"Don't Be Evil" - Google 30 years ago

"Be Evil" - Google now.

That's what I assumed as well. Buy Now Pay Later loans like this have a long history of being predatory. So I took a look at what it would cost to accept Klarna (as an example) as a merchant. The reality is that they have transaction fees that are very similar to credit cards. In other words, these companies do not need to rely on missed payments to make a profit.

These companies are apparently setting themselves up to replace traditional credit card payment systems, which suits me right down to the ground.

The difference is that it is much easier to get a Klarna account, and it isn't (yet) as widely available.

I felt the same way at first. Traditional BNPL schemes were very predatory. However, Klarna (and others) appear to be playing approximately the same game as the traditional credit card processors. They charge transaction fees that are roughly the same as credit card processors, and like credit cards their customers don't pay extra if they pay their bill on time. Klarna, in particular actually appears to give customers interest free time.

The difference, for consumers, is primarily that a Klarna account is much easier to get, and it isn't universally accepted. From a merchant perspective, depending on your payment provider, you might already be able to accept Klarna, and it appears that it mostly works like a credit card. It's even possible that charge backs are less of an issue, although it does appear that transaction fees are not given back in the case of a refund.

Personally, I am all for competition when it comes to payment networks. Visa and Mastercard are both devils. More competition for them is good for all of us.

At the risk of invoking the Death of the Author trope, I don't agree with him here (and I note that he leaves that open too, by saying he personally doesn't want to and not excluding others from wanting to)..

Markdown is now a way doing shorthand formatted typing, effectively. What it's original purpose was is interesting, but not a limitation ('make', for example, was not made for software development but for compiling books). I'm computer-centric, not mobile-centric. A way of formatting bullets and tables without having to move my hands off the keyboard is great for me.

Be interested to see how it handles the round trip - can I take an existing note and edit it using Markdown for instance. But overall - can't see this as anything but a good thing.

The only people who have this kind of stuff are collectors/nostalgia people. They want things to be accurate - that's why go to that trouble.

For a long time I had a Commodore 64 set up ready to go in my rooms, connected to a 1541 snail drive and a C2N cassette. I had a Mac/SE 30 an d a Mac Plus. I had an Atari ST. I enjoyed them all, and I can absolutely appreciate wanting this kind of thing.

For myself I've moved on (played the C64 version of Portal? That was developed on hardware I donated) from physically collecting, although you could argue I've merely transferred the habit to synthesizers instead. But I absolutely recognise and understand the enjoyment people get from this, and it's nice to see this kind of thing being done.

IMHO the fact that we have to, under criminal law, to testify against ourself is a violation of our Constitutional Rights, to not incriminate ourselves.

I'm sure there is some weird legal theory that the government uses to get around this.

Heard this so, so many times over the last 35 years. 3GL, 4GL, graphical-style (Powerbuilder etc.), object orientiation...so, so many times.

It's a giant string generator, copying from other people's strings. It's a good giant string generator, but that's what it is - another tool in the box. Most of programming is not just the syntax, it's the ideas. "Doing exactly what you want it to do" - hah, most people absolutely cannot specify exactly what they want a thing to do.

Did it start and run more than twice in a row? Well then, it's not an Eleanor clone.

Things of value are usually rare. The amount of "entertainment" is ever increasing, and thus becoming cheaper and cheaper. Creating MORE isn't going to help.

And with AI starting to be used in the Creation process, that will lower the costs of making it, and start making it widely available to more people in the creation process.

This ends in a death spiral of more and more "entertainment" with less and less perceived value, chasing diminishing returns. I suspect that places like OF will make quick end once AI girls are able to do everything by prompts on the fly for their "users".

I mean - I was there. People were on dial-up. Fast display of the page was the thing people liked. SEO didn't even really exist as a concept at that point, and the whole PageRank thing was later and quickly dropped. At the time it launched and started getting sway, Google's results were different-but-fine. It progressed quickly to better, but by that point people had mostly moved.

People have forgotten and bought into the legend. Google won because it was a white page with a search box. Alta Vista had gone for the 90s portal fad, and people didn't want that.

Later revisions of Google may or may not have been better, but certainly the "gained sway" bit was because it was faster and not laden with stuff you didn't care about.

Now I lay me in my bed,
Darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see by infra-red,
How I hate the night.
-- Marvin the Paranoid Android, aka Douglas Adams,

...and we're on unlocked phones. UK, EU...all of it that I'm aware of. No harm done at all.

OK - so let's assume the lowest participation rate is also the lowest number of physical answers - that's not a given, but taking this assumption would actually show things in the most optimistic light. Under this assumption if 5 is 13%, then ~39 (rounding up) is 100%. That survey then was sent to only 39 people - that's quite a specialised survey.

The method of engaging needs to be questioned as well as the statistical fall in responses, I feel. Also the relevancy of the survey - if I'm not interested in the answer, then even if you've found the perfect way to reach me I'm still not going to respond.

Also - anecdote not data, but I've been working in the UK for 35 years now. Never received any engagement from the ONS other than the standard once every four years census.

In America we have essentially legislated against small vehicles. Our CAFE standards were supposedly designed to push us towards more fuel efficient vehicles, but the reality is that the easiest way to pass CAFE standards is to simply make the vehicle larger. So the United States ends up with larger vehicles, and the smaller vehicles that we do get tend to be more expensive than we should be. We have essentially legislated away the category of a ultra basic small car. That happens to be a pretty popular segment in most of the world. The small cars we can buy are nearly as expensive as their larger brethren and so they make a lot less sense.

EVs are an even better example of how U.S. legislation skews things towards larger ICE vehicles. The most popular EVs in most of the world are the most basic EVs. I personally would love to buy a basic EV to replace my current commuter car. I have a house and a place to plug in an EV. My commute is short and even the most basic EVs would be fine. However, the only vehicles available in the market are essentially luxury vehicles. I can buy a whole lot of gasoline for $30K, which is the least expensive new EV available here, but if I could get my hands on a cheap Chinese EV for $12K I absolutely would do that. For the price of the least expensive EV you can basically buy a Toyota RAV4 that is a much more capable vehicle.