> You kind of always have to go on a quest for a library on the internet

Plenty of languages come with standard libraries that are more than sufficient for handling plenty of tasks.

There's nothing stopping anybody from making a batteries included lua, and plenty have done so (emilua, luapower, luaforwindows, luart and etc), of course, pure lua still exists and their changes are usually backported into lua since its so small and portable.

FWIW you can do a lot with pure lua and unless you're importing json there's no reason to include a library for it given that lua itself can be used as the data exchange format.

> Why does every discussion have to wind up with a digression thread about how "real" or, even worse, "basic" journalism

Hardly surprising given the contrast to the level of journalistic integrity on display at the Beeb recently.

> We only permit pesticides for which there is undisputed evidence that the chemicals do not cause problems for humans/animals/other plants etc.

This is broadly how the EU operates. If companies want to start putting new stuff in/on our food, they first have to demonstrate it's no dangerous.

Not the best approach to everything perhaps, but I'd rather not have capitalists freely innovating on my food.

At least 2.

Being able to put language-specific shortcuts on keys that change with the keyboard layout is damn useful.

Why does software have such powerful modes for Python and JavaScript, but never for French or English?

> just to reach pihole at home, that sounds like overkill.

Host AdGuard on a VPS (same one as the VPN?). Then you can use it from everywhere.

I doubt the VPS/VPN route is for the majority of people, but if "you" are one of those, then yes, it would make sense.

For everybody else, $18/year vs $5/month for a VPS should be an easy choice.

> Even if the university is free you must pay for food and housing.

A one-person apartment in the local halls of residence costs under €500/month here in DE. A room in a shared flat costs a lot less.

Studying abroad in Canada is not nearly as affordable. Tuition alone for international students here is exorbitant ($40,000/year and up). We don’t give any subsidies whatsoever for international students. Instead, we use their tuition fees to subsidize the tuition of our domestic students.

Yeah, Germany must be one of the few still attracting foreign students with no/low fees? I know a lot of courses have teaching in English, landing a job afterwards needs fluent German though.

I wonder how long it will last? UK Universities are now for rich foreigners only. It does mean great options for Chinese food near student halls though.

That can still be too much. Someone studying abroad usually isn’t allowed to work, so they’re making zero income. If they come from a poor family, they have almost if not zero reserves. So everything must be either provided by the college or covered by grants/loans.

Except some universities may allow foreign students to take on-campus jobs, which would probably pay enough. Or for a PhD, usually the university pays you.

> Someone studying abroad usually isn’t allowed to work

Citation needed, because I'm almost certain not being allowed to work as a foreign student is the exception to the rule. A surface level Google search for Western European countries (BE/NL/FR/DE, typical places to go study abroad) shows me all of them allow non-EU students to get a job. You'll typically see these student workers in bars, restaurants, grocery stores, ...

RE the parent comment stating 500 EUR rent is potentially too much for a foreign student to afford, I can imagine it might be. But it's also too much to afford for plenty of native students, and a large share of them get these student jobs to be able to afford their student housing and the likes.

I was thinking of foreign student work restrictions in the US (https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/students-...), where you can’t work outside your subject and in some cases can’t work off-campus.

I looked at other countries and they have much less restrictions, so it seems you’re right and it’s more common than I thought.

Someone asked Rohloff how long their bicycle hub gears last, and the answer was, "We don't know. We've only been making them for 25 years."

A lot of German SMEs still work that way, even if their big engineering companies have rather lost their way.

On a German PC keyboard, @ is ALT+Q.

That was a big problem when I switched to macOS. I kept hitting CMD+Q every time I tried to type an email address.

> I don't think the amount of breakage per se was the problem with Python 3.

The lack of u"" is just another manifestation of the complete breakage they wrought upon Python's string handling, isn't it?

It was closer to a decade (3.7) till they'd put enough of the bits they'd ripped out back in for Py3 to be suitable for the things I used Py2 for.

I don't think you can make management take a long-term view when shareholders have a short-term one, tbh.