I know I write essays which is a weak point of mine. One I should address, but I see the gist of my message didn't get to you.

For one I use (and like) Inkscape and have strong negative feelings towards Adobe (and run Linux). Just like most of the folks here. That, however, should be pretty clear-cut from my original message.

They have a point.

I'm kind of the other way around:

I'm used to Inkscape since forever. I'm no graphics design expert, but do know my way around Inkscape for simple SVG editing, mostly stuff shamelessly taken off Wikimedia.

Way back in college, I enrolled in an elective "graphic design" course. Of course, being a course, they used Illustrator.

That thing works nothing like Inkscape. It was a long time ago, but I remember being baffled by it, to the point of being unable of doing basic stuff.

To be fair, I had no need for learning Illustrator and no wish to do it either, so I quit the course while I still could and exchanged it. I just felt like i'd be losing my nerves on switching, when I had better stuff to do than becoming dependant on Adobe and losing my minf in the process.

Both programs may indeed sport menus in the same spots, but the menus aren't the same. They may look like the same thing, but they're really not.

It's kind of like a bus and a train. Illustrator (the bus) sports all the nice stuff (i assume) from other Adobe stuff. Just like a bus uses the same road like cars do, with the same signalization.

Inkscape is more like the train. It does things differently from say Krita or Gimp, but it also does other stuff than either Krita or Gimp. Which (dare I say) makes it more effective at what it's meant to do.

I know.

It's just that kicking Russia out for doing war stuff but not Israel for the same sits the worst with me.

Had they said "we never kick out anyone", they'd have a case keeping both. But I feel if they kicked out Russia, Israel should be kicked out by the same criteria. Both wage war nad neither seems like a good side of a war to be on to me, an outsifer to both conflicts.

It really does read like you said, though. Kicking out Russia and having Ukraine win that year was a very popular choice. Keeping israel, while not as popular still seems like the "right" thing for someone minmaxing viewership to choose. My bet is Israel wins. If not them, then a german-speaking country like Germany, Austria or Switzerland sibce they mostly support Israel.

A free alternative is an old phone you don't use anymore, permanently in airplane mode and with just the regular camera app. Can be one where the battery doesn't hold a charge anymore that you just have plugged into your car.

How is it supposed to be recording?

AFAIK dashcams are usually connected to the car so they run when it does. Having tp manually turn it off and on (and having to wait 20+ seconds for Android/iOS to spin up) & fiddling around the phone to start recording seems like way too much work. Or am I missing something?

Yes. Keep the event apolitical by doing the most political thing oit there: kick Russia out, but not Israel.

History will remember.

Because historically (and for the most part today as well), it costs money.

Sure, today stuff like ChatGPT and the somewhat older Google Translate exists, but that doesn't solve the cost issue. (And I'm skirting on the huge elephant in the room called quality for a bit of brevity).

There's a huge chance someone paid a good chunk of money for all the books you find dirt-cheap at a flea market, check out at a library or happen to find in your own house.

Printing physical books is expensive. Publishers also want a margin, and a lot of authors want royalties.

In the end even if the publisher and author are both good souls demanding nothing, someone needs to foot the cost of printing. But before that, you'd need to go through non-trivial talks with most authors' publishers and/or authors themselves.

Then you need to arange for translation, typesetting and printing if you're not doing it yourself. That takes both time and money.

And if you were to do all that yourself, it'd be a huge time investment, with a potential lawsuit if you don't do those damn talks. So most just don't bother.

Businesses are incredibly inefficient, even though some are "successful" and have a lot of cash to burn. They need to pay workers, bills, buy and fix equipment, and of course, a cut needs to go to the top people. Usually the "golden" 80-20 rule applies to almost everything: 20% of books make 80% of money, 20% of employees make 80% of money, and a different 20% of people do 80% of the work, etc. And of course, in this world, it's all about the money.

A translation is usually initiated by a publisher that has a manager who wants to get his section's metrics up to go cry to his own manager about how good he is to get a raise or not get fired. This is a daily grind. Sometimes (but quite rarely), that leads the manager to the decision of publishing a new book. Usually such actions are guided by things like bestseller lists, reviews and personal biases of the manager and the company as a whole. Sometimes the publisher hires an agency to try to approximate the demand for such a book (even more money spent). Then they do the talks. This also costs money, and the result is also a cost of money (the royalties to be paid). Then comes translation, then printing, then distribution to bookstores, and finally advertising.

These are just the steps that come to mind. All cost money, and all the books you see for sale in a bookstore went through all of these steps. For a library, not as much (but still the vast majority) did.

Sure, not every situation is the same, so there are companies that specialize in providing translations of well-known works or companies whose manager at one point said they need to publish 25 translations yearly (instead of one individual one), so they kind of "flood" the market.

But sometimes it's just the whim of a newspaper whose management thought printing classic works of shorter length and bundling them with their newspaper would drive up newspaper sales.

It's incredible how each document (edition of a book or otherwise) has multiple stories (of the author, publisher, translator, seller, advertiser, buyer, worker in logistics/delivery driver,...) that shaped the life of it. Some lasted a few hours, and some took hundereds of man-hours. All of this somehow translates to money.

That's the long answer.

The short one is: 80% the economy and 20% human laziness.

My main gripe with this travesty of a "Start menu" is that it isn't the Tom Hanks movie of a similar name.

The other is that even if it were, it won't just play, but rather send you to the shiniest new subscription service to subscribe.

It's a both-ways situation.

They allow only the Fisher-Price version of phones so less-than-power-users don't do something stupid.

They also allow only Fisher-Price so power users can't beat Celebrite as easily.

I hope Italian dockworkers are determined enough to dock imports for a while. Hopefully without armed intervention from the state.

There's the EU-wide ePrivacy directive, explicitly stating (Art. 5):

Member States shall ensure the confidentiality of communications and the related traffic data by means of a public communications network and publicly available electronic communications services, through national legislation. In particular, they shall prohibit listening, tapping, storage or other kinds of interception or surveillance of communications and the related traffic data by persons other than users, without the consent of the users concerned

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There's also other EU-wide stuff, like:

Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (Art. 7):

Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications.

European Convention on Human Rights (Art. 6):

Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

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Then there's the UN-wide Universal Declaration on Human Rights (Art. 12):

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence

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And as if that wasn't enough, most member states have confidentiality of communications codified in their constitutions. They are:

Belgium (Art. 29):

The confidentiality of letters is inviolable.

Bulgaria (Art. 34):

The freedom and confidentiality of correspondence and all other communications shall be inviolable.

Croatia (Art. 36)*:

Freedom and privacy of correspondence and all other forms of communication shall be guaranteed and inviolable.

Cyprus (Art 17)*:

Every person has the right to respect for, and to the secrecy of, his correspondence and other communication

Czechia (Art. 13)*:

No one may violate the confidentiality of letters or other papers or records.

Denmark (Art. 72)*:

Any breach of the secrecy that shall be observed in postal, telegraph, and telephone matters, shall not take place

Estonia (Art. 43)*:

Everyone has the right to confidentiality of messages sent or received by him or her by post, telegraph, telephone or other commonly used means

Finland (Sec. 10)*:

The secrecy of correspondence, telephony and other confidential communications is inviolable.

Germany (Art. 10)*:

Secrecy of the mail as well as secrecy of the post and telecommunications shall be inviolable"

Greece (Art. 19)*:

Secrecy of letters and all other forms of free correspondence or communication shall be absolutely inviolable

Hungary (Art. VI):

Everyone shall have the right to have his or her private and family life, home, communications and good reputation respected."

Italy (Art. 15)*:

Freedom and confidentiality of correspondence and of every other form of communication is inviolable.

Latvia (Art. 96):

Everyone has the right to inviolability of his or her private life, home and correspondence."

Lithuania (Art. 22):

Personal correspondence, telephone conversations, telegraph messages, and other communications shall be inviolable."

Malta (Art. 41):

No person shall be hindered in the enjoyment of [...] freedom from interference with his correspondence.

Poland (Art. 49):

The freedom and privacy of communication shall be ensured.

Portugal (Art. 34):

Personal homes and the secrecy of correspondence and other means of private communication shall be inviolable.

The Netherlands (Art. 13)*:

The privacy of correspondence shall not be violated, [...] The privacy of the telephone and telegraph shall not be violated

Austria, Luxembourg and France are outliers in that I didn't find anything in their constitutions during my brief little search.

Threats of physical violence are the only tool they have in their toolbox. THE ONLY tool.

And actual gun violence. They're the sniwflakiest and wimpiest of the all, bringing an AK-47 to a civilised discussion and feeling "threatened".

It's not even the highest bidder that gets the data, it's all 1278 data partners. Talk about data prostitution!