Other options exist; you don’t have to buy either. Volkswagen Group, Audi, Renault, BMW, Fiat etc all make EVs in Europe. Hyundai & Kia also both make excellent EVs.

Buying a Tesla is a choice these days. Nobody trips and falls into Tesla ownership. And although those cheap Chinese manufacturers look mighty tempting, they’re not the only alternative out there.

I’m not exactly a US constitutional lawyer, but I’m willing to bet that snuff films aren’t protected by the First Amendment.

I probably swear less since having kids and use more non-swearing expletives (“flipping heck”, “crikey” etc.) in real life speech. Some of that inevitably bleeds into how I write online even though it’s not directed at kids, just because language is habit-forming.

But I really, really hate the “f–k” thing. Either swear or don’t. Swearing like you’re trying to get one over on teacher is weird.

Quakers were

Are. They’re still around. Still a relatively big minority Christian group in the UK.

Still everyone’s favourite Christian denomination. Cool bunch.

Local/national banks with their bankcards and payment platforms

I don’t know what it’s like where you’re from, but here in the UK all banks use Visa, MasterCard or Amex for their bank cards.

How the fuck do you know my PIN number?!

If only the biggest problem was messages starting “I asked ChatGPT and this is what it said:”

A far bigger problem is people using AI to draft text and then posting it as their own. On social media like this, I can’t count the number of comments I’ve encountered midway through an otherwise normal discussion thread, and only clocked 2 paragraphs in that I’m reading a chat bot’s response. I feel like I’ve had time and braincells stolen from me in the deception for the moments spent reading and attempting to derive meaning from it.

And just this week I received an application from someone wanting work in my office which was very clearly AI generated. Obviously that person will not be offered any work. If you can’t be bothered to write your own “why I want to work here” cover letter, then I can’t be bothered to work with you.

Unfortunately it’s a combination lock, and the code is written on a post-it stuck on the front of the drawer.

Don’t forget Tizen too; MeeGo’s other bastard offspring.

I think Tizen is still around?

It was an old truism on Reddit that you could avoid 99% of the worst behaviour by just never going on /r/all or visiting the default subs. If you just visit communities you actually like, you have a much nicer experience.

It’s the same here. I subscribe to a bunch of communities I enjoy, and I browse Local on my home instance feddit.uk. I basically never go on the big All feed. And my experience is pretty tranquil; rarely do I see any trouble, and even more rarely trouble that the mods/admins can’t keep on top of.

Arianespace has fallen behind, but they’re not out of the picture. They’re still by far the largest competitor to SpaceX, and they’re aiming for their 7th generation Ariane to be a reusable design.

Arianespace is an Airbus and Safran subsidiary, so it’s not like they don’t have the engineering oomph behind them.

Sure, but that applies to the UK too. London has a higher cost of living than Los Angeles; averages being averages, this is weighed against lots of cheaper places to live (with massive unemployment and stagnated economics).

Cost of living in the UK is about 12% lower than the US, including housing costs. But the average salary is about half of the US salary. So you can see that that doesn’t really cover it.

Source: https://livingcost.org/cost/united-kingdom/united-states

Just looked on that link for the UK. The average is listed as £63k, which is $85k.

So you’re not exactly disproving the point that that type of high salary is a US thing.

Sure, but the specs aren’t directly comparable.

They also still manufacture the RPi 4, which starts at £33- which is £23 in 2012 money.

but they’re not cheap any more

People say this, but they really are still cheap.

The original Raspberry Pi Model B launched for £22 in 2012. The entry level Raspberry Pi 5 is £46, but adjusted for inflation that’s only £32 in 2012 money. So only £10 more expensive in real terms.

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is only £14.40, which is only £10 in 2012 money. Compare this to the original Raspberry Pi Model A, which launched for £16.

People look at the headline cost of the high end RPi 5s (£115 for the 16GB model, £76 for the 8GB), but fail to recognise that there was nothing comparable to these in the Raspberry Pi lineup before, and these are not the only models in the Raspberry Pi lineup now.

Ask a non-protesting friend or family member to take it with them about their daily routine?

I’m sure my mum would be happy to look after my phone for a day if it meant getting one over on the authorities. And if anyone asks, I’m just a good son who likes to hang out with his mum.

I was really impressed by how lightweight and gorgeous it is.

Maybe a controversial opinion here, but the one thing that everyone says about it is that it looks gorgeous, and I really don’t see it. Never have.

Even back when I first tried it out, maybe 15 years ago, I thought it looked strangely retro. Nowadays, compared to the eye candy that is completely standard in GNOME, KDE, MacOS, Windows etc., it looks incredibly dated.

It’s all hard edges, low res icons, ugly fonts, and eccentric design choices. Yeah, it can make window elements transparent, but you can’t dine out on that one trick for ever.

In theory it really shouldn’t matter. You choose your instance, and it’s up to the instance admins to make decisions about backend software choices. It’s possible that we’ll get to a place there it’s possible for admins to migrate a server from Lemmy to Piefed or back again without loss of content, in which case all the user would see about it would be a change of default interface.

I’m on Feddit.uk, which has several different web interfaces to choose from, and I mostly browse using a mobile app (Boost). It really makes basically no difference to me whether it’s running Lemmy or Piefed.

A social network needs enough users to actually function. In the early days, Lemmy/kbin/associates were too quiet to be appealing, so there was a constant push to bring in new users. As this is a Reddit clone social network, inevitably that means hoping that Reddit users will come across.

I would argue that Lemmy et al is already at a high enough number of active users that there’s a basic critical mass; that there’s enough activity here such that a new user would find plenty to keep them engaged. It could certainly stand to be much bigger still, but the pressure to grow is much less intense.