Comment For the record: I hate SUVs. (Score 1) 194
Just to clarify:
It was given to me as a spare rental after an accident with another rental. I don't own a car, never have and likely never will. I'm 56, have always used PT, the bike and in recent years a Motorscooter that I bought used. IMHO SUVs and similar vehicles should be hit with an epic eco and luxury tax. I only took the rental because I had to cover extreme distances and train thus wasn't an option.
Comment The USA is falling apart (Score 1) 150
Europe isn't doing that well either right now, but you guys are leading the charge. This isn't looking good. Notable parts of the US system need a redo. Europe needs a cleanup. I just hope all that can happen peacefully and without a thug government.
Comment I sure would effing hope so. (Score 1) 36
EOM
Comment The Ice Age ended, finally (Score 0) 194
Comment Yeah, pretty much this. (Score 5, Interesting) 194
Disclaimer: European here.
4th epic heatwave this year in Germany right now. I'm currently in Karlsruhe and it's 37 degrees Celsius outside (too lazy to convert to bananas or whatever you guys use). Got an SUV rental and it's AC couldn't keep up this noon. Concrete on the Autobahn cracked open in the last heatwave and they had to close down to repair it. Right now NRW is seeing it's largest forest fire since ever.
I was up north on the island of Fehmarn at the start of the week. Summer was bearable there although I did get sunburn. Anything south of Bremen though has unbearable heat at noon. Not fun. The Rhine is at an all time low, you can almost wade through it ( this has never happened ) and Hungary is having an energy crisis because they had to shut down both of their fission plants because the didn't have enough cooling water. France is closing in an the same problem once again too.
Climate change is hitting us like a fist this year. Not fun.
Comment Don't put anything in the cloud... (Score 2) 101
... that you can't get out in 2 hours or less. If it's mission critical that is.
Comment NOAA will be defunded (Score 4, Insightful) 115
Comment Do they die earlier, of stress? (Score 1) 70
Or are they more mentally fit due to more social interactions and navigating a car?
Any details on that?
Comment A Man of Yesterday (Score 1) 280
Comment How can you watermark a song ... (Score 1) 33
... without impacting the listening experience?
And how can you check for that watermark?
Comment One of the reasons I'm out of IT ... (Score 1) 61
... with all this AI-sh1t going on is that it's fundamentally non-deterministic in nature. Stunts like these are 10 levels above the non-sense SEO and Co. have been doing for more than a decade, and that was annoying as f*ck already. This new manipulation garbage of LLMs already (occasionally) spitting out their very own version of garbage has me running for the hills and choosing another profession.
Yeah, I use AI to write my code, but that's what I'll be running in the end anyway. There is no AI bot that I trust with anything mission-critical, wether online or on-prem.
Comment Mine certainly are. (Score 1) 93
After 26 years a loyal customer they finally managed to be such an obnoxious nuisance that I quit them and moved to a (way) cheaper and better provider roughly 6 months ago. And I'll never return.
Comment You should see drivers relying... (Score 1) 133
... on early versions of built-in SAT navs and ending up in harbor basins. At least as dangerous but arguably way more entertaining for onlookers. Especially if it was a BMW. 8-)
Comment A little late ... (Score 1) 36
I was a hardcore GOG advocate, because they opposed DRM and offered native Linux runtimes of their games. However, their Linux support was pretty lackluster in recent years. Game versions meant to run on Ubuntu 16 and 18 and unusable on any recent version. About half a year ago, after many attempts to get things running on current Linuxes, I finally caved and moved from GOG to Steam, since they offer a hassle-free Linux experience with a curated central Linux-compliant runtime environment.
I presume GOG has noticed people giving up on GOG and now has decided to follow suit. I hope they can build a compelling experience, but they've lost me for now.