mackwinston @ mackwinston @feddit.uk

Posts

0

Comments

88

Joined

2 yr. ago

Bikes don't go very well in neutral, I've found.

Look at it from his point of view. His plan probably went no further than the escape, so once he was off the lorry it was "Now what?" If he had a real followup plan he probably would have got much further. One of his former school mates was quoted as saying "One thing I will tell you though, he’s not a terrorist. He doesn’t know his arse from his elbow". The fact he even tried to escape (which anyone with sense would know would only make things worse) let alone do the original crime suggests he's probably not the kind who ever thinks ahead.

He had a window of about 2 hours when he could have used public transport to move around (after which too many people would be looking for him) - but during that time he has no money, and given pretty much every station in London has ticket barriers, he's not going to be getting around by train or by bus unless he can lift someone's Oyster card or contactless card without being noticed, and from quotes about his past, apart from the idiotic fake bombs that got him into this mess in the first place, he seems to be a first-time criminal, so successfully pulling off thefts or shoplifting was probably not something he was practised or good at.

After that time he's pretty much limited to travelling on foot in places where he won't get a second look, or at night. He probably found a poorly-secured bicycle on Saturday morning and gambled that people wouldn't give someone cycling down the towpath a second look, and it's faster than walking.

A good curry the night before usually guarantees at least two.

Honda. The answer is Honda.

Why we won't raise our kids in suburbia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw

Renewables are already viable in the UK and making up an ever increasing percentage of electricity generation. Additionally, the time when it's windiest in the UK is also the time when electricity demand is at its highest.

Using coal for electricity in the UK is now rare. Coal only made up 1.5% of electricity generation in the UK in 2022. Just ten years ago coal generation was nearly half.

You can use dd on another machine to make a bitwise copy of the card before you first use it.

Debian (a very conservative distro) switched to Wayland by default in debian 10 if I'm not mistaken (we're now on 12).

I didn't notice the change until I tried to run a niche program that really needs X11. Unless you're doing this kind of thing, then you can probably just use Wayland. At least in Debian it's really easy to switch between Wayland and X11 by selecting the session type when you log in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYWzMvlj2RQ

"I'm also very happy to point out that nVidia has been the worst [...] so nVidia, "fuck you!""

Very few taxi firms, the practise has largely died out. I can't tell you the last time I got into a taxi with a handheld radio in it. One taxi firm here still has a large dipole on the roof of their building, but AFAIK they no longer use it.

¡Me cago en Dios!

• No te puedes cagar en Dios, la gravedad te lo impide...

Similar to "He's one can short of a six pack"

No, two way radios are by and large used by the police, ambulance and fire (and certainly when it comes to the police, they like to exempt themselves from legislation they find inconvenient - e.g. for the longest time, motorcycle visor tints were illegal unless you were the police in which case they were just fine!)

Also, alas, politics/legislation is the art of the possible, and perfect is the enemy of the good. Doing nothing because it would be politically impossible to ban all phone use while driving is a worse state of affairs than at least banning handheld phone usage. Of course it bothers me as I'm frequently a vulnerable road user (I own several motorcycles, and do all my local journeys on a pushbike or walk, and I've been hit by drivers whose standard of observation has been piss poor) but at the same time I have to recognise that at least a ban on handheld phone use will reduce my chance of getting hit, even if (at the moment) all phone usage isn't banned, and so while it is not perfect it is better than nothing. And more power to Mikey for dobbing people in.

Anyways, all of that aside - is using a handheld phone while stuck in traffic more dangerous than using a handsfree phone while travelling at 60 miles an hour?

That I don't know. However, using a hand held phone in a traffic jam is certainly hazardous, as my Houston ramming incident demonstrated. (CyclingMikey has also several videoed incidents of people driving very badly in traffic jams while using hand held phones, putting vulnerable road users such as pedestrians at risk).

Personally I think all mobile phone use behind the wheel should be banned including hands-free, but legislation is often the art of the possible and lines have to be drawn somewhere (e.g. why is the speed limit in urban areas 30 mph, not 31 or 35 or 25? At some point someone has to draw that line. Enforcability would also be a factor, and when considering a change in the law, and it would be very hard to enforce a ban on hands free phone use).

Hands-free phone calls have been shown to cause additional risk, much more so than just talking to a passenger (there are a number of reasons why this is so, some of it is the brutal compression from the codec reducing intelligibility added to the limited audio bandwidth also reducing intelligibility, which means more mental effort must be spent on a phone call than just talking to a passenger). Using a hands free phone at 60 mph might be less likely to be a factor in a crash than going on Instagram heads down on a hand held phone in a traffic jam, but risk = probability x consequences and the consequences of having a distraction incident at 60 mph will be more severe even if the probability is lower.

I think we don't take driving as seriously as we should, we put vulnerable 3rd party road users in a lot of danger by not devoting our full attention to driving. Everyone Mikey catches quite honestly deserves what they got - if they can't take driving seriously they need to have their driving licences taken away. If you can't resist the temptation to use your phone turn the damn thing off and put it in your bag in the back seat.

Well I stand corrected on 2 way radios (one of those differences between Manx and English law - I know first hand that 2 way radios have to be hands-free here).

Have any of those Pinner v Everett cases been for mobile phone use, or similar? Or has it all been to do with drink driving - certainly the list of citations that site gives for free were all about failure to provide a sample. Drink driving is a completely different kettle of fish because you can prove an offence on someone not in a car if you've observed them driving five minutes ago, because you remain over the limit for a considerable period of time. Given how many driving offences are prosecuted, 131 cases since 1969 (over 50 years ago) is a vanishingly tiny proportion of cases.

Lots of things "can" happen but a prosecution of someone for using a mobile phone in a layby with the keys out the ignition is has about as likely as my underwear teleporting one foot to the left unexpectedly.

Twice, and they were completely different experiences.

First was gas at the dentists for taking 3 teeth out as my mouth was overcrowded. I was kind of asleep, I could hear people's voices in a really trippy flanged way, and I could vaguely feel some tugging at my jaw (but no pain). The gas tasted awful.

The second was for an operation at hospital after an accident (requiring 6.5 hours of microsurgery). It was like jumping forwards 7 hours in time, literally counting the seconds after the anaesthetic went in at night, then immediately waking up in broad daylight. It is completely unlike deep sleep (where you still are aware that time has passed).

Under the law, if you pull into a lay-by, stop the car, turn off the engine, remove the key, and leave the car to take a phone call, you can still be charged and found guilty of using a phone “while driving”.

Don't be absurd. There is exactly one case where this was discussed and it was a suspected drink driver who had been observed to be driving and in motion (look up the case here: https://vlex.co.uk/vid/pinner-v-everett-793596681). There are exactly 0 prosecutions for driving offences for people who weren't actually in their car and driving when the alleged offence took place.

Also two way radios are banned if they are hand held. The rules are the same for two way radios - they must be hands-free.

If people rely on driving for their work or independence, they should not be using their phones while driving. It's not hard. A friend of mine is a train driver and you can imagine that being caught using your phone in that job is instant dismissal. His solution is to turn the phone off and put it in his bag, therefore there can be no temptation to use the phone and absolute proof in the case of an incident that phone usage wasn't part of it. If a motorist can't resist the temptation to use their phone, they should be doing the same.

The overwhelming majority of people 'caught' by Mikey seem to be using social media, not taking urgent work calls.

It is still dangerous to use the phone in traffic jams, because what phone users do while texting or doing Instagram is to be looking down while using their peripheral vision to see if traffic is moving, or even less. So they see a movement and move off, not having seen the pedestrian crossing through the gaps. I've witnessed a crash caused by such a distracted driver - albeit it was in Houston - the phone user next to us heard a car horn from behind and without looking just went and hit the car in front. Had there been someone crossing the road in front they would have been crushed.

Being in a traffic jam is still actively driving. Mikey might not be a hero, but calling him a "tool of the oppression of the state" is severely overegging the pudding, when to avoid such "oppression" all you have to do is not use your phone and pay attention to driving.

New duty rules:

(1) it doesn't penalize still cider (which tends to be the typical craft ciders), with even a strong still craft cider usually being below 8.4% abv.

(2) plenty of craft beers <= 3.4% abv, e.g. milds, many bitters, and the highest rate doesn't kick in until 8.5%. Nice beers don't have to be strong.

I'm a bit skeptical of Brexit being significant here. Craft beer from small breweries generally isn't exported, and often it doesn't go that far from the area in which it's brewed.

All the other reasons listed (pandemic, cost of living crisis, tax rules etc) are plausible though.