Patch
@Patch@feddit.uk
- Comment on Network Rail to set up property company to deliver 40,000 homes 4 days ago:
Both Network Rail and LCR have already been working in this space for a long time; this is more about increasing the scale than about doing something new.
Reading is an interesting example; all those big towers and blocks that have sprung up around the station in the last decade? The vast majority are on what was previously railway land.
- Comment on Nearly All Cybertrucks Have Been Recalled Because Tesla Used the Wrong Glue 1 week ago:
You don’t know that. The people of Kepler-452b might well be suffering under a truly awful automobile industry.
- Comment on Elon Musk says X hit by 'massive cyber attack' as users unable to log in 3 weeks ago:
Fair point.
Redirect it to Blue Sky instead.
- Comment on "Reach" news websites 1 month ago:
They don’t use Reach; they are Reach. That’s the name of the company that owns them all (plus The Mirror, The Express and The Star). That’s why they all have the same website.
Most of the ones that aren’t Reach are Newsquest. Their website is also pretty terrible, but at least it doesn’t do that annoying swipe/scroll thing that Reach does.
- Comment on How OnlyFans modeling led to this high-tech set of handlebars 1 month ago:
Technically not really e-waste, as it’s just the same cycling computer you were buying anyway, and presumably would have a similar lifespan.
The waste part is the non-electronic bits, i.e. when the computer needs replacing you need to bin off the attached bits of aluminium and rubber that make up the rest of the handlebars.
- Comment on Guardian will no longer post on Elon Musk’s X from its official accounts 4 months ago:
I don’t know why I forgot this, but there is of course already a solution for this; mbin/kbin, which has both Lemmy-like and Mastodon-like interfaces on one platform.
Not that I’m actually suggesting anything you understand. Just recalling that this is a thought process someone’s already had at least once!
- Comment on Four Dead In Fire As Tesla Doors Fail To Open After Crash 4 months ago:
A plastic nob is cheaper than a touchscreen, yes. But if you’ve already got a touchscreen as part of the design anyway (for things like satnav or car maintenance data), it’s cheaper to not include any other buttons or inputs and to bundle them all up into one interface.
- Comment on Guardian will no longer post on Elon Musk’s X from its official accounts 4 months ago:
You can use Mastodon to interact with Lemmy content and vice versa, but generally speaking the user experience isn’t good. Lots of manually typing URLs and trying to figure out what you’re looking at when you get there.
In theory you could host a Lemmy and Mastodon server under the same domain (using subdomains, e.g. lemmy.feddit.uk and mastodon.feddit.uk), but they’d be different servers in most ways that matter. I presume they would maintain separate user account databases (without some concerted hacking).
- Comment on Guardian will no longer post on Elon Musk’s X from its official accounts 4 months ago:
We don’t have a Mastodon server, do we?
I joined Mastodon years ago, but the server I joined was always a bit moribund and I sort of lost interest. Wouldn’t be against someone doing a Fedwitter.uk…
(It should not be called Fedwitter.uk under any circumstances)
- Comment on Why are we building homes when so many are standing empty? 5 months ago:
261,471 are classed as “long-term empty,” meaning no-one has lived there for six months or more.
If all empty homes were brought back into use, the housing crisis would be solved at a stroke and, arguably, the government would not have to build 1.5m new homes.
I know number literacy is not journalism’s strong point, but surely even the author can grasp the basics of “which number is bigger”.
Bringing 0.25 million houses into occupancy does not “arguably” negate the need to build 1.5 million houses. At best it reduces the required new builds to 1.25 million.
The larger figure (700k) is a meaningless figure for this discussion, because short term vacant homes are by definition not a problem that needs to be solved. Most of them will be homes which are vacant “been occupants”, e.g. ones where the tenant has moved out and a new one hasn’t moved in yet, or the homes of the recently deceased whose estate is still in the process of winding up.
Heck, even a proportion of the 250k “long term” ones won’t be actual problem vacancies; some of those will just be ones like those of the recently deceased for whom the process takes longer than 6 months. A relative of mine recently died, and it took maybe 4-5 months to sort out probate, another couple of months on the market before an offer was accepted, and as far as I know now (about 6 months on again) the new owner is still in the process of renovating it prior to moving in. That’s “long term vacant” in those stats, but it’s not a problem that needs anyone to solve it- it’s just that sometimes things take time.
- Comment on Extend success of UK sugar tax to cakes, biscuits and chocolate, experts urge 9 months ago:
It always seemed weird to me that most companies just discontinued their traditional sugary variety and went diet only, instead of having a diet version and the sugary version just at a higher price.
The death of original Irn Bru is a bit of a tragedy, and I’m not even sure what the point of low sugar Lucozade is supposed to be.
- Submitted 9 months ago to unitedkingdom@feddit.uk | 7 comments
- Comment on Royal Mail waives £5 penalty charge for fake stamps 11 months ago:
If they’re doing it the same as unpaid postage, paying them is still optional as a recipient. They’ll just only give you the item of post if you pay what’s owed.
- Comment on Royal Mail waives £5 penalty charge for fake stamps 11 months ago:
To send things in the post?
- Comment on UK inflation falls as meat and crumpet prices drop 11 months ago:
The Government has abdicated its duties; for the Government who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: meat and crumpets.
- Juvenal, 100 AD (mostly)
- Comment on Alan Bates considers private prosecutions of Post Office bosses 11 months ago:
The barristers the CPS employs to bring prosecutions are the same barristers used by the Post Office, using the same courts and the same judges.
That’s actually not entirely true. Although the CPS does engage “free” barristers via chambers for some cases, most CPS prosecutions are handled “in house” by salaried barristers working directly for the CPS.
CPS’s in-house barristers are (as a rough rule) extremely experienced at prosecuting common-or-garden cases, but lack the specialist experience of barristers available to hire via chambers, who they will usually bring in for the more complex prosecutions (or ones involving a specialist area of expertise).
All barristers are only as good as the evidence given to them, though, and one of the real strengths of the CPS barristers is experience in working with the police- both in terms of knowing how to get the best evidence out of them, and knowing a police wild goose chase when they see one. This is the part that really breaks down in cases like the Post Office, where it’s private corporate investigators throwing complex technical evidence over the fence at random barristers who have mostly not worked with them before.
- Comment on UK retailer GAME to cease video game trade-ins, staff say 1 year ago:
I also usually buy cod in Tesco. But probably not in quite the same way.
- Comment on UK retailer GAME to cease video game trade-ins, staff say 1 year ago:
Keep your filthy Cex parties to yourself, you degenerate.
- Comment on Give Alan Bates an honour for exposing Post Office scandal 1 year ago:
He’s already refused an OBE.
I was under the impression that he refused it because Vennels had one. As she’s now handed hers back in disgrace, presumably that objection is resolved.
- Comment on American bully XL owner: 'I'd sooner go to jail than lose my dogs' 1 year ago:
I’m a big 6’1" man, and generally a lover of dogs, but I’m exactly the same. I once had a massive German shepherd barrel up to me at full tilt, no owner in sight, and launch itself into my belly. It was being friendly, as it happens, but that’s hardly much comfort when a 30kg bundle of muscle and claws hurls itself at you at a full sprint.
The owner, when they materialised a few moments later, was a middle aged woman who chuckled about how “he’s a big softy, he just wants attention”. Like, sure, but it would have been small comfort if I’d been a 10 year old child or something. Keep that “lovable scamp” on a fucking lead if you can’t keep them to heel…
- Comment on Tories face 1997-style wipeout at next election, large poll suggests 1 year ago:
I read that as “incineration”, and my reaction was “a bit harsh, but fair”.
Incarceration works too though.
- Comment on What’s next for Mozilla? 1 year ago:
To be fair, there are (or were) lots of distros downstream of RHEL marketing themselves as drop-in replacements, not just Oracle. And this move isn’t likely to stop Oracle (and the rest), only make the transition experience less smooth for clients (ultimately all the downstream distros can just rebase off of CentOS Stream instead; they lose “bug for bug” compatibility, but will still largely be drop-in replacements).
I also find it hard to muster any sympathy for IBM of all people, even when their opponent is Oracle (who are the lowest of the low).
- Comment on Jeffrey Epstein: Prince Andrew named in newly released court files 1 year ago:
I bet old Andy is really sweating now.
- Comment on The march towards an all-EV future hit a major roadblock. What went wrong? 1 year ago:
. We can’t immediately convert all cars to EV, we don’t have the grid capacity or enough charging stations, yet.
Well sure, but there’s no suggestion of converting “all cars” to EVs “immediately”. Even if ICE cars were banned for new sales tomorrow, it’d still take a decade and more for the existing rolling stock to gradually be replaced by new vehicles.
A 10 year period for utility companies to gradually upgrade their infrastructure doesn’t sound desperately unrealistic.
- Comment on Neighbour deliberately blocking OP 1 year ago:
Four nice sturdy nails placed strategically, pointy end up, immediately behind each tyre. Be content to know that justice will come when the time is right.
- Submitted 1 year ago to unitedkingdom@feddit.uk | 13 comments
- Submitted 1 year ago to unitedkingdom@feddit.uk | 15 comments
- Comment on Wilko collapses into administration putting 12,000 jobs at risk 1 year ago:
Yep, Wickes is still going, as is B&Q and Screwfix. Also, The Range isn’t bad as a Wilko rival.
Personally I’ve never rated Wilko. Not as cheap as B&M or The Range, but no better quality.
- Rents set to continue rising sharply despite cost-of-living squeeze, experts saywww.independent.co.uk ↗Submitted 1 year ago to unitedkingdom@feddit.uk | 4 comments
- Comment on Is charging electric car at holiday house "theft"? 1 year ago:
It seems like the obvious thing to do would be to get a metred EV charging point and bill the tenant separately. THere are even grant schemes to help pay for the cost.
It’s not like EVs are going away. Every house with a driveway is likely to have one eventually. She might as well get ahead of the curve.