@ajsadauskas
@aus.social@alcoholicorn It is when it has been privatised to a company that pretty much pays no tax (hi Transurban!), for roads that taxpayers helped to pay for, and those toll roads connect car dependent suburbs that have next to no public transport.
@Gurre @fuck_cars The road lobby's big answer to the mess they've created with the Rozelle Interchange is to build a second road tunnel under Sydney Harbour.
Engineers at the inquiry into the Rozelle Interchange fiasco have already testified that will only create traffic jams elsewhere on the road network: https://aus.social/@ajsadauskas/112383313109173146
Just one more lane, bro!
@LostXOR @yogthos @NoIWontPickAName @technology There's a few other steps they could potentially take.
The first would be to block any financial institution in the US, or that deals with the US, from sending any payments to or from ByteDance's accounts.
They could also freeze any assets currently held by US financial institutions.
Second, if they can get Apple, Microsoft, and Google on board to help do their bidding, they could pull the ByteDance app from the Apple and Google Play app stores.
That includes removing it from any apps where it's already installed. Globally.
They could also request that TikTok is removed from Google and Bing search results.
On top of this, they could do what you suggested, and ask ISPs and mobile carriers to block domains and IP addresses used by ByteDance.
And the US could apply diplomatic pressure on other countries to implement similar financial and ISP-level blocks and bans.
So, potentially, it's also blocked in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and elsewhere.
@crispyflagstones @yogthos Someone is named @dansup who also created @pixelfed, the app is called Loops, you can follow his progress here: @loops
I mean, Windows is just such a weird proprietary distro.
It doesn't use the latest Linux kernel, or even a mainstream POSIX-compliant alternative like BSD. Instead, you have a strange CP/M-like monolithic kernel — I think they used to call it DOS — that's been extended to behave more like VAX and MP/M.
It also doesn't use either X11 or Wayland as a display manager. Instead, you have an incredibly unintuitive overblown WINE-like subsystem handling the display.
Because it doesn't use Linux, Wayland, or X11, you are limited in the desktop environment that you can use. There's really limited support for KDE, despite the best efforts of volunteers.
Instead, there's a buggy and error-prone proprietary window manager that ships with it by default. A bit like how Canonical tried to ship Unity as it's default desktop environment with Ubuntu.
And confusingly, they've named that window manager Windows as well!
That window manager lacks many of the features an everyday Gnome or KDE user would expect out of the box.
It also doesn't ship with a standard package manager, and most of the packages ship as x86 binaries, so installing software works differently to how an everyday Linux user would expect.
There's also only one company maintaining all of these projects. It insists on closed source, and it has a long history of abandoning its projects.
And sure, if you're a nerd who's into alternative operating systems, toying with Windows can be fun.
But if your grandpa is used to Linux, frankly he'll be utterly bamboozled by the Windows experience.
I'm sorry to be glib, because Windows does have some nice ideas.
But.
Windows on the desktop just isn't ready for your average, everyday Linux user.
@zerakith To be clear here, I am talking primarily here about corporate or organisational level here.
By net versus gross, I mean the difference between continuing to pollute, but "offsetting" that pollution, versus getting their gross pollution as close to zero as possible.
There's many orgs and businesses out there claiming to have a plan to reach, or have reached, net zero (or net negative).
And in many cases, what they're talking about is basically their direct emissions (scope one) and offsite energy (scope two). Not their supply chain (scope three).
And what they really mean is that they'll continue to pollute, and just buy the cheapest carbon offsets available. In many cases, those cheapest available offsets are of dubious value.
That all sounds great in a press release.
But what's a lot better is to continually measure and reduce gross emissions across scope one, two, and three, getting them as low as possible.
At a global system-wide level, I would argue we would be in a far better position if we had more businesses, organisations, and governments looking to achieve gross zero than net zero.
@mcSlibinas @etbe Worth noting that in the six months after Apple releases the thinnest, best iPhone ever each year, it would receive several million two-year-old iPhones as trade-ins.
So you could theoretically reflash several million units of nearly identical hardware with embedded Linux (or QNX), remove the batteries (and screens?).
You would then have several million near-identical motherboards ready for second life embedded in appliances or sensors.
@mcSlibinas @etbe Really good point.
The development time and cost is an overhead. That's divided between the number of units you produce.
If the programming costs are $100k and you produce one unit, then that unit costs $100k.
But if you flash the same software on to 1 million units, then it's just 10 cents per unit.
Worth remembering that millions of people junking their two-year-old iPhones and Samsung Galaxies at roughly the same time.
I think the broader underlying issue is that our economy is optimised for labour productivity, rather than making the most out of finite environmental resources.
It really should be the other way around.
@ordellrb @eugenia The other place the motherboards of old phones could be repurposed is in embedded processors.
Most home appliances feature embedded processors and motherboards these days. Many commercial and industrial buildings and structures feature a range of embedded sensors.
In many cases, a repurposed three-year-old or even six-year-old iPhone or Samsung Galaxy motherboard is overkill in terms of being capable for these kinds of applications.
Especially if they're reflashed with an embedded device-focussed operating system, such as QNX.
Instead of making new motherboards for embedded devices, why not repurpose old consumer tech instead?
@Hello1000 @ylai Yeah, the Dutch have solved this one already. It's called a bakfiets: https://youtu.be/rQhzEnWCgHA?si=jc9mn4E_0SYhG78q
As for cycling in the snow, here's @notjustbikes on why the Finns can happily cycle in the snow but Canadians can't: https://youtu.be/Uhx-26GfCBU?si=9OWyiLYq3kgEsfAU