I recently read a plausible reason that I hadn’t thought of yet:

Apple would need to include a specific flexible cable rated for continuous movement with the mouse. If the port was in the regular spot, then people would ofc also use it wired at times. However if buyers would use regular charging cables, then the experience would both be worse and the cables might get damaged over time from bending.

I still think the main reason is simply that they value form over function, otherwise the shape would be more ergonomic, but it’s another interesting factor to consider.

That was my initial thought aswell, but after thinking about it I changed my opinion to preferring the simple majority.

Imo one of the deciding factors is how you think about it. Do you see it as a choice between two conscious actions (acceptance or active rejection), or is only the “yes” vote an active choice and “no” something of a “natural” state?

Also if you set hurdles for change to high, then you are potentially hindering progress and systematically favoring conservatism. Which isn’t always bad, but the status quo and how things were done in the past aren’t always sustainable and worth the advantage.

Thanks for the link. That is certainly a frustrating development, since they had to sell it for a much steeper discount before as the article mentions.

There might be public displeasure about it, but I think behind the scenes India buying Russia oil is expected and at least to some degree accepted (or possibly even wanted).

The bigger thing is Russia not generating profits from those sales, which I am speculating is not the case at the prices India is buying at. The upside of Russian oil still being available to the world market is keeping the prices lower, something Europe is very much interested in.

Fun thought experiment, but yeah there is no way it ever happens. The simplest reason is that as soon as Ukraine manages to restore full control over its own territory, they will race to join Nato and the EU. Both of which would not accept Ukraine while holding russian land.

Thanks for sharing your experience, i assume most like me will have little to none.

This is their best chance to escape their coming economic trap. They control so few actual resources beyond labor.

Is that actually the case? I am not sure how many resources china has in their own country (I assume there are a few with it being this vast), but I think they are tackling the resource problem more so with their investments in Africa and other poor countries. And because of the war Russia also has fewer countries to sell to besides China.

I think the true longterm problem is actually with the cheap labour force you mention. As the standard of living rises, so do wages. And more importantly they’ll experience the same demographic shift other developed countries are currently experiencing with an aging population. With the difference that it’ll be worse for them due to the one child polic.

Thank you for giving some perspective on how long basic training roughly takes.

If we are talking months, even should Ukraine speed up the process a bit, then i think it is fair to assume that a few days for travel don’t make a significant difference. Especially should there be other advantages to training in existing facilities.

How long is the typical training of a soldier? You are losing 2-4 days to travel, if you are doing it outside of Ukraine. So if we are taking weeks it might matter, but if it’s months I doubt those few extra days would matter.

The issue is that I bet modifying the firmware will have consequences on insurance and liability in case of an accident. Regardless of whether or not one is at fault or not, and that it didn’t have any effect

My two cents as a random German:

• regardless how this actually turns out to affect things in the end, it is again a PR disaster. Seems like we are true masters in this regard. Despite imo supporting Ukraine pretty substantially so far, the vast majority of controversies like these seem to be about our involvement. And at least for this year there is a decent pipeline of new stuff already confirmed, plus as we’ve learned nothing is set in stone forever.

• In principle I don’t really mind the idea that stuff gets financed through these frozen Russian assets instead of directly by us. As long as it’s overall sufficient in providing Ukraine with the weapons they need. What does seem like a huge blunder and pretty bad is to cut funding before this other scheme is in effect or even truly secured. This can (and might already) have negative effects on Ukraine.

• This really unfortunate timing might have at least partially to do with the upcoming state elections in Saxony and Thuringia on September 1st, and Brandenburg on the 28th. In all 3 the right wing Afd and left Bsw, both pro putin/against support for Ukraine, are strong. Whereas particularly Scholz’s SPD is looking weak. So maybe this is only a short term play to gain sympathy point in those regions? If so they’ve learned nothing in all those years watching these extremist parties grow. In any case I’ll at least partially hold judgement until at least the first two elections are done.

Are train tracks actually something one would target with an expensive weapon like a long-range cruise missile?

I was under the impression that this wouldnt be worth it, considering replacing a destroyed section of tracks would be rather trivial. Unless you target harder to repair structures such as bridges.

Right, totally forgot about that step.

Haven’t used it myself, but similar to casa os there is also cosmos os, which looking here seems to offer some build in storage management options. Maybe this could be worth looking into?

openmediavault is ok for raid, but the containers aren’t one click wonder like in other NAS OSes

Since OMV also uses docker compose with a build in GUI to manage them, I don’t assume this would be what OP is looking for either? Unless trueNAS also comes with some repository of preconfigured compose files.

I am currently using Openmediavault for my NAS and can confirm that with an official plugin so far I havent had any issue with my ZFS pool (that I migrated from trueNAS scale since I didn’t like their kubernetes use and truecharts, but as someone mentions they seem to switch to docker).

Otherwise I am happy as well, but I am far from a poweruser.

Yeah i guess that might be the most likely candidate for an opportunistic takeover.

Although their navy is the one thing Russia might not bother (or be able to) send to Ukraine. So that would still stay in the area, making it less likely.

Well i aswell hope that this isn’t just my bias speaking :)

Unlike France or GB, which recently had elections substantially changing majorities, here in Germany it’s still the exact same people in charge since the start of this war. With the only major change being the defense minister, and that was for the better. So the people deciding here are the same that (based on this article) doubled this years support budget. And as far as i am aware there really hasn’t been any major event that would have shifted the sentiment in foreign politics from what we’ve experienced until now.

On the side of internal politics as mentioned it is basically a self-inflicted struggle to balance the budget and limit new debt. Because for some reason we chose to write that into our constitution, restraining our options. So everyone is fighting for their share and by the looks the winners are the usual: more money to secure pensions for old people and the automotive industry. While not only the budget for Ukraine is on the chopping block, but also other stuff like a reform of welfare for children or infrastructure projects for railroads.

Might sound bad, but it’s nothing really new and so far lack of funds hasn’t been an issue delaying German support. So i don’t expect it to be going forward either. We’ll just keep moving in lockstep with what others provide, slowly build out capacity and react to new developments. Which would be no change to how we’ve seem to have handled it so far, and not like “the slashing the budget by half” would imply.

And as mentioned above i am sure there are plenty of additional ways to support Ukraine that don’t hinge on the budget. Like telling Ukraine to direcly purchase through the manufacturers and giving security assurances for loans. Might be a worse deal on paper for Ukraine, but in the short/medium term wouldn’t make a practical difference. And things can get sorted later.

But regardless of how this plays out we won’t have any type of deadlock like the one delaying US aid until recently. And the largest party in the opposition is also in favor of supporting Ukraine, despite taking any opportunity to take shots at whatever the governing parties decide.

Personally as a German. while disappointing at facevalue, i wouldn’t read too much into it in respect to any shifts in the commitment to supporting Ukraine (but i might also be wrong here).

To me this very much is an internal self-inflicted struggle about balancing budgets and we’ll only be able to tell whether it actually affected things in retrospect (if it’s even possible).

In the end maybe more purchases will be directed through EU funds (of which Germany pays a substantial share) or instead of direct aid things are financed through low interest rate loans (that later might even get forgiven). Or you have some other kind of schemes where aid indirectly goes towards Ukraine.

And who knows how the conflict will change, promting adjustments in deliveries. Like the recent airstrikes probably leading towards more air defense systems being delivered than originally anticipated (with a single Patriot system being worth as much as 1 billion if i understand it correctly)

Yeah and that would be dragging the whole army to be killed in Ukraine, leaving russia undefended lol.

But the irony imo is that this wouldn’t actually be a huge problem. Who would actively want to attack Russia?

Despite what they constantly claim, Nato really isn’t interested in a conflict. And China already gets the resources they want at huge discounts, so why bother with another front when they have set their sights on Taiwan? That only leaves some internal minorities acting up, but it seems to me that those are the same people they are throwing into the meatgrinder that is the current conflict in Ukraine.