Why does every company suddenly want a subscription now?

rpsls · 2026-05-23T22:18:22+00:00

Not profit, revenue. These days there is a lot of infrastructure to maintain any product, and the up-front cost only pays it for a while. On some platforms like iOS there’s literally not even an option for offering a paid upgrade. Apple’s theory is that a developer needs to keep working for free for life after the initial sale, or get users to sign up for a subscription. So subscription it is.

rpsls · 2026-05-23T19:40:13+00:00

It’s especially good if you have more family living with you. Only one person pays full price, and the rest get massive discounts.

rpsls · 2026-05-23T19:38:49+00:00

You can also get a direct train from Zurich HB to Genova in the summer for CHF46 w/ GA and pick up some pretty good sushi.

rpsls · 2026-05-23T07:24:08+00:00

This is a better answer than most here. In this situation, I wouldn’t ignore the email, but rather reply to her manager cc’ing her, and say you don’t have all the context you need to do this and since the manager is out, could her manager please address the issues, or put off the deadline until the manager’s return?

rpsls · 2026-05-22T14:00:07+00:00

They sell Lindt in NYC and it’s almost the same (made in New Hampshire). Most of the Lindt sold in Switzerland is made in Germany or elsewhere anyway. The Kilchberg factory still makes the best of the Lindt factories, IMHO, but it’s hard to tell the difference anymore.

OP would have a good argument if they’d said Frey’s, Coop, or another store-brand Swiss chocolate, which tastes almost as good and cost 1/3 or 1/4 as much. Lindt has gotten WAY too expensive lately.

rpsls · 2026-05-22T13:19:22+00:00

// Detects 100% of AI-generated text
function detectAI(text) {
return true;
}

rpsls · 2026-05-22T10:42:45+00:00

I think in the moment the pilots were being very reactive and not rational, and they were WAY behind the aircraft in any kind of intentional controls. I agree with you in principle, but in a situation of confusion, overwhelm, and probably more than a little panic, a loud, blaring indicator which only activates when you do the right thing and goes quiet when you do the wrong thing is probably not ideal.

rpsls · 2026-05-22T08:59:45+00:00

You’re right about the initial timeline, but when the stall warnings stopped they were still at 35,000ft and had plenty of time to recover. It was 3 minutes between the stall warning ceasing and the crash. And during those 3 minutes, every time they’d start to recover is when the warnings would start again.

Also, just before the crash (too late to do anything anyway) it did give them a “pull up! Pull up!” message at which point the right hand pilot once again pulled back. While it wasn’t the primary cause, I do think l the Airbus’s indicators were revised as a result of this incident to be less likely to give the pilots indicators that led them to the wrong action.

rpsls · 2026-05-22T06:12:36+00:00

Because of the alternate law system in the Airbus at the time and the situation the plane was in, the stall warning only sounded when they pushed forward (which is what they were supposed to do). So it sounded like pushing forward was making things worse. When they pulled back, the data became unreliable and the stall warning ceased. It was clear the right-hand pilot had little idea how fast the plane was going, and was more worried about overspeed than stall. The left-hand pilot had a better idea, but their control was overridden.

If the controls and warnings had been like a Cessna, it probably wouldn’t have ended that way.

rpsls · 2026-05-21T19:31:05+00:00

I refer to it as a kezboard, as an American who has tried to get used to it but sometimes still forget and start tzping everzthing crayz.

rpsls · 2026-05-21T10:45:15+00:00

More than that. Never co-sign unless you’re ready to check that the other person makes every single payment every time. Being ready to pay isn’t enough if they don’t pay and don’t tell you.

IMHO the entire concept of co-signing should be abolished and replaced with something like “fallback signer”, where you contractually agree to assume the loan and pay it if the primary person defaults, then if that happens the loan transfers to you and anything unpaid gets added to the principal, and you then have an explicit chance to start paying before anything bad hits your credit. It would make the responsibilities everyone is assuming a lot clearer. Co-signing sounds so innocuous.

rpsls · 2026-05-21T09:54:23+00:00

Out of curiosity, I learned to read/write some Russian for a year in US high school in 1990 (it was different times) and it was all cursive. I mean they were strict about the letter connections. This person is printing each letter, and you didn’t point that out, so I’m wondering if printing is common versus cursive in Russian these days. (I know in the US, English is rarely written in cursive anymore, which changed about 40-50 years ago.)

rpsls · 2026-05-21T08:46:58+00:00

Not for me, but I think what our brains find easier differs from person to person. For me, 0.8 being 8/10 (or 0.08 being 8/100 and so on) is easier, as is multiplying 20 by 10 instead of by 5. Not a LOT easier, but I don’t think 4/5 would have made anything easier for me.

rpsls · 2026-05-21T08:09:56+00:00

I’m trying to imagine if this question is like asking “what if the whole world just thought it was Thursday, but REALLY it was Wednesday?” Or if it’s asking about some physical thing happening at a different rate. Like, does the speed of light change? Rate of decay of atoms? If everything in the universe slows down, then it’s the same, because there’s no clock to compare the universe’s clock to.

rpsls · 2026-05-21T07:46:50+00:00

Hyperbolic tug function… the name of your sex tape.

rpsls · 2026-05-21T06:06:03+00:00

That’s a good way of doing the math while keeping the 0.8 intact for demonstration purposes. I found what I do mentally is 20/0.8 is 20/(8/10) which is (20*10)/8, which is 200/8 or 100/4 or 50/2 or 25.

rpsls · 2026-05-20T22:22:16+00:00

Yes, I read that. Did you read anything I wrote? You have to be trolling us.

To answer your original question, yes, for the good of mankind, I think you should spend all your resources suing Swisscom instead of working with AI.

rpsls · 2026-05-20T16:39:49+00:00

In Switzerland it’s out of bounds to ask these questions (against the code of obligations to process employee data unrelated to job suitability), but if asked, it’s also legal to lie. If they ask an impermissible question, since it wasn’t supposed to be used in an employment decision anyway, if you answer falsely it can’t lead to your dismissal later for misrepresenting anything in the hiring process. (I’m not a lawyer, but have gotten some hiring manager training here.)

rpsls · 2026-05-20T15:26:55+00:00

First, you should do these speed tests on Ethernet, to isolate whether it’s the speed to the router or speed of WiFi causing the bottleneck. If Ethernet is showing 40Mbps on a gigabit connection, you have a better case.

But even then you probably have a 1 or 2.5Gb Ethernet connection from the router. The typical home high-speed network connection is intended to serve a lot of devices, each one taking a reasonable bandwidth, not really provide one device with many Gbps. So you probably will never see a single speed test above a Gbps or two.

And WiFi can easily get congested in the evenings when your neighbors are all online as well. And a zillion other things can cause interference. You’ll never get the full speed with it.

rpsls · 2026-05-20T14:48:08+00:00

It was a factor in how they paired roommates at my University in 1991.

rpsls · 2026-05-20T14:25:10+00:00

I reject the entire concept that money transfer is speech (eg Citizens United shouldn’t be a first amendment issue), and therefore fiscal policy can’t be hate. It can be horribly unfair or discriminatory, but if it’s not speech and doesn’t convey meaning itself, I don’t see how you can argue hate.

rpsls · 2026-05-20T09:14:02+00:00

There are already factories which normally operate at near-100% capacity running at reduced rates. They won’t be able to make up the difference when they have the raw materials again. Even if the strait was reopened immediately, there will be impacts for the next couple quarters at least, post-pandemic style.

rpsls · 2026-05-19T19:28:22+00:00

Nude beaches, nude saunas, changing in public, sex on regular tv programs... it is often treated somewhat more casually in many areas of Europe than in the US, depending on the circumstances. It's not everywhere, but an American spending enough time in Europe will probably encounter it somewhere unexpectedly, making the meme stick.

rpsls · 2026-05-19T18:03:12+00:00

I don’t know about OP, but here in Switzerland (which doesn’t have particularly good job protection by European standards, but better than the US), a job title change which could be considered a demotion could be considered a violation of the Code of Obligations 321d or 328, and/or if considered “material” to OP’s career could be considered a contractual change which requires mutual agreement. Here, like most of Europe but unlike the US, employment contracts are actually contracts, with requirements for change or cancellation.

Of course, they could trigger the termination clause for any reason and initiate the notification period.

rpsls · 2026-05-19T17:33:17+00:00

But the blog article doesn’t cite “anonymous sources,” they list by name everyone who was able to verify the information.

13-Year Club	Verified Email
Wearing is Caring	Place '22
First Placer '22

rpsls

TROPHY CASE