Too many web sites fail to show anything/much if Javascript for them is blocked. The result is that I will often go somewhere else.

Javascript is great to make a web page slicker but should not be needed just to see it. It is done for the web dev's convenience not for the web surfer's experience. Efficiency seems to be a concept that many developers today do not understand.

It's 2024, so far as I know, most urban areas of the developed world have grocery delivery available. In fact, here in Norway, it's taken off to the extent that it seems impossible to drive anywhere without some grocery delivery truck driver parking in inconvenient places and blocking traffic while they make deliveries.

In the 1970's and earlier we had people like this too. They were called milkmen. They would deliver glass jars of juice, milk, and even soft drinks into a metal box outside your house, then they would retrieve the empty containers which of course a deposit had been paid for. The jars would be transported back to the central, washed, inspected for damage, refilled, resealed and reused. The glass would generally be of a high quality promoting a high number of reuses and, though I know nothing about glass blowing, seems to be a material which, at the cost of great energy be reblasted into a new container with little waste.

Why are we still receiving milk and juice in plastic and wax coated paper, and every other beverage in plastic? Why is it that food delivered in glass jars are being thrown into glass waste bins where they are smashed and we have to melt them in order to reuse them?

Let's go further. Uber Eats and similar services around the world deliver food in single use containers. Why is this even legal? If I order food and don't want to take the time to wash the dishes, I'm certainly willing to place the containers the food is delivered in within a pickup box or hand them to the driver next time I order (at a cost of course) and I would even order more often if we could address the waste problem.

Then there's meats. Holy WTF!?!?!?! when I go to the store and buy meat
1) It's defrosted for some dumb ass reason. Why the hell is it defrosted? How dare they? Are you seriously trying to suggest that the meat was butchered and shipped thawed? I can understand if I visit the butcher and I buy meat that is thawed because, well you don't grind meat when it's frozen and the same is true about different cuts, but why is it thawed and rotting before I even buy it at a grocery store?
2) There's a plastic container. Why the hell did you put the meat in a single use plastic container or a pressed (with craploads of chemicals) paper container? Stop charging me for the plastic and pay someone to stand behind a counter and wrap it in paper. It creates a job for a nice kid who is willing to work and I can store the meat in a covered glass dish or the freezer when I get home.
3) There's a maxipad in the container. Since they're defrosting the bloody meat, they've placed a women's sanitary pad into my food to catch the blood. WTF that's precisely what I want to think about when opening up that lovely t-bone steak.
4) There's a high tech meat freshness indicator in the package. Freeze the damn meat, leave it frozen and I don't need to buy the (probably overpriced) one time use, throw away, probably made with forever chemicals indicator. I don't want it, don't need it, stop pushing that crap on me.
5) There's a transparent plastic cover over the meat. Yeh, more plastic. You've defrosted the meat to make it beautiful and wrapped it in planet killing everything so I can choose the 125g slice of individually wrapped steak that looks prettier than the other which I'm going to buy anyway because 125g doesn't make a dinner, so we're going to really try to kill earth by buying two small packages.
6) There's multiple printed labels on the packaging.

Better yet, show me a picture of a big fat juicy steak on a website, let me choose how much I want and whether I want it delivered frozen or if the steak should start thawing on the way for consumption today.

Single use plastic is a problem and ALL plastic is single use. It doesn't matter if it's something you wrap a cucumber in (yeh, Norway individually wraps EVERY cucumber and EVERY bell pepper in plastic), or if it's a Tupperware container that will make it to landfill when die at the age of 62 years old thanks to plastic jammed down your throat. It will get to landfill sooner or later and the Tupperware made to last 50 years is 100 times worse because there was absolutely no attempt to let it degrade. It's made to keep lasting for ever and ever. It's made to curse the planet forever. The only benefit of the Tupperware is that it's your great grandkids problem and we're sure some smart asshole will solve all the recycling problems by then, so you're not being evil.

We can forgive our parents for cursing us with plastic. Just like us, they were stupid, but the difference is, we have more information. So while pumping the world full of lead and mercury seemed as great as filling toothpaste with radium at one point, we now know that plastic is a problem and we have to figure out what to do about it. If we at least make some attempts to address the issues, it's better than figuring "fuck it, not my problem" and trashing the planet for a million years to come. We know it's a problem and we know that probably an insanely big portion of the world is employed by making and distributing plastic crap because honestly plastic is fucking amazing. And I know that I'll be dead long before my pretty little life is affected by the long term effects of plastic. Maybe my kids will be smart and not reproduce and bring kids into a world that my generation and my parents completely trashed. But our legacy is "we destroyed the world because the free market economy demanded that some asshole decided we need a window to look at thawed bloody meat shipped with a maxi pad in a package that was a bad idea 100 years before it was ever made". Pretty much time to say "oops, maybe we fucked up. Let's pretend to give a shit and make some symbolic efforts to stop doing it"... and make the damn grocery delivery STOP delivering plastic and make her take the empties back to reuse them.

30% and people will buy your game. Or use Epic store which is practically malware and no one buys it?

I agree that they should not have control but Apple wants to keep the money coming in. I will accept a warning that Apple is not responsible for apps that do not come from its app store, but that is about it.

What the article did not say is whether the apps will need to make purchases via Apple.

Let's be honest, this is an issue with Americans. I'm not saying that this is strictly and American thing, but look at all older American companies. GM, Ford, Boeing, etc... they all make shit products and while the raw materials they use might be pretty good, anything more complicated than a hammer they just can't get right. Add computers to anything and they're completely lost. It's hilarious because even IBM can't manage to get the computer thing right. American stuff is half-assed, overpriced junk made by workers who want top dollar pay for the least effort but made from almost the best raw materials.

I wonder if this will become noticed by more people. "Buy American" is exactly the same as it always was. It actually was always crap quality, the difference is, the rest of the world keeps getting better and American's just keep getting better pay.

How are they allowed to collect driving data without the owner's knowledge and agreement ?

It was not entirely clear. South West Terminal should have sought confirmation of Chris Achter's intent or meaning. This would have avoided the whole brouhaha. I will occasional send an email saying something like "For the avoidance of doubt xxxx".

However if SWT stood to gain by the sale (or the agent get a lot of commission) then they will see it as to their benefit to assume that it means "yes".

Yesterday I saw a mother with a 2 y/old in a push chair. The mother was talking on her 'phone, the child had a tablet - so not only not talking but not looking at the real world around him/her. I fear for the child's cognitive abilities in the future.

Judging based on the fines they're passing, they're not punitive or corrective. The EU commission is just milking the cow. I think Apple, Google and others should raise a lobby to insist on an investigation into the EU commission who seems to think that their annual should be paid for by big tech through fines.

When people are affected by anti-competitive behavior, the fines levied should not be going to the EU, the money should be given to the people affected. This is not what the EU does. What they do is entirely self-serving and Apple should sue them for this behavior. At the least, they should refuse to pay the fines until the victims are identified and the money is directed towards them instead. The EU commission will have to find a better solution than 2 billion euro fines if they're forced to give the money to the people it really should go to.

You clearly do not understand the history of this, the real causes go back a century, much earlier than 7 October. You also need to understand more than one side of the narrative, Parallel Histories is a good resource for starting your education.

I fail to see why people want to buy it in the first place. Yes: there is a certain value in rarity ... but so what, are people just betting that some mugs in the future will be willing to spend even more real currency on it and that they will be able to cash out ?

Maybe I just have the wrong mindset - I have never been interesting in gambling.

When there are severe power grid problems in Texas... so severe that one of their senators had to flee the state to Cancun to stay cool during a severe and prolonged outage, it's time to identify the problems and fix them and to tax appropriately. If there's an industry straining an over subscribed grid, the government should be able to regulate their grid usage.

Before you attack the idea that this is a state and non federal issue. The grid is interconnected through multiple states and does impact other parts of the country that Texas does not unilaterally have the right to make decisions for. Texas should either bear the cost of upgrading the grid to support the burdens placed on it by the greatest consumers, or the federal government should require the miners to bear the burden. Either way, there is a problem, it needs to be fixed, and while it may be politically motivated, it doesn't mean it's not a problem.

Ah, but did you know that that was much used in Private Eye ?

I am reminded of some graffiti that I saw in a pub toilet in England "all the beer in this pub has been passed by the management".

Hmmm: I wonder if the use of English is understandable in the USA or elsewhere.

I am a Brit. I was in my 40s before I heard "pissed" meaning angry but when I was younger I went to pubs and got pissed.

The Atlantic is wider than you think.