rosbrith

As discussed elsewhere in these comments the booking agent will likely not be processing the payment and probably won't perform validation of the details save for a Luhn check on the number.

It is usual practice to pass on payment details to a hotel rather than the booking agent charging the cards themselves. This can be compatible with PCI-DSS when details are tokenised and stored with a third party.

I think most of the press would rather seek to continue blaming the EU for not acceding to the UK's demands and remainers for failing to give Brexit their full support.

Yes, I'd forgotten about the Buzz Rickson!

I'm not inclined in any way to follow fashion but I was really taken with Gibson's attention to detail in these books. He has a way of imparting curiosity about the seemingly mundane and I have started to pay attention to similar traits in clothing.

William Gibson's Zero History goes into a bit of detail on this, including a mission to track down a supposedly secret brand of jeans.

I bothers me how often I see only closing parentheses in Bash case statement patterns!

> So, is there an advanced hidden civilization underneath that gas and pressure?

A major plotline in "The Algebraist" by Iain M Banks (sci-fi, but not a Culture novel) centres around a species who live in gas giants.

> I wonder why they mention the price of the probe on there.

Some Guardian commenters like to express the opinion that space exploration is a waste of money which could be better spent on other projects closer to home, so I suspect there was an element of provocation to this.

This replicates the functioning of a carburettor equipped with a mechanical accelerator pump. It squirts some extra fuel into the manifold when the throttle pedal is depressed, the quantity determined by the force applied to the pedal.

Mine (also UK) is similar to what you describe, minus your addendum. It makes reference to agreeing that inventions (new software, I imagine) developed during the course of my employment must be made available to the company for its use. I've never known the company to call anyone out on this.

One still owns a home when buying with a mortgage. The lender places a charge on the property while a balance is outstanding, therefore in addition to owning the property you also own the debt secured against it.

What most people are describing here is, to me, an almost alien culture.

Where I work in the UK it's common to socialise after work with colleagues (I'd rather call them friends) regularly after work. It's not usually sponsored by the employer and we rarely talk about work or our workplace unless something noteworth is happening there. It's not just current colleagues either. People who have moved on in their employment don't cease being friends.

However, my cousin works in the USA (not SV) and has met with frustration in trying to organise after-work activities as people there do not seem comfortable socialising with their workmates. To me, that's a shame, but I can understand that some like to keep their business lives apart from their social lives.