I would buy a feature phone today, preferably something eink, if it was painless to switch my SIM between it and my smart phone. Having to take the SIM out of one, put it in the other, then turn on the phone is not painless and they do not design the little draws to support thousands of open/closes against the contacts to read the SIM.

There are times I want the smart phone to have the SIM because I will want or need the extra functionality and if you just make the feature phone do everything then its just morphed into a smart phone with extra steps. I want the feature phone to be basic as I can get away with.

That said, I really want google wallet or similar that I can share between the two phones for my passes and tickets, audio streaming support, and maps. Something like a Hisense A9 would fit the bill but the temptation to add more apps than the basics would be too great, plus I still need a way to switch SIMs between the phones.

I cannot replace my smart phone, rather than supplement, with any feature phone because I use it for such a wide range of things. I can ssh from it to my home devices, I can manage my bank accounts, it tracks my health, it provides video and audio streaming on and offline, I can read and write documents/spreadsheets, plus anything you can do via a web browser.

I am sure this compromat leaking is completely unrelated to the news linking Boris with a comeback at Reform.

She employed multiple firms to manage something that a specialist, which she had already employed for the more complicated parts could have handled in its entirety. Its very unusual to do that unless you are either very dumb or are trying to hide what you are doing.

Farage scared of allowing his supporters a free vote between him and Boris shocker.

What this chart is missing is the impact of the quality of the screen and the source material being played on it.

A shit screen is a shit screen, just like a badly filmed TV show from the 80s will look like crap on anything other than an old CRT.

People buying a 4k screen from Wallmart for $200 then wondering why they cant tell its any better than their old 1080p screen.

The problem with pushing up resolution is the cost to get a good set right now is so much its a niche within a niche of people who actually want it. Even a good 4k set with proper HDR support and big enough to make a different is expensive. Even when 8k moves away from early adopter markups its still going to be expensive, especially when compared to the tat you can by at the supermarket.

Streeting wouldn’t surprise me, hes always been a boot licker.

Starmer I feel is just fascist adjacent with a lot of his actual policy preferences, such as his stance of marijuana being a mass gateway drug, and absolutely willing to say anything to stay in, see that speech on Island of Strangers.

Does he put forward his case that he is the anti christ? As he sure comes across as someone who would want that. He has always felt like the sort of motherfucker who would read the Stand and identify with Randall Flagg

Well obviously as an average, some land lords will need or want to absorb some of it, some wont. But as I mentioned, the heavily leveraged or greedy ones in high demand areas will more than likely pass on more, as that’s what happened with the interest rate rises.

I think if it goes up even 25% of the amount its still going to make a hell of a lot of renters unhappy at a time that the government should be avoiding that.

I broadly agree but the other parts of that cost model is the number of people looking to rent, amount of properties to rent, and the minimum cost of being able to offer them to rent.

If your costs go up, such as interest rate rises, increased legislation, or additional taxation then those on the margins have only two choices, put up prices or sell up. I saw it with the recent interest rate rises, properties sold at a discount with sitting tenants as the land lord could no longer afford the property.

What the rents are offered is dictated by what the majority for that property price point can afford. Increase rent beyond whats affordable and you will decrease the supply of renters.

Less renters, less properties getting rented, and if you are a marginal land lord then last thing you want is the property empty for any period of time so you have to sell, further reducing supply.

Once you start cutting out the bottom of the affordability end of that property type rents as an average can go up as the people left can afford to spend more on rent and there are less properties to rent reducing supply.

This is whats been happening with less and less young people even renting now, the bottom gets priced out.

Yeah the recent mortgage rises are a perfect example of what will happen, and I think you raise an interesting point that the lenders will put pressure on the land lords as well to increase rents to cover this.

While I don’t like small B2L land lords I dislike large companies mass investing in the rental housing market due to the increased power their size gives them. I dont want to see B2L squeezed out for them as that’s going to be much worse in the long run.

I think so many small landlords using b2l are so heavily leveraged thry have no choice but to pass it on, then that dictates the price as almost everyone else just follows the market in high demand areas.

I used to feel the same way around rents when they fairer but the market has gotten out of control, particularly in heavy holiday rental areas i think fuck that. As its resulted in renting becoming out of step with costs to buy in some areas.

I agree that all profit should be taxed but its a massive own goal with kipper fave waiting in the wings to take advantage. Renters seeing price rises won’t blame landlords directly for this.

The cost of this will be passed straight onto the people renting anywhere demand is at least level with supply.Might force a few sales in low demand areas but I have my doubts.

Far better to tax the fuck out of airbnb style holiday lets and require the same standards as BnBs.

Richest 4%? Show us the gap between the richest 1% and the richest 0.1% vs the bottom rather than dragging down the multiplier by deliberate widening the boundaries to imply its not even more lopsided when you look at the rich as people who travel by private jet and super yacht.

Do the wealthy need to cut their emissions? Of course, but stop pretending that they emit anywhere near the amount of the actual rich.

Yeah it pushed me to finally put in an order, got to wait till December now as I’m in the third batch.

I wanted to wait till we had proof thst the graphics card would be updatable and a better one would be available as their AMD card is a bit too lightweight for me.

I would rather it had been a better AMD card, I have a 7900 xtx in my desktop, but i will take what I can get at this point, especially as I know I can upgrade later.

It is this exactly, and is the same problem film, tv, and music has. They are all populated by people who are good at becoming and staying at the exec level, not people who are good at whatever field they are working in. Often the really creative are difficult to work with, they do not make a “good fit” with other execs, particularly when they actually understand the medium.

Its the same group of people who are heavily invested in AI to replace creative people in these fields as they do not understand the difference between AI doing a passable copy of someone elses style and someone actually creative creating a new style or approach.

You can extend the matrix across so it becomes one board, but it means custom wiring the connector.

See here: https://trashman.wiki/keyboards/caravan-2

Does mean more pins for large matrix

Chidori also can have three parts to the split using i think ic2, was a while since I built mine, see the expansion option

https://github.com/kagizaraya/chidori_build_guide/blob/master/README_en.md

With CDs they were negatively impacted by the loudness war as it became much more widespread. Having to hunt around for the right recording, often the earlier ones, can be expensive. Normalisation of the recordings by streaming companies is just an awful idea as it doesn’t fix the bad parts of the mix just turns everything down.

I prefer SACDs to CDs, mostly because they tended to be mastered and mixed better than the CDs of the past two decades. The surround audio mixes are mostly just gimmicky, although they are a good fit for some records, but they almost always had a two channel mix that you could pick instead. The higher frequency range is mostly pointless.

Yeah thats a good indication of how popular he is, with a sizable drop in support in what was a banner year for the majority of Labour MPs elsewhere.

Looking at Leanne Mohamad, she would have been a better voice in parliament. I do wonder how much they would have let her ask many questions about Palestine

But how do you pay the overseers to enforce it when money is no longer valid? And the overseers are bigger and tougher than your average billionaire?

Slavery only works when there is money to pay the overseers and a legal system to protect the owner class from being extorted by the overseers.

ICE is in a similar boat and they have to pay significant amounts to attract people to carry out ICE fascism.

The issue is the branded tat that schools insist upon such as blazers, jumpers, skirts, etc. Its almost always overpriced compared to the basics from Asda and Tesco.

Ban the branded shit and you fix at least half the problem.