5,633 karma · joined November 7, 2015
The popular YouTube channel The B1M has an interesting video on how Finland is tackling nuclear waste:
Finland might have solved nuclear power's biggest problem (2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYpiK3W-g_0
- Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea in 2003 for £140M
- In total, Abramovich has loaned the club more than £1.5bn.
- Abramovich, 55, is alleged to have strong ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which he has denied.
- Other Russian billionaires have already been the subject of European Union sanctions where their assets have been frozen. The United Kingdom government is yet to sanction Abramovich.
- Billionaire Hansjorg Wyss had told Swiss newspaper Blick he had been offered the chance to buy the west London club.
- Wyss said Abramovich wanted "to get rid of Chelsea quickly" after the threat of sanctions was raised in Parliament.
Chelsea: Roman Abramovich says he plans to sell club: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/60585081
"Among the EU Member States, Belgium (67%) and the Netherlands (58%) registered the highest energy inflation rates in January 2022, followed by Lithuania (43%), Estonia (41%) and Greece (40%). At the other end, the energy inflation rate was 0% in Malta, with Croatia and Portugal following, both with 12%."
The UK is not listed as it is no longer part of the EU. However, this BBC report [1] states:
"[For the UK] Electricity and gas bills for a typical household will go up by £693 a year in April, a 54% increase."
Europe gas prices: How far is Russia responsible? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/58888451
Some key points in the BBC article:
- Russia supplies about 40% of the EU’s natural gas imports. Most of the rest comes from Norway and Algeria.
- Russia sends gas to Europe through several main pipelines - such as the Nord Stream, the Yamal-Europe and the Brotherhood (see the map in the article).
- Overall, Russian gas exports to Europe have been decreasing over the last couple of years - down 32% in February this year compared to February 2020. One factor - during the pandemic - has been falling demand as economic activity shrank. Stocks of gas across Europe have been depleted, which in turn is driving up prices.
- Gazprom, Russia's majority state-owned energy company, supplies gas to Europe under two different arrangements: 1. Long-term contracts often lasting from 10 to 25 years. 2. "Spot" deals or one-off purchases for a fixed amount of gas.
- It is understood that Gazprom met its obligations to European buyers last year under these contracts.
- "Spot" sales don't appear to be happening in any significant quantity, going by data from Gazprom's own electronic sales platform.
- The International Energy Agency's executive director, Fatih Birol, has accused Russia of reducing gas supplies to Europe for political purposes.
- Gas storage across Europe is well below the 10-year average, with levels currently at about 75% of storage capacity, according to Gas Infrastructure Europe data.
Recommendations relating to specific commercial practices
Declawing: We have high confidence that declawing (removing one or both of the claws from a crab before returning it back to the water) causes suffering in crabs.
Nicking: We also have high confidence that the practice of nicking (cutting the tendon of a crab’s claw) causes suffering and is a health risk to the animals.
Wholesale and retail: We recommend a ban on the sale of live decapod crustaceans to untrained, non-expert handlers.
Stunning: Current evidence indicates that electrical stunning...can induce a seizure-like state in relatively large decapods, and that stunning diminishes, without wholly abolishing, the nervous system’s response to boiling water. We interpret this as evidence that electrical stunning is better than nothing.
Slaughter (decapods) We recommend that the following slaughter methods are banned in all cases in which a more humane slaughter method is available, unless preceded by effective electrical stunning:
- boiling alive,
- slowly raising the temperature of water,
- tailing (separation of the abdomen from the thorax, or separation of the head from the thorax), any other form of live dismemberment,
- and freshwater immersion (osmotic shock).
On current evidence, the most reasonable slaughter methods are double spiking (crabs), whole-body splitting (lobsters), and electrocution using a specialist device on a setting that is designed and validated to kill the animal quickly after initially stunning it.
Slaughter (cephalopods): Various different slaughter methods are currently used on fishing vessels in European waters, including clubbing, slicing the brain, reversing the mantle and asphyxiation in a suspended net bag.
We are not able to recommend any of these methods as humane. On current evidence, there is no slaughter method for cephalopods that is both humane and commercially viable on a large scale.
An alternative is a fake LED candle with flickering 'flame'. All the ambience of a real candle without the noxious emissions! Of course, you still need a source of power, but LED candles can be powered by batteries and the battery power lasts longer than a wax candle melting.
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Protection against death (mortality)
Vaccine effectiveness against death (mortality) from Omicron in those aged over 50 (it is too early to produce accurate data for those aged under 50):
- After two doses: 59% after twenty-five weeks
- After a booster dose: 95% after two weeks
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Protection against severe disease requiring hospitalisation from Omicron
- After two doses of any vaccine: 25-35% protection after twenty-five weeks
- After a Pfizer booster: around 90%, dropping to around 75% after ten to fourteen weeks
- After a Moderna booster: 90-95% up to nine weeks after vaccination
Hospitalisations prevented: Latest analysis estimates the boosters alone prevented 105,600 hospitalisations in those aged 25 and over in England between December 13 2021 and February 6 2022.
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Protection against symptomatic disease (mild infection)
- After two doses of AstraZeneca: around 50% protection, waning to almost 0% from twenty weeks
- After two doses of Pfizer or Moderna: 65-75% protection, waning to around 10% by twenty-five weeks after the second dose
- After a booster dose: 65-75% protection after two to four weeks, waning to 30-40% after fifteen weeks
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Protection against infection (including asymptomatic infection)
Vaccine effectiveness against infection from Delta (including asymptomatic infection):
- After two doses of AstraZeneca: Estimated at around 50% after two months
- After two doses of Pfizer: Estimated at around 81% after two months, waning to around 46% after six months
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Prevention of transmission
Effectiveness of the vaccines against transmission of the Delta variant:
- After two doses of AstraZeneca: Estimated at 42%
- After two doses of Pfizer: Estimated at 31%
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Additional vaccine protection for those with prior infection (infection-derived immunity)
Early evidence shows that getting vaccinated after infection provides significantly higher levels of protection against reinfection. Protection against reinfection from Omicron:
- No vaccination and prior infection: Estimated at 44%
- Prior infection and three vaccine doses: Estimated at 71%
https://www.flickr.com/photos/vikingman/35359854511
At the start of the bridge you can some spikes and blobs displayed. What are they?
> "At the southern end of London Bridge, close to the riverbank, stands Southwark Gate. De Jongh [Dutch artist Claude de Jongh] has depicted the skyline bristling with the severed heads of traitors, displayed on spikes as a warning to citizens and visitors. The first unfortunate person whose head was displayed at Southwark Gate was the Scottish knight William Wallace, executed in 1305. Over the centuries, the heads of many more famous traitors were so displayed, including the rebel Jack Cade, Henry VIII’s former Lord Chancellor Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell and Guy Fawkes.
> Maintaining this macabre spectacle was the job of the ‘Keeper of the Heads’. He was responsible for first preserving the heads by parboiling and coating them in tar, and then impaling them for display. After two to three weeks, he removed the weathered skulls from view and discarded them in the Thames.
Source: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/kenwood/his...
The popular coding channel Coder Coder has currently 300,000 subscribers, but 9 months ago the channel host announced they had quit their job to focus mainly on YouTube. It's not quite YouTube full-time but I suspect the combination of: YouTube + sponsorship + freelance work makes up a full-time income. I can imagine that combination works well even with channels with 100,000+ subscribers.
Coder Coder: Life/channel update
I also wondered about this one and wasn't sure if it existed before under a different title e.g. Developer Relations or the more recent (horrible-sounding) Developer Evangelist
America vs. Britain: Vegetable Names: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF0w5L0ZsVs
Eggplant - Aubergine
Zucchini - Courgette
Arugula - Rocket
Rutabaga - Swede
Scallion - Spring Onion
Cilantro - Coriander
Beets - Beetroot
It's why so many people flock to large cities - you feel less like an 'outsider' because the population of these cities is so varied.
I completely agree. But the EU is not poor relative to the rest the world. Despite that, the pandemic appears to have been badly managed in many European countries.
Gas and electricy prices have risen across many European countries. In the UK, energy firms are warning that energy bills are likely to soar by 50% unless the UK government intervenes [1]. Already, over twenty energy companies in the UK have gone bust.
[1] Energy bills to soar 50% unless government intervenes, industry warns: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59760331
Will Countries Boycott The Qatar World Cup? https://youtube.com/watch?v=7KL9LExsPLI
(TL;DR: No)
If these figures are true, then no matter how 'successful' the World Cup 2022 turns out, it will always be tainted by these shameful figures.
> David Baddiel explores why some people are choosing to send their elderly relatives abroad for 24 hour dementia care.
> From soaring costs to reports of staff under pressure, covid concerns and neglect in some homes, deciding where in the UK to house loved ones who need intense support poses a huge dilemma for relatives.
> David Baddiel, whose father suffers with dementia, hears how some people from Britain and Europe are choosing to send their mums, dads and partners as far away as Thailand for dedicated round the clock support.
> Peter Brown runs a care resort in Chiang Mai - the mountainous north of the country. His 31 dementia patients are referred to as ‘guests’ with care tailored to the individual. Meanwhile Martin Woodtli runs a nearby ‘village’ where 14 people live in Villas with round the clock personal carers. He set things up after struggling to find care for his mother in his native Switzerland.
> David hears from relatives who are attracted by both the type and the cost of care in Thailand. One of them, Michael Williams from Bristol, talks about the pain he felt leaving his mum to be cared for thousands of miles away for the first time. Meanwhile, another relative reveals how he’s seriously considering joining his wife to live in one of the villas she's just moved into in the Chiang Mai care ‘village’.
> At the moment, there’s a quiet revolution around catering for foreign nationals with dementia in Thailand, but its not the only place. It’s also happening in Mexico, where people have begun moving their loved ones because they couldn’t find suitable or affordable care in the United States.
> David asks if the phenomenon will catch on, and whether more people will be attracted in the long term to the option of sending mum or dad to live out their days abroad.
For example, he has interviewed two people (one in the US and one in the UK) who were double-jabbed but suffered vaccine complications. Both of those people had poor experience with medical staff following their vaccinations as they sought answers to their symptoms.
What is aspiration? It is the pulling back of the plunger of a syringe (for 5–10 seconds) prior to injecting a vaccine. Aspiration is meant to ensure that the syringe needle tip is located at the right muscle location (an intramuscular injection), and has not accidentally punctured a blood vessel.
In this video, Danish Professor Niels Høiby discusses aspiration and how the Danish authorities amended their advice in March 2021 to require aspiration when administering vaccines.
Also discussed is the evidence that vaccine complications (in some cases) have been caused by vaccines mistakenly injected into a blood vessel. In other words, the lack of aspiration has caused vaccine complications.
The Professor compares data from Norway (which does not require aspiration) and Denmark (which does require aspiration). Norway has vaccine complications 3 times higher than Denmark. Could aspiration (or lack of it) be a reason for the differences between the two countries?
Many countries, including the US and the UK, do not require aspiration when the COVID vaccines are administered. Should all countries mandate aspiration when injecting COVID vaccines? (The video concludes with an emphatic 'yes'.)
I think the downvote option is probably needed but it can be problematic - it carries different meanings with subtle differences:
- A way to signal disagreement with a comment.
- A means to flag a comment as clearly misleading or incorrect.
- A way of signalling a 'low value' comment (obviously subjective).
- A way for the downvoter to simply express his or her displeasure at what has been posted regardless how reasonable the comment is. (This probably happens more often than people care to admit it. It's subtly different than just disagreement.)
One might argue all the above examples are types of 'disagreement'.
An idea:
Clicking downvote adds the following line to the end of a comment: 3 readers disagree or 3 readers downvoted. Would this make readers pause before they hit the downvote button? (And is that a good or bad thing?)
Search is poor on the Amazon UK site too. I often fail to find a book that is old or out-of-print using Amazon's search. Or I try to search for a particular brand and model. I then turn to a Google search for the exact title + author (or brand + model). Google's search results display the correct Amazon entry at the top or near the top of the search results. In other words, Google does a better job at finding products on Amazon that Amazon's own search feature.
I can only assume that Amazon has simply so much stock that they can no longer categorise many products correctly. Or they simply don't care.
Also, Amazon is flooded with 'drop-shippers' desperate to inflate their search ranking on Amazon. YouTube is stuffed with videos recommending sellers adopt unsavoury SEO tactics to manipulate Amazon search results.
eBay has a better structured, categorised approach to finding products. The eBay approach is not perfect, but better than Amazon.
- Purpose of the trial: study how well Covid booster jabs work
- 3000 participants enrolled in a blinded, multicentre, randomised, controlled, phase 2 trial
- 7 seven different vaccines tested
- The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines being used in the UK as boosters give the best overall boost response, according to the trial
- To make vaccine supplies go further, even a half dose of Pfizer could be used to boost populations
- Related UK Government press release states boosters give over 90% protection against symptomatic COVID-19 in adults over 50
- The trial results are thought to have prompted the UK government to order an extra 114 million doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to be rolled out over the next two years.
Related Links
The Lancet: Safety and immunogenicity of seven COVID-19 vaccines as a third dose (booster) in the UK:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
GOV.UK: Boosters give over 90% protection against symptomatic COVID-19 in adults over 50
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/boosters-give-over-90-pro...
FT journalist: Impact of booster jabs on Covid cases on elderly people (60+ age) in November - a dramatic drop from October:
- UK’s July reopening likely generated enough infection-acquired immunity to shield it from continent’s winter wave
- But that came at a cost of thousands of deaths, far higher rate than peer countries [so far]
- Boosters also key to UK’s current successes
- If western European countries can accelerate booster rollout they can blunt the wave, esp in terms of hospitalisations & deaths
- But some, like Austria, are hamstrung by low uptake of the primary course. You can’t boosted the unvaxxed, and Austria has a lot of them.
Recommendations relating to specific commercial practices
- Declawing. We have high confidence that declawing (removing one or both of the claws from a crab before returning it back to the water) causes suffering in crabs.
- Nicking. We also have high confidence that the practice of nicking (cutting the tendon of a crab’s claw) causes suffering and is a health risk to the animals.
- Wholesale and retail. We recommend a ban on the sale of live decapod crustaceans to untrained, non-expert handlers.
- Stunning. Current evidence indicates that electrical stunning with appropriate parameters for the species can induce a seizure-like state in relatively large decapods, and that stunning diminishes, without wholly abolishing, the nervous system’s response to boiling water. We interpret this as evidence that electrical stunning is better than nothing.
- Slaughter (decapods). We recommend that the following slaughter methods are banned in all cases in which a more humane slaughter method is available, unless preceded by effective electrical stunning: boiling alive, slowly raising the temperature of water, tailing (separation of the abdomen from the thorax, or separation of the head from the thorax), any other form of live dismemberment, and freshwater immersion (osmotic shock). On current evidence, the most reasonable slaughter methods are double spiking (crabs), whole-body splitting (lobsters), and electrocution using a specialist device on a setting that is designed and validated to kill the animal quickly after initially stunning it.
- Slaughter (cephalopods). Various different slaughter methods are currently used on fishing vessels in European waters, including clubbing, slicing the brain, reversing the mantle and asphyxiation in a suspended net bag. We are not able to recommend any of these methods as humane. On current evidence, there is no slaughter method for cephalopods that is both humane and commercially viable on a large scale.
You're correct it was 52% - however that does not represent 52% of all the public - it represents 52% of the public who turned up to vote. Obviously that still carries the majority verdict for the referendum.
There were 45.5 million people registered to vote in the referendum in 2016 and 28% of those registered voters didn't bother to turn up to vote. The leave vote equalled 17.4m voters. The remain voters equalled 16.1m voters. 13 million people didn't care enough to vote.
https://plausible.io/blog/open-source-licenses
From their blog post:
> If you used AGPL-licensed code in your web service in the cloud, you are required to open source it. It basically prevents corporations that never had any intention to contribute to open source from profiting from the open source work.
> It explicitly prohibits corporations from parasitically competing with an open source project. They won’t be able to take the code, make changes to it and sell it as a competing product without contributing those changes back to the original project. [emphasise mine]
The blog post above was discussed heavily on Hacker News back in Oct 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24763734
Background
Mike Hall (owner of the property) moves around a lot due to his work. He rents out his home, but due to COVID the property has been empty for some time.
Returning to his property
When Mr Hall returned to his house he could tell clearly the house has been broken into. The front door window pane had been smashed and partially replaced, and the locks had been replaced.
Reporting to the police
Police told Mr Hall it was a civil matter and Mr Hall had to leave the house and contact his solicitors.
Mr Hall put in an online application to Bedfordshire Police Service to notify them of a crime. Every time he got an automated replying stating this was not a criminal offence but a civil matter.
He also contacted Action Fraud (UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime, run by the City of London Police). They also said it was a civil offence and they could not help him.
Mr Hall: "So everywhere I turned, it was a closed door"
Contacting the BBC
Mr Hall contacted the BBC Radio programme You and Yours (consumer affairs programme) and they confirmed this was a criminal offence, not a civil offence. (Comment from me: speaks a lot about the police that the owner ends going to a BBC Radio programme due to inactivity and incorrect information from police sources.)
The BBC put Mr Hall in touch with the Bedford Fraud Squad who agree Mr Hall is a victim of fraud and is now investigating.
How did it happen?
The criminal contacts the solicitor and pretends to be Mr Hall. But how did the criminal convince the solicitor he was Mr Hall?
Solicitors require identity documents e.g. Passport, Driving Licence (both include owner photo). The criminal applied for and got a genuine duplicate driver licence from the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) in Mr Hall's name ("genuine document fraudulently obtained").
Mike Hall's driving licence is in Welsh and contains the title 'Reverend', his address, his photo and signature. The criminal's licence is in English, with the title 'Mr', a different address, signature and photo. This is the fraudulent driving licence the solicitor saw.
It gets worse...
In April 2021, the DVLA contacted Mike Hall to confirm if he had applied for a duplicate driving licence as they has a suspicion the request they had received could be fraudulent. Mike Hall confirmed to the DVLA he didn't apply for a duplicate licence. The DVLA said they would cancel the fraudulent request.
Unfortunately, they failed to cancel the duplicate licence even though they promised they would.
The criminal gets the genuine duplicate driving licence and changes the picture in the driving licence. The DVLA would not comment on how the criminal altered the driving licence details. However, they say they are taking this matter very seriously (they described what happened to Mike Hall as "awful") and are working with Bedfordshire Police.
Fraudulent bank account
In April, a new TSB bank account is fraudulently created in Mike Hall's name. In July, over two days, £131,000 is deposited into the bank account - and then withdrawn. The BBC reporter contacted TSB to ask them: why did they not flag this as suspicious activity? TSB said the activity didn't trigger any suspicions and they are working with the police on the case.
Will Mike Hall get his house back?
Reporter: "Very possibly not"
Reporter: "If your name is on the Land Register for a property, that property is yours and it doesn't matter if you bought that property from a fraudster."
"The Land Registery is the only record of property ownership we have in the UK [England and Wales]. It is state guaranteed and that means if there is fraudlent change of title, which has happened in this case, victims of fraud and mistakes can be compensated."
This type of fraud ("vendor fraud") is on the rise. Compensation has risen from £2m to £3.5m in just twelve months - a 40% rise.
The Land Registry say they rely on solicitors to make checks to spot fraudulent attempts to impersonate property owners. Empty, rental and properties with no mortgages are particularly vulnerable to this type of fraud.
And what about Mike?
The BBC showed Mike the fake driving licence used to impersonate him: "I felt sick actually - seeing someone else's face on my driving licence...I felt an emptiness in my stomach and it make it all very real to me."
The paper looks at difference ways to influence or change the behaviour of the public. Some examples from the paper below. These are higly selective extracts, but I highlight them because they do realistically highlight the opposition (or inertia!) to be expected from many of us.
Diet changes
> Asking people directly to eat less meat and dairy is a major political challenge, though positive framings and smaller asks may be possible (e.g. learn one new recipe).
>...narratives must avoid alienation of mainstream dietary choices
Home retrofits and energy transitions
> Information provision alone tends to yield very small behaviour-change impacts in energy consumption or technology adoption...
Aviation
> There will be limited political space to directly ask the public to fly less in the short-term.