Svip

    Communicator
    Communicate remotely between two arbitrary points.

It claims smartphones is that (though surely cellular phones would count then; why not list Motorola or whatnot?); but in Star Trek, the communicator works everywhere without cellular towers (well except when it doesn't for plot reasons). I wouldn't say a device like the communicator is available yet.

According to the same paragraph, it's because Signal isn't a "browser app":

> Given that Windows doesn’t let non-browser apps granularly disable Recall, Signal cleverly uses the DRM flag on their app to disable all screenshots.

(emphasis mine)

Apparently, Microsoft consider browsers special:

> While it’s heartening that Microsoft recognizes that Web browsers are especially privacy-sensitive applications, we hope they offer the same granular ability to turn off Recall to all privacy-minded application developers.

What's the usage of the word 'factoid' when its use is clearly to just say 'fact'; considering the word 'factoid' actually means something that looks like a fact, but is ­– in fact – false? The fact that it should mean 'false fact' but may be used as 'true fact', makes the opening of this piece rather confusing.

As noted, the politicians wanted to switch to the euro; but it's the voters who said no. Twice or thrice, depending on how you count. That isn't a case of "symbolic nationalistic policies", but rather a state apparatus trying to get around the rejection, whilst sticking to the text of the referenda (but perhaps not the spirit of it).

That's because the powers that be want the euro, but the people didn't. They were asked in 1992, 1993 and 2000; and effectively they said no to the euro every time (yes, I know; in 1993, the euro was specifically opted out, but the fact that it was approved when the year before a referendum with the euro was rejected suggests – at least partially – that it was a rejection of the euro (among other things)). Denmark thus came into the EU with 4 opt-outs (one of which has since been rescinded (defence) and one which turned out not to matter (union citizenship)), and they can only be removed with referendum (see for instance the euro one in 2000).

Prior to the adoption of the euro, the Danish crown was pegged to the D-mark (since about the mid-1980s), because Germany was the biggest export market for Denmark (still is), and thus having a currency that's stable towards what the Germans are using has been good for Danish exports (less sure how relevant that still is). (Sidebar; had the original motivation of Alternative für Deutschland been successful and abandoned the Euro for a return to the D-mark (neumark?), it would have put Denmark in an awkward position.)

Yes; it's obvious you include the full context:

> Did you know there's already a special developer's edition? No web designer is building on Firefox first any more. We're lucky if they even test on it. All the functionality attached to Firefox's "Browser tools" sub-menu should be unceremoniously ripped out, banished to the developer's edition.

Though, it would be more plain, if they wrote "could" instead of "should".

I am not asking the CEO to be familiar with the details of programming or with whatever other technical minutiae a company is forced to deal; they can – however – demand insurance that their systems are properly tested, even if they don't understand the details of those procedures.

CEOs are the public faces of companies; with which comes higher pay but more responsibility. Conversely, employees shouldn't be sacked for honest mistakes, since they are supposed to be faceless. If an employee makes a mistake at a company, and that company does not have procedures in place to protect against that mistake; then it's the company's problem, not the employee's. And when it's the company's problem, it becomes the CEO's.

The article mentions – but does not elaborate – that this is not the first time the company have been scrutinised publicly. The fact that it had to attend a meeting with the ministry on a Saturday suggests the severity it was considered by the government. So I am pretty confident, that it was the minister who decided – during that meeting – that she had to resign. Heads must roll, as they say.

Because CEOs should take responsibility for the public errors of companies? If they had had proper testing procedures in place, this mistake would have been caught long before it reached the public. Clearly they did not, and the buck stops at the CEO.

The answer to your question is "it depends". Some also do weighed calculations, where it's "per passenger", which means trains that have a high passenger load being late have a larger impact than one with few passengers. At least in Denmark, where I am most familiar (though I expect most of Europe to be similar), it's per stop.

As for the LIRR, it seems it's only the terminal station that counts:

> Thus, a train is considered late only if it arrives at its final destination six minutes or more after its scheduled arrival time.

You might want to look into what they define as being "late".

> A commuter train is considered on-time by the LIRR if it arrives within 5 minutes and 59 seconds of its scheduled arrival time.

The second source doesn't say, but let's assume it's the same as for LIRR, i.e. 6 minutes.

It's also unfortunate that the SBB doesn't immediately tell us the metric, but I happen to know it's 3 minutes (more specifically 2 minutes and 59 seconds).

In other words, the LIRR permits a delay of twice the time as SBB for it to constitute late. The S-trains in Copenhagen now has a punctuality of 97% using a 3 minute metric.[0]

[0] https://www.dsb.dk/om-dsb/virksomheden/rettidighed/s-togs-re...

I surely hope not. I'd rather have a city centre without cars than one filled with constantly self-driving cars. Pedestrians and animals are still "chaotic elements". At 105 km/h (still slow by European standards), what happens when a deer suddenly runs onto the motorway with a distance of ~30 cm between the vehicles? Talk about carnage.

I suppose the solution is to seal in all roads then with high walls; what dystopian future.

In truth, I was a bit surprised to see the piece written in English, because it feels like the audience should be German-speaking. Whilst there is an initial paragraph discussing the different situations within the Holy Roman Empire in the 1100s, the Holy Roman Empire itself is never explained, merely assumed (in fact, it is not even mentioned by name). Perhaps it comes natural to Germans themselves that their history of unity is far smaller than their history of division.

I assume you are referring to this sentence:

> I know German history and how divided the country used to be, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to see these differences.

The author is not talking about Germany post-WW2, but pre-1870, where Germany was divided into 39 independent states (if we include the Austrian Empire), at least in the 19th century. Before that, the number was likely higher.

German history is a lot longer than the past century.

Nothing's stopping you from defining beautiful ratios and express the result in metric units, like ISO 216.[0] It feels like an odd complaint about the utility of the metric system, as if it is the only system; ratios aren't even units themselves!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_216

Well if you like that, you'd love Danish numbers, where 99 is nine and half (before) five times twenty, or »nioghalvfemsindstyve« (or more commonly shorten to »nioghalvfems«).

Unfortunately, I cannot find an actual source for this ban. So many sites repeat the claim, but with no citation. So now I am not even sure it's true. I tried searching NHTSA's website, but it's kind of a mess. I do know, that Citroën pulled out in 1974 from the US. The CX, released the year after, was never sold in the US, and the last year of the SM, which was popular in the US, only saw sales in Europe.

Citroën? A French auto-maker lobbying the US government so they can stay on the US market? Besides Citroën was basically always about to go bankrupt before Peugeot bought them in 1976. Buying Maserati and building the SM had not turned into the success they had hoped for.

Citroën pulled out of the North American market in the 1970s, due to US regulations that required headlights maintained a consistent height. Since their suspensions allowed them to raise and lower their height, there was no way they could be compliant without massive changes to their system. Besides, the Citroën network was not big in the US anyway, and since the DS had few facelifts in its 20 years in production, it was falling out of favour with US consumers who didn't want to be seen driving yesteryear's car.

Their build quality is fine, at least contemporarily to the rest of the market; of course today, we would find its steel pitiful. It's not without reason that people who maintain Citroëns of that era tend to replace the panels with fibreglass ones.

Additionally, as Citroën pulled out, the maintenance network in North America began to falter, as the suspension system required significant know-how. There are still a dedicated group of Citroën fans in North America (albeit small), and I met a lot of them when I drove from coast to coast (and back again) back in 2017 in a 1998 Citroën Xantia. A car that may not seem particularly interesting to Europeans (although it was the Activa V6 model), but it was extremely rare in North America.

No, originally frameset[0] and frame[1] were the solution to this problem. I remember building a website in the late 1990s with frameset. iframe came later, and basically allowed you to do frames without the frameset. Anyway, frameset is also the reason every browser's user agent starts with "Mozilla".

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...

This is probably also an instance of a significant cultural difference. Continental Europe generally believes in rehabilitation, whereas the Anglosphere - and the US in particular - strike me more as having a vengeful justice system.

Public shaming of people at trial is incompatible with the belief in rehabilitation.

Hard disagree. It's well known that people who are falsely accused of such crimes end up having to live with the damage to their reputation even after a court finds them innocent, because that's not the news story people remember. In such societies, one's life is effectively ruined the moment one is accused.

Innocent until proven guilty, and the same goes for the court of public opinion.

I think most continental European countries do this. The publishing of names like this seem more like an Anglosphere thing. In Denmark, the press norm is usually first to publish names when they get a prison sentence of 2+ years.

I don't necessarily think this is a failure of theory in face of practice. Most party members are team members, and are willing to follow party leadership most of the time. Yes, I know the leadership has leverage that ordinary members do not, but I think most of the time, leadership need not exert that leverage. But the list of members who switch party in Denmark between elections suggest that the theory is very much practised, but it needn't be all the time.

> On the other hand, I suppose we do have primaries in the US. Sounds like that's not a thing in Scandinavia.

Whilst we do not have primary elections, you can vote for individual candidates on the ballots, moving them up on the party list. This strategy does actually work to get candidates further down on the list over other candidates that would have been selected first.

I cannot speak fully to the Swedish situation, but in Denmark, MPs are independent as defined in the constitution. Yes, elections are largely party-based, but once elected, MPs are allowed to vote as they want. Of course, if they chose to defy the party line, they risk "losing the whip" as they'd say in the UK, which basically amounts to being expelled from the party.

That being said, it does not take a lot of signatures to get on a ballot as a candidate outside the parties in Denmark (a few hundreds, I believe), though only two candidates have successfully managed to get elected that way. Conversely, Denmark has a high threshold for political parties (requiring signatures amounting to 1% of the vote of the last election, so usually around 21k), but the threshold to get into parliament is only 2% (which I believe is one of the lowest amongst countries that uses similar proportional representative systems).

Returning to the towing the line (or rather lack thereof), the Danish parliament have a lot of independent MPs in parliament, because a lot find reason to quit their party after getting elected. Wikipedia has a fine table of MPs who has changed colours since the last election in November 2022:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Folketi...

Peugeot.com's 404 page includes - naturally - a picture of Peugeot 404. Unfortunately, there aren't enough Peugeot models for all HTTP status codes.

Even 20 years ago, Microsoft knew they had problem with its naming and marketing[0], but I guess it didn't matter.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k

I recall in the late 00s, how configuring Linux to run properly on a laptop was a fraught experience. And I won't deny there was a particularly broken installation that made me revert to Windows. But that amount of time spent configuring and fiddling with tutorials found random places online weren't caused by a malicious developer, so I was more than willing to put in the effort.

> Without having deeply researched the piece, I wonder if 639 years was chosen with any relation to Tesla's 3–6–9 idea.

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2728595.stm

> They settled on 639 years because the Halberstadt organ was 639 years old in the year 2000.