You mean the systems that are cheaper and provide better results that the privatised systems of the US?

Unlike Americans, Europeans know exactly who pays for them, they do. What Americans don't get is that it's the same situation in the US, you pay, you just pay more for a worse product.

Yep, did some tests with Steam on Linux Mint a few months back with very good results, There was little to no discernable differences I could tell on Steam games, didn't get to try GOG but the one old game I installed via Lutris worked just fine.

Biggest problem was that Steam didn't support sharing drives between Windows and Linux (or NTFS under Linux) which means I need to reformat my games storage for Linux, which means I'll have to redo my mods (OK. Bethesda forced this with another pointless FO4 update) so I'm planning to go Linux on my new gaming box which I'll build as soon as I can find a decent video card that doesn't cost the earth.

OTOH, when it's not in a Linux repo installation can be a right PITA. Windows at least has that bit down to a tee when installing software that isn't in the abominable Windows store (I mean, who uses the Windows store anyway).

I'm struggling to find a replacement for Notepad++ on Linux, specifically to deal with large single line JSON files, most things either choke or refuse to open them, the closest I've got is Geany which will at least open the files but editing it is still a crapshoot.

Never underestimate the ingenuity of the average idiot.

Add greed to naivety and you've got a winning combination if you're a scammer.

I think a lot of the problem is that many people who grew up in nice, middle class burbs never had to encounter the kinds of scammers that I did growing up in poor neighbourhoods. You had fuck all as a 15 year old in a working class neighbourhood but you could guarantee that there was someone around every corner trying to relieve you of the fuck all you did have.

Because we've got all the low hanging fruit like preventable diseases in childhood, dangerous products, toxic pesticides, et al. But don't worry, Trump and the Anti-Vaxxers are working tirelessly to bring back such wonderful easily preventable diseases as Polio, Measles, Rubella and if they can manage it, Smallpox.

It should be noted this is a record for the US... which is still lower than almost all other developed nations.

For those who aren't idiots, I'm sure I don't need to explain that the biggest factor is the reduction in infant, child and young adult mortality as people under 25 dying in larger numbers skew the statistics downwards.

Thing is, PC gaming has been diskless for ages. The last game I bought on disk was in 2015 and that was because I lived in Australia and internet speeds were shit back then.

PC gaming has never really been cheaper, even with the ridiculous price of RAM and SSDs at the moment. A gaming PC I built 5 years ago is still more powerful than a PS pro (to start with, it's a Zen 3 CPU, the PS pro is still Zen 2).

PC gaming is cheaper than console gaming if you actually play games. Consoles are a false economy, the initial hardware is sold at a loss to get you in the door then they pile on charge after charge after charge, pay for access to online services, pay more for games, so on and so forth. PC gaming is the opposite, higher cost of entry as no-one is subsidising the hardware but no-one is expecting to make that back in additional fees and charges afterwards so once you've paid the inital cost for the hardware, savings start immediately. Games are cheaper and go on sale more often and Steam, GoG, et al. could triple their access fee tomorrow and no one would care because 3 x $0 is still $0.

People are realising the console price is a false economy and it's not helping (or is helping, depending on if you're a console fanboy or not) that a PS pro is only £80 more than a PS pro. Because people are looking to reduce their ongoing spend with consoles, Sony and MS are having to raise hardware prices. This, to digital only is one way Sony is trying to shore that up, by making sure that they get a cut of every single sale. Also the breaking of backwards compatibility is a feature, not a bug, as that means all your older games need to be re-purchased through the rip off store.

Which brings me to another point... I've 30+ year old games that still work on my current gaming PC. Of course I've got the installers on a hard drive now as no-one's seen a floppy drive in years and the original disks have probably melted in my sisters garage back in Oz. Games older than the original playstation.

Yet console fanboys keep lining up for more. Doesn't matter how much abuse they get, the only response is "yes master, may I have some more".

The Concorde's engines were adapted from military engines, the Rolls Royce Olympus which powered the Avro Vulcan bomber, so yeah, they were F-ing loud.

Question is, can we develop quieter engines these days? Modern high bypass turbofans (like the RR Trent) are way quieter than their older counterparts. Especially the older low bypass turbofans (I.E. on the 727s)

The gun nuts are the ones supporting the secret police.

Whilst you're 100% correct that gun nuts are melts living in a fantasy world who would piss themselves if anyone broke into their house rather than carrying out their heroic gun fantasies, I think the GPP was referring to a breakdown in society where people get territorial and violent. Society is, as they say only three meals away from anarchy. In anarchy all bets are off.

Erm... the US is becoming a Soviet state?

Well you are aligned with Russia now.

For the uninitiated, and the reason no-one actually uses "second world" any more is because it originally meant what side of the cold war you were on. The planet was divided into three separate "worlds", the first world being US, NATO and allies, the second world being the Soviet Union and countries aligned with them, the third world was unaligned countries. As time went on and the fact most developed countries were aligned with NATO and most unaligned countries were developing or undeveloped it became shorthand for rich and poor countries and with the collapse of the Soviet Union the second world ceased to exist.

So technically speaking, the Philippines is a first world country whilst Switzerland is a third world country (the former being staunch US allies and the second being staunchly neutral).

I'm no grammar NAZI so you can use first and third world to refer to economic development but "second" world is categorically wrong as it never developed a new meaning, it ceased to exist 30 years ago. If you would like to differentiate between poor and dirt poor countries economically, might I suggest using the terms "developing" and "undeveloped" respectively as that's what you'd put on a report you'd make to someone like the UN security council.

All spelling and grammatical errors contained in this post are intentional, grammar nazis need entertainment.

You misspelled "privacy".

This just "virtue signalling" for those with absolutely no virtues. Equal and opposite, instead of standing up for good causes they're letting everyone know they only support bad ones, I guess we can call it vice signalling but that still sounds too kind as most people with vices are generally still nice and well rounded, sin signalling then... Being British and Australian I'm going with "cunt signalling" as that's what they're trying to tell us they are and who they're trying to appeal to, however that's not really a BBC Two word.

That really isn't true as certain airlines (Singapore, QANTAS, Emirates, Qatar, et al.) are still flying them as they fill a niche that no other airliner in production can. They're very good at transporting large numbers of people from hub to hub over long distances, London to Singapore for example. Singapore airlines runs 6 flights a day between LHR and SIN (and another two out of LGW) and half of those are A380s, the A350s they fly to and from Gatwick have half the capacity of the A380, the A350 in the long haul configuration holds 253 pax, the A380 holds 471, 343 in Economy alone... And I'm using Singapore as an example because they're the most spacious of the carriers, Qatar operates A380s with 460 economy class seats (and another 46 in higher classes).

This is not to mention the flagship suite products this airliner hosts.

The B747 is dead, the 8i never took off and it looks like the next generation 777 is dead in the water too. So airlines running the A380 are interested in keeping it running.

I took "sophisticated" to mean "needlessly complex" and it's deliberately kept so to keep out competition. Such complexity is also why it's primitive in comparison to all other developed economies and many developing ones.

Also, isn't "facilitating interstate trade" the purview of the US federal government? If so, they seem completely unwilling to do anything.

Complexity is the problem with the US banking system, it's being deliberately kept that way to keep outsiders out. There aren't any US based challenger banks and the big bois have been killing off the old local banks and building societies.

The US government isn't powerless, but gormless to stop it and do what other countries have done and create a seamless system for interbank transfers. They're quite happy to turn a blind eye to it to keep the donations from the big banks coming through.

I can send money between Australia and the UK or even to someone with no bank account in Colombia easier than Americans can send money to each other.