I'm German and in the rare instance I eat out in an actual restaurant, I still do that "rounding up" if I've been happy with the service. Cash or card is not really an important factor for that scenario.
Let's say the bill says someting between 67€ - 72€, I would round that up to 80€.
Or sometimes (not every time though) when I'm getting a Döner kebab and it's ~7.50€ I'll round that up to the next full €.
Since the title on here is "Unity reintroduces the Runtime Fee [...]" I assumed that there would be more to it the simple outright subscription plan(s), making me scroll down to the FAQ of the linked page where you can find the following bit of drivel which turned me right off:
> "How much does Unity Industry cost?
> For seat-based and floating license pricing, contact Sales."
Also, according to the "order summary" you get when have the default "monthly" option selected and click "Choose Plan", it says:
> "Commitment
> 8/21/2025 - 8/21/2026.
> Your total annual commitment is €4,968.00 excluding VAT /Sales Tax. ¹
> You will be charged for one month today and every month thereafter, and your subscription will > automatically renew at the end of your annual term. You can manage your subscription in your Unity Account."
indicating that even though you selected the "monthly" option it's still going to be an annual subscription and I just can't be bothered to wade through what're probably mountains of Legalese during my private time to find out how they're planning to keep you captive in that subscription for the whole year anyway.
Unity have demonstrated time and time again they're trying to screw their customers, so fuck 'em, use literally any other engine like Godot which has been recommended in this thread already. I don't think the company will reverse their course again now that the original outrage has cooled off but hopefully at least some some bottom-feeding manager types responsible for this get fired for "underperforming" if/when enough devs take their money elsewhere.
¹ in € it's 414€/mo or prepaid 4554€/a, essentially 11 instead 12 months if paid in advance
Got a recall notice about my few-months-old 20.000mAh Anker power bank from Amazon, went through Anker's verification process and found out that the S/N of mine isn't in the range of affected devices. Dodged a bullet there, also from past experiences [1] with the company their return/replacement process works well.
[1] e.g. BT earbuds where one side randomly stopped working after a few months, got a replacement after just a few minutes of explanation/verification hassle.
Not an expert on the topic by any means, but IIRC:
- Those designs have been in parallel R&D for decades
- Tokamaks are conceptually simpler, thus might be easier/faster/cheaper to make into viable installations
- Stellarators are WAAAAAY more complex to design and build but AFAIU they would have the huge benefit of being able to sustain the plasma for way longer for the same "startup cost" of a cycle since the particles of the plasma are routed somewhat like they're on a mobius strip instead of a simple torus (which should make it easier to confine more particles for a longer time).
I recall having read (several years ago) that the simulation technology of the 90's wasn't really up to the task of aiding in the design of those weird wavy magnets for Wendelstein 7-X, an unfortunate reality which delayed the project a lot.
AFAIK some automakers also cut down on the number of sensors by doing stuff like reading the already implemented sensor(s) for the ABS to provide the tire pressure warning function.
When I previously donated blood at the DRK, not only did I always get a Bockwurst&Brötchen along with a selection of beverages (water, cola, coffee, tea, etc.) but also a little gift bag containing a variety of little food and drink items, like a banana, an apple, little bottles/packets of fruit juice, (fruit/chocolate/etc.) joghurt cups, all in all maybe ~5-7€ worth.
Over the last few years here in Germany many, many food products have gained a little note next to the "MHD" (Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum, [1]) which says something like "oft länger gut" ("often viable for longer") or "ansehen, riechen, probieren" ("Look, smell, try").
And IIRC the EU is also debating the removal of MHD from staple foods that are shelf-stable for years, like dried pasta, uncooked rice etc. Normal sugar already doesn't have an MHD, although jam sugar is marked with the year of manufacture since they have other compounds in them as well beside the sugar itself.
Where i work all all the food that's simply past its MHD gets collected every morning by the Red Cross for food banks ("Die Tafel"). Obviously if a foods container is damaged or it's rotted fruits/veg or it would be unsafe to consume for another reason [2], that stuff gets thrown out (into bins collected for biomass processing).
[1]: pretty sure it's the same as "best (if used) by date" since products from abroad are sometimes marked "BBD <date>" instead of "MHD <date>" (at least on the transport packaging).
[2]: like lazy customers not putting frozen or cooled foods back but leaving them elsewhere in the warm store, something which REALLY aggravates me.
> No more books. At one point I was selling the BOFH 'books' on Amazon, but it got to be a royal pain. Every month or so I'd get some warning about the book quality from Amazon that I'd have to address and every year I'd have to fill in a US tax form - not big annoyances, but annoying enough to make it not worth the time... Amazon still reminds me every 6 months or so, but there's no turning back now!
So in my recollection I apparently mixed together the different parts: "having to periodically fill in US tax forms even though he's residing in NZ" and "annoyance not being worth his time". It apparently wasn't a direct tax/fee amount issue, but more one of annoyance and sales of these (e)books on Amazon probably not being substantial enough to offset that hassle.
Sadly I can't edit my GP comment anymore to correct that.
Still have the three BOFH Omnibus volumes in my Kindle app, bought originally from Simon, who has since discontinued their sale on Amazon for some reason, IIRC Amazon fees/taxes/something like that which would actually lose him money from having it for sale there.
I've reread all three volumes quite a few times over the years, currently on Volume I, year 2000 #24 again, since I mainly read a few stories every time I'm on my 30 minute (lunch) break at work.
If Simon reads this, thank you for your work amusing your readers, me among them.
> In France it's mandatory in a company to have a "company union", after 10 employee it's one representative (employee who has part of his paid time dedicated to employees support functions, and it grows to more and more the more employees there is.
In Germany, that's called "Betriebsrat" (something like "company council") with pretty much the same purpose.
And then there's the "Gewerkschaft", which are unions not for one company but for entire sectors of the economy who - through their numbers of members - are able to do collective bargaining for the employees of their fields of various companies. E.g. "IG Metall" being the industrial union of metalworkers, which considering Germanys large manufacturing background is the largest union in the country.
Even if you have tarnished silver things, like silver(-plated) cutlery etc. the "un-tarnishing" is stupid easy and cheap to do:
- take some container and put warm/hot water and a large helping of (table) salt into it
- put some scrunched up Al foil into the water
- submerge the objects to be untarnished in the water so that the silver touches the Al foil
- leave for a while in a well ventilated area (since it will smell of rotten eggs)
- rinse well
- done.
recipe from a kid's chemistry set I had a looooong while ago, used it successfully quite a few times on my parents' silver-plated cutlery they've had and used regularly since their wedding decades ago.
As someone who had cataracts and even after the corrective operations still has the significant sensitivity to glare, dark mode is not just a nice-to-have, but an absolute necessity for me.
I.e. it's an accessibility issue to some people, so don't laugh it off as "just a preference" or try to beat down any disagreeing voices with studies on only healthy eyes.
"Nuclear Fracking: Repeatedly Nuking Yourself for Commercial Reasons" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsu0lHkOIFg