Lmao at David Campbell, City of Bradford MDC Biodiversity Officer’s comment, stealing her thunder right at the top:

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill very much sits in the space Attenborough was aiming at when he said “We have a finite environment—the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist.”

The reason Attenborough et al are screening it for these politicians is because they’re doing things wrong.

They are, in fact, biscuits. They are cooked twice, baked then dried.

But they’re also cakes. It’s like a dried cake. Biscuit cake.

is labouring under about £20bn of debt and is running out of cash.

Claw back the money from investor dividends and management bonuses then.

I heard he was actually a king from Madagascar, and he likes to move it move it.

You put the mug in the microwave, that’s how.

Just the mug and water, mind. You microwave the teabag separately.

They are scones. Savoury scones.

Biscuit literally means twice cooked, from the French, originally from Latin. A biscuit is first baked, then dried. These scones are cooked but once.

What’s really weird is that the dish originated in the British Channel Island of Guernsey, where a lot of people speak French (it is close to France than England), most of their roads are French, and they have their own French dialect. And yet they cooked something once and called it a biscuit.

For me, the bigger problem with how Lemmy is federated is the way comments and posts have unique IDs for every instance. You can’t easily find a comment or post from one instance on any other instance. With users, you just have /user/username@instance, what we need is /post/###@instance or /comment/###@instance. Instead, we just have /post/### and the ### is different everywhere (I think it’s just sequential for every post/comment the instance federates).

Maybe there’s some reason they did it this way, but it feels like the better solution is to have the original host instance decide the number, then every other instance just use their number and their @instance.

Pretty sure that was on the bug list 2 years ago.

Dunno, I was already here :o) just thought it was worth mentioning in a community on feddit.uk hah.

lemmy.zip doesn’t allow users from the UK.

To be fair, lemm.ee didn’t really act as host to any major communities to begin with. So communities aren’t really the loss here, and it could be that having at least a few big active communities on an instance is a key part of maintaining its long term viability.

Also, all the text posts and comments from lemm.ee will still remain on other instances. I’m sure the instance could also back up content, if the specific admin so desired to re-host.

But those other 2 are chock full of extremists.

I always saw those two as something like far left indoctrination camps where people learn and practice astroturfing techniques.

The lemm.ee admin is a shit hot developer though, his instance was generally more robust than all the others, and he helped other instances when they had various problems. It’s a shame he wasn’t the lead lemmy developer, although I’m sure he doesn’t have the time for such a big undertaking.

Paywall.

It does happen often, and it changes over time. For example, my HSBC app used to work just fine without Play Store at all, then it requried some integrity, now it requires strong integrity.

Yeah it’s very hit and miss though, and potentially the bank could require strong Play Store integrity, which can only be achieved with a clean keybox file (hard to find).

With regards to contactless purchases, you’re actually better off doing it with the physical card contactless, in terms of consumer rights. A contactless card purchase is processed as “Cardholder not present”, where the seller assumes some of the liability for verifying the transaction is legit. With such a purchase you can easily argue that someone stole your card and made transactions without your permission, making it easier to claim under consumer protection laws.

This type of purchase has existed for decades and was used for catalogue purchases as well as early internet purchases. If you make a purchase with your card and PIN, or your phone with its PIN, then the purchase is considered authenticated by you and it will be harder to argue it wasn’t you. These days a lot of internet purchases are also authenticated (often by SMS or apps) but a contactless card purchase is not.

Magisk (root) plus possibly modules. I don’t think Revolut requires that, I think you can just set Magisk to Zygisk domain and hide root by putting Revolut in the deny list.

If it requires more then you’ll need to look into MicroG implementations on your device. Assuming Pixel devices (because the user above said GrapheneOS etc), then you’ll be installing MicroG as a Magisk module along with Play Integrity Fix, Shamiko, Tricky Store and Zygisk Assistant, at least for Android 14. You’ll need a clean keybox file though, and those are very tricky to get, if you want to pass strong integrity but you should be able to get most Play Store Integrity checks to pass then. Without the keybox though some banking apps won’t work (because those banks are bastards) without passing strong integrity.

At least you can get around that.

Isn’t Revolut that company owned by the son of a member of the board of Russia’s Gazprom? Weren’t they also partnering with a mobile phone company that was owned by Russians, so to get around sanctions they sold it to a German Russophile for €1, meanwhile continuing to pay profits to sanctioned Russians?

Revolut isn’t really a good alternative for Buy European - and I say that as a user myself. By all means take advantage of the deals and low rates (good currency exchange rates), but be wary of integrating it into your traditional banking and definitely think twice before making it your main bank.

Rail contracts and train companies aren’t the problem. The problem is rail stock leasing, which has obsene prices and pushes the public-facing train companies to both be expensive but also run a paper thin margin. Nationalising the train companies won’t do anything about rail stock leasing, the government needs to focus on the root problem, not buy out the under-performing public facing business at a high price.

The thing is there are multiple companies/sectors involved here, and this isn’t addressing the worst of them (yet, if ever).

First you have the railway lines themselves. These are run by Network Rail, which is already a part of the Department for Transport. This part covers a significant expense, but it’s needed and run fairly lean.

Then you have the train companies. These are the ones running the trains, they are typically private businesses. They lease rail stock (trains and carriages) and sell tickets, while paying Network Rail for the use of the lines. These are the customer facing businesses, and South Western Rail is one of them and the one nationalised in this story. In spite of having high ticket prices and revenue, they have low profits due to high costs.

Lastly you have the rail stock companies. These are the real villains, frankly, much moreso than train companies. They set leasing prices for trains, and in turn cause the train companies to run at paper thin margins. They aren’t customer facing, so the public eye isn’t upon them and they get away with a lot. They have established long term contracts, so simply nationalising a train company won’t end this deal.

However, nationalising train companies does mean that the government (either the DfT or the new Great British Railways) will be negotiating with rail stock companies. In theory, the government are a bigger entity, so have a better negotiating position, and also they should be more motivated to bring the costs down. Private rail companies make more money overall with paper thin margins on high prices, not only because a small percentage of a bigger number can be bigger, but because having a small margin puts them in a better negotiating position with local government (“You have to give us a good deal, we can’t afford to operate otherwise, and you need us”).

So nationalising train companies might lead to lower prices in future, through fairer leasing rates on rail stock. However this won’t start to happen until these contracts are renewed.

Really, a much heavier hand is needed from the government, one that focuses specifically on the rail stock leasing sector.