2,003 karma · joined August 16, 2019
Yes, there has always been the possibility of prices rising. But there's also always been a reasonable expectation that any price rises would be in line with inflation. Not +30% twice in the space of a few months.
> That feels more honest than stealing their gas and then not paying for it. Sure, they're probably ripping me off. Doesn't mean I should do the same.
Even when they're plunging a huge section of the population into abject poverty, causing thousands of elderly people to die of hypothermia over the winter, causing countless people to contemplate suicide --because they literally can't afford to heat their homes or pay their energy bills...
...you're more concerned with not 'stealing' from the energy companies --who've just made record profits again, whose shareholders are laughing all the way to the bank. And whose directors will likely see out the worst of the winter on the yachts in the Bahamas they bought with their multi-million pound annual bonuses.
[*insert other nations, as appropriate]
PS: Why has this thread been flagged. It's a damned sight more important than most of the stuff that gets submitted on here, these days.
>the comparison with the Poll Tax is somewhat irrelevant because the poll tax was 100% dreamed up by the govt...
>Energy is however a commodity, and prices are set internationally either by private companies, or other govts...
I think this was the straw that broke the camel's back for many people. When the energy companies took advantage of the raising of the energy price cap to hike the costs of the actual energy they supply by 30% that was bad enough. But the fact they also took the opportunity to slap a similar increase on the Standing Charge was despicable.
PS: it's cui bono
>Can you tell me how you did this? It'll be a bit help!
https://www.mailhardener.com/tools/mta-sts-validator
EDIT: have you tried the MIAB forums? They're quite a helpful bunch:
On recommendations here, I switched to it 2 or 3 months ago from Gmail, after Google announced they were going to start charging for Gmail on custom domains. I'd no previous experience at all with running my own mailservers and had always been put off by how complicated it seemed.
Even with a non supported configuration setup [running the mailserver for my domain on a separate VPS from the domain itself] MIAB setup was pretty easy. I had it installed and was up and running in no time. I then spent a couple of days setting up the various DMARC MTA-STS policies etc. [most of that time involved looking up what they were and why I needed them!] and [after testing with an unimportant account] migrating the rest of mine and my family's and friends' emails across from Gmail. I was able to import half a dozen accounts from Gmail with about 8GB of emails between them, using ImapSync [1]
So far [fingers crossed] it's been almost painless. Giving the lie to the commonly held belief that running your own mailservers needs constant hands-on maintenance. My MIAB setup runs quite happily on a $5/month Linode [I checked the IP was not on any blacklists, before I started] and the whole thing has been pretty much 'fire and forget'. MIAB sends me weekly reports on what's been happening. Software updates are a one-liner in the terminal and I've had no trouble whatsoever with Google, Microsoft etc. as regards the mail not getting through.
If you've always hankered after running your own mailserver but [as I did] thought it was too difficult and required too much 'hands on' tinkering, I heartily recommend you give MIAB a go.
DISCLAIMER: I run a couple of dozen email addresses on 3 or 4 domains on my MIAB. Probably sending and receiving a few hundred emails a week between them. YMMV if you're a heavier user than this.
For now.
Why did you rewrite it as incomprehensible gibberish?
Now you're using the fact that people can't remember for sure which iPhone model introduced feature X or feature Y as evidence that history was rewritten by Apple, when all it shows is that, years later, people can't accurately remember the minutiae of which details changed between which models.
>What a terrible leader
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMrhoOHNOrI
Sorry. I couldn't resist dredging up this old classic. It used to be compulsory viewing any time Steve Ballmer was mentioned.
Although, on a more practical level; with winter approaching and huge energy price rises on the horizon, the burning feeling of vicarious embarrassment you get while watching this might be a warm blessing on those cold December evenings ahead.
>Apple have successfully rewritten history here, like victors often do
It's a long long time since I've had any interest in Apple or their products. But I wonder if the same excited anticipation still exists today [eg. with rumours of Apple producing an electric vehicle]?... or was it mainly due to Steve Jobs's cult of personality and mastery of hyperbole.
Yes, people wil point out that Phone X had a touchscreen, Phone Y had a browser, Phone Z had something else. But the iPhone was the first phone to bring them all together in one package.
I used to run an Apple user forum way back before the iPhone was released, when all we had were the occasional rumour that Apple 'might be' thinking of bringing out a phone.
Smartphones are so ubiquitous now that I reckon people forget just how much excited anticipation there was at the prospect that Apple would do for the phone what they'd recently done for computers [remember how revolutionary the coloured iMacs seemed at the time?] and portable music [the iPod]. Back then no-one was enthusiastic about their phones. They were just some utilitarian gadget you carried, like a wallet, a pen or your car keys and there was an almost messianic belief that, if Apple brought out a phone it would be an equally miraculous device.
The launch of the iPhone actually kick-started [for better or worse] the promotion of the formerly humble phone to the ranks of 'gadgets you dreamt of owning'
The site I'm working with has 600+ articles. So I was hoping for something that would automatically generate its own index by scanning the text contained in all those articles automatically.
Perhaps it's not possible in a non-database site.
>I think you are overthinking it.
>In Russia there is a strong tradition of writing "either good or none" about deceased people...
But the obituary does make a lot of criticisms of Gorbachev's failings, as well as praising his successes. Having read it all the way through [and it's a lengthy piece!] I'm left with the message "He did some great things and he did some stupid things. But his heart was in the right place and he was a was basically a decent human being"
Almost the last line in the obit recounts how Gorbachev choked up and left the stage in tears halfway through singing an old Russian song in memory of his dead wife. Somehow I can't but see that as a pointed contrast with Vladimir Putin who would never allow himself to be portrayed as the kind of man who cries in public.
Given that we know Putin isn't Gorbachev's biggest fan, won't be attending his funeral and, in fact, seems to hold him responsible for USSR/Russia's loss of position as a world super power, it's interesting to see RT [working within the editorial constraints they must be under] producing quite a broadly favourable, albeit 'warts and all' biography of Gorbachev.
I also wonder if there's a subliminal message here, or am I 'reading 'between the lines' a bit too much?
There does seem to be quite a lot of emphasis on Gorbachev as a man of the people, contrasts with previous [and unstated 'current'?] dictatorial leadership. And the choice of accompanying photographs seem to also be contrasting Gorbachev, not only with what went before, but subliminally with what has come after; contemporary artwork depicting the leader in various non-official posters, rock concerts, mention of open and free debates on TV, smiling Gorbachev mingling with the people [including in Kiev!].
There's even a lengthy section, praising Gorbachev as a peacemaker, which pointedly mentions the withdrawal from Afghanistan, an "unwinnable war" where "...fifteen thousand Soviet soldiers died, hundreds of thousands more were wounded or psychologically traumatised"....Again, is this a subtle comment on current events? Another lengthy section emphasises how the Soviet Union was not one monolithic nation, but comprised of dozens of distinct nationalities and ethnic groups.
Give it a read. If you can overcome your revulsion at RT's usual party-line towing output. I really didn't expect to find such a long, reasonably unbiased and almost nostalgic for pre-Putin times obituary on Russia Today.
Why can so many of you not see [beyond simplistic 'goodies' and 'baddies' labels] how much Russia feels threatened by that? Imagine if the cold war had been 'won' by the other side; Canada and Mexico had joined the Warsaw Pact and the USSR had troops and ICBMs stationed there. And now Alaska, which had declared independence from the rest of the USA was talking about doing likewise [0] How do you think the US would react?
Clue: look up 'Cuban Missile Crisis' if you need a hint.
One of the fundamental pre-requisites for solving crises diplomatically before the shooting starts is seeing things from the other guy's point of view. Simply dismissing 'them' as the 'baddies' and discounting their view of the world only leads to more conflict --as has happened in Ukraine.
[0] Baggsy a share of the royalties, if someone decides to write this up as an Alternative History blockbuster!
>The only bad thing about this affair is that some countries are trying to substitute their Russian gas for Azerbaijani gas, which is just as bad war-of-aggression wise , even though that is of course further away from Europe.
I've not noticed any calls to boycott Saudi Arabian oil in response to that country's Bombing and killing of civilians in Yemen.
It's incredible how otherwise intelligent people, switch off their critical faculties and revert to "baddies vs goodies" levels of analysis, when it comes to international politics.
>Does Russia have to invade Ukraine? Does it have to keep killing civilians?
The energy crisis in EU and UK is becoming unsustainable. Energy bill price rises are going to see huge numbers of people plunged into absolute poverty. Every day there are tales on the news of people's gas and electricity bills going up by 100s of percent.
This is only going to get much, much worse, as we head into winter. When the dead bodies of pensioners who died of hypothermia, because they couldn't afford to turn on the heating start piling up. When businesses [already barely recovering after Covid] start going to the wall in their thousands [their energy costs are not capped, so their bills are going up by astronomical amounts]. Those same western governments are either going to have to reach into their coffers and pay out billions to subsidise gas and electricity prices to help their economies [and populations] survive ...or they're going to have to back-pedal on this suicidal sanctions war with Russia.
Since we know how governments hate having to give money out, I predict that the rhetoric on the war in Ukraine is going to change over the next couple of months. I've already seen a couple of opinions expressed in the media along the lines of 'Ukraine should negotiate a settlement, as they can't win' and I expect this opinion to be expressed more frequently as winter draws near.
In fact, this could explain why the Ukrainian side seem to be mounting a bit of an offensive at the minute. Maybe their leaders also realise that their supporters in western governments are starting to lose the will to keep up their self-harming sanctions.
It's funny really; we hear a lot bout how Russia's battle plans are a huge failure because they thought they'd steamroller Ukraine into submission in a couple of days. But the same could be said about the western response. It seems clear that western nations thought that this massive sanctions campaign would destroy the Russian economy in a few weeks and force their withdrawal from Ukraine. In fact Russia seems to be weathering the storm and now the sanction-imposers themselves are starting to suffer the backlash.
>much of this gas would have been used to feed into the pipeline grid and sold on to Europe. Because Russia has sharply cut supply to Europe...
The EU sanctioned Russia and cut off their access to the global banking system and to their foreign currency holdings. They also announced that they'd be stopping buying any Russian gas at all by 2023. So Russia demanded Europe pay for their gas in Roubles. Because why wouldn't they in those circumstances? Most of Europe refused to pay in Roubles so Russia [and again, why wouldn't they?] said "If you don't pay, you can't have the gas"
The fact that this series of events is being constantly spun across multiple western media sources now as an arbitrary 'Russia turned off the taps' --in attempt to divert anyone from asking whether the west [and the EU in particular] has spectacularly shot itself in the foot here-- is disgraceful.
And we have the gall to criticise countries like China for the dishonesty of their press!
And why [although I agree with many of their aims] I get irritated by the environmentalist slogan "Saving the planet" The planet doesn't need 'saving' by us. It will carry on just fine, whether or not we wipe ourselves out.