I would even go as far and say that the EA purchase (price aside) is one that kind of makes sense compared to some other projects like the line or the absurd sums they are paying to individual athletes.

With all their sports washing and involvement in that area there might be synergies with all the sport game franchises EA has that can be leveraged.

And with them being focused quite a bit on tourism and hosting events having EA also helps on the esports side. Buying the publisher is basically buying the sports federation. Usually they can just bribe those, not straight up buy them outright.

In early August, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced a suspension of exports of arms to Israel that could be used in the Gaza Strip “until further notice,” marking a major shift in German foreign policy.

Regardless of how arms exports should be handled (i’d be on the side of banning them until there is actual change), this just seems like bad politics. Why even bother to first suspend them completely after such a long time and then immediately revert back?

Seems to me like this achieves literally nothing, but is the worst option in regard to public perception. Like they could have just kept the status quo, since there all the bad publicity was already “priced in” so to speak. Or they could do a move like in August and change their stance, but then you got to keep it up for it to actually matter and intend to do so from the start. If you revert this fast you get the backlash again for your original stance AND you look weak to the counterparty.

And yet another issue is that the height doesn’t just matter while driving, but also when cars are parked. Being able to anticipate dangerous situations is a key aspect for safety, but if tall cars on the side of the road block your visibility that becomes much harder.

I’d like to know how long the lifecycles of those charging stations are. Because you are right that Maximum speed and break times put a hard cap on distance needed, but at least some form of self driving will eventually come and i’d imagine long distance highway trucking would be the prime target for deployment.

With iPhones i think it’s less about durability (and especially in the software department they were always great in terms of longevity), but more about repairability in case something does happen.

As far as lightbulbs go the issue with potential planned obsolescence doesn’t go way just because of the swap to LEDs. First there are a type of bulb even today that use some form of filament and second the part that gets damaged is usually some kind of capacitor or other electronic part that gets run with too much voltage and too hot. Don’t have time to watch it again, but i remember finding this video from a few years ago interesting.

I do agree with the notion that phones in todays society are hugely important and spending money on what for most people might be their most important computing device is valid.

But the thing is that you really don’t need to spend this kind of money to get all the performance 95% of people need. Unless you want a foldable phone or NEED the telefoto-lense that is often reserved for higher end models (but I assume even then there are cheap options),

As an example here in Germany you can get a pixel 9 for under 500€, if you get a cheap mobile contract even cheaper (I pay 15€/month over 2 years and got a free pixel 9 with the mobile plan). All the performance you need and makes great photos. And for anyone who wants lots of storage there are still phones with sd card readers

How should Germany have reacted? As I see it there were two possible culprits: Russia or Ukraine. If we make a big deal out of it we have to act.

• Say it turns out to be Russia, then we have a direct attack on the infrastructure of a NATO member. If we don’t react to that it sends a desastrous message. If we do we and the rest of NATO have to react with force, something everyone has tried to avoid at all cost so far.

• If links to Ukraine turn out to be true (which seems more likely atm) this will give a massive boost to anti Ukrainian sentiment, with a good chance of complete collapse of public support for Ukraine. So what are we supposed to do then? Considering how Germany got bashed by everyone already for seemingly not doing enough (unfairly imo).

Now even getting into a position like that is the result of long-term strategic failure. But in my limited view keeping this topic comparatively small is a favor to everyone involved. Because in the end world goes on without the pipeline as well.

This definitely seems like a good idea. It’s a big issue that most promising European companies go to the US for their listings in search for access to capital.

Seems to me that this would already have been the obvious move after Brexit.

However I feel like this is doomed to fail for the same reason as many other issues. Clashing interests of different member states within the EU. I assume this would still need to have a primary location somewhere, so Frankfurt or Paris would be the most likely location to build this up. Merz bringing this up presumably would like it to be Frankfurt, but I very much doubt that Macron would feel similarly.

Fun fact: in Thuringia the afd is blocking the confirmation of judges and prosecutors (needs 2/3 majority) in an attempt to use this as leverage to gain a seat on the control committee that oversees the domestic intelligence agency of Thuringia. The very same that has classified them as proven right extremist and is thus investigating them.

What I find particularly problematic is the conflict of interest between Tesla and xAI, especially because Elon has a higher percentage of ownership of the latter.

It’s clear that Tesla is priced not as a car manufacturer, but as a technology company with high (arguably delusional) hopes towards self driving, compute and robotics. However that kind of seems like a natural area to expand into for xAI as well. So why should Elon do it at Tesla where he has less ownership?

Btw xAI acquired X, so one less company. From what I remember at the time the purchase felt like Elon taking advantage of other investors and getting a very favorable deal for himself due to the company evaluations, which increased his ownership stake in the combined company.

Frankly, if the company you invested in does not give you dividends, then you are a fucking chump.

That’s just not true. There are plenty of reasons why fast growing/expanding young companies shouldn’t pay dividends, if they have better opportunities to put capital to work (if you disagree with their assessment you sell the stock).

And even in mature companies dividends aren’t always good. Just look at Intel and Berkshire. Intel should have cut the dividend way sooner and is now in a worse spot because they didn’t. Berkshire on the other hand is by all accounts a healthy and well run company. If you want to take profits you just sell some stocks and if Berkshire thinks that price is to low they repurchase some of that stock.

Since I just saw this in the self-host weekly post:

Do not upgrade to 13.0.0

Seems like there is a bug and one should use 13.0.1

See here

I’ve only listened to the album for a bit and not seen the movie yet, but this whole thread pretty much reflects my initial impression. I completely agree with your assessment.

I’d have looked at something like Health or the Glitch Mob, but Justice and the others already mentioned also could have been a great choice

John Oliver (or alternatively other talkshow hosts like John Steward, Stephen Colbert, or Conan) could be another interesting choice.

I’d assume he is probably more intelligent than me and has already spent a lot of time presenting problems and thinking about solutions. He’d also have the right energy to get things done.

That said, I think without changes to the capabilities of the office, I actually don’t think they’d get that much done. Despite what it sometimes may look like, Trump can only do most of the things because others support it. This isn’t a one man show.

Yes, another in universe explanation, that I already commented somewhere else, is that the hospital is geared towards excellence. There’s an episode where Cuddy negotiates with an insurance provider for a new contract and one argument is that they provide a halo effect. So the insurance can claim to have the best in their network or get really bad press for losing them.

Yeah, it’s obviously not logical or grounded in reality, but it is at least somewhat consistent within the show universe.

I think during the story line, where Cuddy negotiates with the hospital network insurance provider for a new contract, she makes the argument, that their hospial sort of provides a halo effect. Basically the hospital and probably House in particular (but maybe also others like Wilson) are some of the best in their fields, which obviously is great for marketing purposes, if you can say that you have one/the best and well known hospital in your network.

Edit since I thought of another aspect:

Iit regularly comes up that the team writes case reports. So maybe there is also an aspect where they frequently publish in prestigious journals. Especially since it is a teaching hospital adjacent to a university that might also be an important metric. Similar to insurance providers, the university itself might have an interest in having a reputation for excellence.

My main point was that you pay for it regardless. All the things you list i can also do with a cable i simply purchase seperately. But the difference here is that i can either choose not to buy one, if i don’t need it. Or purchase a specific one e.g. a very long one, if i prefer that over the standard short one.

I doubt most manufacturers would lower the price when stopping to include them, but they might delay raising it for a while. In any case i think the economic mechanism (at least in an idealistic setting) is logical.

I don’t think it would logistically make sense to have versions with and without accessories included, since that instantly doubles the version count. But most if not all places that sell phones also sell cables/chargers. So in that way the choice already exists.

That said i think this line of thinking mostly works because we have standardized on USB-C for quite a while now, so the assumption that most people already have access to a cable is valid. This would be different if they’d require specific cables like e.g. my garmin watch does, which you wouldn’t normally have and that you’d likely purchase from the same manufacturer. In that case seperating them might have the opposite effect in making the price to consumers less transparent.

Also i could get behind the idea that not including something like a cable would require a prominent warning lable that “a cable or wireless charger (if applicable)” is required for longterm use.

It gives you and the users of your jellyfin instance a nice UI dashboard to search and request movies/series. The requests then get handed off to radarr/sonarr for downloading via your downloader (e.g. Sabnzb)

Instead of having to go into the less polished sonarr/radarr that would also expose some settings that you might not want other users to change, you get a nice dashboard. Similar to how you’d browse on a streaming site.

It shows you currently popular movies/shows and upcoming highly anticipated ones, you can search for a specific movie and when you click on it you get a helpful site. It displays all kinds of info similar to jellyfin, like cast, tags, relevant other movies, links to sites like rotten tomatoes or letterboxd, and so on. You can also search for persons and it’ll show you what they’ve been in/have produced. And when you want something you can easily request a download in your preferred quality setting.

You also may limit what and how requests from different users are handled.

But wouldn’t it be equally valid to frame it the other way around that so far we have paid for them to be included, whether we like it or not?

I mean the price to manufacture them doesn’t change and companies werent charities before either.

Feels like in a functioning market this should just sort itself out. At least if it is transparent whether the phone includes accessories or not. People could factor this into their pricing decision.

The more interesting argument imo is the one another comment in this thread made, that this way miss match between phone and charger/cable capabilities might happen. Which seems like a double edged sword. One the one hand manufacturers can advertise great charging speeds and people might not realize that only expensive chargers might be able to achieve those. On the other hand as the comment points out customers might not get the expected performance leading to frustration and negative associations with the particular brand.