ginja

I think your argument falls short when we consider the compulsion that drives most onto these metaphorical cattle trucks at rush hour in the first place.

The employment industry in our prevailing economic structure demands punctuality, often through crowded, uncomfortable and frankly, degrading means of transportation. This perceived "choice" is not a luxury but an enforced necessity, much like the bovine passenger being shipped off to slaughter, with the only distinction being, we humans "chose" this.

One could argue that the transportation network isn't able to offer comfortable and safe transit, yet it is more a matter of priorities than abilities. The ability to provide such transport exists, but the political and economic will, sadly is not in abundance.

Is it not curious that a society which can show empathy for the transportation of its livestock struggles to extend the same basic courtesy to its own kind? After all, are we not more than just cattle to the abattoir of capitalism?

I think it's due to many power banks being so shitty that the chance of them catching fire in normal operation is not insignificant.

From the EASA guidelines on lithium batteries (https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/Backgroun...):

Also, spare batteries, including power banks, should not be recharged while on board the aircraft. Additionally, power banks should not be connected or providing power to a device while on board the aircraft.

You shouldn’t and, at least in Europe, any kind of spare battery is forbidden in checked luggage. You also shouldn’t use power banks at all during flight.

Well, Paypal has been around for longer and works across the world, which explains some of it.

But I question the accuracy of these stats - I would expect to see SEPA wires and direct debit being significant everywhere, Multibanco and MBWay[0] in Portugal, TWINT in Switzerland, giropay in Germany, etc

Also, even if they are accurate, they rank Joe's homemade soap shop the same as a major retailer, and don't consider how many customers actually use each payment method.

[0] https://www.marktest.com/wap/a/n/id~2985.aspx

It's paywalled for me. Are UK customers' funds SAFU?

What customer information did you store with that provider? Just names and emails, or was there anything else that attackers may have been able to access?

Capital gains tax in Sweden is 30% and property tax is around 0.75% IIRC. I don't think they are that low - they're higher than most of Europe in fact.

And VAT is a double-edged sword... It's the only tax that essentially nobody can avoid, and thus the only tax that also applies to people who are already wealthy and could otherwise live their life without paying any tax.

Happy new year! I hope 2023 brings peace to your country.

I use G Suite nowadays, but I used to self-host up until a couple years ago. Mailcow is (or at least was) pretty nice and reliable: https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-dockerized

On a similar note, temperatures in ºC would also be useful. Great website though!

I'm Portuguese and can confirm this works pretty well overall.

It's still too strict though - I got convicted of essentially "possession with intent to distribute" just for having ~15g of hashish when I was young and a regular smoker some 15 years ago (the legal limit is 5g). I only got a bit over a year probation and it never showed up on my record, but it was extremely unfair IMO and a traumatic experience - to this day I still have nightmares of being arrested and my home being searched every once in a while, and a big distrust for police and the justice system which will probably never go away.

I think it depends on the subreddit. E.g. this is archived: https://old.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/hmoabi/ive_designed...

virginity jokes

Is that about the "virgin of EMACS" joke from, what, 15 years ago now? Sure, it was silly and I personally wouldn't have said something like that, but come on... This doesn't make someone an asshole.

Yeah, but it's much worse in Portugal, especially Lisbon. Here are some median home price to median income ratios for various cities (from Numbeo: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/in/Lisbon and corresponding pages for other cities):

  - Lisbon: 18.06
  - Porto: 13.55
  - Sydney: 9.09
  - Melbourne: 7.05
  - Vancouver: 12.62
  - Toronto: 11.82
  - San Francisco: 7.02
  - Los Angeles: 7.47
  - New York: 9.99

While you raise some good points this a very politically biased opinion, and in some points also completely deceptive - e.g. our infant mortality is 8x lower than in 1982: https://www.pordata.pt/en/Portugal/Crude+death+rate+and+infa...

I'll just comment on the taxes, as someone who owns a business - yes, they are high. But not that much compared to the rest of Europe. I'm sure by now you're thinking "but other countries make a lot more money!!" - and that's exactly why taxes are high here. Our GDP is much lower, so if our tax rates were also lower, how would the government afford machines for hospitals, vehicles, fuel, and so on when all these things cost the same as elsewhere in Europe? The only thing that is significantly cheaper here is labor, after all...

Yes, things aren't good. But there's no easy solution either. I personally prefer to pay higher taxes than to compromise our public services further, or privatize them in a fuck-the-poor way.

We already tax vacant property up to 12 times the regular tax when located in high demand areas[1] which includes all of Lisbon municipality. It's definitely had some effect as you see a lot less vacant property, but it unfortunately doesn't fix everything.

[1] https://dre.pt/dre/detalhe/decreto-lei/67-2019-122349221

over 60% of Lisbon's real estate owned by the city

I'm from Lisboa and this can't be true unless you're using some very strange definition of real estate. What's your source for this?

Does anyone have any recommendations for legit companies that provide proxies from ASNs not marked as datacenter/proxy? I need some for web scraping, but all the ones I've found so far seem super shady...

Almost everyone on this earth likes boobs - those who have them and those who don't - so I reckon they (like me) just hate that the company uses sex and other scummy tactics to sell a crappy service to unsuspecting people, instead of making their service better.

Should people who wouldn't like to work for e.g. George Bush have pressured their companies to stop operating in the US? After all, they were effectively accepting and complying with things like secret courts that issued broad warrants and some questionable sanctions (e.g. Cuba), while paying taxes that funded indiscriminate wiretapping of people all over the world, invasions of other countries under false premises, CIA black sites, imprisonment and torture without due process in Guantánamo and so on.

Not saying bin Salman is any better (he's not) but my point is that things aren't so cut and dried, and ultimately companies are just going to do what is best for them even if it means accepting some shady stuff. If all workers were that strict about the morals of the companies they work for, most of us would be out of a job.

Cool article! The Golden Gate is so iconic that Portugal contracted American companies to build a similar one in Lisbon and painted it the same color: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25_de_Abril_Bridge

Originally it had only 4 car lanes (2 in each direction), but was designed to be expanded and some 30 years later two new lanes were added and two sets of train tracks were built in the lower deck, which now carry both intercity and suburban trains that are much faster than driving during rush hour. An interesting unique feature is that 2 of the lanes are made of steel grating instead of asphalt in order to reduce aerodynamic forces in high winds.

The other bridge across the Tagus is also remarkable, given that it is the longest in the EU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasco_da_Gama_Bridge

Interesting. What's the point in differentiating between pedestrians and cyclists? Is it an attempt at preventing suicide for non-bikers?

In fact if one cares about the said mailbox, there would never be any significant number of unread emails in the mailbox.

I don't care about the mailbox and suck at managing it, but I do care about the people who reach out (if you give me a call or follow up I will always apologize and get you what you need). Usually I manage to get to everything, but when I'm swamped or when my mental health is not doing so well things start descending into chaos pretty fast.

Recently it's been bad enough that I am considering just hiring a part-time secretary to organize things, reply to the trivial stuff and keep me in check so others don't have to.

Yeah I remember being a junior and feeling like blunt comments were kind of rude. So I make an effort to be nicer to new developers - sometimes simply adding “what do you think?”/“do you agree?” is enough to make those command style sentences sound much less blunt, and also encourages them to ask questions instead of blindly following my suggestion if they don’t fully understand it.

men who have sex with me

Please start practicing abstinence before you get everyone sick, you sexy bastard!

Metals are also recyclable as many times as you want.

Recycling is not perfect but I don’t understand the negativity. Do you really think it would be preferable to just send everything straight to landfills instead of trying to recycle what we can, even if only once?

Seems like the National Guard were there even before the invasion began:

Already participating in combat operations in Afghanistan, the National Guard lived up to its motto of "Always Ready, Always There," and answered the call in January 2003 to send troops to Iraq for the beginning stages of what would later be known as Operation Iraqi Freedom.

https://www.nationalguard.mil/News/Article/576180/the-nation...

If the war is seen as something distant that has no impact at all on the average Russian's life will they actually care about it or will they just ignore it?

To be clear I don't wish anything bad for the general Russian population, among which I have many friends, let alone Putin's opposition. And this may not be the best strategic idea, but it's a possible one that fits the theme of this community - so I think the snarkiness is uncalled for.

I just woke up to this news and I'm wondering if it's possible for Apple and Google to brick all Russian phones? This would probably be more effective on their population at large than any form of sanctions.

Does it burn in the early morning and late afternoon too? Those are probably the only times light skinned people should get extended sun exposure during the summer.