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I'm not sure if it's naiveté, it's probably more that we are all complacent. If all Facebook/Instagram users (and perhaps, even if only those with children), stopped using, that would be an actual stick, wouldn't it.. But we don't (I'm not excluding myself).

Deeper than that, it might be food for thought if someone can't stop doom scrolling. It does not matter the platform, if people are "addicted" to "bad news" it might be the person at the corner of the street ("the end is nigh! repent!"), the pharmacy next block or something else.

I personally stopped using Facebook because it was annoying me with useless doom and aggressive comments of people on stupid topics. If it would have showed me only cat pictures (like Instagrams does) or reasonable stuff (news, etc.) I would have continued using it.


Meanwhile, in London, UK, local council doesn't allow you to put anything on your rooftop that doesn't gel with the Victorian look..


It's a big town. You might want to specify which of the 33 boroughs this stupid policy exists in. There's no problem with solar where I live.


Is your building listed or something? In most cases it doesn't require planning permission even in a conservation area, and some councils are actively installing them on council houses.


The UK is actually world leading in wind electricity generation (especially offshore). So it's not all bad.


Not quite accurate anymore. The UK was indeed the world leader from 2008 until around 2021, but has since fallen to second place behind China. China now has over 41 GW installed (>50% of global capacity), while the UK sits at ~15 GW (~22%). [1][2]

Still impressive for a country of that size, but "world leading" is technically no longer correct.

[1] https://www.renewableuk.com/energypulse/blog/uk-wind-and-glo... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1489147/uk-offshore-wind...

ps.: Per capita it's also not #1 — Denmark and the Netherlands both have higher offshore wind capacity per person.


I guess we are. But who are the plants owned by, who built the and where did the components come from, are we also switching them off because our grid cannot handle transmit huge volumes of renewable energy from Scotland to London, and turning on gas power plants to make up for it.

You also have situations, like today, where a German developer has handed back a seabed lease for 3GW of offshore power because they didn’t get a contract for power from government (CFD) and their lease fees are approx £400m/yr if they want to continue developing the windfarm. This is after spending £1B already on lease fees with nothing to show for it.


The interconnection problem is being solved by several large cables down the east coast

Leasing the seabed before you win a CfD auction is a commercial risk but they probably didn't win because their bid price was too high


Their price was too high because it had to include paying back £1B of lease fees that were made as part of another government policy. Comes back to priorities being confusing, if the intention is lower bills why the lease fees, if the purpose is good jobs and independence, why compete on price? If their purpose is national wealth why not partial state funding / ownership?


For more amusement, look to Limerick, in Ireland, whose council tried to mandate all new homes have chimney stacks.


In Ireland all the rooms came with a substantial hole in the wall, mandated in case you decided to put something like a kerosene heater in your room, although the heating was electical. I generally had to block them off to stop the wind whistling through.


Right - I think it was to handle Carbon monoxide (and general ventilation). If you look at part F here I think current regs are 6500 square mm for most rooms https://www.seai.ie/sites/default/files/publications/Domesti...

(TBF Irish standards have gotten much better for airtightness)


That's more for ventilation to prevent damp etc (Ireland has humidity issues). Modern houses typically have MVHR instead.


Agreed


We signed up to Gusto's payroll offset services for the R&D credits we claimed. Their website states that the offset mechanism starts the quarter after you file. However, they start charging you from April (at $328.59/month). So, best case, you pay for 3 extra months before the service starts, or more likely, if you've filed in the next quarter (like a lot of other start-ups), 6 months of fees before they do any type of offsetting (which is also limited to 12 months). This did not feel right. When I reached out to Gusto, I was told I pressed the "continue" button when submitting so have agreed (which I understand). BUT - there is no information in their sales pitch on their website about this, nor in their terms of service. I think is is misleading, but I thought perhaps I'm being naive? Anyone else had a similar issue?


I worked at a top US law firm as a corporate lawyer for almost 10 years (my first career). I'd say the brain starts to experience life in 6 minute increments. I think you'd need to accurately capture all the moments when an associate is in front of your computer but not working for this to work. I suppose your plan B would be to sell this to firm management as a timekeeping audit tool. it could be a valuable informative tool that they don't initially rely on but can use to test accuracy etc before they move on to actually using it.


My brain definitely started to experience life in 6 min increments as well, even after just the first few months at a firm!

We do have a couple different approaches to filter out non-work. As far as firm management, we think there's a lot of useful information in time data that firms can leverage, but at the same time we don't want this to turn into spyware so we're mindful of only exposing aggregated/anonymized data


Elastic also has a dual license.


I find it annoying but I do the opposite. Don't give my consent for all the optionals and prefer not to get tracked. I don't believe all of that tracking is warranted in a significant number of cases. Websites appear to be still fully functional without all of those extras, too, meaning the website providers are also ok with foregoing it.


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