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I'm the same, always use a good credit card, but the occasional hassle is worth it. The prices are 1/10th the Amazon ones.

Used to be, but Trump has kinda ruined it for the rest of us. He complained that they were charging Americans more, so instead of reducing their prices, they just increased them everywhere else.

As an example, Mounjaro went from around £180 in the UK, to around £300.

I saw a YouTube video from a guy who bought a mini excavator from AliExpress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

It's surprisingly good. Japanese Kubota engine, everything else looks decent quality, especially considering the incredibly low price. I've seen similar videos from other people who bought heavy machinery like farm equipment and lathes.

On the one hand it's a shame that our domestic manufacturing is finding it hard to compete. On the other, they aren't doing themselves any favours with things like DRM to stop you working on your own tools. The price competition is a good thing for consumers.

Take Germany luxury/performance cars, for example. The Chinese ones are every bit as luxury and well made, and often exceed them for performance. On top of that, the German manufacturers can't resist screwing their customers with bullshit like subscriptions for heated seats and no owner access to the engine bay.

I regularly buy from AliExpress. Their customer service isn't as good as Amazon's, but the prices are 1/10th of the Amazon ones so even though the odd things gets lost or is of poor quality, I'm still well up on what Amazon would have cost me.

Occasionally I need to do a credit card chargeback. Had to do that on a computer case that got damaged. For small stuff costing literal pennies I don't bother with the maybe 1 in 20 items that is lost or no good.

As you say, it's the same stuff they sell with a hefty mark-up on Amazon, and in every other shop.

If chasing ratings is taken too far, you end up with Fox used to be, where shows would get cancelled a few episodes into their first season because they were not instant mega hits. Netflix is nearly as bad, cancelling stuff days after it premiers.

A lot of shows took a season or two to really find their feet. A lot of shows that struggled early on ended up doing very well in syndication, or started a long running franchise.

They will probably charge a much fairer price for their treatments too, which will be very welcome.

Looking at the budget today, the UK is in managed decline. They are just slowly winding the country down, letting things age out and deteriorate. Keep kicking the can down the road for the next unlucky chancellor to deal with.

Theoretically, but in practice SMRs won't be useful for that. They still need a large and robust containment building, and nuclear grade security around it. They need a cooling pool or guaranteed supply of water.

A more practical idea for small fossil fuel stations is to turn them into spinning mass, to help provide inertia and a bit of energy storage. Or turn the site into a battery.

Automated but they have options for manual control and setting parameters of the autopilot. The window helps them be sure it is working as expected, and that instruments match what they can see. It's also very useful when they land.

They will just throw Rolls Royce some money to muck about with SMRs, before realizing what everyone already knows - they aren't better than traditional reactors, and nuclear in general is the most expensive form of energy we have.

Naturally the taxpayer and consumers will be on the hook for all this.

European standards do also award points for simply having certain safety systems installed. The top 5 star ranking is only available if the car has certain systems and they are enabled by default every time the car is started.

If that was the case then a) why would they go to American influences when the cars aren't even sold there, and b) why aren't the American companies doing it too?

They are just really good cars, and the fact that Americans can't buy them makes for some good rage-bait engagement.

It's not a solution for non-technical people, but can you use Cloudflare Zero Trust or similar for Plex?

I have my own Subsonic music server at home, using Navidrome. I set up Cloudflare Zero Trust so I can access it remotely via the web, with a secure Google login in front of it. You can use other authentication methods, it doesn't have to be Google. Passwords, 2FA, certificates, other providers.

For desktop, any browser works. For mobile I use Symfonium. It's not free, it's a cheap one-time purchase, but it works great with that set-up and means I can stream my music anywhere, without the need for a VPN.