glenndebacker

I've been an avid gamer for years but where 10 years ago I gamed only on Windows, that is definitely not the case today.

Funny you say that. If I remembered correctly it was the UK that blocked a lot of the banking reforms because it wanted to protect their financial industry... Not the way around.

"EU means a never ending future of joblessness"

Weird independent projections in this European country talks about new 140.000 jobs in a period of three years and we got horrific terrorist attacks in March which has a big negative economic impact.

Maybe with regards of new jobs it has also something to do with political choices ?

Second the world exists out of more goods than champagne, cheese and cars... . I see you make a big deal about German cars but in the whole scheme of things that is really small. And I dare to ask if a lot of British people will be still able to buy those cars to begin with, as I see how the pound is falling fast.

And third you are dealing with the EU that exists out more countries than Germany and France. Yes, because of their size they have a big position but please let stop that intellectual dishonest narrative that all other countries are living under some-kind of French-German dictatorship where they don't have any saying.

That being said as a European I couldn't care for the fifth "biggest" economy and I really hope that the EU keeps their 2 year timeline (if no deal can be reached in that timeframe it should be over) and deals on EU terms. They should not give a Switzerland or Norway deal without a hard bargain. My country and region is exposed a lot (jobs at our own country btw, trade,... ) and we where slowly recovering and now we are kicked down again. In the future we need to look for better and reliable business partners.

Also it's sickening to see how this give extreme right wing parties (and not right wing in the American sense, but really racist xenophobic parties) a boost. All old is new again, it is only 70 ago years we saw the same uprising of these kind of parties. I do hope that this doesn't jeopardize peace at the main land, that I fear the most. I can only imagine that a Putin is having the day of his life.

On a political sense I think in the end the EU can be possible better of, they never had a constructive attitude. With all the special statuses it got, it was already an island in Europe.

Btw seeing how the Euro is also falling, the whole idea of a weakened pound which have a positive impact regarding trade is also seriously backfiring. UK goods and services are still as expensive, maybe more after today.

But the whole premise of leaving is universally build on xenophobic racist reasons or started with xenophobic arguments. The line between Euroscepticism and Anti-Europeanism is very thin, there is a market for "Breaking point" ads.

The fact that 9/10 of most anti-European parties (even on the mainland or those a Nigel Farage is dweeping with) is xenophobic/racist from nature is extremely telling.

Still haven't time to play with it, but it looks nice.

Service workers are nice but nothing earth-shattering, there are more interesting features in development at the moment: https://webkit.org/status.

According to the list they are also considering implementing service workers so it is not all drama.

This is also sometimes called a dark pattern http://darkpatterns.org/what_is_a_dark_pattern/

Here in Flanders (Belgium) we also subsidy electric cars and while it doesn't exclude Tesla's, you will get a lot less than when you buy an electric car from another brand. And that mainly because they are cheaper.

I can say that with pretty high confidence it isn't about giving the upper hand to our none existing automobile industry, but prevent burning through the subsidy at a high rate.

Consumers who can afford >60.000€ cars are in most cases not the target group of these kind of subsidy programs.

I personally find for the price and the (personal taste) ugly design the Watch exceeds the expectations. It's not because something is not pulling the same frenzy like there was with the iPhone and iPod, that it's automatically a failure.

It is not because you make a lot of money with less than 1/3 of a market, that you should be forced in anything. That doesn't make any sense.

What I don't understand - or it should be that having anti-apple feelings has an influence in somebody's judgement - that people seem to be confused over this.

This is my first iPhone as at previous occasions I always used Android (nexus) devices and I found the fact I don't need to tweak it, a positive thing. That and the fact that at it is longer supported than some Android flagship devices.

Ten years ago I had the time (and needs) to tweak my phone, nowedays I just want a good (out of the box) smartphone with long support.

It is more than (in Europe) half the price of a Makerbot and that for a printer that is certainly on par with it or maybe be even better. It scores very high in the enthousiasts category on 3D hubs (https://www.3dhubs.com/3d-printers#enthusiast)

Regarding Chinese quality, I don't have the feeling that "Made in USA" is so much better if I see how many problems there are with the Makerbot Replicator 5th generation imo. That version is notorious for having a lot of quality problems.

These days most parts come from Chinese manufacturers anyway... .

Look at the fuel/distance range some are advertising with. I never once got the same fuel/range ratio or the difference is a lot bigger in practice.

They have over 70% of marketshare in the top 5 european countries. They may be technically not a monopoly, with those percentages their actions have a bigger impact and can certainly disturb a market.

> And the reason for why it doesn't make sense is because Google charges no licence money for Android

If I'm remember correctly that was also the argument some used regarding the Internet explorer case or Windows Media player. It was given away free.

Again it isn't about having a big market share, the price of the fact that an OS is flexible. It's about using your position to potentially disrupt a market.

Then again is also not because the EU is making a case that Google will be automatically found guilty or it won't be possible to defend themself.

> Oh, come on, you know that ain't true. They are targeting Google specifically because they don't want to share their Search & News revenue with a dying mass-media industry. And I'm saying this as an European.

European cartels, anti competitive behaviour etc have received the same scrutiny in the past. I think the highest fine is still the 990 million euro's Kone, Otis, Schindler and ThyssenKrupp received and they are European.

The reason why I'm stating this because I'm sick of tired hearing in these kind of discussions that Google only gets targeted because they are American while that is certainly not the case.

The problem is also not having big marketshare but having it AND doing things that may be anti-competitive. European companies have also brought before court for the same reasons.

Btw Apple had also been brought to court for not applying European laws especially regarding warranty's which they lost.

If it is a refurbished model with a new battery that won't be the case. I have had refurbished Apple stuff in the past and those things were indistinguishable from new devices and yes that included the battery.

I've I read correctly that a company like Samsung is a member of one the organisations that are complaining, I think there are other stakes at play then the green card. Especially when a company like Apple is involved. There is a lot to be critical about, but they tend to do their best in those departments.

I was also under that impression, but then again I'm not really a HW guy. But reading this thread (https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=1382...) shows that I was wrong with thinking that 64Bit was only a RAM benefit.

Somebody tested the RPI against another board that also has the Cortex-A53 processor and saw in some cases some dramatic improvements (3x the performance). Very interesting read.

If it is really about education, get small inexpensive devices in the hands of millions, children... does things should be welcomed. Hell some of them attack a guy that wants to experiment with a different open source OS, that seems extremely conflicting with an open platform from my POV.

For me it is the opposite of being "open", seems more a marketing ploy to me.

It is fine for smaller simple files but I have had occasions that with some text files it can be really slow to a point that it is unworkable.

Last I was working on a HTML5 game and I copied the base64 encoded version of a font into my file that handled the assets and boy was that a bad idea. The preload.js was just 49KB but one big base64 encoded line made atom choke... Textwrangler or sublime didn't crimp on the same file and opened it in an instant.

Granted my Macbook Pro is old but a i7 with 8Gb RAM should be able to deal with these kind of situations.

That is why you see not that much pictures of the Atomium in Brussels online or on postcards. But I was under the impression that Belgium will implement it in the future as the situation is clearly ridiculous.

The reason being that they can't handle any form of constructive criticism very well. I dare you to make a comment about the USB design, open hardware vs blob thing, I will bring the popcorn. They have an extremely negative stance against competitors products which I don't understand. If it is real about the children and education I don't see how "competing" products that drives the prices down, are something bad in that regards. For me it is a healthy thing.

Personally since the beginning I've had a very negative vibe due to how to they communicate on their blogs, in comments, deal with people who have different opinions,... . I'm not one bit surprised that in the communications with the lakka dev(s) they made the impression of being unfriendly. You really don't have to be in direct communications with them to get that impression.

But they have the advantage of having a good product which in the end is maybe the most important thing. They make darn good inexpensive hardware.

I don't have particular negative feelings about it (there are more important things) but it is certainly one of the more remarkable differences if I compare it will all the other places that I have worked. My previous employer was even mad if you took soda's from home.

The most choice I ever had was working at Lernout and Hauspie. All the free soda, coffee or even soup that you could possibly think of.

You will always find some (edge) case who can profit from these kind of schemes - an amateur photographer for example with Adobe CC or somebody who uses all the jetbrain tools - but there are a lot of cases that are a different and really don't have any benefits of using SAAS.

In Flanders we have a saying that goes a bit like this: "all small things makes on big thing". The personal problem that I have is that if I would add all those "inexpensive" subscriptions of services it will add up very fast to a point that it is becoming really expensive. I don't buy all software in a single month or can even wait for upgrading if an older version is good enough for me, with SAASS that is not the case.

But I have the same opinion that this race to convert all commercial software to SAAS will be beneficial for OSS alternatives. Personally I would even go as far as donating (or crowdfund) (for the same amount that I would give to jetbrains) to an OSS project, if that means that I would get an alternative that I don't need to "rent".

I seldom need to switch to something else or it should be to design diagrams or imagery. Even code - using extensions to highlight stuff - works relatively well. The only thing I dislike is the table stuff which for me always involves some fiddling.

But to be perfectly honest I'm also thinking of looking into latex. I also use pandoc to convert my markdown files to PDF which uses latex templates if I’m not mistaken. For me personally it works and looks great but the company has invested a lot of resources in branding and creating some-kind of corporate identity.

So now they want all the documentation including the fancy headers/footers and I think the only way of inserting it with pandoc involves creating a latex template and using the fancyhdr (off the top of my head so I could be wrong) package. Definitely something that I need to look into.