Hah, I had the exact reverse experience. For years when I had a delivery they would come by once (of course not staying nearly long enough to allow me to answer the door) and leave a notice saying the package would be at their warehouse the following day starting at 17:00.

The warehouse was pretty far. The round trip would take nearly 2 hours by bus. And since they opening hours weren’t ideal, if I happened to have a class or be otherwise busy the one night of the week they’re open late, well I guess I’d better find a solution, because they’ll only keep it for a week.

I would plead with them. Can you come back? Can you leave it at my door? It’s not even worth that much! I’ll take the risk! No. At least one thing they did agree to do was keep my package a bit longer once when I realized I had absolutely no way of retrieving it in time. But they only gave me two days.

It was only when COVID hit that delivery companies started just leaving packages. Sometimes they just wouldn’t tell you at all about it, and you’d have a surprise when you’d open the door and hit your foot on a surprise package, if you hadn’t kept up with the tracking.

Some people complained, because they were scared someone would steal their stuff, but I was so glad they were careless. I’ve worked from home ever since COVID.

Finally, I can order a thing and actually receive it at home.

You know, it’s not always, but apple does sell things that are price-competitive with similarly performing competing products.

Some iterations of the Mac Mini have been hard to beat with a tiny PC with similar performance.

The M1 MacBooks had some surprisingly cheap options for the relatively premium laptops they were.

Samsung’s Ultra phones tend to cost more or less the same as the Apple Pro Max phones.

The main difference is sometimes just that Apple doesn’t make low-end or low-mid-range, or sometimes not even anything below “relatively high-end”, products in a particular category.

They have alcohol at airports? That’s so weird.

Well that’s what I get for not checking my info!

Thanks for the correction.

They got paranoid about nuclear and closed down all their nuclear plants. They intensified fossil fuel power production because they didn’t have enough renewable power. Then prices went up due to the war end they had an oh shit moment.

I wish you were wrong. But…

A Climate Town video convinced me natural gas actually manages to be worse.

Natural gas is methane, and it’s extremely hard to handle that without having any leaks, ever. And since methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas, it doesn’t take that much leaked gas to cross the line into “worse than coal”.

And there are lots of leaks.

I mean it was hardly news to begin with.

I suspect they have something to gain by fueling a climate of geopolitical tension. Maybe they hope someone will turn to them because they’re scared?

I’m not sure what exactly but I’ve got a feeling we’re underestimating their intelligence when we say they’re just posturing or being silly.

But then again, several years ago people thought Trump and Musk had a plan and were just posturing as idiots while playing 4D chess. How wrong they were.

I may just be giving the Chinese government too much credit… But I’m leaning towards no.

My understanding of Afghanistan’s complex situation isn’t sufficient to confirm or deny, sorry.

“This document not only violates Afghanistan’s domestic laws but also broadly contravenes all 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

They didn’t think it could be done, but I knew I could do it. All 30 articles in one law!

— A Taliban, probably

Not sure how right or wrong that is when taking into account the more moderate sections of it, but in this particular case, as the article says, it’s not really about Islam. The holy texts don’t really call for any of this.

Wait they’re still adding natural gas? Geez.

That’s what my current bank uses for the web portal now to think of it. Client number, and 6-number PIN. I guess they’re only doing this because they really trust their “unusual activity” protocols, but I’ve got a feeling they really shouldn’t only rely on those.

Wow that’s a big oops

You remind me of my bank about 17 years ago. Everyone had to have a 10-character password, exactly, and it had to include exactly 2 numbers and 1 symbol. I wasn’t very knowledgeable about computers at the time and it already felt dumb.

Hmm, but then we’re outwardly dissing it and we can’t confidently put it in serious reporting.

And aren’t technically respectful disses the best?

I also like Xitter, because in my head that can only be pronounced Shitter, which is a good name for it.

Oh I see. Well if it has exactly the same API, if that API also has weird legacy stuff built in that hinder developers, then maybe not, but overall that does sound very similar, yes!

Yeah, that makes sense. If it’s starting to bite them in the butt, though, maybe they should start relegating that stuff to emulation, if they can write a good enough emulator.

I don’t know when. Maybe it’s already gone by, maybe it’s in the future. But there’s probably a point in time when all of that backward compatibility stops being worth it.