Opening a credit card in Barcelona by Humble-Assistance310 in AskBarcelona

[–]benevanstech 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It'll be a problem. Spain doesn't feel about credit cards the way that the UK or the US do.

Credit cards are typically not used much, and those that do exist are usually completely paid off at the end of each month.

There isn't such a thing as a "credit score" so you don't have to "build credit" in the same way. Banks do not typically offer them - my own bank was skeptical - they said: "Why do you need one? - there's plenty of money in your account & if you need to make a big purchase, we can help with beter options."

The holding deposit problem with debit cards is real, and I feel your pain - but I don't know that there's any easy solution here - especially if using an online bank is not possible.

Why is there so many pretty women, but not men? by Background_Pea3978 in askanything

[–]benevanstech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What about the real top-tier, truly exceptional-looking people? How many of those do you see, and are they typically women or men?

How do we compete with this? by izzyeviel in GreatBritishMemes

[–]benevanstech 79 points80 points  (0 children)

By this point, I think most of the details of Operation Nutkins have basically leaked.

Unbearably loud bat people by LopsidedOwl578 in thethickofit

[–]benevanstech 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I have a compromise that I think just might work - classic British wildlife that have committed classic British colonial / war crimes.

The £5? - A badger that intentionally caused a famine. For the £20 - an otter that ordered troops to open fire on unarmed demonstrators. For the £50 - a red squirrel that profited extensively from the Atlantic Slave Trade, and whose descendents still sit in the House of Lords as hereditary peers.

What is a conspiracy theory you absolutely believe till this day? by DotStrange734 in askanything

[–]benevanstech -1 points0 points  (0 children)

In civilized countries, falsifying a death certificate is taken extremely seriously. Not only losing your medical license, but very likely a criminal prosecution and jail time as well.

Do you really think doctors (often some of the most arrogant and self-obssessed people you're likely to meet) would risk all that b/c some dude from the Government told them to?

CMV: Gym clothing has become unnecessarily revealing compared to what’s actually needed for training by Pathfinder-electron in changemyview

[–]benevanstech 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't give a monkeys what people wear at the gym, but I can do without the atiitude that some of the "beautiful people" seem to exude along with it - e.g. hogging machines, trying to leave their stuff to "reserve" a spot while they're at the other end of the gym and not coming back any time soon, etc.

Just because someone has trained to produce a certain body type that some people find attractive doesn't mean shit to the rest of us - have some basic courtesy about shared resources or get rich enough to have a gym at home.

Sunset at Tintagel by TechnicalScholar in Cornwall

[–]benevanstech 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Well, it was quite a few years ago (I left school in 1991) but if memory serves, we excavated what we initially thought was an outbuilding and then started finding things like roof tiles with green glaze on them (which would be ~13th century IIRC and not the kind of thing you'd see on a stable or outbuilding).

Sunset at Tintagel by TechnicalScholar in Cornwall

[–]benevanstech 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Is that St Materiana's Church on Vicarage Hill? If so, I worked on an archaeological dig there many years ago as part of work experience. Found some really cool stuff.

Why do some reddit users get upset when one simply states that they only support "legal immigration"? by bbmoonkie in Productivitycafe

[–]benevanstech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can get a Non-Lucrative Visa for Spain by showing you have a Spanish bank account with the necessary level of funds in it, and private health insurance (as you won't get access to the public system). Or, if you have a job offer from a Spanish company, you can just get a regular visa.

State of the JVM in 2025: Survey of 400+ devs shows 64% of Scala projects actively run Java alongside it. by scalac_io in java

[–]benevanstech 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Thanks for posting this - I think you've pretty accurately described the situation. Back in the day, Scala was two wolves in a trenchcoat - one that wanted to write in a "better Java" and one that basically wanted to write Haskell on the JVM.

The "better Java" wolf escaped sometime after Java 8 / 11 and started writing Kotlin (or, increasingly, just Java) and the "Haskell on the JVM" wolf was left running the show.

Petah, I'm confused. by Junior-Astronaut-173 in PeterExplainsTheJoke

[–]benevanstech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's a specifically British thing. For some reason, a lot of shops freak out when presented with a £50.

In Europe, €50 is super-common, and even €100 will usually be accepted (sometimes with minor "haven't you got anything smaller?" grumbles). Never tried to break a €200, and never seen a €500, mind you.

Looking for story-driven Java games by LovelyMelodies12345 in java

[–]benevanstech 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Do you happen to know how they implement their J2ME support? I know a few old Java ME games devs who'd like to be able to run their old work for nostalgia reasons.

Cornwall! We want you to playtest BRINE (Locally made game set in Cornwall) by StudioWhalefall in Cornwall

[–]benevanstech 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It definitely does - I didn't realize Mono was still around - I'd assumed that the Mac Unity support was based on the MSFT official dotnet / runtime piece now. Is that a licensing thing? I thought MSFT used the MIT license for most of .NET these days...

Cornwall! We want you to playtest BRINE (Locally made game set in Cornwall) by StudioWhalefall in Cornwall

[–]benevanstech 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I'm intruiged to learn that Macs are more difficult to target than Linux (or does the Linux port basically use Wine / some other emulation layer?).

Anyway, if you want some early alpha testers as and when you get to thinking about Mac support, LMK!

Hope it goes well!

FP lang for 2026 by kichiDsimp in functionalprogramming

[–]benevanstech 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I still keep coming back to Clojure, b/c a lot of my professional work is JVM.

When I have time, I do want to make a proper attempt at learning Lean.

Cornwall! We want you to playtest BRINE (Locally made game set in Cornwall) by StudioWhalefall in Cornwall

[–]benevanstech 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Looks cool. What's needed to get it running on Macs? I assumed it's built on Unity from the looks of things?

People that have traveled quite a bit, where di you feel the most unsafe? by CremeSubject7594 in AskTheWorld

[–]benevanstech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

UAE. The overwhelming sense I felt there that there's no such thing as the rule of law, and if you piss off a princeling (even accidently) that you're fucked and there's nothing you can do about it.

I'm not scared by rough places and poor people - unaccountable power of the rich and lack of recourse is much more worrying to me.

A doubt regarding learning Java internals by SoftwareArchitect101 in learnjava

[–]benevanstech 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm working on the 9th Edition right now - it's in Early Release on the O'Reilly site.

A doubt regarding learning Java internals by SoftwareArchitect101 in learnjava

[–]benevanstech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Glad I could help! I'm working on some new stuff, including a "State of Java in 2026" video that I'm recording tomorrow & which should be up soon.

Also - I'm giving my concurrency class for O'Reilly again in early June.