Koko founder on £70m relaunch: ‘Camden’s always gonna have edge’ April 28, 2022 Camden’s iconic Koko venue – closed for three years and the victim of a devastating fire in 2020 – finally reopens tomorrow following a £70m renovation. To put that into context, that’s one fifth of the cost the original contractor quoted for building The Shard. It’s a staggering renovation for the historical venue, which has [...]
Ethereum 2.0 staking, a worthwhile investment? January 19, 2021 Background The Ethereum network today is overrun with traffic, causing transaction fees to spike to levels that are not affordable for many use cases. This is partially due to the success of DeFi projects, where users don’t mind paying the high transaction fees because of the financial value of the transactions being made. (In Ethereum, [...]
IOTA unveils smart contracts October 21, 2021 The IOTA Foundation today announced the beta release of IOTA Smart Contracts - a fully-functional smart contract solution.
Fatberg ‘size of small bungalow’ removed from Canary Wharf sewer February 19, 2021 A fatberg “the size of a small bungalow” has been removed from a Canary Wharf sewer, after Thames Water engineers spent two weeks clearing it. The grease build-up was found underneath Yabsley Street, near the London offices of Barclays, Citibank and Credit Suisse. Canary Wharf residents and workers have been urged to be “careful what [...]
Focus On Bermondsey: The London borough with the Shard in its back yard June 7, 2019 Seventy two households, all belonging to the Count Robert of Mortain, and collectively worth a grand total of 40 pence; this was the value of Bermondsey as recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086. Things have changed somewhat since then (Bermondsey wasn’t even an official part of London at the time), but few areas have [...]
The cost of stopping wind farms blight the countryside August 19, 2021 Scientists have calculated that excluding wind turbines from the top 10 per cent of Great Britain’s most scenic countryside will result in 18 per cent less onshore wind potential and up to 26 per cent higher costs for operators. The conclusion was made using data drawn from the Scenic-or-Not website, which is hosted by the Data Science Lab at [...]
How Google searches reveal the hidden cost of lockdown April 15, 2021 The number of people searching online for topics that are related to boredom, loneliness and worry rose sharply at the beginning of the first lockdown, a new study shows. Experts examined Google Trends data from 10 countries across Europe and the United States andfound search patterns suggested lockdown had “severely affected” mental health. They tracked [...]
Police release daredevil climber who scaled London’s 95-storey Shard skyscraper July 8, 2019 A man who was filmed climbing the outside of The Shard early this morning was let go by police later today, after reaching the building’s 95th floor. Police said the daredevil had been taken inside Britain’s tallest building with officers, after they were called at 5.15am to reports of a person scaling the tower. The [...]
Heart and Seoul in South Korea, as the nation reopens for tourism April 25, 2022 The baby octopus floats in its tank, blissfully ignorant, until, all too soon, its time comes. The tiny, wrinkled old woman, who, I later learn, has been manning this particular food stall in Seoul’s colourful, noisy, aromatic Gwangjang market for over thirty-two years, yanks it out unceremoniously and whacks it down onto the steel surface. [...]
We must find a new way of funding Transport for London September 25, 2020 London without the tube would be like the Shard without any lifts. And, just like the lifts in the Shard, it costs pretty much the same amount of money to run the tube every day, regardless of how many people use it. But unlike the lifts in the Shard (and unlike any comparable metro system [...]