It’s literally less than a cent (euro or dollar) for a whole bottle of tap water.

Out of curiosity I checked the price I pay for tap water in Portugal and 1 m³ (1000 l) costs around €0.5, so a 2l bottle of tap water contains all of 0.01 euro cents worth of it.

Ideally the thing should be broken into a “Camera captures images and makes it available in an open format” side and an “Application for Linux/Windows/Mac/iOS/Android/whatever reads said open format data and shows it to the use/records it in local hardware”, so that if one’s chosen provider for one of the sides enshittifies you can easily replace it, but I can understand the tendency to make and launch the whole thing fully integrated as one non-interoperable big bundle from a single provider given that in practice “do it and they’ll come” projects that just provide data in an open format in the expectation that other people will make the software that uses it, almost always fail.

You seem to be running around with some serioulsy lack of life experience and understanding of people plus are probably subconsciously influenced by exposure to American-style hyperreductive politics (i.e. namelly the Red Scare bollocks) so let me tell you a story:

I’m a member a small leftwing party in my country. Now, this country used to be under a Fascist dictatorship and had a Revolution which overthrew it about 50 years ago. The result of this is that some older people who fought against Fascism and were deeply involved in Politics during the Revolution are pretty hard-core leftwingers in older more traditional ways.

Now this party I’m in isn’t the Communist Party (yeah, my country has one), differing mainly because it’s against autoritarian approaches to improving people’s lives. That said, a number of members there are from the old generation, who grew up under Fascism with one or other variant of Communism as the lighthouse signalling their way to a better world.

Back when Russia invaded Ukraine, I was having a conversation with some “comrades” from the party (yeah, even though not being the Communist Party, the party I’m in has inherited a lot of elements from the anti-Fascism revolutionary origins of its founding members, and that includes that other party members are “comrades”) and one of the older ones immediatelly sided with Russia.

Now, I happen to understand were he’s coming from (and YOU CLEARLY WOULD NOT AND JUDGING BY YOUR SIMPLETON JUDGEMENTAL TAKE, WOULD NOT EVEN TRY) - his political birth was under a Fascist dictatorship, were the by far loudest political messaging for change and the main light illuminating the path out was the Soviet Union’s variant of Communism (most people rotting in the Fascist political prisons were Communists) so of course his instinctive reaction was to think “Russia must be doing this for a good reason” and side with them: that’s just tribalist fanboyism talking (and in my experience the one thing Soviet and Mao’s styles of Communism do well is turning people into unthinking tribalist fanboys, something which people like the OP with their blunt adversarial approach actually help because they reinforce the “fortress mentality” side of that propaganda).

Guess what: I actually talked with him about it, pointed out this was a very big nation invading the territory of a smaller nation, one which they couldn’t possibly fear because it was so much smaller - thus a clear big aggressor and small victim situation - and that I was on the side of the victim - Ukraine - and against the aggressor - Russia - just like when the US invaded Iraq I was against the US and on the side of Iraq due to exactly the same Principle. I also pointed out that the claims of Russia of their actions being to “free” Ukraine were exactly like America’s claims when invading Iraq and that Freedom comes from self-determination, not violent invasion by a foreign nation (a take which ressonates with how my own country overthrew BY ITSELF Fascism and brought Democracy)

THAT got him thinking and him thinking got him to change his mind about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and side with Ukraine instead of Russia - ultimatelly brains and principles overrode the knee-jerk pro-Russia from the indoctrination in his younger years.

(Granted, this would be a lot harder with members of the actual Communist Party - this guy wasn’t in the Communist Party exactly because he had tried it and disliked it mainly because of their spirit of wanting to impose things on others - i.e. the authoritarianism - so he left and ended up in an anti-autoritarian small leftwing party)

So, you see, not all tankies are alike and IN THE WHOLE WORLD (most of which is not the US) there are a whole lot of reasons and life paths for people ending up with those beliefs, and doing like the OP did and just poking them like a little child that afterwards runs back to their friends boasting about having poked them and how angry they got, ain’t gonna change the ones who can change, it’s just going to keep them there or even push them further in.

It all feels kinda performative…

Well, yeah, that’s like going into a German sub and saying how you detest the way of doing things of both Germans and French.

You’re criticizing their way of doing things and just because you’re criticizing somebody else, doesn’t make it any better (in fact, mentioning them like side by side makes it sound you think they’re equivalent, which will piss of a few more people).

Not that think the point you made in that post you listed here is incorrect, rather I’m criticizing your “surprise” at the reaction to what you did in the context you did it: I mean if you walked into a Nazi bar and called Hitler a cunt it would be both be true that “You’re correct” and “You set yourself up to be assaulted by Nazis”.

Maybe his standard of Fairness for the plebes isn’t the same as for their betters, and thus he was being totally honest in his desired for a “fair” deal for the working people.

Oh, in my personal experience living in several countries in Europe including the UK, the British elites are pretty much the best in Europe at manipulating the local plebes.

Probably helps that culturally the English (and less so for other nations) have this strain of “know your place” and “look up to your betters” that’s not there or at least nowhere as strong in countries which had actual bottom-up revolutions were they overthrew their installed elites.

Just look at the reaction to the Snowden Revelations in the US and UK - in the former there was an outrage and at least some of it was walked back, in the latter the government just made a law that retroactivelly made the whole thing legal and the press quickly shut up about it and never mentioned it again.

And don’t get me started at the insane levels of Royal Arse Kissing of even supposedly liberal newspapers like The Guardian.

Britain is definitelly “world class” at both sheep herding and being sheep.

“Normal” SUVs are something like 70% more likely to kill the pedestrian in a collision with one that cars like sedans.

SUVs are anti-social cars.

IMHO, it’s a great example that The Law isn’t really done to protect common people that those things are allowed on the road when they’re actually unecessary (unlike, say, delivery vans) and almost twice as deadly for other people than normal cars.

Clearly a Penis Compensation Device.

The pretty much got the biggest idiot possible and gave it the keys of whole damned castle of cards.

Framework computers aren’t really targeted at the average consumer.

It makes sense that the kind of people who value hardware which they can easily and freely maintain and upgrade also value software which they can easily and freely maintain and upgrade.

For sure Linux being a free option vs Windows being a paid for one also helps.

Also there’s the alternative way which Iran offered: kick out the American and Israeli embassadors.

Iran is playing 5D chess whilst Trump’s America is playing Tic-tac-toe.

Ethno-Fascist even - Fascism anchored on ethnicity and ethnic-superiority like the NAZIs, rather than the Fascism anchored on nationality of Mussolini and Franco.

Both kinds are violent, but Fascism anchored on ethnicity is way more murderous - they’re the ones who calously murder children when they’re from a “vermin” ethnicity.

This is the guy that very openly said Germany had a duty to support a nation committing a Genocide because of the dominant ethnicity of that nation.

This shit is pretty close to the NAZI mindset and nowhere else in Europe - not even the in countries with actual far-right governments - would the head of government actually say something like this.

Mind you, in Germany even the Green Party supports Israel based on exactly the same reason as Merz gave, so having a “Race justifies anything” mindset (a core element of NAZI thinking) is a much broader problem in Germany than just this guy.

“Macht macht recht”

Germany supported Israel in its Genocide in Gaza, revealing very clearly that the foundations of the Nazi mindset were alive and well there when none other than their Chanceller very openly and publicly justified supporting Israel in their Genocide in Gaza using the ethnicity of the aggressor as the reason for that support.

Unsurprisingly they’ve also been supporting Israel and the US in this current attack.

A nation were the race of the aggressor and the victims is considered valid justification for wipping out a city of 2 million people isn’t one holding Modern Western values and hence not one that’s going to turn against a Nation whose main ethnicity they consider to be “good” (which applies to both white main ethnicities of the US and Israel) when they’re attacking a nation whose ethnicity - Muslim - they very publicly deem “bad” (though never explicitly using the word “bad”, they definitelly use “terrorists”, “murderers”, “violent” and similar derrogatory terms when refering to Muslims in general).

I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect even just late XX century thinking from Germany.

Also later in time when one is making a choice for a kind of product one doesn’t usually buy, one might have forgotten their dislike for a brand due to their excessive use of advertising and yet their subconscious is still giving them a feeling of familiarity when they see that brand’s name on a product which makes it more likely that they’ll chose it over other options that don’t feel as familiar.

Most advertising nowadays is meant to affect subconscious impulses which will do their thing with no cognitive effort, whilst the position the OP holds (and which I myself try to) is conscious and requires cognitive effort to maintain.

Yeah, even cheap microcontrollers nowadays with support for clock functionality have an ultra low power mode were the only thing running is the clock crystal and the clock functionality which uses so little power that it can run for years from such a button battery.

The thing could do the same as my stupidly cheap alarm clock that has some batteries as power backup and just keep on counting time without displaying whilst mains power is down so that when mains power comes back up it still has the right time.

The extra $1 for the hardware needed for it is hardly going to matter next to the overal cost of anything but a stupidly cheap microwave.

I have a stupidly cheap microwave which I bought a few years ago (because I moved homes and the last one, a rental, included a microwave) and it has no clock.

In fact, it doesn’t even have the simplest of displays - the entire user interface is one analog rotary control for power and another for microwaving time - the latter rotating back by itself at a fixed speed - plus a bell that dings when the second control reaches the zero position.

If I want to know how long till a microwaving operation is finished I just look at the position of the second rotary control.

Sometimes simpler is better.

The definition of “crime” is pretty much controlled by a small number of people and it ain’t a crime if there’s no law against it.

Always remember that the mass murder of Jews and Roma in NAZI Germany wasn’t a crime because it was all legal. Similarly, Slavery wasn’t a crime in most of the World, and even today in many countries, such as the US some forms of it (for example using prisioners as forced labour) aren’t a crime.

We’ve been indoctrinated into in everyday speech conflate Legality with Morality (as its very useful for those who control lawmaking for the riff-raff to unthinkingly shun those deemed law-breakers and side with law-enforcers), so IMHO it’s a good idea to, once in a while, remind oneself that Laws are made by Humans, not Gods, and the reasons for Humans to make Laws as they are, are messy and the results themselves are often bad and easy to selectivelly interpret and abuse, something especially bad in ages like the one we live in when widespread political corruption is pretty much standard.