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Oct. 20th, 2024 07:41 am
The children complained all the way here and are now happily chatting
about what kinds of monsters live in the woods here and demanding that
we not leave for hours.
Original is here on
instagram.
Oct. 20th, 2024
Interesting Links for 20-10-2024
Oct. 20th, 2024 12:17 pm- 1. The Lucy Letby case - here’s why experts are still arguing about it
- (tags:murder statistics healthcare evidence )
- 2. Microsoft creates fake Azure tenants to pull phishers into honeypots
- (tags:security Microsoft )
- 3. Playing video games may make you sharper – but moderate exercise does not
- (tags:exercise games intelligence )
- 4. EU court upholds right to sell PlayStation add-ons, in loss for Sony
- (tags:Sony games mod intellectual_property Europe GoodNews )
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A friend sent me this link to Ripple Energy, a company which sets up a cooperative company which then invests in wind-farms that Ripple build/run. The idea being that you then get paid back in the form of energy produced by that wind farm, which then reduces your energy costs.
And the basic idea sounds simple/nice enough - buy a share of a windfarm, get paid in the electricity it produces. But it makes me feel uncomfortable, and I'm struggling to articulate why.
The way I want electricity to work is "Some people who are good at building/running electricity generators do so. And they then sell that electricity to me, competing against other providers to keep the price down." I don't mind "Slap some solar panels on my roof and keep the energy they produce for myself." But something as complex as "Buy shares in a coop that invests in a specific wind farm company to get electricity sent back to me (requiring me to buy it from their partners)." starts to feel like the kind of thing where to do it sensibly requires me to be fluent in various areas of business and law which I'm frankly not. It starts to feel like the kind of thing where it could be a giant scam and I wouldn't be competent enough to know in advance that that was the case.
Not a giant scam in the "Take the money and run" sense. But more in the "Be not that good at building or running wind farms, and not explain in great detail the risks, and not have arrangements with the grid to actually hook them up for a decade, and oh no it turns out that this is all more complex than we thought it would be and we've gone bust, paying our board of directors a few million along the way" - all of which are in the small print, and none of which is obvious to your average person.
My other thought is "What's in it for them?" - normally an electricity generator would go to some kind of investor (a large bank or someone else with huge wodges of money to invest) and show them very detailed plans, and people *whose job it is to investigate whether you are likely to be successful at generating electricity, and who have experience in the legal, financial, and politicial aspects of that* would scrutinise those plans and your competency, and then either lend you money or not, with careful wording around how that money would be taken back if things went wrong. And if you're an electricity generator then that would be a normal cost of business for you. Your reason for doing it a different way would be either if you thought that the investment bank would say "No" or because you thought you could get the money cheaper by doing it differently. Neither of which is terribly attractive to me as the provider either of money to someone a bank would say no to, or as someone who is the cheap option.
I'm possibly too cynical here. It's plausible that this is actually a great way to invest in the future of green energy, and I've just backed too many things on Kickstarter that never delivered. And if they can get investment in wind farms from ordinary people that pay off, and we get more wind farms built because of it, that's awesome!
So, have I missed anything obvious?
And the basic idea sounds simple/nice enough - buy a share of a windfarm, get paid in the electricity it produces. But it makes me feel uncomfortable, and I'm struggling to articulate why.
The way I want electricity to work is "Some people who are good at building/running electricity generators do so. And they then sell that electricity to me, competing against other providers to keep the price down." I don't mind "Slap some solar panels on my roof and keep the energy they produce for myself." But something as complex as "Buy shares in a coop that invests in a specific wind farm company to get electricity sent back to me (requiring me to buy it from their partners)." starts to feel like the kind of thing where to do it sensibly requires me to be fluent in various areas of business and law which I'm frankly not. It starts to feel like the kind of thing where it could be a giant scam and I wouldn't be competent enough to know in advance that that was the case.
Not a giant scam in the "Take the money and run" sense. But more in the "Be not that good at building or running wind farms, and not explain in great detail the risks, and not have arrangements with the grid to actually hook them up for a decade, and oh no it turns out that this is all more complex than we thought it would be and we've gone bust, paying our board of directors a few million along the way" - all of which are in the small print, and none of which is obvious to your average person.
My other thought is "What's in it for them?" - normally an electricity generator would go to some kind of investor (a large bank or someone else with huge wodges of money to invest) and show them very detailed plans, and people *whose job it is to investigate whether you are likely to be successful at generating electricity, and who have experience in the legal, financial, and politicial aspects of that* would scrutinise those plans and your competency, and then either lend you money or not, with careful wording around how that money would be taken back if things went wrong. And if you're an electricity generator then that would be a normal cost of business for you. Your reason for doing it a different way would be either if you thought that the investment bank would say "No" or because you thought you could get the money cheaper by doing it differently. Neither of which is terribly attractive to me as the provider either of money to someone a bank would say no to, or as someone who is the cheap option.
I'm possibly too cynical here. It's plausible that this is actually a great way to invest in the future of green energy, and I've just backed too many things on Kickstarter that never delivered. And if they can get investment in wind farms from ordinary people that pay off, and we get more wind farms built because of it, that's awesome!
So, have I missed anything obvious?
So I switched broadband providers
Oct. 20th, 2024 08:02 pmI've been with Virgin Media for about 20 years. Since before they were Virgin, in fact. They were the only way to get access to dozens of channels if you didn't have a satellite dish and they had the best broadband speeds. They were expensive, and the customer service could be annoying, but if I wanted faster speeds than ADSL allowed then they were the only game in town. And back before TV moved online a Virgin TV box and a Tivo was the best way to get all of the TV I wanted.
And then Netflix and iPlayer and, frankly, all of the other TV channels moved online. And when we moved into our current house I don't think we even bothered plugging the TV box in. And the only person I ever spoke to on the landline was my parents. So two years ago, when I renewed my contract, I said "Take off the TV and the phone, I'm not going to use them." - and their retention team said "How about you keep them, but we don't charge you for them". I was still paying £45/month rather than £40 going with a competitor, but I didn't have the energy to switch for £5/month and so I stuck with them - after all they basically just worked. Although they put up their prices by inflation each year, so it was more like £51 by the time the t years were up.
And then, two years later, three days ago, I called them up* and said "Hi, I'm looking to renew my contract, and I still haven't plugged in my phone or TV box (for 4 years now). What's the cheapest deal you can give me?" and they said "£61". And I said "Pardon?" and they said "£61", and I said "I'll think about it." put down the phone and went straight to Zen* internet's home page and ordered their 300 MBit service for £40.
They automatically set things up so that Openreach (who own the UK's biggest fibre optic system, which they then lease to ISPs) will come and hook us up at some point in the next few days. And then hopefully a few days after that we'll have internet through them, and I won't have to deal with negotiating deals with Virgin ever again.
It's a shame in some ways, because the actual *service* from Virgin was pretty-much rock solid. No problems at all with their internet, TV, or phone service. But whenever I spoke to a front-line customer service rep it was an exercise in frustration. Fingers crossed everything runs smoothly with Zen!
*I say "Called them up." - what actually happened is that I looked on the site for a phone number and couldn't find one on their contact page, so I started in with the web chat, which told me there was a big queue and that I should talk to them on Whatsapp instead. And they sent me a message asking me to say "Hi" on it, which I did, at which point the webchat ended, and then I never heard anything on Whatsapp ever again. So I searched the web for a phone number for them and called them on it. So I was already in a bad mood by then.
** I chose Zen because they consistently win the Which? award for customer service and don't ever raise prices during your contract.Worth paying a bit more than we could have gotten elsewhere to get good customer service when we both work from home.
And then Netflix and iPlayer and, frankly, all of the other TV channels moved online. And when we moved into our current house I don't think we even bothered plugging the TV box in. And the only person I ever spoke to on the landline was my parents. So two years ago, when I renewed my contract, I said "Take off the TV and the phone, I'm not going to use them." - and their retention team said "How about you keep them, but we don't charge you for them". I was still paying £45/month rather than £40 going with a competitor, but I didn't have the energy to switch for £5/month and so I stuck with them - after all they basically just worked. Although they put up their prices by inflation each year, so it was more like £51 by the time the t years were up.
And then, two years later, three days ago, I called them up* and said "Hi, I'm looking to renew my contract, and I still haven't plugged in my phone or TV box (for 4 years now). What's the cheapest deal you can give me?" and they said "£61". And I said "Pardon?" and they said "£61", and I said "I'll think about it." put down the phone and went straight to Zen* internet's home page and ordered their 300 MBit service for £40.
They automatically set things up so that Openreach (who own the UK's biggest fibre optic system, which they then lease to ISPs) will come and hook us up at some point in the next few days. And then hopefully a few days after that we'll have internet through them, and I won't have to deal with negotiating deals with Virgin ever again.
It's a shame in some ways, because the actual *service* from Virgin was pretty-much rock solid. No problems at all with their internet, TV, or phone service. But whenever I spoke to a front-line customer service rep it was an exercise in frustration. Fingers crossed everything runs smoothly with Zen!
*I say "Called them up." - what actually happened is that I looked on the site for a phone number and couldn't find one on their contact page, so I started in with the web chat, which told me there was a big queue and that I should talk to them on Whatsapp instead. And they sent me a message asking me to say "Hi" on it, which I did, at which point the webchat ended, and then I never heard anything on Whatsapp ever again. So I searched the web for a phone number for them and called them on it. So I was already in a bad mood by then.
** I chose Zen because they consistently win the Which? award for customer service and don't ever raise prices during your contract.Worth paying a bit more than we could have gotten elsewhere to get good customer service when we both work from home.