Normille

One of the few areas where I think the US has got it right. No-one should need more than 3 chances to stop being a dick.

Cool. The EU does have its [many!] faults. But they have a pretty good track record when it comes to consumer rights and consumer choice. Next up I'd like to see them do the same for the plethora of incompatible cordless power-tool systems out there as they did with insisting all mobile phones standardise on a USB connector.

Jeebus! --just bring back text-reflow and allow us to install our own extensions if you want to offer something that's going to make any Android user think of switching.

At the moment what Firefox offers is like a much slower version of Chrome with a couple of trivially unimportant 'features' like this bolted on. That isn't going to tempt anyone.

He wishes he was a little bit taller

He wishes he was a baller

I'd be depressed too, if I woke up one morning and realised I was American.

Being better than DDG wouldn't be difficult. I don't know why DDG gets such uncritical recommendations whenever privacy is the topic at issue. I've always found its search results pretty useless.

I've just had a quick twiddle with SearX. It seems to produce pretty good results. It's obviously an aggregator rather than an individual search engine. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. I may visit it more often as my current search engine of choice, StartPage has the annoying habit --or I should say Google has the annoying habit, as that's what StartPage uses-- of quite often returning results which are the direct opposite of what I'm looking for. eg. search for "convert from X to Y" and Google/StartPage will return myriad results for "convert from Y to X".

Plus Google/StartPage seems completely swamped these day with totally junk results. This is especially true if you search for answers to technical / software related questions. The 'dependable' sources such as stackoverlow, github and the like usually come way down the list beneath a dozen Mickey Mouse worthless 'articles' obviously copy/pasted from press releases and authored by people with no clue what they're talking about.

Whoops! --sorry for the deviation. That started of as an "I'll give SearX a go..." comment but ended up bemoaning the state of search in general!

Sounds interesting. But I got scared off by the horrifically shite drawing on the homepage.

Previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32873924

Thanks for that. It would be useful if the original submitters would use those sites first, instead of making us jump through the hoops for them.

Well, assuming your question is genuine: a cursive F looks nothing like a printed F, a cursive S looks nothing like a printed S [and quite like a cursive R, which, in turn looks not much like a printed R]. Add in various loops etc, which simple [when printed] letters like I and L can acquire in cursive --and someone who's only ever seen those letters in printed form is likely to be very confused as to what they are supposed to be.

  Well, I learned cursive and I can't even read most cursive text..

Ditto. Anyone who's ever dabbled in genealogy will have come across this fundamental flaw with cursive handwriting. It can be lovely to look at. But also very ambiguous to interpret.

Trying to decipher old birth or death certificates often involves trying to guess what they say. Was Great-Grandad a butler, a builder, a butcher, a banker, a baker... or a burglar?

Often, only the first and maybe a middle letter are identifiable for certain and the rest are just insert squiggle which could be almost anything.

I've long been amazed that, even on such important documents of historical record, clerks were expected to fill in details in cursive, rather than printing each individual letter.

  >Well, my penmanship (ie, cursive) sucked back then so as soon as I was able to I switched to printing

Same here [if by 'printing' you're referring to handwriting in a non-cursive way].

My English teacher took me to one side at about age 12 and asked me to print in future as he couldn't read my 'joined-up writing' [as we call it over here].

I've been printing ever since. But, over the subsequent decades, my printing handwriting has evolved into a cursive format all my own, which is also an odd mix of small caps and lower case, which join together in various ways. I think it's quite elegant myself, though I doubt my old English teacher would agree.

Anecdata: I was involved in teaching at university level, for quite a few years, and was shocked at how 'infantile' most of my students' handwriting was.

As per above; all of my generation could do 'joined-up writing' even if, as in my case, it was barely legible. But my students' writing was like the clumsy handwriting of children just learning to write; each character printed separately, leaning in all directions and all different sizes. And these were art students who [allegedly!] should have been amongst the more dextrous, when it came to handling a pen.

Not so many years ago, you could make a reasonable guess at someone's age, by their handwriting. Printing for young children, clumsy simplified cursive for older children, more practiced simplified cursive for adults and the older, more involved style cursive for their parents' generation. It won't be long now til everyone is only able to write like infants.

Jeebus! --when will people learn to stop posting paywalled articles!

To make such an unwarranted accusation, serves only to reveal, Sir, that you, Sir, are no gentleman!

  >Subscriptions for the Reboot Your Age app cost $34.95 per month or $299.95 annually...

Your money back if you die before you reach 100!

Good to see the UK turning into North Korea, since the queen died.

Also here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/king-charles...

Similar stories here: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/protest-anti-monarchy-rep...

But wait. India by has refused to jump on the 'sanction Russia' bandwagon. And their economy recently overtook the UK's.

So, how long til India becomes the next strategic threat and everyone has to stop manufacturing there and bans are put in place to stop India getting access to our latest technology?

Sigh! --paywall

Anyone interested in this kind of thing, I recommend the YouTube channel "Les Routes de l'Impossible" [0]. Their videos are in French and the auto-generated subtitles can be a bit er... random... But it's amazing to see how the various drivers have to battle through all kinds of conditions in vans and trucks which are often little more than scrap, held together with string and snot. Watch a few of those and you'll never complain about your car's squeaky brakes again.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/c/LesRoutesdelimpossible

  >Elementary OS – Why we write elementary apps in Vala (2014)

Fixed the title for you.

Fuck them cunts. Endless tales of them suddenly locking people's accounts, for no apparent reason. Sometimes leaving people completely stranded far from home or overseas.

I closed my account straight away, when I read some of the horror stories. They deserve to go bust.

  >the Sex Pistols GSTQ is a great song (also Anti-Nowhere Leagues 's "So F*king What!"..

Don't forget New Model Army's '51st State'

  >Her death might, maybe will, be responsible for a number of commonwealth states changing their structure of government.

Should boost Scotland's chances of voting for independence too. As I don't think Charlie boy is anywhere near as popular.

  >I'd not heard of Kiwi Farms before this whole censorship attempt...

Me neither. When I started seeing the name on HN, I honestly thought it was literally a kiwi farming website [Do they even farm kiwis in NZ].

Like you, I at also took a look to see what the fuss was about. But, judging by the titles of the various discussion threads, it just looked like a collection of moronic drivel. So I didn't bother reading anything.

Still, that's at least two of us who'd never even have heard of the site, much less visited it, of it wasn't being censored.

   >I wish someone could make a cheap and easy shell to quickly make "hacker news" like clones that people could run for given interests, to create communities like this one geared towards other interests...

It's already out there: http://arclanguage.org/

or...

https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki

  >Anarki comes bundled with News, a Hacker News style app...

  >No, that was Russia's choice. They chose to invade Ukraine with the full and inexcusable intent of occupying territory...

And what has that got to do with our energy supplies? Did we thumb our noses at Saudi Arabia and stop buying their oil,when they started bombing the shit out of Yemen? Have we sanctioned the US --ever!-- for any of the 88 and counting countries they've attacked since the end of the second world war?

What's so special about Ukraine that we have to throw our own people under the bus because Ukraine hid behind the US's skirts poking the bear next door with a stick and are now suffering the consequences?

  >What was the UK government's choice was being party to the entrenchment of Russia as Europe's major energy supplier over the course of the past decade or so. That was a very bad idea

No. That was a very good idea. What was a very bad idea was continuing to treat Russia as a leper state, even after the break-up of the Soviet Union and the [relatively!] bloodless 'liberation' of Eastern Europe. Is anyone surprised that Russia has realised "Fuck it. whatever we do, we're still the bad guys here!" and decided they might as well act accordingly.

But don't fret. I'm sure the good ol' US of A will be delighted to make up the energy shortfall by selling us as much oil & gas as we can send them wheelbarrows full of cash for, in the future. The fact that it's environmentally insane to ship oil & gas all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, when we could have it cleanly flowing through pipelines from our next-door neighbour is a minor detail.

My god. I think he's got it!

  >No, the fundamental reason Europe doesn't enjoy friendly relations with Russia is because Europe is liberal and Russia is not...

Are you for real? Europe [and its puppet-master the USA] enjoys cordial relations with some of the most odious regimes in the world because they're 'on our side'. It's kindergarten stuff and self-delusional to pretend western nations form their relations with other countries based on moral principles.

  >I don't buy the argument that their political or economic system is based on having an external enemy. It certainly wasn't that way before WW2 nor afterwards..

Maybe you should do a bit of independent reading and thinking, before making such nonsensical statements:

* https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/heres-a-list-of-all-t...

* https://www.maurer.ca/USBombing.html

* https://sites.evergreen.edu/zoltan/interventions/

* https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/how-many-...

  >Do you not realize that the US is the only reason Russia doesn't steamroll all of Europe?

Do you not realise the US is the only reason Europe doesn't enjoy friendly relations with Russia and access to that colossal market for European goods and, in return, access to equally colossal supplies of cheap energy.

Wake up and smell the bloody coffee! The US is the direct or indirect cause of most of the conflict in the world today. You're like Oceania. Your entire economy and political system is based on there always having to be 'An Enemy". Today it's Russia, yesterday it was ISIS, the day before that it was North Korea, the day before that The Taliban, The day before that Iran... the day before that... and so on, ad nauseam. Who will it be tomorrow?

The US has been at 'war' with <someone> continually since the end of WWII --yet somehow you never seem to consider the merest possibility that the fact you're continually getting into fights with other people might j-u-s-t p-o-s-s-i-b-l-y be because it's actually you who are the 'Baddies'... and not [at one time or another] everyone else on the fucking planet!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU

  >Europe is sitting on the needle of russian gas/oil. Where is US here?

reply

er... behind the scenes, manipulating conflicts, to their own advantage.

As fucking usual.