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I definitely think the content is dumbed down compared to my issues from ten years ago. Regarding the political stuff, I'd say there's a notable lean in the writing but imo that isn't the worst offender in it's decline.

The kids content they put out is great, we don't get the magazine (probably should) but have 3 or 4 of the big encyclopedia's and they're fantastic.

Can they just start by getting it to hold the setting for a default microphone/audio output?

The infosys part is pretty infuriating. He pushed through off payroll working reforms to make business a bit more nervous about using contractors then handed some more massive uk public sector contracts to infosys. Massively corrupt.

Seems sensible, especially if the upgrades to the cars are already illegal! From my time in the city (Edinburgh so not exactly NYC) the biggest improvement would've been better sound insulation between walls, you really could hear everything from neighbours even when I was in old tenement buildings, though they were better than the newer builds which had paper thin walls. Seems like the better plasterboard (dry wall I think its called in America) is only marginally more expensive than the rubbish that gets used but that margin isn't worth it to the flat builders/repairers!

We're living through a strange time but please do not be defeatist and try not to let alarmist (it's trying to push certain actors into action quite rightly) make you feel that like that should ever be appealing.

Totally get your point here, however the counter that always gets me is the rate of quantitative easing in the US/UK. Not sure on accuracy of this but I've seen figures(cityam website) saying around 18% of all US dollars were created in 2020. There's a good argument that it's safer financially to put money into crypto. Personally I feel quite unsettled with both traditional finance and crypto at the moment.

The night garden is definitely trippy. For the occasions that I lose the battle and let my son have some tv before bed, cbeebies actually goes a great wind down job with the night garden.

Fairly standard for the type of quote the bbc likes from academics unfortunately.

Don't experience the lag but my fans and energy usage goes haywire on my top of the line 2018 15" pro.

Meh pay doesn't bother me - that's an internal problem for them. What does bother me is firefox on a mac (2018 15inch pro), it just trashes the battery life. Too many tabs open and the fans go haywire, energy usage spikes etc. My mac is at 140 cycles with approx 72% of the design capacity of the battery left, I'm convinced this is because of firefox's bad performance. Might not be but it's the biggest suspect.

I've been using firefox since the really early days and I eventually gave up on mac and started using Brave. Still use it on windows work machines or occasionally on ubuntu where it doesn't have these problems.

Very true! A real difficult task for startups when they try to hire too quickly.

That's fascinating. I can see both the positives of it and the downsides. I recently (around two years ago) worked for a startup which grew too quickly and made some really bad hiring decisions which left them with a lot of loud, disgruntled employees - these works council right's would've crippled the company instead of just setting it back a few years.

On the other side I've worked for a larger financial services company more than a few years ago which would've really benefited from this sort of setup as the management was pretty callous in regards to when it got rid of employees or changed incentives at last second or diluted them severely.

That must be wrong, I have the petrol equiavalent, a 320i and it cost me £32K brand new in the UK.

It sure does, Edinburgh also no plans to make life easier and sustainable for families who actually live here. Train services are unreliable, ever increasing property prices in the city itself and even the satelite towns are getting more expensive. Commuting into Edinburgh is a nightmare and likely to get worse.

People bond/interact over shared experiences. You mention kids, I used to become extremely bored over listening to other peoples stories about their kids. Now that I'm a father myself I don't listen to the story about their kid with any more interest but I understand that they just want to talk about the trial's they may be going through at any particular point.

On passive consumerism, unexamined life... I'd suggest trying to understand who it is you're talking to. Sometimes that will be a fair judgement, othertimes you'll find that people are trying their best to earn for their families, look after others and simply want some luxury to unwind before getting back to whatever takes most of their waking hours. However without knowing who you're talking to thats all speculation.

On a practical level, I would suggest you should surround yourself with like minded people. Either work in academia or aim for companies with a higher bar to enter, that should help.