Additional Information (absolutely worth a read): How 3M Discovered, Then Concealed, the Dangers of Forever Chemicals

If there is life out there, it would be rather unspectular. It would exist in the form of microbes, probably not even visible by the human eye. There are theories that suggest that there is a high chance of life on Enceladus.

One of the reasons that life could develop into complexity on Earth is that it could develop over the course of millions of years relatively undisturbed. There were no outside events like supernovae that swept Earth out of exsistence. The Primordial Soup could be cooked long enough to result in complex and intelligent life forms. Other places in the universe probaply have not that advantage, so that the development of life didn’t come that far yet.

I suspect that there is a higher chance that life in other places of the universe will be tainted by humanity than the other way round.

This is a 1972 documentary about the life in the year 2000. It is in German, but English subtitles can be set up in the video settings. It turned out to be a bit different, but some predictions back then came to reality.

It looks like a male specimen of Tegenaria domestica. Its habitat spreads over Europe, Asia and Northern America. They are harmless to humans.

it’s generally super weird how everyone tries really hard to convince you that you are wrong about it

My theory is that (volontary) childless people are less predictable to others. If you only have to take care of yourself, you need less resources (read: money) for that. An employer that knows his employee has children to care for can be treated worse in terms of working conditions and salary/ wages, because the employer knows that this employee can’t afford to quit the job, because of the responsibility for the child(ren).

If an emloyee is known to have no children, it makes him unpredictable. He could get up after a good yelling at the workplace, say “fuck it” and leave. He only has to take care for himself. Also, that employee can accumulate more money since it has not to be spent on the needs of children. That means, the employee has a bigger and longer lasting financial cushion.

Something similar applies when credits/ loans have to be paid. Having debt is a considered a “good” thing, since people are less prone to quit their jobs. On a personal level, the goal should be to become debt free as soon as possible. Not only it will result in financial freedom, it will also enhance your “fuck-it-ablilty”.

Another theory for those convincing people is that they envy your lifestyle of tranquility and spontaneousness. These people have been bullied into having children by their peer groups, because “that is the thing to do”, and “you owe grandchildren”. There are so many parents out there who would be better off if they never had children, but their relatives had convinced them otherwise.

A 1991 Ford Sierra that I bought for 100,- from a friend because I needed a car quickly. This car was already promised to be shipped to Nigeria, where Europe dumps all the old cars. It still had 3 months until the next savety inspection, which the car certainly would have failed.

The engine was still OK, but the car had some electrical issues. When using the turn signal first, and then using the brake pedal, all lights and electrical load were going bonkers, resulting in flickering and failure. The car had to be stopped and the key had to be removed in order to switch it off. Then the car could be started again and one could resume driving.

In order to avoid this issues, it was crucial to use the break pedal first, and then the turning signal, right before turning. This way the electrical issues ware not that severe - the issues stopped, wenn dis-enganging the turn signal.

Also, the doors central locking system was not working properly. Only the passenger door was operational. When I wanted to get the trunk hatch to open, I had to unlock the passenger’s door, reach inside to open the driver’s door from the inside. Then I had to walk around to fully open the driver’s door in order to pull the lever for the trunk hatch that is located next to the driver’s seat.

I only had this car for two months. One day I put the car into neutral at a traffic light. After that, there was a strange noise. I put it into first gear and the clutch refused to connect to the power train. The clutch failed, the car couldn’t be moved by its own. It went to the scrap yard.

I would never mix private data with work related data. You should get a second phone for work related things. As pointed out by others, it may be technically possible to have both on the phone without interfering with each other (which also would be more convenient), but keeping things separated physically has another advantage: Data you are handling/ generating at work belongs to your employer. This means that he can demand (problbly backed up by law) to search your phone when things should go south in the future. You don’t want your employer to have a peek at your personal phone, do you? Also, your employer might want you to install tracking/ logging software to make sure you really do the work. By having a dedicated phone for work related stuff your private stuff is out of focus.

Not that I know of. I think they automatically use the mask that works “best” while these codes are generated. I have tried some (free) QR code generators and there is no hint that the mask can be choosed.

If you have Affinity Designer 2, you are able to generate QR codes within the software. No need to sign up for a free one. But when creating a QR code with Affinity, there is no option to choose the mask.

that is cool.

I feel the same. When I learned about them, I used them for easy access (although a third party app was necessary at the time) to certain websites: I have several house plants at home. I made little signs with the latin name of the plant and a QR code that leads me to a website where care instructions are shown (how many times the plant has to be watered, how much of sunlight these plants have to be exposed to, etc.). It came handy sometimes, especially when leafes were turning yellow. Care instructions could be looked up easily.

Also on business cards: On the back side of my business card there is a QR code that - when scanned - puts the contact information into the adress book. This came in handy a few times when you have to work with workers at a construction site.

I think the major breakthrough came with the Covid pandemic, where these codes were everywhere. Also, later phones do not require a third party app which lowers the entry bar to make use of these codes significantly.

What I don’t like is that restaurants start to use them exclusively, as a substitute for a printed menu.

I think that manufacturers of tech products test their products only with a few standard configurations - but in reality there are too many possible combinations of different configurations:

Take a bluetooth mouse for example. Generally, it connects to a computer and it works. Now imagine that you have a different configuration - a logicboard in your laptop that has not been tested by the manucacturer of the mouse or an obscure model of the bluetooth reciever, that also hasn’t been tested to work with that mouse. Your mouse works well in the beginning, but disconnects at random times. You can’t pinpoint the issue, and when you are looking for help online, nobody seems to have the same problems with that mouse.

In this case, said mouse sucks, because it doesn’t function reliably. A different person with a different configuration of their computer (different logicboard, different model of the bluetooth unit) might have no problems at all with the same mouse.

This happens with your returned packages (article is in German, half of it is translated below):

Amazon shreds its returns 08.06.2018June 8, 2018

The “Destroy” shipping method is bringing Amazon into disrepute - is the online retailer really destroying tons of functioning products? The German government is already talking about a “huge scandal” Germany, Pforzheim: Symbolic image of Amazon logistics center The “Destroy shipping method” can also be booked with the logistics service provider

Tons of returns and products in mint condition, including fridges, cell phones, mattresses and furniture, are said to have been destroyed by online retailer Amazon. This was reported by the ZDF magazine Frontal 21 and Wirtschaftswoche. Both media outlets refer to internal product lists, photos and statements from employees. According to these, goods of all kinds are disposed of “on a large scale” in the mail order company’s German logistics warehouses.

Amazon not only destroys unusable products, but also functional and sometimes new items, according to statements from employees. One employee reported that she destroyed goods worth tens of thousands of euros every day.

Clip from 2022, German. Signature quote: “It is not only an occasional [Euro]Palette of Items, it is whole truckloads - in all fulfilment centers, almost day by day.”

Pizza Hut over Dominos.

In my area Dominos is more common, but they are really bad. All of them. We had them delivered on several occasions (over the time of a couple of years) and at least twice the food wasn’t cooked properly. It was warm but the inside was still raw. When complaining, all you recieve is a voucher so you are bound to them as a customer.

Also, in order to cut preparing times short (a fast order and delivery is advertised) they prepare their pizzas in advance: at our local shop they have a prepared pizzas with the tomato sauce already applied to. They literally have a stack of them handy (at least 30 of these stacked up). They just need to put the toppings onto it, depending on the pizza that will be ordered.

When ordered, you recieve the pizza rather quickly, as promised, but the tomato sauce is more stale than their competitors’ pizza, because the sauce was not freshly applied when the pizza was made). Also, they skimp on the toppings. With a little luck your pizza arrives warm and done (read: not raw on the inside).

Dominos pizza is not worth the money - more precisely, it is a waste of ingredients! I refuse to pay for anything from Dominos - my friends know that and therefore I get invited sometimes when they decide on Dominos. This way, at least I don’t waste my money on them.

Pizza Hut on the other hand is always top notch. There are not many of them where I live, but when there is an occasion to have a pizza at them it’s always worth the money. As far as I know they don’t do deliveries - they are more a restaurant than a fast food place here.

I was living with two other roommates and we were moving into another city to live there together as well. Me and one roommate were planning ahead and got moving boxes, slowly sorting out stuff that can be thrown out, and started packing things way ahead of the moving date.

The other roommate couldn’t be bothered by all of this. The day we were moving he started packing his things. We had rented a moving truck for that day and were able to move my and the prepared roommates’ stuff to the new appartment first. Then we drove back to help lazy roommate. If all had been planned accordingly we wouldn’t have had to drive back to pick up a second batch of household items - only for returning the moving truck, and then to travel back to the new place by train.

Unfortunately he had not anticipated that he would have needed moving boxes and it was way too late to organize some. We were moving all of his stuff with garbage bags. They are not sufficient to move things at all.

Moving lazy roommates’ stuff turned out to last several more hours than anticipated. We almost exceeded the deadline for returning the moving truck to the rental place, which would have resulted in having to be charged for another day.

0/10 for moving with garbage bags instead of moving boxes.

You might be lucky: there is a gui availiable for yt-dlp on GitHub. I just looked it up. The descripition reads:

Graphical interface for the command line tool yt-dlp, which allows users to download videos from various websites, including YouTube. It is designed to be more user-friendly and accessible for those who are not comfortable using the command line.

Link: https://github.com/dsymbol/yt-dlp-gui

Edit/addition:

There are online services availiable (for instance https://yt5s.com/en173) that basically do the same as Cobalt.tools. I assume that they don’t put any emphasis on privacy tho.

Yes, this would be an option (that I did not think of). But I assume that it would be easier to download the same file in another file format, as there will be probably an improvement regarding the video resolution (480p versus 1080p or higher).

Warning, I might be wrong:

yt-dlp seems to be operated with command lines, whereas cobalt is a user interface in an opened browser tab. You paste the link of the desired video or audio source into a search bar and you can toggle different settings (bitrate, file format, video output size etc.). The desired file will be appearing as a download into your download folder.

The funny thing is that said .flv files could be played with VLC without any issue at the time I acquired them. I downloaded a bunch of cartoon episodes in this file format back in 2010 (?) when once-click-hosters like Megavideo were a big thing then. I was able to play them with the then current version of VLC without any problems.

Since then there were several updates with VLC and some time along the way it suddenly didn’t work that good anymore. I might add that this file format is not very common today (it was, when Adobe Flash was still around), so today there might be no incentive to maintain any old codecs for these type of files any longer.

When it gets worse with dwindling playback compatibility I probably have to acquire these files with a more recent file format (e.g. .mp4) in the future.

I discovered that VLC isn’t so good at playing .flv files. This are video files that are saved in the Adobe Flash Video container format. I have some episodes from cartoon series which I downloaded years ago. Sometimes there are no playback issues with VLC, but sometimes the audio track is delayed. For this reason I have installed IINA, but I like VLC’s user interface better.

Not discovered in the past year, but in the year before that:

Blender (program for 3D modelling, animation and rendering)

cobalt.tools(web-app for downloading video or audio content from youtube and other websites)

VLC (media player that plays almost everything)