Explains the "hot hail" as used by Ming the Merciless.

Also, the problem isn't that Africa is too small. Mercator at the equator means it is accurately sized. It's all the land masses at higher latitudes that are too big, but that's attributed to racism instead of the costive apes from the Dark Continent learning basic mathematics and geometry. Bet they want reparations while they're at it.

Those boxes are the distribution boxes on the "final pole" (from a cable that _has_ been run underground or a couple of wires from a preceding pole that extends) to split to individual residential properties and can have up to 16 wires off them. Depends how it was built out when the houses were built; mine has 2 connecting wires and 10 distribution ones as well as 2 more to the next pole as my road was extended with more properties after the initial installation.

Assumes poles are embedded in soil. Apart from rural areas, they are embedded in the asphalt of the pavement (sidewalk), requiring infill, tamping, patching, etc.. Times several million.

For added fun, Openreach will claim it's the local council's responsibility to maintain the streets when a pole is removed and local councils will claim it's Openreach's responsibility to make good the mess that results. Either way the argument would take years to resolve involviing courts of all flavours while the street remains a disaster area.

The street lamp network is already in place, usually fairly close to a pole anyway and that would also require some work to dig a channel to hook up to the power with the costs entirely borne by the local council. Plus there's regulations on how close (or separate) lamps are, so that isn't going to happen.

> We don't have much else on those poles

We don't have _anything_ else on those poles. Legally you can't even put a picture of a lost cat on one without permission from Openreach, but that tends to have a blind eye turned as it isn't commercial. Like a bunch of flowers tied to one where some idiot offed themselves as they binned their motor overcooking a bend.

Telephone poles in UK are only ever for use by BT (previously GPO) as they put them up and have never shared with anybody. Mainly because there wasn't anybody to share with; even when alternative landline networks came into being they still routed through the BT national network as they were small localised ones (such as Kingston Telecommunications) before the advent of cellular networks.

Also not mentioned: what will happen to all the poles that no longer have wires strung on them. Openreach aren't replacing directly with fibre, that's being routed in the ground from new distribution boxes, except possibly for really rural areas. For suburbia that's millions of useless and worthless ex pine trees soaked in creosote that will not only be a bitch to dig out (some have been there for over 50 years) but also are unrecyclable as well as shockingly polluting should they be burnt.

We're all going to get turned into hermit crabs.

He's the dumbest smart person he knows. Pity he doesn't know that, though.

Given your uid, probably on here as well.

No need to knacker your starter.

You can bump a manual within 5 yards single handed on the flat if you know what you're doing, most of which is the distance you roll while you're getting back in the car. Facing downhill you don't even have to push and can do it in 1.

Funny. I had a rental on holiday in Crete once and not only was that the first time I'd ever driven LHD, as well as the first time I'd had to drive on the right, it was a manual, so also the first time I'd ever had to change gears with my right hand. Was second nature before I'd even left the airport.

> We already have one, it's called the Mustang mach-e (though being one of the worst EVs I've driven maybe we shouldn't acknowledge it exists).

I'm glad US has an unmentionable abomination EV from Ford as well as UK. Here, it's the Capri but they went down one level further into hell and made it a 4-door SUV-lite Chelsea tractor.

So Claude is your plastic pal who's fun to be with?

First against the wall when the revolution comes.

"No responsible disclosure" means just that. No 90 day window because that's still "responsible disclosure". Why should I give 90 days grace for a bounty that isn't going to be paid anyway?