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In terms of car repairs, the quotes that insurance companies obtain are almost always for official stealership repairs or their "trusted" repair centers. A third party mechanic can almost always repair it just as well for much less, but of course you may be out of the warranty if that's important to you.

If you car is already out of warranty though, instead of scrapping it and taking whatever low ball value figure they give and buying another car, it may be cheaper to pay for the repair out of pocket elsewhere.

> When everyone is working from home it's not like I could just call someone and chat to them because I don't know if they're busy or not

I don't really see what the issue is. In my company if we want to chat we simply ask on Slack "can we have a call?", and the other person either says 'ok' or 'call me later'. Most conversations happen over async chat, which is great if you are waiting for something to compile (Scala...).

How do you do it in an office setting? Would you go over to a person wearing headphones and starting telling them about your weekend?

A space plane is going to be more efficient. The idea is you fly the aircraft with jet engines (which use oxygen in the air) to their maximum altitude, and then switch over to rocket engines (which use oxygen in the fuel).

So far all demonstrations have been of rockets mounted under a jet engine powered aircraft, which then detaches at space launch. But I don't think there is any reason why you couldn't have a SSTO air/spacecraft, other than we don't have the propulsion technology yet - it works in KSP though :-)

I wonder how many of these articles are because landlords of commercial property et al are beginning to feel the repecusions of people working from home. At least in the UK (this is a BBC article), most commercial properties are owned by big landlords, with ties to the "elite" class.

"Please run this binary from my business card". I guess it's easier than leaving USB drives in the parking lot...

This is different to the US, but in Europe a lot of people have smaller cars that aren't suitable for towing caravans. My family's only car can comfortable fit four people, but I don't have a tow bar (and the manufacturer doesn't recommend fitting one). And of course for most people it's much easier to drive a motorhome or campervan, than to drive a car with a caravan.

Well these are all European products, so yes if you are in the US it's probably cheaper to buy them from IKEA. In Europe you can get the non-IKEA branded version (their appliances are made by Electrolux AB, which has many brands such as AEG, Zanussi, etc) for cheaper from any home appliances store.

> which are two foot or 60cm across

That's not exact though. 1ft = 30.48cm. If you are working in your own garden that's probably close enough, but for anything else the errors will quickly add up. Tiles are often made to have sides that are 30cm or 60cm, if you try and tile a bathroom that is 12ft across assuming tiles are 1ft each, you'll get to the other side and end up with an odd piece.

I was born and raised in the UK, and honestly I think we have it worse than the US. At least the US consistently uses the same units (although the wet vs dry weights are confusing). When I learnt to drive I suddendly had to learn what feet mean, even though I'd never used them before in my life.

I think the issue here is there isn't much profit to be made though. This isn't the US where you pay $100/mo for slow DSL with a ridiculous datacap.... I pay €19/mo for FTTH at 1gbit up/down and no data limits.

My apartment building has 20 properties, so if a competitor came in offering the same for €15/mo and managed to convert half of the properties that would be... €150/mo revenue. How long would it take to even pay back the GPON hardware they need to install in the building?

My provider hasn't attempted to screw us over at all yet (been with them for 4 years), but I am concerned that they are our only choice, so if they wanted to double prices we'd probably pay.

Yeah this is pretty much how VDSL works in the UK. The infrastructure is owned by one company, but you can have different any internet provider. I'm not sure I'd say it works well though, as in the UK I'd pay 3x the price for 1/20 the speed :-)

The electronics and frame of IKEA's electronic standing desks are whitelabled products from Rol Ergo - so that's probably why it feels premium, as it's not made by IKEA :-)

https://www.rolergo.com/products/

> I’ve put my hopes on fiber optical arriving soon, which exposes a much larger market on which multiple providers can compete

I live in Lithuania which has a pretty good fiber rollout, and has fair rules for consumers on common access to physical infrastructure by different providers.

In reality though it means you still only have one choice on who your internet provider is. It's not worth it for multiple providers to wire up an apartment or neighbourhood when there is already an existing provider there.

I was under the impression that - baring physical damage - solar panels won't just stop working one day as the article implies, but they merely decrease in efficiency over time. Most solar panels today come with a manufacturer's guarantee that after 25 years, they will still be 80-something percent efficient.

At this point they would have paid for themselves over many times, and would now be generating free electricity, so for most installations there is little point in replacing them.

Is that really any different than things like Pokémon or MTG - other than cards have a lower environmental impact when landfilled than toys, due to the smaller volume?

I live in Lithuania and that also appears to be the case here. The cheapest mobile plans from the main operators start at around 8€/mo for 1GB data with unlimited calls and texts. To be fair I would say these type of plans are actually quite expensive compared to the rest of Europe. But there are plenty of data-only plans which work out a lot cheaper.

The cheapest provider sells unlimited data for 2.90€/mo, but the speed is limited and they are a smaller player so their coverage is too. From the big players, truly unlimited data with no speed caps is 20€/mo (the largest capped plan is 120GB for 11€/mo, 0.09c/GB). And of course they have discounts if you have other services from the same provider.

I have an 8 year old workstation as a gaming PC, with a 3GB GTX 1060, and a 2.5" HDD as a data drive, and it works fine for me on medium graphics at 1080p.

This is the same for many homes in Spain and Portugal too. For most of the year it's warm enough outside and you can be comfortable without AC (especially if you are in an older building with thick stone walls), but then for the one or two months of winter it is so cold inside, even though it may only get down to 10C (50F) outside. Most houses rely on resistive electric heaters (if they have any) which end up being very expensive to run.

I live in a modern house in Northern Europe, and we don't even turn our heating on until it gets below freezing. Because we have good insulation, only then it starts to drop below 22C (72F) inside.

Working as a contractor in the UK, most contracts stipulate you have Professional Indemnity insurance, which is for exactly this. I doubt anyone has actually made a claim for it though, the amount of other people I've worked with (who are also contractors earning £500+/day) who I wouldn't trust to even watch my laptop is atrocious.

> This Time It's Different

I'm on the other side of the planet in Northern Europe, and I feel the same. This summer has been very warm, it feels more like we are in some Mediterranean city (especially with all the outdoor seating due to COVID). We haven't had any record breaking highs, but the number of days when it has been 30c+ has been very unusual. Coupled with last winter which basically never came (usually we get -25c and frozen lakes; that never happened), we'll see what this year brings...

I tried a few of these DIY dishwasher detergent recipes a few months ago (random things I did during lockdown) and the results were ok. I usually use all-in-one tablets, which in my country all come individually wrapped in a plastic wrapper which I was looking to avoid. The main thing I found my DIY detergent didn't clean was tea stains in cups, everything else came out pretty good, although sometimes they were a few limescale stains on glasses.

Recently my supermarket had a promotion on dishwasher powder, so I decided to try that. If anything it's worse than my DIY detergent. The all-in-one tablets clean perfectly every time, so I'm wondering what else they have which gives superior results. I regularly fill up the salt and rinse aid (even though this probably isn't needed with the tablets).

All new cars sold in Europe since 2018 have been required to have a system to automatically contact emergency services in case of an accident:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeating/2018/04/01/starting...

Not OP, but my story is I was living in a Middle Eastern country for a few years - although you could get alcohol at hotels it was expensive and there was basically no selection (usually only Carlsberg on tap, and similar beers in bottles). So I didn't bother drinking when I was there. It made me realise that I could have fun and socialise without alcohol.

When I came back to Europe I tried drinking a few times, but I didn't really like it. As I hadn't been drinking, even one beer would make me feel so bad and dehydrated the next day (certain non-alcoholic beers do the same, so I don't think it is necessarily the alcohol). My wife was in the same situation, and then got pregnant so she also wasn't drinking. In the end I drifted away from my old friends who I would drink with, and made new friends who were happy to do things other than drinking.

Admittedly it does make certain social situations a bit awkward (my co-working space has a weekly beer night, although I'm usually not the only one who doesn't drink), but overall I don't miss drinking. Looking back the only reason I drank before was due to peer pressure; I never felt having a cold beer after work was a very effective relaxation technique.

I'd suggest buying a cheap wet/dry vacuum. They take up quite a bit of space for an apartment, but anytime you create a mess they can clean it up without issues (previously I had a battery powered stick vacuum and it would regularly get clogged up with sawdust and lose power). It's paid for itself easily, as I've had two small water leaks that if I wouldn't have cleaned up properly in time (I only have so many cloths) would have damaged furniture.

This is how it is in my country now. Previously it was recommended to quarantine yourself when travelling from certain countries (US included), but was not mandatory. They changed that two weeks ago after an asymptomatic traveller from the US spend the weekend partying at various bars the whole weekend, then came down with symptoms the following week.

Is there no grace period while properties are vacant? In the UK the tenant is responsible for paying the equivalent of city taxes, the landlord only needs to pay if it's vacant for more than 6 months. The only other taxes you need to pay are income tax on the rent you receive.

Isn't that why kinder eggs have a rather large plastic shell that contains the toy? I haven't seen one in years, but from my memory, even an adult would be unable to consume - or swallow enough to choke on - the plastic shell.

What does "beamer" in this context mean? Where I'm from it is slang for a BMW car, which I'm guessing you don't have in your living room.

Right that's what I thought. Maybe in North America where labour costs are high this will be popular, but the article talks about developing countries where lower labour costs and less regulations make deployment of fibre a lot cheaper.

I flew business class with BA five years ago as it was cheaper than economy on my usual airline at the time (EK) - mainly as it was a last minute booking. I flew two intercontinental legs (Middle East -> Europe -> North America) and both aircraft were on old 747s that looked like they hadn't been cleaned for a week or more. The infotainment system felt just as old, with a choice of maybe 20 movies on the 8" display where the touch screen barely functioned. The lie flat bed wasn't bad (they had an interesting layout where one seat faces foward and the next faces backward), and the food was just regular reheated meals with slightly nicer silverware than economy.

Now I understand some other airlines have better offerings than BA, and if you fly first class (I think for the same flight it was roughly 8x more) it's going to be a different story, but at the end of the day you are still just flying A to B.

The best part was probably the lounge where I had the connection, but I only had 1 1/2 hours so didn't get to experience it much. However it wasn't really much more than a 4* hotel buffet.

If I could afford to drop $20k to fly first class whenever I feel like it, would I? Probably. Do I feel like I'm missing out on anything by not doing that? Nope.

How much more is it to fly in a private jet? I feel that would be a different story, given you can schedule it so it picks you up whenever is convenient for you.

The article mentions the main costs with deploying fibre "lie within the construction of new poles and other infrastructure". Is there any reason why fibre can't be strung between existing power poles? They aren't conductive, so you don't need to worry about distances to buildings (i.e. they could be run lower than power lines).