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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • I’m not going to defend Apple’s profit maximization strategy here, but I disagree. Most people won’t end up buying a cable and adaptare because they already have one, and in contrast to those pieces made of plastic and metal, the packaging is mostly made of paper. I’m pretty confident that the reduction in plastic and metal makes up for the extra packaging that’s produced for the minority that does buy a cable and/or adapter.





  • I don’t understand the relevance of what you’re saying. Do you mean that the platform should have the right to allow biological females only (following the definitions of your law system)? Do you think that that’s implied when a platform is female only and defensible in court? Not a snarky remark, just genuinely curious what you mean. This case was all about gender identity discrimination and I don’t see how biological sex fits into the picture.

    She had sued the platform and its founder Sally Grover in 2022 for unlawful gender identity discrimination in its services, and claimed Ms Grover revoked her account after seeing her photo and “considered her to be male”.

    Judge Robert Bromwich said in his ruling that while Ms Tickle was not directly discriminated against, her claim of indirect discrimination was successful as using the Giggle App required her “to have the appearance of a cisgender woman”.

    Judge Bromwich said the evidence did not establish Ms Tickle was excluded from Giggle directly “by reason of her gender identity although it remains possible that this was the real but unproven reason”.








  • For me they only work in relatively quiet environments, or with earplugs. As soon as a car drives by it completely drowns out the sound. With music that might not be an issue, but with podcasts or calls it’s very annoying. I’ve bought earplugs especially for this, as my other earbuds have issues with wind while running, but it does feel like it’s defeating the purpose a bit. I guess turning them all the way up would also work, but that doesn’t feel healthy. Other than that I like them and the mic quality is also good according to people I’ve spoken with over the phone.


  • I don’t get why that would be a nightmare. In my country the electricity prices change per hour for dynamic contracts (they just follow the energy market) and with normal usage it’s cheaper on average than fixed contracts, including those with peak and off-peak rates. For gas it’s a day price, again same as the energy market. For both electricity and gas the prices for the next calendar day are published in the afternoon (that’s how the energy market works). The companies charge a little extra per unit and a small fixed fee per month.

    Contracts with fixed rates (including nighttime and daytime rates) have to buy in advance, which means that unforeseen circumstances are included in the price and they also have to account for the fact that they might need to buy extra or sell off their excess based an actual usage.


  • It is, though. Safari has native support for 3rd party adblockers, it’s just that many people don’t know. AdGuard is one of the good options. Safari is doing the actual blocking for the most part (the extension just hands over the filterlists), but nowadays some of the adblockers include an optional extension that applies some rules for complex ads that are not supported by the Apple API, such as on YouTube. As an end user you just have to install and enable the adblocker.

    Then there are also other browsers available with built-in adblockers. Admittedly those are all limited in some ways because they’re forced to use the same browser engine (outside of the EU), but they are very effective at blocking ads.




  • Note, however, that the mere fact that all those apps exist for iOS adds a lot of value for Apple too. Apple wouldn’t sell nearly as many iPhones if the most important apps weren’t available on their platform. They spin it as if they are only creating value for the app developers without asking for much in return, while the App Store is an enormous cash cow, which they’ve been able to build due to the lack of restrictions (pre DMA). A good API is not just a service for app developers, it’s a way to enhance the user experience and sell more phones, because of all the work that app developers do to turn it into useful and exciting features.



  • I think many people peddle just as hard on an electric bike, so the 5.5 kWh/km is a given, the rest is the energy required to go faster. Since air resistance increases with the square of the speed, it might very well be the case that 14 kWh/km at 25 km/h is more efficient than what the human alone would need to deliver for the same speed.

    Edit: I failed to take into account that for the human at the same level of effort the power remains constant, not the energy per kilometer. Going faster at the same power output would reduce the energy expenditure per kilometer for the human to about 4 kWh/km, which would indicate that 10 kWh/km is being delivered by the motor to go faster.

    That being said, it might be the case that they just calculated the energy needed to move the bicycle without taking the energy efficiency of the digestive system into account.


  • It’s Markdown syntax. You can actually format it nicely in a code block:

    bool isEven( long long x ) {
      if ( x < 0 ) x = -x;
      if ( x == 1 )
        return false;
      if ( x == 2 )
        return true;
      return isEven( x - 2 );
    }
    

    You do that by adding ``` above and below it. To force single line breaks, you can terminate your sentences with two spaces, or a backslash.