MystikIncarnate @ MystikIncarnate @lemmy.ca

Some IT guy, IDK.

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2 yr. ago

The only people it makes sense to, for Canada becoming a US state, is the people in the USA.

We have land and resources they need, that we are happy to sell them, year over year.

Also, just to mention, the dairy thing? Yeah, that's on dairy products beyond a certain cap. It's there to encourage the use of Canadian dairy, instead of relying on foreign dairy.... You know, so our dairy farmers don't go broke.

Looking at the records, that import limit has been hit...... Carry the one....... Yeah, exactly zero times.

🖕

Sincerely,

• Canada

ICE cars are absolutely changing designs all the time. There are plenty of ICE car designs that I don't like too.

The difference is that generally there will be a couple of EV designs, but there will be a dozen ICE designs. There's simply more to pick from on the ICE side. So if I want something that fits a design aesthetic, I have a much better chance to find it as an ICE car than an EV.

I widely considered the model S to be a great EV design for a really long time, though I swore I wouldn't buy one. Before the whole Elon Musk drama recently, my main reasons were about how they treated after market/used/rebuilt vehicles, owners, and anyone with the gall to dare try to fix their own vehicle.... And also the "walled garden" of Tesla. Making it difficult or impossible to get something like a third party charger for home, among a long list of other complaints.

I've been aware of the writing on the wall with Tesla for a while, and I reserved judgement for the most part, only committing to not placing myself in that situation, and thinking that anyone who can accept what I will not, does so at their own risk. It brings me no joy to see that I was right on most fronts. They still have some wonderful designs.

Largely, the S stands out... Especially early S models. More recent models started to trend into basically being larger model 3 vehicles; I don't like a few of the key design features of the model 3. Specifically, I don't like that you have a barren dashboard. There's nothing in front of you. The S had a driver information screen that showed all the usual things, like your speed, energy remaining, trip, odometer, etc. All the things that you would expect from an instrument cluster. I wasn't a HUGE fan of the middle screen for infotainment, but as long as it was limited to noncritical features and infotainment, I'm mostly okay with it (mainly that it has no physical buttons) provided that the critical driving components, features and controls were separate.

I acknowledge that this is entirely a personal preference.

Bluntly, if Tesla as a company wasn't as exclusionary to other EVs and manufacturers, and treated DIY/used/repair markets fairly, I might already be driving one. Obviously, even if they completely change all of their policies and evict the guy at the top, I'm not going for a Tesla... Even then, I'm pretty on the fence given that they're burned at this point (aka cancelled).

I'm keeping an eye out for something, I'll probably stick with the vehicle I have four now unless I can get a great deal on a used PHEV like the Honda clarity (which is now discontinued, RIP). There's a few oddities about the clarity I don't like, but on the whole it looks like a solid car. The rear tires being partially covered is odd IMO.

In any case, I can't really afford to get a new car at this point, maybe late this year things will change on that front, but given the state of the economy, inflation and average earnings, things might get worse too. Financially I have two major events happening around October that might make it possible to buy a new car: we will be able to update our mortgage (hopefully with a lower cost), and I'm on track to pay off a major debt I have. If I have my finances under control and in a good place when both of those happen, then I may start looking around for a vehicle again, provided the economy doesn't go down the toilet by then.

I don't have confidence that the economy will be good by then because since I'm in Canada, the United States and their insane commander and chief, can absolutely put our economy into a downward trend.

I'm not putting my money on it being fine. I'm going to get myself into a better position before I reassess.

Regardless, if you've read my ramblings this far down, you have my respect. I hope you have a wonderful day, and I look forward to talking with you again in the future on here. Be well.

Unfortunately Peugeot and Citroen are not names I've ever seen for cars sold here.

I have, of course, heard of both mentioned at some point, but here in Canada, neither seem to be brands we can buy. I'm not sure why that is, I have never felt the need to look into it.

Our major players are GM, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, BMW, Mercedes, VW, Kia, and all their subsidiaries (off the top of my head). Not sure if I missed any major ones there.... There is of course some more niche companies but they're not really on my radar, so to speak.... I've also omitted Tesla on purpose for obvious reasons.

Hyundai only has hybrid sedans, some plug in hybrid, which is better than most, beyond that we're stuck with mostly SUVs and light trucks as EVs, or whatever designer-looking monstrosity someone wants to release... The story seems to be the same across all major players, to the point where I just kind of gave up the search a few years back, for the most part. Anything I've looked up or looked at since seems to follow the same trends.

My only real personal problems with EVs, have nothing to do with them being electric.

Early EVs all looked like science experiments..... I'll give some examples. The Nissan leaf. The BMW i3. And a more recent example is the VW ID.Buzz mini bus thing.

I want a car, not a statement piece, and until recently, Tesla seemed to be the only ones selling EVs that didn't look dramatically different than other cars on the road. I just want a car. I want it to use volts instead of gasoline.

The second issue I have has more to do with the automobile market than EVs.... Everyone seems to have a sport crossover or SUV converted to EV, but very few have just plain sedans, and those that do, a nontrivial number of them violate the first complaint.

I like EVs, I want to drive an EV, but I don't want it to look like it's straight out of someone's LSD trip. That's just not groovy man .... I'm not a fan of SUVs, I just want a small sedan or coupe that's normal except it uses batteries instead of Jurassic remains.

At it's core, yes, absolutely.

It should have checks and balances. The problem is that those checks and balances rely on people to take action. As you've stated, in this case, Congress should be the ones to stop unlawful power grabs by the President and start the impeachment process.

This shows very clearly that the people who are tasked with the duty of keeping those checks and balances in place are either unable to act (Democrats), or unwilling to act (Republicans). This sad reality means that the system is fundamentally broken to the point that it is liable to collapse. Trump/Musk/Vance are already making large swaths of the American population very unhappy with what they've been doing in the first 100 days. The only alternative to four+ years of this is basically a revolution at this point. Given how many "fans" they're making in the Whitehouse, that possibility doesn't seem impossible.

I was not provided details as to what he did to argue it, or who he spoke to.

.... That being said, I don't think it was the latter example you gave

I had no idea that was a thing.... Mainly because it's never been relevant to me..... At least, until recently.

Thanks for the info.

You're not wrong, but you're getting down voted... Lemmy, you crazy.

Everyone is allowed an opinion.

In my opinion, when discussion doesn't work, action is required, and sometimes that action is wacking a dude to prove a point, or simply to remove the harm they're causing to society.

I'll give an example. Hitler.

Do I need to say more?

This. He's basically a martyr at this point.

Luigi reminded the people that we have power. We don't need to be subservient to the whims of corporate interests. We can choose to go a different way. He's in jail but millions of people who are inspired by him are roaming free, any of which could become the next Luigi, and wack some CEO who is devoid of empathy or ethics (which is all of them). Anyone could be the perpetrator, anyone could be the target.

It's like a large chunk of the USA is now part of anonymous. Expect us.

(And for anyone who binds anonymous with 4chan, you don't understand anonymous)

It is and you can buy them, but you pay a significant premium for them.

IIRC Cavendish is supposed to be more resilient to the fungi than Gros Michael is, but it's not immune. The fungi mostly exists underground so it's difficult, if not impossible to remove from the land once it's "infected".... And it takes decades to clear naturally once the trees are removed.

The good thing here is that we already have Gros Michael and AFAIK, Cavendish seeds in the global seed vault, so we're not at risk of losing the ability to bring the trees back at some point in the future. We still haven't lost them, as you mentioned, there's still small batches being grown.

IMO, it's all a bit sad, since apparently Gros Michael is so much tastier, and there's a shrinking number of people alive who are old enough to remember what they tasted like at all.... So without investing in buying some from one of the small batch plantations still growing them, very soon, all but those that specifically went out of their way to try them, will have no idea what they taste like.

I'm not old enough to remember what they taste like (if they even existed as an option in the grocery when I was born at all, which I'm not sure about). I'll probably never know.

... Which is probably why I had no idea they exist.

My dad literally went to the city and argued against them raising the book value of his home, which would cause him to have to pay more in property tax.

He won too.

That loon.

We switched to Cavendish because all the gros Michael trees were dying from the fungi.

Clearly you're unqualified, you know about stuff, they're looking for someone with experience in anything and knowledge of something. Your knowledge of stuff isn't needed here.

With Tesla burning right now (sometimes literally), I'm concerned for the future of EVs.

There are other EV-only makers, most notably in my mind, rivian, but not many others come to mind.

Most other manufacturers have either stopped making EVs entirely, or switched to hybrid, or hybrid adjacent technologies. Honda is a good example of this backpedaling. They dipped their collective toes into EVs with proper hybrid vehicles during the pre-pandemic years. Between 2015 and 2020 (ish) they had a PHEV, the clarity. It was discontinued in 2020. I forget if the last model year was 2019 or 2020. Either way, I still kind of want one.... Regardless, they took everything they learned and put it into their fancy new e-CVT, which essentially, at most speeds, turns the gasoline motor of the vehicle into a generator, powering an electric motor that drives the wheels.

Don't get me wrong, that's still more efficient than burning the Jurassic forests to drive motion, but it's not as efficient as running the drive motor from batteries that were charged from green sources.

Most other manufacturers have done something similar in abandoning BEVs for HEVs or whatever Honda is doing. There's a few stand out exceptions, like the F150 lightening. Good on you Ford... But the list is pretty short, especially compared to the fuel based alternatives.

It's a good time for other companies to pick up the ball that Tesla dropped here, and I'm hoping they do. .... I mean, they won't because they're too busy buying yachts with all that fossil fuel bribe money they get, but I can dream.

I know a lot of people who use and like brother printers. Years ago the go to was HP, then it was Xerox for a while when they had decent small format printers, but they seem to have gone back to their roots of large multi function printers for the most part and priced themselves out of most markets. They're still good, but you pay for the name.

Toshiba's printing division was absorbed by Xerox, no help there. Dell..... Has printers? I guess?

Brother is kind of the stand out. Everything else you can buy as a consumer is either HP, which went completely nuts on the whole "genuine" printer ink/toner, which is why a lot of people ran away screaming. The quality of the printers declined as they tried to force people into, what is basically printer ink as a service. Stupid.

But yeah. Bother is a decent mix of functional, affordable, and being low on the bullshit of using a printer. .... That is, as long as the article isn't a sign of things to come....

I'm hoping that by the time I need a replacement for what I have right now, there will be something open source.... Cries for an open alternative to the current printer market have been ongoing pretty much anytime printers are mentioned. I expect someone is, or will be developing something to the effect of an open source hardware printer.

To be fair, this is also me when I look at a network setup years later. (I do IT with a specialty in networks)

Quick story, I bought a bubble jet printer for college in the mid 2000s, with all the fixings.

I set it up and got it working and promptly never used it. Almost all of my courses allowed either digital submissions or provided the printouts you actually needed, like course work that you would fill out. So I basically wasted my money, especially considering I could always use the large format printers at the school for like 5 cents per page.

Anyways. I did a few test prints and everything was fine and I got to work in college. Almost every time I needed the printer in order to actually print something, I more or less had to go and buy new ink. At first I was like "I guess I printed more than I thought?" But it kept happening. I would print maybe twice a year. Eventually I stopped using it as a printer (it was a multifunction, so I kept it as a scanner), and just used the printers at school. It was cheaper, considering the fact that printer ink is worth more by volume than basically any other substance; and while I was only buying a small amount, maybe $20 or so (adjusted for inflation, this is probably like $50 today) each time, it was a lot for a broke college student.

After college, I picked up a random laser printer, the printer cost more up front (I got another multifunction, but this time with a network port because I'm a nerd). I basically never bought any toner for it, given how little I had to print year over year, and it always was ready to go. I had it for years until a new windows version (maybe the OG Windows 10? Maybe Windows 8/8.1) made the drivers stop working and the manufacturer wouldn't make drivers for that model that worked with the new requirements from Windows.... I did a little print server for a bit to give it some more longevity, but ultimately it had to go to the IT storage in the sky.

Why thermal? Seems odd, but alright.

I recommend laser for just about everyone.

Don't print much? Get a laser. Otherwise your ink will dry out and you'll have to get new ink every time you want to print.

Print a lot? Laser. Super reliable, can do tens of thousands of sheets before there's a problem, maybe more.

In fact, the only time I'd recommend an ink printer is for color accurate work like photo printing, and if you're not using photo paper for it, then there's not really much of a point, is there?

I used to think bubble jet/ink jet was the shit, then I started working in IT professionally and discovered the truth.

Just buy a laser printer folks. Don't bother with all the rest of this shit. If you want/need inkjet, then you already know you need it and why. If you're not sure, get a laser. You'll pay wayyyyyy less on materials to keep it running

1000x this.

We've got all this figured out for 3D printers with all kinds of cool tools to make the job easier, and yet, take away a dimension and there's crickets?

The hell?

Let's make a 3D printable 2D printer.