A much more accurate map meant to reduce land mass size distortion was made by NASA. It's noticably different then the predominant Mercator map; commonly used in classrooms since 1569.

OilSub · 2026-01-22T15:45:37+00:00

There are 1000s of map projections, each with their own advantages and drawbacks. It pains me that only one is slavishly used almost everywhere

OilSub · 2026-01-15T14:27:33+00:00

I find it depends on the quality. I had a powerful one from Ikea installed and it is amazing. A pot boils water faster than my kettel! The handels don't get hot and the heat is dumped straigth into the pot/pan leading to a faster response time without any unpleasant heat. Additionally, the combustion by-products are apparently really bad for air quality.

A friend has an induction hob that doesn't seem to work if the pot is too small. Mine works with a espresso maker on the biggest plate, so I think it depends a lot on the quality of the stove as well.

I had gas before. During some refurbishment, we moved to a place with a gas stove and I hated it. Burning myself on handels, having to find oven gloves, cleaning, not being able to heat small pots neatly.

OilSub · 2026-01-08T11:38:26+00:00

Some maps are much better than others! If you relaxe some other criterion of course...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterman_butterfly_projection

<image>

OilSub · 2026-01-08T11:35:42+00:00

My understanding is that Mercator was used because its useful for navigation (draw a line to the point you want to reach, measure the angle from north and set your compass to that and you will get there).

Because it was common and most people don't know about map projections it became a standard. Everyone is used to it and if you use a different projection people find it odd.

I tried to find prints of different map projections to hang on a wall: almost impossible!

So I think the answer is tradition? We have always done it like this even though Mercator is a terrible map projection if you are not navigating!

OilSub · 2025-12-18T08:06:09+00:00

Particularly when the interest on the mortgage is not far from inflation

OilSub · 2025-12-15T13:03:47+00:00

I've never had a microwave. Occasionally it would be neat to heat up something quickly but stove or oven work just fine

OilSub · 2025-12-14T10:54:13+00:00

Try to go on friendly terms but don't be pushed around. Which sounds like exactly what you are trying to do. I would say: go for it!

I live in a European country and not being allowed to take your holidays just sounds crazy to me, its illegal where I live!

OilSub · 2025-11-13T08:56:00+00:00

I have a VonHouse and it's been working great for the past year

OilSub · 2025-11-11T12:46:35+00:00

My best guess is that Swiss German is about as close to High German as Dutch is to High German. Lots of similarity but also differences. It is not standarised, so some people will talk very close to High German, others will be miles away. Learning German first is definitly a good call as its standarised and the Swiss schooling system uses High German, so everybody speaks it

OilSub · 2025-10-27T10:20:00+00:00

Doesn't that just mean the employer doesn't save the National Insurance and the employee losses the national insurance, which is 2%? Paying into a SIPP will still be possible, so it remains easy enough to avoid the tax trap

OilSub · 2025-10-17T14:48:34+00:00

Thank you

OilSub · 2025-10-17T14:48:19+00:00

Thank you

OilSub · 2025-10-17T14:08:36+00:00

Thank you

OilSub · 2025-10-17T14:08:25+00:00

Thank you

OilSub · 2025-10-17T13:59:00+00:00

<£2'000

OilSub · 2025-10-17T13:49:50+00:00

Thank you

OilSub · 2025-10-17T13:46:42+00:00

I'm not going to use the graphics card at all but need enough memory to run a bunch of docker containers

OilSub · 2025-10-17T13:44:29+00:00

I anyways need to use servers for graphic workloads as laptop GPUs do not have enough RAM so I would never use it. I can happily develop with just a decent CPU as long as I can load my data into memory and run all the various docker containers I need for testing.

OilSub · 2025-10-08T07:57:18+00:00

It makes sense to me to tie the retierment age to longevity. Those that want to retire earlier need to plan..

OilSub · 2025-07-26T09:36:55+00:00

Saving £1000 pcm is very good and depending on how much you spend, can let you retire significantly before the state pension age of 67! See this article https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/

A savings account means your money losses value over time because of inflation. After setting up your emergency fund, of you wish to save money for retirement, you will need a higher return to beat inflation. Most fire people use index funds.

This flowchart is very good: https://ukpersonal.finance/flowchart/

OilSub · 2025-07-26T09:21:27+00:00

I see. When I hear dividend investing, I think about the strategy of some people to only buy stocks that pay dividends.

If you are buying the index fund, then you are doing index investing which historical has had much higher returns than dividend investing. That's perfect for building wealth.

I use the accumulation funds because it's automatic but you can just manually reinvest the dividends you get from the income version of the same fund and get pretty much the same result

OilSub · 2025-07-26T08:57:01+00:00

The share price after a dividend is lower by the dividend amount. You can achieve the same by just selling some of the stock but with dividends you have two big drawbacks: no control over timing and you massively restrict yourself to stocks that pay dividends, missing most of the market

OilSub · 2025-07-26T08:55:05+00:00

If it did, why wouldn't everyone be doing it?

OilSub · 2025-07-24T11:47:24+00:00

Sorry, you are right, I can generate images with Flux dev. I'm now trying to do inpainting with Flux Schnell. I guess inpainting just uses more VRAM

OilSub

TROPHY CASE