johnzim

It's the latter that really bugs me.

I'm willing and even happy to pay taxes for commensurate benefits. I don't really feel like I get that in CA. It's like an extremely inefficient engine.

Ironically there is one way in which the tax benefits are ABSURDLY generous - unemployment. When I saw how much that returned I was staggered. Perhaps I'm in an income sweet spot, but when I calculated it, it was far more assistance than I would have expected from a non-French government.

I'm aware of course that state tax sits on top of Federal tax, but when you factor into the equation what responsibilities are Federal and not state, it looks astonishingly poorly distributed.

I'm not really sure how the high cost of living is anything other than a milestone around the area's neck. I've lived in v-high COL areas, but that has always gone hand in hand with extreme density, which could easily be viewed at as a simple tax for the provision of world-class services. Somehow I'm out here in suburbia paying Megacity rates.

The MEPs only get to vote on candidates selected by the council of ministers - there's a means to provide their own candidate if they don't ratify that decision but in reality, the commission is for politicians who missed out on elections in their member state.

Colpo d’aria on its own is the example I give to anyone who wants to know why Italians can be so stubborn.

People normally are astonished when I explain that that’s pretty much the only reason why air conditioners have historically been so thin on the ground in even the stifling heat of Roman summer.

There is one on the iPad my daughter was playing with it last week. Think it’s an up front purchase of ~$20

> But you're basically accusing programmers back in the late 70s of having insufficient foresight to see problems that would make their decisions seem bad almost half a decade later.

The URL standard was published in 1994.

Sure, in a vacuum you could read view my comment as meaning in all time, but given that the parent comment is discussing ICANN domains and my comment was relevant to that, I think it’s a little uncharitable to do so.

We just never should have allowed filename extensions to have semantic power. Resource forks are far more elegant and you could do simple look ahead checks to verify types etc.

They’re the publishers of those games not devs (though they’re great)

One thing I found fun was to start by blocking out one room, then another and another and basically switching between tools - the geometric shape too for a tower or two, and then start linking them up.

After a little bit of noodling you start to feel the outline of a building and then you can be a little more deliberative.

In my experience, the hard part about planning out a dungeon is filling it with encounters.

There's another creator (Donjon) which doesn't make maps as prettily or easily as this one but it does allow you to basically do what you're looking for:

https://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/

Thanks for providing that! I had no idea about the roots of that expression.

I've had a similar experience - only ever got to the point of turning down an onsite.

I'd add one other issue to Apple (which would otherwise be the most natural fit for me). Side Projects.

I love building and launching apps and side projects and at Apple, as I understand it, that's a no-no. That's why so many devs left to set up new projects.

Given that the BoJ literally can't seem to generate inflation no matter how hard it tries, this seems like a no-brainer. As close to helicopter money as they've yet come.

Yep, Germany's Healthcare system is a good model - Mandated Govt insurance with optional Private Insurance.

Uptake is about 75% on the private side, 25% stick with the Govt model.

You could drag Obamacare there with the right political will but breaking Company based healthcare apart is a tough political cookie.

That's almost for the best. The representation of non-European ethnic facial features / skin tones in renaissance art appeared to mostly be one of two groupings:

1) Accurate, naturalistic portrayals that almost certainly had an actual human sitting and;

2) Color choices / features that are to humans of other skin tones, what that picture of a cat in the still life painting is to our feline friends: https://twitter.com/chelsesaurusrex/status/99512793958585139...

There are some really interesting examples in this article (although explicitly African):

https://thewalters.org/wp-content/uploads/revealing-the-afri...

They normally justify it by requiring you to take out an additional premium for such coverage rather than just skip out on it by force majeure. At least that's the way it's done in other countries.

So annoyed I bought one of these based on testimonials from people I trust (podcasters with allergies). I haven’t seen a significant improvement over a regular HEPA filter.

At least it looks cool and has a HEPA filter at the base. It just doesn’t move that much air.

Nothing has ever beaten the Newton Messagepad for me for this (certainly the last models made, the 2100).

I really wish a modern Newton existed. Evernote started off quite Newton'y (Newton team members were on board) but I fell off quite early.

80% of the functionality isn't where the value resides. It's the 20% of really well-thought-out niche features that make it valuable.

Perhaps not 'unicorn' valuable anymore as it went through that phase of adding enterprise shovel features. These days all cloud enterprise software companies must badly incorporate the features of other products because most Enterprise software buying criteria are just boxes to be ticked.

Noted terribly executed ideas such as wildly successful Dual Screen portables and the dockable/portable current best selling console in the USA.

We can look today at Germany as a mature, stable partner in the world but at the time, the argument that there might just be 'something in the soil' of the primary belligerent of the last 2 world wars was not entirely insane. Gratifyingly the world saw that the nation's contrition was sincere and we enjoy the fruits of its labour today.

It's actually a really nice greyish-green colour. Not as drab as you'd think thanks to the way light diffuses through the glass

With the dark green case, it has a VERY strong Newton MessagePad vibe which I love (having been a very happy Newton user during its twilight years.)

In all my years I have never thought about calling the Control Strip that but all the vocabulary fits.

I do miss the control strip a little

I agree. Globish is already iterating on itself so fast I don't think it'll be beat.

The double standard for Marijuana makes zero sense to me, but I didn't see it for what it was until I listened to a track by the Streets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZrrQoME56U

Edit: Just realized the "lyrics" displayed on that video are a pretty poor translation. Try to ignore what's on the screen because whoever wrote them had trouble understanding the accent.

I used to use that about 5-6 years ago, you have to be very delicate with it because it can look extremely cheap, but if you make it too subtle it's impossible to see.

What's worse is that if there's enough of a bottom boundary to the last visible bit of content in the viewport, it doesn't look like there's anything below it at all, which puts you in the same position.

Jonny Ive took control of software design about 7-8 years ago which I think caused a fall in usability even as things got prettier.

Sometimes look back at MacOS 9, even with its numerous issues and marvel at how good a lot of the UI/UX was.

I have never understood the appeal of BitCoin as a means of purchasing or selling illegal materials. The entire transaction history is literally encoded in a public ledger!

All Law Enforcement has ever needed to do is trace back the transactions - something that's almost impossible with conventional currencies. Heck the equitable principle of 'Tracing' exists in Law because it's normally impossible to do that once monies have intermingled.

The sheer practicality of it is demonstrated in the fact that it's only worthwhile or practicable for Law Enforcement to investigate _large-scale_ money-laundering operations. Yet with Bitcoin you can essentially read back the exact history of every single satoshi.

True, but it hurts more when it's a company with such a great history and strong relationship with its customers.

I think people don't really care about what Nestlé or Monsanto do because they've never really cared about those companies, but people care about Blizzard.

1 Country 2 Systems has been shown to be a scam so things have changed. I can't speak for people of my generation but the kids are alright.

I read a very interesting account of how poorly Lee in particular and the Confederacy in general prosecuted the Civil War. They misunderstood their political goals absolutely and instead of simply fighting a war of defense - holding out long enough to appear a legitimate nation in their own right, (essentially running down the clock), they fought to take and hold territory that they didn't need. Tactical brilliance is nothing without sound strategy.

Montgomery vs Rommel is a good example of that too!

To be fair a huge percentage of the language is already French words. Brits just stubbornly refuse to pronounce them “correctly”.