danielquinn
@danielquinn@lemmy.ca
Canadian software engineer living in Europe.
- Comment on Overheated homes: why UK housing is dangerously unprepared for impact of climate crisis 1 week ago:
That is… nuts. Is your home listed or something or is this must the council being crazy?
- Comment on Overheated homes: why UK housing is dangerously unprepared for impact of climate crisis 1 week ago:
Yes and no. So long as the air temp outside is higher than the inside, you should close and shutter all windows regardless of the direct sunlight.
- Comment on Overheated homes: why UK housing is dangerously unprepared for impact of climate crisis 1 week ago:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but surely both are necessary parts of the solution given the trajectory we’re on?
Absolutely, but critically these don’t address heat. More importantly, swapping a gas boiler for a heat pump in a poorly insulated home will just result in wasted energy and cold/damp people.
In order to counter that we need an efficient way of moving heat from inside back out again without letting any more in, which is not something many houses in the UK can do today.
In 2025, most people in developed hot countries are using air conditioning in addition to everything else
While I can’t speak for the whole of warm countries, my wife’s family is Greek and we visit often, where air conditioning is surprisingly limited given the temperatures they endure. Instead you see shutters on windows, tile floors (with rugs they pull out for the winter), and tree cover that shields the home from the outside. That’s not to say that AC isn’t common, it is, and rolling out solar everywhere is a great way to deal with that. My only objection is to the common refrain of “more heat pumps” without acknowledging that most homes in this country are so poorly insulated that any temperature regulation is lost unless it’s constant.
- Comment on Overheated homes: why UK housing is dangerously unprepared for impact of climate crisis 1 week ago:
Neither of those things address the problem of heat, and they don’t even address the cold due to the sorry state of most homes in the country.
The problem is insulation. It keeps the heat in in the winter (making a heat pump viable) and the heat out in the summer. British homes are largely horrendous on this front, so much so that we used to have a whole protest group called Insulate Britain devoted to the issue. In keeping with the British pattern of arresting and ignoring protestors however, they were widely demonised by media and politicians.
But they were right.
Another problem is just design. People in hot countries use shutters on the outside of the house to block out the sun. Pretty much every house here only has curtains, so the sun comes through the window and heats up the air between the window and curtains, which then circulates around the room.
Finally, the last problem is education. Too many people in this country have no idea how to deal with heat. Our neighbours were actually complaining about how well insulated our homes are because they hadn’t figured out that you’re supposed to keep the blinds and windows closed during the day and open them only at night.
- Comment on The Most Popular Baby Names From the Past Year Have Officially Been Announced 2 weeks ago:
I think the real take away here is that in 2024, more people named their kid “Awesome” than “Cuthbert”.
- Comment on AI is already impacting the labor market, starting with young tech workers, Goldman economist says 2 weeks ago:
To be fair, an LLM can generate a bunch of bug-ridden code lacking any context that I’ll have to fix in review as well as any junior dev.
…of course unlike a junior dev, LLMs don’t learn from their mistakes. What they’re doing here is raising my salary and removing future seniors from the hiring pool.
- Comment on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 | SDCC Surprise 3 weeks ago:
The high seas have you covered!
- Comment on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 | SDCC Surprise 3 weeks ago:
- Comment on Macron plan to recognise Palestine puts pressure on Keir Starmer to pick a side 4 weeks ago:
I just don’t think he’s capable of picking the right side though.
- Comment on UK police hold pro-Palestine protester, 80, for almost 27 hours and search house 4 weeks ago:
Under the Terrorism Act the friends face a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison. Sorrell said: “I just feel if I’m put in prison for this, and even if I die in prison for this, I can’t think of a better thing to die for really than for the justice of the people who’ve been persecuted now for almost my lifetime.”
Godsdamn this woman is a hero.
- Comment on Labour MP claims it'd cost "Upwards of £100bn to Nationalise Water". He is an extremely smart man. Why does he lie like this? 4 weeks ago:
Just fine then £100bn, and declare them forfeit when they refuse to pay.
- Comment on Social media incentivised spread of Southport misinformation, MPs say 5 weeks ago:
Was it “social media” or was it specific tech companies trading rage for clicks? I find it hard to believe that Mastodon & Lemmy would be comparable to X & Facebook in this area.
- Comment on Rightwing campaigners claim there is covert deal to return Parthenon marbles 1 month ago:
Yes. It would.
- Comment on Rightwing campaigners claim there is covert deal to return Parthenon marbles 1 month ago:
I should hope that they’re right. We should return what was stolen.
- Comment on Labour housing plans could destroy 215,000 hectares of nature in England, analysis shows 1 month ago:
You do not need to pave green space to build homes. There’s plenty of paved, ugly, low-density areas in desperate need of upgrades. The problem is the British public’s obsession with that idea that everyone needs their own patch of grass and two cars.
- Comment on Jeremy Corbyn confirms new ‘socialist alternative’ before next election to fight Starmer 1 month ago:
Hell yeah.
- Comment on Does anybody actually care that a dude chanted "Death, Death to the IDF" at Glastonbury? 1 month ago:
Personally I think it’s fantastic and long overdue. Hating genociders is finally “cool” and I am 100% here for it.
- Comment on Google could be forced to change UK search as watchdog takes steps 1 month ago:
So don’t break Chrome and Android out the company, just force them to harass users with another popup? I’m sure this will do wonders for choice on the web. /s
- Comment on Labour MPs launch major rebellion to stop welfare bill 1 month ago:
[Liz Kendall] said the cuts were about “ensuring the welfare state survives” and that the government would always seek to protect those with the greatest need.
This bullshit has got to die, and shame on the Guardian for uncritically publishing it. The choice isn’t between cutting welfare or watching it die. It’s between taxing the rich or not.
The problem here is that they’ve already made that choice and are pretending that now we only have two choices, both of which amount to “screw the poor”. There are massive amounts of wealth in this country and it’s all going into the pickets of the rich and into bombs.
So let’s do away with this “we have to cut or lose everything” lie already.
FFS this country needs a socialist party.
- Comment on Petrol bombs thrown at police during fifth night of Northern Ireland disorder 2 months ago:
Funny how cops manage to round up Just Stop Oil protestors for even talking about maybe being disruptive, but they let full-blown race riots carry on for five fucking days.
- Comment on Labour’s Centrism Is a Dead End 2 months ago:
Swapping out one government for another with identical policies on key issues like sustainability, xenophobia, and genocide is not progress.
- Comment on Downing Street ‘exploring plan for digital ID cards’ 2 months ago:
It’s almost as if the people making these decisions have never heard of compromised devices. Either that, or they’re happy to have someone steal all your data and don’t care.
- Comment on A “victim blaming” row has broken out on social media, after a cyclist uploaded footage of what he described as the “closest pass I’ve ever seen” 2 months ago:
If a cyclist is going to take the lane (and we have every right to) it’s very dangerous to leave any room for drivers to pass because they inevitably try this sort of shit.
Ride out into the middle of the lane. Make them recognise you as someone taking the lane. They’ll still want to kill you for daring to be a cyclist, but they won’t want to damage their car.
- Comment on Co-op votes to boycott Israel 2 months ago:
Honestly, this has really turned me around on them. The Co-op is far less convenient than the alternatives for us, but news like this is enough to get me to commit to going as often as possible.
- Comment on Software engineer lost his $150K-a-year job to AI—he’s been rejected for 800 jobs and forced to DoorDash and live in a trailer to make ends meet 3 months ago:
Teamsters, fuck yeah!
- Comment on Software engineer lost his $150K-a-year job to AI—he’s been rejected for 800 jobs and forced to DoorDash and live in a trailer to make ends meet 3 months ago:
Exactly. It’s stuff like this that’s convinced me to join a tech union myself. If you’re in the UK, you might consider the one I joined.
- Comment on Software engineer lost his $150K-a-year job to AI—he’s been rejected for 800 jobs and forced to DoorDash and live in a trailer to make ends meet 3 months ago:
Cory Doctorow just posted something very much related to this. It’s an excellent read.
- Comment on Levi McClain: Klingon Music Theory is Weird 3 months ago:
I love this so much. Thank you!
- Comment on Want happier employees? Start with a 32-hour workweek – and 4 weeks vacation. 3 months ago:
4 weeks is still not on par with other civilised countries. Living here in the UK now, 5 weeks is standard. When I was in the Netherlands I was getting six.
- Comment on UK bans EU cheese and meat imports to prevent foot and mouth disease spreading - BBC News 4 months ago: