Thinking about leaving the UK - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: deadly_penguin
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 06:54:59 pm
content: I'm a fairly recent Electronics grad working for a big research centre designing custom instruments and sensors; great job, but my wife and I are looking hard at leaving the UK in the next few years but not sure where.The wife is American - so that's an option - and Germany looks like there's plenty of choice in Engineering and might be better to live than the States, but beyond that I've no idea.Has anyone who upped and left got any advice or any regrets?

author: Andy Watson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 07:22:39 pm
content: My regret is not leaving when I had the chance(s).

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 09:51:54 pm
content: Look towards the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden) and the Netherlands.An issue you shouldn't overlook is the language barrier, and in all the above English is no problem at all.Germany, Austria, Switzerland are a bit more difficult. In electronics it's no big deal, but everyday life will be a challenge.For South Europe, you'll certainly need to learn the local language before even going there.Good Luck.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 10:04:42 pm
content: Quote from: Benta on August 04, 2024, 09:51:54 pmI second this. You could add Belgium to the list but only the Dutch speaking part.In any other country, you will have to learn the local language. In Germany, France and Italy you won't get far using English for an engineering job either. In France the people working at the work permit office for foreigners don't speak any other language than French. Odd but true.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 10:14:03 pm
content: Quote from: deadly_penguin on August 04, 2024, 06:54:59 pmWell, of course you are thinking of leaving the UK with your engineering degree. Why would anyone in the UK get an engineering degree. especially electronics, if its not to find employment abroad?I know a lot of people who went to the US and stayed. I also know a number who went to the US childless, but when they had children, and those children approached school age, they reconsidered and moved back to the UK. That was a long time ago. Maybe they would be less likely to return today. If you have contacts somewhere with good engineering prospects make use of that. It can be hard settling in a new place, but contacts help enormously. If you have skills people are falling over backwards to get, you may get great support from a potential employer. If you have more generic skills maybe you will have to figure all the local stuff yourself. That can be hard, especially if there are any language barriers. Its amazing how far speaking English will take you in a work environment, but outside work local languages can be really important, especially when interacting with officialdom.If your wife is American, can family there help you? US companies have a reputation for poor benefits (e.g. short holidays), but one area they can be very good is helping people settle in and get productive quickly. Germany has been a good choice, but their industries seem to be having a rough time at the moment.Quote from: deadly_penguin on August 04, 2024, 06:54:59 pmIf you roam the world you will find quite a cohort of engineers who left the UK. You certainly won't be alone in doing this. Most people don't return to the UK unless something goes horribly wrong, although I think quite a few, like me, return for retirement. Despite some ups and downs, going abroad for life and work was the best thing I ever did.

author: jonovid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 11:05:23 pm
content: if heading for Australia your probably 50ys too late, as Sydney & Melbourne are getting overcrowded too.but if your prepared to go bush, life can be comfortably affordable. just avoid buying property near national parks that are the high fire risk areas.or low-lying country on the banks of a river that are the floodplains.

author: jonpaul
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2024, 11:20:54 pm
content: Relocate: Germany....High energy cost, bad transport, most DE firms have fled to Hungary, Romainia, etc.USA: Depends on the state, TX good, CA , NY, bad.Switzerland has any advantages and a strong electronics/tech industry but very high cost of living.j

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 12:12:56 am
content: From what I am seeing, Switzerland is on the verge of declining - may be not obvious yet, but it's already not what it used to be. Still, a strong industry in high-tech areas, if you have the skills.Scandinavia is possibly a good option, and yes, English is no problem there. Which is a good thing, because their local languages are not easy to learn IMO. The cost of living tends to be very high, but salaries are proportional. Just make sure you negotiate your salary according to the local context, and not according to your own references from your home country.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 12:18:36 am
content: Quote from: jonpaul on August 04, 2024, 11:20:54 pmCalifornia has high living costs, but the quality of life can be good, and compensates.Quote from: SiliconWizard on August 05, 2024, 12:12:56 amThis for sure. Do plenty of research.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 02:27:42 am
content: I would think that Canada or Australia or any of the other former UK countries would be a natural choice for you. I really don't know about Australia but I know that Canada has a lot of high tech electronics industries.What part of the States is your wife from and is she wanting to get back there?Two out of my three cousins in England left and went to Australia and Scotland and they have no regrets.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 02:36:23 am
content: Quote from: IanB on August 05, 2024, 12:18:36 amYes, when moving to the USA, your expected income will be a big factor regarding where you can live in comfort.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 02:43:31 am
content: Quote from: BrianHG on August 05, 2024, 02:36:23 amYes, definitely avoid California and aim for some place like Florida or Texas where the economy is booming and the cities don't look like a third world ghetto.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 04:21:40 am
content: Quote from: deadly_penguin on August 04, 2024, 06:54:59 pmI'm from New Zealand, not the UK, and in fact have somehow never been there despite 3/4 of my ancestors coming from the UK in the late 19th century (my maternal grandfather had a Danish mother and Swedish father).I've worked for a company in Russia for over four years, including three years living there. I was the only foreigner in the company, but everyone had good written English, and 90%+ were good with conversations too. I only needed Russian language for shops and supermarkets (mostly for reading product labels, only a couple of phrases at checkout e.g. recognising "Do you need a bag?" and answering appropriately) and McD etc (same ... "For here or to go?"), taxis, restaurants, signs on the street and in the metro (entry, exit, transfer ...). Perhaps more importantly, they *like* English-speaking people (even if their government doesn't).Ukraine is similar, in fact even easier for English-speaking people, something close to my experiences in Sweden maybe, but not quite Denmark. Much easier than Germany or Austria or Switzerland or .. eek .. France And Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv are not Moscow, but they're all amazing very pleasant and advanced cities.Or were, before the current unfortunate situation.Once the war is over, Ukraine (almost anywhere) will very quickly be a great place to be. And Moscow and St Petersburg too.They will both (sadly...) have a big shortage of men. And not only in terms of skilled workers, if you know what I mean.In terms of lifestyle, New Zealand and Australia are both great. The thing about NZ is ... it really would be a lot better if you can bring your work with you. Remote work for US or European companies (as I'm doing now) is a lot easier to arrange now than it was before COVID, and a California salary while living in uncrowded, quiet New Zealand is the best of both worlds.I hated living in California (SFBA). It's just awful. There are beautiful places but the traffic is awful, the car pakrs are all full, and the trails and beaches etc crowded as hell. The medical system and insurance is a nightmare, and anything to do with cars (DMV, insurance, ...) is almost as bad. The only thing I really liked there was the after work public lectures by famous guests at places like Google and Facebook and Stanford, and being able to drop in to just the conference sessions you were interested in at Moscone or San Jose Convention Center etc rather than having to get international flights and hotels and dedicate a whole week.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 09:12:16 am
content: With problems such as the OP's, correctanswersare easy to find. But it is much more important to find the correctquestions. By that I mean the questions where the answers push the decision inthisdirection orthatdirection.In that vein, perhaps ways of finding the important questions are:in books about becoming an expat, ordifferences encountered when someone moved to the UK, often found in decent newspapers/magazinesvisiting a likely place, and doing a few everyday things there - i.e. not tourist thingsworking out what you want tomove to, rather than what you are movingaway fromAnd after all that, remember the old anecdote...Man goes into a shop and says "I'm thinking of moving here; what are people like?". Shopkeeper responds "What are people like where you come from?". "Oh pretty friendly and helpful". And the shopkeeper notes "Yup, they are like that here".A week later another man goes into the same shop and says "I'm thinking of moving here; what are people like?". Shopkeeper responds "What are people like where you come from?". "Oh a bit stand-offish, mean and snobbish". And the shopkeeper notes "Yup, they are like that here".In other words, "people are people, the whole world over", and "you can escape from anything except yourself".

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 09:21:43 am
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 05, 2024, 09:12:16 amWrong. Having travelled quite a bit myself I can definitely say that people are culturally different and hence more open / helpfull compared to others depending on location. This will be different between areas in countries as well. I know several people who moved about 100km inside the Netherlands because they couldn't get along with the locals in an area and felt right at home 100km away. Ofcourse, the reverse can also be true. Either way it is important to figure out if you can get along with the locals if you want to move to a different place.

author: Messtechniker
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 09:22:15 am
content: To start with, get yourself a good mobile with a good translatorfor the target language.

author: pcprogrammer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 09:34:09 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 05, 2024, 04:21:40 amThe OP mentioned his wife, so not a good selling point?A bit of a problem with wanting to move elsewhere because of some dislikes to the place you are, is the availability of suitable work. Working remotely won't always be possible and when an office visit is needed it becomes more expensive and troublesome when you live in the sticks.I'm originally from Den Haag (The Hague) and moved with my parents to Zoetermeer which is a commuting city near The Hague and after that moved to Delft which was nice in the beginning but after so many years parking your car(s) became a nightmare. The we moved a bit further south to a newly build housing estate near Rotterdam, basically because the work was there. Had my own one man business by then. Hated the place due to noisy neighbors and when the opportunity came up we moved even further south to a small village near Roermond. Was also nice for so many years, but got crowded more and more. Now that we don't work anymore we live in a small village in rural France and it is tranquil, but for someone in electronics not a lot of opportunities around.Moving to the Netherlands to get away from England might become a disappointment when looking for better living circumstances. Don't think it will be that different from living in the UK. But it is a country where English is spoken by most of the people, and I can state that this is very different in France, at least in the part where we live. Few that speak English even though it is a mandatory subject at school.We have been to country side Sweden for a holiday, and I have to say that not to many people spoke English down there. But it may differ in the cities and less rural places.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 09:37:31 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 05, 2024, 09:21:43 amIn topics like this, for every example there will be a counterexample. Recursively. Ad infinitum. World without end.It is up to the OP to determine which are the important concepts and questions, not you or me.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 09:54:23 am
content: Quote from: Benta on August 04, 2024, 09:51:54 pmIn the past much more so than now, at least for Switzerland. Here in Zurich, 30 years ago you never heard English out on the street. (As a native English speaker, it was rare and memorable to hear English back then.) Now it’s a literally everyday occurrence. More and more companies let you correspond with them in English (like health insurance, telecom, etc). I’m not saying that learning German isn’t a huge advantage, just that you can get by with English far better now than in the past.Quote from: SiliconWizard on August 05, 2024, 12:12:56 amThere are ample signs of the decline because it happened long ago, it’s nothing new. If anything, and this is the surprising part, is that it actually appears to be on therise. There is very strong demand for electronics technicians and engineers right now.Quote from: jonpaul on August 04, 2024, 11:20:54 pmCost of living here is high, but inflation has been low. The cost of living in desirable parts of USA, for example, has largely caught up with here!!(The last few times I’ve been back to USA to visit I’ve been absolutely shocked at how expensive things have gotten there.)And of course Swiss wages more than make up for cost of living, and the quality of life is excellent.However, as non-EU citizens, you will need patience to get into Switzerland, because CH and EU citizens must be given priority over “third country” nationals in jobs. There’s a quota on third country work permits, and they run out quickly. You’ll need to get a company to sponsor you. It can be a lot easier to do an international transferwithina company (e.g. work for them in another country first).(Pre-Brexit this would have been a simple affair for you, as you then had the legal right to move here and bring your spouse.)

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 10:04:24 am
content: Quote from: pcprogrammer on August 05, 2024, 09:34:09 amPossibly OP is not the only person thinking of such a move?QuoteI was mostly in the south, Malmo (which is where one of my great-grandfathers was from) and Helsingborg, in 2009 and 2017. I found that if a shop had 2 or 3 people working there then probably one would speak English. Or any teenager.

author: jonpaul
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 10:07:19 am
content: 99% of Swiss in German zone are fluent in English.Less so in French area (Geneva) and even less in Italian ..Tessiono.Very hard to get Swiss residence.Jon

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 10:17:03 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 05, 2024, 09:21:43 amIt's kind of both. I've lived in 3 countries and worked in 4. It's amazing how much difference you get just by moving 100km. For example just across the border in Belgium, a road construction will last a month, a year or forever. Here they write on the construction the date and hour when it ends. They speak the same* language, houses look the same, people look the same. But when you arrive at 16:45 into a shop and the seller look at you like you are about to commit murder, because the shop closes at 17:00. And the country is forcing you to do all your groceries on Saturday because nothing is open during weekdays.Here the most issue seems to be housing related, and daycare costs.Quality of life comes down to being able to get the basic day to day things done. And the fact that you are not even prepared to the curveball a country is able to throw at you. Like you would expect internet without a monthly data cap and it isn't.You can advice someone to move here because it's honestly good, and then they have 3 children, and cannot afford daycare and forced to live in a tiny apartment paying way too much rent. And eat food that tastes like sawdust mixed with sugar.Or you move to USA, and then the power goes out for a week and according to the locals that's "normal" while in Europe you are used to having 1 minute power outage every 2 years.And why both? I think it matters a lot more how are the people you surround yourself with. A company with woke HR or a toxic coworker could as much make your life hell as an upstairs neighbor that has legs made out of lead and likes stomping around every day.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 10:21:42 am
content: I really don't think the UK is that bad.Every country has its problems, the biggest issues for the UK right now are the crumbling social safety net and social services like healthcare, public works, etc... It is not a great situation. Hopefully it will improve, but it will be a long way to go before it is back like it was in the mid 2000s, where politicians were being moaned at that GP appointments were offeredtoo promptly.But, for engineering, the UK is still a world leader in many areas, especially in software and electronics.The US is great in terms of engineering salaries and I can't say I haven't been tempted... But there are lots of problems. The places where salaries are great are the most crowded and polluted. Healthcare is pretty bad in some states too, even with private care. (A friend had to wait 8 weeks for a cancer screening. It was covered by his insurance no problem, but they just didn't have any appointments for that long.) There are also much higher rates of violent crime and disorder, and a greater chance of being caught in the crossfire in some cities... I would never live in LA for instance (visiting it was fun, but that's all.) Also issues with harder drug abuse and homelessness which make the UK seem like it actually cares for homeless people, in comparison. There is also the non-zero chance of a Trump second term.I would say the UK is a tale of two nations in many respects, and opportunities in the south of the country, around the London belt, are far better than in other areas. This is one major disadvantage as the cost of housing is so much higher in these areas due to the concentration of these jobs. But if you can afford to buy a house in those areas, then it just becomes a part of the cost of living calculus.

author: pcprogrammer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 11:38:28 am
content: Healthcare and waiting times are becoming more and more problematic everywhere. I have to wait till the end of November to see a rheumatologist about my Fibromyalgia. Physiotherapy also has waiting lists of more then six weeks.And don't expect it to be better in the Netherlands. There too are problems with finding new medical workers, resulting in lots of work pressure, stress and long waiting lists.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 11:53:28 am
content: Quote from: tom66 on August 05, 2024, 10:21:42 amYou need to get out more. The UK is now so irrelevant to electronics that most of the component vendors who used to have substantial local sales operations in the UK now work through a tiny representative office, or the distributors. The UK is still a leader in some areas of engineering. Travel the world and you'll find a lot of UK civil engineers behind some of the most spectacular structures being built. For software, games still seems to be pretty active in the UK. Apart from ARM, who in the UK is really significant in electronics? Even ARM keeps mulling the idea of leaving. In the 90s there were still signs of life. A number of players, like CSR and Virata, popped up and did well globally, but the follow on has been very weak.

author: watchmaker
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 11:59:15 am
content: Think about working in Boston and living in NH. No sales tax or income tax in NH. More climate future friendly than most of the US. Buying a house in Boston is very expensive, though. $850K for a 1300 sq ft 60 year old Cape Cod style tht desperately need freshening up (but otherwise good bones). I personally would avoid large NH cities of Manchester and Nashua. Prefer the towns.Check Zillow for housing in areas you are considering. Check the annual climate change reports for expectations.Kimball Physics is on a dirt road in one of the most unexpected places in south central NH. Then there is Microspec in Peterborough. I imagine there are many niche businesses with MIT alumni in MA and NH. Skyworks is in Boston.But no matter what, wait until it is clear there will be democracy in the USA next year. Otherwise my kid and SIL will be looking along with you.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 12:05:18 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 05, 2024, 11:53:28 amWell, you listed ARM, but let me think, just within about 100 miles of me...Imagination Technologies - still supply core components of the GPU in the current-generation iPhone.Roku - hardware/software design in Cambridge for lots of smart TVs. And, whilst their hardware sucks, Vestel do most of their software design in the UK for their TVs. Sky also have a base somewhere in Essex.AMD have a base nearby here (inherited from Xilinx) specialising in high speed optoelectronics using their FPGAs. Mostly telecoms/5G stuff.Microsoft have campuses in Reading, Cambridge and an office in London and these all do hardware and software design. Microsoft Research in Cambridge were also involved in their prototype VR headset (HoloLens) which was almost sent to space (sadly the Falcon 9 didn't make it off the pad).Broadcom have connections here, and, of course, Raspberry Pi - definitely a UK success story there.Jagex in Cambridge - creators of Runescape.FAE's may well be getting out of the UK (and everywhere else to be honest) but that's more a reflection of the type of support changing. Manufacturers are less keen to pay for FAE's to provide support and expect customers to help themselves unless they are very high value... Some of that is probably down to the market being a lot more competitive and so margins are ever tighter on components.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 12:12:10 pm
content: Quote from: pcprogrammer on August 05, 2024, 11:38:28 amThis is inevitable. People live longer, accumulating more treatable conditions as they do. The cost of health care is essentially unbounded, and people find it very difficult to be pragmatic.That said, the UK health service, like most organisations which don't have to worry about making money, has been overrun by administrators. 40 years ago 6% of NHS staff were in admin, and its now over 1/3rd. In the same period automation of records, x-ray image handling and other administrative functions has greatly reduced the need for administration. Unlike health care, administration has a natural bound - 100% of all people administering 100% of the time. Until that lofty goal is reached, the administrators will not stop their relentless climb.

author: pcprogrammer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 12:19:19 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 05, 2024, 12:12:10 pmYep. Government regulations, health insurance companies and the greedy pharmaceuticals are also to blame for these problems.My wife was a nurse, but the pressure and some incompetence in the management and the more and more paper work and less time for the patient drove here away. Luckily we were and still are in a healthy financial state that we can afford not to work.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 12:28:01 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on August 05, 2024, 12:05:18 pmIn just one street in Bangalore there are more places than that, and none of them are small. 40 years ago the whole Thames Valley was buzzing. Hertfordshire was doing well. There were a number of silicon startups around East Kilbride until quite recently. Notably the things you listed are mostly around Cambridge. Its the last remaining, and shrinking, pool of activity.Quote from: tom66 on August 05, 2024, 12:05:18 pmGlobally FAEs are a big deal. The integration of any popular function into a single chip means a lot of applications work has moved from the equipment companies to the silicon vendors. You just see a shrink in UK support, because vendors are withdrawing direct invoivement in the UK, and most FAEs follow the sales volumes. This can be very negative globally, but that is how it is. An FAE may be hard to get access to for an engineer in Hyderbad, because the thing they are developing will sell by the million, but will be made in China. Someone in China easily gets the FAE support they want, because local sales are good, but often don't need it. Such is life.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 12:55:21 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 05, 2024, 12:12:10 pmBefore making statements like that, you really ought to do a decent compare-and-contrast with other systems; you will find the USA comparison particularly enlightening. Consider both the healthcare systems' internal workings, and the external effects perceived by patients.The principle change in the UK in last 30 years is government "reforms".I'll refain from saying more, since that's.... politics.But back to the OP's position. If you can find someone who has personal experience of both, you can extract a (single) data point that is worth a lot of theoretical discussion

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 01:12:52 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 05, 2024, 12:28:01 pmReally? There are companies the scale of ARM, Broadcom, Microsoft with engineering the scale of Cambridge in one street on Bangalore? Pull the other one. Yes, work is contracted out to poorer countries. And good engineering is done there (though plenty of bad engineering happens too by companies who think cheap engineers are the same as expensive engineers.) But it's still second fiddle to the West.I have only seen growth in technology in the time I have been in the UK. There's a reason why we're like#4 in the worldfor R&D investment in GDP terms, behind only USA, Germany, and Japan. It would be great to have 2nd place, just behind the USA, but 4th ain't bad!

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 01:31:15 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on August 05, 2024, 10:21:42 amAs far as health care is concerned I would take the US over the UK any day. My uncle retired in England and about eight years ago he got a cancer diagnoses from his local doctor and then waited 8 months and finally died before he could see a cancer specialist in the UK Health Services. I had congestive heart failure about 6 years ago and I called my local doctor and asked what was the best hospital in the area to treat it and then drove to that hospital and was seen immediately and admitted within 20 minutes and then spent the next 12 days in the CCU. All of the care was great and I have zero complaints. My total out of pocket expenses was about $12,000. So it wasn't totally free like the UK system but I DID get treated.But this was in Florida and not a state like California which the state and most of it's hospitals has been FLOODED with illegals with pretty much every disease known to man and with NO insurance.I lived in California in the 1970s and it was still a pretty nice place to live although it was on the expensive side. Today, I won't even visit the state! Some of my family still visits there every year and they bring back photos of places like San Francisco that I know well and I'm just stunned at how bad living conditions are out there today. About 20 years ago I was working for a very large US government military contractor with about 11,000 employees just in this area alone. They were looking for people to sent to California and everyone simply refused to go out there despite the fact that they were offering very large bonuses.For the OP, I'msurethat there are companies that will offer you a job in places like New York and in California but make dammed sure what the living conditions are like in that area and what the taxes are and what the cost of living is BEFORE you accept. My son just moved out of southern California about five years ago. Despite the fact that he was making over $80,000 per year and was single he just couldn't afford it.

author: DenzilPenberthy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 02:22:10 pm
content: Quote from: Stray Electron on August 05, 2024, 01:31:15 pmYou're comparing apples with oranges here in lots of ways. There is private healthcare in the UK as well as public, so if you want to pay 12 grand for private healthcare then nothing is stopping you. Also you're comparing two entirely different types of medical care. Heart conditions like you describe are seen quickly and efficiently in the NHS in the experience of several friends of mine who have had such issues.An important point for OP and their wife to consider which no-one has mentioned yet:Due to the ongoing and continuing shenanigans with access to reproductive healthcare in the US, you and your (presumably) pre-menopausal wife might want to consider carefully whether the state you move to will be a safe place to be if you become pregnant. And whether that situation is likely to change over the timespan you want to live there.I think it is far to say that for a lot of places in the US, a pregnant woman would not share the sentiment of "As far as health care is concerned I would take the US over the UK any day."

author: watchmaker
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 02:35:06 pm
content: Virtually all the New England states protect reproductive healthcare. That is not going to change. Too many Academic Medical Centers that are powerful and need full services in order to train OB/Gyn as well ER staff.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 02:43:03 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 05, 2024, 10:04:24 amThanks to a new absurdly stupid Quebec law coming on the books, not only have I been thinking of starting up a new company in San Fransisco area, but to also move part of my extended family/relatives and offer them work.(Warning if you are thinking about vacationing in Quebec, it is with a sad heart that I would have to say after this summer, cancel all plans for your safety unless everyone in your party is fluent in French.)

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 03:06:38 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on August 05, 2024, 01:12:52 pmYep. There are many streets with 5 to 10 of the world's major companies, each with teams in the hundreds. That is what a thriving place looks like. In silicon valley there are similar streets with multiple major companies. Less so than in Bangalore, as many companies have their headquarters in silicon valley, so they fill the whole street. You still find plenty of offshoot offices gathered together where the main sites have overspilled. Around Thames Valley spots, like Reading and Farnham, you saw the same thing in the 1980s. When I look for some of those places I remember on Google maps, they have been wiped away and replaced with warehousing or a retail park.Don't discount Indian engineering. Good engineers in India get paid more than you, and often more than in the US. Some of the Indians who migrated to the US get pissed off when they find what their friends still in India get paid. They aren't being paid that much for low grade engineering. There are plenty of low paid Indians doing that low grade work.Quote from: tom66 on August 05, 2024, 01:12:52 pmI wonder how that 4th place is measured? Remember things like pharma are very active in the UK, and they spend a lot on R&D. There can be a big spend with very little of it going to the electronics sector. If there were big spending on electronics why do most electronics graduates in the UK not end up in a UK engineering job? In the 70s we did. Most of those I graduated with went into electronics. Now when you survey electronics graduates in the UK, they are more likely going into finance than engineering.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 04:14:50 pm
content: Even when I graduated in the 80's, electronics was already in decline as a career choice for the UK. However, I would say other fields of engineering have remained strong, such as mechanical, civil, chemical, and probably electrical power systems. For mechanical and civil, there have been megaprojects like Crossrail and HS2, and multitudes of other projects that are always going on. For electrical, there is of course the huge interest in sustainability, wind farms, power conversion and so on. In the UK in particular, with the move to offshore windfarms instead of onshore central generation, the electrical grid is the wrong shape and needs to be reengineered over the coming decades. Not to mention that the aforementioned megaprojects like Crossrail had/have an enormous electrical content for power, communications and signalling.My suggestion to find a good career in engineering, would be to seek out big projects and industrial enterprises, and avoid consumer product manufacturing.The same considerations would apply overseas as much as in the UK.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 04:35:59 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 05, 2024, 04:14:50 pmFrom a purely career point of view I have no disagreement with that. However, we are driven by different things. I spent years developing quite complex things, but the deployments were not big. I became deeply frustrate by putting effort into a really polished design, and have only a handful of people benefit from it. So, I actively sought out anything that would let me develop things that shipped at least a million units. There is something deeply satisfying watching your design roll off the line in voiume. Its frightening too, as any slip up you might have made will really come back to bite you, but nothing in engineering is as satisfying to me.

author: DimitriP
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 06:26:51 pm
content: A good friend asked me some time ago "If money was no object where would you like to live?"My answer was "If money is no object why do I have to choose?Most people don't get that luxury and the choice is usually "Where would you rather live if you are not going to have enough money?".Since you already have a "great job", keep it!If you have money aside, get a financial advisor.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 09:17:23 pm
content: Sticking my head back in here finally for a bit...Are youreallysure you want to leave the UK? I had the same dilemma back in the late 1990s. I was working for a large defence company as an EE and getting paid bugger all, which is the going rate in the UK then and now. I had an option of going to the US and putting up with that (company funded) or going into Europe and continuing to be paid bugger all. The US option came with all the risks associated with living in the US and the Europe option came with all the risks associated with moving to Europe.I decided neither was a good option so sloped around for a couple of years until I wangled a job doing something completely different. Look at the economic prospects of the countries and tailor yourself to that rather than find a poor fit somewhere out of desperation for what you are now. It'll be a smoother ride. I make 8x what I did as an EE now in the UK. Even adjusting for inflation that's pretty awful.Also ignore DimitriP's advice about financial advisors. Don't get one. They are all bastards. Even the ones that survived RDR and RDR2 in the UK. Don't even get me started on the advice sector in the US (I work in it periodically). Work it out yourself and skip the commission and the bastards!

author: artag
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 10:23:15 pm
content: I don't have direct experience of it but don't forget Ireland is still in Europe and English is spoken. There seems to be a growing tech scene.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 11:13:33 pm
content: Quote from: deadly_penguin on August 04, 2024, 06:54:59 pmI'm not sure going from the UK to the US would be an improvementAustralia, obviously, we have this thing called sun. But cost of living here is quite high now.Australia consistently has two of the most livable cities in the world:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_RankingI think it's three in the top 15, Perth being the other one.2024 summary report:https://pages.eiu.com/rs/753-RIQ-438/images/The-Global-Liveability-Index-Summary-Report-final.pdfWe do have a housing shortage cricis though caused by massive unsustainable immigration.It's fine if you have money, but if you aren't financially well off, it would be a stuggle.Obviously any potential family plans will tie into this decision as well.As general advice when you are (presumably) young, go where the good paying and satisfying work is and save like crazy.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 05, 2024, 11:15:00 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on August 05, 2024, 09:17:23 pmI'd second that.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 01:11:11 am
content: Quote from: BrianHG on August 05, 2024, 02:43:03 pmWhat's going on in Quebecnow? I lived just south of the border in the late 1970s and made a few trips into Canada and all of the French Canadians went out of their way to be rude if you didn't speak French. I lived and worked in Saint Jean sur Richelieu, Quebec in the mid 1980s and they were still rude but once I made friends with a few of them, the rest of them accepted me. That said, I never felt unsafe, which is more than I can say about some places in the US that's been to. I later worked with Spar Aerospace in Toronto and I made several trips up there and I have to say that that was a very nice area but I don't know what the cost of living was like there.

author: mengfei
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 01:19:39 am
content: Have you Considered Asia?CN, VN or Singapore perhaps?

author: boB
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 01:26:38 am
content: What kind of weather do you prefer ?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 02:21:17 am
content: Quote from: mengfei on August 06, 2024, 01:19:39 amI can't imagine much worse than living in China.Check out SerpentZA's channel for stories on living there for a decade.

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 05:36:53 am
content: What's the deal with UK EE jobs? What caused that market to suck now?

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 05:53:35 am
content: I'm not an EE, so I don't know a lot about it.But over the years there has been a decline in sectors like avionics (Marconi was a big employer once), and consumer electronics goods (names like Plessey, Ferguson, all disappeared).Today, when I see job adverts for electronics, especially smaller companies, the pay is pitiful.On the other hand, I suspect industrial engineering in the power and controls sectors is still decent. As I mentioned in another post, there are still big infrastructure projects, and power generation and transmission are undergoing transformation.Unfortunately some sectors like rail are seeing imports from Japan (Hitachi) or Germany (Siemens), where Britain used to lead. That's sad. However, there is still some design and manufacturing happening in the UK. And every rail system upgrade involves a lot of power, controls and signaling.Furthermore, software continues to be a major employer, and lots of EE's go into software.So I would say it is a bit of a change of emphasis more than anything. Combined with the general industrial decline that has been happening for years.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 09:34:51 am
content: Quote from: Stray Electron on August 06, 2024, 01:11:11 amQuebec's new health-care language directive makes it illegal for hospitals to converse with you in any language other than French. As an English only speaker living here in Quebec, if I were to get into an auto accident, and brought to a hospital, their staff will be legally prohibited from talking to me in English. And I will not be able to understand anything if I might be asked to sign any paperwork as everything will now be uni-lingual French.QuoteOur government is now asking our healthcare workers to decide on the dot what legally constitutes an emergency in the eyes of the government, otherwise if they make a mistake, the language police will get you... Next, what happens when said immediate emergency ends and you need basic care to get back on your feet?For a province which heavily relies on foreign tourism for a good chunk of their revenue, we have stupid politicians making stupid decisions further alienating us from the rest of the world. It's time to leave.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 11:25:22 am
content: Quote from: Smokey on August 06, 2024, 05:36:53 amThe UK gave up, and chose to join the third world. Its a work in progress. Its not fuily there yet.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 11:44:24 am
content: Quote from: mengfei on August 06, 2024, 01:19:39 amChina is a marmite choice. You'll love it or hate it. You don't find many western engineers working there, or even people like me who have spent a lot of time working there without living there (I lived in HK). There are quite a few East Europeans working in MNCs, though, who seem content with their situation. Maybe less so recently, with China's less welcoming attitude to high skilled foreigners.Vietnam is limiting. There is a lot of assembly activity there now, assembling kits from Shenzhen, Japan, Korea and elsewhere. All the interesting stuff is done outside Vietnam. There is still a very limited amount of serious local engineering, despite the country having a pretty well educated workforce. Also, over the last 40 years the government keeps changing direction, with a huge impact on foreign people and businesses.Singapore went from a great place for an engineer, to a terrible place as jobs moved to China, to a more stable place now. The government pumped a lot of money into R&D, distorting things, and maybe making them look better than a sustainable position in engineering might be. Nice place to live, though. Lots of foreigners who have spent years in Asia renting a home, seem to buy soon after they start working in Singapore.Hong Kong was once a great choice, but makes no sense for an engineer today.India has so many educated locals, its rare to see a foreigner working there, unless they are part of the management team of an MNC.Thailand has had its appeal, but I haven't met any foreign engineers working there for a long time.Korea seems to pull in quite a few western academics, but I don't see foreign engineers there beyond a few Chinese.Japan is interesting. I've known western engineers working there, but more because they married a local woman, and settled with her, than direct career opportunities. Lots of people love the place. If you can't read and write, forget it.

author: Zucca
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 01:49:33 pm
content: Italy!No money, no moderb infrastructure, tons of slow no sense bureaucracy, many other problem... crime.but you can live land eat ike a king with low money, especially in the South!

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 02:22:43 pm
content: Quote from: Smokey on August 06, 2024, 05:36:53 amWe're all doing software because it pays the bills.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 02:40:47 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on August 06, 2024, 02:22:43 pm... and returning to our first love (hardware) when we retire.There's a very larger overlap between hardware and software in the industrial and embedded world. By that I mean many (but not all) functions can be implemented in either hardware or software.Consequently partitioning is a key skill, and one that seems to be little understood. In particular, HR-droids pigeon hole human resources into hardware exclusive-or software.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 02:58:21 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on August 05, 2024, 12:12:56 amYeah - one good thing here is that we are quite flexible in changing our office language to some sort of rally English when the first non-Finnish speaker pops up. This is probably because even we are ashamed of our English accent, we would beeven moreashamed of not even trying, and leaving them out of the loop.Otherwise than that, for Scandinavia, maybe prefer our Western neighbors; Finland is in quite a technological and economic decline. This doesn't mean here isn't anything, but expect to look for uncertain and possibly poorly paying startups instead of steady high-tech engineering jobs of the past (Nokia days). Unless you happen to find something specific which matches with your specific skill set, of course, but this pretty much applies everywhere.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 03:04:58 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on August 06, 2024, 02:58:21 pmWhy would you be ashamed of an accent? You are expected to speak someone else's language with an accent. The average well educated Dutch or German speaks English with a fairly thick accent, but they speak it to a high standard and nobody cares about the accent...... at least not until it makes them say something that sounds funny to a native English speaker.

author: os40la
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 03:35:27 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 05, 2024, 11:13:33 pmNot necessary. We (USA) do have some things that may be attractive. We drive on the correct side of the road, still use the imperial system to honor British history. The BBQ is world class.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 03:42:56 pm
content: Quote from: os40la on August 06, 2024, 03:35:27 pmAs I am well aware my waist line will become world class is I am not super careful.Seriously, if you are not from the USA and move to the USA and you do not know what you are doing, the first thing that will increase is your waistline / weight.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 03:44:22 pm
content: Quote from: mengfei on August 06, 2024, 01:19:39 amYou can add Taiwan to the list.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 03:52:34 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 06, 2024, 03:44:22 pmOh, I missed that one. Just 20 years ago I still heard western engineers living in Taiwan use terms like "the shit hole of Asia" to describe the place. I was travelling to Taiwan for short visits at that time, and it seemed a pretty nice place. I guess its about 10 years since I last went there, and it seemed like a nice place to be. I'm not sure what opportunity there is there for foreign engineers. They have lots of good people of their own, often the ones who are now the leaders in their fields. The foreign engineers I have met there have been employees of MNCs, stationed there by the parent company.I wonder how much recent sabre rattling has really affected things in Taiwan?

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 03:59:26 pm
content: QuoteNo you dontQuoteOnly cause yer too stupid /lazy to deal with metricQuoteYouve not been to a south african braai then

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 04:15:48 pm
content: Quote from: themadhippy on August 06, 2024, 03:59:26 pmI'm not sure about that any more. For many years I thought the UK had the right idea. I keep my right hand on the steering wheel all the time, while I poke around at the gears and other controls with my less capable hand. Sounds right for a mostly right handed society. Now it seems to have flipped. I an trying to fiddle with small controls and screens with my left hand, which is a lot harder to do than using my right hand. Maybe the Americans planned a century ahead.

author: os40la
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 04:25:44 pm
content: Quote from: themadhippy on August 06, 2024, 03:59:26 pmI hope you took it that was just joking with my comment. It was meant to bust on us in the USA.I think you have because you replied with what I was actually saying.I have not been to South Africa, I can only assume what you said was true, no argument here. Have you tried BBQ in Korea or any other Asian country? They are also world class in my book as well. I’m scared to try Australian if fear of ruining my love of the BBQ here.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 04:55:38 pm
content: Quote from: os40la on August 06, 2024, 03:35:27 pmNah. You short-change people.How many pounds are there in a hundredweight or ton, and litres in a gallon?

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 05:04:49 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 06, 2024, 04:55:38 pmA slightly more subtle one: how many fluid ounces are there in a fluid ounce?

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 05:09:23 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 06, 2024, 05:04:49 pmOr what is the ratio between one ton in the US, and another ton in the US.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 05:27:06 pm
content: It is certainly interesting to hear "too stupid and lazy" to change to the simpler system. While there are elements of truth to the statement, it is probably close to the ultimate self contradictory argument. Think of the inverse. The English system is too complex for stupid and lazy people to use.On the original topic, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. I have multiple friends and relatives who have emigrated from here in the US to the UK because it is "better" there. Your personal situation in the UK has to be so bad that another location will overcome all of the disruption of a move. And wherever you move there will be drawbacks. You are the only one that can put a weight on those drawbacks, and it is guaranteed that there will be some that you don't foresee.Coppice's comment about people in a new location being about like those where you came from has a core truth. Yes people are different the world over, but some individuals adapt readily to change and can fit in almost anywhere, others not so much. Know yourself (and your family) before you commit to any change.

author: os40la
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 05:31:35 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 06, 2024, 05:09:23 pmProbably my weight if I keep eating BBQ. around 93kg?

author: os40la
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 05:45:38 pm
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on August 06, 2024, 05:27:06 pmI agree. Every place will have it pluses and minuses. Even moving within the same Country can be challenging. Like others have said, You really need to factor in any Language barrier you may have.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 05:54:12 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 06, 2024, 03:04:58 pmThere is no rational reason, it's a cultural thing of being ashamed about the assumed perception by others. Some kind of "we are from small country and need to represent ourselves well in the eyes of the wide world". The result of this is often much more awkward than just being relaxed.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 06:00:21 pm
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on August 06, 2024, 05:27:06 pmThat wasn't my comment. I think its wrong. We are all biologically the same, but culture shapes people in different places very differently.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 06:52:31 pm
content: Quote from: os40la on August 06, 2024, 03:35:27 pmNo, we use “conventional units”, not “imperial” units.The most important difference between them is the US gallon vs. the imperial gallon (and the corresponding pints).

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 06:55:24 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on August 06, 2024, 06:52:31 pmI thought the US used "Tyrant King George III With US Characteristics" units.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 06:58:21 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 06, 2024, 06:55:24 pmWe went metric in 1959, but forgot to tell anyone.The Declaration of Independence cites many bad acts of George III, but nothing about weights and measures.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 07:23:01 pm
content: And of course the rest of the world forgot toactuallyeliminate many non-metric things when they “went metric”. Tons and tons of pipes (and corresponding threads) remain non-metric, tire sizes are still that crazy mm/%/inch mess, and aviation still uses feet and nautical miles.

author: watchmaker
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 07:43:54 pm
content: There are two ways to deal with measurement systems. Get digital measuring instruments (calipers, mic, DRO) Electrical engineers solved the problem.Just don't get confused if you are trying to land something on Mars!

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 07:48:12 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on August 06, 2024, 06:52:31 pmAnd long ton vs short ton (c.f. metric ton)

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 07:50:33 pm
content: Quote from: Stray Electron on August 05, 2024, 02:43:31 amThe California economy is the 5th largest in the world, exceeding that of most countries, including the UK, France, and Italy.California cities looking like third world ghettos is just propaganda. I've lived here most of my life and have rarely encountered anything like a third world ghetto in California cities. Yes, the big cities have some bad areas, but so do cities like London and Paris.The weather is nice--no snow in the winter, but in the winter you can go skiing in the mountains in the morning and surfing in the Pacific in the afternoon. We have more national parks than any other state, including Yosemite, Death Valley, Redwood, Sequoia, and King's Canyon.

author: os40la
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 07:58:24 pm
content: Quote from: os40la on August 06, 2024, 03:35:27 pmWow, I didn't intend to start off a measuring unit debate when I was just joking with Dave’s comment.How about the whole world just switch to Smoot as a new standard and end this this for good.

author: deadly_penguin
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 07:59:32 pm
content: So this blew up.I'm not thinking of leaving too soon, really when the next job change comes up - more for a change of scenery than anything, though more options than "tiny cash-strapped company or massive defence/consultancy firm" might be a nice addition.I'd not really seen much about electronics in Scandinavia past the remains of Nokia, but that might be worth a better look. Norway/Denmark/Finland look nice if the work is there.The wife's actually from California and I know how expensive it is, but some bits are nice and if the pay is enough it's got its attractions (though so does everywhere). My biggest problem with the States is how you feel like being fleeced all the time - tax isn't on the price tag, that'sextra. Bloodytippingeverywhere. Short measures at the pub (not pints, just disappointment). But whatever, they're livable. The whole healthcare thing looks nasty and off-putting, but hasn't bitten the inlaws.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 08:03:03 pm
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on August 06, 2024, 07:50:33 pmPortland (Oregon) is apparently a disaster area, and much of San Francisco is also very bad. Much of this is because the police generally ignore crime.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 08:07:18 pm
content: Pints vary between the two countries (imperial vs. US measure) and tipping is a nuisance.American health care is excellent, so long as the health insurance benefit from your employer is good.Be sure to verify the insurance when negotiating employment.Recent trends in healthcare are that city and suburban hospitals, etc. improve, but facilities are slipping in rural areas—probably not so important a difference for engineering jobs.Another important consideration when comparing US regions is commuting: highways, public transportation (if any), and distance between employment location and affordable housing.Also if the areas of affordable housing are dull and boring.Finally, the climate varies dramatically over the “lower 48”. Many people are paranoid about cold weather (with seasonal variations) and find themselves in summers with lethal outdoor temperatures requiring air conditioning.

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 08:13:07 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 06, 2024, 08:03:03 pmAgain, propaganda. I live a 25-minute drive from SF and spend a lot of time there. Yes, the Tenderloin neighborhood is skudgy, but most of the rest is not. It's pretty much like most other cities. I love London, but wouldn't want to spend time in Brixton after dark, for example. Ditto for some parts of Paris.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 08:15:16 pm
content: Sometimes, I ask my rural relatives if they are discussing the Chicago where I live, or the one they see on TV.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2024, 11:22:46 pm
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on August 06, 2024, 07:50:33 pmWhile this is all true, I did a happy dance on leaving California. The problem is that California is too nice and is wall to wall people both because of natural increase and immigration, with a nice topping of visitors. Freeways, beaches and recreation areas are all packed. In the 1970s when I wanted to visit one of those parks it was just a matter of driving out there, and in off seasons you were almost alone. Now at least three of those require reservations and are well attended year round.Affordable housing is a long ways from baseball stadiums, theaters and other key facilities. And taxes and prices are among the highest in the country. If you like urban living, have a stake large enough to get close in housing, do your homework to avoid the ghetto areas (which are indeed a small part of the whole, but a small part of the fifth largest economy in the world is large relative to some countries) and don't mind sharing public spaces with lots of people California does indeed have many positive attributes.

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 12:18:13 am
content: Quote from: deadly_penguin on August 06, 2024, 07:59:32 pmThat's a very naïve view of the world.If you only look for the 800-lb gorillas (eg, Nokia), options are very limited.But the world is full of small/mid-sized companies bringing very innovative stuff out. Many are family or fund owned, and have a completely different attitude to employees than investor or shareholder companies have.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 12:42:32 am
content: Quote from: coppice on August 05, 2024, 11:53:28 amYes I figured that from one past forum user.

author: RJSV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 01:11:04 am
content: If you can, try to view the movie,'OFFICE SPACE'.That movie, at least the first 1/3 of it, attempts to capture (your) life, in a hypothetical 1987 tech start-up. Exploring many myths, but they do capture some essential 'looks', with the concrete 'tilt-up' construction and half-partitions.Some of that movie is dated, but they do capture an essence, of the Santa Clara valley experience, that also applies to a few Los Angeles area city's, again circa 1987.You had the blue collar folks, in mix with engineers, and a sarcastic dig, on contrasts;A magazine subscription vendor making more than his original title (Software Engineer).It's all 1987, in my opinion, but still more than simple comedy and satire.- - Rick B. near Santa Clara, CA.

author: pcprogrammer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 05:27:34 am
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on August 06, 2024, 07:50:33 pmIs this mostly due to the movie industry? For sure an industry where big money flows around.Or is it still due to engineering with big companies like Apple and Google. (Or a sum of the lot of course)Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on August 06, 2024, 07:50:33 pmAs do many other big cities. I never want to live in a city anymore. Way to many people and noise. Though nature can be noisy tooBirds can be very loud, but over here there are lots of moments of almost complete silence. Lovely.Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on August 06, 2024, 07:50:33 pmMany years back we visited some of those national parks and very nice indeed. No idea about their state now, with climate change and rise of tourism.But there is also that big crack underneath the ground that hangs like a sword of Damocles above the region. What are the risks in the foreseeable future with that one.And not to forget the drought and the forest fires that seem to rampart the region. This seems to be a risk in lots of countries now a days. Might not be to big of a problem when living in a bigger city though.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 05:54:12 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on August 07, 2024, 12:42:32 amShh, saying it out loud is a conspiracy theory which might get you banned.

author: jfiresto
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 06:13:55 am
content: Quote from: RJSV on August 07, 2024, 01:11:04 amWas there a remake about a decade later? In the "Office Space" I saw, directed by Mike Judge, the guys were busy fixing bank software for the year 2000 problem, a problem some were probably still creating in 1987.Did Mr. Gibbons remember to put the new cover sheet on his last TPS report?

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 10:02:25 am
content: Quote from: tom66 on August 05, 2024, 10:21:42 amWhat makes you think it'll get any better? I hate to get political, but we really haven't had a propper change of government. It's just an illusion: same crappy policies, just different branding.Quote from: BrianHG on August 06, 2024, 09:34:51 amHow much does it cost to hire an interpreter or why not learn French? I had a similar issue when I was on holiday in France, in the late 90s, but fortunately my rusty French was enough to get by.I think they should do that in the UK, but only allow English and prehaps Welsh. That would certainly cut down on health tourism and save the NHS money on hiring interpreters for those who don't speak English.Quote from: deadly_penguin on August 04, 2024, 06:54:59 pmWhy? I know this counry is in decline, but the same could be said about much of the West. It's just the UK is going downhill faster at the moment.Perhaps you should stay in the hope to salvage things.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 10:17:14 am
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on August 06, 2024, 08:13:07 pmBrixton is pretty gentrified now. Mostly full of clubbers and ravers at night in the centre. I'd not want to hang around there just because of how busy it is (I don't like busy places), but it's reasonably safe if you keep your wits about you.The real troubling areas are those undergoing that gentrification process... Bow, Dagenham, Hackney are dodgy day and night. And I wouldn't recommend walking through as a lone woman in any area of London at night.Quote from: Zero999 on August 07, 2024, 10:02:25 amI think that instead of outright, almost ideological incompetence (e.g. Rwanda policy = £0.5bn for six guys to leave, five voluntarily on a pre-existing scheme, lol) we have the adults back in charge. Yes, the Lab government are going to be limited to what they can change, but I think suggesting they can change nothing about the UK is wrong.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 10:30:08 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on August 07, 2024, 10:02:25 amPeople act like those things exist in isolation. They actually ride on the surpluses the economy is generating. Britain has no plan at all for getting its economy pumping at a pace needed to generate the money to pay for all these services. Services like the NHS are bloated with massive amounts of admin staff, and could be cleaned up a lot, but you can't finance social services unless you generate a lot of cash.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 10:39:53 am
content: Quote from: tom66 on August 07, 2024, 10:17:14 amI agree with your criticsms of the previous government, but you're very naive (perhaps you're too young to remember Blair) if you think this new one is any better. And that adults back in charge comment is priceless. Have you heard of some of the silly things they've said? They're no more grown up, then the previous clowns.I could write a long post about why Labour are no different, but there's no point, since this not the place. All I'll say is the Uniparty have won again. More chaos and corruption will prevale.Quote from: coppice on August 07, 2024, 10:30:08 amYes and to cap it off, the mainstream media all push pro-NHS propaganda, like it's the best system in the world. No government can do anything to improve it, or else.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 10:51:21 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on August 07, 2024, 10:39:53 amSince we are discussing POLITICS, I'll note all the alternatives are worse. Welcome to the Weimar Republic MkII.Now,lest we fill the void left by Faringdon/Treez, can weget back to electronics and related topics, please.Pretty please.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 10:57:54 am
content: Quote from: pcprogrammer on August 07, 2024, 05:27:34 am2015-2018 I was living in fairly central Moscow (500m from the "3rd Ring Road", which has 5 lanes in each direction), then 2019 in San Francisco (or at least Fremont).Now I live in the Far North of New Zealand, on a narrow strip of land between two dairy farms. I can not see any other houses. Other than bords or the farmer cruising past occasionally on his tractor or quad bike, the only sound I usually hear external to the house is flights from Auckland to Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, or Taipei climbing out at 30,000 or 32,000 feet as they pass overhead (just about to initial cruise altitude) 175 km from Auckland airport.It's got to be pretty quiet to hear those.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 11:01:18 am
content: Quote from: tom66 on August 07, 2024, 10:17:14 amDid you miss the most important documentaries in UK political history - Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister. To this day ex-ministers reference those as an accurate depiction of government. It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government (i.e. civil service) gets in. The elected are puppets to draw attention away from real power. Why do you think countries like the US and UK end up with two leading parties that make very different noises, but end up doing roughly the same thing?

author: pdenisowski
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 11:09:16 am
content: Quote from: coppice on August 06, 2024, 03:04:58 pmOne of the less obvious reasons for learning a foreign language is that it avoids the situation where a group of people speaking that language have to switch to your language to avoid excluding you. I don't normally advertise that I speak German, but I will bring it up when a group of Germans (politely) switches to English so as not to leave me out of the conversation.Quote from: coppice on August 06, 2024, 03:04:58 pmHeck, I speak my own language with an accent, which I am always painfully aware of when I spend time in the UK

author: pcprogrammer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 11:14:55 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 07, 2024, 10:57:54 amSounds (some pun intended) also as a good place to be.The one drawback here in the Dordogne valley are the fighter jets that practice on some day of the week. But that often is over quick. Passenger planes can be seen and sometimes heard but not very loud as they pass by at high altitudes. Tourism is not that much, but we do avoid specific towns in the summer. Luckily the Correze is less known then the Dordogne.

author: pcprogrammer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 11:19:24 am
content: Quote from: coppice on August 07, 2024, 11:01:18 amI have heard the same about how it works in the Netherlands and I also use the argument that throughout the western world the countries mostly are in the same situation or state, no matter if left, center or right has been in power. Maybe the UK is now a bit worse due to the brexit, but in general it feels the same where ever you look.

author: pcprogrammer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 11:24:34 am
content: Quote from: pdenisowski on August 07, 2024, 11:09:16 amWould the world be better of if everybody spoke the same language you can wonder.I fear that other cultural differences would still cause troubles, so probably not.As an example within the US, English is the prevailing language, but one from the north can have a hard time understanding someone from the south, and then ridicule of each other can start fights. Pesky human nature.

author: Postal2
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 11:54:57 am
content: Quote from: pcprogrammer on August 07, 2024, 11:19:24 amI agree. Except when the environment consists of people with severe hereditary traits, such as... well, you get my mean.

author: pdenisowski
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 12:11:05 pm
content: Quote from: pcprogrammer on August 07, 2024, 11:24:34 amCareful - you're talking to someone who published a >60,000 word Esperanto-English dictionaryQuote from: pcprogrammer on August 07, 2024, 11:24:34 amReminds me of the Babel fish from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:"if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. ... the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."

author: Postal2
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 12:16:37 pm
content: Quote from: pdenisowski on August 07, 2024, 12:11:05 pmI have no practice, sorry.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 12:28:57 pm
content: Quote from: pdenisowski on August 07, 2024, 12:11:05 pmDamn: beat me to itDouglas Adams is a good example of someone with the curse of Cassandra. She was cursed to (continue to) accurately predict the future - but not to be believed.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 04:36:26 pm
content: Quote from: pdenisowski on August 07, 2024, 12:11:05 pmWow, that must have been a huge money maker.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 04:44:35 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 07, 2024, 04:36:26 pmi suspect that statement is partly correct

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 05:01:10 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 07, 2024, 04:44:35 pmAs so often, XKCD has this one nailedhttps://xkcd.com/927/

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 07:13:26 pm
content: Quote from: pcprogrammer on August 07, 2024, 05:27:34 amNo. The movie industry is pretty far down the list of contributors to California's economy.

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 08:21:18 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 07, 2024, 10:51:21 amI am a glutton for punishment, and actually enjoyed in a perverse way, the shit storm that would be created by his posts. Similarly to a pyromaniac watching the neighborhood going down in flames.But I agree for the sake of this website’s long-term health, these types of individuals should take their rants elsewhere.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 09:57:48 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 07, 2024, 11:01:18 amWith the greatest respect, no, I don't accept that one bit at all. It's a very common line from people who don't engage in politics, "They're all the same - Nothing changes!" but the reality is anything but.Besides, ministers and the government reserve the right to appoint anyone they like to senior civil service positions, and can sack and hire as needed at that level. So they have no problem installing like-minded individuals, provided they can find them.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 10:02:47 pm
content: Quote from: schmitt trigger on August 07, 2024, 08:21:18 pmThat's a reasonable analogyTrouble is I care about this neighbourhood

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 10:17:34 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on August 07, 2024, 10:02:25 amI do not know about interpreter pricing, but I bet there are roadblocks to getting one in time.Most of my friends are engineers and even if they were born and grew up French speaking, you better believe they are all fluent in English. Otherwise, they could not function in the engineering field since they need to read up to date technical IC, software, and engineering documentation.An yes, here in Quebec, there are 'Language Police', it is a real thing.

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 11:31:25 pm
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on August 07, 2024, 07:13:26 pmCA total... Probably. Los Angeles specifically??

author: pdenisowski
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2024, 11:43:24 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 07, 2024, 04:36:26 pmI actually came across a paperback copy in a used bookstore a couple of months ago .... Glad to see it is still fetching a premium price

author: mengfei
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 06:23:31 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 06, 2024, 02:21:17 amwell actually it's the other way around, not really sure what happened to that guy, guess a china lady turned him down perhaps?Now China is one fo the MOST advance place to Live in, I pressume- safety, very little crime here compared to other western places- food & shopping, looks like the world produce has moved here- Living in an almost cashless society via wechat pay or alipay that even paying for street food is via phone- transportation is above the rest of the world, i guess, almost all buses here are Electric, some cities now have driverless taxi, high speed train @320kph, affordable cars- Most of the high tech that's coming out right now are coming from here- 4 seasons & entertainment, like I said the world has move here except for those that listen to black propaganda.in the beginning serpentza was all praises for china then suddenly the bashing, there have been many many videos from other foreigners too debunking what he preaches, probably there are some truth to what he say's 50 years ago. IF your purpose is just to live & work & w/o any political agenda then you can give CN a try - and maybe, just maybe you'll like to stay here a bit longer coz of how this place spoils it's citizens & foreigners alike.I have seen how china was almost dust & rubble to now a bustling high tech place like Shenzhen. if you have WECHAT you can check & see what other foreigners from the states & the rest of the World are saying about china & debunking SZa, oh have you visited china already?BTW been working here since 1996

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 07:34:17 am
content: Quote from: mengfei on August 08, 2024, 06:23:31 amGoing from what I've heard, China depends on where you live. I'm not sure about the food safety, given the various scandals: sewer oil, tainted baby milk, soy sauce made with human hair. And in how is a cashless society a good thing? It just makes you more vulnerable. It was bad enough in the UK, with the debanking of Nigel Farage.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 09:55:12 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 06, 2024, 02:21:17 amSerpentZA lived there for a decade, married local women (I think he had more than one marriage), and is ultimately pissed off that circumstances drove him out of the place. He's just itching to go back. Seems like he found that China had enormous appeal. How can you base your view of life in China on one grumpy, whiny, disgruntled reporter? There is much that is bad in China. There is much that is good. If you think SerpentZA's videos reasonably identify those two categories you are badly mistaken.

author: unseenninja
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 01:59:51 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on August 05, 2024, 12:12:56 amSwedish is actually quite easy to learn. I don't consider myself to be an adept at languages, but it took me just a couple of years to get to grips with Swedish. The hardest part of learning Swedish is that as soon as a Swede hears that you speak English, they immediately start speaking English with you. One of the first phrases I learned was the Swedish equivalent of "Please speak Swedish to me, how else can I learn the language?".Out of Norway, Denmark and Sweden, Sweden has the cheapest cost of living. Finding somewhere to live at a reasonable price is hard though in any large city and the capital is a nightmare. I'm glad I moved here. The lack of rigid hierarchies at work is like a breath of fresh air compared to the UK. I'd last about five minutes in a UK company these days.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 03:14:45 pm
content: If you are going to move, wherever it may be, make sure you will be moving upward at least 4-5 fold. Otherwise, you may be in for more headaches than it is worth.

author: Andy Chee
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 04:06:15 pm
content: Quote from: mengfei on August 08, 2024, 06:23:31 amCashless is a bad idea in a social credit system.i.e. if the government decides that you're a bad actor, they can shut off your digital money supply

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 04:56:27 pm
content: That is exactly what happened here with the truckers Covid protest.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 06:33:20 pm
content: Quote from: unseenninja on August 08, 2024, 01:59:51 pmYeah, probably for an English-speaker due to many common Germanic words and similar-ish constructs. For more challenge, come here and try to learn Finnish (or Estonia, similar thing). Apart from small number of obvious loanwords, it will be a complete from-scratch process.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 06:46:29 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on August 08, 2024, 06:33:20 pmLearning new languages is easy. You just need to be three years old.

author: pdenisowski
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 07:02:22 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on August 08, 2024, 06:33:20 pmAs someone who speaks English and German and who also studied some Swedish: German helps much, much more than English in learning Swedish, but it still doesn't help to the extent that it does with Dutch (which looks and sounds almost like a German dialect).I think many Germans could guess at the meaning of a lot of (especially written) Dutch, but would probably not be able to understand newspaper headlines in Swedish without some prior study of the language.What makes Swedish "easier" to learn is that it has a much simpler verb system than most Indo-European languages (even easier than English), no strong case system (like German and Slavic languages), and relatively a easy phonology / phonetic writing system. The post-positioned definite article (en tjej - a girl, tjejen - the girl) is probably the "strangest" thing in Swedish for an English speaker.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 08:07:46 pm
content: I like the sound of Norwegian a lot. It is a tone-accented language and it sounds very musical.Also, if you spend time in Norway as an English speaker, you quickly start to pick up a good idea of what people are saying when you listen to them.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 08:17:46 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 08, 2024, 08:07:46 pmNorwegian and English have common roots, if I'm not mistaken.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 08:33:16 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on August 08, 2024, 08:17:46 pmYes, they are both Germanic languages, and Norwegian has some points of similarity with Scots and other northern dialects of English, in accent and in vocabulary.Also, Norwegian and Swedish are nearly the same language, although I think Norwegians understand Swedish more than Swedes understand Norwegian.

author: unseenninja
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 08:34:02 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on August 08, 2024, 06:33:20 pmI can make reasonable qualified guesses reading French, Dutch, German, Italian, etc, but Finnish is so far removed from most other European languages that I found it quite disorienting when I first visited Finland and the only word I recognised was "taksi".Not to mention that the grammar and structure of the language is completely novel compared to the others. It would be quite a challenge at my age.Two of my friends come from Swedish/Finnish parents and they can speak both mother tongues fluently, plus English of course. Consequently, their ability to easily pick up new languages is very good indeed.We all draw the line at Danish though and speak English with our Danish colleagues.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 08:37:25 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 08, 2024, 08:33:16 pmCase in point:Quote from: unseenninja on August 08, 2024, 08:34:02 pm(Danish ≈ Norwegian)

author: unseenninja
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 08:43:29 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 08, 2024, 08:33:16 pmThere's one slight problem with Norwegian. It's actually two languages. There is 'bokmål' - the original Norwegian and there is 'nynorsk', literally 'new Norwegian', which is spoken more along the west coast. I can understand original Norwegian, as long as they slow down a bit and don't throw lots of slang into their sentences. Nynorsk is somewhat more challenging!

author: unseenninja
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 08:50:40 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 08, 2024, 08:37:25 pmYes, Danish and Norwegian are closer than Swedish and Norwegian, but I can read all three of them without problems. It's when the Danes open their mouths that my eyes go glassy. Spoken Danish is a bit like French - only about 30% of the letters in a word are actually turned into sounds! It does depend very much on the speaker and where they grew up though. Some Danes speak a broad Copenhagen dialect that I find next to impossible to understand but I can go to Århus, on the western island and understand people very well. They refuse to have anything to do with Swedish there, so I still end up speaking English to them anyway.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2024, 09:46:16 pm
content: Quote from: unseenninja on August 08, 2024, 08:43:29 pmAccents vary quite a bit too and some are intractable to the unsufficiently trained ear.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 02:07:42 pm
content: Quote from: unseenninja on August 08, 2024, 08:34:02 pmIndeed. Finnish is one of the few languages in Europe that is not part of the Indo-European family of languages. (Estonian, Turkish and Hungarian are the other major ones, along with minor languages like Basque, and a smattering of local languages and dialects.) Excluding the languages of immigrants, only about 1% of Europe’s population has a non-Indo-European native language!

author: m k
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 04:06:41 pm
content: Finns have also generally two languages, written and spoken, plus dialects with their own wordings.Very nice for learners, of written language.Quote from: tooki on August 06, 2024, 07:23:01 pmDon't forget trigonometrics, Babylonia FTW.And when pipes come out from the pipe section they change metric.Are there or was there imperial logarithms?

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 04:22:57 pm
content: Quote from: m k on August 09, 2024, 04:06:41 pmIndustrial pipes can come in various size schedules:NPS (USA)DN (metric)DIN (Germany)JIS (Japan)GOST (Russia)You could compare this with the various wire gauge standards like AWG or SWG.QuoteI think that would be log base 10. Engineers and industrial practitioners tend to use log10, while mathematicians exclusively use loge

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 04:36:56 pm
content: Quote from: m k on August 09, 2024, 04:06:41 pmYeah - but I don't think there is any language where thisisn'tthe case, dialects are everywhere and so are differences between written and "actually spoken" (in daily dialogue) language.Finnish probably being quite difficult to learn otherwise, at least there are two positives: consistent and simple mapping between written letters and phonetic sounds (a feature lost in many languages like English or French), and not too dramatic differences between written and spoken languages, but of course, as in any language, there are some.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 05:21:23 pm
content: I know in many languages like French and German, there are distinct differences between the formal written language and the conversational spoken language. There are words and grammatical constructs used in conversation that would not be used in writing.I think this doesn't happen very much, if at all, in English. You write what you say, and you say what you write.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 05:37:28 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 09, 2024, 05:21:23 pmHuh? English is littered with slang you wouldn't write in anything remotely formal. For example, in real English verbal English there are many terms of abuse which are a form of affection, but written down they are purely abuse.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 05:58:32 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 09, 2024, 05:37:28 pmYes, but I'm not talking about slang, I'm talking about two versions of the language. It would take a native speaker of French or German to amplify what I mean, but I believe I am correct.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 06:36:53 pm
content: "Two different versions" would be a slight exaggeration in nearly any language though, I think. For a beginner sure, just the fact that spoken language is delivered to you at high pace you cannot controlalonemakes it more difficult to understand than written text.Anyamount of constructs and words that differ make it progressively more difficult.Clearly there are small differences even in English; words like "ain't" wouldn't get used in written newspaper or scientific text, but IMHO isn't slang enough to be called slang either, quite a lot of people would use that at least sometimes.Or just like "kaksi" (two) shortens to "kaks" in spoken Finnish, in English you can hear people say stuff like "how y'all doing" quite commonly. Maybe it's a "dialect" or "slang", but pretty common enough not to feel like slang to my untrained ears - just "spoken language".

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 06:45:34 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on August 09, 2024, 04:36:56 pmNo, this is a very different thing, at least in German. See below.Quote from: IanB on August 09, 2024, 05:58:32 pmYou are absolutely correct, at least in regards to German. (I can’t vouch for French.)Switzerland is a poster child of this: the native spoken language in the German-speaking part of the country is “Swiss German”, a language (or dialect, depending on who you ask) with pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar different enough that most Germans cannot readily understand it. Swiss German TV shows have to be dubbed into standard German for Germany, just as if it were any other foreign language.In contrast, the language used in Switzerland in writing, as well as spoken in some very specific settings like elementary school, is “Swiss Standard German”, the Swiss dialect/variant of standard German, readily understood by Germans. (Standard German is used in school so the kids learn it. But the division is really clean: standard German is the language of instruction. During breaks, the same teacher will speak Swiss German with the kids.)(In recent years, written Swiss German has become a thing among younger people, used in text messaging between friends. But since it is a transcription of a language with a very high level of regional variation, spelling varies wildly from person to person.)To give you an idea of the difference, here’s a sample sentence:English: I was in Basel yesterday and went shopping there.Swiss German (Zurich dialect): Ich bi geschter z Basel gsi und bi dete go poschte.Standard German: Ich war gestern in Basel und war dort einkaufen.As you can see, the Swiss German isn’t a slight tweak on the standard German, it is very substantially different. Germany has many local “dialects” that diverge substantially from the written form. (I assume Austria does too, I just have no experience. Liechtenstein is the same as Switzerland.)Now here’s the key thing: when you talk about slang, you’re talking about the level of formality (known as “register” in linguistics). My English (my native language) does indeed vary in register situationally. But in Switzerland, Swiss German vs. standard German is NOT situational, insofar as you use Swiss German in all settings, and it has its own slang and formal registers. So, for example, a sales clerk at a fancy boutique will use very formal Swiss German when speaking with a customer, and very informal Swiss German when speaking with a friend. But if they write a letter, it’s in formal standard German to the customer, and informal standard German to the friend.So it’s not a single language with a spectrum of formality, it’s two separate languages, each with its own spectrum of formality.This is called a “diglossia” in linguistics (which I studied at university), for those who want to read up on the subject.I would argue that there are many native English speakers who also have a clear diglossia. For example, most African-Americans’ home dialect is AAVE (African-American Vernacular English), but use standard American English in writing (and in most cases, also speak standard American English situationally). AAVE has, aside from the obvious differences in pronunciation and slang vocabulary, a number of substantial grammatical differences from standard American English. Similar situations apply to many British dialects.In contrast, many native English speakers (both in USA and elsewhere) have no diglossia, using substantially the same vocabulary and grammar for both everyday speech and writing. A typical American from the Midwest or Pacific Northwest, for example, will not have a separate home dialect. This does not mean that slang doesn’t get used, nor that there aren’t different “registers” of formality when speaking and writing for different situations, but it does mean that, for example, the grammar is the same.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 06:49:41 pm
content: Grammatically, I think there are different ways of forming verb tenses, where some forms are only found in speech, but not in writing. I think in French, some constructs are found in writing, but never used in speech. As I said, I'm not an expert or a linguist, but this is what I have been told.The case of "ain't" is an interesting one. Apparently, this was a perfectly proper and correct form in the past, but over time it got viewed differently and people formed the idea that it was somehow bad. Note that today, you can contract "they are not" to "they aren't", but you cannot contract "I am not" in the same manner anymore. The language has lost something perfectly reasonable.(Note: composed before tooki's response.)

author: m k
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2024, 06:59:38 pm
content: Dynamic language is of course a bit different.Minä mä mää mieSinä sä sää sieFor me and you.Hän se hääFor 3rd person.Se se seFor 3rd non person.And pluralMe me myöTe te työHe ne hyöPotatoPeruna pottu potaattiMore potatoesPerunoita perunia pottuja pottuloita potuiLaatikko loota looraFor box.Ämpäri sanko(sankko)Regular buckets of different part of the country that everybody understand without a problem.As a Finn do you understand what 'pirrastaa' or 'suuli' means?Generally Finns understand each others.Words are not chopped very much, but different parts may have totally different words for same thing.Or the same word for different thing.E,typo.

author: DaneLaw
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2024, 09:54:52 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on August 08, 2024, 08:17:46 pmSame heritage, both were part of the kingdom of Denmark, Also why England got some of the letterings from ÆØÅ in their language..A big chunk the English language are based around old Danish Norse, before England became sovereign, and were part of Denmark, and ruled from Denmark by danish (vi)kings, (fx Knuth the Great) same can be seen on many of the English cities that originate from this old danelaw-era.The most obvious ones - are english cities that ends on "by" as "by" mean city in danish.. Derby, Grimsby, Whitby, Selby, Appleby, Ashby, Rugby, Hornby, Kirby, Saxby etcIn general many of the old English cities, are based around an old Danish naming, same with cities like York/Yorkshire..it comes from the old Danish Norse "Yorvik/Jorvik" meaning pig-alley or something like that...the viking museum in York goes into details and the naming-origin of York.https://www.jorvikvikingcentre.co.uk/A big part of the English language are based around old danish norse from that era.. many common everyday English-words orignated from that old danish norse era...words like*: Law, Fellow, Husband, Window, Egg, Sister, Want, Take, Uggly, Sky, Knife, Bread, Die, happy, Freckle, Gift, Hell, Ransack, Slaughter, Cake, Skin, Call, Club, Guest, Kid, Dirt, Bag, Anger, Ill, Die, Skill (*30 various examples from chatGTP)Same with the weekdays..if I recall 4 of the 7 days, are based around old norse mythology.. Tuesday (Tyrs day), Wednesday (Odins/Wodens day), Thursday (Thors day), Friday. (Friggs day)It was previously believed a huge part of it originated from back when England was called "Danelaw", and most of England was part of the kingdom of Denmark, but Nature had a huge article,(3Q2022) where some of the leading scientists had looked at the current English gene pool, and it was quite surprising that something like 40 to 45% of the current gene pool seems to originate from old norse, and it was effected many hundred of years earlier then previous thought, - where it was believed that is was mostly in the viking era, but it seems to be many hundred of years earlier that it took effect.Article.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05247-2There are a lot of common grounds between the languages, same with pronounce... the same is the case with proto germanic.IN Denmark most people can understand English, I would guess most of it are down to various media.Proficiency world Index (English language skills) Seems Holland tops the charts.https://www.ef-danmark.dk/assetscdn/WIBIwq6RdJvcD9bc8RMd/cefcom-epi-site/reports/2021/ef-epi-2021-english.pdf

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2024, 10:59:54 pm
content: Quote from: DaneLaw on August 10, 2024, 09:54:52 pmIt was in fact about half of England, with other regions like Wessex, and Northumbria under different rule, and Wales also. It took some time before England was unified under one ruler, with King Æthelstan being the leading candidate.

author: DaneLaw
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2024, 11:47:48 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 10, 2024, 10:59:54 pmIt varied a lot over the centuries, depending on records... but a good indication is usually the city naming..Æthelstan was. 927-939 (dead 939)The last danish king of England was the danish viking "Knuth the Great" he was king of England until 1035 (if I recall correctly)Though, also worth noting.. TV shows like fx Vikings.. are for a good part fictional... its entertainment.

author: m k
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2024, 05:45:27 am
content: Some more.Tämä tää (this)Tuo toi (that)Se se (it)Nämä nää (these)Nuo noi (those)Ne ne (them)Reading Finnish is easy, learn pronunciation of vowelsA AdamE EchoI IndianaO OscarU yoU, the endingYÄ mAdÖU -> Y and O -> Ö are like A -> ÄLearn those and you can practically read bedtime stories for kids of your Finnish friends.Double phonems(?) can be tricky.I've heard that some foreigners can't hear the difference.(for Finns there is a clear diference)'Kylä' is a village.'Kyllä' is yes.'Puro' is a stream.'Puuro' is porridge.'R' is hard, like a sound of an old alarm clock with hammer and bells.Earlier 'peruna' syllables are pe-ru-na, very easy.1.CVSyllable ends usually between double consonant and after double vowels.2.CVC3.CVV(di-fe-ren-ce)(dif-fe-ren-ce)PluralsKy-lätPuu-rotPossessionKy-länPuu-ronPlural possessionKy-li-enPuu-ro-jenFrom village to villageKy-läs-tä ky-läänAnd from porridge to porridgePuu-ros-ta puu-roonEven easier.Maybe toughest in Finnish is 'NG' riNG.Shoe and shoes.'Ken-kä''Ken-gät' not 'ken-kät'Pronunciation goes so that a phonem(?) continues over a syllable.Something like 'keng-gät' but stressed from the beginning, like mostly always.Borrowed word signal.'Sig-naa-li'

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2024, 08:20:26 am
content: And from the other side of the world:https://www.youtube.com/watch/h9y1HrDz_Eg

author: guenthert
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2024, 09:09:38 am
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on August 09, 2024, 04:36:56 pmThat might be the case, but in some languages it's clearly more disjunct than in others. Written German is fairly well aligned to the spoken one ("Hochdeutsch" as spoken natively around Hannover in Lower Saxony/Germany). This is due to the written language being adjusted occasionally (not universally appreciated, see Orthographiereform of 1996) as the spoken one naturally develops. Where that is not done, spoken and written language drift apart.But to the original topic: I worked for a number of years in a company originally founded in the UK, later the HQ was moved to California, as there more funding was available. Some of my colleagues followed that move, other stayed in the original office. Some of those who originally came to the US moved later back for various reasons, but it's my understanding that cost of education for the kids was a big factor. Others stayed to this day and enjoy weather and themuchbetter pay (in Silicon Valley at least) and the food (also SV). I moved back (to Germany), but chiefly due to cost-of-living considerations.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2024, 09:13:18 am
content: Quote from: m k on August 11, 2024, 05:45:27 amI'd say the difference is clearly audible -- it just works differently from what we are used to.In Germanic languages, a double consonant essentially shortens the pronounciation of the vowel that preceeds it. In Finnish, the consonant itself is also pronounced for a bit longer; you are "lingering" on the double-consonant a bit. When spoken slowly, it sometimes even sounds to me like two consonants are spoken in a row, with a little "dip" inbetween. (Not a glottal stop, but a little delay.)So I think I can hear the difference pretty well -- but it takes some effort to reproduce it when speaking, and I might not get that quite right. Not that I speak any Finnish, but at least I make an effort to pronounce the names of Finnish colleagues correctly.

author: pdenisowski
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2024, 09:22:54 am
content: Quote from: guenthert on August 11, 2024, 09:09:38 amThat's putting it mildlyAlmost all the polls and studies since the Rechtschreibreform show that barely 10% of Germans approve of the changes.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2024, 09:39:19 am
content: Quote from: pdenisowski on August 11, 2024, 09:22:54 amThat has changed a lot since 1996 and has largely become a non-issue, I'd say. Close to 40% of the population are 35 and younger, and have hence learned to spell after the Rechtschreibreform was introduced. And most older writers have adjusted over time; I would expect significantly more than 10% of them to be OK with the reform by now.I hardly see any "old spelling" in contemporary texts, whether formally published or informal. I do see plenty of plain wrong spelling, but that's another matter...

author: Gerhard_dk4xp
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2024, 06:30:21 pm
content: Quote from: pdenisowski on August 08, 2024, 07:02:22 pmAs a kid of maybe 7, I sat on a park bench in Middelburg, NL, devouringa bag of fries, when 2 grandmas took place next to me and engaged ina long, slooow conservation. I could understand most of it, even if I hadnever been exposed to Dutch before.Me, a German Mosel-Franke. :-)OK, we spoke Hi German at school, dialect was nowhere accepted,even my mom was a teacher.cheers, Gerhard

author: aeberbach
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2024, 10:36:28 pm
content: @eevblog claimed Australia's housing issues are caused by immigration. Maybe we shouldn't allow people without permanent residency (at least) to own property, or multiple properties.But various reports recently said 1 in 20 houses are sitting vacant. There's one next to me and it been empty for more than 5 years, all year round.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-07/vacant-houses-test-the-limits-of-private-property-rights/104064376https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/australia-datablog/2023/sep/02/up-to-136000-houses-are-empty-in-australia-find-out-where-they-arehttps://www.domain.com.au/news/one-in-20-melbourne-homes-empty-during-housing-crisis-2-1301659/It's far easier to blame immigrants than to think about changing a system of concessions and tax cuts that make keeping a property empty an attractive option.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2024, 10:50:27 pm
content: Quote from: aeberbach on August 11, 2024, 10:36:28 pmAs it happens, the UK has a tax penalty for empty properties. Single occupancy attracts a tax concession. Unoccupied properties are taxed at the full rate. If they remain empty after that, the tax can increase up to 4x the standard rate.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 11, 2024, 10:52:05 pm
content: Quote from: aeberbach on August 11, 2024, 10:36:28 pmI made no such claim that immigration is theonlyissue or soluation at play here.But yes, we should not let foreigners own property here either, especially during a housing crisis.

author: guenthert
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 07:48:16 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 11, 2024, 10:52:05 pmWouldn't such a ruling prevent foreign investment in real estate, further disincentivize new construction?Here in Germany there too is a housing crisis (which I experienced first-hand when moving back last year). There are however also millions of empty houses/apartments. The availability is very uneven distributed, particularly large cities lack available housing, while on the countryside there's a surplus. I was thinking of moving back to Berlin, but gave up on that thought; it's currently not economically viable. Instead I moved to a small town in the far west and enjoy it so far, as I'm in the fortunate situation of not being dependent on employment. Not an option for everyone.

author: bat
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 08:14:07 am
content: Find a job in a company making crystal oscillators and resonators. Correct me if I'm wrong, but we're building more and more satellites. In fact, they are becoming more "budget-friendly" by the day, meaning we're sending up more and more. There's also a new market emerging called "New Space," which is definitely going to be a growing field. I currently work at a company that manufactures crystal oscillators. Our results are good, but I believe they could definitely be better.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 08:18:35 am
content: Quote from: bat on August 12, 2024, 08:14:07 amUmm... And as we all know, about 80% of the value of a satellite is in the crystal oscillators it uses. And conversely, about 80% of the crystal oscillator market goes into satellites.No, not really.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 10:10:47 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 11, 2024, 10:52:05 pmI don't know about Australia, but in the UK, immigration is certainly a huge contributory factor to our sky high house prices. It's true interest rates, planning, right to buy and non-resident buyers, are all reasons, but it's simply a matter of supply and demand. An increase in population will increase in demand for places for people to live and in the last 25 years, population growth has been due to immigration.

author: pdenisowski
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 10:23:07 am
content: Quote from: ebastler on August 11, 2024, 09:39:19 amI suspect that, to some extent, increased conformity to the new spelling rules might be mostly due to auto-correct "suggestions" - MS Word pesters me constantly when I write German the way I learned it. After a while it's easier to give in rather than turn off the auto-correction and take the risk of typing something that would have been wrong before the "reform" as well

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 10:32:33 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on August 12, 2024, 10:10:47 amImmigration is not the root of the problem. It is a result of increased economic activity which needs people to do the work. In most of west-Europe there is a high demand of workers so people get brought in from abroad. The only problem is that there simple aren't enough homes to put all these people in. So either reduce economic activity OR build more homes.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 11:19:27 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 12, 2024, 10:32:33 amThe increase in economic activity is not boosting the GDP per capita or productivity. The people migrating here are coming from poorer economies with lower wages, which is dragging down our living standards. There are other countries who are doing very well, without such high levels of immigration: Japan, Singapore, South Korea etc. One interesting point about South Korea, is many younger people there are against reunification with the DPRK because it will result in a fall in living standards for them.This is very simple. Immigration from poor countries will reduce living standards and productivity, whilst importing people from more wealthy countries will boost it.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 12:35:48 pm
content: Quotedont help when developers are sitting on large swathes of land waiting on prices to go up

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 04:45:53 pm
content: Quote from: ebastler on August 11, 2024, 09:39:19 amDidn't they also reverse many of the most contentious 1996 changes (like “Majonäse”)?I know that many publishers created house rules adopting some of the changes and rejecting others.I snuck in under the radar: my class at the Gymnasium was the last to be taught under the old orthography, so I didn’t have th change halfway through my schooling here. Although even if I had needed to, it wouldn’t have been as big a deal as in Germany, since Switzerland rejected many of the new spellings outright.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 05:25:29 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on August 12, 2024, 11:19:27 amI don't think so. 40% of the population of Singapore consists of immigrants. Someone needs to collect the garbage, flip burgers, replenish the grocery store, etc. These are not jobs which add much to GDP but keep a country going nevertheless.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 05:28:57 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on August 12, 2024, 04:45:53 pmIndeed, some of the most egregious innovations were cancelled in later revisions of the reform -- Majonäse, Schickoree, Grislibär... They had been introduced as optional "easier" alternatives to the traditional spellings, but they are no longer considered correct at all.As it stands, the most visible remaining change is to use "ss" instead of "ß" at the end of a word if the preceding vowel is a short one. Very logical, since that is how it has always workedwithinwords too. And very visible, since "dass" is such a common word. (And one many writers need to give some tought to -- is it "das" or "dass" now?)Apart from that, most remaining changes are either alternative spellings where one can choose to use the older one instead -- or changes to capitalization or splitting/concatenating words where nobody was sure of the rules to begin with...Oh, and then there's the rule that three identical consonants in a row survive when they occur in concatenated words like Schifffahrt. That's an actual change where the old "Schiffahrt" spelling is no longer correct; but it's also rather exotic, so I think whether people use old or new spelling is not inflicting much pain on anyone.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 06:41:49 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 12, 2024, 05:25:29 pmMost of those doing menial work in Singapore are not immigrants. They come across the causeway from Malaysia in the morning, and go back at night.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 08:16:50 pm
content: Quote from: ebastler on August 11, 2024, 09:39:19 amAn earlier discussion of the need for language and spelling reform (ca. 1878):https://www.daad.org/files/2022/09/Mark_Twain-Broschuere.pdf

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 08:38:55 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on August 12, 2024, 08:16:50 pmThanks for that one!Mark Twain would be pleased to know that we have made great progress in making the Genitive optional; you can now use the Dative instead. And we are currently working on those pesky male/female endings, in the interest of inclusive, gender-neutral language.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 09:11:56 pm
content: Quote from: ebastler on August 12, 2024, 08:38:55 pmI have been wondering how nations where the language makes much of gender (including nouns that are not obviously sexy) are coping with the present demand for gender-neutral (as opposed to neuter gender) pronouns.

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 09:24:23 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on August 12, 2024, 09:11:56 pm"Coping"? That's a joke. In Germany, the language is going through ridiculous contortions such as:Ingenieur or Ingenieurin (M/F).Solution:Ingenieur*inIngenieur/inIngenieur:inThis gendering is driving everyone nuts and sending a lot of voters to fringe political parties.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 09:26:14 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on August 12, 2024, 09:11:56 pmNot very well... Even the nouns cause us problems.E.g. in German, "Student" means student, and "Studentin" means female student. "Studenten" has historically been used to denote the plural, whether talking about a group of male-only students or a mixed group, while "Studentinnen" clearly denotes the plural of the female form. But recent concerns are that females might feel excluded when one talks about "Studenten".So we are now expected to either write "Student:innen" (and speak it with a glottal stop at the colon), or use "Studierende" as a workaround. The latter means "those who study", which happens to be what the undesirable "Studenten" means as well -- don't ask...Regarding pronouns, we don't have an equivalent of the English "they" or "them" (used to designate a neutral singular). At least nothing has arrived in the mainstream yet; some very progressive ideas have been suggested but thankfully have not caught on.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 09:50:34 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on August 12, 2024, 09:11:56 pmSome languages are at the other extreme, like Chinese. They just had a third person pronoun (他) until interactions with Europeans led them to combine female (女) with third person (他) to create a character for she (她), but they are only different in writing. They are pronounced the same. All the fuss about gendered and non-gendered pronouns makes no sense to them. Its just a short tag to avoid using a full name over and over.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 10:17:41 pm
content: Demand ?

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 10:22:07 pm
content: Quote from: ebastler on August 12, 2024, 09:26:14 pmI still don't like "them" as third-person singular, since it is useful to distinguish singular and plural pronouns.Historically, since English has always been a licentious language, there are many instances of singular them, but I thought we had made progress.There were efforts to invent a new pronoun for third-person singular with neutral gender (not neuter gender "it"), but the advocates could not agree with each other on a single neologism.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2024, 11:02:27 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on August 12, 2024, 10:22:07 pm30 year ago there was a movement to elide his/her into hir. The SJW cretins were so ignorant some of them denied that "their" was theexistinggender-neutral ewuivalent.

author: pdenisowski
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 02:51:26 am
content: Quote from: ebastler on August 12, 2024, 08:38:55 pmAs Bastian Sick would say "Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod"That series should be mandatory reading in German schools.Quote from: ebastler on August 12, 2024, 08:38:55 pmDon't forget the Gendersternchen (gender star)

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 08:39:08 am
content: Quote from: TimFox on August 12, 2024, 09:11:56 pmThat is a good question... I'd find it demeaning to label somebody as 'it'.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 11:15:00 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 13, 2024, 08:39:08 amIn English you can use "they", e.g. "they went upstairs" refers equally to people who are male, female, all the forms of DSD, sexual and religious proclivities.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 11:42:14 am
content: Quote from: ebastler on August 12, 2024, 05:28:57 pmSince Switzerland already didn’t use the ß even before the reform, this is amusing to me.As a speaker/writer of Swiss Standard German, I literally have no feel for when a German would insert an ß instead of ss (especially in the old rules!), since in Switzerland we always use ss.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 11:58:35 am
content: Quote from: tooki on August 13, 2024, 11:42:14 amWith the new rules it has actually become quite straightforward. It's "ss" after a short vowel (lassen, Fass) and "ß" after a long vowel (Soße, Kloß) -- whether used in the middle of a word or at the end.The single "s" is trickier: In the middle of a word I think it always follows a long vowel, and is always voiced (as opposed to the "ß" which is unvoiced). But at the end of a word, "s" can follow either a long vowel (las) or a short one (was, das). And I won't go into how you figure out when to use "s" vs. the homophone "ss/ß" at the end of a word...Well, we can't make it too easy for learners of the language; have a reputation to maintain!

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 12:37:11 pm
content: Quote from: ebastler on August 12, 2024, 09:26:14 pmWell, ultimately the problem is that it’s impossible to make everyone happy.English is not devoid of gender-specific nouns for professions or roles. Actor/actress, steward/stewardess, and aviator/aviatrix are classic examples, but there are more obscure ones like seamster/seamstress. In many cases, one or the other form fell out of use organically (like aviatrix and seamster). In others, like actress, it’s been deliberate.But in the end you can’t win: in many cases where we already had separate forms, like actress, activists argue that the existence of a separate word implies a difference in status between the male and female forms, with the female form of course being assigned lower status. (And that’s ignoring truly disingenuous people doing things like comparingtailortoseamstressto claim the female form is lower-status, even though those are two related, but distinct, professions.) And then in the cases where we didn’t originally have separate forms (like fireman), they argued that bynothaving it, we are ignoring the existence of women who work in those fields.(That of course is why in some cases, we just switched to different phrases altogether, like firefighter, police officer, and flight attendant, all of which had existed for a long time anyway.)I don’t claim to know what the solution is, neither for English nor German. What I do feel is that a) most people don’t give a shit either way (and studies support this), and that b) the most rabid proponents as well as the most rabid opponents of gender-neutral language get themselves worked into such frenzies that they are incapable of working towards a middle ground that everyone can be happy with. This is not helped by some (mostly right-leaning) political parties deliberately using this as a wedge issue. But I suppose we shouldn’t really explore that topic since it’ll get the thread closed.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 12:56:08 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on August 13, 2024, 12:37:11 pmNot the studies and polls from Germany which I have seen. When a large share of respondents say that they "don't care", the question has typically been asked in an asymmetrical way -- "How important do you think gender-neutral language is?" -- so the "don't care about it" actually implies a negative opinion.When asked directly whether they want gender-neutral language to be used, between 2/3 and 3/4 of respondents are critical or fully opposed, depending on the specific poll and on the usage scenario under discussion -- newspapers, broadcasting, government/aministration, private communications etc.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 01:22:49 pm
content: I’m not talking about polls/questionnaires/studies that ask about e.g. “how important is gender neutral language” towards reaching a specific goal. (Because one’s opinion on gender-neutral language as such is unrelated to whether you think using it will have an impact on the goal.) In those, it’s very clear that most people do not think it is productive.But in many asking about people’s opinion on it as such, the largest group is “I don’t care”. And as I said, I think most people are indifferent.Just to be clear, in English the phrase “I don’t care” means “ist mir egal” = “I am indifferent to it”. Whereas the phrase “I don’t care for it” means you expressly dislike it. So without some linguistic contortions, “I don’t care” does not mean “I am opposed to”. (I will say that I hate it when surveys have a Likert scale that goes something like “1 = strongly favor, 3 = don’t care, 5 = strongly oppose”, precisely because “I don’t care” is not exactly the same as “neither in favor nor opposed”. Even worse are the ones that make it a 1-4 scale, forcing you to be “somewhat in favor” or “somewhat opposed” even when you are neither!)https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studien_und_Umfragen_zu_geschlechtergerechter_Sprachehas a bunch of surveys and polls, and the answers are fascinating. But one needs to look at the exact question asked, because they are not at all comparable to each other!

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 02:21:06 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on August 13, 2024, 12:37:11 pmAnd there are women who don't like the depreciation of the word actress.QuoteI'm in the don't care category, perhpas more towards the conservative, since I'm agains change, just fore change's sake.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 02:34:36 pm
content: Quotewhats up with luvvie

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 02:59:52 pm
content: Quote from: themadhippy on August 13, 2024, 02:34:36 pmI've heard that term used to refer to both sexes. No doubt it's seen as distasteful to both.I really dislike people meddling with language. Let things evolve naturally.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 03:08:21 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on August 13, 2024, 02:59:52 pmIn places like the BBC, every engineer and semi-technical person refers to the "creative" types as the luvvies.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 03:19:45 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on August 13, 2024, 12:37:11 pmOver the past few years it has become rare to hear the word "actress", "actor" being used for each/all genders.QuoteThe classic example of that is doctor/nurse. Of course there have been counter-examples for generations, but that was (and to a lesser extent is) the bias.What I find annoying is that some people have a tendency to say one is better than the other. But that's a different topic.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 05:54:37 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 13, 2024, 03:19:45 pmUmmm… yeah. I stated that “actress” has fallen out of favor, and that this is deliberate. And since this was mentioned as an example where one of the (previously stated) pair fell out of favor, if the “actress” in “actor/actress” has fallen out of favor, it stands to reason that “actor” has taken up the slack.Quote from: tggzzz on August 13, 2024, 03:19:45 pmYeah, that’s a good example.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 05:57:05 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on August 13, 2024, 02:21:06 pmAbsolutely. Many people, both women and men, find it sounds odd to suddenly hear women referred to by what has historically been the male or mixed form.

author: unseenninja
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 07:18:52 pm
content: One thing which bugs me about Swedish (and for that matter, most other languages) is nouns having gender.In Swedish, "a table" is "ett bord" whereas "a car" is "en bil".There is absolutely no rhyme or reason as to whether "ett" or "en" is used. I find this aspect of languages utterly baffling. It conveys zero information and appears to be completely redundant. Maybe the thread's resident linguist can enlighten me to how things came to be this way?

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 07:25:11 pm
content: Quote from: unseenninja on August 13, 2024, 07:18:52 pmI'm not a linguist, but what I have learned from my research is that noun genders were not originally associated with male or female. They were simply different "kinds" or "types", which were useful to help disambiguate meanings in sentences by means of the appropriate articles and word endings. But over time, it became convenient to call them genders and describe them as masculine or feminine (there are not otherwise many obvious types you could use, that would not also be normal adjectives).

author: unseenninja
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 07:52:20 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 13, 2024, 07:25:11 pmPerhaps, but I'm struggling to come up with any cases where Swedish would miss anything or become less clear if the definite form of all nouns used "en" or "ett". English works just fine with "a". It just seems so... pointless.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 08:05:42 pm
content: Quote from: unseenninja on August 13, 2024, 07:52:20 pmIt depends if there are, or were, words that sound the same, but have different meanings (homophones), words like cannon and canon in English. If they had different genders, you could perhaps tell them apart more easily without context. But I agree it is a bit of a stretch, and English does OK without them.In the past, Old English did of course have genders, and cases, and other such grammar features of Germanic languages. They got simplified out of the language a long time ago, perhaps due to the mixing of peoples with different dialects, and a desire for more convenient communication.The odd thing is that ancient languages seemed to start out with complex grammars, and then got simplified. So there must have been some reason for the originators of the Indo-European family of languages to introduce such features, even if the precise reason is lost to time.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 08:16:53 pm
content: Quotein 1 or 2 very pc locations they are refereed to as cast member MR smith or cast member Miss smith, and going very ot, traditionally in theater there are no married female cast members as all females were refereed to as Miss

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 09:02:40 pm
content: English does have limited forms of gender for nouns. Refer to a ship as "he", and watch the looks you get.When languages (and humans) were developing, there was a different relationship with everyday things. Given the importance attached to fertility and similar, it is not surprising if "irrational to modern minds" traits became associated with objects.Many languages can be traced back to the various Tigris and Euphrates civilisations. No doubt someone has correlated object's genders over the millennia. Anyone here know the conclusions

author: JohanH
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 09:15:36 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 13, 2024, 08:05:42 pmI happen to be a Swedish speaking Finn. Swedish is spoken in an area on the Finnish west coast and in the southern part of Finland and is actually an official language that you can use when communicating with authorities etc. The local Swedish dialects in rural areas are archaic and differ a lot from standard written and "standard" spoken Swedish. In my local dialect, we still use three genders like in old Norse. This has mostly disappeared from spoken Swedish in other areas, but you might find traces in rural areas like Dalecarlia in Sweden and in northern Sweden. It makes a bit easier to learn e.g. German, because many of the cognate words have the same gender. E.g. die Sonne (the sun) is also historically a feminine noun in Norse/Swedish and subsequently in my dialect. I have noticed that kids in the local community don't use three genders any more, but oddly leave out the feminine and resorts to a masculine/neuter combination instead. Compared to standard Swedish that has neuter/utrum. This is a feature of dialects simplifying and becoming closer to the standard language.Btw, in these areas in Finland, you get by with Finnish, Swedish and English, at least in bigger companies. I work at an international industrial company and the official language is English. We have many expats that only speak English. At work I probably use the mentioned languages equally. I prefer to speak a variant of Swedish when talking to Norwegians (happens now and then at work), but with Danes, no way, we use English.

author: pdenisowski
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 09:39:36 pm
content: Quote from: unseenninja on August 13, 2024, 07:18:52 pmFirst, it's helpful not to think of grammatical gender in the same way as biological gender - there's nothing about the sun that makes it masculine in French (le soleil), feminine in German (die Sonne) and neuter in Polish (słońce).Polish is a good example of where "gender" is largely a function of noun endings: you can guess the gender of at least 95% of Polish words just by looking at their final consonant. As with most languages, exceptions to this rule are common usage words - mężczyzna is the Polish word for "man", but ends in -a, which would normally make it a feminine word.There are many constructions in "foreign" languages that seem superfluous to non-native speakers: is gender any worse than having verb conjugations? or articles (a/the)? or even a plural? Lots of languages get along fine without them.There are also lots of things "missing" in English that drive me absolutely crazy sometimes -- for example, there's no inclusive vs. non-inclusive "we" If I'm with one friend and I ask another friend "Should we go now?" does that include the friend I'm speaking to or just the friend I'm with? This is crystal clear in some languages, but I doubt many native English speakers share my frustration when I hear sentences like that oneEdit: Sorry, but here's another one: John gave his father his book. Whose book is it? John's? His father's? This is perfectly clear in Polish

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 10:16:25 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 13, 2024, 09:02:40 pmThere's no rhyme or reason to it. There are nouns which change gender between Latin, French and Spanish, for example, even though they share a common root. The best way to think of grammatical gender is as "kind", "type" or "category". Some languages have two, some three, some even more, I think.Quote from: pdenisowski on August 13, 2024, 09:39:36 pmWell, it can be made clear in English too, if it is not understood from the context. You could say, "John gave his book to his father", for example.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 10:50:37 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 13, 2024, 10:16:25 pmSure, there will be examples every which way. But is there a bias, a preponderance?

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2024, 11:05:33 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 13, 2024, 10:50:37 pmI don't know, but in early languages that have not morphed too much, the gender is often related to the sound and spelling of the word. For example, words ending in "-a" might typically be feminine, while words ending in "-on" might be masculine. This might still be observed in Spanish, but French bears so little relation to its origins that such connections have been lost over time.

author: mengfei
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2024, 02:08:37 am
content: Re: Thinking about leaving the UK > LGBTQ++++++ > History of Language >??

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2024, 10:55:40 am
content: Quote from: mengfei on August 14, 2024, 02:08:37 amIt was fairly obvious this thread would have gone off topic. It could have been worse. I was expecting it to become very politcal, as many people would consider leaving because they don't like how the country is being run. I suspect there's been a lot of restraint exercised here. I'm sure lots of people are disatisified with the path taken by the UK recently.

author: unseenninja
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2024, 06:09:10 pm
content: Recently?!The country has been going to the dogs for the last three decades and I'm very, very happy that I no longer live there.

author: Alex Eisenhut
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 12:41:08 am
content: I don't know what's going on in the UK but can someone in the UK give me their opinion on this videohttps://youtu.be/b5aJ-57_YsQ

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 01:29:51 am
content: Quote from: Alex Eisenhut on August 15, 2024, 12:41:08 amIt's 1h25m long. Who has time to watch it, let alone give an opinion on it?

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 07:06:59 am
content: Quote from: unseenninja on August 14, 2024, 06:09:10 pmArguably, since WW2, with a brief respite due to Thatcher. (which of course ended a little over three decades ago)

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 08:16:42 am
content: The problem as of today is the traditional large pre-WWI/WWII imperial states like Britain, Russia, France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Japan lost their territories (and "spheres of their influence") with all those cheapo resources which made them pretty happy at that time.With today's globalization and liberalization they become only a "cog in the wheel" and they have to provide a significant effort and added value in order to excel (and thus provide a living standard much better than the others can do).If you watch the global politics carefully you may see there is some tendency these days to revert the world-order back to those older times, however..

author: unseenninja
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 08:19:55 am
content: Quote from: Alex Eisenhut on August 15, 2024, 12:41:08 amI'd say the video is spot on.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 09:27:03 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 15, 2024, 07:06:59 am"Milk snatcher" Thatcher's housing reforms set up the conditions which have lead to the recent riots here.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 09:31:42 am
content: Quote from: IanB on August 15, 2024, 01:29:51 amMy opinion: it is a talking head rant, with semi-random pictures grabbed from wherever.If you have 85 minutes to watch it, you are in need of a life.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 10:07:52 am
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 15, 2024, 09:27:03 amThat isn't even true. Thatcher was against the abolition of free milk in school.Quotehttps://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-the-thatcher-mythsBlair policy of mass immigration, which the recent Tory government continued, is also responsible for the riots. It turns out that people are tribal and introducing people with vastly different cultural values, at a rate, faster than they can assimilate, creates social tensions.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 11:43:08 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on August 15, 2024, 10:07:52 amNonetheless - as your reference and others state - shewasthe education secretary and shedidremove free milk from schoolchildren.Actions speak louder than words.QuoteThat's merely another attempt to deflect attention from the points. That constitutes a strawman argument.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 01:02:56 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 15, 2024, 11:43:08 amI really didn't like that free milk very much. They would bring it to the classroom as a tray of small glass bottles with straws, after having sat out at room temperature for far too long. By the time we got to drink it, it was starting to turn, and didn't taste very nice. Milk time for me was one of the lowlights of the day.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 01:25:40 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 15, 2024, 01:02:56 pmI agree entirely! I too hated it, and remember wishing I didn't have to drink it.But I was lucky in that I was part of a relatively wealthy family with intelligent parents, so I didn't "go without" through ignorance/stupidity nor poverty.In the UK we are, as Thatcher wished, returning to "good old Victorian values".https://apnews.com/article/4cd3f752b4f747aaa21a14038b29302f... and that could be construed as being back on the topic

author: peter-h
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 01:49:12 pm
content: I started typing up a long list of things which are good in the UK but gave up because everybody is looking for something different, and everybody has different options in life. I come from Czechoslovakia. Been in own business since 1978.But I do like the transparency in personal, corporate and govt dealings, and the well set up (tested over centuries) legal system where you know you won't get strung up for some piece of crap, and the lack of contextuality in just about everything.I could write for hours about how hard it is to do business in the rest of Europe, for cultural, xenophobic, language, etc, reasons.Only America is good or better than the UK in the transparency, lack of prejudice, etc.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 01:56:57 pm
content: Quote from: pdenisowski on August 13, 2024, 09:39:36 pmI find it quite interesting that those languages couldn't move past this archaic and weird fascination of gender of objects. Seems completely arbitrary, illogical. It makes learning the language more difficult and it has no purpose in understanding. And you end up with stupid rules, like das Madchen, which calls girls gender neutral, just because the word ends with something.Hungarian doesn't even have genders for people. What it does have is 3-4 versions of "you" to express varying amount of formality. How come all the Mericans are all not upset about that, one single "you" to describe one or multiple people, that are either your friends or a well respected customer of your company. How can you just call both of these "you"?

author: JohanH
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 02:59:13 pm
content: Quote from: tszaboo on August 15, 2024, 01:56:57 pmThere is nothing in it that "fascinates" speakers. It's just a syntax, a part of the grammar. You can just as well argue why a programming language uses tab instead of spaces, or whatever. What scares me is that humans are not capable of figuring out what could be the most efficient language and way of speaking and writing. And even when there is a written language to follow, we invent and change the spoken language to the extent that it's hard to write it down (just look at English). Maybe in a 100 000 years we will figure it out.

author: pdenisowski
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 03:12:44 pm
content: Quote from: tszaboo on August 15, 2024, 01:56:57 pmWell, where I live in the United States there are three forms of you:you -singularya'll - pluralall ya'll - augmented pluralQuote from: tszaboo on August 15, 2024, 01:56:57 pmYou should learn Japanese, where there are (among other things) entirely different verbs, nouns, etc. for expressing degrees of formality.Personally, I prefer a single word for "you" - it helps to avoid a lot of potentially awkward or even insulting situations. It also doesn't require me to make all kinds of assumptions about someone's age, position, marital status*, etc.*Here in the South, even elderly married women are referred to as "Miss"

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 03:27:33 pm
content: Quote from: tszaboo on August 15, 2024, 01:56:57 pmIt makes up for that by having 18 declination cases for nouns, right?

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 03:57:55 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 15, 2024, 01:25:40 pmRicketts in the UK returned with immigration. A jump in ricketts cases in the 80s lead to a public health campaign to get dark skinned people, especially muslims who cover most of their skin, to take vitamin D supplements to overcome the lack of vitamin D they make in their skin in northern climates. Now people are so afraid to point out racial differences that the problem is being ignored. A lot of dark skinned people understand and take vitamin D. Many don't.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 04:05:27 pm
content: Quote from: pdenisowski on August 15, 2024, 03:12:44 pmJapanese is a mess. Ask how to pronounce a Chinese character and you usually get one response. Occasionally there are two or three ways to say a character, because things have drifted over time. Try the same with the equivalent kanji, and most characters have multiple completely different pronunciations. Interestingly one of those pronunciations tends to sound like the Cantonese reading of the character. Cantonese speakers have only that one pronunciation.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 06:30:58 pm
content: Quote from: pdenisowski on August 15, 2024, 03:12:44 pmThe sentences change with it as well. For example, You cannot instruct in one type of formal you, it's an equivalent of "would"/"could".Inflection is different. It becomes complicated quite quickly to the point where you can tell how educated someone is by having a 30 second conversation with them. There is a reason, it's a 4.5 difficulty index language.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 08:07:09 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 15, 2024, 11:43:08 amWhy do you think it's a strawman?We could talk about Thatcher, but not all of what she did was bad and she isn't the only person, who's responsible for the current state of affairs. It's simply false to blame all of this on one person.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 08:09:35 pm
content: Quoteonly decent thing she did was die

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 08:17:08 pm
content: Quote from: themadhippy on August 15, 2024, 08:09:35 pmNot true.I admit I've also been responsible to mentioning politics, but why escalate it?Do you want this thread to get locked?I'll step aside.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 08:17:25 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on August 15, 2024, 08:07:09 pmSigh. SeeemphasisedquoteQuoteSigh.Please point to where I said everything she did was bad.Please point to where I said nobody else did anything bad.Since you can't, those are more strawman arguments.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 08:34:23 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 15, 2024, 08:17:25 pmI didn't say that you said she everything she did was bad, nor that no one else did anything bad. I admit, I wasn't direct enough. What I should have said was, you're mistaken that her housing reforms were the primary cause of the current housing shortage. They might not have helped, but the main cause of the current housing shortage is huge increase in demand, thanks to the population rise due to mass migration, which was ramped up during the Blair era. The current civil unrest is also triggered by people fearing for their children's safety, rather than housing.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 08:55:21 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on August 15, 2024, 08:34:23 pmNot according to the UK courts.There are many causes for the current dysfunctional housing market. I have yet to see a numerical estimate of the numbers attributable to each cause. For example, my daughter was a severley affected by one cause, as were half a dozen of her friends. (No, not migration related).To concentrate all attention on any single cause is stupid, even though it ispoliticallyexpedient.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 09:08:22 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on August 15, 2024, 08:34:23 pmYou have a situation that the UK birthrate has been declining for decades, but economic growth is not possible without an increasing workforce, so migration is necessary to make up for the lack of organic population growth. If the population remained flat, the demographics would change to more old people and fewer young people, there would be a labour shortage, a lack of tax revenue, collapse of services like the NHS, and an overall decline in the quality of life.So there is no rosy garden on the other side of the fence. There are social issues to be dealt with under any possible scenario.That said, I will agree that prevailing policies and ideologies by governments of any flavour do not appear to improve the situation.This situation is going to be repeated in any western country, not just the UK. It doesn't get better if you move anywhere else.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 09:28:39 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 15, 2024, 09:08:22 pmThat's pretty much the case: most developed countries have similar problems, albeit in differing proportions.There's no requirement that economic growth depends on population growth. Once upon a time economic output depended on muscle power, but not during our lifetimes and longer.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 09:47:32 pm
content: Funnily enough, infinite economic growth is just not possible physically and we're barely starting to understand it, although many are still in denial. That doesn't make any sense.Playing with demographics like this doesn't work. Even just population stability is a very subtle equilibrium that is easy to break once we start messing with it.That's precisely, and for a large part fast economic growth that we have experienced for the past 2 centuries, in particular in the West, that has led to birthrate decline. All "rich" countries have experienced it. Basically "importing" people from "poor" countries *to make up for it* is fundamentally absurd, and socially very problematic.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 09:55:15 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 15, 2024, 09:08:22 pmThis is nonsense. By this measure I can double the population, have most of them be 75% as productive as people today, and I have achieved economic growth. This is an idiotic measure. True growth is a growth in per person productivity. Britain is failing badly at this. I see so much work that we were pioneers in automating, being turned back to manual work because people are cheaper than the investment needed for machines.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 10:12:30 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on August 15, 2024, 09:47:32 pmNot even infinite. Just having 15% growth year on year for 50 years would be consuming 1000x more resources in year 50 compared to year 1. It wouldn't take long to completely drain the Earth of energy and raw materials. (Which is partly why climate change is such an issue. The future outlook is much worse than past history.)Fortunately, sustainability has become a major business priority for industry, and so the future might not be quite so bleak.QuoteIt might well be argued that corporate greed and wage stagnation has made jobs unappealing to the local workforce, and a migrant workforce has been taking up the slack. On the other hand, what has the local workforce been doing instead of taking up those jobs? Presumably they are workingsomewhere? And if you took them away from those other jobs, what gap would it leave?Speaking practically, anyone who has had dealings with the National Health Service in the UK recently will realize that if you took away all the migrant workers it couldn't function at any reasonable level.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 10:17:49 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 15, 2024, 09:55:15 pmNot nonsense at all, and your argument is a logical fallacy. "A implies B" does not mean "B implies A".In the domain of intellectual work, where employees use their minds and not their hands, companies have growth targets. To achieve those targets they have to hire people, to add more minds to the workforce. Nobody yet has come close to automating human intellectual curiosity, creativity and inventiveness.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 10:22:49 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on August 15, 2024, 09:47:32 pmAgreed.Economistsare in denial, certainly. They are outside their comfort zone, because their standard theories don't work without growth.Physicists, OTOH, understand quickly.https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/is a good exposition. I used to like that blog, but he's become too "single-minded" for me recently."Free green" energy, e.g. fusion, is problematic for that reason. Any such energy has to go somewhere, and the earth is a (large) black body radiator.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 10:29:13 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 15, 2024, 10:17:49 pmNo, you are the one using a logical fallacy. More people does not mean growth. It just means more GDP. More productive people means growth, and the UK if failing badly there.Quote from: IanB on August 15, 2024, 10:17:49 pmintellectual work, done efficiently (rather than running around in circles, which is all too common), expands productivity per person and leads to true growth. Why to you conflate this with quantity? The UK has a falling output per person. Its heading for the third world.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 10:33:50 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 15, 2024, 10:17:49 pmMany successful companies repeatedly "right-size" (ugh!) their employees, and continue to grow economically.Automation continues to redefine what is "intellectual work".At the second company I worked in (a well-respected very high-tech consultancy), the project bookkeeping was done by a team of four people. They didn't bat an eyelid when someone booked 25hours to a project for one days work: "I arrived Saturday 9am and left Sunday 10am; that's 25 hours". After a couple of years a computer arrived, but nobody lost their job.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 10:39:28 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 15, 2024, 10:29:13 pmI have never said that more people means growth. I have not edited any of my posts above. Please find and quote where I said what you think I said, and then let other people tell you that you are mistaken.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 10:39:46 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 15, 2024, 10:29:13 pmThere is more than one definition of growth; no single measure is adequate. Concentrating onanysingle measure is not only unwise but also misleading.Statistics should not be use in the same way as a drunkard uses a lamppost (for support); instead statistics should be used to cast light on a subject.Statistically, landing in an airliner is becomingmoredangerous.Statistically, landing in an airliner is becominglessdangerous.Both statements are simultaneously true.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 10:42:42 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 15, 2024, 10:33:50 pmYes, this is a sad thing, but such "growth" is an illusion. The only time where it seems to work, for a time, is when a company is sweating its assets, and does not need to add new innovations. But it is not sustainable, and eventually the strategy will fail.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 10:51:48 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 15, 2024, 10:42:42 pmIts much worse than that. For decades people studying downsizing have concluded that in most case many of the people with get up and go actually go in the run up to the downsizing, when they see the writing on the wall. The talented who stay, and have been effective, will have created enemies. Those enemies now put a knife in the backs of the talented, and the whole enterprise is drained of talent.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 11:02:15 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 15, 2024, 10:39:28 pmThen how am I expected to read:Quote from: IanBYou don't say it will lead to growth, but you appear to identify it as a pre-requisite.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 11:06:59 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 15, 2024, 11:02:15 pmExactly."If I want to increase muscle mass, I will need to eat more protein" => True statement"If I eat more protein, I will increase muscle mass" => False statement

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 11:26:48 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 15, 2024, 10:22:49 pmAbsolutely true.The amount of solar energy that hits the Earth is approximately 173,000 terawatts. Our current average global energy consumption is around 20 TW. So we are adding 0.01%.According to the Stefan-Boltzmann law the total black body radiation from an object is proportional to the 4th power of its absolute temperature. So a 0.01% (10-4) increase in radiation requires a 10-16increase in temperature.As Earth's average surface temperature is around 15º C (288 K), current human energy output will, at equilibrium, raise the temperature by 0.0000000000000288º C.That figure overstates the temperature increase by whatever proportion of human energy use consists of capturing and immediately using solar energy i.e. solar, wind, and biofuels.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 11:27:36 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 15, 2024, 10:42:42 pmNothingcontinues forever; in that senseeverythingfails.Hence the most important consideration is the time period over which the measurements are made.For example, my heartrate is anywhere from 220bpm to <1µbpm, depending on the averaging period.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 11:34:24 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 15, 2024, 11:26:48 pmThat statement was made in the context of presuming continual (economic) growth at the historic rate. Hint: exponential growth for a long time.Please read the reference I gave with that statement. Here it is again:https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ Economists and politicians infamously can't get their head around what exponential growth means;engineersreally ought to understand it instinctively!

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2024, 11:38:14 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 15, 2024, 11:27:36 pmMight it be the case that companies that periodically "right-size" their employees go through a boom-bust cycle, with an overall average growth trend? They reduce the workforce in downturns, and hire again in upturns? Maybe they need to learn something from engineering, resonance, and Q-factors (another thread)? Maybe they should employ appropriate levels of damping to avoid such oscillation? But how could they, if the management are MBAs and not engineers?

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 12:00:28 am
content: Is the system controllable and observable? If so does any entity have control of all of the necessary control inputs? I am not sure that those with control system educations are in much better position to run the machine than the MBAs.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 01:01:03 am
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 15, 2024, 11:34:24 pmYes, I read it."The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate (conveniently chosen to represent a 10× increase every century), we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years."After 400 years, under this assumption, we would be using 10,000 times more energy than at present i.e. 200,000 TW, or yes approximately the same amount of energy as received from the sun. So a doubled energy budget to reject thermally needs 1.19x the current temperature (288), or 343 K (70 C).That's not boiling but it would indeed be unpleasant.But I'm not at all sure I accept the 2.3% total energy growth rate.Between the years 1000 and 2000 the average population growth rate was 0.3%. The previous 1000 years more more like 0.05% per annum. In the 1960s and 1970s population grew at 2% a year, since 2000 it's been under 1%, and everyone seems to agree the population growth rate is going to hit 0% or even negative in the coming decades.So population growth has been a fairly significant component of energy use growth, and that's going away.We are left with per-capita energy use growth.I really really don't see how per capita energy use is going to grow exponentially.Let's concentrate on the 1st world. We can assume the 3rd world will in time catch up to the 1st world, per capita, but that's a one-off. The world per capita energy use is about 21,000 kWh/year. NZ and Austria (not Australia) are around twice that, the nordic countries, Russia, Australia are around 3x (I assume mostly heating/cooling of buildings), USA nearly 4x and Canada 5x. UAE and Singapore are 7x and 8x, Qatar is 11x (or 3x the USA).Where is energy use growth over the current usage of Qatar going to come from?The article discusses food. I can't see how we're going to want exponentially more expensive food. We're certainly not going to eat exponentially more calories. Beef is supposedly the most energy-intensive food (at least major food). Ok, so everyone starts eating the finest steaks 3x a day. What then?Once all your buildings are kept at your preferred 21 C or 23 C or whatever all year, in every climate ... what then? A/C gets more efficient, insulation gets better.Gadgets? I dunno. Most things except TVs are getting smaller, with less material in them.Transportation? Modern cars and airliners are, roughly speaking, equally efficient per passenger km, and are getting better. Even if we all start travelling anywhere in the world in 90 minutes by rocket, the energy use of a rocket trip (to anywhere) is similar to flying between Los Angeles and Sydney. We all start commuting to work or shopping on the opposite side of the planet by rocket? Ok. That's a lot higher energy use on transportation than today -- a daily circumnavigation of the Earth is 1000x more distance (let's call that energy) than today's typical 10k miles / 15k km driven -- but I don't see how it can increase beyond that. The article is assuming we're staying on this one planet, right?Airlines do already exist. Before COVID we reached around 1000 km of annual airline travel per capita -- or around 10,000 km per person in the 1st world, roughly similar to the level of travel by car.At the moment transportation is about 25% of total global energy use. Under the assumptions in the last paragraph (or anything remotely close to them) it could come to dominate. But even it has absolute limits on a per capita basis. And I don't think it will ever get anywhere near that 1000x current 1st world levels. One world trip per month, maybe, not daily. So, 15x current average levels, increasing total per capita energy use to around 4x current levels.So again: where is long term exponential per capita energy use going to come from?

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 09:56:04 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 16, 2024, 01:01:03 amThe article is a gedankenexperiment aiming to illustrate whatcannothappen. Hence arguing that some of the conjectures don't represent a plausible future isentirely missing the point!The objective is to force economists to understand that their cherished beliefs and theories cannot be valid in the long term. After they realise that, perhaps they will develop theories that do not presume/require continual growthOr notIt is about energy growth rather than energy per capita growth.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 12:25:34 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 15, 2024, 11:06:59 pmIf I want to make more steel I need more iron ore. If I want to grow economically making steel I need to put intellectual effort into high grade steel, as well as accessing iron ore, where I get a decent margin. Otherwise I am in the commodity business, hovering around break even, and no genuine growth occurs. I am merely keeping more people as the same horrible subsistence level. There are measures of actual growth, and there's treating cancer as growth.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 12:42:48 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 15, 2024, 11:34:24 pmThat guy is quite pragmatic and good to read. Be very careful what economists say about growth, and the potential for growth over the next century or so. They draw some wacky conclusions, mostly hinging on the relevance of cheap abundant energy. They barely factor energy into their thinking, so they draw conclusions like a small difference in outcomes, whether we see massive climate change or not, and whether we have cheap abundant energy or not. People who think human demand for energy, regardless of whether it is actually available, will not just keep increasing are just luddites, unable to see the opportunities more energy brings, and only seeing things in terms of today's activities. In the last half century it would appear efficiency gains in insulation, more efficient engines, telecoms reducing the need for travel, and so on would have somewhat reduced overall energy consumption in developed countries. It hasn't. The only reason a country like England seems to have reduced a bit is all its heavy industries have collapsed, and the energy to make England's stuff is now used in China, India and elsewhere.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 05:10:20 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 15, 2024, 08:55:21 pmThe fact the riots started outside a Mosque and after three girls were brutally murdered by a second generation immigrant, indicates that immigration was the prime concern.Quote from: coppice on August 15, 2024, 11:02:15 pmWhy do we need growth?Living standards and productivity are far more important. The UK is hardly unique in having a sub replacement birth rate. Other countries are in a similar position and are doing very well without bringing in workers from low wage economies.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 06:25:17 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on August 16, 2024, 05:10:20 pmReal growth is growth in productivity, and good living standards require that growth. Any other kind of growth is one group sucking the blood of another and growing at its expense. A zero sum (or even less than zero) scramble for scarce resources.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 06:39:33 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 16, 2024, 06:25:17 pm.This is rapidly approaching No True Scotsman territory.Unreal growth (c.f. the emotional but equally meaningless real growth) can be achieved by "working smarter not harder".

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 07:55:43 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 16, 2024, 06:39:33 pmWorking harder and working smarter are both ways to increase productivity, and represent real growth, although I personally prefer smarter rather than harder.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 08:50:23 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 16, 2024, 07:55:43 pmWorking smarter is pretty difficult if you have a lack of smarts. And if you want to increase the quota of smarts in your company, you have to hire more smart people.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 09:02:42 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 16, 2024, 08:50:23 pmI read an interesting article about Greece a while back . Although they seem to do OK economically, the output per person is quite low because there are so many small companies each with lots of overhead. A few big companies would make the Greek work much more efficient and increase the output per person.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 09:24:54 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 16, 2024, 09:02:42 pmThat's one perspective. But you also have to look at how big companies tend to be burdened by process and bureaucracy. It becomes hard to get decisions made and actions approved, and waste increases due to slowness and missed opportunities.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 09:28:38 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 16, 2024, 09:24:54 pmWhilst big companies tend to have a large bureaucratic burden, the economies that scale brings usually outweigh this, and they can make life hard for small businesses. Most small businesses that do very well try to operate in ways that avoid a head on competition with someone big.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 10:16:02 pm
content: Of course growth can be defined in various ways. But the way we usually define it as far as economy goes is the more money circulates, the higher the growth. Is there really anything else to it? Isn't that what GDP is all about ultimately?The amount of money in circulation is in itself no indication that things are being made more efficiently or more "productively". Actually, economic growth is rather closely related to the growth of energy consumption. In some ways, "economic growth" as the current indicator we use and efficiency are at best orthogonal and at worst, antagonistic. Just a thought.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 10:43:02 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on August 16, 2024, 08:50:23 pmYou need some smart people, but if they applied effectively they make large numbers of others more productive. It happens with human power being multiplied with machines. It happens with automated plant that just needs monitoring by humans. It happens with computers eliminating admin roles.... oh wait. before computers a few percent of jobs were some kind of admin. Now we've automated much of the admin work, and we see 30-35% of the people in many sectors are in admin roles. Maybe something is broken.

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 11:46:11 pm
content: I feel sorry for the OP, but he's long gone.Jeez, talk about people thread hijacking and riding hobby horses...

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2024, 07:24:30 am
content: Quote from: Benta on August 16, 2024, 11:46:11 pmYou could have chosen to improve the thread by writing on-topic reply, but instead you chose to contribute to the noise by writing zero-content reply.

author: m k
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2024, 09:02:02 am
content: Situation start side tracking around page 3 and OP take a step back at page 4, after that the topic is sort of free.I'd say that topic is still pretty much on the issue, how it is to live abroad, though occasionally quite a wide take.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2024, 05:00:39 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 16, 2024, 10:43:02 pmThis is one of the problems we have here. Not everyone is equal. Many educated people are leaving, whilst the majority of those coming here are not so skilled. Given this is a technical forum, I presume the original poster is more skilled and educated than average.It all comes down to why leave?I can understand the reasons: lack if of job opportunities, expensive housing, fear of being a victim of crime, dirty streets, crappy climate.And as far as staying: family, difficulty learning a new language and adapting to a different culture.The original poster could also consider moving within the UK. Perhaps somewhere with cheaper housing, in an area with a low crime rate.Remote working is also more popular now. If you can just go to the office once a week or so, then perhaps it's more tolerable to live further away from work. Also consider renting a shared accommodation during the week and going back home at the weekend. Perhaps buying a camper van is an option.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2024, 05:54:20 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on August 17, 2024, 05:00:39 pmI can't imagine living like that.... is that a thing in the UK ?

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2024, 05:59:02 pm
content: Quote from: Bud on August 17, 2024, 05:54:20 pmIt's a thing in a lot of places. Even Canada.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2024, 07:27:21 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on August 17, 2024, 05:59:02 pmYes. There are plenty of people who live an work in an expensive large town or city during the week and go home to a nice rural area to see their family at weekends. Shared accommodation can be cheep, but it's probably a good idea to avoid living with students who'll play loud music and party late. Living in a van is more common, at least during the week, to avoid expensive rents. You go home at the weekend to wash your clothes and have a proper shower. Be careful about where you choose to park up. You could also take your bicycle with you and leave the van a mike or two away from work and cycle to work. That way no one you work with will know.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2024, 08:09:22 pm
content: Quote from: Bud on August 17, 2024, 05:54:20 pmWhether or not you are aware of it, its pretty much a thing everywhere. A lot of people work on short term things, and that's a problem, unless you have a large pool of potential clients within commuting distance. You either live in some form of mobile home, or have a permanent home and a lot of temporary weekday ones. I've known people who arranged their weeks as three 12 or 13 hour working days on site somewhere, then 4 days off back home, and did that for years. These days a more hybrid work from home some days, and work at a remote site on other days kind of scheme is probably getting more common. However, some of those people are doing things like installations, refits. trials, etc. where working from home is not an option.