I actually mostly pay with my credit card because a certain turnover is required for keeping the gold card free. But I am the exception, not the rule and it also probably varies a lot by the country.

I don't think so - the AI makes many mistakes and debugging assembler is much more tedious.

I'm guessing you have them on your roof, so not the ideal angle. And for commercial use, even 10% of nameplate is fine. They are so cheap, you just build more of them.

It's a European system, while VISA and Mastercard are both American. That alone is a big benefit for Europeans.

As the summary notes, it is designed so that transactions are anonymous to the ECB. Likely that means pseudo-anonymous, in that identity could be determined with some effort, but that goes for cash too. Fingerprints, serial numbers, CCTV everywhere...

The goal is to provide a replacement for cash, because cash is expensive to manage. The government has to physically create it, and replace it as it wears out or the security needs updating. Businesses have to count it and transport it to the bank, and can be victims of counterfeiting. One of the reasons why many of them prefer card payments, even with the fees, is due to the overhead of handling bank notes and coins.

To do that, it is going to have to be genuinely as private as cash is. Believe it or not, the EU isn't all about surveillance, and privacy is considered an important right. Remember that the EU created GDPR, and some member states like Germany go even further with strict privacy laws.

The Wikipedia article on socialism isn't great, being very US centric and seeming to have little input from countries that actually practice it. But the last thing it needs is what he is suggesting.

They have lots of cheap, clean energy to run it too.

Anyone have details of the CPUs? What architecture are they? Domestic Chinese CPUs have been using MIPS and RISC V, but also ARM and some licensed x86 designs.

Actually, Maestro/V-Pay are usually only used for clearing international debit card payments as a co-badge and for national payments the national interbank systems take precedence.
And the only reason why Mastercard is responsible for Maestro (which, incidentally, is being phased out) is because they have aquired Europay back in the day.

There's where your mental model is just wrong. The game server is in the domain of the seller. Some hardware breaking due to wear & tear or abuse is NOT. That is an incredibly important legal distinction.

What EXACTLY do you mean with "the game shuts down"? That is the whole point. The game SERVERS shutting down is not the same as disabling the game. If it's an online-only game, there could still be OTHER servers, not run by the seller. Official or unofficial. That is the whole point of "stop killing games".

Again, this is relevant for online games only, and is not about the game at all, but about access to a specific community or server. Even if I am the biggest asshole on the planet and every ban was absolutely justified - why should I not be able to set up my own server, invite my equally assholish friends and play there? There is no reason to disable the GAME, only the access to a specific server. These can be two distinct things. You buy the game, but you subscribe to a server.

They shouldn't create the need to refund. You're making up a problem here. Every refund ever was done at the point of sale for the price you paid. That's why invoices and receipts exist.

But that's not what it says. Every shop ever treated games as a SALE. Steam doesn't label the button "buy" anymore, but most other shops still do, and even on Steam everything else is handled exactly like a sale of a product. Shopping cart and all.

Because they want to eat their cake and have it, too. I'm sure players would be more hesitant to part with 60 bucks if it clearly said: "temporary, revocable at any time for any reason, permission to play".

No and, just widgets. Anything else could happen elsewhere.

That's nonsensical. Just because it can and does also happen elsewhere doesn't make it not exist. Someone else could build widgets too. Society doesn't work if people aren't doing stuff so having people employed as of today is a benefit.

You act like people need permission to create and build.

People absolutely 100% do without a doubt need permission to have limited liability protection.

There is no bargain here, just a legal framework for people to work together for some purpose.

Absolutely false. People worked together for millennia without such frameworks in place.

It is not a gift from society; it is a protected right.

It's not a gift, it's a bargain. It's a "protected" right in as much as there is a law granting that right.

You can start a business where people would pay you for a kick in the face. Probably won't get any customers, but you can do it.

You don't really understand much about different kinds of business, do you?

You have a right to freedom of association. You have a right to make contracts.

Yes, and? You can do that just as well with and without extra protection granted to you by society.

You have a right to start almost any kind of business you want (some restrictions may apply). You have a right to use your property as you see fit. Government doesn't give you these things; it protects them.

Yes, and? You can do that just as well with and without extra protection granted to you by society.

Limited liability protection is not a natural right. Why should society give you that extraordinary gift if you give little in return?
 

The UK's electricity is expensive because the price is set by gas. Our system sets a national price based on the most expensive supplier that is needed for that period, which is almost always gas. Nuclear has a separate, sweet deal where they get paid a high price no matter what.

The government is talking about changing it so that gas doesn't set the price, and so that there is regional pricing too. That way areas with lots of renewables get lower costs. It should work the other way too, areas with lots of NIMBYs blocking renewables should pay an extra tax to offset the cost for everyone else.

That's how they convince you that everything is false, except what they are telling you.

In reality there are things that are true and widely agreed upon, and there are things that journalists can check before presenting. The classic example bendy bananas, if you want to look that one up. It was never true, in fact it was an example of how the UK had great influence in the EU, but the lie was used to justify leaving. The day after the voter, someone on a national TV debate show said that they were going to vote to remain, but at the last moment they remembered that lie and changed their mind.

Organizations like the BBC are not perfect, but they can usually get that stuff right.

Yeah, and the benefit to society comes in the form of the widgets it so desperately needs.

And also the people it employs and the effect to the greater economy. All of those things are benefits to society, for which people are prepared to give the directors and shareholders some level of protection, as part of a bargain. If the factory provides less benefit, why should the people taking the profit get the same level of protection?

I know what this looks like, the government wants to make sure you read its narrative on everything first.

And I'm sure it will be abused for that.

But there is actually another, more genuine, reason for wanting it. We have a huge problem with misinformation in the UK. Much of it coming from Russia, and the far right, and grifters. It's actually quite lucrative, and devastatingly effective.

It's 10 years since the Brexit vote today. The amount of misinformation is hard to comprehend. Even today, people still believe those lies. Even back then, we were decades into debunking some of them. One of the biggest liars, Boris Johnson, transitioned from publishing lies in newspapers to telling lies as Prime Minister. Misinformation became the most effective political strategy.

This probably isn't the right way to go about it, but I also find it hard to believe that e.g. Facebook can't label Russia trolls easily enough. Whenever information leaks from those sites, the fake Russian accounts are very easy to spot. Twitter had to remove their public location information because as soon as they enabled it everyone noticed that many of the top accounts were Russian, pretending to be European or American.