My wife has a very good Nikon D500, but I always take photos with my smartphone and that is still bad as you can see :-(

What is better for you?

You can turn to a number of companies if you buy one of the best smartphones, regardless of what you buy. However, one of the two popular mobile operating systems is guaranteed to run: iOS (if you choose an iPhone) or Android (if you choose something else).

Both platforms are pretty mature at this point and have been around for over a decade. This means that both have gathered extensive functions and there is very little that the other cannot. Still, each has its advantages, and there are reasons why you should choose one.
What do you choose?


or in German   :

Was ist besser für dich?

Sie können sich zwar an eine Reihe von Unternehmen wenden, wenn Sie eines der besten Smartphones kaufen, unabhängig davon, was Sie kaufen. Es wird jedoch garantiert eines der beiden bekannten mobilen Betriebssysteme ausgeführt: iOS (wenn Sie sich für ein iPhone entscheiden) oder Android (wenn Sie sich für etwas anderes entscheiden).

Beide Plattformen sind zu diesem Zeitpunkt ziemlich ausgereift und existieren seit mehr als einem Jahrzehnt. Das bedeutet, dass beide umfassende Funktionen gesammelt haben und es nur sehr wenig gibt, was der andere nicht kann. Dennoch hat jedes seine Vorteile, und es gibt Gründe, warum Sie sich für eines entscheiden sollten.
Für was entscheidet ihr euch?

So far the largest ozone hole over the Arctic closes

This is the positive effect of coronvirus, fewer planes and ships
 Cars on the move, largest ozone hole so far over the Arctic is closing

The largest hole ever observed in the ozone layer over the Arctic has closed. This was announced by the "Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service", the service of the European center for the medium-term weather forecast.

this is my home village Weikendorf, near 20 km from Vienna

I've never understood this. Is it ads? Is it bitcoin mining? 

I frequently open pages and am shocked at how much CPU they require. It freezes my whole computer. I suppose they are designed for computers that aren't 10 years old, but goodness, why is that necessary? 

Anyone else run into this, or is this just some sort of Chrome issue? I have adblock installed, but I have it paused for almost all websites just because I feel bad using it.

We host on Ramnode. They are what's known as a low end box VPS provider, meaning that they cater to the budget end of the market. That being said, they are one of the best Low End Box providers in existence. They reliability is very good. Their prices aren't the cheapest that you'll find, but you get what you pay for, and Ramnode provides a lot of value for the money. 

However, a quick look at their plans and you'll realize that there are plans that give you 4 cores for $10/month. How? 

Even better, their premium VPS line (much faster CPUs) offers 4 cores for $48/month. This is actually a fantastic price. You won't find something this cheap at many VPS providers. Some deeper digging leads to a few questions, however. 

Ramnode's premium VPS line uses blazing fast 3.7ghz CPUs (and that's the base clock!) However, they achieved this primarily with Intel E3's (and occasionally generic E-series) CPUs. E3's are strictly single socket CPUs with a maximum of 4 cores and 8 threads. This 4-core VPS is, quite literally, being hosted on a server that only has four cores for ALL VPSs available. They are, in theory, lending you the entire server's CPU for $48 dollars, or are they really? 

Not quite. Firstly, for all we know, they could be using the E-series generics that have 6 cores and 12 threads (not unlikely). But the real kicker here is that these "cores" they are giving you are, in actuality, just threads. You are getting about 50% of the threads on the server, but not 100% of the cores, per se. 

Even this is a little complicated. You're sharing these threads with multiple other servers on the hardware. They put a number of them on there. These aren't dedicated cores. If your neighboring nodes aren't behaving, your performance will suffer. Some VPS providers are much worse about this than others. Ramnode hasn't given us many problems.  

Additionally, hyperthreading usually results in about a 15-30% increase in performance. In a gross simplification, if your VPS is the only VPS using significant CPU, you will get 100% of that core. When another VPS gets put on the other thread of an individual CPU, hyperthreading kicks in and your VPS only gets about 55-65% of its ordinary level of performance from that core (since it's being split between two VPSs). 

In other words, "4" cores means anywhere between four full cores, and merely approximately ~2 cores of performance if the server is busy. 

So then, what is their business model?

Their Acceptable Use Policy offers some clues.  

Quote:As in all virtual server environments, CPU cores and disk I/O are shared among multiple VPSs. If your VPS is consistently maxing out one full core or more and impacting the performance of other client servers sharing the same host node, we may ask you to reduce your usage. Load may be generated by CPU usage and/or I/O. Disruptive load may result in a reboot, shutdown, and/or suspension of the VPS regardless of the time lapse involved.

Congratulations to @tc4me for being named the May 2020 Member of the Month!

https://qz.com/1843497/if-kim-jong-un-di...korea/amp/

Kim Jong Un may die, according to reports. It’s unknown who will take his place. Various reports offer possibilities including his younger sister or his older brother, and there is talk of the US stepping in to offer humanitarian aid. 

North Korea is a country that has a severe lack of good human rights as it is. It will be very interesting to see what happens.

When I went to clear the three alerts from a PM conversation yesterday, each page I clicked led to a 404 instead of leading me to the PM conversation. It's not a problem in terms of usability for me since I didn't use the alerts to look at the PM conversation, it's just odd.

look at that !!!! Google Crome the magician under the browser or is the version of espionage? Just make the text in the field disappear and reappear when you re-enter it