Bruncvik @ Bruncvik @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

I live in a RCV country (Ireland), and it's got its advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, you can always make sure that your vote will count. In addition, RCV tends to push the final result towards the political centre, with fringe extremist parties getting less popular vote than in other voting systems. The biggest drawback is that once a party gets entrenched near the centre, ir's very hard to dislodge it. Ireland had been governed for over 100 years by the same two parties - sometimes alone, other times (like now) in a coalition.

I still listen to radio on my phone. Wired headphones are required, as they serve as the antenna.

Other than that, I do a lot of running. Given how often it rains, headphones last no longer than half a year, and wired ones are far cheaper to replace. (I do have a pair of wireless Shockz, which handle water very well, but they are not good for city running with high ambient noise.)

I wish my company did the same, instead of the IT giving out to me for running two virtual machines on my laptop all the time...

Thanks; I'll try it. I usually get bread and sparkling water there (their produce and meat quality got so bad I switched to Aldi), but I haven't been looking for baguettes yet.

The meme is also European, from Ireland. That said, I'm more interested which Spar is selling long enough baguettes that they don't fit in a bag. My local shops don't.

I got a steam owen, and it's a game changer. The reheat setting is 10 minutes at 120 C, the food comes out tasting as if freshly made, evenly hot, but almost ready to eat. If I wait for 2 minutes after I pull it out (make a coffee for after-lunch dessert), the food is just right.

The movie is based on the short story All You Zombies by Robert A. Heinlein, and it does a great job preserving the spirit and internal logic of the narrative. When you take that into account, you'll realize how impressive the filmmaking is here. It's hands down my favourite time travel movie.

That's similar to Audible. I can't rate the books I listened to because I downloaded the instead of streaming them through their app. I think it's to prevent brigading and fake ratings.

Just got my first TV since my old vacuum tube stopped working in the early 90s. 55" Sony flat screen. It has gour fixtures for its stands: a pair that's narrow close to the centre, and a pair if you want a wide stance. I didn't mind the wide option, but I appreciated having a choice.

I use Mint, and I found that it's the best distro for introducing my family to Linux. Those who tried it never asked for their Windows back.

I'm close to 50, been running for decades, and still pull over 2k miles annually. Almost all that on asphalt. Haven't experienced any joint problems yet. I credit three things for that. First, modern running shoes are designed to soften the impact, and recently they have gotten ridiculously soft. The extreme cases give you 50mm (about 2 inches) of soft foam under your feet, but even more normal running shoes have advanced foam and bouncy elements in the outsole to soften the impact. Second, proper running form is not rocket science, and most people fall into a decent running form naturally. This form is the most gentle on the joints. And finally, if you are serious enough about running to go the distance where hard surfaces could be a problem, you are already likely to supplement your running with strength training, which further helps to protect your joints.

That was pretty normal. But the angel and venture investors walked away with money. And if the founders were smart or assertive enough, they also made enough money to start a new venture, possibly with less external seed funding.

Having worked in business incubation at a research university, helping researchers find angel investors, I'd like to throw in my two cents:

First of all, the article runs headlong into survivorship bias. For each Bezos or Gates, there are thousands of entrepreneurs with financial backing that went bust. And the vast majority of those who didn't were acquired by larger, established companies before they could even hit the news (in my area, the ideal exit strategy was said to be acquired by Cisco, rather than an IPO). Many of these startups had even more initial backing by the three f's (family, friends and fools).

Now, let's look at those who didn't have financial backing. For such people, there are angel investors. As others in this thread pointed out, one needs to have good connections to find such investors. Good connections are available in most, if not all, research universities, via their business incubators. Universities, however, will retain part ownership of the company (licensing any research or technology back to the entrepreneur), and they are still thinking in the medium term. They are not looking for unicorns, but a steady stream of revenue, so their preferred exit strategy is indeed the acquisition. I'm certain that the very few poorer entrepreneurs who'd strike it rich in IPO were pressured into selling their company. That's why you don't see any examples of a company truly being pulled out of nothing. And don't get me even started at the wasted opportunities where the professor didn't sign the research licensing papers because he'd make a comfortable living keeping the research at the university...

Point of this is that it will be statistically likely that we'll get a few super-rich entrepreneurs, and they'll come mainly from backgrounds where they could secure seed financing. That does not mean they didn't work very hard with the money they were given.

I read it a while ago (still had David Wong listed as the author), and really enjoyed it. Fun read with some good ideas. However, about halfway in I started getting exhausted. The author just throws so much at you, both in content (ideas) and form (language), and the pacing is always hectic, and I just found it too tiring. I have yet to pick up the second book in the series.

Not OP, but I also prefer Vivaldi over Firefox. My reason may not be the same as OP's, but for the sake of discussion, here it is. I simply can't stand having tabs on top of my screen, and I'll go to great lengths to have them on the bottom. On my private computer, I used to use Firefox with Tab Mix Plus, until Mozilla killed support for such extensions. I later managed to get the tabs to the bottom via custom CSS for Firefox, but every few releases the CSS stopped working and had to be recreated from scratch. So, I switched to Vivaldi. On my work PC, where only Edge and Chrome are allowed, my workaround is to work in separate windows instead of tabs, but that tends to get a little messy.

The top three games that started it all for me. They not only introduced me to my favourite genres, but I'm still replaying them to this day.

• Civilization - the first refined 4X game. Manual the size of a book, plenty of strategies and just enough random chance to make each game exciting. I played the series till the fourth one, and I'm still spending too much time with Civ I and IV. I also branched out to Master of Orion, Colonization, Alpha Centauri and others.
• Dungeon Master - A wonderful and challenging dungeon crawler, which convinced me that the best RPG mechanic is party-based first person. This was my launching pad for numerous games and series, in particular Wizardry, Might and Magic, Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore, the Ishar Trilogy and Realms of Arkania.
• Warlords - 80 castles, 8 factions, lots of unit types, magic items and a complex way to fine-tune the difficulty level makes this endlessly replayable. This game launched its own turn-based fantasy strategy series, but it also introduced me to other series I still play, such as Heroes of Might and Magic, Age of Wonders and Disciples.

Honourable mentions:

• UFO: Enemy Unknown - turn-based tactical combat with a good mix of budgeting, manufacturing and research. I also appreciate other series, like Incubation and Jagged Aliance, but I'm always returning to UFO and its successors for the economic simulation.
• Panzer Commander - This game dumbed down historical strategies for me, to the point where I would actually enjoy it. The whole series is brilliant, and I still occasionally replay it.

Radio Garden - Listen to hundreds of radios around the globe (with a pretty interface to find your favorite radio station). Having lived in several countries, I have a list of radio stations I grew to like, and now I can have easy access to all of them.

If you have health insurance, you can get the free EHIC (European Health Insurance Card), with which you get free emergency care anywhere in the EU. Some countries may charge you (me or my family have experience with Germany, Belgium and Czechia for free admission, and Austria where a bill is later sent to you). However, over a certain income the Irish are required to pay for private insurance (if you don't, you get taxed extra), and usually the insurance companies reimburse the costs as they are lower than they would have been in Ireland.

Nothing out of the ordinary, just very long wait times in the emergency room. Earlier this year, I got hit by a car, suffered a concussion and spent 12 hours in the waiting room. I was in no condition to travel then. However, a few years ago my wife suffered a chronic condition, which sent her to A&E trice. The first time, she was in the waiting room for 16 hours. The second time, she booked the first available morning flight to the continent and went straight to the emergency room. It took her seven hours (including the three hours between booking the flight and flying out) to see a doctor. The charge in Irish A&E is €100 per visit; the cost of flight and taxis was €90. We used to say that Ryanair was the largest healthcare provider in Ireland. Not anymore, as the prices went up, but it's still worth it, especially in the case of chronic, un- or mis-diagnosed diseases.

Here in Ireland, it's often faster to go to the hospital emergency department by hopping on a flight to Belgium or Germany than to drive to a Dublin hospital. Before Covid, it used to be cheaper as well.