tankplanker
@tankplanker@lemmy.world
- Comment on UK households could face VPN 'ban' after use skyrockets following Online Safety Bill 5 hours 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 5 hours 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week ago:
this will go nowhere due to large
bribesdonations - Comment on Eating would be weird if we didn't enjoy it. 2 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. 2 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. 2 weeks ago:
just eating potatoes for every meal?
- Comment on Eating would be weird if we didn't enjoy it. 2 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. 2 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 2 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 3 weeks 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 4 weeks 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] 4 weeks 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! 4 weeks 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! 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 5 weeks 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 5 weeks 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 5 weeks 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.
- Comment on BYD is testing solid-state EV batteries in its Seal sedan with nearly 1,200 miles of range 5 weeks ago:
If you can charge at home especially on solar they make so much sense. I would not switch back for any ICE as my main car even if i was gifted a non returnable Ferrari lease.
- Comment on BYD is testing solid-state EV batteries in its Seal sedan with nearly 1,200 miles of range 5 weeks ago:
So most petrol pumps do about 38l a minute for cars, even in a car with a big tank that’s less than 2 minutes. Now you have to pay, either before or after depending on the pump, 5 minutes if you have to go in a bit less if you can pay at the pump. 7 minutes max assuming no queues?
I just do not see charging to be even in the same ball park unless:
All cars and chargers support OCPP so you just have to plug the car in and it starts charging no messing with apps or payment cards.
Batteries reduce in size with the increasing efficiency so you are charging less kw but this does not impact charging speed as at the moment more cells means more speed for longer.
People accept that charging to 100% when trying to charge quickly just isn’t going to work, the last few percent are always going to be much slower. It’s quicker to charge twice to 80/85% than once to 100%
Best time can do currently is about 40kw in 18 minutes, even with halving the amount to charge its going to be 10 minutes but then its only adding about 160 miles of range. We’d need to get to double that of range for most people, pretty significant jump.
Personally I’m happy having to stop for twenty minutes or so for a comfort break for me while it charges every three hours or so. Not having to go to the petrol station while at home is also a massive perk.
- Comment on What's the e-reader you would buy if you were in the market? 5 weeks ago:
I love my pocketbook colour three. The extra screensize is very much appreciated for comics
- Comment on The "standard" car charger is usually overkill—but your electrician might not know that [32:26] 1 month ago:
Well I did say I was being pedantic, which is absolutely the best way to watch fast and furious with friends
- Comment on The "standard" car charger is usually overkill—but your electrician might not know that [32:26] 1 month ago:
You almost had me charging? You never had me charging - you never had your car charging, it had tripped the socket
Pedantic but: 7kw isn’t three phase in the UK, just 30A. Three phase electric can give you up to 22kw in the UK for charging, obviously not every EV can charge that fast, most only go up to 11kw AC. I would kill for that extra charging speed but I can’t justify the extra cost and effort to get it fitted by the electric company
- Comment on The "standard" car charger is usually overkill—but your electrician might not know that [32:26] 1 month ago:
We have a granny charger that came with one of our EVs that we use as a backup and with our caravan to charge on sites that allow it. As I am UK it tops out at 2.4kw (10A @ 240v) and its annoyingly slow even charging for more than 12 hours at a time.
Our main home charger is 7kw, and as we get cheap electric every night for 7p a KwH for 5 hours, we can charge about 40kwh in that time period. Means even our largest battery is fully charged in two nights from completely empty. If we tried that with the granny charger it would cost significantly more, as it would be up to 40p a KwH outside of the main hours and take 40 hours to charge the same amount.
Now if you doing only a few miles a day, less than 40 miles (4 miles per KwH, charge for the 5 cheap hours using the cars charging timer, charge 10 KwH), it might work out ok for you, but then charging every day cannot be good for the battery? I know it would get annoying quite quickly. It would also get pretty painful if you have more than one EV, we have three between us and the kids, so its not remotely practical.
- Comment on Whatever happened to cheap eReaders? – Terence Eden’s Blog 1 month ago:
Yeah I am the same, I would rather pay more for a better device, and preferably not one from Amazon if I can help it. Its only a matter of time before they start cracking down even more on side loading as they are in the process of removing backing up your own books already. They were only ever cheap in the first place because Amazon wanted to dominate the market and close up shop around their own bookstore so they heavily subsidised the price and turned a blind eye to piracy.
I upgraded my ancient paperwhite for a PocketBook InkPad Color 3 because I wanted colour and a larger screen to read comics but also something that was more responsive. Sure its never going to beat a good tablet for colour depth or responsiveness, its still eink after all, but its so much nicer to use than my old paperwhite.
For something that I use for at least an hour a day, every day (I had a near 600 week streak on my kindle), I do not see the money spent as a bad investment when they lasting a near decade. I could have just replaced my battery in my paperwhite and carried on using it, but the upsides of a nicer ereader that is away from Amazon was a big pull for me.
- Comment on WHERE ARE MY PRECISION SCREWDRIVERS 1 month ago:
I can snap the heads of cheaply made screws or ones made from softer material like “brass” with a screwdriver let alone an impact driver.
If I am doing something with a lot of screws, say decking, then I will spend more on my screws simply because I want better quality if I am going to be fitting a few hundred in a day. I also want to know that if I come back to it in a few years that the screw will unscrew quickly when I come to it. Sure it can be a significant cost increase but the time and frustration saved makes it back.
Quality screwdrivers like Vessel Megadora or Wera or Swisstools or similar tend to cam out less than the pack of ten you got from the dollar store. Same with the hex bits for your impact or drill driver.
Last test I heard had Roberson above Torx for reducing cam out, but if you camming Torx that easily I would just switch to an actual bolt if it needs that much torque to tighten.
- Comment on The Telegraph has deleted this sob story 2 months ago:
Getting to a good university is only part of the battle and the real prize is the job afterwards. Having a big network is what helps with the latter.
Take law, even at Oxbridge only about 10% of students on that course at either university get into a training contract to become a solicitor. Its closer to 1% at normal universities.
Getting onto that training contract is knowing how to present yourself to the right contacts and go to the right events.
Many subjects are like this, especially for the top jobs.