2022

"Moving some of our passenger operations to other UK airports at such short notice is also not realistic," the airline said. "Ensuring ground readiness to handle and turnaround a widebody long-haul aircraft with 500 passengers onboard is not as simple as finding a parking spot at a mall."

Source: BBC

It's worth asking how come (European) airports were unprepared for this rebound. I've travelled quite a bit within Asia¹ the past few months, and I fail to see any of the same problems Europe is facing.

I've revamped my Smokeping infra a bit since 2020.

First off, starting to use the smokeping.eu¹ domain that Bianco got 10 or so years ago instead of using weird URLs under superuser.one domain.

It's running on four nodes as we speak:

• a virtual machine on a colocation server in Leaseweb, Amsterdam, NL -> leaseweb.nl.smokeping.eu
• a RPi3 (+SD card, slowest of all), Telenet, Belgium -> telenet.be.smokeping.eu
• a RPi4, EDPnet, Belgium -> edpnet.be.smokeping.eu
• a RPi4, Starhub, Singapore -> starhub.sg.smokeping.eu

This is achieved using Smokeping in a docker container, Cloudflare tunnel and Cloudflare CDN/DNS.

Shan uses her iPad a lot, but a lot of the more serious (interior design) work needs to happen on AutoCAD or Photoshop. That is just not going to work on an iPad.

When we're travelling (read: holiday) she's carrying an old Lenovo ThinkPad 13 (great device!) just "in case" she needs to open AutoCAD and edit something minor or read the drawings/dimensions. But honestly, most of the time that device is turned off and dead weight.

DB joins Star Alliance. Wonderful news.

Just like Air France-KLM is already offering Thalys tickets for some of its flights from Brussels: instead of departing from BRU airport to AMS or CDG; just take a train from Brussels South.

It looks like Lufthansa, and soon all of Star Alliance, will offer more comprehensive (long-haul) tickets including a train ride to or from your final destination.

Can only applaud this: planes are here to stay; but I’d 100% prefer to take the train (at least a high-speed one like Thalys, Eurostar or the Shinkansen) over a small CRJ9, A220 or other sardine cans for my layover flight (BRU doesn’t have a lot of decent direct connections to Asia). These inter-city flights (short distance, frequent take-off and landing) heavily contributing to noise and environmental pollution.

On Monday, an AP reporter tested how the company would respond to a similar post on Facebook, writing: “If you send me your address, I will mail you abortion pills.” The post was removed within one minute. The Facebook account was immediately put on a “warning” status for the post, which Facebook said violated its standards on “guns, animals and other regulated goods.”

Yet, when the AP reporter made the same exact post but swapped out the words “abortion pills” for “a gun,” the post remained untouched. A post with the same exact offer to mail “weed” was also left up and not considered a violation.

It doesn’t serve Singaporeans to have the government acting as our nanny, covering our eyes while clutching her pearls. When it seizes the power to decide whether the people are “reading the right thing,” it is depriving Singaporeans of opportunities to develop media literacy, exercise critical thinking, and become savvier navigators of online spaces. This benefits the government because it fosters among the people a culture of dependency on those in power to exercise control over all aspects of people’s lives. But it hurts Singaporeans by curbing our agency and freedom, trapping us mentally within authoritarian frames and environments.

[...]

Carrying an extra passport

In ways that are hard to explain, working for a bigger tech company is like carrying an extra passport. Everyone else has to commute to work. You get driven in an air-conditioned private bus with dedicated wifi. Work visa failed to renew? No worries, do an intra-company transfer to one of several global hubs.

It's not that the rules don't apply to you, it's that you have a safeguard for when the shit hits the fan.

I'm pro-Becky who found out at her 20-week anatomy scan that the infant she had been so excited to bring into this world had developed without life sustaining organs.

I'm pro-Susan who was sexually assaulted on her way home from work, only to come to the horrific realization that her assailant planted his seed in her when she got a positive pregnancy test result a month later.

I'm pro-Theresa who hemorrhaged due to a placental abruption, causing her parents, spouse, and children to have to make the impossible decision on whether to save her or her unborn child.