One of our favourite Register reader comments on this story: "So NASA can still talk to Voyager 1 & 2 at over 13 billion miles away and nearly 50 years after launch, but get Microsoft involved and you lose your comms in less than a day." Quite www.theregister.com/2026/04/02/a...

Maybe Charles will stylishly assasinate him with an umbrella like Colin Firth in Kingsman.

Starting to wonder if we wouldn't mind Trump crassly insulting King Charles. It might be rather useful to our government's approaches to Europe and to fighting Reform if he did.

Remember during Covid there was lots of stuff about people being bad at comprehending exponential growth? This crisis will be about how people are bad at comprehending lags. The last oil tankers from before the Iran war are just arriving in Europe now.

Trump works to standard advertising business timelines. Today: Today This Week: Early next week 2-3 weeks: Probably in the next 3 months > 3 months: Will never happen

Watching England and playing count the first time passes. I haven't got very high.

Fuck right off. You broke it, you bought it.

Finally got IL2 running on Linux with head tracking and SRS radio, which was the last thing I missed from Windows and makes me very happy. Now I can misidentify WW2 planes and shoot my teammates down just like before.

Apparently we're also expunging US tech from future govt. IT contracts. The UK is severing ties.

hey, if AI proponents hadn’t been making up nonsense about AI tools while forcing them on us, then maybe people wouldn’t reflexively block AI tools, even when they actually work. that’s not on normies for being rational consumers. that’s on AI proponents for being systematically full of shit

If you can hear swearing, I apologise. They're making me use MS Office.

Monday tip: Claude is unbelievably good at stripping the data out of embedded PowerPoint and Word charts and giving it back to you as csv files.

The winningest win in the whole history of winningness.

Late to this but Last One Laughing is amazing.

The textured grips on a PS5 controller are thousands of triangles, circles, squares and X's. My 12 year old lad can see them. I had to zoom with my phone to check he wasn't winding me up 😳

My favourite line in our national anthem is the drunken "na na na na".

You're so close Marco, think hard now and take your time with this one: Why won't they allow it?

Horrible nagging feeling that the world currently feels a bit like it did in the weeks before lockdown 1. The news is obviously bad but other than fuel being +15p, nothing's really happened here yet, but it will.

When you try playing Civilisation for the very first time and attack everyone because the game has soldiers so that must be how you win, right?

NEW: Will Google's AI hype man kill the BBC? I've written about Matt Brittin because the coverage of his time at Google is shockingly naive. The BBC's next DG is a corporate yes man at a rapacious AI monopoly that preys on journalism in order to destroy it. 1/ www.thenerve.news/p/matt-britt...

How dare you suggest that it's very convenient my phone was [stolen by kids on bikes] [eaten by my dog] [snatched by eagles] [accidentally unfortunately dropped into the sea] just before the police asked to see it. How dare you.

Climbed a couple of V4's last night that I'd been stuck on and found a V5 that at least doesn't seem like it will be entirely impossible forever. Must be getting better :)

It's a Better Offline kind of afternoon. Inject the snarky cynicism into my veins.

I liked the proposal by whoever said that your political donations should be capped by your tax bill. You shouldn't be able to donate more to a UK political party than you pay in UK income tax.

Whatever else she may have done, I think we can all agree that quidditch is unforgivable.

8 am update for you. The UK grid is currently close to fossil fuel free. Wind and solar 70%, nuclear 13%, gas… 4%. grid.iamkate.com

What did Thailand say? I'm now wondering what would happen if Iran made a generalised offer that tankers can pass the Strait of Hormuz provided their countries commit to expel all US citizens.

Sora2 is dead and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the price of AI will roughly 10x over the next year or two. AI is here to stay but only in the few corporate environments where it's genuinely useful.

Increasingly finding that the thing I most use Gemini for is searching my inbox for something I know is in there, because my God Gmail is good at hiding stuff.

Somewhere out there is a radio DJ who prank called the White House in character as the new Ayatollah and is getting increasingly nervous...

Where's Jaime Lannister when you need him?

They're moving because everyone guesses that somebody else will react and it becomes self-fulfilling. Nobody believes his nonsense but traders gonna trade.

Once again a heartfelt thanks to David "cut the Green crap" Cameron and Nick "What's the point in a nuclear power plant that isn't ready until the 2020s" Clegg for their visionary political choices, whose consequences we get to enjoy today.

I'm not a believer in the Great Man Theory of History, but there's a certain credibility to the Fucking Idiot Theory of History. And a Fucking Idiot may well just have got us all into World War Three. 6/6

What's the perfect GIF for your BlueSky persona?

Chelsea seem surprised to find there's an opposition on the pitch, who do annoying things like running about and making tackles.

I'm not a master of military strategy either but in war gaming if you push your troops into a cramped, obvious spot close to enemy lines, the enemy invariably shells the crap out of them until they're gone.

By this stage I'd say quite a lot of countries would have an interest in seeing an F-35 shot down. Outside chance that it might shock Congress into action.

This is true in so many fields and is fundamentally why AI fails. AI can't finish 100% of the job on its own, so at some point you have to step in and take over. You can't take over unless you understand the work, which means actually doing the work.

Good piece. Start from principles that selectively promoting content in news feeds is publishing and running ads alongside content is publishing. If you show *anything* to a user that they didn't actively request (e.g. by deliberately following a user or visiting a web page), then you're a publisher

May the odds be ever in your favour www.standard.co.uk/news/politic...

Becoming convinced of one very large impact of AI: Offshored software development is going to get absolutely wrecked by it.

He's a child. Someone tell him his forehead glows when he lies.

Checking out from the news, I'm done. Meet Jonathan Livingstone Blue Tit, who's been visiting our raspberry pi camera-equipped nest box daily for the past fortnight and we're very much hoping will make a nest in it.

How are these reporters not asking about made-up places yet, just to see what he does? "Sir, is it true that naval minesweepers are on their way from the port of Ankh Morpork?" "Vessels are coming from a lot of places. A lot of places. Ankh Morpork too. But a lot of places"

Catching up with today's World at One. Sarah Montague: "NATO is a defensive organisation." Israeli government spokesperson (verbatim): "Yeah? So? y'know..."

Well that's me all out of ideas.

Surely Sinners got Oscar gongs just for that amazing time-bending blues scene. It's great up to that point and is a stunning five minutes but then it runs out of ideas and turns into a fairly run of the mill vampire movie, except this time the vampires are racist.

Seriously, offer them Trump. They can have him. We'll sail him there in HMS Dragon to keep the Tories happy.

This type of idea terrifies me every time I pay my VAT or corporation tax bill. If you've never done it, you log onto the government portal, scan a QR code, press 'approve' on your phone and that's it. Tens of thousands of pounds instantly vanish. If it ever got compromised it would be a nightmare.