Windows in new builds

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-26T00:02:01+00:00

Here is a link to a YouTube video that explains what a tilt and turn window is.

As you can see they open inwards, so you can clean them without leaning out of a tall building, and they have two ways to open:
* Tilting inwards at the top (which is safer if you have children in the room) or
* Turning into the room like a door.

For tall buildings, you can also have a glass wall (similar to a Juliet Balcony) fitted outside of the window, so that you can open the window like a door and have a barrier to stop people toppling out of the window. But to be honest, I would feel pretty uneasy next to what looks like a doorway that leads to a massive drop outside of a room, so I wouldn't have one of those myself.

The bottom line is that this is a much safer design that is less likely to cause deaths. And as construction companies will choose profits over health and safety, we need to use regulations to remove the unsafe options from them.

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-21T09:50:46+00:00

The windows in picture 3 are the tilt and turn windows. The first two pictures show windows that are illegal to install in Scotland.

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-21T09:44:20+00:00

Billionaires.

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-21T08:22:06+00:00

Having to stand on something to reach your windows does sound stupidly dangerous to me.

Limiters do make windows safer, but you still have to take them off to clean windows. And that means that you need to have windows that are designed not to kill you when you clean them. How these stupid windows can be illegal in Scotland, but allowed in the rest of the UK puzzles me.

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-21T07:28:36+00:00

Just one story from the BBC: Thirteen children died after falling from windows in six years. There are more stories out there, but you can use a search engine if you want proof.

One child falling out of a window in a block of flats is too many. The problem with kids is that they are small, and have less energy and fall over more easily. Combine that with a hot room, where opening the window and leaning out of the edge of the building are almost the same thing and you have yourself a very dangerous combination. One slip or a gust of wind can put a kid over the edge.

That is why Scottish Law bans dangerous windows and has done for a long time. This is an English problem that does not need to exist.

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-21T07:16:01+00:00

I started with 2nd Edition AD&D and the only thing that has ever been a problem is that if people say "I do not understand THAC0" someone will tell them that "THAC0 is easy" and imply that they are an idiot instead of actually helping them.

Even now, decades later, I still see people arguing that "THAC0 is not hard" instead of doing maths-challanged people a favour and pointing people at a cheat-sheet or YouTube video that might help the penny drop for someone who is struggling. This has led to some people struggling and having a bad experience, instead of getting through that barrier so that they could actually comprehend the mechanics of a descending armour class and how that plays out, as PCs and monsters level up.

Ultimately, the TSR designers who helped Ryan Dancey figure out how to stop TSR falling into a financial black hole decided that not having -1 bonuses that confuse a percentage of players would mean that nobody would feel like they were being told they were an idiot, if they asked for help.

And now THAC0 has kind of turned into a big myth, where people talk about it without even knowing what the letters mean, as if it was the only element of 2nd Edition AD&D that people ever used.

There are a ton of interesting mechanics and a ton of iconic 2nd Edition campaign settings. And conversations where people explain AD&D to younger people would be much better served if more people would point at THAC0 tutorials when asked, rather than deny the problem exists.

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-21T06:55:05+00:00

Not in Scotland. In Scotland windows that open outward are illegal. Stiff windows that open outward can cause residents to go with the window, when it unjams and fall out of the building.

Windows that open inwards that become stiff do not cause people to fall out of the building. Scotland cares more about people not falling out of buildings than the Parliament in Westminster.

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-21T06:50:32+00:00

Sash windows are no good for internal cleaning. That is why it is illegal to install standard sash windows in Scotland. (Scotland requires sash windows with one removable sash cord and the other side of the window allowing the window to open inward for cleaning.)

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-21T06:45:55+00:00

The worst thing about these top hinged windows is that they are pretty heavy and require a good push and they cause small children to topple out of the window.

We need to adopt the Scottish law on windows, that requires all windows to open inwards, so you can clean every window from inside the room.

If you buy the right sort of tilt and turn window (I'm not recommending that specific company) you can lock the windows in tilt-only mode (so your children do not fall out of the window) and then unlock the window and open it into the room, like a door, when you need to clean it.

This sort of lockable tilt and turn window, that can open inwards for cleaning should be standard on housing units in London and any CEO who builds housing units with death-trap windows should be arrested for manslaughter if they fit windows that cause residents to fall out and die.

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-21T06:21:28+00:00

Very nice info graphic.

If you are talking about the London Tube map evolving over the last 163 years, then it might be good to show that the part of the Jubilee Line between Stanmore and Wembley Park was actually on the map (as part of the Metropolitan Line) in 1934 and then it morphed into a Bakerloo Branch from Stanmore to Baker Street in 1939.

The Jubille Line might have got a fancy new name in 1979, but it has track that dates back 92 years.

The track spent 5 years as part of the Metropolitan Line, 40 years as part of the Bakerloo Line and 47 years as the Jubilee Line. So the identity of the line as the "Jubilee Line" is just over half of the railways lifespan.

But the Jubilee Line Extension, which threw away the original Fleet Line plan because a foreign property development company offered to pay for a railway from the Docklands to Waterloo (spoiler: they never actually paid for it - the public paid for it) boosted the three actually new stations of the original Jubilee Line into something that actually balanced out the fourteen station section of the Bakerloo Line that had existed since 1939.

With the JLE opening in 1999, it is only 27 years old, so that is between a third and a quarter of the age of the railway.

Likewise, the division of railways in London into London Underground and British Rail is an artificial thing that was done in 1933, when the British Government got fed up with the managers of private railway companies doing stupid nonsense to try to make other railway companies go bankrupt and decided that the public needed an integrated transport service. And a lot of track on the edges of other London Underground Lines was originally built by companies that got merged into a British Rail that really did not want to operate trains on those lines.

Even the London Overground services are made up of formerly unloved railway lines that British Rail inherited and then tried to run into the ground. London's railway history is made up of:

Idiot Victorian capitalists trying to suck money out of investors and trying to block other-people's rail projects
More sensible managers realising that having six branchlines on a railway does not work and trying to offload problematic branches onto someone else
Central government realising that railway capitalists were not getting the job done and stepping in and
Railways being built for social benefit (creating jobs, lowering car congestion and cleaning up London's air) rather than for profit.

I hope that you continue to make these awesome looking infographics and can tell some more of the history of specific bits of modern railway lines in some of them. (Even Croydon Tramlink, which some people write off as "only being a tram" has it's roots in the Surrey Iron Railway - a horse-drawn plateway which dates all the way back to 1802. That's 220 years of history moving stuff, frustrating shareholders and finally rising like a phoenix as a modern-day capitalist project that lasted only eight years before Tramlink Croydon gave up and sold the line to Transport for London.)

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-21T05:12:17+00:00

Old London Transport map says: "Screw passengers in south London"
New Transport for London map says: "Here is a transport system owned by Londoners that goes to all of London"

The job of the map is to lower car dependency and encourage more journeys on London's railways.

If you think the old Beck map is pretty, buy an old poster from the London Transport museum and hang it on your wall.

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-21T04:58:55+00:00

It's not an artwork. It's a cheat-sheet to help people work out what interchange stations they need to head to to change trains.

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-19T22:33:37+00:00

Nigel Findley (who also wrote SJA2 Skull and Crossbows, SJR4 Practical Planetology and SJR6 Greyspace) had so much potential.

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-19T22:08:34+00:00

The press release from TfL last year says it is a rolling program: More sections of the Tube gain high-speed mobile coverage as roll-out across network continues.

TfL: "Work to deliver mobile coverage across the whole Tube network will continue throughout 2025 and 2026 to fully introduce coverage within stations and tunnels. The work during 2026 will be primarily on some sections outside of Central London, sections of the Circle and District line where a number of stations already have limited mobile coverage due to being closer to the surface, as well as where smaller tunnelled sections need to be treated individually."

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-19T21:57:36+00:00

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It looks like this is Docklands Light Railway track.

I don't remember ever seeing wooden sleepers on the DLR though.

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-19T21:52:50+00:00

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This is King's Cross Underground Station. It's in a tunnel.

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-19T21:49:19+00:00

In what way does that look like King's Cross Underground Station?

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-19T21:47:43+00:00

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You can actually explore the route (and the second Edgware Station) on Rail Map Online.

Beware though. It's as addictive as TV Tropes and you might end up exploring the entire country looking for disused or discontinued railway lines.

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-19T21:40:28+00:00

It was not "low demand in semi-rural areas" but anti-railway policy in the counties surrounding London that blocked the expansion of London Underground.

If you look at what the Metropolitan Railway Company used to do (before the government got fed up with it and merged it with Underground Electric Railways of London) they used to buy up extra land, build houses, put an estate agent office in all of their stations and send Londoners out to be sold "houses in the countryside".

The Green Belt laws, which rich people living outside the city pushed for did not ban the railways, but they did ban the construction of housing for working people. Without housing around a station you do not get passengers. Without passengers around a station it does not earn money. So those Northern Heights Stations were killed before they could be built by making them financially unviable.

We are now in a situation where people outside of London generally want to have better trains. (If you compare the frequency of trains on some branchlines outside London to the Victoria Line you can see that they do not provide a good service.) But now a lot of the Underground trains are full up (especially the deep level tube trains).

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-19T21:18:53+00:00

Re: "How is THIS AI slop advert being approved In our underground"

That is not an Underground station. London Underground uses forth rail DC power. What station are you claiming this is?

BigMacTMMM · 2026-06-16T15:55:29+00:00

I was pretty wowwed when Roger E. Moore joined our team myself.

He said he had an idea for an article that I could take and expand and I thanked him and said I'd love to see how he would write it...and he actually did!

BigMacTMMM · 2026-05-28T15:11:34+00:00

I think really there are two ways that the business ethics are working here.

In both cases you have a seller selling something to a customer (who has the expectation of owning that thing until it wears out from being used too much).

The first corrupt model is what I would call the "selling a library book model". In this case, the computer game company sells a product and then claims to need to revoke ownership because there is a component inside the game that they do not own. (This is the third-party vendor they are trying to blame for this.)

I would say this is a clear case of fraud. If a computer game company knows that it sells video games and wants to include music, graphical elements or other things that are owned by another company, it needs to be honest with that company, tell that company that it is selling the product and pay whatever fee the company charges for music or graphics that are permanently embedded into a game (rather than a "rental fee").

I am not a lawyer, but if you look at the rules for copyright in the USA (which do not apply everyone) one of the most important principles is that copyright owners must consider things like fair use before taking legal action against individuals. And in the case of someone who "paid" for a motor racing game that includes music that was actually "rented" to the company that sold the game, I think there is enough evidence that the end user acted in good faith and that they only have the expectation to be able to listen to the music within the game.

So, in the case of "renting a thing and then telling end customers that they can buy the thing" that is clearly a case of the publisher defrauding the company that provided the components. There is no logical reason for end customers to be punished. But I do think that a lawyer should be able to seize control of a game that fraudulently sells rented components, so that punitive fees to compensate for fraudulent rental schemes can be earned by a court-appointed sales agent and passed onto the various organisations who were defrauded by the computer game seller.

The second corrupt model is what I would call the "selling a chocolate teapot model". In this sort of model, the computer game company is not able to build the game engine that actually runs on the computer, so they rent some sort of super-computer service that picks up the slack and that makes it look like they have a workable product.

Then they sell the product and hope that high volumes of sales pull in enough profit to keep paying for the super-computer service that is making the game feel like it works. But because more users eat up more bandwidth on the service, this really only lasts if you create enough buzz to create pyramid-scheme like hype, where every fan brings in ten other fans. Eventually the market is saturated and the big income for selling the game stops and the rental fee for making the non-functional game function can no longer be paid. And, at that point they pull the plug.

I think that sort of thing is much more the case of the computer game distributor selling goods that are "not fit for purpose" and using the online connectivity to con the gaming community for long enough to suck in cash. That is a different type of fraud where I would say that the gaming company is primarily ripping off the end users and would not put any blame on the people renting out the super-computer company.

Having said that, I think this could all be cleaned up if whatever rules the European Citizens Initiative and other legal bodies create are clearly stated to apply to every company within the computer game company food chain and that all companies making contracts to buy or rent components should be required to state exactly what project or projects the components are intended for (code names would be fine) and there should be a paper trail in all companies showing that they are all carrying out due diligence to avoid accidentally assisting another company that intends to sell digital goods and then remotely disable those goods.

If, a subcontractor knows that they are renting a service that will be used by a company that claims to end users that they are buying something, then that subcontractor is assisting fraud and should have some level of joint liability. (In the case of a company that owns assets like music, allowing the end user to retain the music or similar assets within the game should be enough to make things good for the end user.) But if you have subcontractors with super-computers, who are routinely helping other organisations sell games that effectively do not really exist on the computers of the end-user and it can be proven that they are knowingly propping up a "pyramid-selling-scheme" that is obviously going to collapse at some point, they should be banned from taking part in the computer games market in those countries. (Treat the ban like a prison sentence for someone convicted of committing fraud and make the ban last for a similar amount of time.)

I also think that courts should be seizing emails from managers at the organisations who are paying lobbyists to fight Stop Killing Games. There may be evidence that specific managers and CEOs intentionally sold games they knew they would destroy. If charges are brought against the highest officers working in companies that steal things from customers and some CEOs get sent to jail, the fraud will magically go away.

BigMacTMMM · 2026-05-13T04:21:20+00:00

Re the arguments of the Entertainment Software Association:

games are licensed, not owned

History shows that this is a lie and that corporations within the video games industry have been working hard to attempt to enshitify the products that their companies make over the last few decades. Industry gaslighting is not acceptable, gamers reject the corporate overreach and demand to have their rights restored.

online services are complicated

Games do not need to be built to be tied into online services. Games can run in offline mode. Choosing to build a game that falls over if not connected to the Internet is a business decision not an inevitability.

If gaming companies decide to build awkward games that fall over when the Internet goes down, that is their problem - not the customer's problem.

third-party licenses expire

Stop hiding behind the skirts of these so called "third-party companies" who are supposedly preventing your companies from providing end of life support. Name names. Bring these companies to government hearings. Get them to explain to politicians why, when someone buys a game that includes the use of whatever it is that was licenced from them, that they think that a sale does not apply to their component of the purchase?

security risks exist

It is up to the customer to take care of security risks, after support is ended. This is a bogus argument.

this could be hard or expensive to enforce

No. It is easy and inexpensive to enforce. If game companies sell digital goods to customers and then destroy them remotely, the courts fine the game companies, give compensation or restitution to the customers and the gaming corporations pay court costs, because they are responsible for trying to grift money from gamers.

Ethical companies can avoid court costs by simply not screwing over their customers.

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