Viewing profile — desas

HN is owned by Y Combinator. Two of the founders live in the UK.

Oh thanks for clearing that up, I misunderstood on my previous read.

The same thing applies in the US doesn't it? There has essentially only been two political parties (three if you squint hard enough) for nearly the entire existence of the country?…

The US constitution is very similar, except in two important regards: amendments require two thirds majority votes in both houses and ratification by 75% of the states. We don't ha…

To "fall foul", i.e. be required to add highly effective age assurance, there's a number of tests you have to pass One of the tests is: > Are there a significant number of children…

The childcare voucher scheme closed to new entrants in 2018.

> Terminating a train and turning it around takes a lot of space, space that is usually unavailable in a city center. This doesn't happen in London in my experience. Trains don't t…

Is there a reason you couldn't build new light rail trains to a higher level of crashworthiness than they are currently? I don't know the full details, but that's how tram-trains i…

> We're drunk on the ease of implicitly painting people who can't read as much as us as simply dumb modern westerners. I'm not sure we're doing that. That's certainly not my intent…

This is a ludicrous take. I was on vacation last week and read three books, albeit not weighty novels. I can't remember when I read as few as 10 novels per year. I'm not a CEO, but…

V5Cs have been online for 3-4 years now. You still have to send back your cut up old driver's license, though I have my doubts that someone is sat there checking and cross referenc…

Strong is relative. The regional differences in my generation (40) and younger mostly come from accent and not from the vocabulary, whereas for my parents and grandparents it would…

For perspective, the family - currently headed by the 12th duke, were estimated to be worth £910 million in 2024. They are not out of the top echelon, and are now structured much b…

There were 100s of Newcomen engines throughout Europe which were mostly used to pump water. They were being deployed ~50 years before Watt improved the design.

People were doing this in the days of printed phone books. There would be an "AAA Plumbers", "ABC Taxis" and so on. Reputedly, "Apple Computers" coming ahead of "Atari" (Jobs' ex-e…

Not at all. It means that the UK police can compel you to turn over your decryption keys if it is deemed necessary and proportionate to prevent or investigate a crime.

> If instead, I would otherwise be wasting time playing video games or watching TV, then it always makes sense to do the job yourself. It depends on how much you value your free ti…

You're probably right. I just pulled it from https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/zone-2-93814.html without too much thought. Still, a £1.3m house isn't completely infeasible i…

> I'd put less blame on London and more on secondary cities > HS2 is cut short because of money that people outside of London demand be spent on making it so expensive on a per-mil…

> the boundaries of the original private railway companies (GWR, LNER, LMS, SR) Minor point, though maybe less minor in context of the original post. They are not the original priv…

A £1.3 million house in London on a 10% deposit and a 4.7% interest rate over 30 years would be £6094 per month. The average price for a terraced house in london zone 2 is £1.7 mil…

> now it's been found that a majority of Brits receive more in benefits than they contribute in taxes This has been the case for decades. It's not news.

Octopus are already doing this in the UK,so it does actually happen.

The new builds are made of brick and block, and are indeed insulated really well. It's the millions of older houses, particularly Victorian ones, that are made of brick, are not us…

> They can't even speak freely about the horrible crimes being committed in their nation by grooming gangs. Unsure what exactly you're referring to, which might be ironic, but ther…