There’s loads of people who prefer iPhone and would sideload if allowed but it’s not a deal-breaker. I prefer iOS and Apple hardware but refuse to buy one without sideloading.

My S24 Ultra is arriving tomorrow, but I’ll likely be buying the iPhone 16 if it comes with sideloading.

So Apple is gaining a customer, I’ve been eyeing the MacBooks too ever since the M1 came out so might end up pulling the trigger on one of those as well.

It’s definitely an acquired taste, I assume that if you get hooked on it, you start to associate the taste with getting stimulated which makes it seem pleasant.

Having said that, I don’t drink coffee (tastes awful unless it’s drowned in milk and sugar at which point what’s the point), but the smell is heavenly, and I like coffee flavour in cakes/desserts.

And I say this having tasted some of the best espresso known to man - my closest friend is obsessed and has equipment worth thousands, and we’ve sampled great coffee places including in Italy.

He sounds similar to those insufferable effective altruists. Most of these people have a genuine skill in something narrow, and the willingness to walk all over everyone in pursuit of the ‘highest score’ achievement on their ‘net worth’.

Yet they’ve convinced themselves that only they can save the world, so they have to make as much money as possible by any means necessary in order to fund misguided charities. They’ll burn down the planet and anyone necessary to make money so they can save it.

Sir Chris is still in control of his charity, so really all that money he gave them is still in pursuit of his own goals, the charity is only spending money it makes through its investments. So whilst it sounds so generous to donate billions to charity and I’m sure it brought him great publicity, it’s little more than a tax-efficient way to attempt to bring about societal changes that society didn’t ask for.

I’m sure it was also nice that whilst he ‘donated’ billions to the charity, when it came to his divorce settlement, that was taken out of his ‘personal fortune’ which amounted to less than a billion.

So don’t give him that much credit.

So then… continue using exclusively Apple’s store then?

If you consider Apple to be the gold standard for security, you have just keep going as you are.

I don’t see how giving other people the freedom to choose infringes on your security.

Remember these are people who know what it’s like to go through apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

South Africa today is largely governed by the people who fought and won against apartheid, so it’s understandable that they feel a level of solidarity with the people of Palestine.

(in this context I’m choosing to gloss over the real and present issues with the ANC, because they are not relevant to Israel’s genocide)

Probably to continue getting ‘Gulf Region’-rich off the back of the oil it found in an area that is internationally recognised as their territory.

Even Venezuela recognised it as part of Guyana’s EEZ until very recently.

After Maduro mismanaged one of the most resource rich countries into basically a failed state, he’s now trying to cling to power the tried and true way: stoking a pointless war with its neighbour.

Best case he’s trying to rally support for a 2025 election, or use the threat of as an excuse to say the election. Worst case he’s gonna do a Putin and actually start a war. Not a bad time for it either, whilst the world is already distracted with Ukraine and and Gaza.

Here’s a decent video summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ7fTSirNDs

It would make sense for SpaceX to offer lower prices for Africa for example.

They already cover the area, and it will be close to free to provide Internet there - they don’t need any extra fuel for station-keeping, power comes from the sun anyway, they’re not using bandwidth they could otherwise sell to richer customers. Maybe ground station use will cost a bit.

If it’s even mildly affordable, communities will come together to buy a terminal they can share. If you don’t have terrestrial connections, Starlink will be far more economical than conventional satellite Internet.

Plus they can sell internet to companies doing mineral exploration. That should bring boatloads of money.

I’m already seeing people whose jobs takes them out and about a lot starting to use Starlink as an integral part of their job.

Man my heart breaks for Leclerc, he’s really giving it his absolute maximum.

Ferrari strategy again acting like their car is the RB19 and is unbeatable, absolutely no risk, no imagination, just make up a plan before the race and execute it irrespective of what’s happening around them.

This horse has been beaten into oblivion already, but I can’t believe that as dominant as they are, RBR continues to take risks. Maybe the car papers over some of the calls that might have gotten others in trouble, but they’re nimble and you can see them really working.

The strategy call from Leclerc was just outrageous to have a chance of working. The fact that he had to think of it himself and he got so little support from the team is painful. Really what did they have to lose, you have to take chances if you’re behind.

It just makes sense, they’ve got their cars tuned in by now, Abu Dhabi is a circuit they know well so they’re not likely to mess up the setup (or conversely find some amazing leaps through setup).

They now likely have a huge selection of used parts they can put on the car so they don’t risk wear/damage on the parts they might need at a later date.

So if you’re not expecting to be fighting for championship positions in the final race it’s a no-brainer.

The others did it in Mexico which is the 2nd best option, if you don’t want to use up all of FP1 in the final race for the young drivers.

I think that the hope is they’ll be able to increase the launch cadence once they’re managing to take off without doing significant damage to their pad and surroundings.

And once it’s proven enough to take off from Florida or Vandenbudg they’ll be able to launch more freely. At the moment they’re moving too fast to risk the other launch infrastructure present there.

This is a really hot take, but I reckon if it manages to make if to stage separation in one piece, and the hot staging works, the ship should fly trouble-free.

It’s the one part of the system that they have done significant testing on, not that many engines etc. If they once again don’t make it past staging that would be very concerning for the Starship timeline, Artemis, and so on…

It’ll be so cool to see the booster soft splash.

Biggest hope is that they manage to get away without sandblasting Boca Chica so the FAA don’t ground them for 6 months again.

Damn, that’s pretty drastic! I had no idea that they’re reworking the sizes to such an extent.

Especially if they’re gonna keep shoving street circuits down our throats, they might as well make the cars more suitable.

You wouldn’t race fullsize SUVs down the streets of Monaco, yet somehow you’re expected to in modern F1 cars which are comparable in length and width.

MotoGP already has this tech in place and has for a while, works pretty well.

And the long lap penalty is pretty genius. You get a penalty, you have to serve it pretty soon, not get added after the race like F1, at which point you’ve had the chance to build a buffer because the cars can’t follow that closely.

I mean… sounds like they’ve done all they can to avoid making it an issue. It’s happening well after the minute of silence (only starts at 12:45), nowhere near the Cenotaph (the main focus is the US embassy which is 2 miles from it, and the route doesn’t go via the Cenotaph either). And the main Remembrance events are happening on Sunday anyway.

Unfortunately nothing ever happens unless you inconvenience people. It’s the reason why Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil are so effective, whether you agree with their goals or not.

As much as it’s nice to be considerate, I doubt that it’s too high at the top of their minds given that a people are currently being eased off the map.

And all this without even taking into account Britain’s current and historical role in creating and perpetuating this conflict.

The chances of this happening are a rounding error. Red Bull need a #2 who is fast enough to pick up wins when Max can’t and take points off his rivals.

They need a Bottas, not an Alonso.

As an armchair team principal, I’d take even Bottas over Alonso. And Ricciardo over either.

Unless Alonso commits to the mother of all 2nd driver contact with an iron-clad non-disparagement clause.

So won’t happen.

As a fan though, I’ll pray to whatever deity to let it happen, what delicious drama we’d have on our hands.

I don’t know, your #2 reason doesn’t seem to stand up to reality.

I don’t know where you are, but where I am (UK) you can go on any high street (in most towns there will be an area where most shops are, think strip mall in the US) and you will find at least a couple shops that fix and sell electronics - primarily smartphones, but also vacuum cleaners, TVs, computers, games consoles.

Pretty much all of them are locally-run and are, I assume, profitable in spite of every electronics manufacturer trying to run them out of business.

I say I assume because they wouldn’t be everywhere if they weren’t.

I’ve had phones fixed by them, they offer warranties, reasonable prices, only had an issue once and it was put right after a tiny bit of back and forth.

I think by “we can’t afford it” you mean “capitalism hasn’t yet found a way to centralise the profits and run the small business owners out of business”.

2&3 completely agree

On 1 though, I agree IF every other game embraced the modding community as much as Bathesda games do. GTA is the only other game I heavily mod, and in comparison it’s such a pain in the ass, the game engine is not designed to support it so you get weird bugs, just overall a worst experience.

So I think it’s fair to rate the base game highly for its support of mods. They’ve decided that providing a great experience for mods is a high priority for them. Maybe they can make the base game better if they don’t have to make it compatible with whatever modders want to throw at it.

My main concern with this is that what you’re doing is desensitising people from the speed limit.

I’m from a country that has arbitrarily defined speed limits and VERY low compliance rates compared to the UK (if you’ve ever been to Italy for example you know what I’m talking about). The nice thing here is that because the vast majority of roads have a speed limit that ‘feels’ appropriate (ie the road is designed for its speed limit), the amount of speeding I see here is negligible compared to what I was used to.

And generally here when the limit changes people comply to it because you can trust there’s usually a good reason.

There’s roads near me that are arbitrarily set to 30 (no pedestrian walkways, no side roads, but it passes near the back of houses and I assume they successfully petitioned the local authority to change it to 30), and traffic flow there is usually 40-45. I’ve never seen an accident there.

We have a poorly designed intersection not too far away and there’s always accidents there to the point that there’s now a consultation to fix it.

If this rule came to England, both these roads would be turned to 20, and that won’t really be solving anything. In the first example I assume locals will still be driving 40, and it will create unnecessary overtaking because the road is wide and the visibility is good so it’s not necessarily unsafe. But you’ve gone from a safe 40 road to risking head-on collisions pointlessly.

Oh you mean debatable because it’s one of the cleanest, cheapest, and safest sources of electricity we have?

Which allows France a degree of energy independence which has helped it not suffer the same amount of pain other countries have now that they’re having to kick the cheap Russian gas addiction?

And through huge cross-border interconnects it allows France to sell electricity to neighbouring countries at a huge profit?

Nuclear is not always the answer, but as France has shown, as long as you invest in reliable infrastructure and don’t put it in earthquake/tsunami-prone areas, it can be a huge positive for your country.

And you don’t have to rely on antagonistic petrostates for to power your homes with gas, or on strip-mining huge swathes of land by equally-antagonistic China for rare-earth metals for your wind turbines/solar panels/battery storage.

I assume that you’re talking about the Dacia Spring which got 1 star (though the Renault Zoe got 0 stars recently and a few others did too in the past).

So whilst you’re not wrong that these cars currently hold the lowest ratings of cars tested with the new post-2020 procedure, I’m sure a lot of older cars would fare far worse.

And it’s fundamentally flawed to subject a tiny 970kg EV city car to the same tests as a 2-3 ton towering SUV. Besides the vastly different use cases, bigger and heavier vehicles will have an inherent advantage in most of the tests - hint none of them are adjusted for the weight of the vehicle.

I’m not saying this is somehow wrong, they’re simulating crashing into an average car or a stationary immovable object, just we’re automatically discounting small vehicles which have a genuinely valid reason to exist.

The new NCAP ratings only makes sense if we’re saying affordable, small, light cars don’t need to exist. Like everything automotive nowadays, it’s designed to gently nudge us towards big lumbering swollen hatchbacks as the holy grail of the car industry.