spongebue

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

If everything is running on renewables, cool. Until then, there's still the opportunity cost.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

And here we are, not on TikTok or Instagram, and still seeing it

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Yeah, that Franch dipping sauce in Breaking Bad was crazy!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

I'm not an avid reader, but I'm a huge fan of a book called Over the Edge of the World by Lawrence Bergreen. That detailed Magellan's voyage around the world. A few takeaways:

  • Spices really were the thing everyone in Europe wanted. If a sailor managed to smuggle a backpack full of cloves, it would be enough to buy a modest house. Only one of 5 ships made it back, but it was filled with top quality cloves and that was enough that the trip was STILL a financial gain.

  • Nobody really knew where the spices came from. India was a nebulous semi-mythical place, and some believed there were a few "India"s

  • Magellan, while Portuguese by birth, basically moved to Spain when Portugal wouldn't pay for him to try to find the spice Islands

  • The treaty of Tordesillas roughly divided the new world between Spain and Portugal. The land east of whatever meridian was Portugal's, and west was Spain's. But there were still issues, like longitude not really being measurable at the time and no clear idea who had claim 180° past that meridian. But it would have been to Spain's benefit to find the spice islands past that meridian

Bonus fact: the first human to sail around the world was Magellan's slave, Enrique (last name escapes me). He was brought from Indonesia(?) to Europe, then set sail on this round-the world journey, eventually going near his native homeland. Magellan had it in his will that Enrique be freed upon his death, but when he was killed on that voyage (basically by his own who) nobody was aware of that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not really. There were plenty of random pages, but you really had to seek it out to see it. Now an overwhelming majority of non-ad posts are stuff like this (and I wouldn't be surprised if they pay to have this stuff seen, basically making it an ad)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

I'm not sure that's necessarily true. There are plenty of military contractors out there, and a driver is the kind of position you would expect to be likely contracted out. That in no way makes one a soldier.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I love how new Teams doesn't even have a contacts list for chat anymore, it's just your most recent chats. And if you search for someone, any recent group chats with that person show up first so you may still have to scroll to find that person's chat. Oh, and we store documents on Teams so if I want to switch between looking through the document repository and chat I still have to do a whole bunch of clicks between the two.

I don't fault them for when my project manager tags @everyone on the group chat with an important message saying "good morning and happy Monday" though. I wish I were kidding.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Depending on what exactly they're doing, that could be practicing without a license

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) won the general in a write-in campaign after an unexpected primary loss. But I guess I'm not sure if they have an open primary in Alaska, nor if that would really be the critical qualifier.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Hard bread with hard ingredients (like meat chunks or salami), soft bread with soft ingredients (like egg salad). I'd call a burger medium soft, and ciabatta is too hard for that

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

The Bolt is ok. It has a screen and Android Auto and stuff, but I only use it for Android Auto navigation and energy stats when I'm curious. For pretty much everything else, there are good ol' fashioned buttons.

Oh, it does have OnStar and some stuff associated with that, but GM discontinued the worst of it after a class action lawsuit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Part of the problem comes when companies go out of their way to provide a service on their end that could be covered reasonably easily on the consumer's side of things. Why put a few cents worth of storage in a device and make it locally accessible when you can make it cloud-connected and hosted to turn it into a revenue stream?

Another example, GM has had OnStar for ages. It does the same things your cell phone does, so it's hard to justify the subscription. Plus Android Auto/Car Play works really well and relies on something you update more often. So naturally, GM revamped their infotainment to do the things you'd have your phone do and got rid of Android Auto/Car Play.

 

My, how the tables have returned!

view more: next ›