Daytime energy is soon going to be free in much of the world. The advances in green tech, especially solar and batteries, are real. Much faster progress than even the optimists were predicting a decade ago. The revolution is reaching a tipping point where it becomes self-sustaining and requires no state subsidies. I am not a tech utopian, and this alone will not save us. But there's no denying it's good news. It's all happening far too late but it does look like humans are going to kick their fossil habit after all.

Inconvenient footnote: thank China.

For context, as a writer at The Atlantic described it:

The negotiators displayed mainly incompetence, as well as cringeworthy servility to their master in the White House. Trump’s part, though, was pure malignity. Shortly after the meeting ended, he criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, lied about the latter’s polling numbers, and said, in a particularly callous remark, that Ukraine had had a seat at the table for three years. How being invaded and having your civilians tortured, raped, and slaughtered counts as a seat at the table is beyond understanding.

Who is this "we" you talk of?

At last. A showerthought that is actually a showerthought.

Guys - this what a showerthought is, please take note. Thanks.

Let's not get carried away. The scope of the comment is pretty narrow if you read it closely. This is one member of a 5-person board that also includes Tim Berners-Lee. The foundation structure is also a protection against abuses.

Misinformation. OP is advocating that you shoot yourself in the foot.

The CEO said something silly on Twitter which revealed either that (a) he shares an exceedingly banal opinion with literally half of America or (b) he's not above a bit of preemptive sycophancy to advance his (positive) anti-trust agenda.

There's nothing particularly scandalous in the offending tweet:

• Implying that the Democrats are now "the party of big business" is arguably true (and very boring)
• Implying that the Republicans now "stand for the little guys" is dumb but also arguably true, unfortunately - the working classes swung to Trump in the recent election while the Democrats are fast becoming a party of high-earning elites (which is why they lost)
• Saying that the antitrust actions began under Trump I is, well, true

Proton is not owned Zuck-like by its CEO. It's controlled by a foundation with other stakeholders on the board, including the inventor of the Web himself. In its niche it is still by far the best option. Ditching it for a nebulous non-existent alternative because the CEO expressed a dumb and extremely commonplace opinion is just silly and self-defeating.

PS: to be clear, OP is peddling misinformation because it's not true that "Proton took the stance" of anything. It's the personal opinion of the CEO that's at issue. It's a major distinction. I find it disappointing that people interested in privacy would have such little respect for a private individual's right to have their own thoughts.

PPS: to be extra clear, my comments are about the post above, not stuff that people are reading elsewhere. But the substance stands. See discussion for detail.

Always important to remember in this debate: electrification of transport is not just about carbon and climate. It's about public health, not to mention public sanity.

The filthy noisy combustion engine was never compatible with dense cities, which is where most people live these days. Anyone who has been to one of the few places in the world where urban transport has been completely electrified will testify to the difference it makes to be free of the internal combustion engine. It's night and day.

Let's not lose sight of the wood for the trees.

This will be easy to hate on, but let's be careful not to get carried away.

Maintaining a web browser is basically the toughest mission in software. LibreWolf and PaleMoon and IceWhatsit and all the rest are small-time amateur projects that are dependent on Firefox. They do not solve the problem we have. To keep a modicum of privacy and openness, the web is de-facto dependent on Firefox continuing to exist in the medium term. And it has to be paid for somehow.

This reminds me of the furore about EME, the DRM sandbox that makes Netflix work. I was against it at the time but I see now that the alternative would have been worse. It would have been the end of Firefox. Sometimes there's no good option and you have to accept the least bad.

It would help if European voters stopped behaving like spoiled children and voting for wannabe dictators because inflation or immigration or whatever.

that could be because it is an AMAZING post – it covered all the points and no one has anything left to say

Finally, I know why.

This is not a "YSK", it's just yet another post about (US...) politics.

Seriously, this problem ruined [email protected] and it's ruining this community too.

PS: very pertinent ongoing discussion

At some point our species is going to have to move beyond this rapacious zero-sum logic of "unsticking" economies and "getting ahead" and instead learn how to distribute all that wealth better.

In Estonia, at your second speeding drunk-driving violation they confiscate your vehicle - and if it's an SUV they send it to Ukraine.

For backstory, see latest episode of the podcast The Urbanist Agenda.

This looks like a glimpse of how Mastodon (specifically: ActivityPub protocol) can really detrone Twitter. The world is full of governments and agencies and other Very Serious Organizations. They must hate having to depend on a single private company to get their message out. They must be itching for an alternative that gives them the kind of control that they have with phone numbers and email addresses and websites. Surely this is Mastodon's golden opportunity.

Yes, every household in the developed world has a drawer like this. It's for things that you hardly need or never need, but might do, one day, probably (not).

Why it bothers me: in a more sane world, this stuff would be shared. Every community would have a junk tool shed - not every household of 4 people, or 2 people, or (increasingly) one person. It's reminiscent of that drill statistic: the average electric drill is used for 7 minutes in its lifetime. This is madness. Our planet is overflowing with junk. As a species we need to be smarter.

Yes, I've had similar experiences recently and similar thoughts. Crossing land borders in Asia is more stressful than it was a few years ago. Lots of redundant security theater and biometrics everywhere. Of course, China is on another level to everyone else. At the immigration booth, your conversation with the official is now translated and subtitled in real time on both sides. And face ID is now so universal in China that I suspect the fingerprinting has become an afterthought. Everyone is being filmed and tracked pretty much everywhere. Not just cash but even ticket numbers are now redundant. Everything is attached to your personal ID and cameras decide whether you enter public buildings, train stations and so on. The day their government decides to really abuse all that power, they're in deep trouble.

In my experience the border thing is clearly worst in Asia, but with the exception of China it's mostly just tiresome theater.

By contrast I crossed into the Schengen zone from Turkey this summer and was surprised by how little security there was. But then I noticed the police all but dismantling a bunch of heavy goods vehicles in their search for illicit migrants. That was absolutely not security theater.

PS. This subject got me thinking. I've seen a ton of borders because I like to travel by land. Different regions of the world definitely have different priorities at borders. In Asia it's drugs and contraband. They care what's in your bag. In Europe and North America, it's you they care about: why you're here and when you're going to leave. In police states like China, borders are a golden opportunity to harvest a ton of data on suspect individuals. In much of the rest of the world, Latin America for example, borders are mainly just an employment scheme, bureaucracy for its own sake.

Broke the racist Strom Thurmond's record that had been an embarrassment for the Senate that dated back decades.

Set a marker to show how strongly Democrats reject what's going on despite their current lack of options for pushing back.

Anyway, IMO this post flagrantly breaks rule #6 and should really be deleted. Put this discussion elsewhere.

Lose weight. I'm totally serious. Thin people have much higher natural tolerance for heat.

It's no coincidence that so many developed countries have become addicted to AC. The fact is that most people there are now overweight and in many (USA most obviously) over 40% are literally obese. Conversely, AC is much less common in places like France and Japan, and it's not just because they're too cheap.

If you want to stay cool in a heatwave, it helps not to be wearing a blubber overcoat that you can't remove.

Every social-media platform strips EXIF metadata before publishing the photo.

So the issue is the trustworthiness of the social-media platform itself. Personally I always strip the metadata before sharing anything anywhere.