3, "inflation" goes completely wild.

There's no way to tell what inflation has done over, e.g. a 6-month period.

Even if you've got 10 years of worth of inflation numbers, there's no way to tell what inflation has done over any timescale other than a whole number of years.

Every April measurement only tells you about what inflation did since the previous April, and the April before that, and the April before that. Ditto for every October. There is no way of taking those numbers and figuring out how much prices have changed from any given April to the following October.

Why is inflation reported the way it is?

Seriously, why?

These inflation numbers gathered for the government and reported by the media only make sense in the right context. But not only is the right context not given, the wrong context is given instead.

Comparing the rate of inflation from month to month is pointless. If inflation in March is 10.1%, and inflation in April is 8.7%, that says nothing about what the price of goods did between March and April³. It only says something about what prices did between March and the previous March, and completely independently between April and the previous April.

It doesn't even tell anyone whether prices are currently rising or falling.

Furthermore, none of these issues would occur if inflation actually measured what I originally thought it did.

The only possible justification I can think of for reporting inflation this way is to account for periodic seasonal pricing variations. For example, if prices fall every January due to retailers always having sales then, or due to wide scale post New Year belt-tightening leading to lower consumer demand and consequently a drop in prices, then inflation could look like it's doing something weird in January when everything is actually fairly normal, historically speaking. Measuring inflation from January to January and February to February makes that kind of variation irrelevant.

But, the ONS already knows how to calculate seasonal variations in prices and account for it - because it already does that for other statistics it gathers, including other types of inflation. They could easily publish a "seasonally adjusted" measure of what inflation was really doing in a given month.

So, why is inflation measured and reported the way that it is? What is anyone supposed to do with that information? What use is it, like, at all?

Answers on a postcard...

⁰ Actually, more like from the start of April to the start of May, in order to avoid a fencepost error.

¹ Sorry, that's meant to say that Economics is like a science (but not actually one).

That's unfair. The trouble is, Economics appears to desperately want to be a "hard" science with reductionist theories and precise mathematical laws, evidenced by its models of spherical utility-maximising rational economic actors in a vacuum. But because humans are highly chaotic, being both stubbornly contrarian and also vulnerable to groupthink, this approach doesn't really appear to work. See the well-known Economic aphorisms that markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent⁴ and Wall Street indexes [sic] predicted nine out of the last five recessions!⁵. Nevertheless, Economists seem to keep using the language of precise mathematical models anyway.

² You know, like competent governments who work on behalf of voters against the companies who would exploit or endanger them.

³ Although, unless prices fell by more than 1.4% in the previous March to April, an inflation reduction from 10.1% to 8.7% means that prices will have fallen between the current March to April. Also note, that's unless they fell by more than 1.4% in a single month, not that unless they fell at a rate of more than 1.4%/year. So, yeah, prices probably did actually fall.

⁴ A. Gary Schilling, 1986:

markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent.

⁵ Paul Samuelson, NewsWeek, September 19, 1966, p. 92:

To prove that Wall Street is an early omen of movements still to come in GNP, commentators quote economic studies alleging that market downturns predicted four out of the last five recessions. That is an understatement. Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions!

Note that Wall Street indices don't actually predict recessions. Rather, commentators and the authors of economic studies (mis)interpret the movement of those indices to predict recessions.

comments

Book Review - Application for an HSBC Stocks and Shares ISA

2022-10-22T10:22:30Z

Readers beware, this book is long. It weighs in at 109,205 words⁰ over 205 pages, spanning 12 fascicles (table of contents at the end).

This feels monumentally excessive.

For comparison, it's longer than The Hobbit (95,022 words), each of the first three Harry Potter books (Prison of Azkaban comes in at 106,821 words) and Wuthering Heights (107,945 words)¹. You might think that those are not especially long novels but, given its genre, Application is an epic work of monstrous proportions.

I challenge anyone to read all of Application in just a weekend. It took me more than a fortnight, having to take breaks between parts, but also frequently mid-part. And I normally like reading.

One of the difficulties with Application is that it uses the eccentric conceit of being written "in dialect" - specifically, a dry, long-winded, sesquipedalian variant of English known as "legalese". To be fair, this is de rigueur for the genre, and Application suffers from a relatively mild case, remaining mostly comprehensible to anyone well-versed in ordinary English. The only bit of language I was unfamiliar with when I first saw it was "wilful default" (Fs.VI pp.29-30). I initially thought it was a misprint for "wilful deceit", until a conversation with friends enlightened me. Of course, there may be other "false friends" which I didn't recognise and have unknowingly misunderstood entirely! Your personal mileage may naturally vary.

It also doesn't help that the plot is threadbare, and the characters are paper-thin. The protagonist "You" is a complete cipher, who is almost entirely passive and has very little characterisation at all; a classic Audience Surrogate trope. Whereas the main antagonist, "We", is a one-note monomaniacal control freak, who does little but demand that everything be done exactly their way, constantly. Of the handful of other fleeting characters, one going by the cryptic name "Ombudsman" appears the most rounded and intriguing. I would have liked for them to get more of a role, but from what I gather that would only happen if things started going badly for "You".

For readers that are easily confused by characters with similar names, Fs.VI Annex 5 Your Rights and Responsibilities, will really give you headaches. It discusses the relationship between "We" - referred to by their full name of "HSBC UK Bank plc" - and their close relative, "HSBC Bank plc". Now, I realise that names often run in families so the similarity here has a plot-related justification, but even so, this still feels like bad, clunky writing. Would it have been too much trouble to give the relative a nickname, like our antagonist's "We", to reduce reader confusion?

Another major problem with the length of Application is repetition. It is common in good writing to repeat a text's core themes in different contexts to make them stand out, but that works best when those themes are few, succinctly stated, and not over-repeated. As an example, "We" appears to have a strong aversion to terrorist financing and money laundering², and Application explains this, including how "We" uses the details "You" provides to combat those threats (e.g. sharing those details with others). The problem is, it does so at considerable length, and in Fs.I pp.4, Fs.I pp.8, Fs.VI pp.12, Fs.VI pp.18, Fs.VI pp.31, Fs.VII pp.30, and Fs.VII pp.37. Repeating the point three times would have driven it home effectively. Seven times is just overkill.

The themes of ISA Share Dealing Terms, Failed Trades, Best Execution Disclosure, and Conflicts of Interest are similarly repeated what feels like too many times, and at unnecessarily great length. Finally, it feels like more than half of Fs.VIII Rates and Fees was just copy and pasted from Fs.V Key Features of HSBC ID & HSBC ID+. Why? Why was it necessary to present me with those tables of numbers twice?

One of the disadvantages of the length of Application is not just in how much time it takes to actually read everything, but that the length itself is intimidating and off-putting. More than once, I shied away from reading the next few pages simply because of how many there were left to go, only to realise when I restarted that I'd kind of read those pages before, earlier, and already had the gist of them. If the amount of repetition were decreased, the text that remained would feel much more approachable.

Hence, Application desperately needs the loving attention of a viciously ruthless editor.

Ironically, one area that I thought would have a great deal of repetition, which could actually help with its reading and understanding, did not. From their titles, Fs.VI HSBC ID T&Cs and Fs.VII HSBC ID+ T&Cs would appear to have a great many parallels. I suspected that they would act like a pair of alternate timelines, where the effect of one small decision at the end of Fs.V by "You", would produce narratives that were very similar, differing in a few small but crucial ways. I thought I'd be able to read both parts in parallel, mostly skimming the second where it was identical to the first, but paying careful attention to the places where it diverged. Instead, Fs.VII is written in a completely different voice, from a different perspective, and with a totally different structure, from Fs.VI. If the reader is intended to draw parallels and notice differences between the two possible outcomes of the choice "You" makes, this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. Any such comparison is completely obscured by the decision to tell the parts in radically different ways.

(FWIW, I think structuring these parts in a "choose your own adventure" format would be much better. Having outlined the choice that "You" has to make in Fs.V, it should suffice to ask the reader to pick either Fs.VI or Fs.VII before continuing to Fs.VIII and beyond, rather than asking them to read both. Sufficiently invested readers can always go back and read the details of the path not taken later, if they so desire.)

One final issue I have (I'm nearly done, I swear) is the fixed two-column portrait-oriented page layout that Application uses. I understand the reasoning behind a multi-column layout; as the reader's eye scans back from one line to the next, it's harder to pick the correct next line if the lines are too long. Therefore, if you're constrained to A4 paper, a multi-column layout is one of the best ways to prevent this.

But, most people these days won't be reading Application on A4 paper. They're not printing out 200+ pages of electronic T&Cs documentation to flip through in a comfy chair by the fireplace. They're reading electronic documents on electronic devices, like their computer, or maybe their phone. And the kind of fixed two-column layout used here is almost-universally terrible on those displays because of the need to scroll up to the top of the next column, which interrupts the flow of reading down through the document. Not only that, but depending on the display the user might but also have to - even worse - scroll side-to-side between the columns.

What would be great, on the web, is if there were only some format for describing the structure and contents of a document, allowing each users' device to format it in the way that was best for the reader. That way, the length of Application would not be exacerbated by the way in which it's presented.

Lastly, a word of warning. Some readers may want to skip Vol I and jump right into Vol II - Apply for a Sharedealing Account - but you really can't do that here. If you've not already made it through Vol I - HSBC Bank Account Application - you simply won't have what you need to get through Vol II.

tl;dr - Too long; don't read. (Unless you absolutely have to.)

2/10 - It does what it sets out to do; it just takes way, way, wayyyyyy too long to do it.

Abbreviations

T&Cs	Terms and Conditions
ID	InvestDirect
ID+	InvestDirect Plus
S&S ISA	Stock & Shares ISA

Vol I - HSBC Bank Account Application (73 pages, 27,375 words)

Fascicle I	Privacy Notice	10 pages, 6,273 words
Fascicle II	Personal Banking T&Cs and Charges	54 pages, 17,677 words
Fascicle III	Digital Banking Terms for Online and Mobile Banking	8 pages, 2,827 words
Fascicle IV	Glossary of Terms	1 page, 598 words

Vol II - Apply for a Sharedealing Account (132 pages, 81,830 words)

Fascicle V	Key Features of HSBC ID & HSBC ID+	15 pages, 7,561 words
Fascicle VI	HSBC ID T&Cs	39 pages, 26,428 words
Fascicle VII	HSBC ID+ T&Cs	44 pages, 28,846 words
Fascicle VIII	Rates and Fees for HSBC ID & HSBC ID+	5 pages, 1,347 words
Fascicle IX	Key Features of HSBC ID & HSBC ID+ S&S ISA	10 pages, 4,492 words
Fascicle X	HSBC ID S&S ISA T&Cs	15 pages, 10,127 words
Fascicle XI	Financial Services Compensation Scheme information	2 pages, 1,305 words
Fascicle XII	Best Execution Disclosure Statement	2 pages, 1,724 words

Footnotes

⁰ By a reasonable estimate. I couldn't get word counts directly from the PDFs, so I did a Select All/Copy/Paste into LibreOffice Writer, and used the word count feature there. That may have included page numbers, or double-counted words hyphenated across line breaks, but the numbers should be in the right ballpark.

¹ Word Count Of Famous Novels

² Or so they claim, but the author does have history of being an unconscionably hypocritical douchebag in this regard, like when they were found guilty of not just failures and weaknesses in their regulatory due-diligence departments (as appears to happen repeatedly for some reason), but actively aided criminals when its international staff had stripped identifying information on transactions through the U.S. from countries including Iran and Sudan in order to evade sanctions.

comments

Living with traffic accidents caused by speeding

2022-02-22T00:36:53Z

The House of Commons, 21 February 2022^†, The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson):

With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on our strategy for living with traffic accidents caused by speeding.

It is a reminder that speeding has not gone away but, because of the efforts we have made as a country over the past eight decades, we can now deal with it in a very different way by moving from Government restrictions to personal responsibility, so that we protect ourselves without losing our liberties, and by maintaining our contingency capabilities so that we can respond rapidly to any major incident caused by speeding.

The UK was the first country in the world to require seat-belts, and the first European nation to protect half its population with driver-side airbags. Having made the decision to refocus our Highways Agency back in the '80s on the campaign to "clunk, click, every trip", we were the first major European nation to require crumple zones, too. And it is because of the extraordinary success of this vehicle safety programme that we have been able to lift our restrictions earlier than other comparable countries—opening throttles up last summer while others remained closed, and keeping throttles open this winter when others shut down again—making us one of the most open economies and societies in Europe, with the fastest cars anywhere in the G7 last year.

While deaths from speeding are not over, we have now passed the peak of the traffic accident wave, with cases falling, hospitalisations in England now fewer than 10,000 and still falling, and the link between crashing and severe injury substantially weakened. Over 71% of all drivers in England now own NCAP 3-star or better rated vehicles, including 93% of those aged 70 or over. Together with the treatments and scientific understanding of the physics of traffic accidents we have built up, we now have sufficient levels of protection to complete the transition from protecting people with Government interventions to relying on safety features and medical treatments as our first line of defence.

As we have throughout the past eight decades, we will continue to work closely with the devolved Administrations as they decide how to take forward their own plans. Today’s strategy shows how we will structure our approach in England around four principles.

First, we will remove all remaining domestic restrictions in law. From this Thursday, 24 February, we will end the legal requirement to adhere to posted speed limits, and so we will also end speeding-related fines. We will end routine GATSO speed camera checks. Until 1 April, we will still advise people who feel nervous about driving quickly to stick to the old limits, but after that we will encourage people to just exercise personal responsibility, just as we encourage people who leave karaoke bars drunk late at night to be considerate to others.

It is only because levels of protection are so high and deaths are now, if anything, below where we would normally expect for this time of year that we can lift these restrictions. And it is only because we know accidents are less severe that enforcing speed limits on the colossal scale we have been doing is much less important and much less valuable in preventing serious injury. We should be proud that the UK has established the biggest vehicle safety programme of any large country in the world.

From today, we are removing the guidance for drivers to rigorously follow the highway code. The Government will also expire all provisions in the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. Of the original 147, 75 have already expired and 55 will expire on 24 March. The last seventeen, relating to control and enforcement, will expire six months later, when they will no longer be necessary.

Secondly, we will continue to protect the most vulnerable with softer bumpers and bonnets. The UK is leading the way on pedestrian focussed safety measures, with our Ramblers Taskforce securing a supply of volunteers for collision testing, which is more per head than any other country in Europe.

Thirdly, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies advises that there is considerable uncertainty about the future path of the accidents caused by speeding, and there may of course be significant resurgences. SAGE is certain that there will be higher-speed variants, and it is very possible that those will be worse than current accidents. So we will maintain our resilience to manage and respond to those risks, including our world-leading Office for National Statistics survey, which will allow us to continue tracking accidents in granular detail, with regional and age breakdowns helping us to spot surges as and where they happen. And our laboratory networks will help us understand the evolution of accidents and identify any changes in characteristics.

We will prepare and maintain our capabilities to ramp up incident responses. We will continue to support other countries in developing their own surveillance capabilities, because a new accident can occur anywhere.

In all circumstances, our aim will be to manage and respond to future risks through more routine vehicle safety interventions, with medical interventions as the first line of defence.

Fourthly, we will build on the innovation that has defined the best of our response to traffic accidents. The safety taskforce will continue to ensure that the UK has access to effective safety standards as they become available, and has already secured contracts with manufacturers trialling Automatic Emergency Braking, which would provide protection against speed-related accidents. The therapeutics taskforce will continue to support seven national priority clinical trial platforms focused on treatments for accident-related injuries. We are refreshing our security strategy to protect the UK against the potential for deliberate vehicular-based threats emanating from state and non-state actors.

Traffic accidents will not suddenly disappear, so those who would wait for a total end to this war before lifting the remaining regulations would be restricting the liberties of the British people for a long time to come. This Government do not believe that that is right or necessary. Restrictions take a heavy toll on our economy, our society, our mental wellbeing and the life chances of our children, and we do not need to pay that cost any longer. We have a population that is protected by the biggest vehicle safety programme in our history; we have the airbags, the treatments and the scientific understanding of how accidents happen; and we have the capabilities to respond rapidly to any major incident on the road.

It is time that we got our confidence back. We do not need laws to compel people to be considerate to others. We can rely on our sense of responsibility towards one another, providing practical advice in the knowledge that people will follow it to avoid injuring loved ones and others. So let us learn to live with accidents caused by speeding and continue protecting ourselves without restricting our freedoms. In that spirit, I commend this statement to the House.

(original statement)

^† In a timeline even stupider than our current one. Maybe. But, given that deaths from traffic accidents are an order of magnitude less than those from Covid, maybe not.

comments

Hey, some of 2020 is still leaking over into 2021. No fair.

2021-11-18T21:58:08Z

OK, who had hordes of highly venomous scorpions on their ~~2020~~2021 bingo cards?

comments

Agree to Google TOS/Privacy policies for Covid tests?

2021-11-12T17:42:20Z

So if you want to pick up some Covid tests these days, you need a "collect code" [sic].

If you have the NHS app on your Android or iOS smartphone, that's apparently pretty easy. Alternatively, if you're weary of battling countless stupid apps that ask for permissions they have no business needing and are just done with the "there's an app for that" mindset, and therefore don't have it; or if you have an independent (e.g. PinePhone, Librem 5, etc...) smartphone that the NHS app doesn't support; or if you only have a feature phone; or if you don't have a mobile phone at all - that's not going to work for you.

Alternatively, there's the Get a collect code to pick up coronavirus (COVID-19) rapid lateral flow tests web page. (Great page title there, devs. Very snappy.) From this page, the process to get a "collect code" requires you to enter at least your name and date of birth. You may well have to enter more personal information than this. I don't know, I didn't get any further.

Anyway, at the bottom of each page in this process - on a healthcare-based website where you enter a bunch of personal information - it says:

This service is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply.

Those documents are, at the time of writing, 8,127 and 4,013 words long respectively. And you want me to read, understand, and agree to those terms, in order to pick up some Covid tests? Which already involve a fair amount of inconvenience and discomfort on my part?

That's not even looking at the contents of those terms, some of which could be considered objectionable. For example, in their Privacy Policy, under "Information we collect as you use our services" / "Your Activity", there is:

The activity information we collect may include: [...] Activity on third-party sites and apps that use our services

So, in order to use the UK government site for getting hold of tests to help prevent the spread of Covid-19, you are asked to actively agree letting a US company - whose core business model involves collecting as much information as it can about everyone on the planet in order to target them with advertising so they can maximise shareholder value - monitor and track your activity across all the other websites on the internet that they monitor. Which is, like, a lot.

Are you kidding me? Like, whoever thought that this would be an acceptable way to run this site?

Oh, and as a final option to get a "collect code" you can call the phone number "119". Except that the IVR menu you get gives you the choice of "1 - The Test and Trace service", "2 - The Covid-19 vaccination booking service", "3 - The NHS Covid pass service", and "4 - Report an issue with your Covid vaccination record". So, nothing about requesting a "collect code" then. Great. Stellar work there everyone.

I guess I'm not getting any regular testing from now on then.

FFS

comments

Happy September 10,000th!

2021-01-16T23:40:43Z

Today is the 10,000th day of September, 1993.

Thanks must go to AOL for failing to inform new users about netiquette, and to Microsoft Outlook for making top posting the default reply format despite over a decade (up to that point) of trial-and-error research showing that it's the worst way of conducting meaningful email conversations.

In other calendar formats, today is also March 322nd, 2020.

comments

Happy^W It's winter solstice everyone!

2020-12-21T09:27:03Z

Isn't it weird? You know how the solstices move around, with the winter solstice normally falling on Dec 21st, but sometimes on Dec 20th or the 22nd?

Well, this year it's fallen on March 296th!

In an unprecedented turn of events, Christmas has moved too, to March 300th! Quite a coincidence that despite the move, the day-of-month it falls on is still a round number in the base 10 counting system. Even more of a round number than the 25th.

I hope your solstice and holiday season doesn't suck too badly. Fingers crossed for a non-dystopian 2021!

comments

Season 4 (or is it 5?) of Brexit sucks

2020-12-20T13:12:13Z

This season, aka "The Transition Period", has been so badly written.

They set up the main arc all the way back from the middle of last season, in that we have a whole season to hammer out the details of the "ongoing relationship". There's so much scope for gains and losses, alliances and betrayals, careful strategic plans and then chance opportunities for quick tactical advances, all kinds of good stuff. Then they decided to do fuck all with that whole idea for the first three-quarters of the season and go for a rushed scramble punctuated with "the final deadline is only hours away - oops, no it isn't, tune in next week for exactly the same cliffhanger all over again" for, what, five episodes in a row now?

What did they fill the rest of the season with instead? A pandemic?! That's so... random! I mean, they've got some good drama out of it, and some pretty dark satire about the incompetence, cronyism and corruption of governments if they're not kept in check. But the twist in the penultimate episode is so stupid! Having Keir point out again that the Christmas rules aren't viable and need to be severely limited, pushing Boris to call the idea "inhumane" 3 days before he does that very same thing? It's totally broken my suspension of disbelief.

It's been such a trope this year. Keir spots the obvious and terrible danger, warns Boris about it, Boris ignores and insults him, and then realises a few episodes later that Keir was right and does the thing. Once or twice would have been enough to highlight Keir's competence next to Boris' perpetual bumbling, but at this point it just looks like his character has had a peek at the script. Even his name, Keir Starmer, is a bit too on-the-nose for my liking; why didn't the writers actually just call him Kassandra if they were going to be that obvious about it? (Bold choice with the F->M gender swap for that archetype in this day and age though - anyone saying that media production is totally controlled by SJWs is going to have a hard time explaining that decision!)

Definitely going to check out the season finale next week though. I'm invested enough that I want to know how it turns out, no matter how bad it is. Can't be any worse than GoT or WestWorld season 3.

Not sure if I want to tune in next season though. The food-shortages-amidst-disappearing-industries dystopia storyline idea that's been leaked (but not confirmed) sounds terrible. If it's set in 2021, can't the dystopia at least be of the cool cyberpunk variety? Even if today's Cyberpunk dystopias are crappy rehashes of the Cyberpunk dystopias we were always promised (or so I've heard), they still sound more promising than the next season of Brexit.

I'll probably watch it more out of habit, and a lack of anything else to do, than anything else. Roll on the finale!

comments

Christmas lockdown lard

2020-11-24T10:10:43Z

A few weeks ago, someone floated the idea of having a French theme for lockdown lard sometime. That gave me an idea, which I squirrelled away until now. The theme for Christmas lockdown lard next week is... Chez Lahlou.

I've gone back through some old lard club emails and dug out a copy of the menu as transcribed by Bonedancer, so feel free to have a look through, pick something, and either have a go at making it, or just be inspired to make something vaguely reminiscent of it.

You don't have to make the veggie sticks and dips, or the garlic bread, or the chicken wings, or a starter, or all the vegetables in the world to last you for the next week... but I'm not going to dissuade you from trying if you feel like it!

I know it's only November right now, but Merry Xmas!

( Menu behind the cut )

comments

A brief moment of joy

2020-10-06T21:53:45Z

I mentioned this to a couple of people and they sounded not-just-being-polite interested, so I’d like to share a moment of joy I had last week. But it needs context. I need to introduce you to a couple of YouTube sketch comedians I enjoy.

The first is Ryan George who does a fairly popular series called Pitch Meeting. But he also does stuff on his own channel like Time Travelling Reporter and The First Guy To....

The second is Julie Nolke who did Explaining The Pandemic To My Past Self Part 1 and Part 2 which went pretty viral (ahem) a few months ago. But she's also done a bunch of other stuff, and has series like The Two Sides Of My Brain.

Although the subject of their work is different, their styles are similar and the type of comedy - clever and slightly surreal - are a good match. And they’re both Canadian. So I’ve thought for a while that I’d really to see them collab.

And they did! Two videos, The First Couple To Ever Get Married, and The First Couple To Ever Get Divorced.

It's not much, but it's 2020, so I'll take what I can get.

Edit 08 Oct: Explaining the Pandemic to my Past Self Part 3

comments

Thankyou GCSE/A-Level students and teachers

2020-08-17T21:33:59Z

I realise that things are horrible for you right now, and I wish you weren't in the position you're in.

But while you are, thank you for taking the August instalment of "2020 can go fuck itself" on yourselves. You've given everyone else just a little bit of time to catch our breath. Hopefully you can catch a break in September, and whatever new thing that rears its squamous head and aims its tentacular maw in Earth's direction will decide to pick on a more deserving demographic. Like hedge fund managers, or pyramid scheme directors.

comments

Lockdown lard #5 - August

2020-07-28T09:38:04Z

August? WTF?

Yes, lockdown is officially easing, but getting multiple households together for lard is probably not the best idea in the world, so we're doing this at least one more time.

Previously, I've only specified a "theme" for lard because having people come up with their own ideas is fun. Also, given how things are, I didn't want to feel like I was putting anyone under any (more) pressure to do a specific thing. For August, I'm naming a dish. Don't worry, it's pretty easy, but also super nommy. It's...

Tartiflette

I'm doing this for two reasons. 1) I've not had it so far this year, and I miss it. 2) You've probably not had it so far this year - or maybe ever - and you should, because it's amazing. BBC food has a Tartiflette recipe, but there are plenty of others out there. Also, I found a website called Gourmet Sleuth that lists substitute ingredients for things like Reblochon cheese, and Port Salut apparently works and is widely available.

So that's Wednesday 5th August.

comments

"For some crimes, the death penalty is the most appropriate sentence"

2020-07-06T13:20:25Z

...is one of the questions from the British Election Study Wave 19 Panel carried out in November 2019. That's November 2019CE, which I feel the need to stress due to the following finding:

Those answering "Strongly Agree" or "Agree"? 50% (n = 23,315)

As in, half. Half of the UK still supports capital punishment.

The breakdown of the answers is available from Mind the Values Gap - The social and economic values of MPs, party members and voters by Bale, Cheung, Cowley, Menon and Wager, pp 17-18. The paper is about a bunch of other things, but that's the non-partisan finding which really leapt out at me.

Isn't knowing more about your fellow citizens a wonderful way to start the week? Happy Monday, everyone!

Credit to this FP article for the link to the paper.

comments

Working from home, and the rise of employee-tracking software

2020-07-02T16:32:30Z

The EFF recently published their report Inside the Invasive, Secretive “Bossware” Tracking Workers that looks at "automatic time tracking"/"workplace analytics" software, which many companies have started putting not just on their own computers, but more frequently on those of workers who use their personal computers to work from home.

As the report points out:

We’ll call these tools, collectively, “bossware.” While aimed at helping employers, bossware puts workers’ privacy and security at risk by logging every click and keystroke, covertly gathering information for lawsuits, and using other spying features that go far beyond what is necessary and proportionate to manage a workforce.

The report has specifically has a look at ActivTrak, CleverControl, DeskTime, Hubstaff, Interguard, StaffCop, Teramind, TimeDoctor, Work Examiner and WorkPuls - but even if the computer you use has a different brand of "bossware" on it, the report is probably worth taking a look at.

I would like to expand on one point:

The majority of companies that build visible monitoring software also make products that try to hide themselves from the people they’re monitoring. Teramind, Time Doctor, StaffCop, and others make bossware that’s designed to be as difficult to detect and remove as possible. At a technical level, these products are indistinguishable from stalkerware. In fact, some companies require employers to specifically configure antivirus software before installing their products, so that the worker’s antivirus won’t detect and block the monitoring software’s activity.

This kind of software treats the user as an adversary. If it's on a computer you're using, it's reasonable to say that you are not in control of that computer.

As a result, if your privacy is important to you, you should resist installing this kind of software on computers you own, or that you use for personal activities. If your employer wants you to use a computer with this kind of software on to work from home, they should supply that computer for you as work equipment. If you worked in an office, they'd provide a computer and not require that you bring one of your own in. Working from home should be no different. As the owner of that computer, your employer has the right to decide what software they would like on it. Asking you to turn control of your personal computer over to them - possibly a shared device, used by multiple family members - should not be acceptable.

If you feel strongly about this and you're being asked to install this kind of software on a personal device, and you're a member of a union, bring it up with your union rep. Show them the report. If you're not, and joining a union isn't something you're looking at, still push back as much as you feel you can. Consider at least registering your discomfort with your manager or with HR.

Note that this kind of mandated spyware is not limited to corporate employers. See the recent news story CEO of exam monitoring software Proctorio apologises for posting student's chat logs on Reddit.

You cannot trust computers with this type of software installed to work for you. But even if you can't avoid being made to use a computer with this type of software on it, you should at least be aware of what that software can do, so you can make an informed decision about what else you feel comfortable using that computer for.

(h/t Cory Doctorow's Pluralistic newsletter)

comments

Lockdown lard #4

2020-06-24T17:29:18Z

The theme for lockdown lard next Wednesday is Arroz con Cosas, or "rice with stuff". If you feel like it, have a go at some kind of paella, risotto, rice salad, or the like.

comments

This episode of "BoJo Derps a Brexit" is sponsored by...

2020-06-20T12:33:16Z

Producer: So, you have a youtube script for me?

Writer: Yes sir, I do!

Producer: What's it about?

Writer: Well, it's for the newest episode of our YouTube series, "BoJo derps a Brexit", and this one is about the upcoming trade deal with Australia.

( Go on... )

Writer: How are we going to make this episode then? Do we have some kind of ability to deepfake over another actor?

Producer: Actually, funny you should bring that up...

MUSICAL STING

END.

(Thanks to Ryan George's Pitch Meetings for the format inspiration and running gags!)

comments

April lard

2020-04-01T08:31:30Z

April fool!

Or, you know, treat yourself to something nice from you cupboards this evening. :-)

Stay well.

comments

A brief warning to anyone trying to follow government advice...

2020-03-25T20:26:50Z

...and shop at non-peak times - Morrisons are now closing at 8pm.

Because reducing the amount of off-peak shopping times, at a time when people are being encouraged to shop during off-peak shopping times, makes about as much fucking sense as anything else that's going on these days.

How nice to be rewarded for trying to do the right thing by being told upon reaching the shops that "ha ha, we're closing in 6 minutes. Better get that shopping done quick! lol"

Fuck this fucking timeline and the camel it rode in on.

comments

March lard

2020-03-02T09:43:11Z

Hey, sorry for the late notice.

Lard on Wednesday will be at the Taste of Thailand in Broomhill, 7:30. Meet in the Notty for drinks.

comments

February lard

2020-02-01T15:04:57Z

Sorry for the slightly delayed posting. I was a bit poorly last week and haven't had much energy to spare.

This being February, it's customary to go for Chinese as it was Chinese New Year on Jan 25th, so, how about ChinaTown on London Road. Meet in the Beer Engine, and on the off chance that ChinaTown is busy because of CNY (although things should have tailed off by then?) then we can wander up London Road until we find somewhere that can accommodate us.

comments

January lard

2020-01-03T00:24:00Z

Which is on the 8th, because where would have been open on the 1st anyway, will be at a new Ethiopian Eritrean place called Mesob on London road, between the Shawarma place and Ozmen's, at 7:30. Meet in the Cremorne.

Wow. Feels like a while since we've been to London Road for lard.

comments

grok_mctanys

73 Yards

Is Mastodon tolerant of long posts, or isn't it?

Parkrun blocking RSS readers from accessing its RSS feeds? WTF?

Tonight's special winner...

The way inflation is measured and reported makes no sense.

Measurement and reporting

What I thought inflation measured

What "the rate of inflation in April" actually measures

I learned something. Great!

A thought experiment

What is the relationship between price changes and "inflation"?

If prices fall, inflation can stay positive.

There can be sudden shocks in inflation, even if everything is stable.

There's no way to tell what inflation has done over, e.g. a 6-month period.

Why is inflation reported the way it is?

Book Review - Application for an HSBC Stocks and Shares ISA

Contents

Abbreviations

Vol I - HSBC Bank Account Application (73 pages, 27,375 words)

Vol II - Apply for a Sharedealing Account (132 pages, 81,830 words)

Footnotes

Living with traffic accidents caused by speeding

Hey, some of 2020 is still leaking over into 2021. No fair.

Agree to Google TOS/Privacy policies for Covid tests?

Happy September 10,000th!

Happy^W It's winter solstice everyone!

Season 4 (or is it 5?) of Brexit sucks

Christmas lockdown lard

A brief moment of joy

Thankyou GCSE/A-Level students and teachers

Lockdown lard #5 - August

"For some crimes, the death penalty is the most appropriate sentence"

Working from home, and the rise of employee-tracking software

Lockdown lard #4

This episode of "BoJo Derps a Brexit" is sponsored by...

April lard

A brief warning to anyone trying to follow government advice...

March lard

February lard

January lard