saiya-jin

There is no way to know this, universe can be chock full of trees of some form on certain type and position of the planet. Later than first stars for sure, but thats about it with our current knowledge

You mean enforced solidarity without any chance to vote out of it, not very democratic if you ask me. More like gentle modern terrorism, we strike you where it annoys you the most to manipulate you to change your opinions en masse as we need.

Not actually what the word solidarity originally means.

Also, more broadly to the topic a lot of french strikes by state sector were purely money driven, asking each year for substantial raises on top of already-agreed rises even when economy wasn't performing well, asking for 12+ salaries when leaving, of course 10+ weeks of paid vacations, ridiculously high pensions at early age and similar stuff. I don't mean folks like police or firefighters but lifelong paper pushers. That wouldn't fare well in US, would it. As I said, on the ground in France most folks don't approve most of the strikes, but they don't have any choice or effective voice unlike very vocal minority who often has strikes as a (part time) job.

One example I saw unfolding closely even if not living there - during 'gillet jaune' there was a long period in neighboring region where cars would get sometimes attacked by throwing rocks on random roundabouts and places if not showing yellow vest for support behind windscreen or elsewhere visible. This included foreign cars in France. Instead of maybe half of cars driving around with it initially, eventually everybody got scared into driving/parking with it 100% of the time. This lasted few months. This was most publicly supported strike I recall from past few years. Like most of them it eventually leads to another round of bitter political arguments since these are always also political moves.

No, you should be smart. Instead of taking whole country and its population (and everybody else anyhow connected to it) hostage, strike politicians you want to affect where its most inconvenient and 'hurtful' for them, strike the state that you want the change from.

Don't go through making life miserable all the time for 65 millions of folks who didn't cause your woes in any way. I understand its far easier and 'cheaper' to target literally everybody out there, but that's lazy and makes tons of enemies of causes that you should be gathering support for.

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Solidarity? You must live far from actual France and have some romantic young rosy view on events far away. Almost everybody who isn't protesting is pissed off at folks protesting, since they block you from doing basic things in life like going to work, shopping groceries, driving anywhere or flying, taking train, going to gas station, going to hospital (I kid you not, you can be unlucky and literally die to negligence when health care sector goes on strike and nobody would bat an eye too much, and french public health care sector is not in good state currently). Cca half of my colleagues commute daily to work from France, so I have some group of quite opinionated citizens that express their honest opinions loudly outside of French borders.

There are often good causes behind strikes. What they actually do though every single time, is take rest of civilian population as hostages, make their life as miserable as possible for as long as possible, to create pressure on politicians.

See a little flaw in the logic above? You consistently end up in the crowd of hostages that take various pressures from side to side, often in matters unrelated to yours (say massive subsidies to diary farmers should be even more massive, nobody got time to improve efficiency or processes so market gets distorted more and more and local farmers are brutally incompetitive on their own), and you and your family suffers.

US population would not handle such massive things nicely I believe, not with so many guns and gun/freedom culture in general population.

Capacities of your specific chinese broken thermometer doesn't tell much about how scientists measured temperatures decades ago, does it.

And 2F spread ain't right, doctors use rather precise instruments that need some experience to be used correctly though, we have one at home too for kids since wife is a doctor (not a pediatrician but its manageable).

Yeah this is typical junior code ninja opinion. Folks with 20+ years under our belts know damn too well how humane aspect is more important than literally anything in long term.

My wife for example is a doctor. They have cabinets of 4 GP, 1 of them as we found out is a proper sociopath with very unstable personality when things are not perfect. He is driving whole cabinet which employs 10 people to the ground very effectively, wife is running away and hoping it will collapse only after she got out legally. If it wasn't for psycho moves of this guy that cabinet would thrive. While he is consistently being reported as a great doctor by his patients. She is moving into another cabinet where head of it understood it extremely well, and is super picky about people from personality perspective.

People here on HN love stories about experts saving the world, they as experts see themselves in that position. In real life, thats hardly ever the case, most long term problems come from people and not how you solve technical challenges. Once you covered this by far the most important aspect, then of course professional excellence is next step. Never make the mistake of changing the order of those 2, ever.

I don't agree, its like saying Victorinox/Wenger ran out of business because everybody eventually got that small pocket knife of theirs and due to its quality nobody is replacing those.

Yet reality is more like - completely new markets are opening, new rich people look for quality good brands, or father happy with his knife for 20 years will buy another one for his son. Or Miele, brand completely built on just its perceived reliability. They cost 2-3x more compared to even Bosch/Siemens, without any unique features apart from this.

The problem is, as almost everywhere in corporations - C-suite bonus incentives. Quick milking without care about long term strategies or brand name is the name of the game.

You pay premium for Apple because of advertised privacy. Yet every market analyst is well aware how they are expanding their ad business with very bold plans for the future. There is only 1 direction they can go - invasion of privacy.

They are not even trying hard to make it look like they are above ads revenue streams. Which is fine, as you mention everybody else is doing it in some way, but lets be honest here.

The last thing anybody concerned about their looks wants is to have strong side light shining up close on all the imperfections, scars, bumps and overall messy skin that looked so nice and smooth before.

Guys really don't want to see woman's pores and pimples 3D facial structure. Or anybody's else for that matter.

It doesn't have to be prohibition which over time would harm HN badly, just slower and delayed approach of earning good access. Or show age and karma of users commenting next to their nick, some scam patterns will become obvious.

Yeah but people literally have to use phones for basic functioning at work and private life, that was true 20 years ago already. Uncomfortable ski googles with many cons and little content costing up to 4k?

We all know there is going to be next gen which will be marginally better and marginally pricier. It will still not be enough to 'be there'. At that point the market for wanna-shop-this will be fully saturated. Good luck with that.

The only way to solve all this mess would be to have killer apps. So far what we have seen that even 3 trillion company can't put together much in this space quickly enough, so I am not holding my breath. And literally same problems are with other headsets released even 5 years ago - there is simply not good-enough and enough of content to make people buy it and keep using it. Apple must have seen this from 10 miles too and pushed hard, but reviews politely say all the same thing. Almost all folks here with earlier VR headsets write how after initial wow faded it collects dust in cellar now.

Me, I prefer watching movies from 4m on huge screen, the social aspect with family and simple freedom of movement in more cinema experience is great. For gaming these days PC monitors offer much better visual experience than even these VR goggles, over 40" high refresh say oled with good ie Sennheiser headphones and you are as deep as you want to be, and for many games (that I like to play if I have some time), mouse is simply a superior controller to anything else.

Never grokked real market for it - all the toyota hilux owners? These type of cars are basically not used in Europe, you can sometimes see it on farms but almost never on the roads and general population simply doesn't buy them, they are not the best choice since they drive poorly and have high running costs, and also way too big for our roads and parkings.

Also, legendary hilux has solid reliability in brutal conditions (thats why every isis in desert has them, ideally with some gun or rockets mounted in the back). No way some early 1st generation of much more expensive electric car will match that. You want to have that safety of lugging around additional fuel tank or two in jerrycans and refuel in a minute, instead of doing additional mental gymnastic re chargers.

So a bad civilian car, and farmers are very price sensitive so not a great choice for them (now).

Its not like it was a great mystery 20 or even 30 years ago that too much sitting on one's ass in front of computer or generally being physically very passive is a disaster for your health, whole routines were suggested not only to avoid carpal tunnel and in some nations whole offices did morning exercises.

Seriously, in 2024 there is no excuse... but folks without any discipline/resolve like to take weak shortcuts in their lives and then complain when unavoidable results eventually come in.

Ah yes the digital-only menu, one of more idiotic cargo-culting moves (although not sure who they are actually following here, maybe just general zeitgeist). I try to politely suggest that this is their weak spot when paying and tip accordingly.