I really like this design due to how compact it is. Italy has an almost identical historical design*, but the earth is not offset so LN can be swapped.
Both plugs and sockets are very compact, which is a far cry from the emerging standard which is the shuko/europlug which takes twice the space. Almost all new houses are equipped with shuko sockets.
But the sockets here do not have the additional prong to avoid swapping the neutral, so they're effectively just a waste of space.
* at least, we have two sizes for it, a smaller one rated for 8A, and the newer for 16A which we commonly have today.
In Italy in practice there are 4 common plugs, 2 type L (big and small), the schuko (type F) with many variations and the europlug.
the compatibility table is not trivial (in particular the europlug is compatible with everithing except the big type L sockets) and while new houses might be to nicer standards, there are a lot of very old houses in italy (i lived in a house from ~1850) and many public spaces use the cheapest sockets they can find so you either get a small type L (accepts also europlugs) a simple schuko (accepts also europlugs and unhearthed small type L) or a big type L (accepts only big type L).
Is the BTicino plug (https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/Italian2.html) used at all in Italy now? There was a serious attempt at adopting it in Iceland in the late 1970s to early 1980s. These sockets can still be found in homes that were built in that period and they are just called "Italian sockets".
3) add support for multiple accounts and identities (too many requests to list on the issue tracker), since federation is great, but it's not always wanted.
Disclaimer: I managed to convince a group of technical users to switch over to matrix. We stay for the principle, but not really for the experience so far. FluffyChat is the best client we tried on mobile. On desktop, I'm glad weechat-matrix and gomuks exist, because all the other clients "reek" to us. And even if you like the modern chat UIs, they're really not bug-free either.
Overall many clients and some severs to choose from, but I did prefer irc just for the simple-no-BS-clients alone (the protocol has nothing to do with it).
If you prefer FluffyChat's UI over Element's then I'm guessing you are after a 1:1 or group style chat (i.e. chat bubbles), similar to say Signal or Facebook Messenger. Element isn't catering to this audience from what I can tell, it has a UI that is similar to Slack or Discord, which is suited for large group chats. Just because you aren't using Element in this way doesn't mean that it has the "worst UX" of any other client.
Your third point is a client side feature. If you meant that you want Element to have that feature, then yes I agree. But in saying that, it wouldn't surprise me that it's not high on the priority list when most clients (of any chat app) have this feature.
I totally get it, but I still disagree. Getting more users on the network should be a #1 priority. You don't want to keep another 10 chat programs, just because matrix is "not" a plain chat app. If the element foundation doesn't do this, who will?
As a tech user, I still don't find the element UI great. It's clunky, quite slow and generally not intuitive, and wastes a lot of screen real-estate.
I'm using slack and discord and I find both to be _significantly_ better for group work.
But actively trying matrix on mobile, I still found the simplified FluffyChat UI much more usable on mobile anyway.
Element is this sort of annoying middle ground which is not great for either.
The third point is also important, because matrix is one of the few systems where you can have a private network for your work. You know, just like slack (again, the "group" they're apparently targeting?). Great feature. But if you, like me, would like to use matrix for both work and other communications, you're stuck.
So in the end you run two clients. Element for work, fluffychat for everything else? And maybe shildychat for your other private group (I wish this was a joke).
Not to justify the missing feature in any way, but assuming you're on Android can't you modify the applicationId of the existing apk (there are tools on GitHub that will do this for you), resign the apk, and adb push it? Unlike desktop, mobile apps are so thoroughly sandboxed from one another that I don't think there's any way for that to cause problems. I guess updates might be cumbersome though.
You can. People have suggested the Element foundation to publish "red blue green yellow" versions of element with just a different app id for this.
I wouldn't be against it (the _clear_ distinction between accounts is important!), but element is already a memory hog. You really don't want multiple instances running.
This is why I've always been confused by HN's comparisons of Signal and Matrix. I see Signal as a replacement to texting/Messenger/WhatsApp (chats focused on one on one or small groups) but I see Matrix as a replacement to Slack/Discord (chats focused on organizations or large groups). I'm not sure why these aren't two different paradigms, but maybe someone sees something I don't. Telegram seems the most in between to me, though there are security reasons I see Signal/Matrix as being better.
For the average user the element UI is just confusing. This is the #1 complaint I got from all non-techies. They expect to just see a contact list, with each contact being a simple chat without the typing bar. Most of the other interactions are also too complex (like sending an image).
You'd think this is a small complaint, but I've listed this as first as it's the biggest barrier to conversion. Ask the _same_ user to try FluffyChat, and no objections will be raised besides the expected "why another chat app".
I'm not a fan of the Element UI myself, although I "get it" as it's targeting to something more group-oriented like slack. The problem is that Element is currently neither oriented to plain users, nor it's great to technical ones.
If everything else had to stay the same, they should optimize for plain users on mobile and offer a better, more advanced desktop client instead.
I guess it depends on what Element is trying to replace.
If it's whatsapp etc then yeah, I agree, it is not going to work. But if it's Teams or Slack or something, then I don't see much difference.
I don't think it is meant to be a whatsapp replacement, I think it is a generic chat tool that lets me integrate all my services in one place - kinda like Pidgen.
As you say, maybe this cash injection cam let them get a mobile client that can work as a whatsapp replacement (as I guess that is what most people are moving from)
What important features? FluffyChat had cross-signing for more than a year now. A lot of other features are unlikely to be added, since FluffyChat aims to be easy to use. FluffChat even supports E2EE fallback keys!
I do agree it is quite ok, it has all the basic features, but it feels "slow" and "beta" at some points.
In addition to some decryption issues that made some of my friends hate Element (they could view messages on one device but not another one, and there was no clear action to fix this), one of the issues I think could be easily worked on is the settings: the current layout is way too complicated, too much scrolling, too many options, it doesn't feel clear at all. Also the stickers are really crappy: they are not useful for any serious chat (ie. work), and not useful for any fun chat (ie. friends).
There aren't that many showstopper issues in the UX (except for wrangling bridges, but that's not really an Element thing, it's more of a Matrix thing).
But everything is just a bit off. The text is a bit too spaced out for IRC users, the icons a bit too small for people coming from Slack and Discord. Colors are seemingly chosen at random by the coder and don't jive well together. The "These people have read the backlog this far" notification is just plain useless. It is death by a thousand cuts really. The small things stack up and make me not like using Element for Matrix.
I do love Matrix, the underlying technology, in theory.
IMO they just need to bite the bullet and make a truly user friendly mobile UI to replace Telegram, WhatsApp, FB Messenger etc. And a proper client for the major operating systems that's not too different from Discord and Slack.
Using it everyday too at $work, also used Slack and Gitter (and FreeNode/IRC FWIW). Quite happy with the current Element UI. They have slowly added features and fixed issues. I tried a beta some time ago with... topics? Rooms grouped in some sort of topic I think. It was really buggy, but I forgot about that I haven't seen it yet. So I assume they are doing some A/B testing, trying things slowly and seeing what works.
I want to like Element but I find strange UX issues or minor bugs every time I use it. It feels extremely beta from a polish perspective. I'm hopeful they can iterate and deliver something on par with the quality of mainstream chat apps they just need to decide that UX and look-and-feel is as important as delivering something conceptually novel from an engineering perspective.
Above all else, it's because core functionality is frequently broken and issues like this[1] languish for months and years without updates. When things don't work, it's rarely transparent to users whether this is due to a bug on Element's end (or on the server side), user error or misconfiguration, or operator misconfiguration.
Further, there's virtually zero documentation for end users. There are no in-app explainers as to what E2EE is or why anyone should care, leaving the onus on operators to document and explain these things to non-technical users.
For me the channel/room list is too messy with different parts which have their own scrolling zones. And each entry takes too much space leading to having to scroll all the time.
On Quassel I can have 30 channels open without having to scroll. On element only 10 or so. That's way too few considering the number of bridges available.
They have a high density xchat mode but it only affects the chat view, not the room list
Personally I’m always confused about the accounts I which one I’m currently using (they have the same names). Also I can never understand when I verified someone.
I had never heard of FluffyChat and so visited its site. Appears to be a very attractive landing page. However, UX of the site leaves a lot to be desired.
Their FAQ link in menu bar just links to their GitLab issues page, and AFAICTA nowhere on their site does it actually explain what FluffyChat is or which what network it operates, etc. (clearly from context I infer it is Matrix)
I'm not trying to talk down your personal experience or have any skin in the game, but...
We also have a group of technical users on Matrix, where we were formerly on IRC. Nobody complains about Element and most prefer it over the native clients they tried (but it doesn't rule out the possibility that everyone hates all native clients here).
This is also just anecdata with a sample size of "handful of users", but from the other side.
I personally would love to have a native Windows and Linux client I really like (preferably the same), but so far I've had no luck. The Android version of Element is perfect for my usage pattern though.
I never think a concrete issue will affect me. But over the last weeks I've been affected exactly by 2). Today I finally figured out that it had to do with the sender having turned on the setting "Never send encrypted messages to unverified sessions from this session". It's terribly implemented, because it gives the sender no feedback that they break any unverified receivers, and the unverified receivers only see an obscure error message. For more details, see my issue report: https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/18255
Also +1 on Element's terrible UI and UX. It was designed by programmers instead of UI designers, and you can feel that. I always find it weird when people talk about Element being a good client. It's literally the best of the worst. From the thousands of open issues (5000+ Web, 1000+ iOS and Android each!) you can clearly see they have an organization problem. Even most volunteer open source projects are more organized. I hope at least 30 million will be enough for them to hire some talented people and build a better management.
I have the feeling most of them are hackers. Hacking and experimenting with new things like Matrix P2P is great, but it's not enough to have consistent output. You need to manage an organization, and I have the feeling they aren't capable of doing that. On that note, I'm surprised they managed (pun!) to get 30 million of investment.
> From the thousands of open issues (5000+ Web, 1000+ iOS and Android each!) you can clearly see they have an organization problem.
As I said before down thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27974054), there’s nothing bad about thousands of issues, quite the reverse in fact. Many are feature requests that may or may not be implemented.
A large number of open issues means the project is growing and many people are have ideas for new ways it can improve.
Furthermore, those thousands of open issues hint to me that a lot of people are actively contributing, and that the dev team takes responsibility for legitimate problems.
Compare this to other projects with the illusion of quality because most bugs haven't been reported, or because their developers routinely dismiss and close reports of bugs that they don't feel like fixing, just to keep their bug tracker looking clean.
Indeed, the contents of the Matrix/Element/Synapse issue trackers played a significant part in convincing me that the developers are making good decisions, and that investing my time and contacts in this network would also be a good decision. That was over a year ago, and I do not regret it. The project still looks very much on track to me.
So much entitled whining in this discussion. With friends like open source users, who needs enemies?
> Element is probably one of the worst matrix clients in terms of UX.
If you ask nicely, I'm sure they will give you back all the money that you paid for it.
But your point 2 is spot-on:
> 2) fix decryption issues
Part of the problem is that Matrix nukes your crypto keys every time you log out. This traces back to Element's heritage as a primarily web-based app, where there isn't really a great local, durable place to store your secrets. Not having local on-device storage is painful when the protocol encrypts messages to individual devices rather than to users.
The fix is to set up encrypted key backup, aka secure server-side storage. Then all your keys from all your "devices" (including real devices and web sessions) get safely stored in encrypted form on the server, where you can always find them. You have to use a second passphrase to generate the new key-encryption key, so it's a little annoying. But the fix is pretty magical. Suddenly everything just works!
I was trying to figure out why this comment rubs me the wrong way so much. I think it's how quickly it leaps to hostility and calling the user entitled, only because they shared their honest feedback. You say users aren't entitled to anything, which I guess is true, but what does that say about the value that this project purports to provide?
I guess what I'm trying to say is I read this comment and my thought wasn't, "Oh, I guess those problems are handled", it was, "Oh, this projects advocates have a lot of contempt for their users."
The GP comment was well beyond honest feedback. Honest feedback is like "I find such-and-such piece of the UI ugly", or "All of my friends get confused by the way it does XYZ".
What I object to is the way our community viciously tears each other down. "This open source product is the worst thing ever! Kill it!" This crap is not productive. It's harmful.
We're up against companies who want to monopolize markets, lock us in to proprietary platforms, and own our data forever. And then when somebody finally comes along and tries to do the right thing, we attack them for not being perfect. F that noise. So, yes, I have contempt for this attitude.
(And no, I have no affiliation with the company being discussed in this article.)
Perhaps it is harsh, but element is being founded to improve the client, and I find several other open source clients to behave better than the official one.
I call this honest criticism. My hope is to push matrix as an open protocol, to push matrix as a slack replacement and I genuinely wish the greatest success to the element foundation.
I currently cannot say "element is awesome". Matrix as a protocol and ecosystem is awesome, but the client... I can't say that.
It's not about being perfect, it's about having a solid UX such that we can start recommending it to our friends and family to help wean them off the major platforms without a lot of headaches and frustrations, which will push them even further towards proprietary ecosystems.
There is a lot more than 4 clients out there. For example I develop Nheko, which supports E2EE (including cross-signing) as well as 1:1 calls (those only on X11 though, because time and none seems to be interested in adding call support on other platforms). Then there are UX improvement forks like SchildiChat, clients for other platforms like SailifshOS, etc. Oh, and I almost forgot about Mirage.
Given how frequently Matrix comes up in the Signal federation/alternative clients discussion, it's interesting to note that neither one of those supports the E2E encryption in the Matrix protocol.
I haven't tried it in a while but last time I tried about a year ago, the messaging was very slow - both to be sent as well as receive.
Has this changed recently? I would like to give it another shot as I want to support the tech. Can someone with use experience please comment with their experience on the speed?
About a year ago was in many places just after the start of the pandemic, which brought a large influx of users to the default public server. It got overloaded, and slowed down. I experienced it, too.
They have made several rounds of significant scaling improvements since then. It's almost never slow for me any more. (And even if it was, I could always just choose a server other than matrix.org, or run my own.)
That was probably a problem with their main matrix.org homeserver, more than with the protocol or your particular client app. It was very slow for a while, until they worked out some scaling issues to handle the load.
I’m on matrix.org pretty much every day now, and it’s a lot better than it was. And when I use my own server to talk with other local users, I never have any latency issues.
I started to work as a staff member of a local research center mostly doing foundational research (genetics, life sciences), publicly founded so no conflict of interests. At some point, the founding body (the local administration) decided that general research wasn't cool anymore, and was thought to be a waste of money. They should only found "targeted research", an idea which sounds good in theory, but in practice is a sure way to destroy research at it's core. The first result is that any researcher that wasn't working on something mandated from above had either to shift (destroying his work) or leave. New positions would only be open to work on targeted projects.
The net result was a massive loss of bright researchers, massive churn and the death of pretty much any promising research endeavor (it's hard to do great research on a 2 years contract already, but doing so without infrastructure...).
The administration also started to push aggressively for this idea that we should try to apply for patents in anything that seems even vaguely applicable, and in order to keep the financing going the center had to sign a contract that "guarantees an increased in throughput of 2% every year", where the throughput is measured in pubblications. Again, this requires no explanation for whoever has worked in research, but for the others: it's impossible: it just promotes lower and lower-quality of output in order to meet the criteria, until it will bust.
This also gives an idea how the center and the local administration fail to understand how research work on a basic principle.
The local group has started to apply aggressively for more and more EU grants (which are the only one that can provide vaguely sustainable research), which in turn resulted in staff doing less research and much more grant writing. We now have staff whose purpose is doing just that.
Academia has a lot of problems, but founding seems to be one of the major ones. Without stable founding this is what you get: aggressive push to make money, and not to make great research.
> Academia has a lot of problems, but founding seems to be one of the major ones. Without stable founding this is what you get: aggressive push to make money, and not to make great research.
It is closely related to a shift in the definition of "what purpose should academia serve?"
Basically, old-school academia had the government pay a lot of money to universities to do general research and educate students to be researchers, and then the military paid more money for research that could be usable for military purposes (encryption, rocketry, nuclear). Training of new employees was paid for by the companies themselves (e.g. apprenticeships).
Nowadays, governments have massively cut general research budgets (leaving universities and research to the mercy of grantors aka the free market), the military is running its own show (aka the MIC sucks in enormous amounts of money and puts it into private coffers), and companies have outsourced training and vetting of new employees to universities and the payment for all of that to the students in form of student loans, which means that universities are no longer primarily a place of research but of schooling.
It's a real disgrace what happened over the last decades, and the Western world will pay badly for this since China does not follow this turbo-capitalist ideology.
This is also something addressed in Lyotard's book "Postmodern Condition"; the federal funding was more of the "end" than the "beginning", in the sense that it was when the purpose of the university became "output", rather than something else.
He presents two alternatives for "what is the purpose of academia?" that date back to the 19th century and earlier. On the one hand, is the "German" approach, of "the great encyclopedia of knowledge", where the universities steward research for its own sake, to discover truths about the world. The other hand is the "French" approach, where the goal of the university was to produce well-rounded, educated citizens. He argues that both of these goals are effectively obsolete, and what now matters is "performativity", i.e. producing "value".
My sense is that the immense military funding signals the initial shift, especially since the fundamental nature of the university changed so much as a result of mass admissions after the GI bill. No longer was it a sort of "special" place for intellectuals; now everybody goes to college, so these older, more "romantic" goals become problematized.
It’s a nice story but it doesn’t make any sense. Corporations didn’t force universities to do anything. Quite the opposite.
Universities realized that they had a blank check in the form of student loans. Enticing students to study philosophy at $40k a year is a little difficult when there are no job prospects to pay back that loan.
So how do you get students to pay obscene tuition? Make the product appear to have good ROI. This is when universities started altering core curriculums and created new degrees to cover more applied topics that are useful for employment.
Businesses actually don’t care that much about college education (in SWE hiring it’s only relevant when the candidate has approximately no experience). This tide of shitty, expensive university was entirely brought on by the universities wanting to sustain obscene tuition growth.
This has nothing to do with businesses dumping training onto universities. This is purely greedy universities pretending they are a blessed training path to a good job to justify a price.
Probably because HN generally leans towards a "small government", libertarian, capitalist point of view whereas I'm advocating for a strong government, social-democrat position.
No, it’s trying to justify these changes. Universities have become bloated and optimized to suck as much value from outside funding sources as possible. The fundamental question is if their not paying for research, why exactly should they own anything?
This is especially true for students, which are paying money to go somewhere and then suddenly also need to give up their IP.
>This is especially true for students, which are paying money
And before anyone says "stipend" I'd like to point out that someone who could work in industry but is instead spending an additional couple years doing research is incurring a heck of an opportunity cost.
If you make research funding essentially only available through competitive grants, then obviously universities are applying for those. So yes they are applying for outside funding, who else is going to do fundamental research?
Also regarding IP, I'm not sure about the US, but in all the countries I've worked in students retain their IP. In fact looking at some online sources this applies also to the US.
It has recently become popular here on HN to bash universities, but at least keep it factual.
(Not the person you were responding to) I'm curious what countries you have had experience with? Direct praise of the university programs you had may be due?
My favorite audio language, pure data, was created after IRCAM kept the IP for max/msp - if I recall correctly. This seemed to motivate the author, miller puckette, as he seemed to form an ethos of accessibility. Now pure data is supposed to have a ~25 year support cycle along with mit/bsd licensing. Ableton, a german company, bought max/msp after a few decades of it being on its own.
I have first hand experience about Sweden, Germany, New Zealand and Australia.
In Sweden there is something called the teachers exemption which means even university teachers (as employees) will own their own IP, which is unusual (I think Italy has a similar provision).
For students they will in general own their own IP, that applies to graduate and undergraduate students.
The same rules for students apply to Australia and New Zealand, although there it depends on the scholarship/financing for graduate students. For large projects who finance PhD scholarships there is often a provision that IP is owned by the university (the same as employees), because there would often be a large number of co-inventors on patents for example. If there is to be some commercialisation you essentially want to avoid co- or unclear ownership.
For Germany I believe undergraduate students own their own IP, but graduate (PhD) students are typically university employees, so I'm not sure about the rules for them.
I've been told by university admin, that in general university agreements claiming rights on student IP would violate the law in most countries in Europe, because they would be agreements with a one-sided benefit, i.e. the student gives something up without getting something in return. This essentially the same reason why non-competes are generally not valid in Europe either, unless you are being paid while you can't work.
That hardly masks anything TBH. You smell the same with some hint of mint on top. Most of the smell comes from your lungs, your clothing and your hair. You need to stay outside for a good 10 minutes to make a significant difference in perceived smell. Anything else is mostly wishful thinking...
It does make a difference, even so slightly. Trust me in that one, I have been called off more than one time by not using mints. But yeah, I agree that it doesn't remove the stench completely
I generally never comment on this to my coworkers because I want to be polite and keep good relationships (I've had very hard responses to very polite requests just to open the windows in the past, so I simply stopped commenting).
I'm doing this here because I'm seeing this often, and I want to be honest: no, it doesn't really do much, unless we're talking about ~50cm face-to-face conversations maybe (something that would make me back-off quite sharply, gum or not).
Keep in mind the smell after 10 minutes of open-air ventilation is still not a smell I would consider acceptable. For consideration, a very nasty and strong office fart would be in the same line of stench for my nose at that point. Except a fart doesn't tend to cling on for so long.
I'm in IT, but I've worked as electrician and carpenter for some years. IMHO this is not easily comparable as you'd think.
You can easily estimate the time required to perform some physical tasks. It's a bit different if you're working on something you never did before, but again as an electrician or carpenter this rarely happens after the training period. Working more hours generally does result in more work done, although the physical factor makes this work-life balance waaay more obvious to whoever is working.
In IT I'm constantly working on things which are slightly different than before. Time estimation is big common issue in the field. I'll be fully honest and say that working 4 or 8 hours a day makes absolutely no difference in work being done for me, except in very rare cases. Dedication has nothing to do with it (I love what I do). Technically I'm not stopping to work at the 6pm hour mark, my brain keeps thinking about technical issues also during off hours and the weekend.
I don't know about you but I felt physically tired, but satisfied at the end of the day when working as a carpenter. Sense of accomplishment was much more rewarding. When coming home I would enjoy something different. The next day I was recharged.
When working on problem-solving, I don't feel physically tired, but I can still feel exhausted in a way that prevents me doing other things. It's much, much harder to find a good balance. And I'd stress this again: putting more working hours sitting in front screen is not necessarily achieving anything.
Note also that these crazy perks as outlined in the article are not my experience in IT working in several places in EU. Yes, our working hours are more flexible due to the nature of the job, but I've yet to see such entitlement in my career. Maybe I've been unlucky.
The energy drain of software development is something I struggle with. I’ve worked as a painter and can relate to wrapping things up for the day and coming home physically exhausted but with energy remaining. Especially with Covid ‘work from anywhere all the time’ it’s very difficult to find a balance as a software slinger.
YMMV but I've also disabled favicons as well where I can.
For me the reason is that the icon is too small to be useful while browsing. The details are insignificant, so it just ends up being a "color" cue at best.
I actually hate newer versions of FF mobile that show favicons instead of the page title on the new tab page. I often have no clue what the icon of a site looks like before I stumble on that page or I bookmark it. Presenting me the icon without the text is like asking me a guessing game.
It makes sense for software packages, of which you have about 50 icons that you might be familiar with, but with web browsing it's easy to browse through that many websites in a day while searching for stuff, destroying any visual memory you might have.
Disabling it on mobile is sensible. In fact, I’m also currently using FF on iOS and will also do this (thanks to you I now know it’s an option). That being said, I still think 0.0000000001% of users won’t disable favicons (especially on desktop).
Note that when ordering outside the country you still have to pay for the shipping fee of the return yourself _to_ the amazon store of origin you selected, making this a lot less flexible (and slower) than you'd think.
As a frequent traveler across the EU, this bit me both on amazon.de/fr.
I'm not sure if there are exceptions to these rules, but free returns are frequently only free if within the same country and it's not unique to amazon.
>Note that when ordering outside the country you still have to pay for the shipping fee of the return yourself _to_ the amazon store of origin you selecte
That is false - I do order outside and it costs around 10 + 10euro/kg for around 7-10days delivery (express within 2-3days is around double). When I returned anything (3x times) - amazon paid back the shipping costs, BOTH my own sending and the bill sending back to them. If the item was part of a bigger order, they paid back partially my own cost for sending it to me initially. And they always foot the bill for the sending back in full.
More also, there was a hard drive that failed 2nd day I installed, I complained, they called and did send one immediately prior I even returned the original one to them, which they reimbursed the bill for. The drive arrived the next day (shipped by courier/air). Like I've said - I cant say bad words about their service in the EU.
What do you mean by "BOTH my own sending and the bill sending back to them? When did this happen, and from where?
My last cross-country return was in 2017 for a lens (sold and shipped from amazon) and I had to pay for the shipping myself to amazon.fr from italy. Didn't get a refund for the shipping cost, although the replacement arrived for free. Note that the lens was originally shipped to france. I was substituting for an identical item, which usually gets shipped right away. However, in this case, I had to wait for the return to be processed.
I had the same scenario in 2016, but from germany (shipped to germany, returned to france).
Note that I cannot complain for the service itself. I only had great experiences in return from amazon in general, but your description comes unexpected from me.
Note that you have to specifically ask customer service for the return shipping refund afterwards, it is not automatic if you self-paid the shipping (or they might only provide a small allowance automatically which is usually not enough for international shipping).
I've gotten my international return shipping always refunded when returning to amazon.de, amazon.it and amazon.fr (when the item was faulty or the item was otherwise eligible for free returns).
The initial shipping cost to me and then the return shipping from me to them (plus the cost of the goods).
In my case all the shipments were outside Germany, and the returns were from the same country originally shipped to. All the returns were back to Germany.
Edit: However, they should tell you in advance (before you order) if you will have to pay if you decide to return your order. If they don't tell you that you must pay for your return, the trader will have to pay for it. You don't have to pay any other charges that you were not informed of. [0]
Currently for me 4G is the only option to work remotely (the only alternative would be going with a wimax provider, or sat). I don't normally incur in the data size caps, but I will soon in the current situation, even when trying to be conservative.
It also doesn't seem worthwhile to switch at the moment, since other solutions require a 1-2 year contract which I do not need (not to mention, it would also take 2-3 weeks to get a connection with those anyway).
That's the idiocy in general of modern car design.
A bright-blue headlight of a modern car will actually make everything surrounding the headlights darker. A light which is slightly dimmer and more shifted towards red works much better for your peripheral vision. If you drive in rural areas the difference is very apparent.
Not only that, but street lights seem to be doing that as well.
Cross-walks here are now illuminated along the path with a strong shaped light. But the light is so bright that during night they just blind the observer: the pedestrian looks like ghost in a black background. IMHO this is even more dangerous, I frequently cannot see past the crosswalk, so a pedestrian which is passing behind it is risking much more than before. Go figure.
There are a couple of intersections which I pass frequently where the green light is too bright already during day. During the night, as soon as you get the green light you get blinded, which is _awesome_ since the light is guarding a cross-walk in this case as well. By night you cannot see pedestrians when you have the green.
The police are the biggest offenders when it comes to unnecessarily blinding drivers at night.
The construction companies (who have to pay their own insurance premiums and generally avoid unnecessarily risking injury to people by blinding drivers) have long since toned down the lights they used (there was a short time period where they all had super bright lights because LEDs were new and cool so why not have a 1000W flasher), switched to the non-glaring light plants that use the canvas bags.
I use some CAD/CAM programs on Wine and they're sensibly faster in both rendering and general usage compared to a windows install (I have a dual boot system).
I can only complain about some minor font rendering issues and the lack of child window rendering [0] which is frequently used in programs like these.
Once child window rendering is fixed, I will actually be considering ditching windows entirely and go wine-only.
Both plugs and sockets are very compact, which is a far cry from the emerging standard which is the shuko/europlug which takes twice the space. Almost all new houses are equipped with shuko sockets.
But the sockets here do not have the additional prong to avoid swapping the neutral, so they're effectively just a waste of space.
* at least, we have two sizes for it, a smaller one rated for 8A, and the newer for 16A which we commonly have today.