I already replied and I’m sorry if seem to insist but I want to add on the subject and myth of “Elon Musk being a genius” and “contributing to society”, and went over the part about internet, and electric cars in general.

I’m glad you can have internet in a rural area, really. However, doing it via a constellation of satellites instead of having a robust ground network is posing certain issues for the future.

The size and scale of the Starlink project concerns astronomers, who fear that the bright, orbiting objects will interfere with observations of the universe, as well as spaceflight safety experts who now see Starlink as the number one source of collision hazard in Earth’s orbit. In addition to that, some scientists worry that the amount of metal that will be burning up in Earth’s atmosphere as old satellites are deorbited could trigger unpredictable changes to the planet’s climate.

In a paper published in May 2021 in the journal Scientific Reports, Canadian researcher Aaron Boley said the aluminum the satellites are made of will produce aluminum oxide, also known as alumina, during burn-up. He warned that alumina is known to cause ozone depletion and could also alter the atmosphere’s ability to reflect heat.

Whole article here

So as much as this could be useful, it’s also polluting the skies at a very rapid rate, and we’re not sure about the future consequences of it. And depending on where you live, fast and reliable internet in rural areas is often the result of other capitalistic companies not deeming those places profitable enough, and poor governmental regulations on internet as an essential service. We shouldn’t have to launch thousands of satellites in the air for this. But because it’s more profitable this way…

As for electric cars. Call me cynical, and anti car, which I am, but I don’t think the goal is to be ecological. Not anymore. Maybe when the company started with their three first CEOs. But it seems clear to me that Musk used the electric part as an ecological argument for greenwashing and selling to people that want to be “green”.

Electric cars are not to save the climate. They are to save the automobile industry. They want to continue to sell cars because it makes a profit. Electric cars are still posing an ecological threat, are still polluting the environment because of particles from the tires, are still killing millions of animals and people every year, and are still wasting vast quantities of space for parking lots, which are often not permeable.

And of course, people in rural areas will need cars, even if I don’t like them. But most people live in cities and Musk seem to be deliberately trying to delay public transit projects by announcing always soon-to-be-revolutionary technology like the Hyper Loop that has ben watered down multiple times to end up as a glorified LED lit electric car tunnel. Or the FSD which is not “full” “self” “driving”.

Again, I don’t like cars, don’t like to drive, and don’t have one. So I once was excited to see how the robotaxi part of things would evolve. But it’s been many many years and it’s obvious that I won’t be going from a city to a rural area soon, using a robotaxi or a self-driving car. I still need a driver’s licence for FSD. And robotaxis that do exist won’t go very far outside a city.

Also, if Musk is all about the environment with Tesla, why is he now trying to court people on the other side of the political spectrum; the side that doesn’t care about this?

Yes, electric cars are part of the solution, but cities need more public transit and micro mobility, not more cars (but electric and self-driving)! I’m sorry to say but it’s a lot of greenwashing, empty promises, and personality cult. The contributions to society are, I think, exaggerated.

Paypal is not from Musk, and he was eventually ousted when he tried to rebrand it to X.

The company was originally established by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek in December 1998 as Fieldlink, later it was renamed Confinity, a company which developed security software for hand-held devices. When it had no success with that business model, it switched its focus to a digital wallet.

In 2000, Musk had become CEO after the merger of his X.com and Confinity, the venture-backed company co-founded by Peter Thiel that owned the PayPal program that was a more popular money-transfer service than the one offered by Musk. The board ousted Musk as CEO and replaced him with Thiel in September 2000.

Tesla is also not of his own. He pretty much just bought an already working company.

He certainly made it his own over the years, investing early on and then overseeing its growth from niche luxury carmaker to mass production, adding on a solar business, and pushing self-driving technologies. However, the tech titan – and now the world’s richest man – was actually Tesla’s 4th CEO when he took that role in October 2008.

I have no idea about Space X, but Paypal and Tesla are absolutely not from Elon Musk. He just happened to cross roads with those companies and invest his emerald money in those.

If he contributed to those companies, it’s via money, not ideas and intellect.

At first glance, I thought Terrians from Earth 2 kind of vaguely looks like those guys.

The bottom image is missing the pests specific to your region, hovering over the person’s head, driving it mad. Here in southern Quebec it’s deer flies. Apparently in Scotland it’s midges.

I love to go camping on my bike or go kayaking as much as I can. But this year so far has been horrible for me. I have never had so many deer flies chasing me and biting my shoulders while cycling through wooded areas. I have to hurry to pitch my tent and then hide in it for much of the trip, then hurry to take it down while being attacked by a horde or mosquitoes and deer flies.

I use them to worsen my personal impact on climate change, since those things are consuming vast quantities of energy. It makes me feel more manly to know that I’m contributing to the slow destruction of our habitat every time I use them. It’s like having a second SUV to go to the closest corner store multiple times a day. These changed my life for the better, made it easier, and I can’t live without them now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism

Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.

I’m a middle age Québécois and we learn about that system in secondary school when we talk about the early ages of New France. AFAIK it was however a bit different from empire to empire. In New France there were seigneurs (lords) holding vast pieces of land for the crown, called a seigneurie (lordship). Within that there were censitaires (serfs) that had to make use of the land and pay taxes.

More like it doesn’t want to get the money to maintain those infrastructure by going into further debt.

I’m not following German politics very closely but the article mentions that this restriction is in their constitution.

There was something in that genre in my province decades ago when a government dedicated itself to ‘zero deficit’ by cutting on infrastructure maintenance for many years. A bridge eventually fell. Classic story. It seems like a common thing.

A rich phoque

This can also be practical in places where the police can force you to unlock your phone with biometrics but not with the PIN.

Ever since I’ve seen the police here force people to delete the videos of them abusing citizens, I have been very wary of biometric identification.

So far my ‘emergency’ procedure would be to restart my phone, as it’s asking for a PIN after a reboot.

Meh. I have a cabin in the countryside 130 km away from my apartment and I can cycle the whole way, or take a coach with a foldable bike and pedal the 30 km left.

It’s actually in the region where I grew up so I have to get there frequently to see my family. It’s a hassle sometimes but it’s only because my government can’t adequately fund and maintain a decent transit network.

I also bike to national parks nearby, and sometimes haul my inflatable kayak with a bike trailer.

People overestimate distances and think the country side justifies a car but it’s usually just excuses. I did move in a big city eventually but I lived in small towns and cities for a decade before that. I still hated cars and didn’t have one.

For example, my mother lives on a rural road outside a village of less than 2000 people. And she works in the next town that is 7 km away. Meanwhile I live in a city and work in the same city but I have to bike 9 km to get to work.

So sometimes distances are shorter in smaller cities and towns but people still insist they need a car. People will give any excuse to use their car. It’s like cocain.

Also, here Uber is only available in major cities where it’s competing with public transit anyway. AFAIK you can’t take an Uber to a small town or a rural road.

EDIT: Also, most people DO live in a city anyway. And they still have excuses to use a car.

Today, some 56% of the world’s population – 4.4 billion inhabitants – live in cities.

I prefer to be compared to Diogenes of Sinope, thank you.

Jokes on them, I hate cars, don’t have one, and would never take an Uber.

My very anecdotal theory is that those seeing humans frequently get used to us (up to a point) and usually just end up hissing when we get too close.

Where I live geese are omnipresent in parks and people are cycling, jogging and walking through their flocks. They will certainly act inquisitive, hiss and act like they own the place, but I’ve never seen them attack.

However, maybe a flock in a place less busy with humans and less used to seeing them would be more willing to attack.

Oh they’re not suing anyone for a change. I guess they have the means to give some of that money away now.

I still remember them from the times they threatened to sue their fans for not buying their music.

Metallica hadn’t sued fans directly, but were making clear their intent to hunt them down. A consulting firm was hired, and complied a list of over 300,000 internet users in a single weekend who were alleged to have downloaded Metallica songs.

I know. I’m in my early 40ies and have been trying all my life to convince people around me and do what I could. But with time, I learned about the fraud that is plastic recycling and how capitalism is really not interested at all into solving the issue. My city is fining people for putting recyclables in the trash, but the recycling centres are full and they themselves trash the recycling. What matters is short term profits and virtue signalling. What matters is to look green. Just buy electric cars and everything will be good, apparently. Buy green! But don’t stop buying!

Then a pandemic happened and people disappointed me en masse. We could see the changes in the environment and in ways we could live, but most people were “EaGeR To GeT BaCk To ThEiR RoUtInE”, even if it meant commuting 5 days a week to the office, just to “resume” the economy. What mattered was not other people, it was the economy. Even when they forced us to stay inside with curfews, people couldn’t go out to run/walk in the evening, they barred unvaccinated people from stores (I’m vaccinated 4 times but it’s still not okay), it was all for the economy and to save the system, not the people. And if you had a minor disagreement with this, you were a grandma killer for wanting to go cycling at night. Then we went back to our routines and nothing will ever change. People are whining because of paper straws and want the plastic back. And all this straw stupidity is not even important on the grand scheme of things. Most people don’t want to change anything. Most people will not vote for change. The system does not have any incentive to change.

I never owned a car and everyone around me is telling me how great they are and how I should definitely buy one because it’s useful and practical. I would have total absolution! Some people here are vociferously fighting against active and public transit, and the government is actually cutting public transit funding. People are yelling at me when I trash some plastic instead of putting it in the recycle bin, then they drive away in their car that generates literal tons of toxic fumes and greenhouse gases in the air, accusing me of not caring.

I gave up a few years ago. We will deserve most of it.

Don’t worry, the rich will eat well and survive, with their private security forces willing to kill others, while the poor will starve and die. We’ll have rations and curfews but it will all be for the good of the people economy. Just like in the pandemic, It will be an effort of the poor, to save the rich. That’s what we want. You just have to become rich before it happens.

AFAIK Kodi can use pulseaudio and probably pipewire. I use Kodi too on those computers and I just leave it to use the default PA device that I’ve set. I switch the default devices with pasystray.

What’s usually breaking for me is paprefs. Every so often after an upgrade, the options are greyed out and I can’t share or access my devices over the network.

I never tried to setup simultaneous output before because I just switch from device one to another, but I just enabled it in paprefs and it’s working too.

I won’t bother reading AI stuff. I don’t appreciate cars in large parts because of their environmental impact. And the same goes for AI.

Just as cars, AI is also polluting our spaces, and wasting energy.

I work in a call center where we are all speaking English as a second language. At one point we had a pharmaceutical company as a client. They had employees in different countries but the American employees whined that we didn’t speak English correctly or made bad comments about my coworkers. Eventually we lost the contract and they went with an all American call center for their American employees, because apparently they didn’t like our English.

In certain areas, a bug net for hammocks is a must.

We (Canadians) actually have two layouts to type French characters. The modern Canadian multilingual layout, and the traditional “French (Canada)” layout. As an older French speaking Canadian, I prefer the traditional layout but both work. You can even type English words with these.