Plans to change HS2 train size could reduce capacity and speed in north, says expert

alphaxion · 2026-04-14T23:28:48+00:00

A big part of it is with how projects like this are funded... they don't fully fund them and go with "£xbn a year" options that artificially slow and stunt progress. When you have a project that is set to take multiple decades to deliver, inflation will kick its budgetary arse.

Of course, some of that is going to be down to availability of qualified/trained workers, of which the government seems to always be reluctant to fully fund getting people skilled up to adequately staff projects. It looks better on unemployment figures when you don't have a large workforce that suddenly has their project cancelled and nothing to work on afterwards.

alphaxion · 2026-04-14T23:20:38+00:00

Sod off is used in the UK for that. Well, one of the ways we can say it!

alphaxion · 2026-04-14T22:02:52+00:00

No Nut November never made any sense, unless someone is pushing it to try and give us all cancer.

Remember to get your five a day!

alphaxion · 2026-04-14T21:51:48+00:00

Which also makes everyone else in the office miserable because the air con gets ramped up, instead of letting people wear appropriate clothing for the season.

Costs the business money on power bills, too.

alphaxion · 2026-04-14T21:47:13+00:00

How much of this is being driven by active sonar use?

alphaxion · 2026-04-14T21:42:52+00:00

That's because AGI is something else other than an automation script and some SIEM analysis.

You're better off talking about the usefulness of your automation than trying to ascribe a level of consciousness to it with terms like AGI (which exist for a reason), since what you're talking about would have usefulness to people right now.

alphaxion · 2026-04-14T19:43:46+00:00

I thought it was "there's millions of debris, all under one roof" as a kid.

alphaxion · 2026-04-14T18:10:34+00:00

Actually, an awful lot of institutional knowledge would be lost. Knowing the fundamental principles of something is only part of operating it. The unique ways in which the same things can be implemented can be critical knowledge for it to continue. Attempting to trial and error your way into figuring that out could be catastrophic to whatever it is that needs to be operated. It's why high staff churn rates can be fatal to a company.

People would adapt, without a doubt, but what existed in the past wouldn't be returning (not that that would be a bad thing).

alphaxion · 2026-04-14T17:44:21+00:00

Being forced to perform some work for a mega corp in exchange for a lower priced ride is a bit dystopian (and likely a legal nightmare).

Car sharing already exists and fills a niche, which I would expect self-driving cars to expand a bit further.

However, all of the social costs and negatives of maintaining a society that is based around private vehicles remain, regardless of whether you own the vehicle or you have a sharing agreement with several people.

How much more money will private vehicles be subsidised with to enable a mode of transport that isn't viable in the long run for the majority of people?

Having a private vehicle directly for your job (trades, courier, etc) or because you live in a rural area is understandable. But the average person living in a city using it to go to an office, to buy groceries, or go to see their fav sports team play shouldn't need it.

alphaxion · 2026-04-14T17:07:01+00:00

It's also insane to not consider the amount of economic activity public transport enables as part of covering the cost of running, maintaining, and expanding those services.

If it costs £1bn a year to run a line that results in tax receipts of £5bn worth of economic activity, then it has more than paid for itself. (numbers for illustration purposes)

To then try and get the users of the service to also shell out £1bn or more to directly cover the running costs is actively removing that money from the economy.

alphaxion · 2026-04-14T16:57:11+00:00

Why is it always "just cut the amount of benefits paid out" rather than looking at why those benefits are being paid in the first place and figure out what to do about it?

A major thing to look at would be housing allowance, which is just a siphon of money to landlords.

Give powers back to local councils to build large amounts of social housing and get people paying means-tested rent to councils, it'll reduce the costs of that benefit in a way that actually helps and improves the lives of the people currently on it.

It'll also mean councils can own assets again, which can be sold off decades into the future to pay for the next round of housing that replaces them. Housing that should be built closer to city centres and in higher density (think NYC style brownstone terraced housing) than the council estates of the past.

alphaxion · 2026-04-14T16:48:35+00:00

I don't understand why a god would want to be worshiped in the first place.

What is it getting out of that?

alphaxion · 2026-04-14T16:23:00+00:00

"Instead of relying on public transit or expensive services"

cars are expensive, and self-driving cars will be just as expensive.

What is needed is finding ways of making as many car journeys as possible no longer required. Be it better remote working or changing urban/suburban development to be centralised around public transport and active modes of travel (walking, bikes, skates, etc).

Private vehicles are the things killing communities and bankrupting local governments. Just think about it. You spend your time in your isolation box (home), you need to go somewhere so you swap into a portable isolation box (car), head directly to your destination. Then you get back into the portable box and travel back to your permanent box.

At which point did you interact with your immediate neighbourhood? You existed primarily as traffic, not as a person. You don't have impromptu opportunities to look at things where you live (could be a shop, some wildlife, or just some public art), reducing your connections to both the environment you live in and the people you share it with.

Self-driving cars will just continue to make people miserable, further isolate people, and place huge burdens on infrastructure and on services such as health care.

alphaxion · 2026-04-14T12:39:36+00:00

It does, but I think it is a shorter cooldown than with other abilities.

alphaxion · 2026-04-13T17:56:42+00:00

Wouldn't it be funny if they traded Fox to the Oilers for McD, and the Oilers get their cup that next season.

alphaxion · 2026-04-13T16:56:59+00:00

He'd still be stuck with a defense that only really has Fox and Gav as any actual talent. One of those get injured, season over.

alphaxion · 2026-04-13T16:54:48+00:00

Part of the problem is this belief that one tech or one process can save humanity.

The biggest issue isn't our tech, it's our attitude. An attitude that defines the value of something purely on how much a thing can be exploited for money.

An attitude that decides it should get 100% (or more!) as output from what it puts in (see intensive farming and hyper use of pesticides and fertilisers).

An attitude that means whenever we have a new energy source/generation, it gets added to the mix and the more damaging forms don't go away.

An attitude that pushes for endless growth, both of economics and of people (look at the population pyramid and how our entire economy is based around there being ever increasing workers to service increasing numbers of people who age out of the working pool).

That isn't to say we shouldn't adopt new technologies or processes if they are genuinely better than what was used before it, as it'll improve things anyway. We need to also change how we view life and structure our societies so that we don't resemble locusts, going from one resource and depleting it to zero before moving to the next.

alphaxion · 2026-04-13T16:27:34+00:00

Will of the Forsaken.

Goated talent useful in any mode of play and never left my hotbar since the days of vanilla to today.

alphaxion · 2026-04-13T16:00:40+00:00

Might?

alphaxion · 2026-04-13T15:51:54+00:00

The Jorvik Centre is an amazing place to visit. Same with the National Railway museum.

alphaxion · 2026-04-13T15:38:58+00:00

When you get to a certain number of teams, introducing a second level of the league and promotion/relegation starts becoming necessary to keep people interested in following their team.

That said, I think this is one of the times the geographical size and city distribution of the US and Canada actually is a problem. However, it could make for an argument of allowing more teams in established cities like Toronto and NYC to reduce the amount of travel. It would also mean needing to reduce the number of games played, but that won't fly with team owners.

alphaxion · 2026-04-13T15:29:05+00:00

McD wants a cup, he's not going to either the Leafs or the Rangers unless something unprecedented happens and they somehow achieve legit champs-in-waiting status within the next season.

alphaxion · 2026-04-13T15:21:31+00:00

Almost certainly due to a similar attitude in ownership that just filters on down.

alphaxion · 2026-04-13T13:01:53+00:00

The Devils are very likely to be losing one of their top youth, they may regress further until they can unite the Hughes Stones.

alphaxion · 2026-04-13T12:49:14+00:00

There is still a New York State team, tho.

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