I recently decided I will go for the cheap Chinese store brand power tools for most things. It's about 1/5 to 1/3 the price of Ryobi, gets really good reviews, have been sold for more than 10 years now with the same batteries, and comes with a 5 year warranty which is 2 years more than ryobi. It's maybe not going to last 10 years, but at 1/5 the price it does not have to.
Replace "breaks" with "fails to work as intended" then.
A tool that doesn't break but does smell like a refinery or damages nearby electronics when used, gets strangely hot or inexplicably changes shape when idle, etc. should still be replaced.
I don't think that is how screws work. I really have a hard time seeing how the drill makes a difference with that. The bit you use, sure. How you use the drill, sure. Maybe if the drill has a completely messed up clutch maybe, but then the tool is not functional and you should return it.
I don't think anyone is asking you to stupidly follow the advice off a cliff. You're welcome to call "stripping all your screw heads" broken and take appropriate action.
All too often I've seen amateurs do this and thing think "don't blame the tool, I must be bad", when it really is the tool! A good craftsman never blames his tools is a reflection on the types of tool a craftsman has, not just the skill they have.
Perfect. The dirty little secret of this strategy is that most people's uses just aren't that demanding, so the cheap stuff is more than sufficient. Additionally, breaking a cheap tool is a great indicator of where your real needs for quality lie, which is rarely where you think it will be.
Never before in history has a vassal that is this dependent on its patron hated its patron so much.
God help us when the US finally decides that the vast amounts of money it pours down the drain to keep us as its vassal is not worth the squeeze. China and Russia will not be nearly as patient and kind.
America sends a VP to give a speech, which even though it made some politicians cry, was still just words. China will just use us for spare body parts and Russia will drop our people from planes.
America says it really would like Greenland, which it could take with literally zero contest if it wanted, and which it gave back to Europe after Europe had another one if it's many internal meat grinder wars. China and Russia just takes what it wants, they don't ask.
It's really going to suck balls being the punching bag of Russia and China.
Europe is by actual fact completely dysfunctional, constantly getting itself into shit left and right, constantly needing bailouts from America to keep it afloat, and Europeans pretend they are better than Americans. Totally absurd.
This is a bit disingenuous. If you install Chrome, you install Chrome and all it's parts. They don't ask your consent for individual parts because that would be absurd. If you don't want Chrome and all its parts, don't use it.
If I install Chrome, I expect it to take a few hundred MBs and then only take up additional space in a controlled and transparent manner - for its cache, for example. For me, secretly adding 4GB after installation is a bit too much.
If you're okay with 4GB being added, where would you draw a line? What if it downloaded a 40GB file? 400GB?
Personally I draw the line where Chrome becomes worse than alternatives, and then I switch.
Lately Firefox has been getting better, but I still prefer Chrome for almost all my needs, so I stick to it. This barely even makes a difference to me. If it was 400GB however it would make a difference to me, and I would make more of an effort to switch to something else.
I was just curious why would anyone use Chrome over other superior Chromium alternatives (Vivaldi, Brave, etc.) other than Google account syncing (which I can understand can be pretty big deal for many).
Prices being negative for one day does not make energy prices low. The "green shift" in Germany has increased the use of fossil fuels and the price of energy.
From JP Morgan's 16th Annual Energy Paper, March 2026
> In 2024 we estimated that had Germany not decommissioned nuclear power after the Fukushima accident, it would have needed 50% less electricity generation from fossil fuels, 84% less generation from imported natural gas, 27% less fossil fuel capacity and 42% less natural gas capacity. Another road less traveled: Germany’s electricity prices in 2024 were almost 25% higher than they would have been had the country kept its nuclear power online . And as shown below, Germany might not have experienced such a sharp increase in its electricity imports which are 2x higher than a decade ago as a share of consumption.
> More nuclear shutdown repercussions: Germany’s industrial power prices were 3x higher than the US and China in 2024, and part of the reason why Germany has been experiencing the deindustrialization shown on the right.
> Prices being negative for one day does not make energy prices low.
My apologies, that was poorly worded - I didn't mean to imply that all energy prices were low across the board. Of course they are not.
It's an interesting indicator, not (yet) a systemic change. And as I said in answer to the parent comment, it's a important subject right now because of the petrochemical price shock.
Nevertheless, if I were to interpret your statement as unilaterally as you interpreted mine: you said "negative prices are not low prices", which is wrong as a matter of arithmetic.
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