eertami

Yeah as a rule I cancel every service immediately after payment. If I still need it in the second month I'll just buy another month, it takes seconds and I don't need to track anything. (Only exception being a music subscription, the only thing I use on a daily permanent basis.)

I would much prefer if all services offered an option to buy only one period rather than always requiring manual deactivation - but I also understand they make a lot of money from people paying for things they aren't using.

But the legal notion from where you grew up might not apply worldwide right? People aren't saying you are wrong, they are just saying things are different in other places.

Where I grew up you do have legal right and social expectation not to be under surveillance at work. You even have an expectation of privacy in public spaces - I know this is not the case in other countries, but I accept/know that and it would be senseless to imply this is expected everywhere.

Europe is a big place, but in my area of Europe it is very illegal to monitor employees this way. If you were to be fired for something that illegal surveillance turned up, I would consider it a good thing - with the settlement money you could take a couple years of vacation.

To provide my anecdata, my work MBP is 48GB and with nothing more than our dev environment, VSCode, Slack and Chrome it's at 34GB memory used. Modern NVMe drives make swapping to disk bearable (and it's the same on MacOS and Linux), but it is still swap and there will always be a performance penalty.

Sure I could survive with a 32GB machine but over the many years of life a laptop has, the extra cost seems negligible, and I would prefer to have slightly more RAM than I need rather than slightly less. With how bloated the web is becoming I wouldn't recommend an 8GB machine in 2026 to someone who intends to use it for the next decade. (I know people still using 2013 Macbooks with 16GB that are still fine for the kind of usage the Neo is aimed at.)

I think it isn't as absolute as you suggest, and that it depends on city planning. I own a car but in the city I live it is not a better solution for everyday trips. Walking, cycling, or bus/tram are all far more convenient - it is only when leaving the city that the car becomes better.

(Even then, it depends on the destination - if it's to another city then the intercity trains are still better but for 2+ people it ends up being the premium/expensive option and the car is cheaper.)

For the most part he's not making streets safer, but just costing people money.

It's not just a fine when caught using your phone while driving, it's also 6 penalty points (of a maximum 12). Being caught a second time (or if you are within 2 years of earning your license) results in a ban from driving for 6 months.

People who are caught once will likely think twice about using their phone again, not wanting to risk the ban.

I know what you mean, though I have a device running SteamOS though and it runs extremely smoothly, the latency is no different than my windows PC (on titles where it can achieve the same framerate).

I'm sure that it must be possible to replicate whatever optimisations SteamOS has on other distros, but unfortunately I am not sure what those are exactly.

I somewhat suspect our difference here is cultural divide - I've never been to the US, but none of the things you mentioned have involved salespeople in my experience in Europe.

I live in a city, have a car (bought second hand), buy things in person, go to restaurants. We have no tipping or gratuity, apartments have a fairly standard application process and often it's a previous tenant showing you around because they want you to take over their lease, unless the apartment is empty.

If you're aware of it and think you're susceptible then you can make it impossible to be influenced by it. Ie, You can disable all 'related videos'/feeds/home page on Youtube with Unhook, and sponsored segments with SponsorBlock. I'll probably never see a Youtube thumbnail for the rest of my life, throw in Adblock and your exposure is extremely limited.

Sales guys love people like that.

You can also easily never speak to them. I know they exist, but as a consumer I can't think of anytime I've had a sales interaction with a salesperson. I understand that some people do, and might even actively seek a salesperson - but if I go to a physical store I already know what I want to buy before I get there and the only interaction I might have is to ask how to find the thing I want.

I know it's a common argument/appeal to authority that advertising must work, because companies are still doing it - but there are economists who think that it might not[0].

[0] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-actually-w...

Why would I, as a user, ever opt in to this instead of just using adblock and never seeing adverts at all.

Surely OLED is bad for a productivity device due to poor text rendering. For games or media, sure.

That isn't quite true, because the law was enacted on October 26, 2023, which was still the same party that drafted it.

Of course, it is true that it is being supported by the current government, however the only way a future government could have avoided the law coming into force would be to repeal it with a new act of parliament (because it was already enacted).

I somewhat suspect you would not find it so amazing if you paid £9000/year for it, though.

if you playing chess up to a decent level 1700+ (like me), you know that these argument its wrong and I assure you to learn chess to a decent level

In a fascinating coincidence, there is a tonyhart7 on both chess.com and lichess, and they have been banned for cheating on both websites.

This is exactly what high beams are for, and even 20 year old cars have very bright high beams that are plenty safe.

The problem referred to in the article is dipped beam headlights being too bright and often too high, which are making things less safe by dazzling other drivers and road users.

I don't disagree but things would've been same under any of the major parties that could possibly get elected under FPTP.

None of them have the political capital to really oppose it even if they did want to. Plus there is a media absolutely overflowing with hysteria around the topic (Brass Eye's Paedogeddon is just as relevant today.)

Starmer’s government

It seems worth pointing out (for any readers unaware) that the Online Safety Act, introduced by Conservative MP Michelle Donelan, was passed in September 2023 during Rishi Sunak's Conservative government.

and by staring at these monitors all day, we are slowly degrading it

Yes, but that is probably accelerated more by sitting closer to screens than is healthy for too long, than it is by the resolution of the screen. It's anecdata so maybe truly everyone you know does sit 45cm away from a desktop monitor - but I can't say I've ever experienced that.

Of course if you do sit that close then higher resolution is resolvable. Perhaps what your statement actually should be is: "Perhaps Retina doesn't matter if you sit at a (perfectly comfortable and healthy) further distance away from the screen - that's OK", otherwise I can a reader may think you are trying to imply the OP is somehow inferior, but really the only thing that differs is your viewing distance.

If you have 20/20 vision, a 27" display at 1440p (~110 DPI) has a visual acuity distance of 79cm - ie, if you are sat 79cm or further away from the screen, humans are not capable of resolving any extra detail from a higher resolution. High refresh rate 1440p IPS screens are very widely available at good prices, so it isn't that crazy that people choose them.

Phone and laptop have higher DPI screens of course, but I'm not close enough to my desktop monitor for a higher DPI to matter.

I suspect what OP meant is that if the party is majority men, then they are still happy to hang out.

There is no expectation of privacy in any place that is considered public.

Well that entirely depends on the country - in the UK it is true, but it wouldn't be true in Switzerland or Germany, where you do have the right to privacy even in public spaces.

Then this is nothing else than you "not liking it".

The author knows what the laws are, but presumably disagrees with the reasoning behind the laws and is criticising them. If someone came to Switzerland and started complaining that they can't install a doorbell camera, then it would also be a case of them 'not liking it' - but they have a right to voice their opinion.

If someone's aim is to avoid a wealth tax, then moving to Switzerland (one of the few other countries with a wealth tax) seems like a confusing choice. The Swiss wealth tax is payable in some cantons from ~50k Euros.

As a country the UK is so quick to dismiss initiatives from other countries that are shown to work there

I found British culture so depressingly defeatist that I stopped trying to argue for improvements and ended up moving away.

Switzerland isn't perfect but for day to day life it's just much easier to live in. I believe that's partly being a higher trust society but also higher ambition to make infrastructure and town planning improvements.

I thought Stanley cups is a weird choice to make "more shit" sound wasteful or a bad thing. Typically I think the American lifestyle is people carrying fewer things usually. I walk or cycle most places but always take a backpack, but I've frequently seen American-centric communities dismiss this as weird (because the car becomes their backpack).

As plans develop during a day it's easy to end up being out of the house 12+ hours, so it's comfortable to have a refillable water bottle, warmer layers, sunglasses, hat, umbrella, any other comfort things etc.

I think you raise a valid point, but I would argue that in your photography example, the content is very much still human - portrait mode and ring lights are tools that improve the output but a human framed the picture, and pressed the button.

LLM generated writing doesn't quite feel the same for me, the words are the content but they lack human touch, context, intention. The equivalent would be the photographer uploading their photo to ChatGPT and asking it to regenerate the image. The output wouldn't feel right, it is more like losing something than gaining.

Sure it isn't a socialist country, but many Swiss policies would be considered socialist in US politics, eg: if you are sick/ill you receive 80% of your salary for 720 days.

I would've thought "most" people would be firmly on the free tier, are there any stats to check how common it is? Personally I've had Gmail for 20 years, Android phones for 13 years, Home/chromecast devices but never thought about paying for Google One or any other services.

Somewhat amusing after this how the top comment mentions "Apple ... never makes marketing content like this about its design language"

There's already a pretty popular free/opensource website with similar live data (https://f1-dash.com/) which would be an obvious alternative.

I also suspect that the trying to monetize a project like this would not sit well with the FIA, if you had any kind of traction.

I believe the middle ground is implementing `prefers-reduced-motion` alternatives for the looping animations.

Then it would still loop for you, but not negatively impact people who are using reduced motion settings in their browser/OS.