fmajid

I replaced my MBA M3 15" with a Thinkpad X13 G6 AMD, running CachyOS. Much lighter, and the freedom from Apple's increasingly buggy and enshittified OS is priceless.

None of this is particularly insightful, but that brings up an interesting point: when people are inducted in a new job, they are not trained in the company's workflow and conventions, yet expected to be productive. Cal Newport's written on this in "A World without Email".

35 years in my case, thanks to Jean-Jacques Lévy of INRIA. But Emacs was started by James Gosling, not Stallman.

The word you are looking for is “simony”

There are two reasons why the UK does not have affordable housing:

1) land hoarded by the feudal aristocracy (parasites descended from thugs), who do not pay property taxes because there are effectively none (wouldn't want Chuck von Battenberg-Saxe-Coburg und Gotha to pay taxes, now, would we?). Most people in the UK do not own the land under their lodging due to the feudal practice of leasehold, and have to pay rent on it and are constrained from doing even essential maintenance like fire safety without the permission of the freeholder.

2) NIMBYs, generally older and Tory, who vote to block construction and are pandered to by pretty much every major party

Granted, England has twice the population density of Japan, but Tokyo somehow manages to have affordable housing.

International students subsidize UK ones, and most UK universities would go bust without them. Cutting their numbers means at best making higher education even more expensive for British students, and endangering one of the few sectors where the UK is still world-class.

The UK enjoys the worst of both worlds: the high taxes of Europe combined with the low benefits of the US like no free higher education (Germany provides free university education even for foreigners, for instance).

Ah but the geniuses Trump and Netanyahu assassinated the Iranian leader who had issued a fatwa banning nukes as unislamic so now all bets are off.

The Saudis would then get nukes from Pakistan. The thought of MBS or a Wahhabism fanatic successor getting his hands on nukes is absolutely terrifying, far more than the Iranians or even Kim Jong Un.

Sufficiently long that in the TV Series “The Big Bang Theory”, one subplot involves the characters buying helium from a black market dealer to perform their experiments

More likely Larry finally had to come to terms with the fact his son is a moron, and now a significant portion of his wealth is tied to the Skydance millstone, he wanted to see adult supervision.

It’s called failing upwards and is the primary skill set of many CEOs and executives

They are working on it (CXMT for RAM and YMTC for NAND flash) but not having access to ASML’s EUV lithography equipment hobbles them.

The US government is also trying to kneecap them, threatening Apple with tariffs if they went ahead with YMTC storage, even if only for the Chinese market.

They are thus primarily focusing on the Chinese market, but if they weren’t there, DRAM and flash is a global commodity market and prices would have gone up even more insanely than today.

Not being able to receive phone calls is the single greatest feature of the iPad.

The Google Pixel Tablet can be degoogled with GrapheneOS, but it was discontinued last month. It also does not have cellular connectivity. But it’s an excellent device, and the one I am using as part of my effort to wean myself off dependency on fast-enshittifying Apple.

Nano texture was the entire reason I upgraded to an iPad Pro M4. The camera on the long edge is a major regression as far as I am concerned, however. The only drawback is fingerprints are harder to remove,you really need that special microfiber cloth or one of the cheap Chinese clones.

Praying mantises are far swifter.

The British monarchy has far more powers than is commonly thought, even if they are held in reserve.

And they also get to exempt themselves from laws they don't like, like racial discrimination laws (well into the 1970s, brown and black people were deemed unfit for anything more exalted than cleaning toiletsat Buckingham Palace). Or the Cornish or Lancastrian tenants of the crown who have far fewer protections than any others in the UK.

The UAE is also an absolute monarchy and a police state to boot, but unlike Saudi Arabia they are very efficiently run, and rank better than Israel on the Transparency International corruption index.

What you really pay for in a Braun is the silent mechanical movement, no tick-tock to keep you awake at night. But while the movement is still allegedly made in Germany, the quality has gone downhill, as you point out. I had some Kienzle and Braun clocks in the 90s that were extremely good, but the new ones made under license, not so much.

Considering Apple has a long history of colluding with rivals on illegal anti-poaching arrangements, they do not deserve the benefit of doubt.

The proposal is unnecessarily complex. The Feds should just start a rare earth company and contract out its operations. That’s how enriched uranium production is handled.

Those things are often 4x cheaper on the Chinese marketplaces, if you can tolerate 2-4 weeks shipping times. Amazon is a tax on poor planning.

I never had any problems with AliExpress returns

Spam camping requires paying Amazon for placement fees, so the system is working just as Bezos intended.

More generally, the unprecedented levels of market concentration and pricing power in the US, a consequence of the gutting of antitrust enforcement from the inside by Robert Bork and the Chicago School, have led to much higher inflation in the US.

Isn't that basically what KIPP schools are aiming for?

Rich parents' kids with drug habits or a sense of entitlement can be just as bad.

Yes, on my last trip to the US I noticed protein-boosted drinks are the latest fad. Also noticed this in Germany.

Solaris as well, apparently

The picture changes if you count by countries' population, since the 5 most populous nations are not parties to the ICC. I wish it were not so.

It takes some doing to behave even more despicably than Saudi Arabia (which stopped public executions in 2022).