... to move to old-school open solutions like IRC and such and result in them learning a thing or two about computers, networks and administration. And perhaps they'll learn about anonymity and it's importance just like we did in the 80ies.
That generative AI is voiding 90%+ of jobs in media production should be obvious by now. What's interesting is that these jobs, just like software development, are only a (very) small portion of the workforce. I am just some wide and far between senior webdev getting ready to move into marketing or customer service and taking a ~15k hit on my income. No huge impact to society.
Just wait until the robots start driving our vehicles and replacing drivers. That's when the real fun starts.
It tries a tad to hard to be hilarious and is obnoxious in that way but overall the whole short film does lean into the major system level difference between W1ndows and macOS. It also shows how someone might actually solve the problem by quickly switching to macOS. They cleverly plug the Mac Mini as a gateway device for this. Which it actually in reality often is.
It pushes the diversity shtick/fad a little hard (the masOS geek that saves the day is a women - because of course _she_ is), but she is exaggerated in a plausible way. And they lean into the geek speaking vs. ords listening dichotomy rather than anything boss-baby. At least. All protagonists and situations are goofy enough as to provoke some laughs.
As a European I did notice how nearly all protagonists were (notably) overweight. I guess that's an accurate representation of the US population.
The 8-minute add is quite neat for such a thing and not a CWOT. Which is good enough I'd say.
... that by and large there is absolutely no lack of USB cables.
I don't use the ones that ship anyway. I have long thick ones with fabric isolation and little LED lights on the plugs that tell me if they are live or not.
... I love the UK and lived in Scotland for a while as a teen. It's sad to see the country go down the loo like that.
The UK has invented a strange way of funding university. It's similar to the American model but without the option to go to a cheaper "community college"
(Costs here are converted to USD @ 1.34)
So basically, if you go to university (and don't have parental funding available), you're getting (approximately) $13000 per year in tuition fees as a loan. All universities charge the same (which is the maximum the government allows)
Additionally there's up to roughly $17000 per year as maintenance grant. In London for example, you'll need all that and more (my quick google suggests another $10000 per year.). At the cheapest places in the country you'll just about manage without needing extra funding. A huge part of the money goes on rent and is the main driver for why Newcastle, for example, is around $800 per month cheaper than London.
So, at the end of a three year degree you've got $90K of debt. Interest rates are RPI (not CPI which is what the government pays when it borrows!) and currently is 3.2% so there's roughly 3K of interest being added each year.
Loans are repaid once income reaches $34000 and you pay 9% of your income over that limit. So unless you're earning about $60K per year you won't even pay off the accruing interest.
I can't be arsed to do the calculation but I'm making a wild guess that at $80K per year you'll manage to pay it off. Only 10% of the UK population earns that sort of money. And that's just to pay it off, you'll be paying an extra 9% of your income for your entire working life. The loan gets written off at (I think) 60 years of age. So basically everybody is paying an extra 10% tax over $35K of income except for a few hyper-earners or those with parents who could fund them rather than borrowing.
And don't forget that those $80K incomes tend to be found in the most expensive cities, so overpaying to pay down the debt more quickly is harder than it first looks compared to someone living in a cheap city on $40K per year (roughly median income)
Because university is basically unaffordable, governments have not been putting up the maximum fee that can be charged, which means that universities are seeing a real-terms decline in their funding.
And the "get immigration numbers down at all cost" has meant that HMG are no longer issuing (as many) visas to international students. They subsidise UK students, particularly at the more prestigious universities where fees can be over $65K per year just for tuition.
It's been a disaster - and a rapid rethink:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fed...
The international student tuition fees at UCL range from about $30K for the cheapest courses all the way up to about $55K for the most expensive.
... about how epically f*cked the UK is. I mean we all knew that Brexit would hurt and the British who were in favor of Brexit would quickly get their doubts if Brexit was such a good idea, but looking across the canal right now I have to say "Holy cow, talk about screwing up even worse after leaving the EU." After all, the pro Brexit message was that they were going to fix all the problems they now have 5x more of.
Here's a good expert analysis that perfectly summarizes the UK situation.
It is common knowledge that the planets Albedo (Level of light reflection) has been dropping. The mean reasons are less snow and ice (a large portion of Albedo loss) and fever overall clouds. It's one of the runaway cascading effects of man-made global warming. This really isn't news anymore. Well, perhaps for some, I guess.
There are food additives that are "legal" to use in the US that are classified as 'effing bona-fide Toxic Waste in the EU and can't even be legally disposed of in regular landfills. There are literally thousands of additives that are flat-out _illegal_ in the EU that can be used in food in the US.
To me there is no wonder that you guys have cancer rates rising.
... towards the poles. It's clearly noticable here in Europe and the pace has picked up notably in recent years. I'm mentally preparing to relocate to Scandinavia if the need should arise in the future. 3 Years ago I took an extended summer trip to Portugal. The heat was unbearable during the day, I only could go out in the early morning or late afternoon and evening. Desertification of the Iberean peninsula is in full swing as is the water table dropping in more northern parts of Europe. The German Harz mountain region has abandoned winter tourism because there is no snow anymore to speak of. At the same time the dutch have fewer and fewer hours in which low-tide allows for water to be let out into the ocean again through those massive flood-gates they built. It is likely that we're going to have to look where we put the dutch during my lifetime. We're pretty screwed. How hard is still largely up to us but time is running out fast and my reluctant optimism is fading.
Upcoming? The iPhone 16e was released last year. These are schematics for a phone that has been out for a year.
The problem with this document's release is that it's technical information that was supposed to be kept confidential forever.
I'm assuming this is just an error on the FCC's part, and that they automatically released it after a year. Though with the current administration, Hanlon's razor is getting harder and harder to apply.
Why didn't they stop in the first safe place, like refugees are supposed to do?
They're not. It's a particular perverse reading of the Geneva convention that is not consistent with the VCLT.
And even if that were the case, UK law recognises that refugees might pass through other countries on their way. They may not *settle* there and then request asylum in the UK but they may pass through them in order to request asylum.
The EU, however, has the Dublin III regulation which means that asylum seekers can be returned to the country of entry into the EU for their asylum application. If/when asylum is granted and maybe after some years of residence, and some paperwork, they will eligible to travel to their desired EU country to live and work. But the UK (deliberately) opted out of the Dublin Accord as part of the brexit negotiations.
Britain left the Dublin Regulation on 31st January 2020. Less than 2000 people arrived in 2019 by small boat, all of whom could be returned to France, 8500 in 2020 most of whom could not be automatically returned to France, and nearly 30000 in 2021. Peak year was 2022 at around 45000 although 2025 is currently running higher.
For completeness, the Dublin III regulation doesn't actually allow returning all asylum seakers, however one reason they can be returned to another country is:
"There is evidence that you were in another Dublin country, even if your fingerprints were not taken"
and it's pretty hard to convince anyone that you've arrived by small boat to southern England and you weren't previously in France.
TFTFY.
The Internet was "messed up" before. Yeah, those cookie regulations are silly and obviously written by people overwhelmed with computers and digital networks, but fixing them would take 5 minutes and this bizarre cookie pop-up nonsense would vanish overnight.
Cross domain de-anonymizing tracking is prohibited.
There, fixed the law. No more pointless cookie bullshit.
As for the Internet: De-centralized crypto signed DNS as a replacement for the existing DNS. There, Internet fixed.
Earth is a beta site.
