rorroe53

Macbooks have been nice since M1 era, but the Intel Macbooks between years 2013-2020 were hardly robust. My partner's 2014 MBP Retina's screen plastic film started peeling off, which was a known design flaw of those models. Later the ones with butterfly keyboard were notoriously unreliable, with keys getting stuck.

Personally I haven't had much trouble with Linux on modern Thinkpads. Very little to configure manually, as long as you pick the right distro. Even a Dell laptop at work with Linux isn't causing me much OS-related issues, although battery life sucks.

I would suggest creating sanctions that hurt those in power, meaning mainly old bearded men who probably don't play Minecraft. Ordinary people have no power to change anything over there, they get shot if they try.

Iran is one of those dictatorships where the majority of the population already dislikes (or plain hates) the government, as we have seen in many demonstrations that have been extinguished through use of extreme violence by the regime.

Making life more difficult for ordinary Iranians isn't going to change anything as long as the army and revolutionary guard stay loyal to the criminals in power.

Could be a pilot mistake as well. Aircraft entering runway without clearence has happened before.

Human intelligence is definitely multilayered, and different parts of brain are known to be responsible for different types of processing.

Personally I was born with a disability that makes me suck at motor skills, spatial learning and understanding most forms of mathematics, but somehow I'm still decent at programming, and significantly better than average at reading and writing - all of which LLMs can do quite well compared to its mathematics and logic skills.

What about native Germans though? At least here in Finland plenty of natives move away from the capital to smaller bordering towns once they start a family. Advantages are reduced cost of living, and improved safety & schools.

It's not about where people want to live, but where most jobs are. Historically rapid urbanization started with industrialization, which reduced jobs in countryside, and created news mostly in urban areas.

It seems South Koreans in aren't comfortable with having kids in general. It's much better to dedicate your life to making shareholders of Samsung, or some other soulless megacorporation richer. That's how you get one of the world's lowest birth rates.

It's curious how Koreans have managed to build two dystopias into their small peninsula. I wouldn't blame any South Korean for "illegal drug use" considering their utterly sick working culture. I certainly couldn't live there sober, and apparently most Koreans can't either considering the high alcohol consumption per capita.

Well, maybe AI will replace most office jobs, at which point most of those workers can become caregivers to the old.

Middle class 15-20 years ago was able to buy, or even finance building of their own houses. How many poor you know who do that?

Only thing that has really improved is access to cheap Made in China goods, and perhaps plane tickets. But actual necessities like housing are becoming more and more unaffordable.

Well, the planet would be better off without Chinese middle class and elite flying around and buying stuff. Countries that are full of poor "uneducated farmers" tend to have much lower carbon footprint than richer ones, even with the higher birth rates. Despite its admirable investments in reneweable tech, China still keeps building new coal plants as well.

Good, the world doesn't need that many liberal arts graduates. Quality over quantity should be the focus in fields where there aren't that many employment opportunities and potential for successful entrepreneurship.

Besides, nothing prevents one from pursuing a career in most liberal arts without a degree, assuming you don't want to be a researcher. You can always be a nurse or an engineer with arts related side-job, but doing it the other way around is hard.

But why should educational instutions care? Education is a business, students are the customers (or in countries with state-funded education, the government). If AI helps people graduate faster, that's more money to the institutions, less effort to the students, and nice statistics for the governments.

At least in my country most degrees aren't worth much anyway, they just open you doors to internships where you really learn stuff. AI isn't going to make the situation any worse.

Yep, proper tires (ideally studded), reasonable speed and avoiding sudden movements is all there is to driving in snowy/icy conditions. Not doing any of these three things can get you into trouble.

Here in Finland statistically the most deadly months in traffic are in summer, when there's no snow or ice, and weather conditions are generally good. Holidays and great weather encourage people to drive fast, stay awake late, and drink alcohol.

Rural area isn't bad if you find the right place, hobbies and a proper house. Lots of opportunities for outdoor activities, such as gardening and trekking, which also help keep you healthy.

Yes, OP should look at something from 2005, or original Raspberry pi. I've used a 2011 Thinkpad for web development with IntelliJ IDE, no major issues.

I agree. I find it highly pointless to spend one's leisure time learning new tech stacks, working on hobby projects just so that you can show them to an employer. Finding actual real-world problems that you care about to solve, that's way more satisfying. Intrinsic motivation beats extrinsic motivation.

Yeah, I think buying an used iPhone is the best value for money at this point. Depending on the model you get the same or more years of support than from new Android for similar price. The iOS UX is so smooth I had zero trouble switching from Android to iOS, even though I had never touched an iPhone before.

I'll reconsider Android phone only when manufacturers start providing as many years of software support as Apple does. Planned, premature obscolence is unethical and sucks.

Old Thinkpads are at least equally durable, though not sure about the newest generation. Been using a T520 from 2011 for a few years with Linux, no problems.

Macbooks are great if you get a model without some serious design fault - like screen protection peeling off, or butterly keyboard breaking.

I would argue that a tribe at least need some kind of a common identity to remain strong, which by nature excludes it from people who lack that identity. An extremely inclusive tribe probably won't be a strong one with a sense of community. An example could be citizenship - we may not relate that much with someone just because he happens to live in the same country, compared to him being also our neighbour or colleague.

There are many practical problems to actually implementing this idea.

First, money. Some parts of the EU are way richer than others, with superior welfare systems. If every EU citizen is to be truly equal, then that would mean same standards of government services and welfare everywhere, which would be costly to the richer states. Of course, alternatively we could lower standards everywhere, but that's not good for people.

Then there's cultural, economic, geolocial differences in general, higher corruption in many members states of east/south... Plenty of things to consider. Leaders in some parts of the EU really won't understand the situation in other parts, which makes any kind of centralized government problematic. Perhaps a very decentralized model could work though, but then again that's not much different from what we have now.

Also, nationalism is hardly "an ancient mentality". Healthy nationalism, a common idea and identity is something pretty much all well-functioning countries have. United States of Europe would never work without a common European identity, and controlled outer borders. Cultural differences between different parts of the world are still way too large for anything like democratic one world government to work.

I agree, hybrid is definitely the best for most companies. Some in-person collaboration and socializing is always going to beneficial, even if rest of the work is done remotely. Having a long commute isn't that bad either if you only do it once or twice a week, so it gives people much more freedom over where they can live.

I think hybrid approach will be the best for most people. It's good to see co-workers regularly, maybe once or twice a week max. It's nice, though not a requirement for tasks that require high level of collaboration, and at least for me helps avoiding certain feeling of detachment from my work.

However, I would never want to return to working from office 100% of the time. When I really need to concentrate alone, I find home to be much better for that. Having to go to office every working day is also way too limiting in terms of where I can live - the hybrid model allows people much more freedom to choose where they live, long commute is perfectly fine if you only do it once or twice a week.