There's also recency bias. Most people these days have no clear concept how bad things like the Holodomor actually were but they do have an idea of how bad it is in Gaza right now.

Then there's the fact that some of Russia's worst actions were actually perpetrated by the USSR so you could argue it was a different country and that they've changed like Germany argues it did. Of course the USSR was run bv Russia and there's a long list of post-Soviet Russian behavior that suggests they didn't change all that much. But, weak as it is, that argument can be made.

That's why I never touched it; the whole thing sounds like boring neocolonial milprop. If it's essentially a modern army vs. a medieval country with flying lizards, how is it any different from when the USA go shit all over a third world nation and then give themselves an award for being such great warriors?

My expectations may be colored by growing up in an age where RTSes were a thing but wouldn't a more balanced fantasy adversary lead to more interesting scenarios?

Like trying to do counterintelligence against someone who can use clairvoyance to listen in on your meetings. Or stopping saboteurs with access to invisibility spells. Or the fantasy guys figuring out how to do magical EMPs, taking your telecommunications and modern vehicles out of commission so you have to use message carriers and jury-rig technicals out of vintage cars.

I dunno, kinda sounds more interesting to me than the "modern military equipment is superior to a medieval army" that everyone always describes the show as.

Toasters could do that in the fifties. Crispiness is directly related to surface temperature and you can detect that with nothing fancier than a bimetal strip and some clever engineering. If you want to use modern technology you could use an IR sensor and a two cent microcontroller.

Using AI for the task suggests that they stuck a camera in there and use image processing to badly simulate an IR sensor. Less reliable than two metal strips welded together but also way more expensive.

Mind you, even relatively simple fridges can technically have firmware because these days the cheapest way to implement something like a defrost timer is with a microcontroller. Of course that firmware is so simple that it doesn't need updates and definitely doesn't need to be connected to the internet.

Other than that I don't really see what a smart fridge can do that you can't cover by sticking a cheap tablet on the fridge door. Sure, maybe a smart fridge can order butter from Amazon when it thinks that yours runs out but you can do the same with your phone and "buy it again" in seconds. Assuming that you even want to buy your groceries from an e-retailer.

It's definitely a pointless price inflation device that makes the fridge less reliable to boot.

XCOM A-Team in theory: They're the best, they can solve any problem.

XCOM A-Team in practice: It's March and we just spotted a Snakeman on this terror mission so our soldiers will spend their remaining time units running back to the Skyranger while screaming like little girls.

Mind you, to apply for a minimum wage job at my company the applicant has to fill out several forms and then submit the exact same information as a PDF file along with a cover letter that will be run through an LLM detector (data mismatches or possibly LLM-written cover letters will be an instant fail) followed by an LLM that determines whether the applicant is worth my HR department's time. If they pass they will have three video interviews, the first of which will be with my company's AI avatar.

If they pass those and do well on a little take-home test that just happens to be identical to the work they'll be doing for me, they're invited to an unpaid six-month full-time WorkPrenticeship™ where they get the opportunity to prove they can consistently perform well beyond the limits of their job description. They don't even have to pay for that privilege, which goes to show that my company likes to go that extra mile for our employees. If they do that and we don't happen to have a silent hiring freeze they get to sign the hiring contract, an industry-wide non-compete agreement, and a contract stating that they will never join a union and will actively report any instance of union building to management.

From then on they get to enjoy all the perks my company has to offer to non-executive workers such as coming to a beautiful office building every day, a salary competitive with other entry-level jobs like the hospitality industry, up to five (5) vacation or sick days, and the chance to work with exciting new artificial intelligence tools that may soon render entry-level drudge work obsolete.

"Complex" doesn't mean "balanced". Israel has always pulled underhanded shit like extending its de facto borders by means of "settlements". The Hamas/PLO fight also didn't happen without its involvement. But there have also been factors like the involvement of foreign powers, German guilt, the similarity between Zionism and early Nazi deportation plans, and so on.

The conflict between Israel and Palestine has been a mess from the very beginning and it's understandable that people were reluctant to get involved. Of course these days most of that complexity doesn't matter and not taking a stand is a luxury we shouldn't be able to afford.

(I'm saying "shouldn't be able to" because honestly we routinely ignore genocides; this one just happens to be particularly hard to ignore because Israel is a spotlight hog with huge diplomatic influence.)

A couple years ago it was complex. The complexity just stopped mattering once Israel turned the conflict into a war of annihilation.

Admittedly, those are already handled by something else where I live: A regular class B license only lets you drive vehicles with a max weight of up to 3.5 metric tons; everything beyond that requires some kind of appeal l special license and those cost a couple thousand bucks a pop and have additional strings attached. Not something you get casually.

So I would handle commercial vehicles like freight trucks, buses, tractors etc. differently from regular cars. The use case there is usually that someone has a specific professional need for such a heavy vehicle and not that they want to drive their kids to soccer practice in an Actros.

If your country doesn't have truck licenses and random jackasses do drive around in semi trucks for fun you can just go with a tiered approach. I'll use the European definitions of vehicle classes here; adapt as necessary.

Commercial vehicles get taxed by maximum weight. That includes everything designed to pull a semi-trailer, tractors, self-driving farming equipment, everything capable of seating more than eight people, and everything with a max load above 3.5 tons.

Personal vehicles (ie. everything that don't match the above criteria) get taxed by empty weight.

So if someone decides they want to drive around in a Peterbilt with no trailer attached they still get taxed as if they were hauling heavy loads all day because that's what semi trucks usually do. But someone in a regular car gets taxed as if their car was mostly empty because that's usually the case there.

Kann nicht einfach Toyota mit einem Monitorhersteller fusionieren und dann Modellnamen wie "bZ4X3261UHSCP-W" machen? Nicht zu verwechseln mit dem bZ4X3261UISCP-W, der das äquivalente Modell ein Jahr später ist, aber völlig andere Komponenten verbaut hat, und dem bZ4X3261UHSCN-W, den es exklusiv bei einem spezifischen Elektrohändler in den USA zu kaufen gibt.

Perhaps this supposed pizza is penance for that.

For the record, as a German I do remember the lessons we learned from our grisly past: That genocide is evil and that it's very easy for a country to sink into utter barbarism. I wish we could take the principled stand we owe to our past victims and condemn Israel for its actions.

Unfortunately, that's just what the German people learned. German politicians apparently learned from our past that our mistake was to genocide the wrong people and to lose the war.