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Oddly enough the Irish equivalent of the FCC, ComReg, made a small number of pay phones a part of the ‘Universal Service Obligations’ for the ‘incumbent fixed line operator.’ The result has been they’ve contracted out the sites (all of which are prominent locations) to an advertising company...

They’re a nice idea, and the refillable cartridges make some sense but it’s not really solving a big issue I’ve ever had. It just seems like that and the cap dosing are an attempt at developing consumables and a secondary revenue. I found their detergents work pretty well though. I wonder if...

There's a difference in how the markets were structured. In the old days in Europe telecommunications were generally seen as a public utility. The history of it goes back to the dawn of telephone services. The history here (and it's part of UK history too as we were part of the UK until 1922)...

@henene4 The way it works here in Ireland we've basically got 3 FTTH networks and a cable network. The FTTH networks are open to any ISP to use as an access network. You can pick your ISP and in some areas you've a choice of infrastructural networks, but in a lot of areas you might be stuck...

Miele changed the formula of the TwinDos detergents used in Europe anyway. The original ones left a very bitter odour - I didn't like them. The current ones aren't bad at all. I found my TwinDose dispenser has started to leak though after a few years and I've largely given up on using it as...

Well, it depends. Ultimately fibre to home is a lot more capable than any kind of wireless technology. The internet has a tendency to find content to fill whatever the maximum capacity of the network is. It wasn't all that long ago that 50mbit/s seemed way more than most of us could use...

Peak dial-up era really used the phone network in a way that it was never intended to be used. Switching systems were designed with an expectation that a large % of calls were likely to be short. Instead you'd modems sitting on voice lines for hours and hours. That tied up capacity in switching...

Mobile 5G speed test.. I have fibre at home which gets around 1Gbit/s but recently got a 5G phone and have to say it's a huge speed improvement. Just a random speed test wandering around - not bad for €14.99/month promo for 6 months (€29.99 after) with 30-day notice contract on a SIM only plan...

I think it’s somewhat parallel and part of that whole contemporary ‘Karen’ phenomenon (and I’m using that term gender neutrally) and it’s certainly not unique to the US. There’s a bit of a cultural wave of just not giving a damn and being hugely demanding / expecting things to magically...

I remember reading a British book on homes from the very early 1970s and it has a chapter on dishwashers that make them sound slightly more complex than MRI scanners. They were very definitely still a niche product in the UK at that stage.

Handy word that likely means very little but sounds technical in multiple languages.

Non-bio detergents, as sold here anyway, don't contain any extra bleach. The majority of them currently in use are liquids and pods and don't contain any bleach at all, just OBA. Persil non-bio and Fairy non-bio powder in my experience simply don't shift stains effectively. Everything about how...

I just remember being in a laundrette in London and when I was living there and this very friendly lady asked me “how do you get the washing machine to fill up? I put my clothes into the big one over here and nothings happening.” She had put her laundry into a dryer and poured about half a...

They don’t rely on bleach anymore than biological detergents do, but they definitely rely on the chemical components of the detergent exclusively. The history of non-bio in this part of the world is all about marketing. There were a series of panics about enzymes in the 70s and Persil Non Bio...

@henene4 Non Bio Person Non-Bio and Fairy Non-Bio are still huge sellers here and in Britain. There’s a cohort who are firmly convinced (by decades of non bio ads) that enzymes are a tool of the devil and slightly more dangerous than plutonium. I know a woman from England living in France who...

There’s probably less focus on them in the USA because of low energy costs. It’s very definitely a different market when it comes to that focus. Some of it is driven by cost, but also there’s a genuine awareness of the energy consumption of machines - it’s a huge part of how they’re marketed...

For something like that you’d really want to be talking directly to a supplier who works with unusual requirements like ships at sea, oil / gas platforms, military etc In Europe probably Miele, Electrolux or similar commercial machines. Domestic/ Residential machines of any brand may not be...

Yeah, the Miele has been impressive. I’ve had it since 2017 and its energy use is excellent and the results are as good as I was getting with a vented Miele at tiny fraction of the running costs. It’s extremely gentle too. I could trust it with very shrink prone t-shirts.

I’ve been petty happy with my Miele heat pump dryer so far. Seems to be the way forward as a technology for drying. Some of the earlier ones weren’t great but it’s maturing as a tech.

No. Definitely not! My machine never has any issues with mould and I could do without adding more chemicals to my environment. Also I’m not sure that typical disinfectants are very effective against that kind of mildew like stuff anyway. Run your machine on a hot wash, full of towels once in a...