> I think it's exactly that, the UK has never had this so people there either choose by brand or just convenience.
We've had it for years (as noted in other comments there's a few different people like the RAC, AA and Petrolprices.com all maintaining their own lists - a quick check of my email has messages from the latter going back to 2011). The new part is that this is from the government and the data is freely accessible (Petrolprices in particular covered their pages in ads, so I'd be surprised if there wasn't a way to exchange money for the data).
The context to this is that, especially since the pandemic, there's been a complaint with the Competition and Markets Authority that the petrol stations were quick to raise prices, slow to lower them, and weren't competing with each other[1]:
> The CMA found that retail prices tended to "rise like a rocket, but fall like a feather" in response to increases or decreases in the cost of crude oil.
Independent petrol stations have virtually disappeared and you don't have to look too hard to see that in an area they tend to all raise or lower their prices in virtual lockstep. Gathering this data would make the case significantly easier if the next step were that some of the petrol station operators had to be broken up to encourage more competition.
But how accurate was the data on those older apps?
Petrolprices.com (for example) seems to have been built on user-reported data rather than petrol-station reported data, and it's easy to find fairly recent criticisms of the whole thing being inaccurate. And an inaccurate comparison site is fairly useless IMHO.
I lived in the UK until 2021 and I must admit I'd never heard of them. Whereas here in WA everyone uses fuelprices. There are probably other factors involved here as well, as we have a weird weekly or biweekly price cycle (though I think this has ended somewhat in the last two years) where every second Tuesday fuel was dirt cheap as they were trying to clear down the tanks ahead of the next delivery.
Is the 'new part' not that the vendors are being forced to actually publish comparison data rather than rely on third parties to gather it?
Other than a time lag (and petrol prices don't generally change often enough to matter IME), I can't say I ever noticed any of them being that inaccurate.
myAutomate (the owners of Petrolprices.com) talk about having "over 60 years combined expertise in the fuel industry", so I suppose I'd be surprised if it's all crowdsourced data - they've probably made arrangements with at least the big players, in which case the forced publication is much of a muchness?
This isn’t a new thing either; Farage has been challenged over claiming to align with far-right Northern Irish Unionist parties like Traditional Unionist Voice while recording Cameos saying things like “up the ‘RA”.
The ignorance isn’t a mistake, it’s part of the brand that lets them spout whatever their audience wants ts to hear.
Maybe that's the answer - the USA needs to hold a referendum on becoming a British colony again. It's 250 years since they declared independence, maybe they've changed their mind on having a king? (/s)
> Hosting a website behind a NAT isn’t as trivial as it used to be, and for many it’s now impossible without IPv6.
The example I keep coming back to is multiplayer games like Mario Kart, where Nintendo tell you to put the Switch in the DMZ or forward a huge range of ports (1024-65535!) to it [1].
If you’ve got more than one Switch in the household, though, then I guess it sucks to be you.
To require that, the person would have needed to disable upnp on their router. I’ve played tons of multiplayer games on the switch and upnp handled it seamlessly on the 7 or 8 home networks I connected it to over its life. Never once even had to think about it.
So yes, if you disable the requisite, standard, built-in feature on your router, you may need a pretty annoying workaround. Weird!
What percentage of users do you imagine disable upnp? Let’s be real. This is a problem that your average user will never, ever experience a problem with.
No they wouldn't. UPnP is not requisite, certainly not standard, or necessarily built-in. For example, the router I've got doesn't implement UPnP.
It's not unusual for it to be disabled, because it's a security issue that something with no authentication can punch enduring holes out through NAT.
It's also irrelevant in a scenario where the ISP's using CGNAT.
I'm sure the Switch deals with conflict resolution with multiple consoles on the same network too but shrug it's another example of how NAT is a pain and also contradicts your assertion that incoming connections would be a breach of ISP ToS [1].
Edit: A quick Google suggests the Switch originally didn't support UPnP, and the Switch 2 now supports IPv6.
Ok, so it didn’t even need upnp then. Are you talking about using their LAN head-to-head feature across the internet? Or perhaps all the times I used my switch on various networks to play head-to-head games it was… my imagination? Sure. If people had to consistently forward every port on their home router to play Fortnite, smash, etc. with a portable console you’d never hear the end of it. This is literally the first time I encountered someone saying this was a problem. Regardless, most people don’t buy routers— they use the ones their ISPs gave them, and I haven’t seen one of those come without upnp in at least a decade. You’re seeking out reasons to dislike NAT.
> So many people online (not just reviewers) complaining that it's just a spec-bump, demanding a new design.
If ever there was a case of "be careful what you wish for" - whether it's the Touch Bar, deleting ports or the butterfly keyboard, a redesign isn't necessarily a positive.
I loved the touch bar once I realized all the first party applications actually had useful customizations for it.
When you used the Terminal app, there was literally a "man" button that would open the relevant man page (for whatever command you currently had typed) in a new window.
Actually an awesome feature if application authors got on board.
Making the power button part of the bar instead of a physical button sucked though.
> Ford was really big here at one point but it's a shadow of what it used to be.
Speaking for the UK at least, it's not like we were really getting US-originated models from Ford: it used to be the Mondeo or Fiesta but now it's the Kuga. Similarly GM (AKA Vauxhall/Opel, now Stellantis) pushed the Corsa/Astra and so on rather than, say, the Chevy Suburban.
A majority of them are made within Europe (if not necessarily the EU, between the UK and Turkey) so should avoid tariffs.
Yeah the oversized gas guzzlers of the US were never popular in Europe. They're hard to park here (parking bays are smaller), difficult to drive in narrow historical cities, expensive to fuel etc. And pick-ups are very unpopular here, unless you're a farmer there's no point in such a large open loading bed.
I remember choosing between a Nissan 100NX and a Ford Probe (both about 10 years old) but the latter had way worse fuel economy not being a Europe native model (though it wasn't really a US model either I think). Also the 100NX wasn't really a sports car, it was just a Nissan Sunny compact with a more sporty looking body and T-top. It was a super nice car though.
> And pick-ups are very unpopular here, unless you're a farmer there's no point in such a large open loading bed.
And even if you are a farmer, an american pick-up seems to be a rare choice around here. If you see something pick-up-like, it's usually more a variant of UniMog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unimog .
And for the "small-time farmer without enough money to buy lots of equipment" (rare nowadays), tractors with tons of included functions were often more practical: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fendt_GT (no english version, sorry). Since Germany is more dense and distances are smaller, low speed is less of an issue I guess, compared to the US. And you can pull real farm equipment, which a pick-up car usually cannot.
Yeah it's also that American pick-ups usually don't feature 4WD (unless as an even more expensive option) which is kinda a need if you're into farming. It's a weird niche for people that want to show they are outdoorsy somehow but aren't really.
And for people that just need to move a lot, having it exposed to the open air is usually a dealbreaker. Panelvans are much more popular for that. Or MPVs with removable seats.
I have seen other countries where they are popular though. Like in Australia where they call it a "Ute". But yes also a long-distance country like you say.
In our part of rural Australia ute (utility vehicle) is largely reserved for the classic Australian Ute (eg: 1974 HQ Holden Ute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cztnXaND-Xo) which is a non US car footprint that'd be at home in Europe, cut down from a family sedan to be a single front bench seat in a two door cab, with everything behind as a tray.
Other parts of Australia do vary
As such things get bigger, get more doors, and veer towards a US size they get called crew cabs, trucks, pickup's, etc.
Traditionally, the term referred to vehicles built on passenger car chassis and with the cargo tray integrated with the passenger body (coupé utility vehicles).
However, present-day usage of the term "ute" in Australian English and New Zealand English has expanded to include any vehicle with an open cargo area at the rear, which would be called a pickup truck in other countries.
doesn't speak for all Australians and veers toward city usage.
> (This occasionally leads to fun disputes; for instance see the famous Jaffa Cake court case, or the more recent determination by the Irish Supreme Court that Subway's bread was not bread.)
The FT's been having fun investigating whether Tesco's Birthday Cake or M&S's Strawberries and Cream sandwiches are subject to VAT. The answer seems to be no but maybe they should (although nobody cares, probably). Quality journalism at its best.
We've had it for years (as noted in other comments there's a few different people like the RAC, AA and Petrolprices.com all maintaining their own lists - a quick check of my email has messages from the latter going back to 2011). The new part is that this is from the government and the data is freely accessible (Petrolprices in particular covered their pages in ads, so I'd be surprised if there wasn't a way to exchange money for the data).
The context to this is that, especially since the pandemic, there's been a complaint with the Competition and Markets Authority that the petrol stations were quick to raise prices, slow to lower them, and weren't competing with each other[1]:
> The CMA found that retail prices tended to "rise like a rocket, but fall like a feather" in response to increases or decreases in the cost of crude oil.
Independent petrol stations have virtually disappeared and you don't have to look too hard to see that in an area they tend to all raise or lower their prices in virtual lockstep. Gathering this data would make the case significantly easier if the next step were that some of the petrol station operators had to be broken up to encourage more competition.
1: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp80dpzdg37o#comments
Edit: Petrolprices was founded in 2005 (!) [2]
2: https://www.myautomateapp.co.uk/
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