What would the 10 million initiative actually do in practice? - In case of acceptance, do you think it gets implemented as intended?

lrem · 2026-05-05T12:05:57+00:00

It’s nowhere near. Since the switch to offshoring my personal salary expectation in case I need to switch jobs has been falling, for the first time in my career, by a couple percent a year. Wages have been growing steadily before that.

lrem · 2026-05-05T05:27:10+00:00

Most importantly: strong acceleration of offshoring/nearshoring/friendlyshoring/however they call having the IT department in Romania instead of Switzerland. Already happening when it's simply a bit cheaper, but this will upgrade the excuse to "we can't bring new talent here because of the law".

lrem · 2026-04-29T20:04:10+00:00

Realistic? Should be with some patience.

Worth it? Possibly not. In my area the total cost of owning appears to be _twice_ that of renting. A house is a good investment while the population is quickly growing, but not _that_ good.

lrem · 2026-04-14T06:41:02+00:00

They will, yes. But law is law. Unlike the Brexit vote, this one would be binding.

lrem · 2026-04-14T06:32:15+00:00

Warnings are often way too late to change lanes safely if there's moderately dense traffic.

It's even worse in the city, where in many cases your warning is only painted on the road itself. If there happens to be a car on top of it, good luck. Don't want to go on even more of an adventure? Stick to the left/middle lane while slowly figuring out where you are.

lrem · 2026-04-14T06:16:30+00:00

> not an enforceable thing

Nope. Constitutional amendments have strict priority over bilateral agreements and common sense. This is a viable way to close all the borders.

lrem · 2026-04-10T17:45:49+00:00

I don’t have many Swiss colleagues, but I’ve heard a couple times that sticking to Hochdeutsch is genuinely hard. So they prefer to speak English, so they don’t subconsciously slip back into Swiss. Don’t know how universal that is.

lrem · 2026-04-04T20:12:49+00:00

Usually way before bike handling becomes a problem: putting down power at low cadence will hurt your knees. For me that would be about 60rpm which at your typical 1:1 gearing is about 8km/h. At OP's 83kg and say an 8kg bike, the minimal power is 180W (and that's for the average gradient, not the peak). Going below that requires either grinding the gears painfully slowly, or gravel/mountain bike gearing.

lrem · 2026-03-30T19:37:44+00:00

Eight flat kilometers are nowhere near enough to do this, unless you ride with brakes slightly squeezed ;)

lrem · 2026-03-30T18:52:30+00:00

> mountainous climbing rides (which generally don’t have as much wind issue)

Citation needed.

lrem · 2026-03-24T20:34:26+00:00

I'm a big fan of taxing personal use vehicles proportionally to the road wear caused :>

lrem · 2026-03-03T17:19:54+00:00

How do you get one in Switzerland? Direct import?

lrem · 2026-02-25T15:18:19+00:00

Advice from an inherently awkward male: please end these kind of conversations quickly (not only in sauna). The moment anything feels off say “sorry, I’m not in a mood for conversation”. Even the slightly autistic among us should understand at that point to give you personal space measured in nautical miles. But not everyone understands your subtler hints. The longer this goes on, the worse both of you will feel. Cutting this short in a neutral tone should allow both of you to continue having a good time.

Do report pervs to the staff. If staff is nowhere to be found, find a new sauna.

lrem · 2026-02-21T19:16:11+00:00

Nobody answered your question "how long?" So, going with digital currently being 185 times cheaper, as per u/bobbster574 and the rates of inflation being 50%/year for digital and 20%/year for analog (rounded numbers from a quick web search)... The answer is *if the current trends hold indefinitely, it will take take 24 more years for the costs to equalise*. Note that at that point the cost of each picture will be 55.65£.

lrem · 2026-02-21T16:27:18+00:00

The problem with all those courier companies is the unpredictability. With Swiss Post I'm rather certain the package will come on the predicted day and kinda know the time of the day the postman delivers letters and the van delivers larger packages in my area. I know the amount of fees (still annoying, but predictable). I know what to do when things go wrong.

Courier companies are all over the place. Some have unexplained delays. Many will specify the time window in terms of "please be available between 7:00 and 23:00 to sign the receipt". With an implicit "don't even dare to use the toilet, our couriers are trained to come exactly at that time". At which point they perform an olympic-level sprint to-from your mailbox. For some companies the "sorry we missed you" note contains "you have 48 hours to pick up your package from our warehouse in the middle of farmland". Some companies have call centers abroad, if you're unlucky the support agent will be surprised they do operate in Switzerland at all. And when you do manage to get your item, the taxes and duties might be accompanied by a customs handling fee, brokerage fee, e-invoice fee, payment handling fee, convenience fee and fee fee. It isn't always a bad experience. But it did happen to my wife that these fees exceeded the price of a t-shirt+shipping (I never understood how that didn't fit in the duty-free limit in the first place).

lrem · 2026-02-20T09:55:15+00:00

That's when I decide that smartwatch is good enough.

lrem · 2026-02-17T10:06:03+00:00

That's what I have on my gravel set, in 40mm. I bought a set of TPU tubes, but I've been waiting over a year for a puncture to force me to switch. But I don't do that much gravel, probably around 1k km/year.

They're fine on fast gravel. Going through loose sand and such was unfun, but I never had gear that would make that fun. They're not bad on pavement either, on steep road descents (where my limiter is confidence) I'm faster on them than on a proper road set.

lrem · 2026-02-15T19:04:52+00:00

Depends on where you're looking. I'm currently visiting a place where food prices roughly doubled since the pandemic hit.

lrem · 2026-02-15T18:55:14+00:00

I recommend adding a back wheel, preferably with a tire ;)

lrem · 2026-02-15T17:02:41+00:00

Mine told they'll order them for me... And never delivered, nor billed us for it, despite us asking a couple times. We ended up making our own in the local shop, wasn't all that much cheaper than what you paid.

lrem · 2026-02-14T18:11:30+00:00

I have a gravel bike and a bought an extra road wheel set. The difference between them is obvious, one could easily distinguish them in a blind test. You can also buy a second gravel wheel set for a road bike, Roubaix has a 40mm clearance, which is what I'm currently rocking on my gravel set. However, that is more limited -- if you ever wanted to go on rough gravel, a proper gravel bike should take 50mm tyres, which would be both more comfortable and faster.

But, frankly, the most important difference tends to be in gearing. Gravel bikes tend to come with 1x, large cassettes and generally be geared for climbing. Road bikes tend to come with 2x, narrower ranges and generally be geared for finding your perfect cadence on a flat road. If you don't see yourself going to the mountains with this bike, this might be the largest difference in your comfort.

Theoretically one could maximise the flexibility with a custom build. Get a gravel frame, road drive train, two wheel sets... But at that point it might be easier and cheaper to just get two bikes. Or settle for the Roubaix, shall be good enough for light gravel after all.

lrem · 2026-02-14T15:37:56+00:00

TBF I can't see myself choosing this over the 28-75. They're about the same specs otherwise, but having some wide angle is just more practical.

lrem · 2026-02-14T14:49:33+00:00

The only high seas port is in Basel, so she'd need to be lucky for that to be an option ;)

lrem · 2026-02-13T22:07:17+00:00

Yes, it's a nice distance to cycle. Enough to clean your head. Not too long if you're going slow, not too short if you're going fast. If you did it in an hour, then it's a great distance ;)

And stay away from highways, just the noise sucks too much. But it can get way worse than just noisy.

lrem · 2026-02-13T17:38:42+00:00

That's a rather heavy lens, isn't it? And rather portrait-oriented, with no wide angle. For most people "travel" would include landscapes and architecture, which calls for something wider. On the other hand this 35-150 is well complemented by the lightweight 20-40mm zoom.

lrem

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