High-speed rail
don’t tell America. pretend it’s multiple automobiles welded together and they’ll like it
I honestly think we should build normal light rail stations with RGB gamer lights and crap and hype it like it’s futuristic tech. it works for musk’s tesla taxi tunnel so it should work for actually good public transit too. maybe make the bodywork on the trains look like some dumb sci-fi movie
Just tell them they run on coal.
pretend it’s multiple pickup trucks welded together
Fixed for 'murican tastes
Duh, we have high-speed rail in Morocco. It’s called Al Boraq and is the best way to blast from Casablanca to Tangier.
And it is not overpriced like in France, where the tgv is more expensive than a taxi to the airport, your plane ticket, and then another taxi.
I thought I was the only Moroccan on Lemmy.
I also live in an area that doesn’t get served by the Al Boraq. We don’t have trains in general over here and I am jealous.
I also learned about the Al Boraq’s existence the hard way, because in the summer of 2022, my family had to drive me from Casablanca to Tangier and back by car, which took us like 3 hours on one trip.
Tgv is awesome but I do agree that it is quite expensive
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Don’t quote me on the exact time but I heard somewhere that they run so close to schedule that a bullet train arrived something like 18 seconds late and the company apologized for the delay. ( might have been a minute or two but I recall it was really, really short. )
Confirm. That’s Japan. The driver is in trouble when it’s a minute or more
We’re doing fine with that in Switzerland thanks.
Also, the EU just launched a new plan for railroads all across Europe! Ofc Switzerland won’t get any additional upgrades, but they are still somewhat connected because of the proximity.
We’ve been waiting for Germany and Italy to upgrade their railways for a decade now, we invested billions in our alp transit system, but it can’t get used properly without the connecting infrastructure
In other words, no need, we’re already far ahead
I’d kill for a fast track to New Orleans, Atlanta, Little Rock, Tulsa, Nashville, all that. Ply me with cheap beer, let me chill and ride. What a dream.
Kansas city… what I’d kill for a fast track to Chicago, St Louis, Denver and the like…
I mean fuck, at least we have Amtrak to Chicago and one to St Louis… however only runs once a day, takes as long as driving as long as the priority that goes to freight trains doesn’t delay too much.
Private sleeping room. I’d never fly inside the US again.
smug TGV noises
Would love to be able to take a sleeper train to the border with Canada, then have one of my friends from Toronto pick me up so I can visit them.
On the flipside, something most developed countries consider normal but would blow Japanese minds is the ability to do all “paperwork” on your phone or laptop without any paper ever being printed anywhere. Japan is somehow still a country of fax.
I heard Japan described as being “stuck in the year 2000 since the 1980’s”. I think South Korea fits the original question better than Japan nowadays.
Yeah, Japan had a massive tech boom in the 80s and 90s, but then just kinda stopped growing that field. It’s still there and still a strong industry in Japan, but the cultural tech hype isn’t there anymore, it seems.
Part of the reason for the original enthusiasm is that they were enamored by the country’s recovery post-WWII when they managed to barely obtain permissions from transistor patent holders to manufacture in Japan which led to creation of many of the first consumer transistor radio brands among other electronics manufacturing.
They were the cheap electronics labour market before China, as China wouldn’t see notable economic improvement until after the 80s.
I think Shanghai/China fits it even better. The convenience and technological advances are moving crazy fast.
Meh. They’re head to head for most fields, only thing I can think of that they’ve made noteworthy advances in would be superheated coal burning efficiency to squeeze out more power and at the same time capture more emissions than any comparative western facility. China as a whole has some of the lowest per capita emissions of any nation, though their numbers might not be as accurate for several reasons.
Even their rocketry is kind of pathetic, I think India might even have the edge over them on that front.
That might be true, I have no idea but for day to day stuff, is amazing.
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I was there in the last few years and couldn’t believe how much of the country was still cash only!
I’m there right now from Australia, which is often considered one of the most cashless societies and yeah, it’s really a shock.
To be honest I kind of like it, and the way they manage it.
Here in the Netherlands you can pay practically everywhere electronically (even the door to door collectors for charities carry a qrcode in addition to their collection box) , but if you go next door to Germany you’d better bring cash if you want to buy anything.
Germany is very much the same way, in terms of paperwork and cash only.
Germany is the same as Japan in more ways than i could have thought.
They’ve made a stunning amount of progress in accepting credit cards in the past couple years though. I’m there pretty regularly and the shift has been wild. By spring 2023 I didn’t really need cash anymore. By fall, I used cash maybe twice.
There was one thing I was sure I’d need cash for— nope, the hotel paid them and added it to my tab. Back in the day, that mostly happened only if you skipped out on a reservation and the restaurant wanted to collect the cancellation fee. Which has never happened to me so I guess I’m not sure it worked exactly like that.
I know a lot of people here hate credit cards and only use cash, but it’s honestly a pretty large hassle to get cash in every country you visit. Using the same card everywhere is way more convenient and cheaper (exchange fee + no % back like with a credit card)
Isn’t this because of those special stamps they use in Japan to notorize documents? I heard about them on a podcast: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/hanko/
Love that show.
I’ve heard it’s just more of a burocracy thing. A friend there once told me he always puts the date wrong on the top of documents because there is a person who’s job is to double check your work. They’re judged on how often they find mistakes, so it’s easier to put something blatantly wrong at the top that easily fixed so they can quickly find it and he can move on.
sweats in german
We are getting more and more stuff, but they often have a really shit UX. We can do some stuff on PC since the “My Number” card system, but that also requires installing all kinds of software, only works in certain browsers, etc.
You can fax at your local public library. It was only about six months ago that my state’s social services dept. stopped requiring faxes.
Are you talking about Japan here?
No, Indiana.
Excellent public transportation
WITCHCRAFT
Is is a joke I’m too European to understand?
As I understood, lots of Japan is rural, and travel between places outside of the main cities and tourist spots is limited. It’d be like saying the US has good public transport because of the NY subway…
I got out to the middle of fucking nowhere on a mountain by taking the Shinkansen, then a local small train, then a bus, and finally a taxi because I didn’t want to wait 20m for a shuttle bus
Compared to California (home, comparable size and layout tbh) it’s way easier to get to remote places period thanks to the public transit system
Quite literally to do the same trip I did in Japan in CA I’d have Maybe a slow ass Amtrak line to get me close-ish in twice the time of the Shinkansen and still have an hours drive of my own rented car to get there
I’ve traveled from tiny towns in northern Japan to major cities like Tokyo. All on public transportation. Bullet trains, local trains, they’re very well connected to each other.
We have trains out to hubs in the countrysides here as well. Generally, they only run hourly the in a lot of the countryside.
sorry this is gross:
i do not understand american’s aversion to the bidet. why would i want to wipe my ass with dry fucking paper rather than water? why why why. like it’s somehow ‘gross’ to use water. but scraping at wet shit with fucking tissue paper is hygienic and normal?
American with bidet for 2.5 yrs. I hate shitting anywhere else now. Need a shower to get a new ass. Day is ruined.
pro tip: get a mobile one. Its basically just a plastic bottle with a nozzle screwed on. Some even come with little travel bags.
Pro tip: Those are called douches, pretty sweet huh?
I am not carrying around a tube for my asshole
Certainly not a 2nd one!
Yeah, I have one of these for backpacking. Works great.
Same.
My ass is squeaky clean at home.
I think we got our bidets at the same time
Woot deal?
Installed one for my Filipina wife. Never used it myself. I have shit on that pot for months, still forget it’s there. Old habits die hard.
Dude. Do it. Go. Right now. Don’t even need to drop heat. Just go freshen up.
Somebody once said it to me like this: “If you faceplant into a pile of shit, would you rather wipe your face with a dry paper, or use water for cleaning”
I think you’re shitting wrong…
Bath tub. With soap. My SO washes his dick every time he pees and his ass every time he shits. After he wipes.
Ok that’s too far. You don’t need to get into the bath just because you pissed wtf.
People don’t wash their ASS after they SHIT??
Sorry let me just wash my ass in the public sink when I gotta take a shit and I’m not home?
Pretty much every thread we have in this community, someone comes along to say “you should pressure-wash your asshole”. I’m mildly bemused that this is what Lemmy obsesses over.
It’s not just Lemmy, the sentiment is on Reddit and such as well.
I’ve always heard it explained like this (which I wholeheartedly agree with). Imagine you’re hiking a trail in the forest, and you trip on a rock and fall. By chance, you land on turd of excrement, luckily it only smears part of your arm and elbow with shit. Would you be fine just taking a piece of toilet paper and scraping it off? Or, would you feel compelled to wash it off with water, perhaps also soap?
Why wouldn’t you just use paper, if you scrape hard enough it wouldn’t even smell and be just as clean, arguably?
If you would at least use water, why do you extend to your elbow a courtesy that you don’t extend to your anus?
The point is that there’s a lot of people who walk through life with a dirty asshole, but then try to act morally superior regarding personal hygiene, and I think that that’s not right.
Dude, you think I haven’t heard that explanation before? Did you forget where we are?
I was in Asia and got pretty horrible food poisoning. My wife suggested we head over to this Japanese mall. Spent the day there. Use the toilet, walk around, buy something, use the toilet. That was the ideal toilet to have in that situation.
I don’t understand this either, toilets already require running water and have plenty of room to integrate bidet function. It’s not fancy tech or anything… in North America that’s sort of how they’re marketed though, with an emphasis on the settings, like its something you have to learn to use.
they’re afraid they’ll enjoy it…
I enjoy mine…
scary
I live in Japan. My wife and I recently went to visit my family in the US and I hated every minute of the toilet situation.
I own a BioBidet 2000. My friend Brian has one at his house and he convinced me to just try it. I did. And then I ordered one for myself before I left the bathroom.
What makes it better than my luxe bidet that I got for $20
I’ve never used your $20 Luxe bidet to know the difference, but I’m going to assume it doesn’t have a heated seat, heated water, variable pressure settings, massage settings, and an enema setting. If those features don’t interest you, then nothing at all makes it better. Use what you like. My wife just really loves the heated seat in the winter time.
You had me at heated seat. Fucker’s cold this time of year. Feel like I’m going to get my ass stuck to it.
Tell Brian thank you. I just used his and ordered one too.
Edit: I really did order one though, my current bidet needs an upgrade.
Fear of the Koch bros?!
Completely agree. I was raised with bidets/ water cleaning. TP That’s just a dry off or catch those last few drops
They’ve become increasingly common in recent years. I don’t think there’s as much of an aversion as you appear to imagine.
This is also gross. There’s a lot of men in the US that thinks touching there ass is gay so they never clean them.
Cultures who use bidets and not the bum gun will always confuse me. Ones a robot strapped to the toilet that does a medicore job at one thing, then other is a cheap water gun you can use for all sorts of shit (pun intended).
I used them while visiting Europe. They made my ass incredibly itchy. I’m good with the paper and washing my hands.
How does water make your butt itchy?
He was applying the water with a dildo 😞
Like someone at the bar whose seat is too far from the counter, he was trying to push his stool in
Ahh yes, deep cleaning.
A very itchy dildo?
Uhhm, I’m not a doctor and this is not medical advice, but. You should talk to a proctologist about hemorrhoids or other blood circulation issues. Anuses are not supposed to itch when lightly sprayed with water, or ever for that matter, and that sensation might be a sign of tissue inflammation. Don’t ask me how I know this.
This was many years ago. The itching didn’t happen immediately. Good advice to not take medical advice in social media comments.
The itching didn’t happen immediately
That’s worse.
It’s like having a second toilet seat. Takes more room.
Not from the US and live in a condo, so I’m speaking from a purely practical standpoint. My condo is not that big and having a bidet would mean that I have no place to put my washer and dryer at.
the bidet is an attachment to your toilet, not a separate thing
That’s not really traditionally true. Modern ones are integrated into the toilet seat, but they used to be a standalone fixture.
Yes, I was thinking about the old designs, haven’t brushed up on new designs.
Sure, in that case, I would consider it, why not.
Oh… well, it was a sparate thing back in the day, haven’t looked up new designs.
Check out the new ones. They fit right between the toilet seat and the bowl lip. Super slim. Plus, always clean ass.
You know those poops you take when you wipe once and it’s already clean? It’s like that but ALL THE TIME.
Damn… this does seem like the way to go.
I will most definitely look this up, seems like a real time and money saver 👍.
You’ll enjoy this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=crDMkN8TZ8k
I suppose there’s also a mini electrical boiler in there somewhere, so the water’s not cold when it hits my ass.
Cool though, will look into this, seems like a nice soltion, toilet paper is getting more and more expensive.
there’s also a mini electrical boiler in there somewhere
Correct!
Some of them have it, but that complicates the installation. I bought one without a heater ages ago, thinking I’d hate it. I actually hardly notice the cold water. Your butthole isn’t great at sensing hot vs cold.
My butthole is pretty good at sensing temperature. During the winter I have to try and use the bidet fast with the room temp water before the cold outside water gets to my turd cutter.
I call dibs on first shit
Really? Hm… might try that as an experiment 😂.
Water coming from the nastiest thing in the building in contact with the part of my skin that’s got a low barrier to things passing through it? Get fucked.
Are you just fucking stupid? All water in the building comes from the same fucking place, the water in the toilet and the kitchen sink are the same until they fester.
There is nothing more hygenic than a bidet
Yeah bruh, it’s fine until it’s at the toilet. Then it’s not fine. Get over yourself.
Do you… Do you think that the water in the bowl is what gets sprayed on your ass?
Obviously not.
Is this like a mental locational thing? There is no way the unsanitary water from the toilet bowl can back feed into the water line. They are isolated mechanically via the tank float and by gravity because water can’t travel back up into the tank from the bowl. The bidet and toilet fill valve is piped into the same water line the hand sink is you use to rinse your mouth after brushing your teeth.
Motherfucker, you just shat out of your delicate asshole. Tap water ain’t gonna hurt it.
I think it’s more… What other people did with the bidet hardware that might result in it spraying other things with said tap water.
You do know that toilets are like, the easiest to clean piece of furniture ever invented. Like the thing is designed to withstand being sprayed with chlorine on the regular. It’s literally a porcelain basin that has a built in water flushing system. If it’s your home’s private toilet, no one else but you will ever use it and you can make it as clean as you want it to before using it.
Even then, epidemiologically, in any given public bathroom, you’re several orders of magnitude more likely to catch an illness from the door handle than the toilet.
See “the cons”. I’m lightly convinced for private residences… Public restrooms as awful as I’ve seen them, I don’t know about.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/11/30/bidet-hygiene-pros-cons/
[About the study that claims changes in vagina’s bacteria] The study would “have to be repeated” for researchers to draw any conclusions, Swartzberg says.
This could go either way, bottom line, we don’t know.
bidet nozzles were contaminated with infection-causing organisms such as Staphylococcus aureus and Enterococcus spp.
So does your fridge, but no one is advocating against using fridges to store food.
You need to regularly clean it.
Uhh? duh. Such a radical concept, hygiene, that’s surely too much for most people. You also have to regularly clean your whole bathroom. What’s the con?
It’s also important to pay attention to your bidet’s water pressure and temperature
The level to which some articles infantilize adults is the really scalding issue here. Top water temperature of a typical household heater should be no higher than 120 F (48° C), unless you do something seriously wrong, my guess is you’ll be fine.
I’m less worried about whatever diseases I may already have and more worried about those coming from others. You can have butthole splash time all you want. If you’re toilet is entirely private, maybe that’s even good. I’m not doing it.
I don’t understand why you’re so angry. Do you not get how bidets work?
Angry? Don’t project. I’m grossed out.
Do you also avoid brushing your teeth on the bathroom? Because I have some news about poop particulate and toothbrushes for you.
No, but I don’t keep my toothbrush in the bathroom for that reason.
They have a device which progressively shines a light on a piece of paper while moving across the page and converts the brightness of the reflected light into an audio signal. Once it reaches the edge the paper is incremented and the process repeats. Each of these segments of sound are sent via a standard telephone connection to a similar device on the other end which uses the sounds to reproduce the image on the original paper on a new sheet of paper. This can be used to send forms, letters, black and white pictures, and even chain letters. It also forms the basic underpinning of a significant fraction of formal communications with landlords, employers, medical systems, government offices, and so on.
Fax machine?
I think he’s saying that, for as futuristic as Japan may seem, they also still rely on outdated methods for certain things, just like every other country.
I’ve sometimes heard it phrased that “Japan has been living in the year 2000 since 1980.”
I think it’s because the country did not significantly recover from the 90s financial crisis, and their society is so conservative that they literally could not try anything modern again afterwards
They literally went “industrial society and it’s consequences have been a disaster for Japanese society”
I agree with the first part, but not the second.
The impact of the financial crisis reverberates to this day, and that drives a huge proportion of the issues, but the crisis in my opinion was inevitable. From my perspective, the Post-War Economic Miracle, as it’s called, catapulted Japan through all the stages of economic development into an almost accelerated version of the same problems that are afflicting the U.S. and other Western countries.
The dream of infinite growth in the Japanese context fell flat for the same reasons it is falling apart in other developed countries. A rise in standard of living and wages led to offshoring and outsourcing of production, the hollowing out of the middle class, a work culture at odds with family life, and so on. The country’s land and businesses were valued in the late 1980s as though it could remain competitive internationally with a mostly domestic supply chain, even as the production costs of its goods continued to rise along with the needs of its population, which in a globalized economy turned out to be a pipe dream.
We see the same thing in the U.S., where every president promises to restore the American manufacturing base, then comes up against the reality that U.S.-produced products made by U.S. workers paid U.S. wages cannot be competitive with something built in Southeast Asia and shipped overseas for less than $100 per ton. But the conservatism of Japanese society certainly plays a role, in that the country is highly resistant to change, and also due to a rigidity that stifles innovation, making it hard to start new businesses outside the keiretsu/conglomerate structure. The U.S. has somewhat mitigated its manufacturing decline through the creation of new service sector and especially tech businesses that operate internationally, which path is less available to Japan due to the rigidity of its business structure.
But the part I disagree with is the idea that Japan has rejected industrial society. Japan is still extremely proud of its culture and the impact it’s had globally. They love that people in western countries eat ramen and sushi, play Nintendo games or watch anime, and they have a deep reverence for their globally successful businesses and particularly the auto industry. They have no desire to reject or withdraw from industrial society, they just haven’t been able to figure out amidst external economic barriers, and internal cultural and financial barriers, how to move forward.
We see the same thing in the U.S., where every president promises to restore the American manufacturing base, then comes up against the reality that U.S.-produced products made by U.S. workers paid U.S. wages cannot be competitive with something built in Southeast Asia and shipped overseas for less than $100 per ton.
That is the lie they tell us. Meanwhile we do everything we can to make we don’t have an industrial base.
- We zone factories far away from everything instead of allowing them to be in normal commuting range
- We tax the land they are on the same way we tax commercial property. Which you might think is fair but we don’t do that to farmers. Especially considering how easy retail gets it, with governments willing to give plenty of free roads and police protection to them
- We treat inventory as taxable which punishes factories that want a buffer and rewards the quick turnover of fast fashion places. Ever wonder why they never have your size and you have to go to the website to get it?
- Thanks to our shit medical system any workplace injury is going to be devastating which means that the insurance as a whole will be very high.
- Factory investments take longer to pay off which doesnt mean much when we all think quarterly. A tax on rapid stock trading could probably fix that but that isn’t going to happen.
There are other factors as well. We don’t hire women to do factory work which limits the labor pool. There is still a lot of discrimination against Latinos and African Americans. Which again lowers the labor pool and kinda leaves us with…well the kind of people who feel only comfortable only working with white Christian men.
oh nice! i hope i get to use that at a party before i forget it!
Ironically, I just noticed this morning that the pizzaria on the corner (here, in the US) can take orders via fax (as well as in person, via phone, and on the Web).
I don’t know about today, but back around 2000, stuff on the Japanese market was quite a bit ahead of the US in small, portable, personal electronic devices, like palmtop computers and such. I remember being pretty impressed with it. But then I also remembered being surprised a few years later when I learned that personal computer ownership was significantly lower than in the US. I think that part of it is that people in Japan spend a fair bit of time on mass transit, so you wanted to have small, portable devices tailored to that, and that same demand doesn’t really exist in the US.
Then everyone jumped on smartphones at some point after that, and I think things homogenized a bit.
Yeah, PC games are a nothing market in Japan as virtually no one owns a gaming PC; they’re much more likely to own a console (Sony and Nintendo are domestic companies) or a mobile device.
This used to be the case, but it’s hardly true anymore. PC Gaming has taken off in Japan.
https://www.pcgamer.com/japanese-pc-gaming-saw-another-year-of-explosive-growth/
Keep in mind that that’s been changing over the past couple of years
Clever! I missed that.
And we’re still trying to eliminate fax as a channel we take orders in. We made a big dent a few years ago but we still get a handful a week.
I heard it’s to do with how secure tax actually is compared to email or something.
So simply put, it is a facsimile machine?
Bro you actually got me so hard until I read the comment below. I was blown away.
Takkyubin.
If you have a large suitcase or other parcel it may be unwieldy to walk around Tokyo or another city with it. Subways only allow one suitcase of a certain size, so you might have to take a much more expensive taxi.
Instead you can go to a desk at the airport and have your luggage delivered same day or next day to ~any hotel, subway station, or convenience store. It will be insured and kept safe for you there to pick up. And at the end of your trip, you can send it back. The price for this convenience? Around $10.
This is not only a good demonstration of Japanese trust and customer service, it’s also a legitimately hard logistics problem. I daresay that such a business could not succeed in the US both because of our defensiveness and sprawling cities.
Japan’s current fiber-optic commercial internet connections use optical fiber transmission windows known as L and C multi-core fiber (MCF) bands to transport data long distances at record speeds. Meanwhile we (USA) have fiber back to copper and Cat3 for the last few hundred feet in most cities at best making the entire idea into a bottle neck.
There are a lot of very good reasons to switch back to copper for the last portion of a run. I highly doubt that consumer internet in Japan is terminating fiber directly into peoples’ computers. Fiber is a lot more expensive both for the line, to run it, more prone to breakage, the network cards are more expensive, etc. It’s really not needed for most purposes.
Also no one uses cat3 for data and it can’t be run for ‘hundreds of feet’. And LC fiber IS used in the US - that’s a kind of connector not the kind of fiber.
I highly doubt that consumer internet in Japan is terminating fiber directly into peoples’ computers.
You run fiber to the home and gigabit ethernet or whatever internally in the premises. All your other complaints re: cost and etc aren’t really an issue for last mile consumer grade fiber.
I have seen installers run a fiber drop cable across from a power pole, bring it down an outside wall , then staple it to joists under a house, cleave off the end and stick a mechanical splice on it, bang it in the power meter, all good, plug it in the fiber modem, good to go in less than 20 minutes. All this stuff uses standard components and technology that’s been available for 10+ years now.
Also no one uses cat3 for data and it can’t be run for ‘hundreds of feet’. And LC fiber IS used in the US - that’s a kind of connector not the kind of fiber
It’s probably the standard “last mile” half assed solution where they decide to use existing phone lines and VDSL from a box down the street instead of biting the bullet and running fiber.
This is how it works in the UK too. I’ve got Fibre To The Premises (FTTP), and the installation was pretty much exactly as you described.
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This is like arguing that SMS is still a good messaging platform.
Which US-americans will happily argue for
No it’s not? Fiber is a bad solution for short runs for residential use inside people’s homes. Copper can pull 10 gig speeds or more.
Well, almost all apartments in the city I live in has fiber. They all have a box in a corner somewhere.
Then we pull a standard ethernet cable to our router and we run full speed.
Maybe I’m not knowledgeable enough on the area, but why is that bad?
They are arguing that inside the nlhouse ople don’t use fiber, they use the ethernet copper cable from the router. Which is like, fine, okay, that’s true, but also not at all what people are arguing and not something that should be required to be pointed out in this context.
People are arguing that in some US cities the Internet distribution is done through copper for the whole building/complex, and just like you, in my home there’s a fiber port into my router, which then I use cat7 copper cables for my stuff. But up until my router there’s fiber, which is awesome.
Anyway I hope this clarifies it.
I’m in Italy and I have a fiber internet port inside my home
Not on your computer though
Typing from my Tokyo fiber-to-the-home connection now. They ran it off the pole, installed a little thing in my house, ran the fiber to the modem they make me rent, and it works like a charm.
Yeah, it’s not terminated in your computer though for all the reasons I said.
I don’t think I understand unless you’re expecting me to buy some router and network cards that natively support fiber to go from the modem (which is fiber in from the pole outside).
I have fiber to home in Canada
Have fiber to home here in Arkansas in the US
Yeah, it’s not terminated in your computer though for all the reasons I said.
And so what? I have 1.5 Gb symmetrical with latency to many sites and game servers under 10 ms (on Wi-Fi!)
And you would be wrong.
Sweden is also quite well connected with fiber.
Yes, but nowhere compared to the Netherlands and Denmark
Ofc the size of the countries makes it easier.
Cat3? As in most cities in the US are limited to 10mbps?
No, the average internet download speed in the United State is about 171 Mbps. Though disclaimer, I’m not sure of the exact reliability of that number, different sources are reporting quite a range of speeds, though I don’t see any under 100 Mbps average and I see many reporting well above this. You’d also have to consider median vs average since people with fiber sitting at gigabit speeds may be dragging that number up, median may be lower.
https://www.highspeedinternet.com/resources/fastest-slowest-internet
There are certainly some areas, especially rural, that struggle though. And upload speed is often much worse unless you have fiber. Major cities are definitely getting much better than 10 Mbps down though.
Cat 3 isnt actually a thing, but people call house phone wiring that. Runs DSL quite well.
Cat 3 is a thing and is basically unshielded twisted pair. You can abuse it quite a bit from its voice grade days to cram a few hundred megabits of VDSL over it if it’s only from your house to the curb.
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Good livestock conditions so that food is actually edible raw
There are places in Japan that actually serve chicken sashimi.
I’ve tried it, and I ate the whole plate, but I wouldn’t do it again.
Raw chicken tastes like it smells, and it’s just inferior to every other sashimi - not outright repulsive, but just not as good.
I honestly don’t understand how those specialty chicken sashimi places stay in business. I guess there must be an audience for it, but I can’t imagine why.
That’s nasty and I ate bad sushi from Publix last week.
It’s completely normal for stores to keep cooked, deli style chicken on non-refrigerated shelves all day. I don’t trust it.
This is what we heard. So when visiting my brother, the whole group tried it. Everyone got salmonella poisoning and had explosive diarrhea for two days. That was an interesting shinkansen trip.
Your intuition is right on this, don’t eat raw chicken.
I googled.
“When cooked, chicken can be a nutritious choice, but raw chicken can be contaminated with Campylobacter, Salmonella, or Clostridium perfringens germs. If you eat undercooked chicken, you can get a foodborne illness, also called food poisoning.”
Yeaaaaaah, no way I’ll try it.
Then I think I would like to try cookie dough sashimi
What if you get salmonella!?
Automatic opening doors but they don’t open by a proximity sensor, they open when you press the button. This is the optimal solution as the door doesn’t open needlessly but still allows for ease of access.
Ordering machines, where all your menu options are clearly listed and priced. Pressing on a combo of buttons will print a receipt which you can sit down and show the staff/cook your order.
Water (hot and cold) tapped straight to your dining table for self serve drinks.
Unfortunately becoming less applicable with the smartphone domination finally reaching Japan, but their flip phone technology.
taco bell in particular is embracing the kiosks and it’s wonderful. they have signs in the lobby saying ‘order at the kiosk’ even. and why wouldn’t you? why do people in the US have this pig-like stubbornness where they must have a human stand there and ‘PeRsONaLIze tHE iNtERacTion’ or some shit
Every US McDonald’s I’ve been to for the last…5+ years has had the kiosk system.
There was an article published last year, maybe the year before, where they tested the touch screen kiosks in McDonald’s. Every single one of them has traces of faeces on it.
Even if that wasn’t true, it takes me significantly less time to tell someone my order than to scroll through however many sub menus the restaurant has decided to put their food into, and then select the options for each item and add it to my basket, then check out.
That’s because there’s feces on every person all over them. Your nose works because it detects matter. If you smell feces it is because it is inside of your nose. Feces is in the air. Smell a fart? It’s now on you. Bathroom smells like shit? It is in the air around you and on you.
Just about 20 years ago when all those soda fountain dispensers tested always had feces detected on them, it wasn’t because some bandit was going around the world smearing shit on them every day, it is because it is always every where.
According to the BBC article that talks about the McDonalds touch screen, they say the same thing.
Having to crawl through multiple menus to order is not that big of a deal for restaurants. They don’t value your time, they value their staff time (because they have to pay for it). There is probably very little ongoing cost to double the number of order kiosks while every additional human taking orders needs to be paid minimum wage. The restaurant owner watches with hate as their money slowly melts away while you decide if you want pickles, fried onions, and jalapenos on your burger.
That’s a good point. I could be in the restaurant for an hour trying to order, and as long as there are other kiosks available, it wouldn’t make a difference to them.
This is not a good point. This is just a company making us their unpaid employees.
Yes, that’s the point that TAG made. It’s something that I hadn’t considered, and it’s a good point.
The fact that it’s something shitty that businesses do doesn’t affect the fact that TAG made a good point.
I didn’t even consider that, America is just filled with ‘people’ who barely even qualify as such. it’s no wonder we can’t have nice things.
i just want to pay cash, otherwise i prefer kiosks… but i see a future of hostile, nagging UI design…
like at some stores self checkout, you have to click 80 different confirmations and give your phone number, email and social security number…The auto kiosks in Japan take cash and they are also mechanical and not touch-screen based (at least in most stores). They are tactile buttons. :D
That’s why you have GDPR.
Because I don’t want to be bombarded with ads and “did you consider this offer” shit and take 5 minutes to use some usability nightmare? Because I do not want to touch a greasy screen that 362 people used today without washing their hands after taking a shit? Because I do not support corpo greed that will not rest until every employee has been fired?
“BUt I LiKe tOucHy fLaSHy SCreeNy!!”
What are you, morons?
“Would you like fries with that?”
“Would you like to supersize that?”
“We have an offer on…”
“Paying by card? Type your pin into that well used machine. Cash? OK hand me the piece of paper that have touched hundreds of hands and maybe nostrils”
Maybe my people are bad at their jobs but my fast food people just take the order without any real upsell most of the time. PIN is only for debit. I almost never have to actually touch payment controls these days. NFC tap and away.
Why should I have to do everything myself when I’m at a commercial establishment? Why is interaction with a human a bad thing? I absolutely hate self checkout for the same reasons. Quality of service is valuable and humans benefit from interaction.
If you have to push a button, does it really count as an automatic door?
I guess you have a point. What I meant is that it’ll still slide open (like an automatic door does) but you push a button that has a similar feel to a door bell. So, still very accessible and automatic!
Oh yeah, I agree, just needless pedantry on my part :-)
Since I don’t speak Japanese, it was definitely a much preferred setup that made things very simple for me when I visited.
Water (hot and cold) tapped straight to your dining table for self serve drinks.
This in particular sounds awesome, speaking as a heavy water drinker who always feels like a bit of a heel having to pester busy wait staff to come over and refill my water glass a bunch of times.
I love places where you can just get it yourself. Rare here in North America, but all over the place in Korea
I often see buildings in Japan that have a manual sliding door followed by either a push button or proximity automatic door. If I am going to have to open one door myself, I might as well open both. If one is automatic, the other might as well be too.
Automatic opening doors but they don’t open by a proximity sensor, they open when you press the button. This is the optimal solution as the door doesn’t open needlessly but still allows for ease of access.
Ordering machines, where all your menu options are clearly listed and priced. Pressing on a combo of buttons will print a receipt which you can sit down and show the staff/cook your order
I see those all the time over here in my European country.
The hot and cold water thing is not common at all. A few sushi places and bars have it. But it’s quite rare tbh.
Automatic opening doors but they don’t open by a proximity sensor, they open when you press the button.
I think it would be cool to have a hybrid system where you can wave/nod/bow to a sensor to activate it, but also implement an open standard frequency that can trigger it so people with reduced mobility can mount a transmitter on a wheelchair/cane etc. or just use their cellphone. Would eliminate having any external equipment that would be exposed to weather or vandalism and is one less common surface for the public to have to touch.
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A mindset of quality.
CNC Machines that are built in Japan are so much Mount Betterest than their ‘Made in America’ counterparts. Even under the same company name.
Visit any shop that requires quality around the world and you’ll see Japanese made machines almost everywhere.
Refrigerators that make way less noise than the ones we have here. Japanese more often live in small apartments so noise is a bigger nuisance. But, those refrigerators are ridiuclously expensive by our standards. I had been interested in buying one, oh well.
Japanese more often live in small apartments
Cries in NYC
Another big difference is the apartments are actually very affordable. Two minimum wage earners could afford a
32 bedroom apartment in 6 of the 23 wards in Tokyo.EDIT: 2 bedroom, not 3.
You do realize a 3 bedroom appt is like 40-60m2 over here right?
40m^2 seems small. 60m^2 is 645 sq ft, so a bit smaller than we’re used to, but not enough to make up the price difference.
An average apartment in Tokyo is less than 200sq. ft, less than a third of New York’s average apartment size of ~700sq. ft.
When I looked into it a few years ago, I found that, contrary to the stereotype, Japanese homes are surprisingly big. Smaller than the US or Canada, which are some of the biggest in the world, but actually bigger than most of Europe.
The result of a quick search: the average Tokyo apartment is 65.9 sq m (710 sq ft). The modal apartment size is 19.7 sq meters (212 sq ft), so maybe that’s what you’re referring to. But that’s only 21% of Tokyo apartments.
How much is that in communist units?
There are tons of silent and near-silent refrigerators in the US
Got a url? Not the very inefficient ammonia type, or the Peltier type that won’t freeze stuff. Thanks.
Doesn’t anyone check the dB an appliance makes? It’s one of the first things I check, as I hate loud devices.
Can’t believe noone has mentioned the hot beverage vending machines.
Its so fucking nice to spend $1-$1.50 and just get some hot tea or coffee right there without issue. And they’re everywhere so you can pretty much rely on them.
So much more convenient than having to go to a coffee shop so you can pay $5 for the same thing, and the vending machine version still tastes great.
Those crazy toilets
New band name
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No, I meant the ones with all kinds of buttons that has 5 different bidet settings and heated seats and plays music when you flush
plays music when you flush
Please tell me this is something you can customize. I didn’t realize until now that I need a toilet that plays John Williams’ “Olympic Fanfare” when I take a dump.
Therapist: Japanese toilets aren’t real, they can’t hurt you.
Japanese toilets:
I saw an ad for the Squatty Potty and decided to put 2 phone books in the bathroom instead. it worked well enough
Where did you find a phone book?
Next to the landline
I use my kids’ step stool.
I would kill for their bidets everywhere.
Useable transit
