BananaTrifleViolin

The hardest part is documentation. 1945 is perhaps easier to “create” an identity following the war, as so many we displaced. But after that it would mean needing to change identity every so often. I’d probably stay in Europe, either in my home country of the UK or maybe even move to West Germany. Both countries did well in the post war 1950s, although not as well as the US. Maybe I’d go to the US because post war may have been an easier time to slip in to the country and then take part in the post-war boom?

I’d start trying to earn money, and put every penny I could into a company I owned and use that to buy stocks and shares in companies I know would do well in the post-war boom. The key is compounding investments to make more money longer term, accepting lower standards of living initially. In the 40s-60s that’d be largely blue chip companies like Coca-Cola, IBM, GE, Proctor & Gamble. Then as new big names of the future came along I’d buy into them - obvious ones being Microsoft and Apple in the 1970s, Google in the 2000s. And of course, probably buy into Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hatherway at the earliest opportunity in the 1960s.

With wealth I’d create new identities - a “son” to inherit the business every 20 years or so. Move around every 10 years or so, maybe between countries to help keep anonymity and to stay under the radar. Unfortunately it could also need a degree of criminality to be able to keep this going - identity fraud but at a low level. Maybe set up a trust, and every 10-20 years be a new lawyer who manages it. So much of that can be done somewhat anonymously and somewhat remotely even in the past.

The aim - if I am to be immortal - would be to accumulate a lot of wealth, spread across multiple countries, to prepare for getting back to today when fore-knowledge runs out. Because not knowing what happens next, all you can do is then try and prepare for possibilities, and making shit ton of money seems like a sensible way to guarantee security and comfort.

EDIT: The other thing to do of course: buy and sell land. Knowing that cities will grow rapidly is perfect for buying up land for later development. And also in many big cities, certainly in Europe anyway, there was a period of suburbanisation with matching collapse of the urban core. A lot of apartments and buildings were sold cheaply as demand was depressed, but then the trend started reversing again in the 1980s though to now. Imagine buying up apartment buildings in London, Paris, Berlin etc. Then all you have to do is live off the income - pay your taxes and no one really is going to ask who owns what, and who exactly is getting the money.

They didn’t miss the “wave”, they discovered it’s just hype and a bubble. They spent a fortune and damaged their core products to try and get in on AI, and have realised it was fools gold that their actual paying customers don’t want. This really sums the problem up well:

According to Velloso, less than 3% of paying users actively use Copilot, even though Microsoft has pre-deployed it directly into the Windows 11 taskbar and across the Office suite.

Out of Microsoft’s 450 million Microsoft 365 user base, the company has only managed to convert roughly 15 million paid Copilot seats. This means a staggering 96.7% of users are rejecting the premium AI features, yielding just a 3.3% paid adoption rate. When viewed against Microsoft’s estimated $37.5 billion quarterly AI spending, this is an alarmingly low adoption rate.

I’m sure I’m like many people - I tried Copilot a couple of times; it’s ok to make an email or even document text a bit more concise, but that’s really it. I don’t find it useful; I do all the actual work and then occasionally get an AI to help make it a bit easier to read very similar to a spell check and grammar check. It’s not good enough to do anything else; it bullshits and is error ridden and like all the AI I’ve tried it’s really plateaued. I just really don’t see where the value in that $37.5bn spent by Microsoft is.

I certainly wouldn’t pay for copilot myself. Instead I object to it being rammed down my throat at work, and Windows 11 just being generally awful but not improved. Microsoft are finally making the right noises but the damage is already done.

No, it has better frameworks to regulate local companies but seems to give a free pass to international conglomerates that come in and avoid tax by off shoring it in other EU states. The EU has allowed the US tech companies in on an uneven playing field and they have obliterated EU tech companies, with Ireland in particular taking the proverbial by enticing them with low taxes to benefit it’s own economy.

This was also perhaps tolerated as it was believed the US and EU were close and Europe benefited in other ways from the open trade with the US. Now it looks very short sighted and foolish. When Europe does try to regulate the big US tech companies, the US - not just Trump - objects and undermines it.

Which “British research firm” labels them a loophole?

The paper is from the European Parliament Research Service, which is an in-house EU Parliament service. And the “briefing” they published has a section titled “A loop hole that needs closing” that starts “Some argue that this is a loophole in the legislation that needs closing and call for age verification to be required for VPNs as well”. The words “Some argue” are a hyperlink to a South African news article / opinion piece by some random journalist who writes in a slightly snarky way about VPNs allowing people to bypass the Online Safety Act.

So the TomsHardware article is nonsense - it’s an EU briefing paper which seems to think a random south african opinion piece counts as “research”. No British research firm, and in fact no real research at all - just crap layerd on crap and making it’s way into a crap briefing paper. If this is the quality of the information been given to MEPs, EU citizens should be worried.

Links:

• The briefing paper: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2026/782618/EPRS_ATA(2026)782618_EN.pdf
• The linked article that is being called “research”: https://htxt.co.za/2025/08/the-uk-seems-to-have-just-realised-that-vpns-are-a-loophole-in-age-verification-measures/

So you say a computer but what do you mean?

Do you mean a laptop? If so, I’d go on ebay a second hand laptop; the more powerful the better but be aware you won’t get much power for $150.

Do you mean a PC? As in you have a display (including a TV), and a keyboard and mouse? If so get a 2nd hand mini PC. There seem to be a lot available on Ebay that are within $150 and decent enough spec (8gb Ram, multicore processor albeit older ones); you will in theory get more bang for your buck for power as you’re not paying for a screen and peripherals. Reality can be a bit more random between PCs and laptops.

Or you could get a SBC (Single Board Computer) like a raspberry pi 5 and case, or Orange Pi 4 and case. Storage would be an issue so you’d have to also get an SD card or budget for an external drive if you want better performance. This may be a decent route to go, as it’s a fun project and can be reused for something else (like a home lab/server set up) if you decide you want to buy a more expensive laptop once you’ve tried Linux.

Any of these option, you will be able to run Linux including Fedora. But bare in mind that if you get a lower spec device like an SBC you may need to use a low powered desktop environment like XFCE or LXQT - this will run fine but won’t be as slick as MacOS seems. That said, I had KDE Plasma running fine on my Raspberry Pi 5. While a second hand laptop or mini PC with enough RAM and a decent enough CPU should be fine with KDE or Gnome.

Whatever happens, don’t expect as slick an experience as a Mac book when only spending $150 on hardware. That said, it should be decent enough to get a feel for linux.

Do you have basic security like 1 email is a unique account, and the email needs verification before an order can be placed? Because that simple step will be rate limiting for the attackers but normal and expected for real users.

Also could be worth considering using a dedicated payment processor to handle things. It adds overhead, but so does fraud.

No not “too woke”, don’t apologise for calling this bullsh*t out. People make lots of excuses for him but he settled one case; he was aquitted in one case but further people have made accusations - supposedly 10-15 (including a family with 5 children).

The Michael Jackson biopic is definitely a whitewash; it’s produced by the estate that has a vested interest in protecting his financial legacy. It was going to try to cast doubt on the Chandler case but settlement from that case actually agreed no movie representing the family could be made by Jackson or his estate.

It’s not woke to find this disgusting.

Windows is in no way free. Every new Windows Laptop and PC comes with a license; when you pay for the PC part of that money goes directly to Microsoft.

Microsoft made upgrading to Windows 10 and 11 “free” for those on older hardware who already had paid for a license because they wanted to move people onto the latest versions and stop supporting the old versions. At the same time they’ve been harvesting and selling users data to make even more money.

They are not trying to “kill” Windows, they are trying to change it into a cloud based system too so that you do have to pay a subscription to use it. They want new PCs and Laptops to be essentially nothing more than thin terminals, using your hardware to support their cloud based system but not actually owning any of the software at all.

But they are less bothered about the absolute revenue Windows makes now, and more bothered about making it a walled garden they control and which up-sells you to all their other subscription services under Office, and Xbox.

There are two elements to this - the system and dollars. The systems are CHIPS (used for clearing, which is in US Dollars) and SWIFT used for interbank communication. Russia was severely cut off from both. Countries can trade in any currency they want, but the international system is standardised around the dollar and CHIPs and SWIFT make it fast and efficient.

Lets say Russia wanted to buy $50m of oil from UAE. It would involve a Russian bank and a UAE bank handling the money and both would have CHIPS accounts. A Russian bank would place an order via SWIFT for $50m to the UAE bank via its CHIPS account. The money would be transferred to the UAE banks account and out to the UAE. This seems pointless for 1 transaction, but actually there are many 1000s of different transactions happening every day in different directions, and the way clearing happens instead of moving $50m from one bank to another, it will look at all the other transactions both banks are making with everyone else across the day and just move the correct overall amount out.

So $50m does move from one bank to the other, but it’s part of all the other transactions going on making it simpler for both banks. For example maybe at the same time the UAE bank is transferring $30m to another bank in another country; so at the end of the day it’ll get $20m from CHIPs.

When Russia was cut off, there weren’t really other good routes to make that trade. Also people don’t want Roubles. So normally Russia and Russian banks buy and hold Dollars, and use that when they need to trade. Russia was locked out of this, so it now had to buy $50m of oil but using Roubles which the UAE bank didn’t want or need. This means either Russia had to find other ways to get the $50m or it paid way more in Roubles than the $ amount to buy enough Dirhem so that the UAE would accept the money.

However, as you rightly point out - why would countries be so reliant on the $ and the US like this? Up until now, people trusted the Dollar and the US to keep the system open and functioning. But first the Ukraine war sanctions and now certainly the Iran war have shown to the world that the Dollar and current systems are entirely under US control. Even though the EU was against Russia in the Ukraine war, they have also been moving to put in new systems so they’re not over reliant on the US systems after seeing what happened with the CHIPS/SWIFT sanctions. Those sanctions were really seen as the “nuclear” option when it happened, and people never thought anyone would actually do that.

Now the Trump is again emphasising how reliant the world was on US stability, and US stability is seemingly gone. Tarrifs, threats to invade Greenland, disparaging allies, and Iran - all have shown that the US is unreliable and unstable. So now the EU and many other countries (including China) are accelerating the process to move away from being so reliant on the US Dollar and the USA. It will have huge consequences for the USA and the world, and even if the Iran war ends tomorrow and a decent president is elected in 2028, the damage is done. No one trusts the US political system any more - it has been shown to be unstable and capricious, and entirely dependent on the whims of the US president. The supposed “checks and balances” are non-existent: the courts and congress have done nothing to stop this mess. So everyone is reducing their “exposure” to the risk of being too reliant on the USA and it’s financial systems.

It really doesn’t matter any more if the Democrats win congress and the white house. It will just be seen as a period of calm before the next Trump comes along. We’ve already had that once with Biden coming in after Trumps first term, and Trumps second is even worse. And it’s not about Trump specifically - he’ll be gone in a few years, but the world has been shown that any nutter in the white house can do what they want, plus the Republicans are clearly bat-shit crazy. And whats to say the Democrats don’t also put someone bat shit crazy into the white house in the future? All trust in the US is gone and it can’t be rebuilt.

I wonder if the world will ever standardise to one or the other?

The . for decimal separator is used in English, as well as China and India but apparently that is only 35-40% of the global population. The , is used for 60-65%. Although the figures may not be accurate as a lot of countries seem to use both, with . used for international business, and internationally published science tends to be published in English?

Probably never be standardised as it’s probably too difficult to switch now? 1,000,000.00 and 1.000.000,00 are clear because of the use of three 0s for thousands etc, and two 0s for decimals. But 1.001 and 1,001 are much more ambiguous and would definitely need context as to which system is being used - is it 1 thousand and 1 or 1 and one thousandth?

A few reasons. One is there isn’t much flat land; most of it is hilly and even mountainous and covered in thick forests. The flat areas are occupied with farms and towns but the space is small and not enough for big cities to grow. The hills and mountains are heavily forested and there has never been a big enough population to need to encroach on them. It’s also not great for building and farming, unless grazing animals.

The other big reason is there are no natural deep sea ports in that region. It’s either marshy or the estuary of the river Colombia. Small fishing towns would be fine, but not big industrial ports that drive city growth (or did in the past). Meanwhile, Portland sits further back up the river with plenty of flat land and access to the water, so makes a natural port. And Seattle sits on the bay further north and is coastal, and a good port.

The dynamic got set up of big cities further back, and those areas never really grew. Once the land became part of state forests, then that restricts growth even more.

EDIT: Here is a topographical map showing in blue the flat land: https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/world/?center=38.54817%2C-119.79492&zoom=6

Tortoises are Turtles, but not all Turtles are Tortoises.

This isn’t an English thing, this is a taxonomy thing. It should be the same in any language, just with different words used.

And we were right.

In all honesty at this stage it’s not that exciting. They’re hyping up people going further from the earth than ever before, which is technically true, but astronauts have orbited the moon before just not quite as far in absolute distance.

So this is mostly doing something done before in the 70s. Rocket launches, grainy images of the moon from close up, photos of earth from near the moon and astronauts floating in zero G isn’t new.

I don’t blame you for not getting excited to watch long videos where not a lot happens very slowly, or reading press coverage which is brutally honest largely fluff.

The ultimate goal is exciting, but that doesn’t mean every step on the way is exciting. I suspect the first moon landing will be of more interest, then the next one will not be, even though the landings are a stepping stone to Mars.

For comparison, prices near me in the UK are £1.55 a litre which is about $7.45 a gallon.

Sim City 4 is the best version of the Sim City games, and is 75% off on GOG right now, $5 / £4.

Cities Skylines 1 is the best modern city builder, 3D and a lot of fun plus well designed. But only really worth it when it’s on sale; lots of DLC and overpriced as a package when not on sale. Avoid Cities Skylines 2 - it’s just not fun and hasn’t been fixed - maybe they will one day fix but I doubt it 2.5 years in…

True but at the same time bees help spread pollinating plants - it’s a two way relationship. They may be commercialised for crops, but they will go to any plants in range and contribute to their spread.

So a method of increasing bee populations may also be helpful in spreading wildflowers and speeding up rewilding efforts.

In addition dramatically increasing bee populations may help resolve issues with pollination such as in some regions of China where damage is so bad that hand pollination is needed for crops. Restoring bee pollinators in those areas may increase crop yields, which in turn reduces the general pressure globally on expanding the use of fertile land for farming.

So while crop/pollen diversity is certainly very important, this kind of research still has potentially big benefits for the environment both in the fight to rewild and slow the spread of land use being moved to farming.

Native English, very basic German from school.

I want to learn another language but can’t decide which.

I love The Net, it’s a decent thriller even if janky by todays standards. I saw it as a kid some years after release, and the tech side of it was absurd even then. But the core plot is basically Hitchcock like, and Sandra Bullock is good in it. If you can let the silly tech side of things go (it was made when the Internet was a new concept even to users, so it does get things wrong), it’s actually a decent enough plot.

Tech seems to often seems to follow the Pareto Principal of 80:20 split; where one company dominates and gets at least 80% of the market share. In tech its often more extreme and 90% domination often occurs, and is even expected by investors.

It’s debatable where this is cause or effect - e.g. whether tech would naturally move to such dominant splits or whether this is actually the effects of bad regulation allowing monopolies to form. I personally favour the latter but thats irrelevant.

So in the space of “forums” Reddit has taken a dominant position. In some ways it gets away with this because it’s regarded as “social media” and as such is no where near dominant, with Meta dominant (Facebook, Instagram) and big players like TikTok etc. But in terms of the forum style discussion platform it really is dominant. It’s so dominant that people who host communities on there seem to unquestioningly believe Reddit when it says it owns them and all it’s content.

Lemmy, MBin, and PieFed show that actually anyone can host their own instances of Reddit like forums, but Reddit does still dominate as a single location hosting and controlling lots of other peoples content.