It isn’t too surprising that some things get routed over general domains that the company already owns. Probably the facebook domain since they bought WhatsApp way before they rebranded to meta.

This for once isn’t anything malicious. Dunno if I would call it best practice, but they probably don’t intend to unbundle WhatsApp in the near future.

I’m not even sure what that joke could’ve been

Educational entertainment, also referred to by the portmanteau edutainment

The word has been around since 1973 and is included in many dictionaries. If you want to correct someone, at least inform yourself beforehand.

The microplastic is the least important point when it comes to food safe products. Sure microplastic is bad, and we have no real idea about the long term effects, but there are there are things that already have effects on your health in the short term:

A lot of different plastic types release actual toxins over time, especially when exposed to high heat, since that destroys the molecular bonds. Having food or water touch these toxins is a great way to absord them into your body.

Apart from that most 3D printed materials have micro ridges and air pockets that are the perfect place for bacteria to grow. That’s probably the worst thing to have in your kitchen.

The point I’m getting at is this: When a certain percentage of the population is diagnosed with a disorder, you have to ask whether we’ve started diagnosing ordinary human existence as a disease.

Its pretty mich a known fact that autism and ADHD were a somewhat beneficial trait in our hunting and gathering era. Hypervigilance makes you really good at spotting prey or predators and unsatisfied curiosity pretty mich forces innovation over a long enough time. The side effects that make life aliving hell in modern society weren’t nearly as detrimental back then. People lived in more communal small tribes and being a bit weird didn’t mean you get cast out and left to die alone.

Over time it became less and less useful. When the industrial revolution came along and everyone was supposed to let go of their individuality to instead work 12+ hour shifts pretty much only the negatives prevailed.

So yes, we are diagnosing a normal part of human existence as a disorder because in today’s society it is one. Mind you, its not diagnosed as an illness, something with a cause and potentially a treatment, its specifically diagnosed as a disorder, something that disrupts normal physical or mental function. It doesn’t really matter which genetic marker is the reason for your specific case of serotonin deficite that leads to the inability to concentrate and keeps your brain on 120% to compensate. The symptoms and their treatment are the same either way.

Yes. What’s also true is that sometimes they must be. You will disagree until you find the exception.

No, there should never be any reason to connect these versions to the internet.

If you are talking about legacy software in a corporate setting, then a vm should do the trick 99% of the time. If that legacy software needs an internet connection (which is already questionable), then you bridge only the specific port it needs to the connected interface. If that doesn’t work either, then you get a separate PC explicitly for that software and disallow pretty much all other connections.

If you are talking about private use, then the only thing keeping you on a windows version older than 10 is your unwillingness to upgrade. Its understandable, but it doesn’t change the fact that these versions have massive security holes and shouldn’t be used anymore.

If the state of the Scottish energy grid is comparable to mainland Europe, then the prices go up due to increasing cost of infrastructure.

Renewables are a lot cheaper per kWh, but require a substantialy higher up front cost in infrastructure due to their decentralized nature.

Before renewables, the electricity only ever flowed in one direction, from the power plant down to the consumers. A few centralised main powerlines could deliver most of that.

With the increase in renewables that suddenly isn’t true anymore. Smal villages often are net positive, we’ve reached a point where even the medium voltage grid of entire regions is net positiv and the energy has to be transported somewhere else, sometimes even outside the country.

All this requires substantially more powerlines (or at least thicker ones, so still new cables). But more importantly, devices to measure the current load of the grid at all times and modernized equipment that can remotely be operated to respond to variing load.

Not to say that we should stop building renewables. All this infrastructure will be needed eventually eather way, but at least in the short term, investments will be needed regardless.

Because its arguably worse than smoking cigarettes overall.

The health effects aren’t researched enough for a proper comparison between the two, but at least short term studies, while being inconclusive, show that vaping is just as damaging as smoking. The glycerine based liquid can damage your lungs more than smoking would. And while cigarettes have a lot more different carcinogens, what matters more is the amount.

In addition to that, vapes taste a lot better than cigarettes, which removes the first hurdle that smoking usually has. And this isn’t only relevant when talking about children, its the exact same thing for adults. Most smokers I know startet smoking more when they switched to vapes.

Then there is the whole issue with one time vapes and batteries in landfills

Asking an existing userbase for any kind of change will pretty much always result in a no.

If the project requires minimal resources and doesn’t have a major downside, then implementing your own version before asking is fine.

They didn’t serve a bunch of ex alcoholics a full bottle of whisky, all they did is make you scroll twice on your mouse wheel.