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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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To summarize in brief:
The British Post Office scandal, also called the Horizon IT scandal, involved Post Office Limited pursuing thousands of innocent subpostmasters for shortfalls in their accounts, which had in fact been caused by faults in Horizon, accounting software developed and maintained by Fujitsu. Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 subpostmasters were convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting based on faulty Horizon data, with about 700 of these prosecutions carried out by the Post Office. Other subpostmasters were prosecuted but not convicted, forced to cover Horizon shortfalls with their own money, or had their contracts terminated. The court cases, criminal convictions, imprisonments, loss of livelihoods and homes, debts and bankruptcies, took a heavy toll on the victims and their families, leading to stress, illness, family breakdown, and at least four suicides. In 2024, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described the scandal as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history.
Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
Takeaways: That the government/post office knew the software was flawed, and nevertheless made hundreds of it's employees scapegoats, with criminal convictions, lost wages, opportunities, credibility, and in worst cases lost lives.
This is peak Great Britain, only maybe remove the great. And - it's easy to see a miscarriage of justice happening overseas, but don't for a moment think it couldn't, wouldn't, or isn't happening as you read this here.
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The small-town idyll, at New York/Tokyo/London pricing. Actually, that'd be an expensive flat anywhere in the world.
Anyways, this is where we're at at the moment...
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So, overdue and much needed updates to the website. Fuckity-fuck-fuckaroo. All going smooth until I install a component....then - bang.
Broken. You saw it broken in the front end but the back-end was something else.
Oddly - humorously - the component was working fine. The only bloody thing.
So, fuck around, find out, fuck around, find out.
I really can't 'afford' to leave all the information behind, and the database doesn't allow upgrading.
There will probably be a few more fuckity-fuckaroo moments on the way to getting this thing up and running - an unenviable amount of loading components, reordering, fixing thing up.
There was, for a while, the very real peril that I'd lose some 1000+ pages of content, some 4,000+ articles comprising of millions of words and thousands of photos. Almost 20 years of scrap paper thrown into the basket. This, naturally, rather upset me. I wonder why.
Anyways, the past week this is where I've been, fucking around, finding out, 40+ hours for a "seamless" migration that - to be sure, is anything but seamless.
Now, this being the most current version of my website it will be a fresh start, but the old content - if for any reason you need or are bored and crawling - is all here: V4.rodboyle.com.
I'll try migrating it over - at some point, but there's a lot to be done before then, so it'll be the balance of content and form...
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And, reading content on Facebook - "real" content - presumably - one user has had enough of the CGI pictures, posts a picture, a nice house, how to tell? It bothers him that of all these posts very few seem to be real...
Of course, none of them are and most of the comments reflect that. AI fatigue has started and we've only just begun.
That said, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if an AI wrote the article complaining about superabundance of AI on Social Media...
Now, I've never posted on Facebook complaining of Facebook, and I can't help but wonder if this post is simply reinforcing a lot of other's user experience, or if it's a reaction to my discussing this issue with friends - because, it's no longer paranoid, just common sense, to acknowledge that your phone is always on and listening...
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And my computer, all updates to the OS postponed (not enough memory, an HP Stream, I cannot in good faith recommend) - it's time to bin it, buy another.
Not in this weeks budget.
But then, at my login prompt, messages from Microsoft offering to finance a newer model laptop...
Like, they create a problem, then try and sell you the solution...at X% financing...
Bloody Microsoft!!!