gaspoweredcat

it suddenly went down nearly a week ago and hasnt come back up at all since, i know sites go down but not usually for days at a time with no explanation. they hosted a fair amount of files but there seems to be no info on why theyre down or when/if theyll be back.

anyone have any information?

The NHS app (and as far as i know most other countries ones) is a complete mess, this isnt really a surprise as its been rather hastily thrown together and couldnt really be tested on the wide range of devices it needed to be.

so why not allow the fine minds of the net to create an alternative which actually works? if the app was open source a vast number of people could contribute fixes etc and all for essentially no cost to the government

the only reason i can think against it may be some sort of privacy issues but i dont really think that would be any worse than the current iteration.

so is it a good or a bad idea? opinions?

###im not entirely sure this belongs here but id argue its to do with the sites algo so is kind of tech related###

comparison sites are a wonderful thing in general but they seem to throw up some rather odd issues, i was searching for insurance for various cars i was looking at and one came up really cheap(just under £500 for the year) sadly the car sold before i got paid today

however i saw another for sale, basically the same but a year older with lower mileage, ran the insurance quote...... £938??

i was confused, the car was essentially the same just a year older, so i decided to pull up some photos of other 1300cc 2005 Ford Ka's that matched the original one i searched and run the reg plates through the comparison, surely theyll be the same right?

literally every single one came back different ranging from as low as £489 to as high as £1,150

how or why would this be? i feel like theres something slightly wiggy with the algo and somewhere out there will be a vehicle that comes back with a quote of about £10 or something

i know insurance companies are picky gits at the best of times but this seems insane, the only real possible difference i could see would be either the colours or the "trim" which usually consists of little more than body coloured bumpers which shouldnt really double the insurance cost, also cars of identical trim and colour returned different results too

For reference all searches were done on Compare The Market for comprehensive insurance against a number of various 2005 Ford Ka 1.3s found via google image search. the only change for each quote was the number plate of the vehicle

While sat sipping my morning brew and browsing the news an interesting thought crossed my mind, just how much extra load there must be on the net right now?

Cities and entire countries are on lockdown, many people are stuck with nothing to do and nowhere to go or in many cases people are simply choosing it with reported footfall at brick and mortar businesses reportedly down by 60% here, these people have to do something and its a pretty safe bet that in the majority of situations that thing will be somehow connected

Just think how much extra strain the likes of Netflix, PSN/XBL/Steam, Facebook etc must be under, along with that other things that were previously events youd attend like sporting events etc are being done in a closed space and televised or streamed (and of course lets not forget Pornhubs donation of free premium to anyone in Italy, its nice to get a chuckle out of the news in a time of such bleak reporting)

Sadly im not a data scientist or id probably be able to knock up some sort of fancy visualisation of it but as im not ill just have to make do with it as a fun thought experiment