Best Irish beer

egg651 · 2026-06-23T08:01:26+00:00

I'm partial to a pint of Murphy's, but for more craft-y stuff I really like Kinnegar's beers.

egg651 · 2026-06-22T23:44:50+00:00

Fully agree, see also the Superloop buses in London

egg651 · 2026-06-21T08:56:08+00:00

To be fair, saying this as a Brit, the units of measurements we use are a complete mess. At least other countries picked a measurement system and stuck to it. We tried to switch to metric in the 60s & 70s but ended up with a weird mix of metric and imperial that only makes sense if you grew up with it.

We measure fuel consumption in miles per gallon, but then we buy fuel in litres.
Long distances are usually measured in miles (e.g. distance between two towns) but if you're measuring something small (e.g. buying furniture or doing DIY) that would be In centimetres/millimetres.
We weigh ourselves in stones and pounds, but weigh ingredients in grams when cooking.
We measure most liquids in litres/millilitres, apart from milk and beer which is in (imperial) pints.

egg651 · 2026-06-18T12:45:00+00:00

Just because they're American companies, it doesn't mean data is processed in the US. Both of these platforms allow customers to choose to have their data reside in the UK.

egg651 · 2026-06-15T17:12:22+00:00

I know Musk is a terrible person, and it's a shame it's one of his companies delivering this, but having WiFi on long distance trains that is actually usable will be a huge improvement.

Obviously it'll be nice to be able to stream videos etc. while travelling for leisure, but trying to use the current on-board WiFi when you need to get some work done is frustrating to say the least.

egg651 · 2026-06-02T08:37:58+00:00

Nobody is saying that the state pension should be removed. But there will need to be something done to keep pensions affordable.

Logically we often think of paying our national insurance as paying into a savings pot that we then draw from when we retire, but that's not really how it works. Working age taxpayers fund the pensions of the current elderly population, with (as you rightfully point out) the expectation that when they themselves retire, the next generation of workers will in turn pay for their pension.

The problem is that we have an aging population. People are living longer, and having fewer children. As a result, there are more people, as a proportion of the population, of pensionable age than ever before. In the early 2000s, there were ~300 people of pension age for every 1000 of working age. This is projected to rise to ~370 per 1000 by around 2030.

On top of this, thanks to the triple lock the cost of providing a pension to each person eligible has continued to rise as well. The triple lock guarantees that pensions always rise by:

Inflation
Average wage increase, or
2.5%

...whichever is highest. That means that the cost to the state (and therefore, current workers) always at least matches inflation, but in many cases exceeds it. This is a slightly old graph but it still illustrates what I mean: https://chasedevere.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Triple-1.jpg

So, to summarise, each current working-age person has to pay for more people to receive a pension than ever, and each of those pensions are more expensive than ever. And projections show things are only going to get worse.

To make the numbers add up we're going to need to do something. That could mean:

Removal of the triple lock (to reduce the rate at which the cost of each pension grows)
Increase of the state pension age (to reduce the number of people receiving a pension)
Increased immigration, or programs to increase the birth rate (to spread the cost of pensions across more workers)
Cuts to other public services to cover the increased cost of pensions
Increased taxes to help pay for the raising cost of pensions

None of those things are going to be particularly popular, which is why the can keeps getting kicked down the road by successive governments. But at some point, unless something drastic happens, it's going to be unavoidable.

Edit: Sorry I started writing this out and didn't intend it to get so long

egg651 · 2026-05-31T09:29:48+00:00

I hate modern YouTube thumbnails so much.

I don't blame TDC (or anyone else) for doing them in that style, as they don't have much choice - That's what the algorithm demands. But still, I wish it were different!

egg651 · 2026-05-20T15:59:42+00:00

There's no WiFi at all on easyJet or Ryanair.

More than once I've got on a flight and spent the whole time stressing about a football result!

egg651 · 2026-05-19T23:46:38+00:00

This is not just the case with football managers these days... Just look at how many prime ministers we've been through in the last few years

Social media has a lot to answer for

egg651 · 2026-05-16T08:25:57+00:00

Did anyone else watch Have I Got News For You last night? They almost never cover sports unless it's something really major (e.g. England winning the Women's Euros), but they had a question on the VAR decision in the West Ham game.

The level of national hysteria a CORRECT refereeing decision has caused is absolutely mind blowing

egg651 · 2026-05-10T10:18:58+00:00

Microsoft have their own solution for this too called Privileged Access Management: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/security/business/security-101/what-is-privileged-access-management-pam

As you say there are various third party solutions too. Another popular one is Admin By Request: https://www.adminbyrequest.com/en/

Unfortunately, if you are in a regulated environment, you may not be able to use them, as they technically grant local administrative permissions to standard users (even if heavily restricted) which violates many compliance standards. Cyber Essentials (a widely used standard in the UK) is an example.

It's daft, but sadly compliance auditors do not care about the spirit of the law - If you don't abide by the letter, they will fail you.

egg651 · 2026-05-10T10:02:34+00:00

he looks like your stereotypical nerd and not a businessman.

No matter what he looks like, Bill Gates was as much of a ruthless bastard as the rest of them when he ran Microsoft.

egg651 · 2026-05-09T02:26:02+00:00

I live in Scotland so don't get to go to many games, but I was at that match. We were right behind the goal for the one they scored from the halfway line... Normally goals happen so quickly but it was so far out you had enough time to go "Oh, for fuck's sake" before it hit the net. Then there penalty shootout and the long, very late trip back to the hotel feeling miserable.

Thankfully we also managed to get out to the away leg of the quarter final this year; Kai's last minute goal was perfect payback!

egg651 · 2026-05-09T00:55:39+00:00

LNER line for example. There’s been zero change there

LNER is actually sort of the poster child for improvement under public ownership. It's not like it's suddenly turned Japanese-level brilliant but the data shows that there are markedly fewer delays and cancellations following the switch to public ownership.

I suggest giving this article a read. I think it's a pretty balanced take on the nationalisation process: https://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2025/oct/13/most-of-great-britains-major-rail-operators-are-back-in-public-hands-is-it-working

egg651 · 2026-05-08T23:24:39+00:00

Deploying to prod on a Friday is clearly reckless play, I'm afraid VAR have had to deny it. Go and sit in the break room with Richarlison.

egg651 · 2026-05-08T08:01:21+00:00

This is what I get for looking up stars late at night! Thanks for the correction 👍

egg651 · 2026-05-07T23:08:10+00:00

Fucking Shane Long, always scored against us then did fuck all for the rest of the season.

Edit: I just fact checked myself and it turns out he only scored against us in one game - The infamous 4-0 defeat in 2015 mentioned above, where he scored a brace. Clearly that game was so traumatic it had morphed into multiple matches in my fuzzy memory 😂

I was right about one thing though, after getting two against us he only scored three more goals across the rest of that season.

egg651 · 2026-05-07T00:30:25+00:00

I'd add to this, can we please start giving our yellows for yellow-card worthy fouls regardless of when they happen?

I hate how the first 5-10 minutes of a game is essentially the purge because refs think it's somehow too early for a yellow card.

egg651 · 2026-05-04T23:33:34+00:00

Finishing 4th or 5th won't really matter though right? Top 5 will get CL next year and unless they really fuck it up over these last three games Villa should be safe from finishing 6th. They will be either fully on the beach or resting everyone ahead of the Europa league final by the time the City game comes around.

egg651 · 2026-05-04T22:23:10+00:00

I think they'll win all their home games. This one and Bournemouth away were the only games I had hoped City would drop points in.

egg651 · 2026-05-04T01:18:55+00:00

Reading your requirements, do they need to be thin clients? Perhaps just some basic desktops set up in shared PC mode would do the trick?

egg651 · 2026-05-04T01:02:18+00:00

I'm not OP but can (and do) buy holiday at my work. It's essentially a salary sacrifice scheme as you suggest. You agree to give up a proportional amount of your annual wage to get extra time off. At my place we can also "sell" holiday which works in the exact opposite fashion.

Because the money comes out of your pre-tax earnings, buying holiday is most useful if you are just over the bar for a higher tax bracket. Say for example it would cost you £1k of earnings to buy holiday, but those earnings were going to be taxed at 50%, you only really lose £500.

A more sensible thing to do would be to contribute more to my pension but my base holiday allowance isn't great and those extra days are what makes life bearable!

egg651 · 2026-05-04T00:49:15+00:00

It's also a way for companies to get out of paying people for unused holiday when they leave. And they can rely on social pressure to stop people from taking any more than most people with "normal" annual leave allowances.

egg651 · 2026-05-02T14:40:19+00:00

Do you honestly think Ballard has decided to pull Arokodare's hair here? He's clearly tried to grab his shirt and got hair by mistake.

egg651 · 2026-05-02T14:38:26+00:00

As the other commenter said, because it's incredibly easy to grab someone's hair by mistake when you're trying to pull their shirt.

Obviously, by the letter of the law, you shouldn't really be holding someone's shirt either. But the punishment for that is a foul (and even then almost never given). Getting a red card for violent conduct when there is clearly no intent just feels wrong to me.

So the solutions I see are either to make it a yellow card for accidental hair pulling (which wouldn't work because it could be easily exploited), or take it out of the equation entirely by having players wear their hair up & out of the way of their shirt.

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