YMS

joined 2 years ago
[–] YMS@kbin.social 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

In Germany and Austria, there was a tax on salt for cooking until recently (1993 and 1995, respectively). To avoid that people buy the cheap road salt and use it for cooking, such a bitter component was actually added, usually magnesium chloride (sometimes also capsaicin).
Many German sources still say you shouldn't eat road salt for that reason, so maybe this is still done (though it is of course possible, that those sources are just outdated).

[–] YMS@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

Come on, almost two thirds of DB Fernverkehr's trains are punctual (if you accept DB's definition of punctuality, which allows six minutes of delay to still be counted as punctual).

[–] YMS@kbin.social 11 points 2 years ago

Scott E. Fahlman proposed using :-) and :-( to mark jokes and not-jokes respectively in internet posts in 1982, and they (and lots of variations) have been in use ever since. IBM's Codepage 437 character set (as used by the original PC) had two dedicated smiley characters even before that.
There was no golden age of the internet where there were no emoticons.

[–] YMS@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

US is probably the only country that went back on rail transport. Every other country is taking it as far as they possibly can.

I don't know for other countries, but Germany (that has a decent high-speed rail network, to be fair) had a rail network of almost 55,000 km in the 50s and less than 40,000 today. More than 300 train stations have been closed since the year 2000 alone.

EDIT: sources:
https://interaktiv.morgenpost.de/bahn-schienennetz-deutschland-1835-bis-heute/
https://www.allianz-pro-schiene.de/themen/aktuell/336-bahnhoefe-seit-2000-stillgelegt/

[–] YMS@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A developer evangelist is not a press person, but a developer that gives talks to other developers. I didn't find any specific numbers, but Microsoft probably has hundreds of them. And anyway you wouldn't expect that kind of announcement to be made by anyone who isn't like C-level, in a presentation made specifically for that fact, accompanied by a big marketing campaign, and so on.

[–] YMS@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago

Windows 11 officially requires Secure Boot and TPM 2.0, but can easily be run with just TPM 1.2, and with some effort even without TPM. All the other system requirement increases (like single to dual core, 2 to 4 GB RAM, etc.) don't really play a role for any recently built PC anyway.

[–] YMS@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

But incorrectly quoted as "Microsoft promised...". It was one low-tier Microsoft employee who said it once, in a side note of a conference talk that was not about the future of Windows.

[–] YMS@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago

Besides, if you want to win a complex court case, it certainly helps to have more than a few million dollars, so you can hire more of the best lawyers and let them prepare for longer time. But at some point, more money gets useless, and the stock value of your company isn't even money that you could spend on anything.

[–] YMS@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If you're talking about specific models, sure. But if you ask a group of people "Who's here by bicycle today?" the ones that came with an e-bike would raise their hands, too.

[–] YMS@kbin.social 6 points 2 years ago

Born in the early 80s, the 90s been my youth. Reading through the comments here I realize there's nothing I miss from the 90s. Every single thing mentioned here has either been replaced by something better, or isn't gone in the first place.

[–] YMS@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Bicycle means two wheels, so a motorbike technically is a bicycle, too.
But e-bikes are closer to non-e-bikes than to motorcycles in terms of components, looks and propulsion.

[–] YMS@kbin.social -2 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Well, e-bikes are bicycles, too.

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