How much do we subsidise the oil industry? Just look at the military deployments in the Persian Gulf guaranteeing supply.

One puts her fitbit on the dog

When we had Vitality healthcare at work, they explicitly said that they had ways to detect this very trick. Not so good when at detecting that it's your child with your running around with your phone though ;). Never mind that some of these health companies are also involved in pensions and, as a healthy and active person, I don't think I want them making decisions about what annuity I might possibly get later in life. The less data you share with these companies, the better. Also, never mind that Vitality was about three times the cost of Bupa, which I guess is how they fund all of their incentives.

Working from home is slowly killing you! As is owning a car. According to my phone, I've averaged about 10,000 steps per day over the last six months. Last time I worked from home, I barely made 600. I sold my car in 2008 and go to the office every day (lucky to have a short commute at the moment), which I'm sure are both beneficial to my health.

I suspect that depends on your height. 7,000 steps is more like 3.5 miles for me, based on the averages for steps and distance from my phone.

Technically, it's both. It straddles the mid-Atlantic ridge and sits on both the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. There is no continental slope or abyssal plain between Scotland and Iceland, which is maybe what you were saying about the continental shelf (it sits on the same continental shelf).

Yes, but only some places like theatres and mall centre. I think in houses it is something like 4%, compared to 90% in Florida or even 60% in Canada.

No. I was replying to somebody who wrote about H1b and I had an H1b in the late 90s. Not sure if anything's changed in the requirements since then, but it wasn't just an any old route in to the US. It was a bit of pain all around. Probably not worth the hassle of the expense and time to apply for one, unless there's no enforcement of the prevailing wage requirements for example and it really is used for undercutting local talent. I was certainly on a fair wage at the time.

That kind of defeats the purpose of bringing in people who have specific skills. Furthermore, as a former H1b myself, I know that the salary has to satisfy the Department of Labor's prevailing wage. If you want to make the salary threshold higher, no need to turn it in to an auction, just set the bar higher.

I decided the US wasn't for me after three years and moved overseas. I then worked 1099-MISC for another American company for four years (until it was bought by a company with an international office near me). If I can do that, what's the point of capping H1b numbers?

Working from home, as a contractor, so always connected to client via VPN. A contract could be done with a 1MB link because there is about no comm needed, another contract for a broadcasting company required downloading/uploading gigs and gigs of video per day and the gigabit link makes a big difference here.

I was taught to write quotes as 66 and 99 when I was at school, but they graduated in to straight quotes that lean to the left or the right. Straight (vertical) quotes was always viewed as a limitation of typewriters and not done when writing by hand, and those typewriters of course have gone the way of the dodo.

This whole discussion reminds me of 1990's and early noughties flame wars on the Usenet from grumpy people who didn't like HTML. Thanks Netscape! Hmmm, that reminds me of the dodo again ;)

If a phone is configured to automatically update, why can't Apple create an iOS update that is specially crafted to give easy access to the handset? I.e. remove the security. Is there something inherent in iOS and iPhones that means that can't work?

The single decker ones have been around a while, but the double decker ones entered service recently in 2021. Looks like there's a trickle of them being deployed around the country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Buses are a different public transport story though: TfL has 20 hydrogen buses running in the centre of London on routes 7 and RV1.

Why are you harping on about Starmer when the data leak and the relocation scheme were setup by the previous government?

You appear to have benefitted from dubious moderation too either by people ignorant of the story or simply supporting their political views and disinformation.

The relocation scheme was setup in April 2024, by the previous, Tory, government. According to the story I read by the BBC.