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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • Ireland uses a variant of ranked choice voting. In essence, voters get a list of candidates for their voting district, and rank as many of them as they want in order of preference. When votes are counted, the candidate with the lowest votes is eliminated, and votes of those who ranked the candidate first are distributed to their second choice. Rinse and repeat until only as many candidates remain as there are open seats in the constituency.

    There is still some inertia, especially in rural areas (“my dad always voted for this candidate, so I’ll vote for his son”), but the system still lends itself to more informed voting. From what I’ve seen in other countries, on average Ireland does a better job at electing more reasonable candidates than the US or EU countries.












  • A bit late to the game, but for what it’s worth, my experience with the Shockz. I run about 6-7 hours per week, and listen exclusively to audiobooks. As a result, I can’t comment on the sound quality, but I do have some other observations.

    Pros:

    • Waterproof. I’ve been running for more than a decade before I got the Shockz, and no earphones lasted more than 6 months in the local rain. No such issue with these headphones.
    • Not falling off. By their design, they would not fall off, unlike any and all earbuds I ever tried. I may have weird ears in this regard, but I had to learn to run with a hat or headband to keep earbuds in place.
    • Spatial awareness. Excellent at keeping me aware of my surroundings.
    • Good battery life. A single charge lasts me through the week, and a quick partial emergency charge can carry me over the next 2-hour run. In addition, the “battery low” status actually works well. With any other brand of earbuds, from Mpow to Anker, once I got the “battery low” warning, I had about 20 minutes of charge left. So, going for a long run at “battery medium” was always a gamble. With the Shockz, I never ran out of charge when I started at “battery medium”, even on my long runs.

    Cons:

    • Not too comfortable. I have a big head, and even so the band behind my head is standing off enough that I can’t wear my hat over it. So, in winter it’s earbuds, held in place and waterproofed by my hat.
    • A bit too quiet. Everything, including the persistent wind here, is interfering with the sound. So, for audiobooks, I have to process them in mp3gain to around 95 dB, and then play them at max. This, however, may be more related to my mp3 player; I didn’t do an analysis of it yet.
    • The controls are weird. My sense of touch is not too good, so pressing the controls while the Shockz are on my head is a futile exercise. I just can’t feel the buttons properly, so I have to take off the headphones and see which button I’m pushing.

    I didn’t test them with music or calls yet (for the latter, I’d have to pair them to my phone), so can’t comment on those features.


  • This is rsa.ie. The main site works fine, but you have to wait to access the driving test registration portal. Mind you, this is even before you see the login or registration screen. And given Ireland’s small size, there are only about 4000 driving tests per week. That number of users is negligible for a normal scheduling page; it must have taken some serious skill and effort to make it non-performant at this scale.



  • Bruncvik@lemmy.worldtoMildly Infuriating@lemmy.worldAh, reddit
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    7 months ago

    I’m still on Reddit, and once in a while I manually overwrite all my comments that are older than a month. 95% of my comments don’t have a real value, and whatever I find interesting or insightful ends on my personal Web site. It’s my information, and if I think I brainfart something that would be helpful for someone, I add it to space that I control. This was true even before the whole API fiasco.