I think the article only mentions the prices in the Google store, which are way more expensive than other shops. The Pixel 8 128GB is currently available at 550€.

So the Pixel 8a at 570€ would be the more expensive model.

I read that paragraph on Wikipedia but fail to see your statements. Italy, Denmark, France aren’t even mentioned there.

In detail it’s described that Poland stopped paying Russia, so Russia stopped pumping gas via the Yamal pipeline to Poland. That is not ‘cutting-off’. Also Poland kept receiving natural gas from Russia via Nord Stream, via Germany and over to Poland during summer 2022. Yamal was running in reverse and supplying Poland, so that they even hit over 100% storage at that time. For Finland it’s similar - they stopped paying, so Russia stopped delivering.

Even today Russia supplies EU countries with natural gas, which is also part of the storage and supply calculation within the EU. What if Russia stops delivering tomorrow? How can these countries be supplied in such a scenario? Russia still has some leverage over a few countries, e.g. Austria via long-term contracts, where Austria stated not honouring the contracts from their side, would be more expensive that taking the natural gas.

I must admit I stopped reading after the first paragraph but it’s just so exaggerated or simply false, that I don’t see the value in spending more time on such an article.

Shell, Europe’s largest energy company, forecast on Wednesday that global demand for liquefied natural gas, which has been a lifeline for Europe after Russia cut off pipeline gas supplies, will surge by around 50 percent over the next 15 years.

• LNG is not a lifeline. A pipeline could be labelled like that, but LNG is a globally traded good supplied by dozens of countries.
• Russia did not cut off natural gas supplies, they even supply now throughout their illegal war, towards countries that support Ukraine.
• 50% increase over 15 years is not a ‘surge’, but more a slow and steady increase.

It’s renewed for a 2nd season:

“Blue Eye Samurai Has a “Lot More Blood to Spill” in Season 2”

https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/blue-eye-samurai-season-2

Link including trailer.

It’s just a setting like so many other things. You can put in individual IPs you trust or IP ranges.

It seems Plex has figured out lots of Plex ‘server admins’ are just normal Windows users and click OK on everything w/o reading any change logs or checking any settings. So it’s easier and saver to enable a lot of things right away. Admins can just go into settings and adjust it.

As you didn’t read the article:

“This move seems driven by the government’s interest in collecting and centralizing biometric data for identification, tracking, and surveillance purposes,” he said. Omar agreed: “Probably to keep track of the refugees.”

They hand out SIM cards to track those SIM cards. Using a certain messaging app on the phone or not doesn’t change SIM card tracking within the network.

In a selected port, with a crane. That’s basically the tl;dr from the video Kalash posted at 4:23 time index.

But the Houthis didn’t fire at warships. I know some outlets had similar sounding titles but they were clickbait and their own articles were contradicting their title. The Houthis were firing towards merchant vessels and within 20 km or so, there was also a warship, which then reacted.

Especially living in a city, this looks interesting to me. ‘Fast’ charging I’ve seen was in the range 30-60 min but then it’s like the phone, from about 20% up to 80%. So living in a city, I’d have to wait for half an hour for half the battery.

With a swap-station, it could be nearly as fast as a fossil fuel stop. About 2 minutes for a 0% to 100% stop.

This also allows for smaller batteries, for smaller cars, for lighter cars. You don’t need to carry a lot of overall range if you can swap/refill to 100% in 2 minutes.

The European spendings and commitments for Ukraine are higher than US. As it should be.

Here is the tracker: https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/

To me this is such a minor thing, that the whole topic, currently widely discussed in media, looks like a distraction from the overall shit show COP28 was.

COP28, with the before leaked documents, that it will be used as platform for the UAE to negotiate new fossil fuel deals behind closed doors. And Sultan Al Jaber saying there is no scientific basis for phasing out fossil fuels to keep global warming under a critical threshold.

To ‘phase down’ and ‘phase out’ is the same thing, just with two different time points selected. The event is a fossil fuel reduction and once you phase down long enough, you reach the phase out. It’s like a kindergarten group debating a common statement, if later in life they will be teenager or adults. Both is true, one just sooner, the other later. Arguing about the wording detail in a non-binding statement is so silly to me, but there is a whole wave of media publication about it.

The more important CO28 topics from two days ago are gone though.

There is no context and nothing specific, as the headline makes it seem. He is just putting out phrases in an interview:

“Wars develop in phases,” Stoltenberg said […]

“We have to support Ukraine in both good and bad times,” he said.

"We should also be prepared for bad news,” Stoltenberg added […]

[…] Stoltenberg said. “The more we support the Ukraine, the faster the war will end."

There was an article on Washington Post last week explaining COP28 and details around it. Also the reason for the location:

Why is an oil kingdom hosting COP28?

The United Nations rotates the location of COPs each year through five regions: Africa, Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western Europe. This year, it was the Asia-Pacific group’s turn to host, and the United Arab Emirates made an unopposed bid in May 2021.

Source (Published November 27, 2023): https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/11/27/cop28-climate-summit-dubai/

This reads like an onion article. How did they not have to detect and fix their self-inflicted methane leaks so far?

[…]for the first time, require oil and gas producers to detect and fix leaks of methane.

It was the most ambitious move to reduce fossil fuel emissions that President Biden’s administration was expected to unveil at the summit,[…]

This is the most ambitious move? While extracting natural gas, they create methane leaks. So far they were ignored? And now someone had the ambitious idea to no longer ignore them? How is this reality and not satire?

Signal’s operating costs: around $40 million this year

• $14 million a year in infrastructure costs
• $6 million annually, goes to telecom firms to pay for the SMS text messages Signal uses to send registration codes to verify new Signal accounts’ phone numbers
• $19 million a year or so out of Signal’s budget pays for its staff. Signal now employs about 50 people

Staff budget seem crazy high with about 50 people. That’s an average of $31.666 per month per employee.

As the prices are mentioned in US-Dollar, this offer is likely only available in the USA. E.g. I’m currently getting a Black Friday offer for the full price of 1.099€ for the Pixel 8 Pro but a 100€ store voucher is included.

In a way kinda. It’s problematic though that China is using Uyghur forced labour to produce cheap solar panels.

This of course allows them to undercut any other manufacturer, driving them out of the market. So the delivery chain is getting kinda small and the products have forced labour attached to them.

“China uses Uyghur forced labour to make solar panels, says report” Published 14 May 2021 (Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57124636)

As per this article:

Cargo shipping is responsible for nearly 3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions

With the amount of cargo moved per ship, sending a product around the globe generates only a fraction of the CO2 in the product lifecycle compared to final truck transport inland. Which again is less than the final car transport to pick up the product at a store and bring it home.

So even producing locally, would still have the same major CO2 factors: Inland truck and car.

Global shipping isn’t too bad and the companies want to make their ships more efficient anyway. Fuel is a major cost factor for shipping lines, so to please investors and fill their own pockets, reducing fuel and thereby CO2 is already a necessity. Ships get more advanced hulls, larger cargo holds, more efficient engines with each new generation. It’s on a good path on its own.

On a side note, I’m not a fan of calling technology or energy ‘clean’ or ‘green’. We’ve already seen discussions about clean goal or here we have green methanol. There is just no definition or norm to it, besides being a colour of certain wavelength. No energy form at all is green or clean, but they can be low-CO2 or renewable.

The article is quite harmless compared to the silly title.

But the main argument is that Android has too many settings and options where users don’t even know what they are good for. And with further development it’s getting more features and more options.

That seems to be a very minor and rather luxury problem to have more and more features and options.

On the PC, there are lots of programs that already use a short list of options available and then a checkbox with ‘I’m an expert’ or ‘Advanced settings’ to show them all. More settings means more freedom for the user to chose from. Hiding them would be a simple task. But just because they exist and are shown, this doesn’t mean that anyone has to click on anything without even knowing what it does. So it’s not really a problem besides reading 3 more words in the list of settings but not doing anything with it.

For options I don’t know, I just use a web search in case I’m interested. Or I just ignore them as long as I don’t have a problem related to the topic.

In the 1st step, maybe a year ago or so, they updated the Kasa app (v 3?) to only function with account and while being logged in at TP-Link servers to use your devices. And in now the 2nd step, they integrate Kasa into Tapo, which was always account-bound. The 3rd step is then probably the discontinuation of the Kasa app.

Kasa was their more premium product line, that was usable without internet connection and without manufacturer account - which is why I paid more to get those instead of the cheap Tapo products. But now my ‘smart’ power outlets are in a box in the basement collecting dust and I cannot recommend anyone to spend money on TP-Link smart products, as they remove features after sale.

I understand ‘worst sales’ but ‘worst performance’ doesn’t really fit. It’s in my opinion this is a fantastic performance on the market. With right to repair, longer software support, some models with replaceable batteries, we can use the phones longer and make the industry more sustainable and consumer friendly. For the last years already, the model feature upgrades were marginal and it’s fine that way.

In the future, I’d hope for further technical and regulatory development in that direction, resulting in further reduced annual sales numbers.