Ryanair's O'Leary is well known for making outlandish statements that never come true in order to get his name and his airline plastered all over the news and generate faux outrage for free publicity. Would bet this is just another such stunt.

Almost every airline that lets you check in online also sends you a PDF that you can print out. I'd be very surprised if this was not already industry standard if not law in Europe. Even if they get rid of printers at the airport I suspect this system will remain for people without smartphones or those who simply want a paper copy with the boarding QR code on it.

Finally I strongly suspect that if they actually did try to force people to download their shitty app... the EU will step in and say nein, non, no y fuck off in 3... 2...

Google Play lists all the permissions:

Device & app history
        retrieve running apps

Location
        approximate location (network-based)
        precise location (GPS and network-based)

Phone
        read phone status and identity

Photos / Media / Files
        read the contents of your USB storage
        modify or delete the contents of your USB storage

Storage
        read the contents of your USB storage
        modify or delete the contents of your USB storage

Camera
        take pictures and videos

Wi-Fi connection information
        view Wi-Fi connections

Device ID & call information
        read phone status and identity

Other
        receive data from Internet
        view network connections
        pair with Bluetooth devices
        access Bluetooth settings
        connect and disconnect from Wi-Fi
        full network access
        control Near-Field Communication
        run at startup
        reorder running apps
        control vibration
        prevent device from sleeping
        read Google service configuration

You can refuse some of those permissions, but it's still a hell of a lot.

That's the key point that people always forget, or simply don't know. Most Chinese people are happy with how things are going. Life is getting better every year. They feel like they are involved in local decisions, and that the government is looking out for them.

I asked a guy about all the CCTV cameras on roads. I noticed them because, unlike the ones in the UK that are hidden and quietly record number plates in a central police database all over the country, the ones in China have a flash so you can't miss them. As well as the licence plate, they get a photo of the driver, hence the need for the flash. I was a bit alarmed, but he said they keep everyone safe and help the police catch criminals. Exactly the same justification used in the UK, only with better PR.

I do 99% of my coding in C these days. I used to do some C# stuff, but it's been a while.

So for me a decent IDE is very very helpful.

That was my other thought, why don't they submit a patch fixing it? Or maybe they did and it just needed review.

Ryanair have two motivations here.

1. Steal your private data, spam you with notifications, the usual app stuff.
2. Make more people pay the check-in fee.

They are always up to stuff like this. The other very common one is rejecting bags that are within their size limits. They have special devices that the bag must fit in, but the dimensions are not the same as the ones in their Terms & Conditions. The device has rounded corners that reduce the volume a little, for example.

Capitalists are always looking for ways to make sure you don't have a choice, or at least not a real choice.

That's why companies often find that the kind of consumer lock-in they do in the US doesn't fly in the EU. Just because a consumer has a choice not to buy an Apple phone, doesn't mean that Apple can't remove choices from them about where to buy apps from, or to switch to Android and lose all their purchased apps and accessories.

Indeed, lack of production has been a limiting factor in their exports so far.

Also the practice of pre-registering cars is commonplace in Europe. The dealer buys the car from themselves, registers it to themselves, and sells it "second hand" to the customer with only delivery miles on the clock. My current car was supposed to be like that, but they just registered it to me so it was brand new, but for the pre-registered price.

I'm always surprised that VS is the best IDE. You would think that there would be a really great open source one, given that every open source developer needs something to edit code and manage projects... But nope, the only half way decent open source IDE is Visual Studio Code, another Microsoft product.

I have to use Eclipse based IDEs for various things, and they are all painful and buggy. The UI is a complete mess. It's a little bit mind boggling how bad it is.

The Dice era did so much damage, but to be fair the new owner fixed a lot of things and the place got a lot better. Of course many people didn't come back.

This ad is annoying though because it covers the content. I'd rather it was part of the page layout, than floating over it.

The damages might be insignificant, but if OpenAI doesn't stop doing it they could be much larger. That's likely the point here, to stop them doing it or to force them to buy a licence.

All those things are true of places like Saudi Arabia, only worse. They don't seem to have issues getting talent though.

They pay big bucks, they have enclaves for foreigners to live in, and they use English as the working language where needed.

You know those stories about the Saudi police having supercars? Those cars were bought on credit by foreigners. It's illegal to default on a loan over there, so when they get fired and suddenly can't afford the repayments, they ditch the car and flee the country. The police eventually come and collect it as abandoned, and if they can't find the paperwork for it (accidentally fell in the shredder) they put police livery on it and use it for patrol.

This seems to be a misunderstanding of the current rules. Chinese nationals can take up about $50k out of the country annually, but there is no limit for foreign nationals. As long as you paid all your taxes, you can take as much money as you like out.

The fact that places like Saudi Arabia are able to attract people, despite the fact that drinking is illegal and women's rights are heavily curtailed, suggests that somewhere comparatively liberal like China won't have any issues.

A lot of people get an ffmpeg binary from some repo, and they often compile those with all the optional extras.

Either way, it needed to be fixed.