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Comment Re: PHP (Score 4, Informative) 86

Because it embeds into html, rather than rendering the html. It makes for very fragmented code.

In my experience, most sufficiently advanced use of PHP involves rendering the HTML. You can do it either way.

And most sufficiently complex PHP uses PHP as a full-fledged language, complete with classes, etc., and to the extent templates are used, the code in them consists of tiny partial-line-long fragments of code that call some method in some other file that is basically just code.

In other words, very fragmented code isn't caused by PHP; it's caused by the way that the developer chose to use PHP.

Comment Good (Score 2) 126

We stayed somewhere eight years ago where the host complained and that they were disappointed we didn't put the recycling in some bins somewhere or put the rubbish out (we didn't know where nor whether the locality had rules about these), that we didn't do the dishes (we left them air drying), that we left the place dirty (we tidied up, swept the kitchen floor, but we had a toddler too). There was an enormous cleaning fee for that place too. Never mind I had to clean the ashes from the choked fireplace before I could use it, despite it being one of the big selling points of the cottage. We did far more than we needed to in cleaning. Years later, that host is no longer on AirBnB and other hosts tell us we're great guests and they don't understand that one bad review. It's annoying, we can't even see that review or know what was actually written about us.

Comment Re:You cannot destroy data, harmless or not ... (Score 1) 320

Yepp, as I said: The system is built first and foremost to defend itself.

Personally, I don't think that police should have any right whatsoever to enter your digital devices. Yes, including for terrorism and kiddie porn. And I am 100% for us nerds developing defenses against this overreach. This case is a lesson that teaches us distress PINs are a good thing, but we need to improve on them, make it less obvious they were used, etc.

Comment Re: Yes (Score 1) 202

It's not a question of "Germany for the Germans". It's a matter of allowing people who are openly opposed to your culture to become a sizeable minority, while at the same time putting pressure on society in every way in order to extract wealth for the "elites", while at the same time replacing everyone among the "elites" who is actually capable of something with incompetent, corrupt egomaniacs.

If one of these factors were absent, we might yet manage. Competent leaders might be able to keep things together. Not maximizing profit for the few while returning the populations' lives back to peasantry would give ordinary people breathing space to cope with everything and solve issues at the base. Not importing culture war would keep society more cohesive and able to fight back against the exploitation.

Comment damn (Score 1) 135

As a (small) shareholder of both companies, I'm against this move. Not that my opinion counts for much, but these are two companies that are strong each for their own reasons and a merger would muddle that. But maybe that's the point.

We thought the Megacorporations would emerge as vertically integrated all-consumer-products giants. Turns out that a tech bubble beats that.

Comment Re:We really should stop jerking Ukraine around (Score 1) 79

Russia is an economic pygmy compared to Europe. Even if something hurts us several times more than it hurts Russia, proportionally, it hurts Russia far more.

That does not follow. Germany especially is an export-oriented economy that relies on cheap energy to be profitable. It competes directly with asian countries that have far lower costs. You might not grasp the magnitude: Gas was 2.5 cents per kWh a decade ago. It jumped to 30 and more after Ukraine, USA or a combination of both blew up North Stream 2. Granted, it came down again, but it's still over 6 cents today. (exact numbers depend on your market, location, yada yada )

Russia is suffering a slow-burning blow to its compound growth. I honestly don't think that the damage to Russia is worse than the damage to Europe.

Comment Re: Yes (Score 1) 202

It's not just you.

I've lived most of my life in Germany and definitely got its best years. It's been going downhill for the past 20 years or so. And a lot of the why are very similar to the ones you list, and while I saw them early and left the country for that, it's only been coming to a head in the past decade.

Comment Re: Yes (Score 1) 202

True, but there's a saying that capitalism won the competition because communism failed first. Meaning capitalism will fail 2nd and we might be seing that.

capitalism is at the top of the pack

Yes, but by what measurement? Being able to destroy the competition might mean you are better, or it might mean you aren't playing fair. Microsoft dominates the OS market, but not by offering the best OS.

And your example of Kuwait is more spot on than you think. The USA also was handed a cheat code - it was the big winner of WW2, with no damage to its infrastructure while Europe was in ruin, Russia had lost 10% of its population and insane amounts of infrastructure, etc. - and while everyone else involved was busy rebuilding basics for a few year, the US could pivot its wartime industry to productive industry and jump ahead.

Comment Re:Yes (Score 1) 202

They are the heart of the consulting firms that are constantly selling (at a very high price) the latest management fad.

Worse than that, it's an entire circle-jerk. Many of these people were at consulting companies, then were placed into their positions, while still being loyal to their consulting company. The biggest one whose entire modus operandi is placing their people into positions where they can give the company future business is McKinsey. This isn't even news.

Comment Re:Sounds like ... (Score 1) 202

True, some of the bad apple stakeholders will take a zero sum view of the operation (every dollar the employees get is a dollar that the shareholders lose). But being a good CEO is knowing how to deal with such people. Even to the point of letting them go.

Yeah, but that's not how that works.

The CEO these days is one of the bad apples, and his real-world experience consists of a cozy upper-class childhood, a business school that exchanges money for degrees, a few years at McKinsey or such and a placement as CEO somewhere. He has barely even MET a working class man in his life. His primary concern are quarterly numbers and getting his bonus. The fact that quarters are very short periods in the business world alone doesn't allow him to focus on anything else, unless he wants to explain to the wife why they can't buy that nice mountain chalet she wanted this year.

Buffet is exceptional in many ways, he's not a good example here.

Comment Re:You cannot destroy data, harmless or not ... (Score 1) 320

Once a search is initiated, you cannot destroy data.

He didn't, though. He gave an officer a couple numbers. This action did not destroy any data. The phone could still sit in an evidence locker, all data intact, even after this action.

The officer entering that number into the phone is what destroyed the data. You could argue that he aided in the destruction of evidence. But in that case you need to put the officer on trial as well for destruction of evidence.

Now the officer will claim "I didn't know". In which case you'd ask "then what the fuck were you doing there, not knowing? Does procedure not require you to handle evidence with care? If you didn't know what you were doing, how does that constitute care?"

But, of course, this isn't what's happening. Considering the actual facts, I mean. What's happening is that the government wants the right to spy on you and this dude defended his privacy. And we can't have that, can we? So my money is on the court siding with the police, because they're all part of the same system whose primary purpose is to keep itself intact.

Comment Re:Lying (Score 1) 320

Police are allowed to lie during an investigation.

And you aren't. There's the problem. This is why they pretend that it's a friendly interaction when actually it's a hostile one.

We need a right to not just remain silent, but to lie just as much as the cops do. This would also get rid of the whole "anything you say can and will be used against you" bullshit, you'd just say "I lied" when they bring it up.

I understand that a society needs police. I don't think we need THIS police, the amount of fails it has is dramatic.

Comment Re:Rinse and repeat (Score 1) 21

USB-C? Apple were laughed at for only including USB-C on their laptops and there are still weird antique societies around keeping USB A kicking when it should have been buried over a decade ago.

I still want a USB-A port on my MacBook Pro. The number of times I don't have the right cable/adapter with me is still way too high.

But no, I meant phones, where Lightning was dumped on iPad in 2018, but didn't go away on the iPhone for another half decade.

If you mean only the world of phones - Apple changed their charging and connection standards three times. 30 pin -> Lightning -> USB C. Each one lasted about a decade, which is what they always said. Lightning came out in 2012, USB C didn't even exist as a standard until 2014. Should they have changed yet again after two years, thus annoying everyone?

Yes. At the very latest, they should have changed when they changed the iPad over. Having a different charger for iPhone than for every other Apple device was overtly user-hostile. It meant carrying around extra crap for zero reason other than because Apple extracted four bucks worth of MFi revenue off of every licensed iPhone cable sold, and couldn't extract revenue from every USB-C cable sold.

And given how thin Lightning cables had to be because of the miniature connector and the inability to use a bigger connector because of case manufacturers building the holes too small to accommodate them, and how often the cables failed because of the too-thin wires, I'd imagine that was quite a nice revenue stream. The number of Lightning cables I went through was nuts.

Meanwhile, over in the rest of the world you had an assortment of barrel connecters, USB Mini, USB Micro, USB C.

USB Mini was in 2000. Micro was in 2007. Both were before the first iPhone. Don't get me wrong, micro-USB sucked. But we'd all have been better off if they had gone with mini-USB and stuck with it. We'd all have been better off if Apple had stuck with the Dock connector another two years and pushed the USB Forum (of which they are a member) to make a reversible connector happen, then switched to USB-C. We'd all have been better off if they had switched to Lighting, scared the rest of the industry into making USB-C happen, and then dumped Lighting for USB-C in 2018, starting with the iPad and then quickly progressing through the entire product line, rather than changing the iPad, but keeping the iPhone on Lightning until 2023.

Instead, Apple waited until the EU forced them to do it. By the time they finally switched, I was about to give up and move to Android, because the experience was so much better being able to share power infrastructure with my Mac instead of carrying around special sh*t-quality, low-data-speed cables just for the iPhone. Don't get me started on the fact that Apple never put USB 3 silicon into any iPhone, so they maxed out at a pathetic 480 Mbps data rate. It made photography and videography on iPhone absolutely horrible, because you couldn't get data off of them in a timely manner.

Everything about the way Apple handled Lighting on iPhones was botched just about as horribly as you could possibly botch it. Consumers put up with it, but that didn't make it suck any less.

Comment Re:Rinse and repeat (Score 1) 21

Generally speaking the problem with Apple is the magnitude of orders.

OLEDs on laptops is generally an option on the higher end laptops - they default to standard TFT displays and reserve the OLEDs as an upgrade option This means the companies don't really need all that many OLED panels.

Apple though, sells only a few models of laptops, and generally on such a scale that they may need millions of OLED displays.

Apple has sold two different versions of their display on Mac laptops for years — a glossy screen and a matte screen. An OLED screen option wouldn't be unthinkable. They'd just have to price it appropriately based on availability.

But you're right that doing it across the entire product line would be a lot of hardware. Even doing it for the Pro line would be a lot, largely because that's more than half of Apple's laptop sales — a sad testament to how badly Apple screwed up when they dropped the standard Macbook in favor of the thermally throttled Air. Contrast that with when the first Macbooks came out and the Pro laptops were maybe a percent or two. This doesn't leave Apple with the wiggle room to have truly high-end-only features except by making them BTO/CTO options.

It's still noise compared with the 1.1 billion OLED panels expected to be sold this year. Whether manufacturing capacity drove Apple's availability or Apple's demand helped drive capacity is unclear. Probably both.

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