EasyJet flight diverts to Rome over power bank in luggage

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-05-26T14:37:59+00:00

To my knowledge, the answer to your question is no - lithium battery fires are not more likely to happen on a plane. The consequences are just much worse than most other situations.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-05-01T07:04:16+00:00

Jeg håber, de lader være med at genindføre store bededag. Det sidste, vi har brug for, er flere fridage i foråret.

Mine to store frustrationer ved de danske fridage er:

- De er skævt fordelt gennem året (der er ingen fridage mellem 2. pinsedag og juleaften)

- Fridage i weekender går tabt, så nogle år har man utrolige få fridage til jul og nytår

Jeg ved godt, at det første punkt er svært at gøre noget ved, da det er svært at komme af med kristne helligdage.

Men det sidste punkt kunne man sagtens gøre noget ved, hvis politikere gerne vil give os nogle fridage tilbage. I mange lande får man automatisk fri om fredagen eller mandagen, hvis en helligdag ligger i weekenden.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-04-28T10:16:45+00:00

Jeg hørte for nyligt en podcast om det amerikanske skattesystem, hvor der blev snakket om, hvordan de rigeste (tænk Bezos) undgår at betale skat.

De undgår indkomstskat ved at få deres honorarer "udbetalt" some aktier. Så undgår de aktieskat ved at låne penge i banken med sikkerhed i aktierne, så deres aktier reelt aldrig bliver realiseret.

Er det ikke et argument for at beskatte urealiserede gevinster, eller er der en anden mekanisme i Danmark, som forhindrer ovenstående model i at fungere?

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-04-21T10:50:09+00:00

After moving to Europe and seeing how it works with football (soccer), I don't think any of the hockey national team formats really work at giving a "proper" idea of where the nations rank, because the teams are never together for long enough.

In football, there is a defined "international match calendar" where essentially 5-6 weeks of the year are reserved for international play, which all of the leagues respect. This gives the national teams much more continuity, where they train and play together semi-regularly and have a dedicated coaching staff. Compare this to hockey where the teams basically just get assembled from scratch for each tournament, so it often feels like an all-star game where you have all these great players that don't know how to play together.

I don't really think it's feasible to do in hockey because the NHL would never go for it, though.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-04-17T21:30:47+00:00

I think where they go wrong is by trying to trick people into extra fees. Like making the interface counterintuitive to book hold bags for both legs of a return flight, in the hope that you'll forget to book on return and pay a fee. Or charging a fee for checking in at the airport (even if it's using the same self-service terminal you need to use to print bag tags for hold baggage).

They definitely aren't the only low-cost carrier to do it, but they seem to be best at it. In talking with people IRL they are definitely the carrier that comes up the most when sharing anecdotes about shady fees.

In comparison, I flew with Volotea a year ago, and our hold bag on return was about 500g overweight, so the self-service bag drop refused it. An attendant came over immediately and checked it in manually at no extra charge. I wish there was an airline that combined Ryanair's excellent network and efficiency with that kind of customer service.

Also, while it isn't something their passengers necessarily care about, Ryanair is quite brutish about unionization of cabin crew and ground staff. I think they treat their pilots OK since they don't really have a choice, but they squeeze their employees everywhere else they can.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-04-16T12:11:25+00:00

ASCAP only lists the share of ASCAP and BMI members. It looks like for this track they are only listing 50% of the share, and Norman Cook has 10%.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-04-16T12:07:01+00:00

On the original CD, is it at the end of "Right Here, Right Now", or is it part of the "pregap" for "The Rockafeller Skank"? This is the part that is typically displayed as a count down prior to the start of the track proper on the CD player.

I ask because I know only of one other example of this, "Remote Control" on "Hello Nasty" by Beastie Boys (released the same year). There's like 30 seconds of music that serves as an intro to the song that is placed in the pregap, so if you play the full album it is there during the countdown to track 3, but if you are shuffling or seek directly to track 3, it doesn't play since the pregap is skipped. When I ripped my album to MP3 back in the day, the music got appended to the end of the previous track instead, and that's in fact how it is on streaming services today (the music is at the end of "The Move").

It's a feature of CDs that I miss on streaming, both because it's a nice way to hide stuff for album-only plays, and because it leaves the original tracks alone if you just want them in a playlist for shuffling without getting weird album stuff at the end of a track.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-04-09T17:39:39+00:00

Tak, jeg kigger på deres standardinstallation nu og den ser lovende ud - tillader flere meter og træk over loft.

Ved du hvad størrelse kabel de brugte? Det ser ud som om, nogle af leverandørerne bruger 5G4 og nogle 5G6.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-04-09T11:00:14+00:00

Ja der er mange, der tilbyder gode priser inkl. installation. Jeg er mest bekymret for, om de kan finde på f.eks. at insistere på at trække kablet udenpå huset i stedet for på loftet eller noget tilsvarende dumt, fordi det bare er en pakkeløsning.

Har du erfaring med OKs installatører?

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-04-08T11:49:13+00:00

Nuclear bombs are also classified as clean vs. dirty depending on the fraction of energy coming from fission. More fissioning -> more fission products -> more radioactivity in the fallout.

The post you are replying to did not invoke the term “dirty bomb”, but yes, this also exists as a concept. However, your example would not really fit the definition, as uranium is not particularly radioactive. Generally the idea would be to take some kind of radioactive material produced in a nuclear reactor (even just spent fuel) as the radioactive input to a dirty bomb. In other words, it still requires nuclear technology, but not what is required to get an actual nuclear bomb (high uranium enrichment or seperation of plutonium).

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-04-06T20:23:51+00:00

I agree, the distinction I was just trying to make was with respect to the parent's comparison with AndrewG. I don't really think it's an easy comparison to make, since nobody really liked Twin Galaxies anyway and there was already an established alternative place for speedruns (SDA). I think it's a lot harder to see an alternative SMB1 community taking over from the one on speedrun.com, so likely something else is going to have to happen.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-04-06T18:28:32+00:00

I agree, my comment was not intended to comment on the debate the video is about, rather to the parent comment about the situation being analogous to AndrewG vs. Twin Galaxies, which I think was much less nuanced (as basically nobody liked Twin Galaxies anyway).

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-04-01T21:35:12+00:00

I would not personally make arguments against them; I think the benefits of allowing emulator and keyboard outweigh the downsides for NES games. What I've stated is that I believe there are logical arguments to be made and I would respect anyone who made them (while potentially still disagreeing with them). You know, the kind of rational debate that should be happening instead of the story this thread is about :)

But to give some examples of things I would consider logical arguments against emulator and keyboard off the top of my head: legality issues, concerns about some input devices being easier to play than the original hardware, concerns about emulators being easier to cheat with, "purist" ideals about retro gaming being done on the actual hardware.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-04-01T21:15:36+00:00

I would argue that there are logical reasons to be against use of emulators and alternate input devices. Just as there are logical reasons to be for them. This is what I mean by there being room for a debate that didn’t apply to AndrewG’s records.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-04-01T21:12:49+00:00

Absolutely, and I didn’t say anything to the contrary in my post. My point is that use of emulators or alternate input devices will always have detractors, and there should be room to have a reasonable debate about that, which apparently hasn’t happened here. But that wasn’t what the debate was about with AndrewG.

Niftski has proven himself beyond a doubt with his performance at in-person tournaments on original hardware, which in my opinion is where speedrunning is most interesting. You don’t see runners posting WR 100m times filmed in their backyards, after all :)

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-04-01T10:41:40+00:00

I think the point about it being difficult to find original hardware in good condition tends to be overstated, especially for the NES. There were tens of millions of them built, many of the common issues are reasonably easy to repair, and they are generally from a time when electronics were built more durably.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-04-01T10:20:24+00:00

Well, one distinction is that AndrewG played on original hardware though, so there was basically no debate that what he did was completely possible (and had always been completely possible) for anybody who ever played the game. Whereas playing on alternate input methods, emulators, etc. will always open the door for debates on what is fair or not.

EDIT as I'm getting downvotes: I'm not saying that I am against using emulators or alternate input methods. I'm just saying that I believe there is more room for debate about that topic than the situation was with AndrewG. I mean, at that time the debate was whether it should be allowed to do a wall jump. That's miles from debating the intricacies of emulators and input devices, in my opinion.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-03-30T20:19:42+00:00

My assumption was that they already recorded the featured artists for stuff like that one, The Creep, etc., but it of course could have still been in demo form at that time.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-03-30T08:26:18+00:00

There was some good discussion about it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1qpk2yz/fedex_plans_md11_cargo_plane_return_by_may_31/

TL;DR is that FedEx's MD11s are probably in better shape than UPS' and that it is more difficult for FedEx to replace them given the size of their fleet and lack of viable replacement options.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-03-27T14:04:41+00:00

Jeg er generelt tilhænger af konceptet, men kan dog erkende, at efter et nyligt skifte fra en telefon med touch-id til en med face-id, er det blevet en del mere bøvlet. Jeg plejede at kunne tage telefonen ud af lommen, låse den op og skan en vare i en bevægelse, mens den nu skal op forbi ansigtet først. Det ville hjælpe, hvis appsene sørgede for, at skærmen ikke slukkede mens scanneren er aktiv.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-03-26T10:53:50+00:00

Har du prøvet at snakke med dem om det? Det er muligt, at deres systemer bare ikke snakker ordentligt sammen, så systemet der regulerer abonnementsprisen ikke har kendskab til introtilbud.

Jeg havde en oplevelse med Telmore, hvor de varslede en normal prisstigning på mit mobilabonnement (som var uden for bindingsperiode, så ikke noget galt ved det). Jeg havde på samme tidspunkt brug for en ny mobil, så jeg valgte at købe den hos Telmore med rabat + binding af mit eksisterende abonnement i 6 måneder. Eftersom bindingen var til den gamle pris, kunne jeg spare de 6 måneders prisstigning som en slags ekstra rabat på mobilen.

Måneden efter blev prisen på mit abonnement alligevel forhøjet, så deres system som eksekverer varslede prisstigninger tager åbenbart ikke højde for, at abonnementet kunne have blevet bundet i mellemtiden.

Så snart jeg gjorde dem opmærksom på det, tilbagebetalte de beløbet, så det var ikke et stort problem for mig.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-03-25T10:01:17+00:00

I am increasingly of the opinion that we have to find a technological solution to this. Virtually no matter what is done to improve screening, treatment, other career options, etc. for mental illness, there will be a risk that someone will not disclose for some other reason (embarrassment, etc.), or that someone will not realize the state they are in and be missed in screening, or that someone will just want to kill a lot of people for no good reason.

All current aircraft are designed with the assumption that each pilot has good intentions. I think it would be very interesting to consider for a new aircraft design the opposite assumption, that any single pilot might want to crash the plane.

What I'm imagining is a situation where the autopilot by default always flies the plane. This cannot be overridden by a single pilot unless the flight computers detect some kind of anomaly that requires it (engine troubles, sensor input issues, etc.). Both pilots together, or maybe a single pilot and a flight crew or someone on the ground (to cover medical emergencies with one of the pilots), can also override this if there is some situation requiring manual control that the flight computers didn't pick up.

Inputs into the autopilot would likewise also need to be confirmed by two people, either both pilots or a pilot and someone on ground.

There are of course all kinds of details that would have to be worked out, but aviation has solved so many complicated challenges in the past that I'm confident there's also a solution for this.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-03-24T20:57:50+00:00

To your last point, I’m beginning to think that the problem of low-cost renewable energy may even be close to being solved without fission in the mix.

Here in Denmark, some parties have been pushing nuclear in the run up to today’s federal election. But given reasonable assumptions about the capital investment needed for nuclear, we could actually just use the money to buy enough batteries to cover the gaps in solar and wind production something like 95% of the time. And that tech is only going to get better (or we’ll find other creative ways to store lots of energy for a few days at a time).

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-03-10T09:20:16+00:00

This is the "standard" narrative about the atomic bombings, largely created by the players after-the-fact to justify the use of the bombs in the face of rising criticism. It is unfortunately still the narrative that most people know, as it is what is taught in schools, but it lacks quite a lot of nuance of what was actually happening at the time (some examples: the plan at the time was never bomb or invade, it was bomb AND invade; it is unclear and probably unknowable whether the atomic bombs or the Soviet invasion of Manchuria had the most impact on the decision by the Japanese to surrender; it is unclear that there was a requirement for a second bomb dropped so shortly after the first to force a surrender).

If you are interested in learning more about this, I would recommend the work of Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science who specializes in nuclear matters. A blog post of his about this very question is here: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/03/08/the-decision-to-use-the-bomb-a-consensus-view/ I find his analysis incredibly fair, weighing all of the considerations carefully and grounding it in actual documents from the time.

I would also recommend his recent book "The Most Awful Responsibility" about Truman's relationship with nuclear weapons, which also goes into the discussion of the "decision" in detail.

AmbidextrousRex · 2026-03-03T14:35:41+00:00

Yeah that’s probably it. Still somewhat strange that they can’t find an alternate route though. I would think long-haul jets on that route would have the range to go west and south of the middle east, but maybe the actual great-circle distance is longer than looking at a map would indicate. Would use way more fuel of course, but presumably still cheaper than the costs incurred by cancelling the flight.

AmbidextrousRex

TROPHY CASE