Plenty of opinion pieces and articles with all kinds of biases are posted here.
If you have specific criticism about something in the article, that could be interesting and has the potential of generating curiosity and starting an interesting discussion.
An empty complaint about the bias of this particular article is what I would rather not have to see here.
And finally, as the sibling user commented, this publication is very upfront about who they are and what they stand for, so the bias itself is not hidden in any way.
Selling negative convenience very succinctly describes the issue.
You already have to spend time researching airlines, buying tickets in advance, etc. but now in addition to that there is a completely contrived layer of bullshit I need to know about.
You can extend this concept even further and imagine literal series of hoops that you must jump through to earn “cash back” on your ticket at the end of the flight.
> In dicatorships there is no opportunity to speak out.
There is always opportunity to speak out.
In dictatorships, it usually costs more energy, money and sometimes lives. It tends to culminate in revolutions, and then the system changes.
In censored quasi-democracies like what we see in "the west", it tends to culminate in being ignored and the status quo being maintained or gradually worsened. Alternatively, you may become a pariah and either have to self-exile [0] or suffer years of isolation and torture [1].
I'm not sure I follow the logic. I mean all the arguments are valid when taken separately, but the construct fails me. You mean, the dictatorship is then better because you might die but the survivors can have a revolution? Why couldn't then a democracy have a revolution as well, by exactly the same argumentation? And how's all this black and white thinking, like because democracy is not perfect, dictatorship becomes suddenly acceptable???
First, I don't really consider what exists in "the west" as actual democracies. They are oligarchies or autocracies disguised as democracies instead. They've always been that, only now it's becoming more obvious.
> the dictatorship is then better
No, not at all. But it does have a clear path toward something better. This doesn't make it better, but it is a silver lining.
> Why couldn't then a democracy have a revolution as well
It could, but more frequently what happens are coups - and they descent into authoritarianism. Or the authoritarians get elected.
> And how's all this black and white thinking, like because democracy is not perfect, dictatorship becomes suddenly acceptable???
Is it? Having lived in one and having studied it extensively, I don't think there was a single moment in time since the coup all the way throughout the 21 years it lasted when the people fighting against had doubts about what they had to do and where they wanted to get.
In my hometown there used to be at least 2 shops (yes, shops) that sold bootlegged/pirate software. Mostly games but they had all sorts of business software as well. This was earlier than the 90s.
The shops themselves were not in the software business. One of them was specialised in turntable needles, and it was pretty popular. You had to go to the counter and specifically ask for "the menu" in order to access the "other side" of the business. It was an open secret though, as there was a lot of traffic in the shop for "the menu". You'd choose what you wanted, paid for your copy and leave with a bunch of floppy disks with it. They charged extra for the actual disks but you could also bring your own and only pay for the service.
If you mean electronic music bootlegs, then I don't see why the media or the format is that relevant. It's still just regular bootleg, and it's been popular since whenever copying and selling music was made possible.
> the reality is that a lot of development work doesn't necessarily rely on the strong engineering methodology (e.g. measurement, material properties, tolerances, modelling, etc.)
It's probably true that a lot of development work doesn't rely on those. It's probably also true that the work other kinds of engineers do also don't.
That said, when engineering software systems, those are very important. Measurement: resource sizing, observability; tolerances: backoffs, back pressure, queues, topics, buffers; modelling: types, syntax, data analytics...
There's a whole class of developers out there that are not aware or very good at those. And that's fine. There's a place for them in the market. You don't need an engineer to work on your floor joists or your plumbing. Sure you can have one, but you can also hire a builder or DIY it all yourself.
There's no escape, is there? I'm not even talking about recycling at this point. If metal cans are plastic-lined inside, is there any way to avoid microplastics in drinks? I guess glass, but that's exceedingly rare and some drinks don't have a glass option where I live. Mostly it's sugary soda that does, or alcoholic beverages.
> In fact, 34 percent of the growth in bottled water sales during the past 11 years (from 2012 to 2023) has come from people switching from soft drinks and fruit drinks to bottled water. U.S. consumers now drink an average of 46.4 gallons (176 liters) of bottled water per person, compared to 34.4 gallons (129 liters) of carbonated soft drinks. -- https://wcponline.com/2024/10/01/2024-state-of-the-bottled-w...
PS: To be fair, I switched from the (acidic!) soft drinks to tap water. Almost always boiled water. Despite being comparatively confident in the quality of our tap water, the pipes mustn't be great. According to our city's water supplier, the tests come out classifying the water at their end as "soft" (bordering very soft). Yet on our end, there's a lot of chalk build up in the water kettle. I am entertaining the idea to send a sample of the tap water to a lab.
I researched about this, and the best solution is to get a water softener. These are devices that mix salts with the water that break down the limescale minerals.
That said, most reputable manufacturers and installers of these devices will recommend you have an unsoftened tap for drinking water. The minerals in the water are actually good for you, and removing them could have deleterious effects on your health. Watering plants is generally best done with unsoftened water as well.
> To be fair, I switched from the (acidic!) soft drinks to tap water. Almost always boiled water. Despite being comparatively confident in the quality of our tap water, the pipes mustn't be great.
if you’re making hot drinks, sure, but by boiling, you’re going to concentrate the minerals (and anything else in there that doesn’t like to evaporate, like PFAS)
If you really want to avoid getting anything in your water - even essential vitamins and minerals - you can always distill your water. It’s worse for you though, much worse. That ‘chalk’ in your carafe is just small amounts of minerals you need anyway that come out of solution.
Bottled water has it too.
If they build up to the point it’s bothering you, a little vinegar will dissolve them right out.
My understanding is that soft water is classified as 0-60 mg/L of CaCO₃ equivalent, so there's no such thing as "very soft"). Maybe they're claiming "Moderately hard" is actually soft water?
Of course I can, and tap water, filtered or not, constitutes most of my liquid intake. That said, I also like to drink other things every now and then. Sparkling water, kombucha, the eventual beer or cider...
I avoid microplastics by drinking only water and wine. I was never really one for other types of beverages, so this isn’t very limiting to me. Keep in mind that any closure other than natural cork contains plastic or other noxious chemicals: in theory there’s also metal, wood, natural waxes and rubbers, but they are rarely used without plastic.
Yes, they do. It's not everywhere but I can find them. That's what I mean though, there are alternatives - only fewer and far between.
As another user pointed out, even those still probably have plastic in the lid. That's not great, but at least the lid is a very small contact area, whereas a lining of the entire interior of a metal can is about as large as it gets.
I agree. It shocked me when I first started that you couldn't do desired state automation.
I ended up creating poor-man's controllers in automations where there's a timer, a switch to override the automation, triggers for many different events - like at first start, then when the timer runs out, others - just so it would ensure things wouldn't just get out of what because one event was lost, or an addon was down for a minute, or I had a networking glitch, you name it.
Yes, you are right. There is one more abstraction layer.
Home Assistant Operating System uses Buildroot which uses Docker to run container with Home Assistant Supervisor. And only that container is Debian-based [0].
If you have specific criticism about something in the article, that could be interesting and has the potential of generating curiosity and starting an interesting discussion.
An empty complaint about the bias of this particular article is what I would rather not have to see here.
And finally, as the sibling user commented, this publication is very upfront about who they are and what they stand for, so the bias itself is not hidden in any way.