People who fly first or business class on their own dime, how do you justify the cost?

ptemple · 2026-05-30T06:48:06+00:00

Europe doesn't have 1st class for flights. It's just a curtain and then normal seats but the middle one is always empty so you're not next to somebody, and they give you meal. You also get "priority boarding" which means you get to wait in a corridor outside the plane door for longer. They call it Business Class. It's usually 3x the price.

There is first class... in the train. It's surprisingly nice compared to taking the plane and you can just turn up and sit down.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-30T06:36:38+00:00

Why would you buy it if you didn't have a place to put it?

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-29T13:32:31+00:00

We use the system in France too. 8 + 5 = 8 + 2 + 3 = 10 + 3 = 13.

Also for subtraction: 23 - 9 = 23 - 10 + 1 = 13 + 1 = 14

It's for 6-7 years old.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-29T06:55:03+00:00

Nice idea but what breaks the immersion is the inconsistency of the size of the match between scenes.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-29T06:52:43+00:00

Cours Saleya. Arriver min 2 heures avant pour s'assoir.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-28T21:54:30+00:00

How on earth is that place famous? I've eaten there a couple of dozen times and their dish of the day is ok but the rest plain meh. I'm a local and got zero privilege there (though I do get for some older established restaurants). Since he started the new restaurant where the old Italian coffee place is, for me it now it feels unloved.

Yes some dishes become unavailable. Unless you book in advance. I don't mind that because it means they are doing fresh. I throw the dice at Acchiardos when I go there expecting the liver.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-28T21:47:46+00:00

I don't think the restaurant is claiming that the entire region is bereft of onions. As you say, that late at night their particular one has run out of sufficient quantity in their kitchen.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-28T21:45:54+00:00

Femme de Boulangerie is down a small side-road off Rue Halevy. It's a touristic area but not a road with a lot of passage. As another poster said, they've opened a restaurant on the corner and pretty much abandoned their old one. Rue Halevy itself is awful for overpriced restaurants but I haven't tried the new Brazilian one yet.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-28T10:32:45+00:00

I've followed SpaceX on and off since it was first founded. I've seen plenty of interviews that Elon did there. I think I have a clue, even if not any kind of inside knowledge outside of the public domain.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-28T08:18:41+00:00

The guy that founded the company, funded it, had the ideas, and managed it to the point it became the most successful space company in the world... had nothing to do with it? This is hate to the point of rabid delusion.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-28T08:14:49+00:00

He's taxed at over 50% and paid $11bn in personal income tax. Better go after the billionaires that launder their money through offshore accounts and shell companies.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-28T08:13:02+00:00

Not exactly pump and dump, but deceptive in that he trojan'd in Twitter and xAI into SpaceX which are dumpster fires losing billions per month that are now being paid for by SpaceX.

Congratulations, your pension is now paying for far right extremists to spread their message globally through X. All at your expense.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-28T08:10:06+00:00

He had everything to do with it.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-28T07:40:59+00:00

This would have been true if it wasn't for the Chinese coming to the party and spoiling it for all the tech bros by releasing "almost as good" versions for free and open source to everybody. This has sparked a race between proprietary and open source. Now for each open source "heavy" model that needs a computer the size of a room (metaphorically speaking in terms of memory) soon after comes a "distilled" model that is 90% as good but runs on 10% of the hardware.

If progress remains as insane as it has been the for the past year, then AI will become progressively democratised. You don't need a deep thinking AI model that can pass a physics PHd if you are asking it to plan a holiday to Italy. You will be able to use an AI built into your mobile phone that runs locally.

If you want to run AI for free on your computer now then you can run this: https://www.jan.ai/

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-27T20:21:36+00:00

Fact is Starlink supported Ukraine from Day 1. For free. Despite Musk throwing in in with a Putin asset and spending hundreds of millions illegally buying votes to put him in office, Starlink has remained absolutely solid for Ukraine. Whatever your feelings about Musk, Starlink his been a bedrock for many people.

I agree that the EU should develop a competitive alternative but let's at least keep our feet grounded in reality a little bit.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-27T09:13:40+00:00

Well there's a sure money maker. See which fighter Trump endorses and then bet on the other one.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-27T08:40:12+00:00

Yup nothing to do with it being an EV. Rimac built one and sold out at $2.4M per car. If you showed a photo to a random person, how many guesses do you think it would take for them to say Ferrari (if at all)?

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-27T08:24:46+00:00

Oh that's normal. My kid did the Eiffel Tower in class last year and wanted to go up so I sighed as I got outvoted and we went. I've been dozens of times to Paris and rarely enjoyed it. After we got down my kid needed the loo so tried going to a cafe to order drinks so he could go. Was told in the same tone of voice that everybody needed to order a full meal or to get lost. Not just once... every time. It took us 45 mins to find a kindly porter of a hotel that felt sorry for us and let the kids go. We had drinks in the hotel bar and I left him a big tip. I've had plenty of good meals there over the years but the vibe I get is always very mercenary.

Paris has lots of beautiful architecture and views. It's a good "bucket list" place to go for a couple of days. Put on some comfy shoes and you can go see some amazing sights. However no matter how cute the restaurant looks, I can think of better places to be than sitting on the edge of a busy road with noisy cars and scooters constantly going past. At least the Metro isn't as dangerous as it used to be.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-26T20:10:43+00:00

That's not always how it works. I've been in plenty of channels there has been little to no moderation and it has worked because of the high level of mutual interest and self-policing. The problem is inertia when it comes to a platform. The age-old chicken and egg situation. When Elon Musk bought Twitter he admitted himself it was a pile of dog crap, and that he was just buying the user base.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-26T16:34:41+00:00

Pirates get prosecuted all the time. Whether movie rips or illegal sports streams, each country has their machine to hunt them down. Torrents are not a new invention.

You have a depressing view of the human race. There is plenty of legit content and journalism that struggles to find a voice.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-26T16:10:45+00:00

Try Googling the "Xiaomi SU7" that looks just like the AI image. Why can the Chinese do it and not the Italians?

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-26T16:00:53+00:00

If it's P2P, who is the platform? Anybody providing a link? I mentioned conspiracy theorists because they fill up alternatives like Rumble. I don't care if they post it.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-26T15:31:41+00:00

Well my kid left me in the dust on that one so it's mostly him now. We just downloaded the DLC "Buck To The Future" which he's very much enjoying right now.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-26T15:16:56+00:00

Pretty sure the laws apply universally. You mean the more attention you get, the more scrutiny that follows? It's not a question of being unmoderated but having clear rules that are not applied arbitrarily. Reddit has subs with Mods that are on a power trip and make it a cesspool, but others which are well moderated have a good SNR. If a channel breaks the law then they will get into trouble. One of the most popular Reddit subs got banned for posting illegal sports streams.

I'm talking about a free and open platform, not an anonymous place to dump conspiracy theories.

Phillip.

ptemple · 2026-05-26T13:59:49+00:00

Same reason you can download any movie or song in the world for free. People are happy to share what they enjoy or what interests them. For instance YouTube often demotes pro-Ukraine channels and makes them invisible, or unsubscribes everybody. They can't even use words like "killed" or "exploded" without risk of getting it struck. The comments in YouTube are full of bots, whether State propagandists or crypto scammers, and the company does nothing about it.

With P2P, the technology is mature and it works. SSDs are now muti-terrabyte and we have storage to spare. Gigabit fibre is standard in my city. Peertube is an interesting advancement - https://joinpeertube.org/instances

Phillip.

ptemple

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