antimidas

Wouldn't say so, loads of people and organisations use it as a pseudo-CDN of sorts AFAIK

Many do, for long term archival at least, but tape still has only 30 years lifespan and has other limitations. As an example, the media wears relatively quickly when in use, so if there's a need to access the data even relatively often optical media would make sense. That's often not an issue in archival though.

I find it funny how whoever originally created this meme somehow ended up using a picture of Macintosh II (or IIx, IIfx) to represent a computer. An over 30 yo mahcine, which while capable of speech synthesis is not going to talk to you without being requested, unless you've configured something very incorrectly.

Feels a bit like a floppy disk still being the save icon; computers are still being presented with floppy drives and a CRT monitor in clip-art and such.

Yep, should've probably clarified that I'm personally not talking about the US. Housing costs are included in HICP (the index in Europe) but not the cost of purchase AFAIK, only the cost of ownership, calculated via more direct means like rent or energy costs.

Should've probably included where I'm from, that being Europe, more specifically Finland. As far as I know our index for inflation (HICP) sourced from ECB hasn't so far taken into account OOHC (owner-occupied housing cost) and has focused more on rents and other costs of living. Proposed roadmaps for changing the official indices would back this understanding, unless I'm interpreting something very incorrectly.

There's some rent controls in place in most European countries, so rents aren't tightly coupled with house prices in many locations. As such, for specific dwellings it can often be cheaper to rent than to own, since rent increases are regulated at least a bit, but cost to purchase the unit altogether is not. In many more expensive cities there's also the issue of units not being available to rent, since the rents don't directly reflect the market value of the rented unit.

Though including OOHC to the calculations will cause some difficulties when you take into account more rural areas, where the value of housing can not only go down, but actually be negative. In rural Finland there are cases where you can actually be paid to get a whole apartment complex out of someone's hands, since the costs outweigh whatever rent you can get out of the place. People are opening shell companies and selling stock in an apartment complex (a peculiarity of the local system called limited liability housing companies, or asunto-osakeyhtiö) to them at a loss, to get rid of paying for upkeep.

No, the first mailed fine would be the payment reminder from the collection agency with some additional fees attached, after which it will move to proper collection. This applies only to parking fines issues by the city/municipality. Private parking spots have a different system, but they usually also rely on just a note on the windscreen.

I think it's part of the Finnish society often resorting to an honor system in these kinds of things. For private operators also due to the fact that previously the fine couldn't be assigned to the car owner, and had to be assigned to the driver personally. Nowadays a lot of places just automatically scan the plates and you pay either via app or a website.

Infuriatingly getting cars towed is also very difficult in finland, and I mean multiple layers of red tape and a few weeks of time spent difficult. Due to the fact that the tower is responsible for any sustained damage, that can be as little as a scratch in wheels or similar, and can't bill the car's owner unless they've been duly notified, it's practically an impossibility for anything other than abandoned vehicles. If somebody else is in your spot you just have to find another one, even if you're paying good money for it.

The ticket stealing thing no longer happens AFAIK, since the PEO just scans the plates to see if you've paid for parking nowadays.

In my home town people used to steal parking tickets from people's windscreens to put on their cars, to make it seem like they've already been ticketed – same thing but more malicious as the ticket will go to collection for the original owner as they had no way of knowing about the ticket

SEO is of course a problem, but it's been a problem for a long time, and there are ways around it for those who know how to seek information. Proper use of keywords, blacklisting sites with known spam information, searching specific sites, mandating specific words and phrases to be contained in the search etc. It's true, however, that information has become less discoverable during the latest decade – at least reliable information has.

While AI-written spam articles and such have been a pain sometimes, gatekeeping content is in my opinion as big of a threat to the proper use of search engines for finding information. As more and more sites require you to log in to view the discussion (social media is the worst offender here) much of the search results is unusable. Nowadays the results lead to a paywall or a login wall almost more often than to a proper result, and that makes them almost completely useless. I understand this kind of thing for platforms which pay for creating the content, e.g. news sites, but user-generated content shouldn't be locked behind a login requirement.

I fear the day StackOverflow and Reddit decide the users' discussions should be visible for only logged-in users. Reddit has already taken the first steps with limiting "NSFW" content to logged-in users only (on new reddit). Medium articles going behind paywall also caused some headaches a while back.

Well, the example was with a tent which is a single layer of cotton between you and the environment, and by no means resembles anything even remotely insulated. That's why it needs a relatively powerful heater to stay comfortably warm. In normal use you have quite a lot of control over the temperature of the heater, mainly with the size and amount of firewood -> effective surface area of the fire.

For static buildings the situation is different, with enough insulation you can get by with almost no heating. Zero-energy building is a thing in Finland as well, and although it has its challenges, it's still possible to keep your home warm with only your body heat in e.g. -40. The main difficulty you'll encounter there is getting rid of the moisture in air, since being that energy-efficient will require having your home almost fully enclosed. You'll also need to be careful to properly limit the moisture getting out from the house, as the dew point will be inside the insulation and any moisture getting out will condense inside, eventually leading to mold.

I haven't actually reached the end game in Frostpunk 1, but at a glance it would require some efficiency improvements and better insulation – and given enough insulation and heating anything is possible. If your people are sleeping under the sky hugging the generator, I'd assume you won't get past the end game. A real-world example that somewhat resembles the Frostpunk world would be people living in Yakutsk, Russia, where they have more of a brute-force approach to the -60 °C temperatures – just burn enough gas to keep your log cabin warm. Surviving outside at those temperatures without protective equipment would be difficult though, especially since most materials won't stay flexible at -120 °C or -140 °C. You'd find it pretty difficult to move around.

Edit: But also, a mandatory "don't quote me on this", as building is my hobby, not my job. I've some knowledge, and some experience, but by no means am I a professional.

It's safe enough, in the Finnish army we occasionally get the tent heater red hot, and as long as nothing flammable touches it or is too close, it's fine. It will radiate heat quite well when that hot, but won't be anywhere close to dangerous if you know what you're doing. In the tent we of course have some water nearby to extinguish the possible flames but still.

You basically need to have it glowing red if you're to keep the tent warm in -15 °C or lower. - 30°C needs something closely resembling the picture posted.

Here's an example, unfortunately hosted on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fjiquty6qz7s51.jpg%3Fwidth%3D1080%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3De4b8083400858eccc1786d7b32b94b759b2bc6c2

In Finland at least, and AFAIK most other European countries as well the law mandates drivers stop if they see a pedestrian about to cross the road. We have "intention to cross the road" buttons too, in some intersections with limited visibility or a lot of traffic – but by no means are you required to use them. From the looks of it crosswalks have the right of way in the US as well.

I can't really understand the assumption that people don't need to pay attention to the road because of some button. In a sensible legislation the driver is responsible for the accident even when the pedestrian is jaywalking unless they literally jump in front of the car from behind a bush or something. If the police rules you had a realistic chance to avoid the collision you, as the driver with a license meaning you've had the necessary tutoring, should be at fault.