Whenever I have to book Ryanair, there's a lot of clicking back and forth between screens to confirm I've made the right choices.

Ten minutes is a long time. That's the purpose of dark patterns.

I don't find Ryanair much cheaper than Aer Lingus. In my experience there's up to a 20% premium, and I just cross checked the Alicante route for next week with the same results.

Compared to the high likelihood of delays or cancelled flights with Ryanair, I think it's worth it for peace of mind.

Aer Lingus is a slightly weird case; they have essentially become a budget airline (at least for their European business) to compete with Ryanair, but they haven't yet gotten around to adopting most of the dark patterns.

I don't think it's a weird case to compare two budget airlines to demonstrate why I think one is better than the other.

Well, the thing is they historically weren't a budget airline. They've taken on some budget airline attributes, but mostly not the dark patterns. Yet. They'll get there.

Ryanair is the biggest airline in Europe. Everyone competes with them. I found if you are traveling with family, need a checked bag and seats - Ryanair has no price advantage over other players.

Aer Lingus is a budget airline? And here I was still thinking that they're the flag carrier of Ireland...

(of course, they can be both at the same time)

Their trans-Atlantic flights are ok and cheap relative to United (out of IAD, to points in continental Europe). Their EU flights are a noticeable step down.

IIRC Aer Lingus could already be described like that 10-15 years ago. I remember it as cheap but decent.

Yeah, they went price-competitive with Ryanair a while back.

As a bit of a bonus for the latter airline, you are permitted to yell "Forth Aer Lingus!" as you charge headlong towards your seat.

RyanAir is ultra-budget. You need to be ready for the whole thing, but often you can get something much cheaper. As an example, looking for London to Belfast next month, RyanAir is a fifth the price.

Thanks, I hadn't seen a price difference like that.

I'm unsure about the following. Do you know if flights between London and Belfast be covered under EU airline rules regarding missed and delayed flights?

The UK copy-pasted EU261 into "UK261", which of course covers intra UK flights. That UK law would apply, not EU261 (London and Belfast are both in the UK)

Today I learned Encarta was not free.

It cost $100 in 1993, after they dropped the initial price. That is about $235 now.

Thanks. I'm Irish, no idea what the price (in Punt, it would have been!) should have been at. A family friend hooked us up with software that should have cost money (mostly Office software, but some games and Encarta included) via the usual means.

What about like educational licenses? Esp late 90s

I have fond memories of the, I think 1995, Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia. I think it was given away with new computers, like Encarta and Grolier's. I think I did buy the Compton's CD, but at a huge discount, since I bought it grey market (not bundled with a PC, but from a PC retailer).

Be thankful you didn't buy Beko. I had a horrible uphill battle trying to get them to honour a 2 year warranty in Ireland after about a years usage.

After they finally engaged with the warranty, they had someone come out to 'fix' it once every couple weeks until I gave up and just bought a different brand washer/dryer.

I'm now sworn off Beko, and will happily tell everyone I can about my terrible service :)

That's also a bit 'you get what you pay for'? Especially with large electronics/cars typically it pays off to go for the more expensive ones. Miele here as well and well past a decade

And there are still parts too

Yes. But. There's many companies that build up a reputation then cash in on that reputation. Eg Mercedes in the 90s. So you could end up paying more for cheap rubbish.

It would be nice if the EU or someone introduced an energy star type system for reliability and repairability so that consumers could have some kind of idea what the quality is likely to be.

Miele makes darn reliable appliances, I've had two Miele vacuum cleaners from -88 and still both work fine. Used weekly, one at home and when I sold summer cottage to my brother & his wife I gave one to them, they still use it there.

All parts still available and when I bought new hose few years ago from service I asked if they still are willing to fix it if it went broke answer was. Sure absolutely, just bring it here and we make it work again. I've just bought once new floor nozzle that was worn out and that hose because it grew leaky from ends. Third party dust bags are available and very cheap.

Not anymore. I bought a brand-spanking new high-end Electrolux dishwasher and discovered it had a flimsier construction than the 20 year old one my mom has at home, that was an absolute bargain bin purchase.

I expect companies to honour their legislatively required, and their advertised, warranty.

I wonder what the crossover or relationships between the two - Persons of wealth in positions of power and the church - was here at the time.

In Ireland, for as long as it has existed with its own government, the two have been pretty heavily intertwined.

I think it's more visceral, but a smaller story. 'yet another person merked by our predatory healthcare system' is a headline that will be relevant again, with new participants, tomorrow, or next week.

This headline about star wars lego? Less so.

> a smaller story

Sure. Any one person's story will be smaller than the whole picture - is that your whole point? What are you proposing - that we ignore stories like this until we fix healthcare?

Because if that's not what you're saying, why bring it up as if one cancer patient's life and property rights aren't important (even beyond tomorrow and next week)?

> 'yet another person merked by our predatory healthcare system' is a headline that will be relevant again, with new participants, tomorrow, or next week.

And so will corporate theft, and bureaucratic Kafkaesque nightmares, and police corruption, etc. There's no lack of overlapping evil to look at here.

Individual stories are still important and relevant, and ignoring them to look at the bigger picture is like ignoring water to look at the ocean.

> is that your whole point? What are you proposing - that we ignore stories like this until we fix healthcare?

IMO that's a pretty antagonistic read of my comment. GP said 'bigger story', you said 'visceral story'. In no way do I read myself or the GP dismissing the B&M story - quite the opposite, as GP says, noting "millions of dollars in PR damage" doesn't sound like ignoring something.

The second half of my comment was criticizing the news cycle, and its preference for unique headlines.

Apologies for reading your comment in an antagonistic way, but, I couldn't find a better way to read it. If you're saying that it was just about adding context, okay, but I think there's a way to do that with out painting this a "smaller story" that will be forgotten about "tomorrow or next week".

A guy is dying from cancer and unable to get treated because a $400m company stole his unique $200k life-long Lego collection ... That is a smaller story than America's murderous healthcare system - but until the guy's situation is corrected, no amount of media coverage is too little.

America's media failures also are a critical piece of the picture, but as written your comment reads as if painting this as a forgettable little story about Star Wars lego:

>This headline about star wars lego? Less so.

... I'm glad to hear that wasn't how you meant it.

You're getting pretty put out arguing that the news cycle should focus on this guy in particular and his illness in an article that doesn't mention it.

I've already outlined how I was criticizing the news cycle.

idk about you, but I don't pay my taxes to sports authorities.

The sports authorities get my gambling losses.

This is the main reason I read comment threads on law enforcement stuff on HN. There's a bunch of people trying to square their opinion of policing ("protect and serve") with the reality of policing ("protect and serve the wealth").

For a specific example, see the WNBA green sex toy Polymarket betting debacle.

I don't think it'd be difficult for the CIA to charter a cargo plane from somewhere in the USA without any questions being asked. They used to be very involved in the air freight trade. Guns don't move themselves!

Yes, I agree. CIA cargo flights out of U.S. military bases and private airfields probably happen all the time. My point was that if the guy's scheme to get the gold issued involved a cover story of flying the gold on such a cargo flight to some general or warlord somewhere, I can't imagine the normal process is "Ok, we'll deliver a pallet of >600 pounds of gold bars to your office desk."

The CIA must have people who securely transport illicit things like pallets of gold, RPGs, explosives, etc from a wherever they are warehoused to airfields for secret cargo flights. So, I was puzzled by how the culprit circumvented what I assume would be the normal delivery channel and took direct possession himself.

The reality may be more depressingly banal than clever clandestine deception. The guy was probably just the senior person in charge of approving dispersal of the CIA's slush fund 'petty cash' for illicit bribes and payoffs. And, incomprehensibly, there was no process for reviewing the approver's approvals, so he just wrote up his own paperwork and approved delivering it to himself in whatever way he found convenient. Hell, maybe he just had them deliver it to his house.

I guess that's the kind of stupid stuff that can happen when you combine "need to know" compartmentalized secrecy with massive bureaucracy. People just do what the paperwork says and don't ask questions or care.

They still own several air freight companies!