Worth noting that these were changes implemented by the previous Tory government. The new Labour government was more or less happy to leave it to ride, but now it’s been successfully challenged in court they’re happy to let it fall by the wayside.

Sure, but that applies to the UK too. London has a higher cost of living than Los Angeles; averages being averages, this is weighed against lots of cheaper places to live (with massive unemployment and stagnated economics).

Cost of living in the UK is about 12% lower than the US, including housing costs. But the average salary is about half of the US salary. So you can see that that doesn’t really cover it.

Source: https://livingcost.org/cost/united-kingdom/united-states

Just looked on that link for the UK. The average is listed as £63k, which is $85k.

So you’re not exactly disproving the point that that type of high salary is a US thing.

Sure, but the specs aren’t directly comparable.

They also still manufacture the RPi 4, which starts at £33- which is £23 in 2012 money.

but they’re not cheap any more

People say this, but they really are still cheap.

The original Raspberry Pi Model B launched for £22 in 2012. The entry level Raspberry Pi 5 is £46, but adjusted for inflation that’s only £32 in 2012 money. So only £10 more expensive in real terms.

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is only £14.40, which is only £10 in 2012 money. Compare this to the original Raspberry Pi Model A, which launched for £16.

People look at the headline cost of the high end RPi 5s (£115 for the 16GB model, £76 for the 8GB), but fail to recognise that there was nothing comparable to these in the Raspberry Pi lineup before, and these are not the only models in the Raspberry Pi lineup now.

Ask a non-protesting friend or family member to take it with them about their daily routine?

I’m sure my mum would be happy to look after my phone for a day if it meant getting one over on the authorities. And if anyone asks, I’m just a good son who likes to hang out with his mum.

I was really impressed by how lightweight and gorgeous it is.

Maybe a controversial opinion here, but the one thing that everyone says about it is that it looks gorgeous, and I really don’t see it. Never have.

Even back when I first tried it out, maybe 15 years ago, I thought it looked strangely retro. Nowadays, compared to the eye candy that is completely standard in GNOME, KDE, MacOS, Windows etc., it looks incredibly dated.

It’s all hard edges, low res icons, ugly fonts, and eccentric design choices. Yeah, it can make window elements transparent, but you can’t dine out on that one trick for ever.

Yep. It’s to distinguish it from other forms of homelessness, such as “sofa surfing” (where someone moves from one friend or family member to another for short periods without having a fixed address of their own), people temporarily living in homeless shelters/boarding houses, people living in places which aren’t really accommodation (such as their place of work), and “statutory homelessness” (a broader legal definition which includes a few things which might not seem like homelessness, such as people who are at serious risk of violence in their homes).

Agreed; I don’t hate my FP4, but it’s definitely the least polished phone I’ve ever owned, and it wasn’t cheap for it. The ghosting was a nightmare, but they fixed it (eventually) with a software update…which begs the question why it shipped with a bug like that in the first place.

The company has been around far too long to get away with putting out buggy devices.

And that’s before we get to the failure to update FP4 (let alone FP3+) to Android 14, despite being well within their support period. In theory FP4 will be going straight to Android 15, but FP3+ is effectively grounded at Android 13; which considering their stated goal of reducing e-waste, is really not a good look.

The real competitor for green aviation isn’t hydrogen, it’s bio-fuel. Bio-kerosene, bio-gas and bio-ethanol all have useful roles in aviation, and are essentially carbon neutral over their lifecycle. Zero carbon at the proverbial tailpipe is a lot less important when that tailpipe is at 30,000 feet.

A lot of quality small local newspapers doing an amazing job are financially struggling. It’s very sad.

Sadly not as many as you’d think. The overwhelming majority of local newspapers were owned by a handful of national companies. The three biggest are Reach (owner of the Mirror and the Express, amongst others), Newsquest and National World, who between them own 70% of all local papers. Another 10% are owned by the next biggest company (Tindle News). Only at most 20% of local papers are owned by smaller companies, and most of those aren’t independent, they’re just smaller companies than the big 4.

Anyone lucky enough to still have a genuine independent local paper with at least passable quality should cherish the fuck out of it.

ReactOS is a very fun project, but anyone expecting it to be a real useable OS is absolutely mad. It’s been going for almost 30 years, and they’re almost at the point of binary compatibility with Windows Server 2003…

Technically St Pancras is still state owned, but it’s on a long-term lease to a private consortium. Once the lease expires it’ll revert to direct state ownership too, it’s just that that’s got quite a long time horizon on it compared to the TOC franchises (still another 15 years away yet).

The company that owns the lines (Network Rail) is already nationalised. Its privatised predecessor (Railtrack) collapsed spectacularly all the way back in 2002.

All stations are owned and managed by either Network Rail or a train operating company, so this will bring all stations into nationalised ownership.

The only thing that isn’t being nationalised as part of this plan is the existing rolling stock, which is owned by yet another set of companies. But there’s no reason why new rolling stock won’t be under direct ownership, so that should sort itself out eventually.

Quite a lot of the world (including the EU and UK) is committed to banning ICE cars entirely within the next 10 years. Honda simply can’t survive selling exclusively ICE cars to the US and a few fringe markets; either they’re a global player or they’ll disappear.

Obviously if a global apocalypse wipes us all out then none of this matters, but that’s true of everything. It makes commenting on the news in general a bit redundant.

The two big minicab firms in my town both use apps with very similar functionality to Uber. Fixed fare, vehicle tracking etc.

Uber doesn’t have a monopoly on nice apps. It’s [current year], that stuff is standard now.

Only the Scottish could think “caffeinated wine” is a highly desirable beverage.

I love chinotto so much. They used to sell the San Pellegrino one here in the UK, but it got discontinued.

It’s great. Like a Campari and soda without the booze.

Good advice in general; even contractual fuckery aside, you can’t guarantee a company will even still exist this time next year.