This article has motivated me to change up my punctuation preferences; you see: we hardly ever use the noble semi-colon; a punctuation that adds a wonderful dramatic pause; while connecting each sentences into a thought-stream; and only once the complete train of thought has been completed; shall we finally terminate with the ignoble full stop.
I'll just stick to the quarter colon.
Thoughts and prayers that one day the US gets politicians brave and principled enough to get rid of the fucking guns.
The US decided that it wasn't going to be smart or sensible after they defended Sandy Hook by supporting the likes of Alex Jones and Charlie Kirk (who ironically said we have to accept a number of shooting deaths). I have to wonder how bad things will get before people finally wake up. I suspect a lot worse.
This kind of thing isn't something you hear of in other parts of the world, even parts with relatively lax gun laws. I've not seen the headline "CERN scientist shot in his home" and that's in the middle of 2 counties with a fair few guns (Switzerland in particular, given their high gun ownership and love of sport shooting, yet they don't seem to have the same problems as the US with gun violence), nor Australia and New Zealand which also have relatively high gun ownership rates.
It might not even have been a targeted attack, it could have been just a burglary gone wrong. Something I'm glad I don't have to worry about, if I came downstairs to find a pair of scrotes lifting my TV I'd not worry. I'd just tell them to take the TV and get the fuck out knowing the worst they'll be carrying is a kinfe... meaning they'll have to get up close and personal the problem with which is that crims are usually cowards. They'll be more scared of me than I am of them (OK, I'm a Krav practitioner, so I'm too stupid to be sensibly scared), so scared chances are they'll forget to take the TV.
It'll be interesting to know if people spend more on games over the next year while hardware prices are high.
Uh, the PC will follow suit?
The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series of consoles both turned five in November..
You'd have to get Microsoft to actually support the damn hardware that long first. 5 years is 2 years longer than Microsoft wants to wait. Only reason they tolerate it with gaming consoles is because they can easily convince gamers that 5-year old hardware is cutting edge while charging more.
Put a 5-year old desktop on display charging latest-n-greatest prices and you'd probably be mocked relentlessly.
Yep, PC hardware might have had a bad november in the US but not because people are losing interest in PC gaming, people are losing interest in Console gaming which is to say, people are realising they're being nickel and dime'd for console gaming and have had enough now that consoles are approaching the price of entry level gaming PCs without half the features and all of the downsides.
PC hardware will take a hit for one simple reason. RAM prices (due to the AI bubble).
Also remember that we're due for some big releases soon, the Steam Machine in Feb (I think) and there's bound to be a new Nvidia generation out soon.
Finally, there is an economic downturn in the US... This means people start belt tightening and deferring a lot of purchases they don't need. A new console or laptop is one of said purchases, you can't eat an Xbox.
about as much as having a former WWF executive with a single-digit IQ serving as Education Secy.
I'm sure glad I have a real education in the 80's.
Actually, "Reading" is pronounced 2 different ways, depending on whether one is talking about the verb or the place
Erm... that was the point. Hence I referred to the "name" Reading.
Someone who was not native to the UK wouldn't know unless someone told them that Reading was pronounced differently to reading.
Because all the 'sources' were saying they would announce it this fall. These promises are as good as nuclear fusion. We get to next spring and it will be next fall.
Yep, so-called reporter says complete bollocks to get eyeballs on ad laden article.
There are lies, damned lies and reporter suggestions.
When this is what passes for a scandal, things are OK.
Yep, if spelling is the worst they can get him for he has to be doing a decent job.
Can I borrow some worchestershire sauce?
Worcestershire isn't even that bad once you sit down and actually look at it, it's just long. Leicester is far more confusing and then we have names that are spelled like common English words but are pronounced differently like Reading.
One thing I can say for the British is that they pronounce words exactly the way they spell them. (See aluminium/aluminum). So, while my Canadian coworkers pronunciation of "schedule" bothered me as an American, I cannot call it incorrect! Obviously, the Canadians still consider themselves to be British... er, with the exception of a bunch of francophile jerks in Quebec.
Granted we don't horribly mispronounce words like "solder" (it's "sole-der" not "sod-her", there's an L in it and don't even get me started on Jaguar) however there's a whole swath of words in English that are not pronounced the way you think, Sean Bean for example. there's at least 7 ways to pronounce the "ough" sound. Hell, just try to pronounce a lot of English place names like Bicester, Leicester or Worcestershire let alone the sizable London commuter town of Reading (for the uninitiated, it's pronounced redding, as in Otis, not "reading" as in what you do with a book).
English is a mongrel (and mutated) language, formed from proto-German and proto-French with spatterings of Latin and Greek hundreds of years ago and we've been adding new words from other languages ever since. T|he English language doesn't just borrow words from other languages, it chases them into alleys, beats them down and rifles through it's pockets for new vocabulary.
Spanish is far closer to a language that pronounces things the way they're spelled and even they have huge, glaring exceptions.
I think the USA & EU should start developing hybrids, use a smaller engine that can take over when the battery gets low and charge the batteries while driving and when parked and it frees the car from being dependant on charging stations
Many European manufacturers already have hybrids Renault, BMW, Mercedes, VW, et al. offer hybrid models. Even the supercar brands are getting in on it (Porsche, Ferrari). It's only the US that seems to be behind here.
I've said before that the upcoming bans were more aspirational than effective, placed far enough in the future that when things didn't go as rosy as predicted (which itself should be predictable), that they'd modify them.
Examples include:
1. Expanding the qualifying vehicles, like including HEVs in the same category as EVs
2. Pushing deadlines back
3. Lowering percentages.
You're not exactly nostradamus here.
This is exactly how politics work.
1. Make attention grabbing policy.
2. Bask in attention.
3. Slowly roll it back to what the policy should have been but would have grabbed fewer headlines.
This is not something that is exclusive to the EU but they are experts at doing it. This is why you should never fly off the handle at a mere policy announcement, not that logic and reason will dissuade the frothing hordes one iota. Anyone with an ounce of understanding of the technologies involved (or the EU... or politics in general) knew from the word go the policy would be rolled back and watered down. Meanwhile the politicians get a poll boost from the "EVs are the few-char" crowd who seem surprisingly similar to the "Diesel is the few-char" crowd from 10-15 years back.
Works well for the rest of the world. Like the metric system, and everything else that is not retarded.
This. Raise prices by 30% across the board and use it to pay them. Then everyone will be happy.
That's pretty much why these scummy companies are fighting it. We all know tipping in the US is mandatory in all but law, it's culturally obligatory which bears little difference to a legal mandate. Companies like to keep it this way so they can pretend their bill is lower, thus enticing people in with prices that don't accurately reflect what it will actually cost the payer. Uber et al. want to exploit this as much as they can by presenting the pre-tip price on payment and then adding the tip option so it feels like you're paying less than you are (yes, this actually works and works quite well.. Victor Gruen is famous for making a career out of things that fool consumers but shouldn't).
Ok, so if PayPal becomes a US bank, will it offer free Zelle inbound and outbound money transfers?
If they don't, will people still be stupid and lazy enough to have their money eaten away by digital transfer fees?
If they do, will people still be stupid and lazy enough to have their money eaten away by digital transfer fees?
"PayPal", is not the reason. Or the excuse.
That's the reason they want to become a bank... Every time you make a transaction via a card, the banks take a chunk of that transaction (there's 3 middle men, your bank, the payment processor (Visa/MC) and the merchants bank all taking a cut) and Paypal knows that 1. the banks are minting serious coin from it and 2. most people aren't even aware it's happening so they'll keep paying.
Up until now the cost of compliance with regulations has made it to prohibitive for Paypal to become a bank... However now those regulations can just be ignored with a sufficient donation to El Presidente, they don't have to change or even have their shady business practices examined.
A lot of those regulations govern how you can access your money, how much liquidity the bank must hold and many other important things. So you're not just looking at paying more and less transparent fees... but also will be putting your money at risk if Paypal ends up having to pull the plug because they didn't comply with the regs... and you can tell it's going to be shady because they haven't tried to become a bank here in the UK where it's actually pretty easy if you're planning on being a legitimate bank (see: "challenger banks").
The risk is it could lead to shortages of critical skills that end up harming Switzerland's competitiveness.
The chance of someone capable of learning critical skills being born in switzerland is the same as anywhere else, if the swiss are not training their own citizens to perform these critical roles then that's already a failure on their part.
The Swiss aren't exactly an industrial powerhouse, nor scientific. The largest sectors employing more Swiss are the banking, finance, trading and insurance sectors. Chemicals and pharmacuticals are their main physical exports, which means they're pretty much competing with most of Europe. So local universities will not struggle to meet demand and there's a load of British/German/French institutions they could use as well, also remember that they're smack bang in the middle of western Europe with open borders, so already a lot of people work in Geneva but live in France. A commute from Germany to Zurich wouldn't be difficult either.
That being said, even though Switzerland is a very static country, it would still be a mistake.
Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks.
