Podcasts tend to be available from different sources to extend their reach YouTube and Spotify don't offer RSS feeds, however other services like redcirle.com, megaphone.fm, anchor.fm, and audioboom.com all offer RSS feeds. Even Apple should as it has a set of iTunes extensions for RSS to annotate things like the episode number.
I've been able to find RSS feeds for all the podcasts I listen to.
> As others have stated, plenty of websites have RSS feeds.
It’s a bit of a mixed bag though - whilst some big websites still have an RSS feed, you can’t get the full article text, smaller blogs etc seem to be better in that regard.
Is that really a problem though? I usually want to read something on the original website anyway as RSS is a lot more limited (or at least inconsistent) in what kind of styling and media is supported. What I care about is getting notified of updates to sites/people I follow without having to rely on a centralized gatekepper and RSS does that really well.
The emission scandal is something that VW paid while literally everyone else didn't - they got caught because they installed cheating software and deinstalled it after the test lab, while the others did pretty much the same in the same software which was more sophisticated, as it could somehow recognize the car wasn't being driven in real use cases, which reduced the emissions, to drastically increase once it was driven outside.
So yeah, Ford, Nissan, etc., also did their cheating, but due to some loopholes they are all good :)
IIRC, VWs in the wild would pass emissions tests, as long as only the drive wheels moved and the steering wasn't touched.
Of course, most people drive on roads, so the non-drive wheels move, and most trips involve turns.
Since the emissions tests were conducted on a dynamometer, the average affected car would likely pass. Researchers did tests in real world conditions and found the emissions varied significantly.
The difference is, some people say "VW, never again!", meanwhile they don't notice that all car manufacturers are probably guilty.
There is an old news article that said UK, French and German authorities argued to keep lax emissions testing (e.g. "they should be done while the car is going downhill!"), no doubt due to their car industry lobbyists, but since search engines suck now I can't find it anymore
So basically VW got shit all over not for cheating but for being the lowest dollar, lowest effort, trashiest implementation of cheating that makes a fool out of the regulating agency. That's actually makes perfect sense if you're jaded enough
They're reducing manufacturing costs by producing the same car, and just selling it at different prices based on performance.
I think this is quite common with EVs especially, where the same motors are used in the base and performance models - they do normally add other stuff like bigger batteries etc too, but also cost a lot more than just 600 quid extra.
What I mostly see from EVs is varying the number of motors. You get the manufacturing cost reduction on your motors without having to actually over-spec your base model.
Even this isn't the whole story though, at least at the high end. The Model S Plaid has an extra motor but also uses different rear motors, designed to be more efficient at high RPM. And Tesla puts a lot of emphasis on parts commonality in general.
I have found that there are very few absolutes in life --- so use your best judgment.
In my judgment, European manufacturers have jumped on this bandwagon more than most. Probably out of desperation and necessity --- they can't compete solely on price.
As another example, Mercedes vehicles seem to be good for about 3 years before the planned maintenance (aka gouging) really starts kicking in. I've known people with $10K bills for the scheduled maintenance from a dealership --- for a 3-4 year old car that seems to be running just fine.
"Mercedes-Benz is one of the fastest depreciating car brands in the world!"
For used car buyers this is a boon. You can pick up a nice older E class for a few thousand dollars if you know a bit about what to look for and what to avoid.
Yes, this might make sense if you could do the maintenance yourself --- but this is not at all easy or even possible in some cases without expensive/specialized electronic tools --- and this is all by design.
Something that should be simple like changing the battery is actually an intricate process on some models involving all sorts of resets and nonsense. A mistake can "brick" your car. I know someone who did this and had to have the car towed to the dealership where they were subjected to a good ole fashioned ($$$) reaming --- all for a dead battery.
For me, a 5 year old Mercedes is just not worth the headache --- and again, this is by design IMO. If you choose to buy one for basic transportation, my advice is make sure you have a backup vehicle.
Yes this is more and more true of any car. And yes I'm assuming you can handle at least routine maintenance and repairs yourself. My newest is a W211 which is about 20 years old now. Reliable drivetrain, pretty easy to work on overall, most electronic systems can be at least read if not managed by a generic scan tool such as a YouCanic.
You can find them cheap enough so that if they have a major failure you just scrap it and find another one. If they last a few years, you have a comfortable solid car for way less than making payments and depreciation on a new one.
the EU has literally banned facial recognition by law enforcement across the entire bloc.
HN has terrible EU Derangement Syndrome:
any time its mentioned here, suddenly there are tens of people lining up to blindly shit on it, usually for laws it hasn't actually passed, or literal anti-truths like your comment, despite the fact that it is consistently passing the best tech-focused laws of any major governmental body anywhere, and the proposed laws that everyone repeatedly loses their minds over have never once actually come to pass. even when they released the DMA and DSA, possibly the two most HN-friendly pieces of legislation of all time, half the comments were attempts at criticism, basically seemingly because people here just love to hate the EU, sans facts
I edited mine to add additional observation, leaving the central focus the same. your edit entirely changed the meaning of your comment, changing the meaning of my reply
Incus is fantastic. I think Proxmox is where everyone is migrating to after the VMWare/Broadcom fiasco, but people should seriously consider Incus as well.
When the UK was in the EU, hardly anyone I know voted in the EU elections, and equally they weren't covered by the media. I believe there was so little interest in the EU elections and it felt so far removed from the uk that I'm not sure it really counted as "democratic" (perhaps someone will correct me here?).
I'm hoping voters in European countries feel differently, I suspect not though.
> hardly anyone I know voted in the EU elections, and equally they weren't covered by the media. I believe there was so little interest in the EU elections
The choice about not voting is easily a sign of democracy, than a sign of no democracy. An autocratic system would either prevent people from voting or arrange votes leading to high support.
However there is indeed a problem:
For one the parliament is weak. It has no right if initiative and no right of budget. These rights are with the elected governments of the member states, who control the commission and firm the council. However even those are (if we ignore Hungary and that complexity) democratically elected and can face votes of confidence over their actions (based on national law)
The other big issue are the topics the EU deals with. Those are mostly complex trade related things, where not being an expert or having special interest in a segment hardly interest the people. The "interesting" topics like taxation, health care, education, social benefits, inner security, ... are within national politics. And even topics where EU powers overlap are discussed from national perspective. Which directly leads to the third issue.
EU is multinational and multilingual thing. A commissioner or MEP can give a fabulous speech, but most people only hear a badly dubbed version, partially even with being double translated (first from, say, Bulgarian to German, then from German to Portuguese) which makes it really hard to debate.
Now saying "it's complicated" hiding eyes and turning around is an option, but even Germany itself is too weak to play in the international field against US (especially with the current political situation) or China. If they can't find a common stand, they will not behold against t the big countries. For a few small counties aside, like Switzerland and UK there is some room to benefit from the big neighbor but be special, but Europe falling apart weakens all.
Which is the final point: The EU is the best structure we had in a few millenia where we didn't have all those different countries fighting and going to war, but we're we have defined ways to negotiate, vote and execute decisions. There is lots of room to improve, with different priorities by everybody, but better than other things we had.
I always thought a police state would demand identification at every street corner (perhaps I'm wrong?) and any minor breaking of the law being dealt with severe justice. The UK has always been against a "state ID" unlike a lot of European countries, so I'm not completely convinced the description of "police state" is accurate. In fact I think it's the opposite given people can freely break the law despite cameras being on every street corner.
The UK is basically an end-of-days advanced state: bureaucracy taken to the extreme, with a heavy dose of nanny-state "mind the gap" messaging.
Bureaucracy kills any kind of infrastructure project (see HS2), so don't expect any improvements any time soon.
We do have some nice cities: Manchester, York, Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge. (I've probably missed a few from this list). London feels pretty far from 30 years ago - and not in a good way.
>The UK is basically an end-of-days advanced state: bureaucracy taken to the extreme, with a heavy dose of nanny-state "mind the gap" messaging.
Reminds me the latter three dune novels. Frank Herbert had this idea he was exploring about how the inevitable end-state of society is this sort of stalemate between opposing bureaucratic factions which have become optimized towards preventing their own destruction to the point that they aren't capable of doing anything other than prolonging their own existence.
It reminds me of the Republicans and the democrats in America which have become utterly unresponsive towards their own voterbases because they have already rigged the political system to prevent any viable competitors from displacing them but in general it seems like the whole of western civilization has reached this point over the last 50 years or so, because just about any country which is referred to as 'western' has a set of very obvious problems on the horizon with very obvious solutions being stalled by a ruling class which is concerned with maintaining its own existence at all costs even if it has to bring down the entire nation with it.
> opposing bureaucratic factions which have become optimized towards preventing their own destruction to the point that they aren't capable of doing anything other than prolonging their own existence
This is the best 1 sentence explanation of how it feels like to live in the UK. Every institution feels more catered towards preventing it's end than to a goal.
> I always thought a police state would demand identification at every street corner (perhaps I'm wrong?) and any minor breaking of the law being dealt with severe justice.
Those cameras know exactly who you are, and the tracking device your carry around in your pocket serves as a secondary confirmation.
Checking IDs would be a superfluous and costly tertiary method of confirmation.
> minor breaking of the law being dealt with severe justice
This is the case if you do anything that opposes the governments desired narrative. For example, by saying something “far right”. Multiple years in jail for a tweet.
But I agree, what you’re describing is I think best called anarcho-tyranny: not some (disturbed) utopian inspired police state, but a police state of gritty hypocrisy.
Over here under communist times it was definitely a police state - there were no ID checks, crime was rampant, but everyone could be observed at any moment and be arrested/dissappeared as needed.
A properly designed app would leverage multi threading to place any long running jobs in the background, allowing the user to carry on with other tasks.
You are aware that 'local-first' does not mean 'no-network'. Having a sync mechanism that runs in the background without user notification can be quite disconcerting.
I mean, I did it, I built an app with a transparent background sync. Then I added a special page, 'sync center'.
In reality, mobile devices don't always have perfect network connections. Therefore, when the user is unsure whether the device is in sync or if the sync is in progress but encounters an obstacle, they might perceive the app as unreliable.
I'm in my mid-40's and I'm in the best shape of my life. However it's taken a lot of hard work and sacrifice, that I weirdly enjoy:
* Cooking all meals from scratch (I try and reduce UPFs as much as possible).
* No bread or pasta ever. Fresh non-supermarket bread and pasta is probably OK for you...
* Less alcohol (only on special occasions). Modern no-alcohol beer is actually very enjoyable.
* Lift weights 3x a week. I built a home gym in my garage, with a TV mounted on a wall. It's a great time to unwind, watch YouTube and get fit. It's alone time I look forward to.
* Walk every lunchtime for 20 minutes, rather than browsing the Internet
The key thing about exercise, is that if you don't enjoy it then you won't do it. For me, the alone time watching Youtube or listening to a podcast is the pull-factor. For others it'll be a sport playing in a team.
Food is the major factor in your general health, and we really have fallen into a trap in the Western world with our food habits. Fortunately we have a choice in this regard.
As others have stated, plenty of websites have RSS feeds.