Why did Apple make the iPad shutdown button combination the same as the screenshot button combination? Both use the volume up + power buttons, it's just a slightly longer press to shut an iPad down rather than take a screenshot. I've just deleted more than a dozen unwanted screenshots of my home screen, taken whilst attempting to shut it down over the past few weeks.

The BBC website has published a number of articles about Universal Credit lately and a lot of them profile people who got into trouble after taking an advance on their payments. People take these advances because it’s not until five weeks after applying that a payment is made to the claimant.

The good news is that I’ve solved this problem for the government. It’s a two-step process.

Step 1. Apparently it takes seven days for a bank to transfer the government’s money to the claimant. This is ludicrous. I can transfer money between two accounts in less than two hours and I’m sure the government has more oomph with banks than me. Is the additional six days and 22 hours it takes the government to transfer their money because they route it through the remnants of Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel in Mexico in order to ‘clean’ it? The government should simply demand a modern bank account.

Step 2. Universal Credit is paid monthly, which is fine for the long-term I suppose. However, it’s clear it’s the initial wait for the first payment that’s causing a lot of people problems, so how about making the first two payments on a fortnightly schedule?

And there we are — problem solved. I’ve slashed the wait from five weeks to two by applying nothing more than common sense and I’ve assured myself a knighthood in the process.

BBC licence fee decriminalisation

So, the BBC are having a consultation to decide whether not paying a TV licence fee should be decriminalised. For the love of God, of course it should. It’s a television, not an Uzi 9mm. Not paying something like that should be a civil offence, similar to not paying council tax, not a criminal offence.

The whole issue of whether we should pay a TV licence at all is another matter. As it stands it’s simply a tax because you have to pay it whether or not you watch the BBC. I think it should get with the times and become subscription-based. You shouldn’t have to have a licence just because you own a telly. They may as well start licensing underpants.

I’d probably still subscribe. The BBC has gone downhill in recent decades, as its Saturday evening dross demonstrates. It just seems to be emulating the commercial channels with many of its programmes and chasing ratings, and a lot of it is complete pap. That said, it does produce the best factual programmes (about things like science and nature) and many of its dramas (The Bodyguard, Killing Eve etc.) are top quality.

So, yes, throw in Radio 2 and the BBC website and I’d subscribe. And I’d give them an extra tenner if they finally do away with the formulaic dancing and singing shows, which always have three normal judges, one nasty judge, a public vote and an unerring ability to depress me. The sheer amount of televisual time Strictly commands is staggering.

Tracy Brabin MP

Great reply from an MP to some trolls. I, for one, am glad MPs aren’t routinely banged over a wheelie bin before parliamentary sessions.

I'm struggling to understand why Ring's complementary mobile app needs to pass so much (or even any) data to third parties. It does this without user consent and also goes to great lengths to hide the data its passing on, attempting to elude analysis.

Ring is owned by Amazon and Amazon was the second company to be worth more than a trillion dollars, following hot on the heels of Apple. In the last quarter of 2019 Amazon raised $87.4 billion in revenue and made a profit of $3.3 billion. Jeff Bezos is now allegedly worth as much as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined.

So why, I have to wonder, when they're charging between £89 and £229 for doorbell with camera in it, do they also feel they need sell data from their mobile apps?

Ring already has form for data breaches and they could well be setting themselves up for another one. As the Electric Frontier Foundation — who performed this analysis — says:

This goes a step beyond that, by simply delivering sensitive data to third parties not accountable to Ring or bound by the trust placed in the customer-vendor relationship. As we’ve mentioned, this includes information about your device and carrier, unique identifiers that allow these companies to track you across apps, real-time interaction data with the app, and information about your home network. In the case of MixPanel, it even includes your name and email address. This data is given to parties either only mentioned briefly, buried on an internal page users are unlikely to ever see, or not listed at all.

This all raises a few related points.

Companies like you to install their own app instead of you doing your business via their websites in a browser. This is because browsers are getting cleverer at blocking tracking and because you can install ad-blockers in browsers. There are no such restrictions with apps: they can track you at will and advertise to you as they choose.

The thing that puzzles me, though, is why, when you're making £3.3 billion profit in a quarter, you feel the need to do this. Why not instead trade on the principle of no tracking and top class security? You'd probably sell more of your expensive doorbells in the first place if you did that.

On the back of the Cambridge Analytica debacle you'd think companies would learn but most appear to have learnt little. Greed and the lure of selling data, which is after all easy money for a company, still seem to rule supreme.

Google search and subscription sites

I really don't think Google should display search results for articles where, when you click through via search, you then have to have a subscription or account to see them. It's essentially advertising an article with a promise to satisfy your search criteria but then you can't view said article. Such sites are often subscription newspapers, social media pages or the woeful Medium silo.

At the very least, Google could give you an option to filter out subscription sites.

Light switches

Light switches should always be down for on and up for off. This is a problem when you have two switches that operate the same light. Therefore it should be the law that dual light switches are fitted with servos of some sort that switch the other switch(es) to match when you engage one of them.

Have I just invented that? If so, it's Copyright Gordon Ansell, 2020. I'll apply for a patent whilst I'm doing so for my electric underpants puller-upper (the deluxe model will have a stack system for your briefs on the base).

I don't want to get into the debate about whether we should or shouldn't have a porn block, but I do want to say something about the age-verification software companies who want £3m in 'damages' because the government didn't go ahead with it.

Remember, it's the tax-payer who'll ultimately pay those damages.

As far as I'm aware, the government never commissioned these companies to come up with age-verification software, so I can't see how they've got any right to claim anything. If it turns out they were asked or commissioned to do this then of course they deserve payment, but nothing I've read indicates that.

It's the government's job to create new laws and repeal old ones and they can do that at will. If a bunch of companies jump the gun and spend money and resources developing something that's no longer needed then that's their own look-out as far as I'm concerned.

Apparently these companies have applied for a judicial review and I hope their application gets turned down.

Royalty

I just don’t understand the furore about our Royal Family’s “emergency discussions about the Sussexes’ future”. I simply don’t care. They can do what they like. I’m not anti-royalist but I just don’t give a shit what they do and I’m staggered so many people in the country are that interested such that it’s the main news story on the BBC.

For what it’s worth, I’m in emergency discussions with my cat about the protocol she’s established for a second breakfast shortly after the first. It should be pointed out that I still remain second in line to throne of this house even if I decide to go and live in Canada. Bet that doesn’t make the front page of the BBC.

Flybe tight-lipped over collapse threat

The BBC is running an article suggesting Flybe is in trouble. If this is true and collapse is imminent (and it seems very likely) then Flybe are showing a shocking lack of morals by continuing to take bookings, whereupon they’ll leave people stranded in foreign parts and we, the taxpayers, will ultimately have to pay to repatriate them. If that happens then the CEO should do jail time. Surely it’s fraud if they know they’re going under and still take payments for flights they can’t honour.

Of course I’m only speculating on a speculative story.

An article on TechCrunch takes a long look at how cookie consents are breaching EU privacy laws and how the cookie confirmation pop-ups are merely a hindrance to people.

I’ve talked about this here, here, here (the ‘Cooke Monsters’ bit) and even here to a certain extent.

All cookies except essential session cookies should be off by default. There should be no cookie confirmation pop-ups, just a website “settings” option where you can go in and switch cookies on if you choose to.

If a site doesn’t want you there if you won’t accept their tracking and advertising cookies then they should send you to a page telling you that. That page should just have the “settings” option and you can switch some cookies on if you choose to. Alternatively, you can simply choose not to visit that site.

That’s how it should be. End of.

Samsung have recently been demonstrating something called Ballie, which is basically a ball that follows you around and controls your entire home.

Any ball that follows me around will be tripped over in short order, whereupon I’ll probably break my neck. Hence it’s a killer robot. It’s quite clever actually because we all expect killer robots to look like a T-800 and speak with an Austrian accent. Nobody expects an invasion of killer balls.

I dread to think what my cat would think of such a thing.

Anyway, watch the video and be either suitably impressed or extremely scared as you choose.

Update: You can't watch the video, sorry. Some buffoon has removed it from YouTube. It was very good, though.