Interesting Links for 18-07-2017

[andrewducker]

A List Of Times Doctor Who Was Ruined Forever

(tags: drwho funny )

Scientists marvel at creatures' precise body clock

(tags: time genes life )

Taiwan woman divorces husband who ignored her messages

(tags: communication relationships divorce marriage )

Is Love Racist? The TV show laying our biases bare

(tags: love relationships viaSwampers race uk )

Custos startup uses bitcoin bounties to make pirates rat on one another

(tags: piracy copyright bitcoin )

UK students should not try to pay off loans early

(tags: tax students uk )

Pay-per-mile road tax plan wins £250,000 Wolfson economics prize

(tags: tax cars transport economics viaSwampers )

Humans hardwired to lean to the right while kissing the world over

(tags: psychology romance kissing )

Manchester’s bike-share scheme isn't working – because people don't know how to share

(tags: sharing society bicycles UK manchester )

Flow battery developer ViZn Energy says it can pair solar and storage for 4¢/kWh

(tags: solarpower batteries electricity )

Generating random English place names

(tags: geography names AI England )

Doctor Who: We regret to inform you that you are still legally a man

(tags: drwho law lgbt transgender uk )

“Board game of the year” goes to Kingdomino (my copy arrives today!)

(tags: games )

A brain implant turns “loser” mice into aggressive fighters

(tags: mice brain aggression personality cyborg )

Programmers discuss "What's the worst thing your code has done?"

(tags: fail programming )

Smoking in the UK now down to 15%, government aims for 12%

(tags: smoking uk )

Advertising watchdog to get tough on gender stereotypes

(tags: advertising stereotypes gender uk )

Comments

UK students should not try to pay off loans early

[jack]

That makes sense, although I'm always hesitant at people's complete omission of any possibility the government won't suddenly change the rules again to force everyone with a loan to pay more, given that's what the whole system seemed set up to do from the start. I mean, I hope they don't, and it seems likely the same logic of that article would apply in either case, but I expected them to say, "even if the government removed that cap, if there's a 9% repayment rate for life, it's better to pay for life that try to pay the loan off now" not "well, here's the current situation". I've read other articles talking about "oh my why on EARTH might people not want to take loans out when the repayment terms are so clearly specified and generous (but can be changed at any time)" and ground my teeth.

Re: UK students should not try to pay off loans early

[andrewducker]

I'd like to hope that the terms aren't retroactively changeable in this case.

But I also think that explicitly making it a graduate tax would have been a much better idea.

Re: UK students should not try to pay off loans early

[doug]

The terms have already been changed retrospectively, to freeze the repayment threshold rather than indexing it to earnings as originally promised:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/nov/25/student-loans-george-osborne-criticised-freezing-repayment-threshold