Is burning bunker fuel in international waters very polluting and should someone try to do something about it? Yes it is and yes they should. And the good news is that they have been working at it: https://www.imo.org/en/mediacentre/hottopics/pages/sulphur-2020.aspx

But were the more polluting cargo ships from the past more polluting than “a continent”? Probably only if that continent was not Asia, Europe, America or Africa. If they were and I’m wrong, then I would love to see a source. Telling me to “google it” is not a source, I already tried looking for it when I first asked the question and I could find no info about this claim. It seemed like a hyperbole comparison that they made up.

I also tried looking up your claim that 10 ships pollute more than all cars combined, and the first result was an article debunking a similar myth (about 15 ships): https://www.oldsaltblog.com/2021/04/no-sixteen-large-ships-do-no-pollute-more-than-all-the-cars-in-the-world/

Which continent? Antarctica? It wouldn’t surprise me, but it seems like an entirely useless comparison to make.

The russian assets in the White House want to portray Zelensky and Ukraine as insufficiently thankful for USA aid and as disrespectful towards the usa, and to use those supposed slights as justification for cutting off aid. To reinforce this narrative with their audience, other fellow travellers are now repeating those lies.

This goes back to the white house meeting where Trump and Vance claimed that Zelensky was disrespectful because of how he was dressed (normal) and how he didn’t thank anyone according to them (he had, profusely, there’s video of it). It was a clown show and the meeting didn’t deliver the desired images + soundbites, so now the usa republicans are working overtime in providing the necessary soundbites for fox news etc.

Trump and Putin their relationship isn’t going to reverse. Trump is a gullible idiot and Putin is not, if they meet and negotiate face to face, then Putin is going to get what he wants. Especially because Trump has said before negotiations even started, that he wanted to give the occupied lands to Russia. Trump is such a “master negotiator” that he sells out his own side before the talks even start. This is why Putin wants to negotiate alone with the usa, without the eu countries or NATO present.

The Observer is one of the oldest news papers in the world. Generally quality journalism I think, though I’m not a regular reader. Since a few decades under the same ownership as the guardian, but apparently sold 2 months ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Observer

And articles changing after first publishing happens quite a lot. It beats putting out a separate article for every small development in an ongoing story. For example: entity A said x about B, and later there’s an update wherein B denies x happened. In quality journalism it used to be done in clear updates at the bottom and/or top of the article. But now with Trump, A is claiming x and then later A realizes how dumb that was, so A claims they never said x and that they’ve always been saying y. Good luck reporting on that in a clear and concise manner.

Officially it’s allowed after April 17th, but there’s already an extensive list of approved devices.

https://www.test-aankoop.be/woning-energie/hernieuwbare-energie/nieuws/plug-and-play-zonnepaneel

There’s probably a french version of that article as well, but test- achats/aankoop hasn’t made it easy to switch languages :)

These plugin systems shut down automatically when there’s a power outage. To make sure that they really do shut down when needed, in Belgium only plugin systems that have been approved by the network management organisation may be used. The other countries that allow these probably have similar precautions.

Pickups have their uses in Europe as well. Where I live, it seems like most pest controllers (rat catchers, an easy to clean open trunk is probably very nice) and land surveyors prefer them over other vehicles. They all use smaller sensible size pickups from Japanese brands though.

I think I’ve spotted only 2 different modern USA oversized pickups in traffic. Both full black, never a speck of dirt on them, always tailgating someone. They are vastly outnumbered by the sensible pickups, but you just can’t miss spotting them in traffic.

The eu commission warning was officially only aimed at their internal services, it wasn’t a mandate that all organisations within the eu should stop advertising on x. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if it comes to a total ban in the eu, X is already under investigation for disinformation.

If you’re curious what their official children are up to: https://english.elpais.com/usa/2021-04-20/nicaraguas-political-dynasty-heirs-in-a-golden-cage.html

Tldr: the eldest daughter accused her father of sexual abuse and had to run to Costa Rica. The lives of the other 8 adult children + the lives of their families are mostly controlled by the president’s wife.

Also the same category as Reagan’s election and the embassy hostages + Iran contra affair. It’s part of the standard republican playbook now.

Canceling to downgrade your 365 subscription is the “normal” Microsoft way, so that part is not a new scummy practice that was invented for this scummy occasion. I do hope this forced upsell comes back to bite Microsoft in the ass, most consumers won’t be aware of the downgrade option, but consumer agencies shouldn’t let this slide, it’s setting a very bad precedent.

The ms instructions:

1. Go to Services & subscriptions and if prompted, sign in with the Microsoft account associated with your subscription.
2. Find your current subscription and select Manage > Cancel subscription.
3. The Cancel page will show you the features of your current subscription plan. If you’re switching to another plan with less features, select the plan that works for you.
4. Follow the instructions to complete the switch. Your existing subscription might not change immediately, but it will automatically change to the new plan when the plan renews. You won’t be charged for the new plan until it renews into that plan.
   https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/switch-between-microsoft-365-subscriptions-3fcc1efc-2722-427f-8efa-db94b9b0a36b

I had something like this on my hybrid, but it was fortunately spotted when I had my winter tires put on.

The problem was rust between the calipers and pads, which meant that the pads could come loose from even a mild impact.

Why do people hate Lenovo and Razer? From what I’ve read in the past early Razer laptops had a battery problem, but that was it. I can’t recall systemic laptop design issues. And Lenovo has a malignant bloatware problem, but that’s not a problem at all if going for Linux. So I’m out of the loop on what’s supposedly wrong with these 2.

For good graphics performance in a smallish package, I like Lenovo Legion.

If graphics aren’t a concern, then I have no more specific recommendation, too much choice. I like flip style laptops, but I don’t know if those have proper Linux support. I’d also look for a screen larger than 14", but with thin bezels.

The worst build laptop that I’ve ever held in my hands was from MSI. Cooling problems that made the fans work almost permanently at full blast (even after repasting by the shop), underperforming for the specs, a chassis with too much flex and a broken screen hinge after slightly more than 2 years (just out of warranty). When I looked up the screen hinge problem, it turned out to be an old recurring problem that MSI never bothered to fix when releasing new models, like they couldn’t be arsed to give a fuck.

This laptop was bought in about 2017 or 2018 after which I put MSI on the do not buy list. It’s possible that they’ve improved their quality since then, but I doubt it, given that I can find the same complaints in forum posts from 2024:
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?threads/are-hinge-issues-still-a-thing.343279/page-5

LTT is entertainment, I wouldn’t expect in depth reporting from them. They don’t have that anal retentive attention to details/all angles that Gamer’s Nexus or Louis Rossman have. If LTT made videos where they attack stuff that they think is wrong, then I’d expect them to go on their face more often than not. And attacking large companies with a poorly constructed case, would always come back to bite them in the ass.

Very few people can do the kind of repeated reporting that Gamer’s Nexus and Louis Rossman do + stay in business. I can’t blame LTT for sticking to what they’re good at (superficial entertainment).

"That might make me look advertiser unfriendly!” Not what I was saying at all. I said that in the context of the time it might have made them look unnecessarily greedy to the public + provide free advertising + extra users for Honey.

I don’t enjoy watching ltt anymore since a good few years, but I’m still going to come to their defence :)

They discussed dropping Honey on their forum in march 2022: "We ended the partnership with Honey due to the way their service interacted with affiliate links. Essentially, if someone clicked on a affiliate link (For example, one of ours below in the video description on YouTube), and then if they “use honey” and search for a deal, Honey will override that tracking link even if they don’t find you a deal. ".

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1415146-weekly-sponsorship-suggestioncomplaint-thread-feb-28-2022/

When they defended themselves against the recent accusations, that they didn’t make enough noise when dropping Honey in 2022, their defence was that they thought that only creators were disadvantaged (a few 100 people?). They claim to have been unaware that the users of Honey (the hundreds of thousands of LTT viewers) were being disadvantaged as well. They also seemed to be unaware that Honey’s behaviour is likely illegal, at least LTT made no mention on the legality of it. https://therecenttimes.com/news/linustechtips-addresses-megalags-honey-allegations-defends-transparency Which checks out with their 2022 post.

If they had known that the users of Honey were being bamboozled as well, I’m sure that they would have made a video about it. But making a complaint video to basically say that an ex sponsor was stealing some of their marbles, might have given a bad look. + given more publicity to Honey, which LTT probably didn’t want to happen.

Trustpilot doesn’t have a way to verify if the reviewers are actual product users, so their system is very vulnerable to review bombing. Allowing review bombing can also harm their credibility. It’s a catch 22 for them: damned if they suppress review bombs and damned if they don’t.

Trustpilot’s method and/or communication could probably be better, but what Google is doing is the worst possible way to go about it: On the chrome webstore page there is no indication whatsoever that anything is amiss, Google is just silently removing all recent negative reviews. Atleast Trustpilot tells visitors that they’re temporarily not accepting reviews and that it’s because of recent news.

Aggregate scores on all sites have become untrustworthy, they’re just poor first indicators now, but reading user reviews is still very much worth it imo. It just takes way longer to figure out whether a product is good/bad than it did 10 years ago. Once ai llm catch up with writing credible texts, then that method will be toast as well and then we’ll be really screwed when choosing a product.

And I kinda understand why they’re blocking new reviews. Trustpilot doesn’t have a way to verify if the reviewers are actual product users, so their system is very vulnerable to review bombing. It’s a catch 22 for them: damned if they suppress review bombs and damned if they don’t.

Trustpilot’s method could be better (Fe: they could allow reviewbombs to happen and show 2 scores, with and without), but what Google is doing is probably the worst possible way to go about it: On the chrome webstore page there is no indication whatsoever that anything is amiss. Atleast Trustpilot tells visitors to go check the news.

I actually can’t believe that I’ve been defending Trustpilot, they’ve always had a repuation of selectively removing reviews, but well, Google is now worse than them.