tankplanker
@tankplanker@lemmy.world
- Comment on How to reform income tax: end the high marginal rate scandal 12 hours ago:
It gets worse if you compare Jane with Janet and John who both earn say 50k each, as they still get that child benefit despite their combined net income being about double what she earns.
They simply refuse to look at household income, and treat even married couples as singletons living separately for this.
- Comment on Acquired a sliding mitre saw 3 days ago:
Awesome, should cut it like butter
- Comment on Acquired a sliding mitre saw 4 days ago:
If you haven’t already checked the alignment in both planes with a good quality square.
I guess you purchased an aluminium cutting blade for this? Also if you decide to cut fine wood with this get a better blade than stock.
They are such a useful tool, I’ve cut thousands of floor boards and framing with mine.
- Comment on Help. 4 days ago:
This with the right controls and rules could actually be a positive thing for people who don’t want or aren’t ready for a relationship with a real person. However as the people who are running things are Elon, Sam, and Mark, there is fuck all chance of that and whatever this ends up as it will be exploitative and will result in deaths.
- Comment on UK inheritance tax clampdown will not spark mass sale of family farms, study shows 4 days ago:
Those who purchased farms to avoid paying IHT such as Clarkson can usually afford to pay for a good accountant to help them plan avoiding as much IHT under the new rules as possible as its quite generous if you have at least seven years (and money for a good accountant) before your kids will inherit.
Those who are actual multi generational farmers, even if that’s just the parents and the children they want to inherit the farm, there aren’t that many who are over the threshold for a married couple plus the various exceptions if they can go the seven years.
Its those who lack the time or lack the quality advise that will struggle, its not a huge number, less than 500 farms a year should be dragged into paying more without proper planning at the seven years to implement it due to allowances. I think thats the only bit I do not like, as once again we have allowed a loop hole for those who can and should be paying more tax and the expense of everybody else.
- Comment on Experts discuss plans to save water as dry conditions worsen across England 5 days ago:
Two decades ago we needed the water companies to fix their leaks rather than paying bonuses, dividends, and loan repayments to help the former.
At least that long ago we needed more reservoirs rather than allowing the cost and nimbies to stop them.
But right now we need to be cutting back on new data centres and other new projects that can’t afford their water debt. Stop making the problem worse without an actual plan or funding to fix it.
- Comment on Billionaire Elon Musk is threatening to sue Apple and escalating his feud with Sam Altman 5 days ago:
Hes also exactly the type of person who this would cause a massive hissy fit over and demand immediate changes to Grok that would further stunt its working
- Comment on Cyclist injuries dropped by half after “hated” cycle lane installed, but mayor still claims scrapped lane largely used as “bike run” for drug dealers to “get through traffic" 6 days ago:
Its possible that the local businesses have lost business because terminally lazy people can no longer park directly outside their shops and will not walk a short distance to them, this should be extremely easy for the business to prove if its actually true, I have my doubts its a significant amount. I suspect the people most inconvenienced by not being able to park outside the businesses are those that actually work there. This is the only remotely serious suggestion I see from the anti bike lane crowd in this instance.
My local village center is meant to be no parking on the high street, has had times its been enforced properly and times its been ignored due to pressure by local businesses. Recently they started enforcing it, directing people to the free (under two hours) car parks on the edge of the high street. Car parks were full with people who own and work in the shops, so they prevented them from parking in the car parks all day, so now they park on the residential streets off the high street enforcement area.
- Comment on UK households could face VPN 'ban' after use skyrockets following Online Safety Bill 2 weeks ago:
Yeah that’s the point of the license from Ofcom, to approve the endpoint address used for the VPN. Most work places don’t use some random IP address but a small pool of known DNS entries for their endpoint. Just because you are using a VPN doesn’t mean nobody can see which endpoint you using.
- Comment on UK households could face VPN 'ban' after use skyrockets following Online Safety Bill 2 weeks ago:
It has always been the main aim of legislation like this to nobble VPNs, they just needed the “child” “violent pornography” etc. excuse to do so. UK government already monitors all of the internet traffic for the UK, except for MPs who are exempt, VPNs are a blocker for this.
Obviously, not even the UK government would expect a private VPN ban (work VPNs would likely need an Ofcom license) to stop everybody from using a VPN or suitable alternative, its not the aim. The aim is to stop the majority from doing so and criminalize the minority who do still bypass the block.
- Comment on UK households could face VPN 'ban' after use skyrockets following Online Safety Bill 2 weeks ago:
Work based VPNs would likely have to obtain a license from Ofcom, it would be highly unlikely to block them completely. Probably be requesting a back door into the work VPNs at the same time just like they have for other encryption, lol.
- Comment on State pension age could rise again after cost of triple lock soars 4 weeks ago:
The completely made up and arbitrary fiscal rules? The ones we could change at any moment, for say, defense spending?
- Comment on State pension age could rise again after cost of triple lock soars 4 weeks ago:
Sick of them refusing to address the actual problem. Triple lock costing too much money right now? I know let’s fix it by reducing the amount of people claiming it for an extra year, years from now. Punishing the very people actually contributing the tax revenue to pay for the pension and the triple lock today.
If you are spending too much money now you either need to reduce the money being spent now by binning the triple lock or increase taxation this year and be hones thats what its (part) paying for. Except you too chicken shit to do that.
- Comment on We face nationalisation if we’re not let off fines, Thames Water warns 4 weeks ago:
The threat he is trying to make is around the government being on the hook for the loans and urgent improvement works at a time the government is trying to cut costs.
Should we nationalise it? Yes but it needs to be in such a way that we write off the costs of doing so as much as possible. I have no idea how we can protect ourselves in doing that without causing at least some problems downstream.
- Comment on Labour backbench MPs push for tough, wholesale changes to gambling regulation 4 weeks ago:
this will go nowhere due to large
bribesdonations - Comment on Eating would be weird if we didn't enjoy it. 5 weeks ago:
Yeah we stole all our good food from our former colonies and improved on them, see curry.
- Comment on Eating would be weird if we didn't enjoy it. 5 weeks ago:
Yeah that’s not the same thing as a bland food diet, that’s up there with the cabbage diet for how awful it is.
Mine is: Scrambled eggs made with cottage cheese + porridge for breakfast Chicken, salad (no dressing) and rice for lunch Chicken, vegetables and rice/sweet potatoes/lentils for tea
No sauces, just dry herbs/spices as a rub.
Snacks are two protein shakes, naked bar (counts as a one a day of fruit/veg allowance), banana.
Repeat for past two years. Before that it was lentils, avo, boiled egg, before than goats cheese salad for lunch.
Its boring as fuck when you do it for months at a time but it works for me. Controlling
- Comment on Eating would be weird if we didn't enjoy it. 5 weeks ago:
just eating potatoes for every meal?
- Comment on Eating would be weird if we didn't enjoy it. 5 weeks ago:
Only a small percentage of people keep weight off long term, Ive seen figures around 20% so whatever works for you is the right answer but its unlikely to be the same solution for the rest of your life. Its a higher relapse rate than alcoholics.
Speaking from experience, if you only buy healthy food it massively reduces the attack vector of unhealthy food, and by unhealthy I mean calorie dense food that leads to relapse due to its high processed sugar content.
If I am eating clean then everybody else in the house is eating clean, its no different from an alcoholic needing no alcohol on the house. Obviously food exists outside the house as well, but its about reducing your exposure to it as much as possible, which includes avoiding majority of restaurants.
Unless you have a problem with over consumption of food its very hard for people to directly equate it to an addiction. When people who can self regulate food intake, who have never had to diet in their life, try to give diet advice its like a fish giving running advice.
- Comment on Eating would be weird if we didn't enjoy it. 5 weeks ago:
One of the strategies for long term weight loss is to swap from an interesting and tasty diet (which are often high calorie density) to one as bland and uninteresting to you as possible diet (often low calorie density). Idea being you will eat less if you are only eating to survive rather eating to enjoy, you will leave more on the plate.
Personally I say fuck that, as life is hard enough as it is.
- Comment on Royal Mail given go-ahead to scrap second-class post on Saturdays 5 weeks ago:
This is about being able to charge more for Saturday delivery like most other “premium” delivery companies as they sure as shit wont be cutting the hours that they expect the Posties to work.
Because second class has a decent service level, even now, its possible to time your parcel delivery for a Saturday reasonably accurately for a low(er) fee. Drop second class then push up the prices for 1st class parcels.
Then when they can, with a more friendly Ofcom, they will stop first class on a Saturday and switch to a proper Saturday delivery tariff.
- Comment on Tough new driving rules could land Brits with a ban for ‘minor’ mistakes 1 month ago:
Phone use is meant to be detectable by the latest automated cameras, along with seat belt use that are on trial last I heard. If it works as good as they say they do then I suspect a lot of people will be facing a ban.
- Comment on Members of public to be selected for ‘honest conversation’ about MPs’ pay 1 month ago:
Any conversation around salary has to include their generous pension scheme (better than civil servants), significant expenses that they are allowed to claim for their lifetime in parliament, expensive freebies such as Taylor Swift or access to an Arsenal box, subsidised food and drink, and the opportunities offered for additional salary from outside jobs and lobbying. Oh and if they lose their seat the get a decent pay out, significantly more than statutory redundancy. And for the small number who might have a baby in office, six months full pay, far more than statutory again.
Just focusing on salary when its only part of their actual net income makes it appear meaner than it actually is. They should be forced to stick to statutory requirements as that would incentivize them to improve it quicker rather than yet another exception.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
UK as an adult you often have to pay for this per request and there is a limit on the number you can request at once. As it can take weeks or even months to complete while you wait for your turn in the queue so it makes it very hard to stack requests.
As a kid I used to love this service as it was free without real request linits and a lot faster. I could just pre order books that hadn’t come out.
I stopped using my local library because of it as their planned fiction book selection is basically large print romance or war stories or westerns.
- Comment on Steam Summer Sale 2025 has begun! 1 month ago:
Classic is a little different from modern tsw, it could have been retired when it became Classic but they kept it on. How long on total was that dlc available for? And I don’t believe its been turned off just not available to buy or officially supported?
- Comment on Steam Summer Sale 2025 has begun! 1 month ago:
I purchased a bunch of dlc for Train Sim World (tsw). I only buy dlc for tsw when its on sale, save a small fortune that way.
Bonus savings if you can get one of the bundles on sale for double discount. I got £150 of dlc for about £55. Yeah dlc is super expensive for tsw but it doesn’t go out of date and nor is it needed for a multiplayer mode so why rush?
Been after the expansion pack for Germany and the Preston Route for ages.
Train Sim World® 5: West Coast Main Line: Preston - Carlisle Route Add-On Train Sim World® 5: Schnellfahrstrecke Kassel - Würzburg Route Add-On Train Sim World® 5: DB BR 101 Loco Add-On Train Sim World® 5: Maintalbahn: Aschaffenburg - Miltenberg Route Add-On Train Sim World® 5: Hauptstrecke Rhein-Ruhr: Duisburg - Bochum Route Add-On Train Sim World® 5: Ruhr-Sieg Nord: Hagen - Finnentrop Route Add-On Train Sim World® 5: DB BR 363 Loco Add-On
- Comment on When the AI bubble bursts 1 month ago:
I agree it has some value, but the problem is that value doesn’t seem to align with the cost of Western AI.
If you look at what Altman said about how much OpenAI was losing despite charging an arm and a leg for its premium subscription, no one will pay for that for low value items such as transcription or scaffolding code.
Unless it can actually replace high value jobs long term rather than short term pretend replace as with Klarana then its doomed with the current models.
- Comment on Students in England now graduate with average debt of £53,000, data shows 1 month ago:
People will blame Nick Cleggs Lib Dems for this and yeah they play a big part in this, but the root cause is further back.
Tony Blair removed the cap on the number of students who could go to university which lead to introducing tuition fees. Before then you used to get a grant, I got three grand a year, to go to university.
Suddenly universities could massively increase the number places so they did. This lead to spiralling costs, which lead to fees going up and loans had to go up to cover this. They also borrowed heavily to expand.
David Cameron removed the cap on fees while increasing the money students could borrow with Cleggs backing (against a key Lib Dem manifesto pledge fucking the Lib Dems for years after) and Universities started getting properly greedy.
Inflation kicked in but the loans available to students didn’t because the government couldn’t afford to, majority of students never pay back the full amount before its written off. Student loan book is set to be a trillion pounds in about 20 years.
The whole situation is fucked because Blair said anyone could go, rather than being honest about what we could afford to pay for. Now we have a ticking timebomb that someone’s going to have to pay.
- Comment on Angela Rayner: I’ve taken all sorts — but we won’t legalise cannabis 1 month ago:
It would cost them votes with a certain group of voters who would make this a capital offence if they could.
It doesn’t really impact MPs, see the studies into drug use at the HoP or even this articles headline, so why bother risking losing important votes in swing seats? If the police started throwing MPs in jail for drug use then you’d see something done quite quickly.
Much like a lot of these wedge issues such as abortion there are a few nutters in the HoP who are rabidly opposed to it on moral grounds and a few whose husbands own legal medical cannabis farms who frankly don’t want the competition.
- Comment on BYD is testing solid-state EV batteries in its Seal sedan with nearly 1,200 miles of range 1 month ago:
PHEV for certain situations is still the best choice, but its more a limitation of the charging infrastructure than anything else. In some countries this is not a quick problem to solve so PHEV has a use for quite some time.
PHEV was very much a stop gap when batteries were even more expensive, performed by third parties (so losing that profit margin as well) and production limited so they reduced the size of the battery to keep the car affordable. Long term they are a dead end outside of specialised use cases.
A lot of PHEV owners do not bother to charge regularly as the small battery needs daily charging.
They have higher engine wear due to the engine being used more aggressively when cold as battery was used for the start of the journey.
You are also carrying around an entire ev and an entire ice, with additional complexity to meld the two together. It’s just not smart design, KISS after all.
I much prefer range extending engines like on the i3 that act as direct generators as a concept for properly remote travel. Although the tech is far far from perfect and advances in battery, such as these solid state batteries, look to make it superfluous.