3G networks in many European countries were shut off in 2022-2024. The few remaining ones will go too over the next couple of years.
VoLTE is 5G, common throughout Europe. However the handset manufacturer may need to qualify each handset model with local carriers before they will connect using VoLTE. As I understand the situation, Google for instance has only qualified Pixel phones for 5G in 19 of 170-odd countries. So 5G features like VoLTE may not be available in all countries. This is very handset/country/carrier-dependent.
Bear in mind that's a measure of how backwards US banking is, not how advanced.
In the UK, I can't remember the last time I wrote or received a cheque. Maybe twice in the 17 years I've been living here, and certainly not in the last decade.
So with UK cheque usage being a tiny fraction of the US rate, there's simply no demand for it in banking apps.
Just plug in the Garmin watch to your computer, and its storage opens revealing sensibly named folders. You can open the folder named Activity and copy your sport files in FIT format. Everything else is JSON.
Portion sizes in the US are ridiculous... often 2-3x larger than here in Europe.
When I regularly visited New York for work, and we'd get takeaway sandwiches, I'd have to open them and remove half the filling. I just couldn't physically eat that volume of meat, cheese or especially mayonnaise. For all drinks, I'd order small.
Where in Europe? I haven't toured the _whole_ continent but I've been to restaurants in Germany, the UK, and Ireland and did not find their portions to be any different than what you'd get at the average corner restaurant in the US.
Now, there are plenty of food vendors and restaurants in the US where big portions are considered part of the experience. Especially hamburgers, subs, and other sandwiches. I once ate at a place that served a plate-sized burrito completely covered in french fries. 12 inches wide and 6 inches tall. SOME people can eat that amount of food but most people cannot, and nobody is expected to.
Finally, large portions in NY street food are often customary because for lots of people with demanding jobs and 12-16 hour shifts, lunch is often their only meal. Or, half of it is lunch, the other half is dinner later on.
They may be famously large, but I don't think they are abnormally large for most of the US nowadays? I certainly didn't think they were particularly big when I visited.
Katz serves roughly 3/4 lbs of meat. That is particularly big. You can get triple hamburgers which would be similar is size - but most people are ordering singles or doubles. And you can find other kinds of large sandwiches around the country ... but it is not the most common of sizes.
I think what made them not seem excessively large to me, is that it didn't really come with much else? Yes, it was more meat than I would get on a sandwich, typically. But... that is about it?
Maybe I got too used to some of the obscure burrito places around Atlanta that would put way too much on them?
If you're Dutch, "ij" is a technically a single letter, and may sometimes be written as "y".
(Traditionally, Dutch words are sorted alphabetically with "ij" treated as if it were "y". On my first visit to Amsterdam, pre-Google Maps, I had the bizarre experience of standing in one of the main streets, Vijzelstraat, but being unable to find it on my map. Its index of streets has nothing starting "Vij...". I sheepishly had to ask someone wtf was going on. He pointed me lower down to the end of the "V"s where all the "Vij..." street names were hiding!)
I've just started exploring analysing runs from my Garmin watch. In summary:
- Attach watch to laptop via USB-C -> opens like a USB drive, showing all the config and activity data files. You aren't locked into Garmin Connect or Strava or any other platform.
- You can also use the Garmin Connect API and go via the web service. I tried that first. But since discovering the raw data is available directly on the watch, I don't anymore.
- Activity data files are in the FIT format. Garmin has an SDK on GitHub in languages including Python, C# and a few others. I've tried the Python one.
- There are a couple of projects on GitHub for decoding FIT files. I've just started writing my own as I want to output modern Pydantic models. (And the Python code in the Garmin SDK is not the most efficient or idiomatic).
I've had my Garmin watch for 10 months now, and rate it as my best ever purchase for improving my fitness and performance, and for overall motivation to be more active. Having easy access to the raw data files is a huge bonus that I didn't originally consider.
London City Airport (LCY) has a very short runway with an approach right next to houses and apartment buildings. If the weather is very windy, especially with cross-winds, they are quick to cancel or divert flights.
I was once in a plane that had three landing attempts there aborted at the last second before eventually diverting to Southend Airport. The plane was bobbing around like a cork on the end of a string, quite a few passengers were airsick from the wild turbulence or screaming hysterically convinced we were all about to die.
Conversely, it can be amazingly rare to break out of these local maxima.
For instance, it took 60 million years from the first trees until the appearance of the right fungi able to decompose the lignin in wood. (Coal deposits arose because trees from the Carboniferous Period had nothing to make them rot). If you think about it, that's a very long time for a very small amount of evolution.
Equally, as I understand it, all life on Earth has a common ancestor, and therefore a single origin. So life only started here once. And therefore is exceedingly rare.
3G networks in many European countries were shut off in 2022-2024. The few remaining ones will go too over the next couple of years.
VoLTE is 5G, common throughout Europe. However the handset manufacturer may need to qualify each handset model with local carriers before they will connect using VoLTE. As I understand the situation, Google for instance has only qualified Pixel phones for 5G in 19 of 170-odd countries. So 5G features like VoLTE may not be available in all countries. This is very handset/country/carrier-dependent.