klausjensen

I have done a lot of line of business work over the years, and I would argue Excel is the perfect tool for prototyping processes.

Almost anybody can use it, it is simple and reasonably intuitive - and most importantly - extremely flexible, so you can change your processes and workflows without much cost.

Then once processes are figured out and reach a more stable state, you can turn that Excel process into something more smooth, custom software or a more advanced tool. And you have a pretty good starting point for a spec for the software.

...And that is the topic you choose to focus on?

Russian officials spew genocidal garbage, stating Ukraine is not a nation, all need to be de-nazified. Russian soldiers murder, rape and execute in the occupied areas, routinely shell and bomb civilians. Torture and murder prisoners of war.

...but God forbid the Ukranians post a funny meme. The horror.

You encapsulate the reaction perfectly, which I have seen from Russians en-masse.

This "NATO expanded East-provocation"-nonsense is getting tiring.

Russia has invaded several of their neighbouring countries - but never ones with NATO membership card. Russian invasion always leaves a trail of executions, torture, rape, murder of civilians, looting - warcrimes en masse - and piles of dead bodies.

If you are a former East-block country, who has experienced what it means to be under Russian rule/control, of course you want to be a member of NATO - because it is literally the only option - unless you want to become a vassal state like Belarus. If the baltic countries had not joined NATO, they would have been invaded as well.

Every single NATO member actively applied to become a member of NATO. The only realistic way for Ukraine to be safe from Russian invasion in the future is NATO membership or similar guarantees.

I pay the high energy prices as well.

The alternative is continued financial support of Russia, which feeds their unacceptable invasion of Ukraine, and the murders of civilians and countless war-crimes.

Increased energy-prices is a price I am willing to pay. If you prefer supporting Putin to save some money, that is your opinion, which you are free to have.

The faster Germany remove the dependency on Russian gas/fossils, the faster it can cut a critical source of income for Russia and their war-machine.

A temporary slightly increased cost of living is a cheap price to pay.

It sort of makes sense - until 2008 (invasion of Georgia). Or at least 2014 (first invasion of Ukraine).

Top German politicians were/are tied closely to Russian interests. Like former Bundeskanzler (chancellor) Gerhard Schröder, who still to this day refuses to distance himself from Putin/Russia. He was literally paid by Putin-controlled entities to lobby Russian interests in Germany/Europe.

The amount of money that flowed from Russia to Germany in corruption and sweet-heart deals is staggering - and I am sure much more will be revealed in the coming years, of what really went on behind the scenes.

Exactly.

Slightly related: I wrote a small converter for a couple of unsupported bank formats (like zen.com) for Xero. https://xeroconverter.com

I don't even know if anybody else ever used it, as I don't track anything at all - but most likely not.

By Skype getting gradually worse with every release. It is mindboggling how it is WORSE than the Skype I used 15 years ago in every way I can think of.

General Major Valeriy Vasilev has ordered his troops to prepare to follow an “important order”. “We have already mined all of the important objects at the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Station…“And we are not hiding it from our enemy. We are alerting them. They know that it’ll be Russian, or nobody’s. We are prepared for the consequences of [taking] this step.”

Acts of a terrorist state

There is no limit to what Russia will do. It truly is a terrorist state.

Ukrainian, not Russian.

I use Pinboard - and I always tag my bookmarks. Then I usually never look at them again.

Apple rejects apps that are just wrappers around a website. :(

Apple will not accept that, unfortunately. :(

I hate installing new apps as well and prefer mobile websites for most things.

So on a new project, we just created an amazing, reponsive web-app.

The most frequent feedback we got from users we showed it to was: "That's awesome! When is the (IOS/Android) app ready?"

Sigh...

Millions and millions of dollars in bribes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_FIFA_corruption_case

FIFA is one of the most corrupt organizations in the world so it is hardly a surprise. Anything is for sale. It is widely documented.

Here is an OK starting point, if you want to dig deeper:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_FIFA_corruption_case

As somebody who has followed Linus for the last couple of years, I have to say I deeply disagree with your conclusion about hating apple and being for sale.

He is not without flaws, but I think he is fair, balanced and very well-intentioned.

This is exactly what lots of businesses do. Trustpilot claim they can weed them out, but from what I have seen, they're noget very good at it.

That is certainly google's fault. :)

Google lets them poison the results.

It is a lot better than a landscape filled with Russian tanks.

It looks like you are right. Sorry for spreading this. It was all over the news, but it seems it has later been debunked as the satirical work of a 3d artist: https://twitter.com/hoaxeye/status/1507595277859180545

I remember the evening news on TV when the first McDonald's restaurant opened in 1990 at Pushkin Square. There was a huge crowd of Russians outside, wanting to try the burger.

It was a sign of a more open world, something resembling an end of the cold war. There was a sense of optimism in the West about a peaceful future with Russia.

It does not matter that McD itself is closing in Russia, but it does tell us something about what the political and security-climate has reverted to.

EDIT: This turned out to be fake - sorry. Leaving the rest of the comment here for posterity.

A Russian restaurant chain "Uncle Vanya" has already filed for a trademark that looks very "inspired" by the McD arches. It is basically rotated 90 degrees and a line is added, so it looks like a "B" - which is like the letter "V" in Vanya in the cyrillic alphabet.

Source:

https://twitter.com/JoshGerben/status/1504082125968007174

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/18/uncle-vanya-...

That is absolutely ridiculous. I love it.

When it looks like Finland and Sweden are going to join NATO soon, you say it is because of CIA manipulation?

I assume you do not recognize the polls in for example Finland, which indicates ~22% support for joining NATO before the Russian invasion of Ukraine - to ~75% now (only 12% against)? This is all CIA manipulation?

I am 100% in agreement with you about the atrocities commited by the Soviet Union, which clearly spills over on how they act today (still raping, torturing, executing civilians etc - and it seems acceptable and encouraged in their military culture).

I would just argue that Nazi-germany's industrial-scale extermination of jews, homosexuals, handicapped etc is still worse. Anyway - it is arguing semantics and definitions. :)

Russia most certainly invaded.

"In response to the deteriorating situation in the Donbas, Russia abandoned its hybrid approach, and began a conventional invasion of the region. The first sign of this invasion was 25 August 2014 capture of a group of Russian paratroopers on active service in Ukrainian territory by the Ukrainian security service (SBU)."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_War#:~:text=In....

If you focus only on the non-jewish civilian population of Poland, then I guess you could argue Soviet was worse... But in any larger context, Nazi-Germany were much, much worse.