futurix

While our construction costs are indeed ridiculous, this number is incorrect. It hard to decipher which £1.2bn figure you are actually talking about - but none of them are for just planning (for reference: the contract for the northern connecting highways and the contract for the actual tunnelling are both for a similar amount of money; the total spend as of 2025 is also around the same amount but it includes initial payments on all contracts etc).

Stunning! I'm not a driver, so it won't be easy to organise - but it is on my list of places to see before I die.

At least in Germany public transport reaches into very deep countryside and it is used widely everywhere. This is certainly not about just supporting urban transportation.

I can partially understand this, as my family is from ex-USSR country (also went through repressions on one side) and we all shudder at the mentions of 'socialism' and 'communism' too. However it doesn't take a lot of research to realise that the modern Western understanding of those terms and actual things that the modern socialists want are in no way comparable to the realities of mid-20th century. In USSR socialist and communist ideas were subverted to facilitate repressions and totalitarian society. Modern socialism is basically Sweden or Denmark - no gulag there.

I love searching for very American-looking fire hydrants or pedestrian crossings. Great case of US cultural imperialism - I suspect that the developers didn't even think it might not be the same thing abroad.

TV+ is a special case, because the trial period (1 year) is longer than the non-trial payment cycle (1 month).

Apple Music pop-ups are annoying, but I only saw them after some iOS version updates. There's also a setting to hide Apple Music features completely.

You are holding it wrong TM. But seriously, I realised that I need to hold it in a way that is different from all other mice I ever used.

Worst mouse I ever tried. But at least they learned for it and current Magic Mouse is a delight to use (on macOS).

Well, the difference is that German manual tends to work in the end. Certainly worked for Coronavirus (so far).

An actual blur that directly modifies multiple pixel values cannot be reversed. Things like swirls and motion "blurs" potentially can be - but I wouldn't even call those blurs as they are more of a directional transformations.

This is gross generalisation - I know many workers who are hired on H-1B who are getting same (good) pay and conditions as locals.

Cut off the abuse, don't shut down everything for everyone.

My copy of Charles on iOS disagrees.

Thank you!

Provided that next election is still happening.

The real issue here is not Caucasian skin tones vs everyone else but instead light skin tones vs dark(er) skin tones. So Chinese government won't have an issue with current facial recognition tech.

No. What I’m trying to say is that any comment on a public forum does not exist in a vacuum and acquires additional properties based on where and when it is posted.

The analysis might not be false - but it sure is dismissive. Dismissiveness that jars with the stated dislike of 'pretension' and that makes the poster sound pretentious themselves.

Yes, EU is the cause of all British ills... </sarcasm>

Or perhaps it was the usual incompetent planning of the owners of TSB - banks splitting up is not a new or impossible thing, you know. And complexity of IT systems is the most absurd argument against splitting up LloydsTSB - why would any regulator consider this at all?

Paranoid scaremongering.

Your description of European trains is rather pessimistic and negative.

UK train network is not perfect, but generally is in a decent state of repair. It does receive large amount of investment regularly (less so under Conservatives but still a significant amount) - and main disruptions of the recent years were caused by either railway worker strikes fighting for their rights or changes to timetables that were too ambitious (because of the amount of new services added to the network).

Yes, the maintenance closures are annoying - but no piece of infrastructure can avoid periodical maintenance. You usually get 6 months' notice and in most cases a diversionary route. In fact even then you could get to Leeds from London via the West Coast mainline and then Transpennine routes. And it certainly didn't affect all travel to the north - depending on how you count them, London has 3 to 5 separate rail routes to there.

The assumption that delays, cancellations, and odd rules are particular to only railways is frankly bizarre. And so is your statement that train travel is considered a second-rate service here - it is all of course highly anecdotal, but on routes that are competitive with local flights (and longer distance routes with high speed trains) - trains are usually considered to be the better option (although that might have something to do with the never-ending cost saving drive by the airlines).

Your particular example of travel from Brussels to Lyon is also incorrect now, as French railways recently introduced direct high-speed services avoiding Paris (and building even more tracks for that). Crossing Paris old-style involves a Metropolitain trip, but that is not an unusual problem for most places (Boston's infamous North-South railway gap comes to mind).

I have experience with Amtrak, UK, French, and German railways - and I don't think I ever saw Amtrak tickets cheaper - unless you are comparing them to some last-minute train tickets on over-subscribed services in Europe. In fact I was under a distinct impression of Amtrak being noticeably pricier.

And finally, railway redundancy in US is typically way worse - Amtrak doesn't own most of the tracks it runs on and is treated as a second class citizen there. And any contingency route is likely to be untested and not ready for use due to cost-cutting. And apart from North East Corridor most of Amtrak routes are double track only, shared with freight.

We migrated from the age of IE shells (2000s) to the age of Blink shells...

It would if he's actually extradited to US.

Your example might be seen as an advertiser trying to capture a nascent market (which it actually seems to be).

You forget that we don't have a colonial empire anymore.

Investors already voted against pound (look at the exchange rate). Brexit shown them that U.K. is no longer predictable and stable. And since after Brexit it will be equally expensive to move funds from Eurozone to U.K. or to any other country - there are likely to choose somewhere else.

No fiber? How do you poop??

No, it's only scary if you bought into pro-Brexit propaganda. Just like people say America instead of USA - they might say EU instead of Europe.

"One" - sure sign of a branding failure.

Sketch heavily uses macOS specific APIs for drawing, hardware acceleration, widgets, etc - I'd imagine Windows version would be a nearly complete rewrite with much higher subsequent development costs.

I use Safari and Safari Technical Preview as 2 semi-containers (TP uses it's own storage for everything, but still syncs with iCloud).