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That quote mentions gas only. What about coal, oil, and biofuel?

Record energy costs are a thing. If solar and wind are 'free', why have European energy prices risen so much?

The real-world contra-indicators are the USA, China and pretty much any country outside the groupthink of the G20.

Whilst state interference is a factor, more tellingly they haven't slavishly followed the suicidal empathy of being 'green' and shutting down nuclear and fossil fuel power plants before a sufficient replacement was available.


China installed more renewables in 2025 than the rest of the world combined.

We're talking about historically, up until now. They've continued to bring online more fossil fuel and nuclear plants in last decade, whilst Europe has done the complete opposite. It's only this year that fossil fuel plants are predicted to peak in China. The point being plentiful 'anything' forces prices down, including energy, and China are doing exactly what I said in the previous point: not shutting down nuclear or fossil fuels yet.

For example - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/charting-chinas-evol...

Europe on the other hand, has shut down nuclear and fossil fuels over the last decade and removed a source of cheap energy from the grid. And by cheap I mean, the build costs, are a sunk cost.


> Why is VS code the defacto answer nowadays?

For what I do, there's no reasonable alternative at the moment.

I'm sure someone will correct me, but it's the only editor that correctly (for some definition of correct) allows remote editing and devcontainers:

[desktop OS] -> ssh -> [dest box]

[desktop OS] -> [devcontainer]

[desktop OS] -> ssh -> [dest box] -> [devcontainer]

[desktop OS] -> ssh (jumphost) -> [dest box] -> [devcontainer]

I won't name and shame other editors (or IDEs), but either they simply can't do that, or their performance is absolutely, shockingly, abysmal.


I would rather solve file access at an entirely different level. A filesystem is a reasonable, editor-agnostic abstraction for this, and I can use sshfs to mount a remote directory over SSH in a way that's invisible to whatever tools I prefer to use to edit the files.

If you have a jumphost chain, you can configure that in the SSH config.

I don't know what a devcontainer is exactly, but if it's a container in the sense that it runs a Linux development system, I would investigate whether that, too, could easily be set up for access via SSH or mounted locally through some other mechanism.


File access isn't the same as tool access. You need to run tools on your ssh host as well. And a devcontainer does indeed equal a (docker) container. The name is very specific and describes shipping a full developer environments so that 'you' do not have to install gcc-toolset-15, or boost 1.83, or mold, or python 3.11, and so on.

https://containers.dev/


> File access isn't the same as tool access.

Running tools remotely isn't the same as remote editing, so you'll have to forgive the misunderstanding.

> You need to run tools on your ssh host as well.

`ssh user@remote tool`. Indeed, the tool you run on the remote host could be a text editor in itself.


Interesting. Something to think about. Thanks.

I'm old enough to remember the first attempt at 'mobile underground'. Maybe I've forgotten the name but it was something like BT Phone Zone, though google returns zero relevant results, so perhaps it was called something else. In lieu of public call boxes, BT trialled a base station that was installed in some tube stations (almost certainly Oxford St and Tottenham Court Rd), and with the correct 'wireless handset' as long as you were within 10 feet of it, or thereabouts, you could make a call. I'm sure I remember a semi-circle painted on the ground that if you stood in, you were in range.


Yeah, I think that's it. Thanks.

Whilst I have seen the Rabbit fittings others have mentioned I do remember mention of a "zone phone" and suspect we're recalling the same thing...



Yes, looks like it. I see it was licensed to a few other companies.


Every single financial institution on Wall Street, the City of London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Dubai and so on, uses Python. Very few contribute.

I've worked at a few that use the 'mold' linker to dramatically reduce their build times. Again, very few contribute. In this particular case, I managed to get one former employer to make a donation.

But the list goes on.

Short arms, deep pockets, as the saying goes.


It’s interesting to see everyone advocate for open source software with permissive licenses, then get mad when companies use them.

If python wants to require money for updates or for customers over $X in revenue, they can!

If companies don’t want to donate, they don’t have to just as python contributors don’t have to if they’re annoyed at how it’s used.


very easy way to make bank would be to support extended security updates for old versions of python

a couple of paid engineers could support every previous version essentially forever


The American shopping experience is weird as well. There's a spectrum of supermarkets.

Versus the UK, any US supermarket I've ever visited (I lived there for a couple of years) seemed to have far less fresh food, especially vegetables and fruit, but stuff in boxes was piled high.

Then again, the UK vs. Spain or France is weird, by the same metric, they have even more fresh food than us in supermarkets, and much less boxed stuff.

Geography and having continent sized country probably doesn't help either.


What grocery store chain in the U.S. are you referring to? Every major chain grocery store generally stacks fresh food around the entire perimeter of the grocery store, reserving the aisles for boxed, canned, and frozen food.

You can find dozens of varieties of fruits and vegetables, tons of fresh beef, pork, chicken and fish, milk, cheeses, even bread, in every major chain grocery store in the U.S.


This. Sometimes I hear people saying random stuff about the US and I have no idea what they're talking about. I'm aware of food deserts, but that aside, I could find fresh food in most grocery stores in the many places I've lived in the US. When I say "most", I'm excluding places like Dollar General that explicitly aren't about fresh food.

Which ones are you going to? 90% of what is in a grocery store is pre-packaged processed food. In fact, many grocery stores are starting to sell clothes. The produce sections are small compared to the aisles and aisles of boxed foods, frozen foods, soda, alcohol, and candy. I've never been into a major grocery store in any state that wasn't like this.

Honestly I had the same experience, and I love exploring supermarkets in the US (I genuinely go there after work and spend hours just wandering around). I often found the variety of produce to be really limited, as in, half the kinds of fruit than you would find in a smaller supermarket in Europe. Jack's fresh market, Walmart, Hyvee and local chains.

Is that accounting for just how much bigger the US supermarkets are?

The ones by me, ranging from cheap grocery stores, Walmart/Costco, through premium grocery stores, all have plenty of fresh food available.

They absolutely have aisles and aisles of frozen, packaged, etc; but outside of like specialty tropical fruits, there's nothing reasonable you could walk in for and not find fresh or at least frozen w/ minimal processing.


Food quality and options vary significantly with location in the US. In my city I have a Gucci market that gets super fresh veggies and fruit, along with imported cheeses, fish, very fresh meats, and other low processed food, but at a premium price point. There are also 2 other supermarkets to choose from. If you go an hour away there is one supermarket for the area that is "okay." Go to the next State over and the towns have 1/4 the fruit/veggie options and very limited meat options, all at a premium. The veggies are not fresh, no exotic fruits, and you might not find the cut of meat you are looking for.

Those kinds of gigantic supermarkets do exist in Europe too, you're just not likely to see them as a tourist going around historical city centres.

Less fresh food? Or a similar amount, in a larger building?

Fresh food spoils quickly and often goes around the perimeter as a draw to get people to navigate the whole store.

Shelf stable and frozen foods last much longer, and are what they try to fill the middle of the store with. This can be deceptive in terms of feeling equivalent - all stores are going to have ketchup, but one may have room for two kinds and another has room for 20.


Ive never been in a US grocery store that didnt have 20-30% of floor space dedicated to fresh veggies and fruit.

Where you shoppin’?


I don't see this. The US markets have lots of fresh vegetables and fruits (though lots of processed foods too). There are also lots of healthy alternative supermarkets in most cities.

And huge selection of frozen meals. These I actually found better than expected.

No idea what you're talking about!

I live on the west coast in the US and the sheer variety of fresh produce would put any supermarket in the UK to shame, even Spain. California produces 40% of the nation's veggies and fruits.


The difference can be explained in large part by urban design: many US shoppers need a car to drive to the supermarket and only go there once a week or less. In Europe you live much closer to a supermarket, so you go more often and get more fresh food and less frozen or canned.

Some Americans are surprised to learn that many supermarkets inside cities do not even provide parking, everyone walks or bikes there. People go to the supermarket every day.


That makes no sense. If the average American can drive to the supermarket, they're even more likely to go more often than if they had to walk.

Eh, this is just not proven true by observing what people do though.

When I lived in Europe for a couple months, my first time there I grocery shopped like an American - filled up an entire cart with a week or two worth of groceries and then everyone stared at me when I checked out.

It's absolutely true that Europeans who live in walkable cities go to the market to pick up groceries a few times a week. Americans simply do not, with very few exceptions.

The grocery store density is much higher though. There were at least 2 grocery stores within a 5 minute walk from anywhere I've stayed in a city core in Europe. At least a dozen within 15 minutes.

It's simply a difference in culture. There are plenty of places in the US where you could drive to half a dozen grocery stores within 15 minutes but people simply don't do so. The store sizes reflect this cultural difference too. The average grocery store in the US seems to be 4-6x larger than those in Europe.


>I grocery shopped like an American - filled up an entire cart with a week or two worth of groceries

Is that really how the average American shops though? The majority of shoppers these days are in the self checkout or "15 items or less" lines with only a single basket of stuff, at least in the stores I frequent. Granted, I'm close to a city center but the store I go to is not very walkable


You seem to be talking about a small subset of Europe. I’m sure people in New York have rather different lifestyles than many other Americans.

[shrug]

Your mileage varies, I guess. I used to live with easy walking distance of an upscale supermarket, but yet I did most of my shopping by driving to a different one farther away. Buying groceries with a car is simply more convenient.

Even after I moved out of that neighborhood, it wasn't unusual for me to stop at the grocery store every afternoon on my drive home.


> In Europe

Isn’t a monolithic place. I don’t think there is a non micro-state country in Europe where the absolute majority of people don’t commute by car.

Living outside of dense urban areas without a car is still generally tricky. In quite a few cities there are no large supermarkets in the densest parts and you have to drive further from the center to find one. So not having a car might be tricky


Makes no sense IMHO: produce can last more than a week in the fridge

In what scenarios are they terrible? I hope not every scenario. I've found Codex adequate for refactoring and unit tests. I've not used it in anger to write any significant new code.

I suppose part of the problem is that training a model on publicly available C++ isn't going to be great because syntactically broken code gets posted to the web all the time, along with suboptimal solutions. I recall a talk saying that functional languages are better for agents because the code published publicly is formally correct.


From my perspective - do you even need a database?

SQLite is kind-of the middle ground between a full fat database, and 'writing your own object storage'. To put it another way, it provides 'regularised' object access API, rather than, say, a variant of types in a vector that you use filter or map over.


If I would write my own data storage I would re-implement SQLite. Why would I want to do that?


Not sure if this is quite what you are getting at, but the SQLite folks even mention this as a great use-case: https://www.sqlite.org/appfileformat.html


This release of MacOS is the most retrograde backwards step I've seen Apple make.

To use a famous movie quote: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should"

Just because you have HDPI and opacity, doesn't mean that you have to use it by default, everywhere.


Reminds me of how OSX used to treat opacity in app icons as not part of the hithox. So I'd accidentally click the hole in the "O" for Outlook and it wouldn't open, haha.


Publicly, it's about oil, privately, it's also about China getting a foothold in South America, on the USA's doorstep and denying them a source of cheap oil from the world's largest proven reserve. It's the modern version of the Great Game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Game


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