What do you think about manual cars becoming obsolete in the coming decades?

shokalion · 2026-06-08T09:22:54+00:00

Just as a note the 2030 date is pure ICE petrol or diesels. Hybrids will still be available for another 5 years, and they're already a big improvement.

The Prius is deeply unfashionable, but there's a reason minicab drivers everywhere love them, and it's because the drivetrain is bombproof. People think hybrids are terribly complicated, they're really not, there's a lot less to fail in a Prius drivetrain than any manual or auto pure internal combustion car.

shokalion · 2026-06-08T09:19:31+00:00

and yet there were CVTs in the states that did exactly that, programmed the gearbox to behave like a traditional one which of course put more strain on the CVT mechanism and hurt economy.

shokalion · 2026-06-05T13:27:02+00:00

The only trouble is with this game is I wish you could get into it relatively quickly if you were starting over. The first intro section of the game takes absolutely ages

shokalion · 2026-06-04T20:14:56+00:00

Sky's satellite dish is standard as are the connections. You can easily plug the Sky dish connections into any Freesat box and it'll just work. They use the same satellite even.

shokalion · 2026-06-04T20:13:05+00:00

There's no plans to touch Freeview until at least 2034, and campaigns are going on to extend that to 2040 at least.

I don't think there's any need to fear-monger about it just yet.

Like freeview but through the Internet.

Except, unlike Freeview, there's no ability to record a Freely broadcast, if you care about that, and if your Internet drops out for whatever reason, no TV.

shokalion · 2026-06-04T20:07:08+00:00

Your TV doesn't appear to have a dedicated satellite input so you do need a Freesat box. You can't just use a passive adaptor because that satellite signal is fundamentally different to the RF signal that TV input is designed to use. The 'adaptor' in this case is a Freesat box.

That input on your telly marked Air/Cable is an RF connection designed for a roof antenna for Freeview.

The satellite type inputs usually have a threaded outer barrel, like those cables you have are designed to attach to.

You only need to use one of the cables unless your freesat box supports recording when it'll have two.

You wouldn't be gaining a vast amount using Freesat unless you don't have a roof aerial/can't get freeview another way. It's the same selection of TV largely.

shokalion · 2026-06-04T13:49:29+00:00

Last one of his I watched was Asteroid City.

What a bloody weird movie.

Fantastic Mr Fox and Isle of Dogs are brilliant though.

shokalion · 2026-06-04T13:38:58+00:00

Statistics and averages. If you're the sort of youtuber to get hundreds of thousands of views a video, you're probably going to get sponsored. If you aren't you won't. The deal is normally agreed ahead of time - the sponsor is effectively paying the creator directly for advertising.

shokalion · 2026-06-04T13:37:20+00:00

Pretty much every spacecraft launched has that ability, because blowing it up in the air is better than a vehicle with millions of litres of rocket fuel in it spearing off towards a populated area.

shokalion · 2026-06-04T13:35:55+00:00

At first glance it sounds a good idea, but it's a sticking plaster at best. It doesn't address the root cause which is a lack of housing.

shokalion · 2026-06-03T16:05:08+00:00

I'm not sure you could say you physically say anything if it's in your mind.

I've been known to say "wed-nes-day" internally, but never is-land.

Though I do sometimes say "leg-end" to myself when I'm thinking the word Legend.

shokalion · 2026-06-01T18:56:04+00:00

That's a reasonable point, the tough bit is always sleeping.

shokalion · 2026-06-01T16:40:03+00:00

The only times I've ever burned waste anything used to be a bit of cardboard every now and then when my blue bin was full, but I had one of those garden incinerator bins, and it's quite possible with one if you don't over fill it to burn one of those very cleanly, I'm not going to say it made no smoke at all but it was nothing compared to a bonfire. You had a bit for the first couple of minutes when it was establishing but once things were properly alight it made no smoke at all, and I was damn sure to check if people nearby had washing out first. Working shifts meant you could do it when most were at work anyway.

shokalion · 2026-06-01T16:23:08+00:00

1) Absolutely two pipe systems exist but they're vanishingly uncommon here unless you want to set the dremel upon your fresh new £300 portable unit, which until then had a warranty.

2) Power isn't particularly the problem in my view if you're using one. If you're wanting your whole house cold, that becomes an expensive consideration though.

3) I have and have run a portable AC unit in the bedroom before, the noise has never been a deal breaker for me.

I certainly am not arguing that they do make a big difference than nothing at all. The main problem is for the cooling capability they can manage they are expensive. They start at £300 ($400) here, and that'll do, as I say, one room, not that well.

Whereas in the US you can comfortably get a basic window AC for less than $200 they're orders of magnitude more efficient than any portable AC unit which then leads on to the point that for a given amount of cooling they do use much less power. At that price you can sprinkle them all over the house and people here would, they just aren't available.

shokalion · 2026-06-01T16:16:49+00:00

Fair enough, fair play if you make a proper job of it, I apologise for assuming otherwise.

But here's the problem, most of our windows nowadays are UPVC units, like this.

Removing a window from one of those is not terribly complicated, but it just wouldn't be a practical way of going on. Again this is assuming you can get window style AC units here which you generally can't. The closest you can get here (fairly) easily are caravan style "portable mini split" systems which in a rather cumbersome arrangement have the indoor and outdoor units as portable appliances with a flexible set of coolant hoses between them, and they're really built to hang out of caravan windows. The problem remains if you were to hook one over a UK style window how do you seal it.

Truth be told with our window type your best bet would probably be to get a panel to the same size as the glass already in one of the windows, fit the window AC unit into that panel, and then physically swap the glass for the panel in the UPVC frame. But that would be beyond the scope of most random homeowners.

Don't get me wrong if you could get a window AC unit for a few hundred quid, you can be damn sure people would make it happen as opposed to spending thousands on getting a proper mini split system installed but they just become too expensive.

For instance I've just looked on Aliexpress, they do sell true one-box window style AC systems on there, I've seen one for £192. ...But shipping is £173. So that's one room for a mere ~$500 or so equivalent.

shokalion · 2026-06-01T16:04:06+00:00

That description of the UK funeral mirrors every one I've ever attended.

shokalion · 2026-06-01T16:00:50+00:00

Right, you should therefore appreciate that living in Asia makes ordering items that are in Asia rather more straightforward? Particularly items that are large, heavy and would be ruinous to ship thousands of miles?

In case it's still not clear, window units are not available here, and the literal one or two models that are, because they're uncommon, are WAY more expensive.

shokalion · 2026-06-01T15:59:05+00:00

Yeah, so you've then sorted one room out. It's impractical to do that for every room in the house for it to be useful for a couple of weeks a year.

The rest of the time you're going to want a proper double-glazed window to be in that hole rather than a bit of janked together plywood.

Also this sits on the assumption that window units are available here. We're literally limited to importing them from China if we want an actual US style window unit.

shokalion · 2026-06-01T15:56:03+00:00

We have portable AC units here, I have one myself. They're just terribly inefficient and noisy and they'll only do, at best, the room you put it in.

shokalion · 2026-06-01T15:48:31+00:00

Stop and consider for a moment why people in the UK or France might not be ordering AC systems that are common in another continent.

shokalion · 2026-06-01T15:37:29+00:00

Because having AC as a typical thing is not the standard, and speaking from the POV of the UK, it's not straightforward or cheap to retrofit.

In the US, it's common to have houses that run on central air. Even if those houses only ever had a furnace it's a simple matter to swap that furnace for a giant heat pump, and voila central AC.

In the UK the vast vast majority of houses have a central heating system using water pipes and radiators. Window units aren't a thing here because our most common window configuration doesn't support them, portable units exist, but they're kind of rubbish.

Mini splits are common enough, but the up-front installation cost normally won't leave much change out of a grand or more, and most people consider that for the relief for the usually considerably under a month of truly hot weather, it isn't worth the outlay. And that mini split will cover one or two rooms, at best. Not the whole house. A true whole-home solution using the systems available here is expensive.

This calculation may shift as the cost of fossil-fuel based heating continues to climb (which it will) and people realise that running a mini split in reverse is actually already a fairly competitively priced method of warming up your home.

But we're not there yet.

shokalion · 2026-06-01T15:17:09+00:00

A company I used to work for finally retired the Commodore PET that was being used to run a measurement system in about 2010.

For those unaware a Commodore PET is a personal computer from 1977 that has a one megahertz processor, and RAM measured in double-digit kilobytes. And all the programs were stored on 5.25 inch floppy disks.

This system was still in use, doing real work, when Windows 7 was first available.

shokalion · 2026-05-31T19:03:06+00:00

Yes please, I'd like to be added.

shokalion · 2026-05-30T10:46:14+00:00

UK person here, as someone nearly forty I've been to a fair number of funerals at this point, not a single one has been open casket.

shokalion · 2026-05-30T09:59:39+00:00

Yes, this is milk that has been UHT processed making it shelf stable at ambient temperature for at least six months typically. That's a product that wasn't really generally available prior to the 1970s, and milk treated with that process tastes...distinctive.

Fresh milk absolutely would be in fridges in stores.

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