Ooh, maybe I'll try a new font size
pedz @ pedz @lemmy.ca Posts 2Comments 417Joined 2 yr. ago
pedz @ pedz @lemmy.ca
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I'm an old millennial that downloads and keep what I like. It took so long to download anything on dial-up that the habit was to keep everything for later.
And then because I go camping and cycling in places without network coverage, I took the habit of copying a few hundred of MP3s and a few dozen episodes of cartoons on my phone. That way I have some entertainment even when I'm in a forest without network coverage.
I still can't understand people streaming music on their phones, music that they probably are going to listen and download again and again and again instead of only once. Why not keep it instead of constantly using bandwidth for the same thing over and over?
Same with watching stuff. Your favorite paid streaming service may eventually decide to remove a series you like, or miss a few seasons. That's if it's not on another streaming service. Like, I know I'll watch and rewatch again episodes of the Simpsons, so I download them. It only consumes bandwidth once and can watch it on repeat whenever I want, even without internet.
You can still pay for stuff, but don't use the DRM ridden streams that can disappear or can't be accessed without internet... pay for it if you wish but then, pirate and download a version you can keep.
Or I'm just old and living through "bandwidth scarcity" and really owning stuff left its mark on me.
Aah yes, more cars. But those will be ecological cars! Green cars! Super good for the economy environment. That way North America doesn't need to finance or build transit. Just buy more stuff, but green stuff!
No need to change any habit. We'll even pay you to buy a green car. Buy a green car! It's good for the environment! Buy buy buy! Don't stop buying. The more we consume, the greener it gets!
Convincing people that they need EVs instead of reducing car usage is an evil genius marketing plan for car companies.
Ask me how I know we will not reach our climate target goal.
Depends on what kind of debts.
I'm an "old" millennial that recently got a raise and cleared all my credit cards after years of having them loaded near the limit. Now I have a positive balance in my account and enough to live for a few months without a salary. It boosted my credit score to average. So that's great!
However, I live in a studio and don't think I can afford to move anywhere much bigger nor buy any kind of property. It will still take me years to save enough for a mortgage.
So I guess it's still nice not to have any debts, but I would also prefer to have paid off a mortgage instead of "only" credit cards.
If I understand correctly, the alerts can be classified under the different categories listed in the options (amber, extreme threats, etc..) and those can be disabled. However there is a categry called "presidential alerts" and those cannot be disabled.
Lucky for me, my province just blankets everything under "presidential alerts" and so that's why the sliders don't do anything in my case. Like... they should, but because my province just sends everything as super mega extreme presidential alerts, the options are useless.
I tried disabling them on two phones using Android 11 and 13. I can slide the sliders to "off" but it doesn't change anything. I also tried to disable them using adb. Alas even if everything is disabled, the phone still blasts the alarm.
Apparently those are mandatory and you're not supposed to be able to disable them.
I have anxiety and I didn't mind much when people called me, because I have caller ID, I could just ignore the unknown callers. But then emergency alerts are now a thing in my country and my phone has started to whine and ring multiple times a year, like the end of the world is coming, to tell me a child is missing, or that a big storm is coming. Plus, during the pandemic, my government thought it would be a brilliant idea to send general messages to the public using that emergency system..
The most frustrating part is that I can't disable nor mute those alerts. My only way not to have my phone blasting the emergency alarm unpredictably, is to mute it permanently. I'm now missing calls but on the positive side, I don't notice amber and emergency alerts.
Today I learned that a giraffe in Greek is a spotted camel.
No one organism is more evolved than another
There might even be a belief that humans are somehow 'more' evolved than chimps, or any other life form, but this is simply not the case. Humans have had exactly the same amount of time to evolve since the beginning of life on earth as any other organism on earth.
https://www.earlham.ac.uk/articles/10-surprising-things-you-might-not-know-about-evolution
If you own your music, you can have it in a digital format and copy it somewhere else.
I'm an old millennial that started with dial-up and downloaded MP3s from IRC/Napster/Kazaa/torrents.
Eventually I started to buy what I could on CD then ripped them, then bought MP3s when possible. Otherwise I don't mind using yt-dlp.
Those MP3s have been played by a portable CD player, then a Samsung MP3 player, then 3 or 4 phones. I'm still playing that collection on my actual phone, using Poweramp.
The device that plays the files may not last but you can certainly copy those elsewhere and do what you want with them, for as long as you want.
Before this week, Canada.
In Canada eyes and teeth are not considered "health" and thus is also not covered by universal healthcare.
It was up to the provinces and employers to implement whatever coverage they wanted for those. In my place, dental care is free if you are under 18, or if you live from government assistance. The only way to get healthcare for your teeth as an adult, is to have a dental plan at work. So a young adult working minimum wage in a convenience store doesn't have dental insurance.
From personal experience, I didn't have dental insurance between 18 and 30 because I had low wage jobs.
However this is going to change a bit soon, because the social-democrats just pushed a vote to expand dental insurance to everyone that needs it. It's not universal yet but now people with low wage jobs will be covered.
But then you realize their north is not the same as physical north, like Montreal, where west/east follows the river instead or real cardinal points.
So if you ask directions in Montreal and someone tells you to go north, it means to go NW. And if you're told to go east, you have to NE. It's easy once in the city because the grid follows that "convention" but you always have to be aware of that detail. We just like to add a layer of complexity.
One quirk of common Montreal parlance is that directions (north, south, east, and west) along the street grid are sharply skewed relative to the actual compass directions. The St. Lawrence River is taken as flowing west to east (even though it flows north or northeast past the island), so that directions along streets parallel to the river are referred to as "west" and "east," and those along streets perpendicular to the river, "north" and "south." In much of Montreal, "north" is actually northwest, and in some areas such as Verdun and Pointe-aux-Trembles it is actually due west.
[Foreign language]
Quite candidly, it's not articles selling the spiel of tech bros that is going to help us. I'm one of those commenters and I also wish "Technology" was about technology instead of trying to sell the latest gadgetbahn or a solar road or self driving cars.
EDIT: It's not technically about "helping us", but more specifically about the kind of spiel those "articles" are trying to push. It may very well be about technology, but it's misrepresented as something that could help us and save us in the future while in reality, it's just marginally interesting, Think about how many articles there has been about bitcoins, NFTs, AI and crap like this, coming from techbros and their simps. That's why you'll see the sort of comments you complain about. It certainly is tech, but it's more like tech they're trying to hype, misrepresent and sell.
I love tech. I work in IT. But I can also smell BS and will not hesitate to point it out.
Being "anti car" is good for people that love cars. More public transit means less trafic, less congestion, less demand for gas and generally just more space for people that actually like to drive cars.
Plus, if some people don't want to drive a car and just want to get places, maybe don't get a car? There's already safe and proven "technology" to do that. I understand the added safety bonus of "autonomous" cars but let's be real, it's not advertised as something to boost the safety of everyone around, it's advertised as "autopilot" or even worse, "Full Self Driving".
I am certainly anti car, but pointing out the flaws in "FSD" or "autonomous cars" and how it's being falsely marketed to people is also on topic and is not exactly "inserting my views". People can still love cars and use them, just don't BS us with the "FSD" and "autonomous" spiel.
I know it's not the answer you're looking for but, what is safer for pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers, is to have less cars on the roads. Buses can move dozens of people with a single trained professional driver. Trains can move hundreds. It's illogical to try to push for autonomous cars for individuals when we already have "self driving" technologies that are much much safer and much more efficient.
Yeah. Libertarian is not only a thing for the right. There are libertarians on the left too.
I'm going to sound like an asshole but as someone that has been making efforts to live without a car in Canada for more than 20 years... there are other options than motorized vehicles.
Bicycles exist and you can cover a good deal of distance with them. That could help reduce the number of car trips. No need to get rid of them completely but at least try to reduce its use.
There is also the option to move.
But in the end the argument of rural people needing cars is kind of moot because the vast vast majority of people live in cities or in suburbs that were founded on railroads. So it would be relatively easy to help a good chunk of people to get rid, or use less of their cars while rural people can still drive or pedal to a nearest bus stop, tram stop, or train station.
I know that from experience of living in both a rural environment, and in a city. I did move a few times for my work in order to avoid needing a car.
Again, not possible for everybody but options have to be considered because, we're running out of time and excuses anyway.
If you live in a rural setting and can't use a bus or cycle, fine. But don't sabotage the efforts and options for the vast majority of people that should, or do have options, by stating that if you need a car then everybody surely does! Please!
As the meme says: BuT iT's sO CoNvEnIeNt!1!
Going above warp 10 is definitely not recommended.
Indeed, that's one annoying thing I miss about my new phone, as it doesn't have a micro SD card slot. Another thing about new phones and this "everything cloud" point of view is that it's becoming increasingly difficult (for me) to plug a USB drive/stick as a temporary ad-hoc storage device. So in addition to not allowing lots of space on the device itself, and removing micro SD card slots, it's also becoming difficult to just plug a USB stick in an OTG port.
However, MP3s are not that big and anyone used to streaming shouldn't bat an eye on compression. The loss on files compressed at 192 kbps is acceptable and you can have thousands of files for a few dozen of GBs. Also, when I started to "keep my files", it was mainly in SD. Those files are perfect for devices with small screens and they are still small enough to be "portable". A whole season of South Park is like 2.5 GB and my video player won't tell my it isn't available in my country. For 10 GB I can have 4 whole seasons on my phone and because the screen is pretty small, quality will still be more than acceptable. So, there's still wiggle room even if phones will not allow TBs worth of storage.