@FlockOfCats I don’t know either, but OED suggests it may have been a boat originally “to ride (board) the gravy train (or boat) 1933–
Money easily acquired; an unearned or unexpected bonus; a tip. Hence to ride (board) the gravy train (or boat), to obtain easy financial success…”

@germ as a morning person, I give my employer the most productive part of my day, whereas my night owl friends have energy left to do cool side projects in the evening…

@brenttoderian.bsky.social here in the UK it’s common to see pickups with a rigid cover over the bed, making what is effectively a giant station wagon. We have at least now altered the tax rules that encouraged small business owners to buy pickups unnecessarily

@TeaKayB pretty sure it’s Mentimeter: https://www.mentimeter.com/templates/p/where-are-you-from

@moof even if you were a Koploper!

@ricci : I call them "Juliuses"

https://ploum.net/2024-12-23-julius-en.html

The classic example is where Employee A fills in a form consisting of a Word or Excel file, and then emails it to Employee B who takes that data and enters it into a different computer system, sometimes by cut-and-paste and sometimes by re-typing or re-clicking. I'm sure there are some others!

@christineburns I basically owe my career to Sophie Wilson: I got hooked on computers with the BBC Micro, which led to an interest in electronics, and I got into working on embedded systems just as ARM processors became the dominant architecture.

@knirirr no address or postcode required

@knirirr I've just checked, and it's actually possible now: the provider "PayByPhone" is already on NPP and their parking service asks for very minimal data. I went to https://m.paybyphone.com/, denied location access, entered the car park code, vehicle registration and vehicle type, and could […]

@knirirr yes, and I think NPP enables this - from what I can find of the documentation, it seems like it would be possible to create a privacy-focussed parking provider (perhaps along a nonprofit lines like traintimes.org.uk or mysociety's websites) that plugs into NPP whilst collecting the […]

@knirirr I think in principle NPP could be used to create a simple mobile web interface where you scan a QR code or enter a location code, and then pay Apple/Google pay, paypal, or manually entering a credit card number.

@knirirr this study was quite some years ago, before "app fatigue" set in. There's a balance to be had between hassle and privacy - the Singapore solution is zero hassle but involves the system tracking your vehicle. Many ticket machines are annoying to use and can be a long walk. Apps can […]