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Long ago I played this game called Airport Mania.

In it you’re an ATC. There’s like 10 stages (airports), with several levels in each stage in increasing difficulty. There are different capabilities to add to the airport (such as de-icing, defogging, upgraded terminals, upgraded fuel pumps, layover spaces, additional runways etc). Different types of planes had different patience levels (for example, Concordes needed quick service) etc. Very sophisticated. It was fun.

About 5 years ago a slightly watered down version of it was available on Android. I think it’s gone now. Even as an adult I found it engaging. It may look childish in the screenshots but it’s really fun.

It’s the only game I have bought online. They sent me the CD from Portland Oregon to my home on the opposite side of the Earth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airport_Mania:_First_Flight

Ah right okay. I didn’t know that. TIL. Thanks :)

Actually I’m not so sure about that. The turning on and off quickly part.

Because in my country (in Asia) there’s surplus energy from renewables (solar, wind) during the daytime, so much so that they’re having to shut things down because the grid can’t handle it (yet).

However at night we need power from traditional sources (coal, basically. We do have hydroelectric and nuclear power also, but that’s not sufficient).

They cannot shut down the coal plants during the day because apparently turning it back on is a tricky time consuming process.

They cannot run the coal plants at reduced capacity because that reduces the efficiency and increases the wear and tear of the equipment.

And the renewables also brought up another problem in that the power that comes is not steady (unlike the traditional sources).

All that is putting pressure on the grid.

The long term solution is to upgrade the grid to handle all this. And the government is working on it (I think). But that’ll take time to do. At least a decade.

Uhh, I don’t know much more technical details about all this. Maybe more knowledgeable members can contribute.

People that didn't have the skills to compete, now do.

Come on now, you can’t be mad that people acquired the skills.

Realize that whatever your frustration is, those people who acquired the skills are probably not the root cause of whatever is currently going on, in the bigger picture sense.

Maybe a lot of them can now put food on their table.

I sincerely hope things work out for you.

For example when I buy coffee in America the barista says “awesome!”

I think they mean well. But it feels weird.

I think this “awesome”, “amazing”, “super exciting” phase came much later than the moon walking era. Remember it’s been over 50 years since humans walked on the moon. Much has changed.

See these old videos, where people talk in a straightforward way:

Car transmission https://youtu.be/JOLtS4VUcvQ

How to dial your phone https://youtu.be/PuYPOC-gCGA

The dial comes to town https://youtu.be/p45T7U5oi9Q

Now go watch that Apple video again and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

stick shifts are also possible

Ah, let me add on to this from the other perspective.

I live in a country where cars are driven on the left side of the road. ie., the steering wheel’s on the right side, and the gear shifter is operated by the left hand.

And until about 5 years ago stick shifts were very common (automatic transmission was considered a luxury feature only available in higher variants).

I’m right handed. I have no trouble at all shifting gears with my left hand. Feels very natural to me.

I have never driven a left-hand-drive vehicle and in my imagination it feels weird. Like, operating the clutch with the left leg, and the gear with the right hand feels weird. In RHD cars the gear is in the same side as the clutch.

But anyway I know lots of people who drive LHD cars when aboard, and they have never complained.

So I think at least for driving it’s just a matter of getting used to it.

Wow.

I often have to make repeated presses on my iphone until it registers.

This makes me really curious.

And you seem to have a problem with all your Apple devices. That’s why I wondered whether you’re experiencing that only with Apple or whether it happens with Android devices as well. Perhaps you could borrow a friend’s, or try using a demo phone at a store etc.

Also have other people use your problematic devices and see if they experience a problem.

I’d love to dig into this further with you (because, curiosity), but alas we live in different universes.

Wishing you a speedy recovery from your cold.

Though I don’t own one, I’m fortunate enough to occasionally be able to drive around a “Benz”. It’s my dad’s. Over here we prefer saying “Benz” rather than “Mercedes”.

It’s a W212 E-Class, bought new just a few months before the all new generation hit the market.

It has no touchscreen. But the UI/UX is terrible anyway. My dad still has no idea how to bring up the tire pressure monitoring screen, for example. Using the buttons to navigate a myriad of menus is not exactly straightforward.

The physical user manual book that came with the car has limited information and recommends viewing the user manual through the screen. The screen is not a touchscreen. There’s a knob in between the seats to navigate the system. Very terrible experience.

On the other hand, a Honda economy car that I used to have had the most straightforward physical controls imaginable.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, eliminating touchscreen by itself will not necessarily make anything easier, especially if the car itself is complex.

We’re going off track, but I’m curious as to whether you experience this problem only on Apple devices, and not – for example – Android devices?

(btw, it’s an honor to be able to reply to you; hope you’re doing well :) )

There’s a Phrack article that’s relevant.

Internet Voting https://phrack.org/issues/69/11

Thank you. I didn’t know.

Why not use antibacterial soap instead of NON-antibacterial soap? Wouldn’t it be even more effective?

That’s anecdotal.

So do you think iPhones built in China have terrible build quality? How about the ones made in India? I have an India-built iPhone — can’t tell a difference.

Chinese parts don’t necessarily mean low quality. It may have meant that in the past, but not anymore. People need to get over that mentality.

There’s nothing inherently magical about anywhere (be it Europe, America, India, China, or anywhere else) that guarantees things made there are of impeccable or terrible quality. If it’s built well it’s built well.

Why those 3 countries in particular? Wouldn’t this work anywhere (provided it’s not in a war zone or a volcano zone etc)?

I was going to say what I’m about to say as a reply to the parent, but then I saw your comment mentioning Japan.

The rooms in Clayton Bay Hotel in Hiroshima absolutely has a nice proper work desk and a work chair. So if anybody here is ever in Hiroshima Japan, you now know where to stay :)

Not sure if this applies to all room types though.

Disclaimer: I’m not related to that hotel in any way other than having stayed there one night some years ago.

What should they have defaulted to?

I mean, wouldn't any language they choose exclude others?

Isn't that what's meant by "functional"?

I remember when they originally launched. Happened around the same time I was looking for an email client. Postbox felt the slickest back in the day, yet I ended up not using it due to some reason which I have forgotten.

Slightly sad to see them go, even though I never really used it. Maybe it's because I remember them starting and it was somewhat long time ago (I guess). Usually things that shut down did so relatively quickly, from my perspective.

with the "submitted" dates reset to reflect that

Huh. Okay.

Oh! Okay! That's reassuring, thanks!

[Off-topic]

I'm getting an eerie sense of Deja Vu.

I remember reading this exact thread (exact question, exact replies) a few days ago.

But right now it says this question was posted just 6 hours ago (right now the time is 2:35 pm 1st September UTC).

Either I'm going crazy or there's a bug with the time here.

@dang please tell me that I'm not going crazy, or at least that it's just a simple glitch in the matrix.

For those who don't know, Digilocker is a govt initiative.

Also, it is opt-in and not mandatory. If you don't want to use it then don't bother. Nobody will force you to install the app or attach it with any of your docs.

It's a very cool idea.

However, I gave it "Jane Eyre" (a mid-19th century novel by Charlotte Bronte; it's a classic) with the expectation that it will return "Wuthering Heights" – another a classic novel written in mid-19th century by Emily Bronte (yes the authors are related) – among other things. People who like Jane Eyre tend to like Wuthering Heights, and vice versa.

But everything it returned were new works – published in the last 20 years – of stories that are set in the 19th century.

The only filters applied were: "Preferred: Gothic romance novel, Victorian literature, Highly influential classic literature, Early 19th-century England ".

So, something seems amiss for now. Nevertheless, it's a very cool idea.

(Edited to fix my grammar; English is not my first language, so pardon me for any mistakes.)

Tell us about your Audis!

Bergamo to Liverpool is over 1700 km by road as per Google Maps.

The company is trying to solve transportation for the 50 to 300 mile range (around 80 to 500 km). Trains can easily do this.

Anyway, in China the Beijing to Guangzhou high-speed rail covers the 2200 km distance in 8 hours. Costs $120.

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Do note that — while I do understand there's an environmental impact (and I hope technology improves to eliminate this impact) — I'm not against flying. I love flying. In fact I wanted to become a commercial pilot myself.

I'm not a professional Android developer, but a few years ago I did create and publish a small app to the Play Store (and discovered that there's whole new category of spammers promising to make my tiny app become #1!).

Android development is not simple. Take time to learn the architecture and underlying concepts. It took me a couple of weeks and some false starts to make sense of things (although back then I was a college student; a professional can probably get started faster).

As a non-native speaker, I have no idea what's wrong with the sentence (fragment?) you wrote.

He's as smart as I am, so it wasn't an intelligence flaw.

I literally wow-ed out loud.

I've always felt everybody around me is much smarter than me. Now I have found the opposite personality — somebody who is fully confident about themselves.

There are many tiny scripts I use at work to manage things. Mostly bookkeeping stuff like utilities to manage Jira, scripts that create text files as per a predefined template for meetings etc.

I'm the only one who uses it because these are tailored for my own specific use case, but if anybody from work asks I'm willing to share.

If I knew how to use Emacs, then maybe I wouldn't have needed some of these scripts.

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I have a huge list of movies I want to watch or have watched, and I like keeping track of those.

For the longest time I used Google Keep, but that couldn't keep track of dates when I added to the list or watched something off the list. And I liked my list to be sorted alphabetically and have it show the counts of watched and total etc.

Tonnes of apps and websites already do this. Or I could have probably built a spreadsheet file that does this. But I felt like rolling my own.

I built a simple webapp using Laravel and a little bit of Bootstrap to make the site look decent. Did it in one day during the less than a week of gap between resigning one job and joining another. Building it was therapeutic. I even bought a domain and hosted it on a DigitalOcean droplet. It's been up for over two years now.

There's nothing fancy about it. It really is just a glorified todo list. But I like the simplicity of it and I've been using it to keep track of movies to watch over the past two years.

I never had any intention of trying to promote it or anything. Initially I planned to share it with a few friends, but then I didn't. No reason.

So it's just out there in the web. In broad daylight. Anybody can sign up for it. Nobody has. Nobody knows. Hidden in plain sight. Just like me ;)