I think 12h is a big deal, for business travelers it makes the whole trip pointless. And for leasure travelers it means paying for a really expensive sleeping cabin or “sleep” in an uncomfortable seat.

I agree the privatisation was a big mistake, also in healthcare, energy etc.

It’s also better really.

I used to live in a place where I needed a car to go anywhere because the buses were so unreliable, infrequent and useless (all going through the town centre with lots of delays). I hated it, because everyone drove and was stuck in traffic. Driving is very stressful too.

And now I live in a big city, have really dense public transport for 20 bucks a month flat. No more finding and paying for parking spaces. Being able to go back from a different place than I arrived. No more parking meters timing out. No more maintenance. No more fuel costs. No more insurance. No more traffic fines. No more yearly inspections. No more people damaging my ride with shopping carts. I love it honestly. And to top it all off I can ride while playing with my phone and not having to pay any attention to the road. No need to be sober either for that matter.

Quality quickly drops off leaving the city unfortunately but that’s the thing with cities, you rarely need to leave them anyway.

Here in Europe it’s very hard to see hydrants though. There are no signs and they’re just little panel-covered holes.

It’s because your country makes so many cars. Same in the US. Cars are holy because so much money is made off them.

Where I’m from in Holland they are sacred also but it’s kinda a different reason, car ownership was a big symbol of economic progress in the 60s and people have become addicted to them.

Eh so these are official parking spots? That’s a bit weird yeah.

Whoa and that in Germany where people are pretty law-abiding.

Yeah that search bar, so useless because the start menu itself is a search bar if you simply start typing.

Yeah and also, many of the drawbacks of windows don’t really apply to companies. All the AI and MS account crap? Just switch it off in intune and M365 portal. Telemetry you can minimise with group policies. Crapware you can simply not install. It costs money? Sure but at a corp level so does Linux because they always want to pay a vendor so they can blame them when something goes wrong.

In Holland it seems to show them all but it probably differs by country.

One thing we are really really bad at in Europe is homogenising rail systems. Every country does its own thing, like voltage, signalling systems, sometimes even with their own gauge (e.g. spain). Only the high speed lines are fairly commonised.

There’s some projects going on like the ETCS safety system but they go at a snail’s pace because there’s so much installed base and design by a 25-country committee that are all trying to rope in their own industry ties is a slow process.

Also I read that in the US Amtrak gives priority to cargo trains even though laws exist expressly forbidding that, so that a 200km trip with no stops ends up taking 4 hours.

And still here in Europe they are not a meaningful alternative to the plane. Taking for example an Amsterdam to Barcelona is an exhausting 12-14h deal (almost 10x as long) and 5x more expensive.

What we need is express trains that go from A to B without stopping anywhere, avoiding city centres and constantly running max speed. If I’m going to Barcelona I don’t want to stop in Schiphol, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, and various cities in France. There should just be a dedicated departure just for that (and judging by how many planes go back & forth daily these trains could certainly be filled). This would cut down on that exhausting travel time a lot. But we lack the high-speed network capacity for that. And won’t have it for at least 15 years even if they decided to build them now :( So planes it is.

I work in IT (security). The reason they are so adamant on Windows at least in our place, is because it offers so many opportunities to go BOFH and lock everything down so much so the user can hardly do their job :) No other OS offers that, even Mac.

They think they need this to be secure. I beg to differ but unfortunately Microsoft is constantly feeding them with ‘best practices’ and other BS.

For Years, you had the Option to use Linux. Since the release of the win 11 beta, Linux has not made any relevant big steps.

I would argue it doesn’t need to. It’s pretty perfect these days as it is, especially with KDE (and the great thing about it having so much control over how your computer works and feels, Windows can never offer that).

Yeah this is just a weird tangent that will die off.

“Zorin Group” never heard of that. Seems to be a shop that just wants to lift along with the Windows 10 discontinuation tbh.

And if their selling point is running windows apps then they have no chance. You can’t get better at being windows than windows already is. You’ll always be one step behind the real thing.

And really you don’t need to, most linux apps are much better now that windows apps are more and more dumbed down. Look at the “new outlook” for example. It doesn’t even do local storage anymore, you must import all your email into the microsoft cloud overlord.

• Ads all over the place (and a start menu full of crapware)
• Telemetry you can’t completely turn off anymore (the only thing I’d respect is a license check)
• Constantly putting edge back
• Forced MS account and removing ways to bypass it
• Cloud upsells
• Forced updates “do this within the next 2 days or else…”
• “Copilot copilot copilot”

Gaming for me is the only thing I don’t use Windows for. But for gaming I still do. Because I mainly game in VR and that’s still so far behind on LInux :(

But I have 20 odd computers in the house so it’s easy to have one with windows around (two in fact, another old one with Win 10 LTSC for programming some old radios).

I love KDE for all the options it gives 🫶 I don’t like Gnome, Systemd and all the other redhat influences but they are easy to avoid these days.

Also, humans are social creatures. If you’re a progressive, surely you care about other people. I certainly do!

Other individuals yes, but not being part of a group. If I align with a group like a political party, it’s just a temporary thing while our goals align. I have no deep loyalty to any group or country.

I definitely think there’s some issues with a lot of the western notions of formality, with it being very Euro-centric and sometimes oozing with pretentious classism, often racism and misogyny, but that’s not an issue with formality

Here in Europe it’s definitely often associated with “old money”. Or people wanting to show they are powerful or rich, or that they want to hang out with people who are. I don’t believe being powerful or rich makes someone a better person or more important, so I don’t want to make special arrangement just because they have this group code.

However, maybe you are in the US? Progressivism here in Europe is a lot more left-wing than in Europe. Something like the Democratic party would be right-wing here, and the republican party extreme or at least radical right. I’d be more left than Bernie Sanders to give an idea. Many left-wing party politicians also don’t wear suits. There’s definitely an anti-formal slant there.

I’m not saying formality is some requisite of social life or anything, but I am saying that that stark rejection of it sounds antisocial, let me tell you. Well, to be totally fair it sounds neuro-divergent, more than anything, but I don’t mean to diagnose you either. You wouldn’t attend a friend’s wedding because it’s formal? I guess you just aren’t friends with people that would want you to wear a suit to their wedding. Whatever, feel free to disregard the last couple of sentences.

Oh yes I’m AuDHD so yeah I am definitely neurodivergent. And no I wouldn’t attend a formal wedding. I’ll be super uncomfortable and unhappy and people will see that and be bothered by it, so there is no point. Better not to be there. I wouldn’t enjoy it anyway. I’ve tried twice and it went down really badly.

Also, if your idea of diversity is “no dress-code”, frankly, that’s ridiculous. I admit that there’s, as I mentioned, quite a bit of classism and misogyny and racism in some groups, and those groups do end up being associated with more formal attire – I get that – but to blame that on suits or formality is ridiculous! Why are you talking like dress-code means people aren’t very diverse?!

No it’s not no dress code, I do go to dress code events. But more in the alt/goth/fetish sphere. But that leaves a LOT of room for expression. A black tie event for example does not, at least not for the guys. Women have a lot more wiggle room (and I’m kinda genderqueer but that kind of event is not very accepting of that either, lol)

I really do take offense to that position. The range of people that wear suits or go to formal occasions is extremely diverse, and to imply otherwise is beyond reductive.

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s not the people per se but the events and what they represent. Events that I have seen that required dress codes and I have not shown up for:

• Expensive restaurants, clearly the suits are a point of “we’re better than the peasants here”
• A work event with lots of leaders - I believe in equality so I don’t think they are someone I want to impress with dressing up pretending to be in their ‘class’. With my actual skills, sure but such events aren’t the place for that.
• A cruise dinner with a captain, if I’m on a cruise I’m on a holiday and it’s me-time, I have no interest in that (and the whole thing turned out super boring anyway basically being stuck on an expensive boat with almost no time to visit interesting places :) )
• A trade show that required “business casual” attire. It was a security event and I’m an ethical hacker, everyone knows we don’t do suits. I’m not going to be super uncomfortable just to make the money men feel better.
• Job interviews, if they specify a dress code in the invitation then it’s insta-decline, I don’t want to work there anyway

And that’s just false. I mean, did you even see the pictures I showed? Do they look the same to you? Do they express the same things?!

Well I see they are a different colour but they are essentially the same to me. One of them isn’t wearing a tie which I like (I don’t do ties anyway, they are a hard limit for me)

So? I don’t care. Why would anyone care? I thought you were about wearing what you love and expressing yourself, why does it matter that businessman wear it too? I think corduroy pants look nice, so I wear corduroy pants. I think funky ties look nice, so I wear funky ties. If I think a suit looks nice, I’m gonna wear the suit – CEO be damned!

I do have to say I didn’t consider that you might actually like wearing suits. That’s something I didn’t think of, as I hate them so much. That changes things indeed. I was more arguing against events where people are required to wear them.

and that says that you meant to wear that, and didn’t just happen to wear it because you liked those pants and you liked that shirt.

I like that though because what you like says a lot about a person. I love self-expressive people, not people who just do whatever they need to fit in. I also hate formal occasions because again formal means there’s lots of rules on how to look and act. Again pressure to fit in. As a progressive I don’t align with that. I like people being very diverse. If I’m invited to a formal event (or even a trade show with a dress code) I just decline.

A suit is like the uniform of the business world. Very boring and non-expressive.

PS I also hate collared shirts and ties, I don’t wear them anymore. They bother my neck.

I like that a lot. I’m GenX but I always hated the suit & tie bullshit. These days I don’t even own a suit that fits. The last time I wore one was at a wedding in 2005 or so.