Torrenting a song from cassette? From what specific era should that be? You forgot Napster, Kazaa, and IRC.

I shed a tear for those poor drivers every time I pass by a gas station on my bicycle. It’s not like a lot of them have alternatives but refuse to do anything but pay more for a liquid that people are killed for. Countries are politically pressured, invaded or bombed. It encourages dictatorship, abuse and torture. It’s slowly choking us and making the environment unlivable. And it has to be cheap or we shall invade, bomb, and kill more people so it stays cheap. More death and destruction, no alternatives. We need cheap gas!

My previous microwave oven had a mute button. That thing stayed permanently silent. Unfortunately I have never found a new model that can be muted.

Cue a Technology Connection video about how old microwave ovens were better.

Who is going to arrest/fine FOSS developers for not doing anything about that? Would Brazil and US states go after uuuh, the systemd developers? What about distros not using systemd, like Slackware. Who is ultimately responsible for a collaborative project? Are they gonna send the police after Torvalds?

Plus, other countries don’t have this obligation.

All that dev had to do is nothing. Instead he chose to comply with something that was never asked.

Apparently horses sometimes eat small birds. They shouldn’t but it seems it can happen if they are hungry, or bored and/or curious.

Most distributions use systemd but there are still distros and other unix-like operating systems that are using something else. However, they are not “user friendly” and will probably not be what most people are looking for.

Slackware uses its own init system and never used systemd but it has the reputation of being difficult to use. Gentoo also lets users choose between systemd and OpenRC. Alpine Linux uses OpenRC too. There’s more than a dozen distros not using systemd, but again, probably not what most people want to use. It’s also possible to replace systemd with OpenRC on some distros, but it possibly, probably, might cause some quirks.

Otherwise, there are other unix-like operating systems. Debian GNU Hurd also has its own init system but it’s not using the Linux kernel, so it’s a different beast. OpenBSD and FreeBSD also have their own init system, but not Linux. And AFAIK there’s no such thing as modern gaming on those.

There are ways not to use systemd, but realistically speaking, it will probably not be worth it unless you’re really militant about this. I started with Slackware at the end of the 90ies, I know how to compile a kernel, and tried GNU Hurd at some point, but I will not change something unless it’s really implemented deeper into the general software. It’s frustrating that the systemd devs are “collaborating”, but we’ll see what happens after a few rounds of updates.

Cycling on rail trails and long isolated bike paths. Getting from A to B without burning any fossil fuel. I live in an archipelago and pull my inflatable kayak to the river and the lakes nearby using a bike trailer.

Not a federated platform but some of my friends are from the IRC era and they still come on my network. I did not have to convince them but we switched to The Lounge for the client a few years ago, so we can paste images and see url preview on the channel. Otherwise they would have insisted that I join Discord, but the small features of the “modern” IRC client was just enough to keep them coming back.

Mild guess. The dev(s) don’t know about navigation buttons. Gestures have been “standard” for a while now so maybe someone forgot about this as a possibility?

Yeah. Every time I hear someone say they don’t have kids and complain about paying taxes for the education of their neighbours, I like to remind them that having those kids not being as dumb as a rock is also an advantage for them.

I don’t have kids, and even though I went through public school in Quebec, I can confidently say that I’m more educated than my parents, and I’d prefer my neighbours’ kids to be also more educated than their parents. I hate capitalism but even from that point of view, it’s an investment. Educated people usually earn more and it will prevent the neighbourhood to become overrun by rednecks. Apply the same logic to a city, region, country. I want my neighbours to be intelligent enough to avoid polluting their/my water and air. I want them to be intellectually curious instead of plunging us straight down into another “dark ages”.

Unfortunately…

I know this is a technicality but AFAIK neither the former prince Andrew nor Peter Mandelson were arrested for the pedo stuff. They were arrested because they leaked state secrets to a person that happens to be a pedo.

It’s proprietary software and it seems doubtful the company will port it to Linux. However it seems there’s a workaround using AES67, or a reversed engineered implementation called teodly.

As someone that is using RTP to send audio from and to different Linux computers, this is unfortunately an option that is getting more difficult to use as time passes. A few years ago when pulseaudio was dominating, it was trivial to just tick a few boxes, enable RTP, see a lit of devices in pasystray, and choose it with a few clicks. Now since pipewire, this is no longer possible. Sure, RTP still works, but using the command line is now mandatory, as all the GUI options have disappeared.

I still find myself reinstalling pulseaudio on most of my computers running Linux because I need RTP audio and it’s disappointing that it’s getting harder and harder to get it to work on Linux.

Cars make people miserable.

Star Trek

So we’re just spreading trash in the environment and feeling good about it because it can be reused by other animals?

This just made me look up and learn about the environmental impact of tennis balls.

Every year, an estimated 300 million tennis balls are manufactured globally, and most of them end up in landfills. The rubber core is pressurized with air or nitrogen to give the ball its signature bounce. However, rubber itself is a challenging material to recycle, especially when combined with pressurization and other materials. The felt covering is partially synthetic (nylon), which contributes to the microplastic pollution problem. Synthetic fibers shed during play, adding to global plastic waste.

I’m just pointing out that cheaper energy means people tend to use more. I’m very much for renewable energy and against AI. Just that we also need to find ways to be much more efficient with it. I live in a place with “cheap” renewable energy and we use more per capita than most of the rest of the world. So it’s just something to keep in mind. I’m saying it’s excellent to have renewable energy, it’s excellent to have it as cheap as possible, but it can also lead to waste and pollution in other ways.

You don’t have to make a false dichotomy where it’s either one or the other.

EDIT: Just to give you an example. People know here that our energy is “renewable” and cheap. So when we’re asked to reduce usage during peaks, there’s a few people yelling at the top of their lungs that we just have to build more dams, flood more land, and that “water will always flow in the turbines anyway”.

Have you read it? Translated or in French? Because this is a list of facts, with a conclusion addressing what you are pointing out. It’s literally from the government of the province.

Le Québec, avec son climat hivernal rigoureux, connaît des besoins élevés en puissance électrique lors de périodes de grand froid, alors que toute la population doit se chauffer simultanément. Ces épisodes, appelés périodes de pointe de puissance, ne durent que quelques heures par année, mais exercent une pression sur le réseau.

Translated: The province of Québec, with its cold climate, has high energetic needs during the peaks of extreme cold periods, because the whole population has to heat their homes at the same time. Those periods, called power peaks, are only lasting for a few hours every year, but are putting pressure on the network.

Also, those places have summer. Most of the population in Québec and Norway don’t live in an arctic tundra.

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If the electricity bill would be lower people would use more energy and switch to electric cars real fast. I’m sure some people would not change their habits, but I’m inclined to think a lot of people would just use more and care a bit less about trying to use it as efficiently as possible.

Just take cars as an example. Everyone wants low gas prices, but when gas prices are low, people are buying bigger cars that consumes more gas/energy. Another example are places with renewable energy powering the grid, having cheaper electricity, but also ending up using more per person.

The province of Québec is one of the biggest consumer of electricity per inhabitant in the world, behind Iceland and Norway. Source in French.

Those places have super high percentages of cheap renewable energy being generated, but they also consume much more per inhabitant. Sure, if we cover the earth in solar panels, reservoirs, tap geothermal, and have enough energy to waste for everybody, and every manufacture. But this takes resources, space, batteries, and ends up polluting too. The less we need, the better it is for everyone.

I’m not saying we don’t need renewable nor deserve lower bills. Just that the actual system of consumption cannot only be reduced to “more cheap renewable energy”. I’m in Québec and energy is mostly renewable and relatively cheap here. But we also can’t just continue to build giant reservoirs visible from space to quench our insatiable appetite for electricity. We’ll have to learn to use less energy too; be more efficient with what we have. Not just convert everything to renewable and call it a day.