Curious Iguana

I just changed my job on the car insurance. It affected my premium by £0.06 and THEY ACTUALLY TOOK CARD DETAILS TO PAY IT.

The actual story isn't "they're listening to us", it's "they have so much data on us, our movements, our interests, likes, dislikes, relationships, medical, social and leisure, work habits and everything else that they know in scary detail what were doing, who we're with and what we want"

They wake word isn't the same as always listening. It holds 3 seconds at a time then discards it.

Facebook knows the relationship between you and can't target you both.

Ok, but that's only when the device hears (or thinks it hears) your voice. It takes a recording, which may then be used to infer your interests. That's very different to that common misconception that they're always listening.

His sketch show was panned and his carpool thing wasn't a new idea, having himself been in an earlier version for Comic Relief.

I'd be grateful for a link to that as I've not seen it

Too late. The charts have dug themselves into irrelevance. Young teens don't even know what a number one is. They use the streaming playlist and see what's big there.

I know news site have to cross-link their articles to try and keep viewers, but this is a frankly bizarre non-sequitur in an article about a man not being allowed on his flight

I think the test is a good one, but view the outcome differently. If a restaurant serves Diet Coke at all, you've either walked into a chain or it's crap.

It doesn't, they're thick as mince

In the 1970s, every working class home had an encyclopedia set and a load of library cards. Reform voters are people have grudge against anyone who can read.

No one took your job, Gary. You couldn't have done it with your three GCSEs.

5 groups. Every one of them as thick as mince.

In my teaching career I grappled with the conundrum of low aspirations, low horizons, selfishness and elevating the lowest denominator. Doing well was denounced, being a moron celebrated. It's ingrained. It's insidious.

Oh Rishi, but all we were saying is that your trousers should be long enough that we don't always see them

The original post was about mics

Your smart devices do indeed phone home, but I've never seen any evidence that they're phoning home with secret recordings of you

Is your iPhone listening to you? Probably not A new report claims that a company has finally admitted that our phones are really listening to us to send us targeted advertising.

Can you find me anything on this? All I've seen is stuff like this, which amounts to "they could buy don't"

You don't have to pay £200 for the sort of food they cook on MasterChef.

But either way, "could not justify" is not the same as "could not afford". If you want to have a high quality meal out at a restaurant is it, indeed, within reach of more than "a few".

If the devices were sending data, someone would have seen it whilst analysing network traffic. They haven't.

A book titled "Outdoor Pigs: How to Make them Pay."

those damned outdoor pigs can't keep getting away with this

He said "very few". That's patently not true. The majority of people can afford it once in a while.

That's a good point. I'd watch it.

The average household spends £616 a month on leisure activities. The bottom 20% of income brackets spent an average £212 per month on leisure. Two thirds of people play to take a foreign holiday this year.

A nice meal is not something "few normal people could ever afford".

They didn't say entertaining. They say interesting.

What they need to get better at is recognising things it can't do and telling the user.

I hope they are on the same path we were and find that tolerance, respect and equality are far more liberating and loving for everyone. I feel sure they will.

I cannot reconcile it with the generosity, love and joy that I saw and I know from the groom. I cannot defend it either, it made me extremely uncomfortable. But also I'm not someone willing to denounce a culture I can only glimpse.

I will say that I found the 2 hour churchy bit and the all-pervasive patriarchal, misogynistic Christianity that was in every moment of the whole day a bit sickening. And the little tangent from the pastor to insist that it's man and WIFE, not man and man was deeply unpleasant.

It really is the dream to be invited to a wedding of another culture.

It was FABULOUS. I work with the groom and he's the nicest and kindest man ever. And his new wife seems utterly lovely. I wish them lots of happiness, and am so grateful for the invitation to the experience of a lifetime.