Western bids to recognise a Palestinian state put Israel first
cross-posted from: ibbit.at/post/57398
From Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera via this RSS feed
Western bids to recognise a Palestinian state put Israel first
If recognition is to matter, it must centre on Palestinian self-determination, not Israel’s security.Somdeep Sen (Al Jazeera)
First person removed to France under ‘one in, one out’ asylum deal, says UK government
First person removed to France under ‘one in, one out’ asylum deal, says UK
Agreement reached with France allows for removal of asylum seekers who arrive on small boatsDiane Taylor (The Guardian)
Introducing QUIC Obfuscation for WireGuard | Mullvad VPN
Introducing QUIC Obfuscation for WireGuard
We are excited to add QUIC obfuscation for WireGuard, aimed at helping users bypass firewalls and censorship.Mullvad VPN
As the title of the RFC implies, QUIC obfuscation works by tunneling UDP through an HTTP server acting as a proxy.
...yes, it says so in the article.
Yeah their CEO said some weird shit last year. They also just rolled out an LLM chat bot this year. Sketchy company heavily leaning into enshittification.
I switched to Proton at one point because they're one of the last few providers to offer port forwarding, but I recently cancelled it and went back to Mullvad.
Chinese economy slows amid Trump trade war and weaker consumer spending
Slowing growth in factory output and retail sales prompts calls for fresh economic stimulus
China’s economy showed further signs of weakness last month as it comes under strain from Donald Trump’s trade wars and domestic problems, with factory output and consumer spending rising at their slowest pace for about a year.
The disappointing data adds pressure on Beijing to roll out more stimulus to fend off a sharp slowdown, with a debt crisis denting the country’s once-booming property sector and exports facing stronger headwinds.
Economists were split over whether policymakers should introduce more near-term fiscal support to hit their annual 5% growth target, with manufacturers awaiting further clarity on a US trade deal and domestic demand curbed by an uncertain job market and property crisis.
Probably only considered a slowdown because China comes from enormous growth.
Industrial output grew by 5.2% year on year last month
That's exactly what I thought, after almost 5 decades of near 10% annual growth, 5.2% is obviously less, but most countries would love to have 5.2% which AFAIK is more than mostly any industrialized country, or western country or democracy.
What's called terrible news for China would be awesome almost everywhere else.
The activity data point to a further loss of momentum
Oh wow really? They can't keep growing 10% annually?
Surprised pikachu!
🤣🤣🤣
France: Strikers challenge Macron's austerity drive
Report: At this point we are just trying to figure who Canadian Parliament WON'T give a standing ovation to | satire
Report: At this point we are just trying to figure who Canadian Parliament WON'T give a standing ovation to - The Beaverton
OTTAWA - After members of the Canadian Parliament earlier today gave a standing ovation to recently deceased far-right agitator who touted white supremacist theories, Charlie Kirk, we here at The Beaverton are stuck trying to figure out if there’s li…Staff (The Beaverton)
Opposition calls for ‘regime change’ in African state – media
Opposition calls for ‘regime change’ in African state – media
South Sudan opposition SPLM-IO has called for regime change, urges citizens to mobilize after charges against Riek MacharRT International
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The Soviets had promised at Yalta to enter the war in the Pacific within 3 months of the war ending in Europe. And they did launch an attack on Manchuria at 3 months to the day. Hardly feet dragging.
In fact, them being about to launch the attack, was one of the deciding factors on Truman dropping the nukes on Japan. He wanted to prevent the Soviets fron capturing territory that they would be reluctant to give up in the end. And he also knew that the USSR entering the war in the pacific would be what really pushed Japan to surrender. He didn't want to lose the opportunity to show off the new toys to scare the Soviets.
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Um... no
"Curse those lazy Soviets for not immediately starting a two front war after losing 11 million people to the Nazis. Respecting the agreements made at the Yalta conference regarding an invasion of Japan, to the letter, was ACTUALLY mendacious."
You realize that after losing 11 million people in a enduring and cataclysmic war, it may take some time to prepare for a war on the totally opposite front?
I dont even know why I'm engaging with this whitewashing. This isn't even what the OP is about.
The fact of the matter is that Japan has not handled the outcome of WWII well at all. Namely the Nanjing Massacre.
Being a "middle" user is the most difficult
By this i mean, grandma checking her email and the IT pro with 10 NAS setup are the perfect linux users.
But us in the middle who pretend we're smart...its a damn hard road. And then helping others to switch when youre not yet a pro is even harder, though a good learning experience.
Getting games to work perfectly, audio issues, Bluetooth issues, vr setups are far harder to do, running older obscure software, hooking up obscure hardware, using external drives, music production, these are some examples of things that will be extremely hard on linux vs windows for the majority of middle users.
However id say it is worth it if you like learning thousands of weird terms and phrases and putting in many hours of frustration to solve a problem. (Have you tried using floop to Docker the peeble?). It is very satisfying fixing an issue and figuring out why it happened!
Still, when im forced to use windows I see how bad its become, so im sticking with linux!
I had a crisis too some years ago, when Windows 7 was the shit, I heard Windows 7 was very good (for Windows).
So I tried to dual boot Windows 7, goddam a load of crap!! I'll never believe anyone claiming Windows is good again.
The structure of security is a bloody mess, providing worse security, while taking control away from the owner of the system.
And lack of package manager makes it ask for updates at the most inopportune moments. Just a tiny program like Adobe reader was super invasive, and was a major pain in the ass.
Windows is not in any way user friendly, it's just what most people are used to.
Window XP was probably the best and last good Windows version... 10 was kinda okay without all the telemetry shit and bloatware.
Windows 11 feels like macOS with extra steps + spyware on every move, click, clipboard copylpast.... Wouldn't go near that stuff even with full protection and debloat ^^ Just remove that shit and install linux instead.
A few months ago I wrote out some recommendations around the same theme here. Extracts:
A good start is to install tldr. You use it like man, but it gives you shorter explanations – or rather, a short list of illustrative examples.Going further, check out Fish instead of Bash. I haven’t use Fish yet, but it’s said to be much better for learning Linux commands as a beginner. Later on, you may switch to Zsh. In any case, hitting Tab once or twice will often give you a list of possible completions to the command you are typing.
Also, I hugely recommend reading at least one book about Linux. I'm now almost through with the O’Reilly book “Classic Shell Scripting” by Robbins and Beebe (ISBN 9780596005955). Despite the fact that it's 20 years old, it helped me hugely – primarily with the shell and its commands, but also with understanding things like file structure.
It presupposes some familiarity with Unix-like systems and with the shell, so if one’s just starting out, the book “Learning the Unix Operating System” may be better.
External drives? Usually on most distros and file managers, it’s just one click.
I have had a bit of a horrid time with Bluetooth, though, especially when it comes to audio. However, I will say Linux allows you to do some nuts things with Bluetooth like emulate a Nintendo Switch controller with NXBT, allowing you to use a PlayStation controller on a Switch with a spare laptop.
As for audio, I feel like life has gotten much better for the layman since Pipewire.
I don’t think VR setups are that common, and the Venn diagram of VR owners and Linux users has to be even smaller. I’ve probably only known 2 people who actually own a headset, and both of them were standalone Oculus affairs.
Overall, I feel like it’s possible to conceptually understand Linux and which config file is while, while Windows registry is an incomprehensible beast. Also, it feels like Linux tends to have better errors that correlate to a specific problem, whereas the same Windows error could be caused by many different things and lead you on a wild goose chase through forum posts filled with generic advice and dead ends.
Not to say you are wrong in general, just a personal anecdote: i run Debian, everytime i need to upgrade from one major Version to the next I work for a day, dont get it done, cry, and then setup all my 3 PCs from scratch. (And NO a rolling release like arch or tumbleweed is not the solution, as I am not smart enough to manage different versions of dependencies and everything breaks at somepoint, Debian is at least stable between the major releases)
My vive wireless will not work under Linux so I need to keep a dual boot windows on the workhorse which is difficult to maintain itself sometimes.
And on my low spec PC audio is never synched with video and no matter what I do I don't get it fixed
I love Linux for its philosophy and hate Microsoft for theirs, I will go back under no circumstances and agree that Linux gives better error messages and docs to fix things, but I never needed to do that with Microsoft. I never needed to open the registry apart from escaping out of box setup...
User experience for someone with high technical expectations for what should be possible (vr, games, hi-fi cinema, CAD, DAW) but only moderate technical skills (I can navigate GUIs and make basic use of the terminal (grep, nano, apt) but if I try to understand English primary source docs I don't get it as after ~7 years of Linux I still only know about 30% of the necessary concepts and vocabulary just isn't that good....
Like, Damm, its hard for someone without any technical training who only has a few hours a month to work on his PC (meaning having time to fix and learn stuff, not just using the PC) to get the stuff done which is a no brainer on win
May I ask how your Debian upgrades go wrong?
I mostly say so because I recently upgraded from 12 to 13 with almost no issues; the only issue was something with Apache that ended up being a quick fix. I followed the official Debian guide and temporarily remove third party repos and packages.
Havent brought myself to upgrade to 13 yet,
but from 11 to 12 i followed to official guidlines, and when trying to reinstall my packages after kernel upgrade stuff got messed up. Packages didnt recognize their own config files anymore, wine completley behaved random, apt was flooded with error messages, the blzrry glassy Theme in I had in KDE plasma didn't reinstall properly leaving my desktop looking horrible, half programs not working and some weird driver(?) behavior ( hanging Indefinitly when trying to shut down the system and stuff like that)
Maybe all would have been fixable for someone smart enough, for me it was easier to start again from scratch.
Did you restart the computer after the upgrade and before reinstalling third party repo packages?
The “half the programs not working” kind of sounds like you had packages compiled for a newer libc and the like but the newer libc wasn’t in memory yet because you hadn’t restarted.
Was a while ago, i think i did.
All I know is I worked trough the whole doc to upgrade start to finish because I didn't know which sections apply to me and which don't, it was like ten hours of work trying t o understand everything which, holly shit, wasn't easy and when I finally got completely through it didn't work as expected.
Not that I think the docs were wrong, I am aware that I was the problem there, but it sometimes bothers me when people act like Linux is super easy and even grandma can understand and use it while I, the most techy persons in my peer group, give it my all and still dont even manage a simple upgrade, which would be absolutely no problem on the corporate OSs
Huh. I guess 3 years of Debian usage has just gotten me used to stuff like that.
I can see where one might go wrong; there’s a lot of sections in that guide with contingencies only meant for specific situations, like upgrading from a USB or optical disc.
It's 100% nvidia's fault. AMD has been doing a great job maintaining linux drivers. I recommend it if you are pro-linux.
Can't compare rocm to cuda though.
Gonna be real, I haven't had to bother with my OS for the past two months, so I disagree with a lot of this post. The take I disagree with the most is that things that would be difficult regardless of OS are somehow "harder" in Linux though. Getting old games to run on Windows is also a massive PITA, and oftentimes can be easier on Linux since you can always just run a WINE instance using whatever version of Windows the game was originally intended for. Same for old obscure software, anything from like the XP era does not play nice with Windows 11 in my experience. It sounds like the bigger issue is that you have learned a lot about Windows, and haven't learned a lot about Linux, so your knowledge base for Windows is better.
The actual issue I think is huge for your hypothetical "middle user" is hardware based. Some hardware is just better for running high performance applications on Linux than others. In my fancy, shiny, top of the line rig, my experience in getting games to work is I download them and run them with Proton. I've done no troubleshooting, barely use any applications other than Steam for gaming, and so far have not found a game I wanna play that doesn't work. On my old Nvidia-based rig that I replaced, however, it was the exact opposite story. Nothing ever worked, I was constantly looking through error logs and trying to troubleshoot, and most of the time the answer was hardware that wasn't properly supported.
Thats not what i experienced....
Trying to run sketchup with wine, 3 days trial and error, doesn't work even though winehq says its possible
Using vive wireless? Not possible at all!
or playing league, hard before vanguard, impossible after...
Updating between major versions? Always breaks my setup and makes me start from scratch
Using zoom for work with sharing desktop? Huge pita and u need to deepdive in Wayland to get I running (I didn't so I switched back to x)!
Install a non native daw like ableton and get it running without crashes and usable latency? Impossible!
Using your rack audio interface? Not possible as there is no Linux driver and pipewire only recognizes half of the functions
I have a ryzen 5 12 core and a Vega 64, so hardware is decent and clearly not the problem here.
I am aware that those problems often stem from programs not being designed for Linux, not Linux itself being bad, but the effect is sadly the same: using halfbacked freeware or study IT to get it running, nothing apart from Mozilla "just works"
Still, when im forced to use windows I see how bad its become, so im sticking with linux!
That's the right attitude. A lot of the comfort of Windows comes down to habit and mere exposure. Every Windows user who dives beyond the surface also spends a lot of time learning, but with the added burden of having to sift through every forum post suggesting sFc /ScAnNoW. And if you keep the same hardware for a few years, the Linux experience ages like a fine wine as drivers improve and features get some subtle polish.
Sometimes I wonder if my health takes a toll each time I help someone set up Windows. I can literally feel my heart rate increase as I go through the privacy-related settings.
I had that very experience somewhat recently. I had to set up Windows 10 on a laptop for a friend. I had been using Linux on my main PC for probably five years at that point, so I was “un-used to” Windows. Oh boy that was a dreadful experience. It was a lot like “no, no, no, no, don’t want that, stop it, turn that off, be quiet”, and then logging in and getting the final pieces finished? Headache-inducing. “Try this!”, “try that!”, “did you know you could do THIS?”, “subscribe to this product you should use!”
And then the preloaded “suggested software”, the search bar with “suggested/trending” garbage I did NOT want to see? Yeah it was not pleasant. I think unless I’m doing it professionally? I’m not going to accept that task again. I’m glad I do not have to use that software on my main PC anymore. It seemed to have gotten worse since I stopped using it five years ago.
But us in the middle who pretend we're smart
The trick you'll learn is that everyone is just pretending. The more your learn the more you realize you don't know.
You've used Windows for so long that you don't remember how it was when you first started using it.
This isn't different than what you are doing with Linux. The flow gets better and better and you will acquire the experience needed to navigate the issues. It takes time, that's all.
True, but there's a lot of stuff in the free software ecosystem that is just jank.
I expect things not to work at this point and don't get surprised when they don't. It's part of how we pour way more resources into abusive technologies over ethical ones. We can continue to be part of the problem (like a useful idiot), or pick our heads up and work towards the solution.
If you stick to popular free software, the jank is limited.
The Linux userspaces have a lot of enthusiastic people that create their own software and share it, and thus it seems like there is lot of janky stuff (because there is).
It feels like Windows has been captured by corporations and so the market is competitive. There isn't much space for enthusiast developpers to tackle a different vision of a popular software.
So yeah, I agree with you, lots of janky software in Linux, but that's the beauty of it IMO. If you stick to popular softwares, the jank is somewhat equivalent to Windows.
True, but there’s a lot of stuff in the free software ecosystem that is just jank.
A lot of free software is built to scratch the authors itch. If you choose to use it as well, that's on you. There's nothing stopping you from forking it and making it work how you want it... except time.
Yeah, my linux experience usually seems like its hanging on a thin thread at all times. If stuff is actually working, im super grateful and hope it doesn't break itself on the next reboot.
Im not sure why everyone else seems to have a perfect error free experience except for me xD or they are just lying. And I dont use Intel or Nvidia so I should have it easy!
This is very true. Linux is great if you just want to check email, or if you want to compile your kernel or dig into incredibly esoteric config files. But if you want to do something between those 2 extremes, the learning curve is extremely steep. My Windows box and Mac Mini both do all the things I want them to, but my Linux box keeps breaking and I don't trust it with anything important. I usually try to do things on Linux first, but when it inevitably breaks I switch over to Mac and get it done in a tenth of the time.
I'm sure I could get my Linux box to do everything I want. I'm busy and I don't want to fight with it and spend all my time learning about its eccentricities. I want to point and click and occasionally modify a text file.
and the IT pro with 10 NAS setup are the perfect linux users.
Well I'm closer to that. I'm an "IT pro" (I pay my bills by writing software) and I did learn CS at uni... and yet it's STILL damn hard!
I think that might be the part that "grandma" (bit sexist and ageist there but going with the example) finds it hard is a given but that professionals are struggling daily is somehow hidden away.
I can give you examples from just yesterday :
- my deGoogled Android phone rejected my SIM card yesterday "SIM 1 not allowed"
- my home IoT server stopped working
and few others smaller problems. So... I had to find ways to fix that which lead me to learn that :
- some bug into HomeAssistant (my IoT server gateway) led me to
restartits container, without having to restart the device itself - my Android ROM has a "Reset Network Settings" within the "Reset Options" menu
The irony is that some people who are not professional might even know about the later one but I didn't. So... my whole point :
TL;DR: IT is hard for everyone because it's complex (lots of moving parts) and always changing ("updates" are not just "better" but different) so we ALL must keep on learning.
I was moving plex from my NAS to a dedicated box this weekend and spend 3 hours going crazy on why my movie library wasn't showing up. After a break and looking through fstab, I realized "novie" wasn't a share....
Remember kids, always work from the simplest solution up
It seems only natural…
- the “grandma”/casual users never try anything complicated or different so nothing goes wrong.
- the “pro” users either know what they are doing well enough to not make a mistake or to fix it when it goes wrong.
- the middle users will always have it harder, they are trying things beyond the margins of “easy” so of course things go wrong and they don’t know how to fix it.
Anecdotal example: just yesterday I found out that I broke my file picker function in five out of six web browsers, by loading an Xcompose file with some definitions that GTK apparently doesn’t like. It took me about 5 hours of poking at things to figure out that a change I did a week ago, broke a function I hardly ever use. So I did fix it eventually but I it took me a week to notice and then hours to track down what was going on.
Is there any chance at all that the casual users would be using a compose key, let alone loading a custom definition file for it? Hell no!
But here’s the secret: there is nobody out there who is the perfect expert who never makes a mistake and knows all things. We’re all out here pushing boundaries; the only difference is where those boundaries are.
me getting games to work:
install cachyos
install steam
download game
pick proton in compatibility options
what else are you all doing ? you can also add a non steam game and pick proton to launch it
I also use a 4070 (Nvidia) and haven't had any issues
my audio works with an usb interface with 0 tweaking
Yeah well, no problem with steam proton games.
Now get the ones with kernel level anti cheat running (league for example)
As a more advanced user, I have to say, the problems don't stop. Computers will never be "solved". They just keep making new puzzles forever. That's whats fun.
The more advanced you get, well you can solve the easy problems off the top of your head, but now you have new problems and there are zero search results for your error message. If you can't figure it out from the docs or irc you just have to read source code.
I try to document stuff as I find it, even if it means resurrecting an ancient thread. I often search for things and get one result, and it's me answering my own question a few years ago.
This is strictly my personal experience and is not meant to negate someone else's experience.
I disagree, as a middle user myself, I've had much less problems since the switch to Linux. I don't own a VR setup, so can't speak to that, but I have used basically everything else you've mentioned since switching without issues. Older software seems to work better on Linux than windows 11 in my experience. The rare stumble I've had was easily remedied by searching forums and wikis.
Most windows problems I've had to search for solutions in the last several years led to either blind registry changes, following some useless wizard that rarely fixes the problem, or a nothing-burger circle where the OP ended up either giving up entirely or re-installing windows to avoid the problem. I've very much had better luck actually fixing a problem in Linux than just avoiding it.
Sonetimes i feel like its a lot of work to stick with linux
Then im forced to use windows at work and get locked into a 45 minute forced update.
Not to mention how horribly slow win11 is even on 64 gb ram and an i7.
And the bloatware. Never seen so much bloat (and ai slop shit) ever before. And start menu ads. Yay.
How do people use this trash!
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I’ve found Linux easier and a much better user experience than windows 10 or 11.
If you use a straightforward distro that doesn’t let you do stupid stuff (like Bazzite or Fedora Kinoite or any other atomic distro), Linux becomes easy.
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This is so true. It's been good enough for me for so many years at this point, and yet it just keeps getting better. The whole experience is so much nicer now than it was years ago, which was better than years before that, etc.
(That said, better hardware also helps a lot.)
It sometimes is, but then sometimes Linux is not to blame.
Yesterday I was installing CachyOS on my son's laptop, because that's what he chose to use instead of Windows 10. The desktop came up fine, but no wifi adaptor was detected. I could try another more mainstream distro, but I wanted my kid to have what he chose. So we went troubleshooting. Googled the laptop model, found the adaptor, found the matching kernel module, checked the logs... and there it was, a cryptic error -110. Googled that and there was an answer: disable Windows Fast Boot.
It turns out that Windows locks the wifi adaptor when shutting down in Fast Boot mode. So after disabling it and a couple of reboots later, CachyOS was installing flawlessly.
It served as a lesson for me and an example for my kid to persevere and learn more.
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That love of tinkering is why I've landed on not using an immutable distro for my first time installing Linux since the 00s. CachyOS is what I landed on; now I just need to catch up on work so I can take a day to tinker with my setup.
For context, I semi-broke my current Windows 11 install by trying to manually edit the registry to remove all traces of a piece of invasive, uninstallable bloatware (that comes direct from ASRock... the bastards) I accidentally installed. Turns out my sound drivers are from the same company, so when I deleted all entries with that company in the search terms, I FUBARed my Bluetooth audio and 3.5mm microphone. And didn't backup the registry.
I like to tinker, and if I need to reinstall my OS anyway, so now is the time to finally switch!
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I never understood why windows updates take so long.
I can format and reinstall a linux distro in 10 minutes. I can update everything after that reinstall in 5 minutes.
On the same machine a windows update takes almost an hour. A format and reinstall can take several hours.
What is windows doing that takes so much longer?
Ive been having a good time with PopOS/Linux made for a specific machine. Its my daily driver.
I know its cheating a bit, but having something completely supported is so nice when I just want to sit down and compute. Ive had the same system76 machine for 6 years now and its still VERY fast. No issues with drivers (cause they fully support it) and made of generic parts.
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Your Windows install breaks because Microsoft fucked it up.
My Linux install breaks because I fucked it up.
We are not the same.
I was troubleshooting some audio hardware and decided that I should try it on windows, to make sure it was hardware and not software. So I tried to download an install disc image that I could put on my thumb drive and it was surprisingly hard, then I got driver failures, then I lost count of all the boxes I had to uncheck, then finally after like 2 hours I was greeted by ads on my desktop. Just a really bad experience overall. I cannot fathom why anyone uses that piece of crap.
Anyway so I figured out it was a Linux problem because of course it was just plug-and-play on Windows, and I found my misconfiguration and fixed it in 10 seconds, and I thought about the tech literacy of the average person, and realized that is why people use windows. They don't care about shit except least resistance. That was the first time I've booted windows since 2020 though, so here's hoping it was the last time.
I fathom they use it because its what they have always used and it comes with there device. Often people find its linux which takes the extra work.
If you want to use windows for testing, I would recommend something like Atlas OS for debloating: github.com/Atlas-OS/Atlas
edit: for testing
GitHub - Atlas-OS/Atlas: 🚀 An open and lightweight modification to Windows, designed to optimize performance, privacy and usability.
🚀 An open and lightweight modification to Windows, designed to optimize performance, privacy and usability. - Atlas-OS/AtlasGitHub
I grew up with DOS and used Windows 1 (barely, DOS was better), 3.1, 95, 98, etc... But curiosity made me try a bunch of OS in the beginning of the 2000s, like BeOS, QNX, and Linux (Kheops, Mandrake, SuSE). I dual booted for many years, keeping Linux as my main OS but having to boot Windows for games. I preferred Linux but I was pretty much OS agnostic for a while. I even worked as level 1 tech support for many years, helping people with Windows and Office products.
But then came Windows 8, 10, and now 11, + Office 365 + OneDrive. It's very difficult to stand any of those new versions, with the ads, the constant peddling for Microsoft products, the "forced" login with a Microsoft account, the updates whenever they feel like it if you don't pay enough for Windows, if the updates are not breaking something. A few years ago I was helping a friend and discovered a version of Windows 7 where you can't even change the wallpaper.
TBF, I knew it was coming. Anyone in IT knew for years that Microsoft planned of having everything subscription based. To me, every new versions of Windows or Office, or Teams, is now more intolerable than the previous one.
Anyway, at some point I stopped gaming/dual booting and pretty much kept exclusively on Linux. My workplace used Windows, and I use Linux at home. I've been using Debian for 15 years now and despite minor issues with sound recently, since pipewire, every time I use Windows, I'm reminded of how much worse it could be.
Recently I quit my job as a level 1 tech. I can't help people with Microsoft products anymore. Having calls from people telling me they cannot delete files from their OneDrive when it tells them it's full, then discover it's a bug and users with their drives full cannot delete anything, is just disconcerting. Before all that, I could at least see/understand the reason why things were working like they did; I could help and explain it to the users. Now, I'm as frustrated as they are when I use Microsoft products.
I have to use a windows machine at work and without fail I have to restart it by early afternoon because it has nearly ground to a halt. Usually right when a client turns up and wants to see their work.
It's an absolute embarrassment.
But it's still Windows.
Doesn't matter how much hot sauce and cinnamon you dunno on to a turd, it's still a turd.
I build cross platform desktop software professionally.
Because of this I have to use and pretty deeply understand the inner workings of every OS.
I can state as absolute fact that every major operating system including Linux is an absolute pile of hot garbage.
The difference is that macOS and windows are garbage on purpose. There were deliberate decisions to enshitify them for profit. They spent time and money making the OS worse on purpose.
On Linux most of the shitty parts were designed with good intentions but just kinda suck (Wayland for example).
What parts of Wayland do you not like?
There is a good chance that it was also designed this way on purpose. Almost everything I have heard people complain about on Wayland boils down to “it does not do that on purpose for security reasons”. In order to get around the purposeful constraints, you need to design extension protocols to create desired functionality and not all of those have been built. It is still on purpose though.
You may simply disagree with the priorities. Which is what enshitification for profit is as well of course.
IDK I think Wayland will be great some day. But right now we're between x11 and Wayland an both options suck.
I'm just over here trying to record my desktop and take screenshots haha.
“it does not do that on purpose for security reasons”.
I understand the motivations here but my priorities do not align with this. Not once in my life has someone recorded my desktop without my permission. I support the idea of having a secure environment but its just a pretty bad UX in the meantime.
Dont take this the wrong way. I think Wayland is a good idea in general. I just wish there was something else to hold us over in the meantime and x11 isnt really that.
It is a LOT of work indeed! In fact I even commented on that hours ago in lemmy.ml/post/36231170/2112411…
... but as you mention the alternative is ALSO a lot of work PLUS frustrations.
So between learned helplessness and tiring empowerment the choice remains obvious.
FWIW whenever it feels like it's "too much" I reminder myself how I browse through obscure man pages decades ago... to still find them useful today! It's crazy that so long after learning about tools like more or grep is useful on :
- a desktop
- a console (SteamDeck)
- a mobile phone (which basically didn't exist back then)
- a VR headset (yes, via
termux) - the "cloud" (as in fine it's just a server)
depends what you do, tbh. If you try to get a 3D program (that works well in Windows) to work on Linux, or try to get a game running as smooth as it is on Windows, then you are in for a lot of work.
But if your usage involves: simple web browser / email, codes, file operations. Then Linux is just plug and play, even much simpler than Windows. No ads, no constant updates nagging.
Linux just leaves you alone, if you mess some thing up it is you fault. On my Win 11 laptop, I got logged off by the damn OS just for it to display a popup with something bullshit like "Sign in to OneDrive to protect your PC"
You’re wrong about the games part. Most of us have no issues with that because of proton. As long as the game doesn’t require kernel level anti-cheat malware.
And yeah, 3D program written for windows is not going to run on Linux natively without issues. That’s common sense. It’s up to the developers to support more platforms, and that will happen with market share.
I use Garuda, which is an Arch-based distribution. Regressions are inevitable, though in my experience any actual issues arising from updates are quite infrequent. I’ve only once ever had to use Snapper to restore my system after a borked update in the some three and a half years I’ve used it. Keep in mind that this is a rolling release distribution, so new code isn’t always thoroughly tested before it’s sent out. I generally prefer new software, because I like playing games so new features and enhancements are important to me (on my main PC. I often install Arch for fun on other computers, but I thought for my ThinkPad? It’s older, maybe I’d like it to run Debian).
But any time I have a minor hiccup (that usually gets resolved after an update or reboot), I remember how much worse it could be. I’d much prefer the rare slight complication to the ads, telemetry, nags, intrusive updates, excessive bloat, and lack of control.
I’ve said before, that after using Linux on my main PC and not touching Windows? Windows really does feel like I’m not using my PC, something I never really noticed before I made the switch five years ago. I used to have no problems with modern Windows, but now it’s hard for me to tolerate. Old Windows is generally okay. I collect old computers, so versions like Windows 95, 98, 2000, and XP are fun.
Strategic Thinking and Planning Training with Unichrone Certification: Achieve Business Excellence
Organizations that succeed in today’s dynamic environment share one common trait: the ability to think strategically and execute effectively. Success is no longer about short-term gains alone but about building sustainable systems that endure changes in the marketplace. Strategic thinking and planning training with Unichrone certification is designed to cultivate these skills, enabling professionals to achieve business excellence by aligning vision, strategy, and performance.
The Importance of Strategic Thinking
Strategic thinking is the ability to analyze complex issues, anticipate future scenarios, and craft innovative solutions. It requires professionals to step beyond operational concerns and focus on the bigger picture. Strategic planning complements this by translating ideas into structured actions that deliver measurable results. Together, these capabilities empower leaders to guide organizations toward long-term goals while addressing immediate challenges effectively. Strategic thinking and planning training with Unichrone certification provides the foundation for developing this critical skillset.
Why Business Excellence Requires Strategy
Business excellence is not achieved by chance; it is the result of deliberate planning and thoughtful execution. Leaders who undergo strategic thinking and planning training with Unichrone certification gain tools to evaluate opportunities, manage risks, and align teams around a common purpose. These capabilities ensure that businesses not only respond to market changes but also proactively shape their future. In this way, strategy becomes the driving force behind innovation, efficiency, and sustained growth.
Core Focus Areas of the Training
Strategic thinking and planning training with Unichrone certification covers a comprehensive range of topics designed to make participants proficient in both theory and practice. Key areas include environmental scanning, goal-setting, resource allocation, and performance measurement. Learners also explore frameworks such as SWOT analysis, balanced scorecards, and scenario planning. By mastering these tools, professionals develop the ability to design strategies that are flexible, forward-looking, and adaptable to diverse organizational contexts.
Professional and Organizational Benefits
Completing strategic thinking and planning training with Unichrone certification enhances individual careers by improving decision-making confidence and leadership credibility. Professionals become better equipped to contribute to organizational discussions, propose data-driven solutions, and guide teams toward shared objectives. For organizations, the benefits include improved alignment of strategies with business goals, stronger collaboration across departments, and greater resilience in times of uncertainty. The training helps create a culture where clarity and direction replace ambiguity and inefficiency.
Application Beyond the Classroom
The training emphasizes practical application through case studies, workshops, and real-world exercises. Participants practice designing strategies that address issues such as expanding into new markets, managing resource constraints, or responding to technological disruptions. Strategic thinking and planning training with Unichrone certification ensures that learning does not remain theoretical but becomes directly applicable to workplace challenges. This approach allows professionals to immediately implement concepts that drive measurable impact within their organizations.
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The program is suitable for managers, executives, and professionals seeking to strengthen their strategic leadership and planning skills.
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Strategic thinking and planning training with Unichrone certification is globally recognized, offering professionals credentials that add credibility across industries.
Does the training include practical learning?
Yes, participants engage with real-world examples, case studies, and interactive sessions to ensure immediate workplace application.
Is prior knowledge in strategy required?
No, the program is designed for professionals at all levels. Beginners gain foundational insights, while experienced individuals refine advanced strategic skills.
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The training equips leaders to align resources, improve collaboration, and implement strategies that achieve both short-term results and long-term excellence.
Conclusion
Business excellence is achieved when organizations combine vision with action, strategy with execution, and foresight with adaptability. Strategic thinking and planning training with Unichrone certification equips professionals with the mindset and tools required to achieve these outcomes. By fostering leaders who can anticipate challenges, design effective strategies, and guide their teams toward success, the training creates a foundation for organizations to thrive in competitive environments. Investing in these skills is not just about personal growth but about ensuring the long-term success of the business as a whole.
Why the EU won't hit China with the 100% tariffs that Trump wants
Why the European Union won't hit China with the 100% tariffs that Trump wants
Donald Trump's request for 100% tariffs on China is unlikely to gather the necessary support among European Union countries.Jorge Liboreiro (Euronews.com)
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UK public has paid £200 billion to shareholders since privatisation of water, rail, bus, energy and mail services
UK public has paid £200bn to shareholders of key industries since privatisation
Analysis reveals ‘privatisation premium’ of £250 per household per year paid to owners of water, rail, bus, energy and mail services since 2010Matthew Taylor (The Guardian)
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sistemazioni contro il malore in HTMLy per scrivere decente (nuova funzione per editor Markdown a schermo intero)
Ogni tanto, per risolvere problemi pratici merdosi, mi invento soluzioni tecniche complesse e cursate… del tipo di reimplementare la API di WordPress dentro HTMLy per poter gestire il blog basato su quello con la app di WordPress… ma, questo è uno spoiler che non dovrei fare, almeno fintanto che non finisco di lavorarci, cazzarolina. Tuttavia, […]
octospacc.altervista.org/2025/…
sistemazioni contro il malore in HTMLy per scrivere decente (nuova funzione per editor Markdown a schermo intero)
Ogni tanto, per risolvere problemi pratici merdosi, mi invento soluzioni tecniche complesse e cursate… del tipo di reimplementare la API di WordPress dentro HTMLy per poter gestire il blog basato su quello con la app di WordPress… ma, questo è uno spoiler che non dovrei fare, almeno fintanto che non finisco di lavorarci, cazzarolina. Tuttavia, qualche altra volta, se il caso vuole, mi escono piuttosto soluzioni tecniche semplici ed eleganti… come, in questo caso, aggiustare l’editor di post già presente in HTMLy, senza sostituirlo, per risolvere i problemi pratici merdosi in un modo banalissimo: aggiungere una modalità fullscreen. 🤯L’editor Markdown base dentro quel coso, fatto di una semplice
<textarea>con una barra degli strumenti bonus (e scorciatoie da tastiera) per la formattazione, con un’anteprima a parte (che, tra l’altro, non è accurata rispetto a come il Markdown viene poi renderizzato dal frontend del sito, ma questa è un’altra rogna), per qualche motivo infatti non mi ha mai completamente convinto, ma non mi sono mai messa a riflettere abbastanza da capire come mai ciò fosse il caso… Almeno fino a prima di adesso (cioè, di qualche giorno fa), quando ho capito che il problema è il layout assoluto della pagina admin; non l’editor intrinsecamente, insomma, ma il contesto in cui questo è inserito. 👌In breve, pensandoci, tutti gli editor di testo normali e i programmi di videoscrittura, e le interfacce di blogging di conseguenza, non hanno ‘sta cosa dove la pagina è un form classico con tremila campi, che scrolla pure verticalmente perché ovviamente è bella grande, e il contenuto sta in una delle tante scatoline… bensì è circa tutto il contrario, cioè che il contenuto è al primo posto e tutto il resto sta attorno. In qualcosa come il Blocco note di Windows, questo “attorno” è solo barra dei menu + barra di stato, mentre in WordPress è una serie di tasti importanti sopra e campi misti di lato (o in un menu a parte nella app Android), su Word è la barra gigante in alto, e così via… 🎐
Ma quindi, la soluzione a questo apparentemente insignificante dettaglio di UI/UX, che però mi causa (e penso a molti causerebbe) dei mal di testa (o, almeno, uno stato di controvoglianza nell’uso), — come sempre, perché le interfacce fatte per bene sono invisibili, mentre quelle che non lo sono causano sempre dolore — potrebbe sintetizzarsi in, semplicemente, aggiungere una funzione per cui il campo di testo dell’editor possa andare a finestra intera, prendendo precisamente tutto lo spazio, e non di più o di meno (più la barra degli strumenti fissata). ⚗️
Ora, ovviamente l’ideale massimo sarebbe in ogni caso solo rifare da capo l’intera pagina per farle avere alla base una struttura decente, ma significherebbe appunto ricostruire tutto; e sicuramente con JavaScript potrei riuscirci senza dover rompere ogni cosa, ma per ora chiaramente non c’ho voglia. Già questa piccola modifica tanto basterà per alleviare tantissimo il mal di capa causato da quello che spesso è un doppio scrolling (specialmente su mobile, dove la sofferenza viene credo triplicata), della pagina + l’area di testo (che non si ridimensiona mai automaticamente), o in alternativa il dover scrollare troppo la pagina per raggiungere altri campi se l’area fosse alta quanto il contenuto… e le controindicazioni sono assolutamente zero, quindi ho fatto subito una pull request al capo del progetto, fiduciosa che verrà accettata (quando si sveglia domani, che lui è indonesiano, quindi ora starà nel lettino). 🔧
Pure a livello di codice, ribadisco, non è stato difficile; è bastato un po’ di puro CSS per dichiarare il layout, e del JavaScript integrato nell’editor già esistente per attivare e disattivare l’ambaradan a necessità, col bottoncino o con la combinazione da tastiera che ho registrato (CTRL+P). Per mobile ho in realtà aggiunto anche una proprietà del meta viewport che ho scoperto letteralmente stasera, cioè
interactive-widget=resizes-content, per indicare al browser (almeno, per Chromium e Safari si, su Firefox chi lo sa) di ridurre il l’area della pagina quando la tastiera virtuale è aperta, così da evitare un altro doppio scrolling che altrimenti ci sarebbe… e ora si che è comodo lì, pare nativo! 👄Va detto comunque che l’idea di base non l’ho inventata io, anche se mi è dovuta comunque arrivare come intuizione personale perché io potessi considerarla (poiché non arriva mai nessuno da me a suggerirmi le cose in anticipo e semplificarmi così le missioni, mannaggia alla polvere). Infatti, pensandoci lo fa anche un plugin di cui non ricordo il nome che ho sulla mia DokuWiki, che aggiunge un tasto al campo di editing anch’esso semplice vecchio stile da
<textarea>buttata in una pagina alla bene e meglio, per mandare a schermo intero… ma quell’implementazione è mezza rotta e meno elegante di cosa ho fatto io qui, che ho riutilizzato gli elementi già presenti nel DOM, senza duplicare il campo di testo o fare strane scemenze. Detto questo, però, è proprio strano che questa idea non solo non sia mai venuta al grande capo di HTMLy, ma nemmeno ad altri contributori… non esistono issue o pull request al riguardo, a parte qualcuno che vorrebbe sostituire l’intero editor Markdown con altri più avanzati (che no, non risolverebbe direttamente questo specifico mal di cervello, e lo so perché sulla mia installazione ci ho provato; non è la mancanza di WYSIWYG che mi uccide, è il layout che scrolla e fa cose che bleh… ma ora grazie al cielo non più). 🙌#blogging #CMS #HTMLy #improvement #Markdown #OpenSource #webdev
Add fullscreen feature to Markdown editor by andrigamerita · Pull Request #967 · danpros/htmly
Since I started to use HTMLy, the Markdown editor has always felt kind of strange to me for long posts. After a bit of reflecting, I noticed that this is because any other normal text or blog edito...GitHub
Israel threatens national film awards after Palestinian story wins top prize
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/48951540
Israel's culture minister has threatened to axe funding for the country's national film awards after The Sea, a story about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, won its top award.
Israel threatens national film awards after Palestinian story wins top prize
The Sea follows a boy from the occupied West Bank who wants to visit Tel Aviv to see the sea for the first time.James Chater (BBC News)
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To be clear, it's an Israeli film.
As winner of the best film category at the Ophir awards, The Sea now becomes Israel's entry to the international film category at next year's Oscars.
This is what their Culture Minister looks like btw:
Not very cultured if you ask me.
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Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Pakistan sign mutual defence pact
Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Pakistan sign mutual defence pact
Israel’s attack on Qatar last week heightened those concerns. Read more at straitstimes.com.ST
Mass protests erupt in Buenos Aires over Milei's austerity cuts
Tens of thousands of Argentines filled the streets of downtown Buenos Aires on Wednesday to demand increased funding for universities and pediatric care, which have suffered cuts under libertarian President Javier Milei's austerity measures.Milei's popularity has declined following his deep budget cuts, and he is dealing with the fallout from a corruption scandal and a legislative defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections earlier this month.
Milei faces high-stakes midterm elections in October, in which his party aims to secure enough seats to keep the opposition-controlled Congress from overriding his vetoes.
Mass protests erupt in Buenos Aires over Milei's austerity cuts
Tens of thousands of Argentines flooded the streets of Buenos Aires on Wednesday, demanding increased funding for public universities and pediatric hospitals, sectors hit hard by President Javier Milei’s sweeping austerity measures.FRANCE 24
Yes, in the sense that printing less money reduces inflation. This isn't exactly a shock.
The big issue is what he has sacrificed to get there. Poverty rates initially spiked, causing a lot of people to burn through their savings. Now the poverty rate has fallen, but people below the poverty line report having even less to spend than before.
And of course he slashed the budgets of a lot of services, so people are feeling that too.
They are, if your definition of working is that inflation is down. No question inflation is way down. Unfortunately employment rates are also way down, and poverty is way up.
So are they working? Depends on the metric you look at. Reducing inflation is, in a vacuum, a significant success; though taken in combination with the secondary harms of austerity, it’s probably a net negative for many people, if not most people.
I'm going to use the same phrase I use for Americans.
Have the day you voted for.
AI note taker for Linux?
I've been trying to find an AI note taker for when I have calls for work so I don't miss anything because my boss likes to ramble through a bunch of tasks at once. I'm looking for one of those background note takers that will be triggered whenever I get a slack or Google meets call, and I don't have to add it to the call for it to work. I'd prefer something open source but not a deal breaker there. The ones I've found when I search for a Linux note taker never seem to have a Linux version for downloading.
Has anyone had any luck finding a good Linux one or had success with a Windows one with wine?
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ffmpeg to record audio from your desktop (which will include the meeting) then pass it to whisper.cpp or other text-to-speech FLOSS solutions. No need for "AI" or Windows software for that kind of tasks.
GitHub - ggml-org/whisper.cpp: Port of OpenAI's Whisper model in C/C++
Port of OpenAI's Whisper model in C/C++. Contribute to ggml-org/whisper.cpp development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
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GitHub - lxe/yapyap: fast and simple push to talk dictation
fast and simple push to talk dictation. Contribute to lxe/yapyap development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
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I just use regular ol' ed for jotting my thoughts on the AI-related news I see each day. After all, it is the standard text editor.
...was that not the question?
/s
Man claims council bid to remove 'therapy' roosters is contrary to human rights conventions
cross-posted from: slrpnk.net/post/27655836
On the one hand he is taking the piss, on the other hand he might not be taking the piss
ABC News
ABC News provides the latest news and headlines in Australia and around the world.ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
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China steel exports poised for record high, risking further tariff backlash
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/48946777
China's steel exports are set to hit an all-time high this year, defying predictions that unprecedented trade barriers would drive down shipmentsExports will grow 4% to 9% this year to hit between 115 million and 120 million metric tons, according to forecasts from 11 analysts
Rising exports of semi-finished products are also drawing opposition from the Chinese government. Beijing wants steelmakers to add value and is weighing higher export taxes to discourage shipments of lower-value steel.
‘I’m a modern-day luddite’: Meet the students who don’t use laptops
‘I’m a modern-day luddite’: Meet the students who don’t use laptops
The vast majority of students rely on laptops – and increasingly AI – to help with their university work. But a small number are going analogue and eschewing tech almost entirely in a bid to re-engage their brainsDazed Digital
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"He goes to the library with nothing but his “pen and paper,” and stays there until his essay is done. “Then I’m free to doomscroll Instagram on my phone without any guilt"
- He doesn't seem very opposed to technology if he just goes straight home and doomscrolls
- Are laptops really new technology to this kid if they've existed for his entire life?
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$5 says it's the "what's a computer" kid from like a decade ago
"'laptop'? it's like a foldable but with half a screen??? and why is this keyboard broken, all the keys move?? how do I get an overwatch skin for it?? this is awful"
What a pedantic (and incorrect) take. Luddite can absolutely mean a person who purposefully avoids technology.
I’m sure I’ll get downvoted, but words can have multiple meanings and take on new meanings over time. Luddite is one of them. This article used it properly.
And anyone who disagrees with me can kiss my linguistics-degree-holding ass.
In your defense, the statement specifies "modern-day Luddite" which compares it to the historical Luddite bands and excludes the first meaning of the Oxford dictionary.
Also, avoiding is not the same as opposing.
As “someone who gets distracted very easily,” he made the change to reclaim his attention span. Ditching his laptop gave him an environment where “YouTube isn’t around the corner” and he can focus on his reading.
This is just avoiding the issue of having a short attention span.
Reminds me a lot of fellow classmates at my college who I discovered hate online classes because they say they can't stay focused. So I don't know how these "luddite" students plan to not get distracted when their job will most likely involve sitting in front of a computer.
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This is just avoiding the issue of having a short attention span.
I used to be easily distracted during online lectures yet had little difficulty following live lectures. It's a fundamentally different experience, for whatever reason.
Also, the attention span has to be trained. And training it by working without a distracting computer sounds like a good idea.
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Doodle. I always doodled in my notes. Repeating patterns worked for me, because I am no artist.
I am still unmedicated, and method helped me a lot with lectures using pencil snd paper for notes.
Everyones different, I failed my online college courses. In person, I do alright. You may like online better.
But if you're forced to sit in lecture, fuckin doodle.
Nah, that shit woulda never helped me and I wouldn't even know where to start and I never have, we had laptops open on lectures so I just wrote small programs about whatever concepts the lecturer talked about but to sit in the same place for 2 hours it was borderline impossible.
After entering the workforce it was just pure torture sitting in the office waiting to die 8 hours a day, I went through like a full character arc from arrogant to humble to desperate to hate at others to hate at self to finally worldly and gradually radicalized against the onslaught of alienation.
I came back for my masters in 2020 and it was fairly sweet all online.
Thankfully now many years later I WFH. Uni is far behind. Haven't handwritten anything in years, I'm almost curious to try it
sitting in the office waiting to die 8 hours a day
That is exactly why I absolutely thrived in manufacturing. Well, the right type of manufacturing. I'd rather die than work in an office. I lasted exactly one month at my one and only desk job before I had to quit and find something different.
I don't write often anymore either, but recently tried to write a letter to someone, wow after a few sentences could I notice how out of practice I was. I 'jot things down' all the time, but a letter, paragraphs, whew.
I think it's tough, because many degree jobs are all desk jobs, so it's like, you want the degree and good money, but the work, doesn't sound fun. Im glad wfh has helped though, thats great
This is just avoiding the issue of having a short attention span.
And how do you improve your attention span? By not having distractions available to you.
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I absolutely love doing everything on the computer and can’t stand writing things by hand anymore. I’ve always learned simply by listening — instructors that force students to take notes were the worst because I would be too busy scrambling to write things down than actually listening and learning.
All of this goes out the window when it comes to foreign language though. I have to do everything old school: textbooks, pencil and paper, and if it’s a non-Latin character set I have to write the same characters over and over for hours.
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For me I always wrote as i listened, still do often.
I rarely read the notes back.
'Revision' was just writing a whole new set of notes either from memory or from sources.
Then, never reading that set of notes.
Massive waste of paper and ink, but it's part of how i pay attention.
Most of my lecturers did provide printouts of all the slides, but I'd scribble all over them anyway.
Typing doesn't do the same thing at all for me.
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I got myself a remarkable after seeing a colleague use one and thinking they were cool. An astonishing price for what is essentially a kindle that you can write on, but that is essentially the entirety of its functionality right there. No web browser, no ebook integration, no keyboard, just a thing for scribbling notes with a big battery life. No distractions.
As such, it's completely ideal for my work diary, meeting notes, D'n'D notes, maps for games that I've been playing, random scribbles, all sorts. Quite a lot lighter than the thousands of sheets of paper that would be required otherwise. Also not as rude as popping open a laptop when you're meeting someone - they can see you're just making notes and writing to-dos.
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Title is misleading:
Nick, a philosophy student at the University of Cambridge, stopped using his laptop for university work in the last year of his undergraduate degree. He still types his essays, but lecture notes, revision, and essay planning are all done by hand.
The second sentence contradicts the first:
stopped using his laptop for university work
then
He still types his essays
So basically he's not taking a laptop in to the lecture hall to take notes etc but is still using a computer to complete his work. Which makes sense as pen & paper in that environment is way more practical anyway.
Laptops are extremely useful. It really doesn't make sense to avoid them.
I pretty much treat mine as my second brain.
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Just remember to back that shit up.
Nothing like forgetting your brain on public transport and getting instant amnesia for the past five years.
Massive Attack Turns Concert Into Facial Recognition Surveillance Experiment
Massive Attack Turns Concert Into Facial Recognition Surveillance Experiment
Massive Attack used live facial recognition technology on concertgoers, turning surveillance into provocative art that sparked debate about privacy.Gadget Review
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Social media erupted with bewildered reactions from attendees. Some praised the band for forcing a conversation about surveillance that most people avoid, while others expressed discomfort with the unexpected data capture.Unlike typical concert technology that enhances your experience, this facial recognition system explicitly confronted attendees with the reality of data capture. The band made visible what usually happens invisibly—your face being recorded, analyzed, and potentially stored by systems you never explicitly agreed to interact with.
The audience split predictably along ideological lines. Privacy advocates called it a boundary violation disguised as art. Others viewed it as necessary shock therapy for our sleepwalking acceptance of facial recognition in everyday spaces. Both reactions prove the intervention achieved its disruptive goal.
Your relationship with facial recognition technology just got more complicated. Every venue, every event, every public space potentially captures your likeness. Massive Attack simply made the invisible visible—and deeply uncomfortable. The question now isn’t whether this was art or privacy violation, but whether you’re ready to confront how normalized surveillance has become in your daily life.
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If this disturbs you, then good. That was the point.
These guys are amazing. Of all the shows I saw at Roseland NYC, theirs in 96 was the absolute best.
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Summer of 97. I had just turned 18.
Whenever I hear, teardrop, I am transported back to that night at Roseland.
Roseland was perhaps the greatest musical venue ever do exist. Better than CBGBs.
Cowboys by Portishead gives me goosebumps every time I hear it
Edit: Link, because I had to go listen to it as it's been years: youtu.be/ApQpx-MVk0w
This disturbs me in the best way. I love/hate it.
I wonder how long they can run this before their backend database vendor cuts them off with some flimsy pretext because this kind of thing is bad for business.
Thanks, I just watched the video linked by @spizzat2@lemmy.zip and I see that now. It’s actually a little disappointing and I’d love to see the same kind of public spectacle on hard mode with real-time doxxing from a commercial backend. That would be far more provocative.
I think the article hugely understated that nuance.
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I will agree that it was still powerful. All of the phone videos would memorialize any real doxxing so it’s maybe just as well that they didn’t do it.
I think it would be better with minor obfuscation like F***e L***e for Firstname Lastname. Something instantly recognizable to the victims/participants but not for the entire audience.
That would be far more provocative.
Yes, but depending on the country that could be (public + illegal) if it lists [what is legally considered] personal sensitive information or accidentally reveals someone's secret like the Coldplay incident.
It would be fascinating, but IMO unnecessary and unethical.
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Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.m.youtube.com
Yes, while its generally common on this platform, we are early adopters for tech so we understand it first. The general public gets exposure much slower, especially when there is efforts to subvert it for profit.
Attention and time are limited, those that focus on tech know things first. Its the same as a chef knowing about food more than the average person.
extreme ironer
I did come across that hobby when I was trying to list examples of productive sports. Yeah, it's a thing.
Why would anybody willingly visit that site. Wtf
I got a video that started playing which only had an arrow to expand but no x to close. It kept following while scrolling.
Not sure why my ad blocker didn't block it.
Edit: after staying on the page for about a minute it just auto showed up
IronFox OSS / IronFox · GitLab
Private, secure, user first web browser for Android. https://ironfoxoss.org/GitLab
Oh hang on. My ad blocker was disabled.
I turned it off to test something because my browser kept hanging when surfing the web on my phone.
It is related to ublock origin for some reason. Because the moment I turn it off I can browse like normal.
Case solved why I'm getting it 😀
yeah it was way less offensive than the typical news sites that get posted
pinhole ftw?
The point is that, if you're going to a concert of that size, this technology is being used whether you like it (or know about it) or not. Massive Attack was never going to be able to play venues the size that they do without at least tacitly allowing this to happen. Like literally, the venues would likely not allow them to play.
So I think doing this is better than just letting it happen and staying quiet.
It’s a great way to showcase that these things are in use and will be in use in places with bad privacy laws (and by those that ignore such laws). Most people don’t want to think that this happens on a daily basis, it’s logical for them when you tell them, but they’re busy with their lives and they don’t actually see it being done with their own eyes.
Now tell them how this data is connected to your ticket and your face/video being analyzed after the fact, which is then sold off to become what is basically an quantification of you as a person to judge you and determine what your addictions, views and flaws are, in order to expoit it to make you as miserable as possible. And people won’t really believe it since it’s uncomfortable to believe in. Showing someone’s face makes it more believable and difficult to ignore.
The only people offended by this are those who have something to hide!
/s
https://x.com/IpswichPolice/status/1892910824517177743
I do trust Massiva Attack more than this violent gang of thugs
What is wrong with the populace of ipswitch ? Are they all cattle already ?
Pretty cool... But anyone else get major AI vibes from the way this article is written?
Why even become a journalist anymore if you're just going to be putting prompts into a black box and copy/pasting the output?
"The Consent Question Nobody Asked"
Yeah, that tastes like AI this turn of phrase
This article gives me vibes that someone wrote a few lines outlining the situation and asked the AI to write the article itself. Interestingly though, I think most people would just rather read the outline, less time wasted and less llm.
A part that screams AI would be:
This wasn’t subtle venue security—your biometric data became part of the artistic statement, whether you consented or not.
"This isn't this--it's that" is an extremely common AI sentence structure, further exposed by the fact that the part before the em-dash doesn't even make sense to begin with. No one was asking themselves whether it was part of subtle venue security.
As a sidenote, sometimes I read sentences like this and I wonder "could this ever even have been written by a human?" I think that there's a very low chance that this article didn't have at least some amount of AI involved, but I know that somewhere out there there must be some people who actually write like this. And that's kind of sad.
tbh I don't even know why I even wrote this, the entire article appears to be one big example of generic AI writing
But that's what capitalism is all about! Efficiency.
Now one journal-ist can produce hundreds of art-ickles per hour!
/s
Citizen, we have detected Bad Thought, as well as sarcasm. Have no fear, re-education drones as well as Correct Thought beams are headed your way! Please take this time to make sure the correct flags and slogans are on prominent display.
Have a Wonderful Day!
I'll gladly introduce you to Massive Attack because it seems you never heard of these Trip Hop legends from Bristol.
Good. People don't understand implications until it happens to them. Suddenly they don't like this security features anymore because it became personal.
We need more people to experience that discomfort
If you live in a city (not only) anywhere, you are on at least 5-10 security cams when you leave your home on the way to work or the store, more counting those in your workplace and the store. Unknown how much are with face recognition soft. Think of it, you are tagget.
Worst knowing that a lot of live cams are even with public access and even streaming on YouTube.
- earthcam.com/
- skylinewebcams.com/es/webcam.h…
- worldcams.tv/
- webcamera24.com/
- whatsupcams.com/en/
- webcamtaxi.com/en/
- ....etc.
EarthCam - Webcam Network
EarthCam is the leading network of live streaming webcams for tourism and entertainment around the world with 4K streaming technology.EarthCam
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Gaza: Top independent rights probe alleges Israel committed genocide
Senior independent rights investigators appointed by the Human Rights Council alleged on Tuesday that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, a charge flatly rejected by Tel Aviv.UN News
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I think people can separate between people of a faith and a genocide government better than he thinks.
What I would hope to see of Jewish communities all over the world is some public separation from and critique of the Israeli governments actions.
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Intersex people face high levels of violence in Europe
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/48936466
One in six intersex people was physically assaulted in the year 2022, an EU agency report said.
Intersex people face high levels of violence in Europe
One in six intersex people was physically assaulted in the year 2022, an EU agency report said. Intersex people are the only LGBTIQ group that has not experienced a drop in discrimination since an earlier survey in 2019.Hauwau Samaila Mohammed (Deutsche Welle)
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To be honest, I'm confused about this too.
How are 40% of respondents being harassed at work for being intersex? How do people even find out?
Only about 30% of the people surveyed identify as cis, and around 15% describe their orientation as heterosexual, so I'm sure that they definitely face many of the same struggles that the LGBTQIA+ community faces as a whole.
But why would discrimination at large be decreasing, except for intersex people? Maybe they're feeling more empowered to come out, and people don't know how to react?
I would even expect, if anything, that bigots would be more understanding of someone for whom Nature made life "visibly" harder, but maybe I'm just naive.
In any case, it doesn't seem like the study sheds enough light on this, hopefully more studies will follow so that we can find a way to do better.
discrimination against trans people is increasing in most of the world.
intersex people often look trans, and often are trans.
Is there a difference in updating via an uppdate manager/discover vs using the terminal?
I have 3 machines I've switched to Linux: an old laptop with Mint, and my primary laptop and PC runing Ubuntu Studio. I use Protonvpn on all 3.
Today I had my app manager on Mint and Discover on Ubuntu showing new updates. I installed Mint's first, via the manager and Proton was an update. It mentioned it would uninstall a few proton things so I figured it had to uninstall them in order to install the new update. Protonvpn stopped working after, it looked uninstalled but my killswitch was still active (so no internet at all and no access to open the vpn app). I had to find out how to kill the network processes via ncmli (good new info to learn!) and do a roundabout uninstall through a process I found in an old Proton post as just uninstalling it with normal commands didn't work, restart the laptop then reinstall Protonvpn.
So on my laptop and PC, I updated via terminal instead, using sudo apt update/upgrade. All smooth and no issues.
Was my Mint problem a one-off glitch or is there a real difference when updating via update manager vs the terminal?
Edit: Thanks guys, seems the general consensus is yes, but some of ya's say no haha. I knew going into the question that having Mint screw up with manager and Ubuntu Studio work with terminal opens a lot of os possibilities beyond simply manager vs terminal.
Next Proton update, I'm going to try the terminal on Mint instead of manager, and the manager on my Ubuntu Studio laptop instead of terminal and see if anything screws up.
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dnf command. But after updating system packages via Discover, it prompts me to restart the PC to finish the update. What is it actually doing? Why does DNF not do that?
It's safer, and uses a systemd mechanism to update with most programs not running.
That said, I've never had a problem updating without restarting...
You can change the behavior in System Settings -> Software Update -> Apply System Updates
Pick either immediately or after rebooting
Some things only get applied once you restart. Take the kernel for example. It will be used once restarted. It is safe to restart at a later time but you would still be running a older kernel at that point.
So technically the update is done but not everything is using it yet. Dnf does tell you you should restart for some things to be applied. The choice is yours to do so.
On Ubuntu, I’m not sure about “Discover”, but I use the GUI called “Software Updater”. This is just a GUI on top of apt/apt-get which I can also use from the command line.
Not sure about Mint, but I would expect it to be very much similar.
on my manjaro machine updating via terminal doesn't cover some updates. Opening the software manager reveals missed updates. stuff like gear level and freedesktop.org. couldn't tell ya why.
on my fedora kde machine, it misses stuff from Discover. also not sure why.
on mint, terminal covers everything. same on debian.
The Linux Mint GUI updater is an interesting bit of code, or at least it was about 5 years ago. I looked at updating it a bit with a status bar for a stage I thought could use it.
I opened up the code....Python that just uses a shell call to apt. No muss, no library calls. Okay, that'll do.
It was a functional wrapper on the command line calls, exactly as you'd hope for a tool.
there is. if the updater gui integrates with packagekit and systemd, it can start an offline update that reboots your system and installs the updates while nothing else is running.
kind of like on windows, except that this is one of the things where windows made the right call. complex software does not handle it well if its program libraries and assets are being replaced by newer ones that the running version cannot understand.
its still kind of a new thing, not all distros make use of it yet, but Fedora does, and it's not a Fedora custom solution but something that most distros can have.
automatic filesystem snapshots and rollback can be integrated to this too, and then bye bye to updates breaking the whole system.
Corals Won’t Survive a Warmer Planet, a New Study Finds | Most corals in the Atlantic Ocean will soon stop growing. Many are already dying, leaving shorelines and marine ecosystems vulnerable.
Reduced Atlantic reef growth past 2 °C warming amplifies sea-level impacts - Nature
An analysis of coral reefs in the tropical western Atlantic suggests that nearly all will be eroding by 2100 if global warming exceeds 2 °C, which will worsen the effects of sea-level rise.Nature
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How big a solar battery do I need to store *all* my home's electricity? - Terence Eden
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they generate about 3,800kWh per year. We also use about 3,800kWh of electricity each yearObviously, we can't use all the power produced over summer and we need to buy power in winter. So here's my question: How big a battery would we need in order to be completely self-sufficient?
O, god, it's going to be huge. You really can't do the off-grid thing unless you have enough power production to satiate you over any given 3-day moving window. Trying to store power from summer until winter is going to be too expensive, instead buy more panel.
This isn't even going into the fact batteries lose charge slowly. So any power generated in summer will be much diminished by winter, even if you have big enough batteries.
And depending on load profiles, you might not be able to load all of your excess solar power at once (depends on how many Watts the battery can be charged at) or fulfill your power requirement with battery alone (depends on how many Watts your battery can deliver).
Wind isn’t great small scale. You rarely can get high enough for constant wind energy. They are noisy. They don’t produce a lot. In many or even most cases solar will be better than wind.
I’d go so far as building both sun oriented and a solar “fence” line going north/south to get more non-peak solar before putting up small-scale wind.
What is also mentioned is the fact that battery prices are going down. Soon it seems they’ll be down to $10/kWh!
I have seen some wild priced on Ali, in your link the 75Ah and the 210Ah are priced the same, so I guess it's for the smaller one, 30€ for ~0.225kWh or 133€/kWh.
Could be wrong ofc, but it sort of fits what I thought it would roughly be.
I mean even ~133/kWh..
Whats an average, perhaps even gratuitous, level of consumption per household? 24kwh if you are running a clothes drier and an AC nonstop? Lets go nuts, say you are a DIY enthusiast and hosting your own servers, so 36kwh daily.
3192€-4788€ to be and you can be effectively energy independent with a small solar system.
Triple that and you are truly energy independent are any where south of the English channel. I mean obviously its money out of pocket, but its a fixed cost that you pay now, instead of a variable cost that continuously goes up. It just seems basic.
It is. Some of them are getting snapped up to help with powering factories.
I think this is car companies using the incoming battery packs from replacing worn out packs. Time to look it up...
autoblog.com/news/toyota-just-…
This is the article I was thinking of. It's more of an idea than a common use case to use old packs to help power factories.
Using half-worn car battery packs seems optimal for home use.
I'm not putting cobalt based (NMC or NCA) batteries bolted to the inside my house. Thats nearly exclusively what car battery packs are. Thermal runaway is too great a risk to bolt that much energy to a wall in the house. I am comfortable with LFP in the house though.
How big a battery would we need in order to be completely self-sufficient?
Exactly. Haven't read all details of the link,so I react your comment, and have immersed myself a bit in this earlier.
You need to change your way of thinking and energy usage. Start with your daily energy supply and then change your energy consumption pattern to day time use Then, with for example a dynamic energy contract or if you can spare solar energy, buy or store cheap electricity in your storage ( battery ). The energy management system ( charge / uncharge and which cells) is very important.
Also, realize that battery life is tied to charge cycles and need replacing like every 10 years when talking about the better quality Lithium battery . Sodium systems could and maybe should be used in parallel, if you want more storage, safety and longevity (20 years).
It is yet all quite expensive, though imo having a half day reserve like 5 - 10 kwh, battery, would already create more independence (at around € 3K to € 10 K in Europe) .
Seems to me his panel capacity is to small anyway.
We have 11 kWh panels, and yes in the summer we routinely produce 4 times more than we use, and we have a 7.5 kWh battery
But November December and January it's not even close to enough.
In the Winter you can easily have a week with near zero production:
Our Import / export from grid last year:
November 215 / 59 kWh
December 300 15 kWh
January 268 / 34 kWh
Despite we have almost 3 times the capacity, and produce more than twice what we use per year, and we have a decent battery and believe it or not, even the shortest day we can produce enough power for a whole 24 hour day if it's a clear day! But we can also have clouds for 14 days!
But for those months we imported 783 kWh and exported 108 that could have been used with bigger battery.
But the net import was still 675 kWh!! For those 3 months, and that's the minimum size battery we could have managed with, and then we even need 10% extra to compensate for charge/discharge losses.
TLDR:
Minimum 740 kWh battery in our case, and that's without heating, because we use wood pellets.
That means it would require at least the equivalent of 10 high end fully electric car batteries. But also a very hefty inverter, which AFAIK ads about 50% the price of the battery.
PS:
Already in February we exported more than we imported.
The reason to have a battery is that it lasts through the night, or even with a smaller system, it can handle dinner time, which is the most expensive time of day to buy electricity.
Now if you live in some remote area without a grid, a generator is a way better option than a huge battery.
Maybe if you live somewhere very sunny, like Spain and especially southern parts of USA you can probably do it with a modest battery that can handle a couple of days.
In the summer we can make enough electricity on by far the most cloudy days, but in the winter, the sun can't penetrate the clouds nearly as well.
Admittedly London is south of where I live, which is close to the most southern part of Denmark, but on the other hand London is infamous for grey weather with heavy clouds.
OK I didn't see that, that's bigger than I expected, we make about 12.5 MWh per year on our 11.2 kWh panels = 1.1 MWh per kWh capacity.
Your system is 5.1 kWh but you only make 3.8 MWh per year = 0.75 MWh per kWh capacity.
Meaning we have 50% higher yield per kWh rated capacity!
So our production remains 3.3 times higher than yours, despite we only have twice the capacity.
But our panels are pretty optimally placed towards the south.
Considering you are further south compared to us, I'm surprised your yield is so low, despite London is infamous for being cloudy.
they generate about 3,800kWh per year. We also use about 3,800kWh of electricity each year.
Holy shit. I think we used that much last month, which is higher than average but not that high for August around here.
glad I'm not the only one that noticed that.
last time I checked I was using around 4600-5800kwh from May to August. the rest of the year its 3300-4200.
I live in a dual zoned 5200sqft home and my average power bill is around $900.
I've had solar sales try to talk me into solar panels but once they see my consumption they stop answering my calls lol. could be because I told them I'll buy once I can get net zero.
that's an average btw. last months bill was $1100.
this month is already at $960 and we're only halfway through the month.
this year has been lower than previous. I had new insulation installed last November.
highest bill I have ever seen was around $2200 which is over my monthly mortgage.
no crypto farm. though it would probably be higher if I was.
I have personally never seen a bill of more than 60€ per month. I have some friends living in bigger houses, not apartments, and they tell they can get over 100 fairly frequently, the bigger ones more in the North can get over 200 in the winters, but even still, I’ve never even heard of anything reaching 300.
But I’m in my thirties and don’t really know anyone from beyond upper middle class. That might help explain my experience if it happens to be the outlier, but just reading the responses to this, I might not be the outlier here.
Anything four figures is just crazy surreal to me. I can not even imagine what it takes to reach that kind of electric usage. Or maybe it’s just extremely expensive, not the usage itself being crazy? I would think living in a place where sustaining one’s existence requires that kind of resource usage would be very hostile against settling and building in general?
But if it’s just personal usage rather than the regional climate or whatever, and an insane price of electricity isn’t the main reason, then I don’t even know what to say. That’s crazy.
it's kind of a mix of everything.
I grew up poor. like, "take a nap for dinner" poor. I was afforded great opportunities that allowed me to become comfortably wealthy, as in I can freely go to the store and just buy groceries without concern. This is important because I always promised myself that when I grew up I would live comfortably.
I keep my house between 68F-72F year round. I don't open my windows because I have terrible allergies (that my kids have also inherited). at least half of my bill is just heating and cooling. the other half is likely a mix of the servers and the regular appliances.
I have family ranging from 30-60 years old. when I told them how much I spend on power their eyes popped out. they don't run their hvacs as much as I do, and actually use their windows and attic fans. they also don't have the allergic reactions I have either so 🤷.
in my old home, 1600sqft, our highest bill was around $300, and that was still high for the area. our neighbors were average between $100-$150. they were in their 70s though, so likely they didn't use their hvac as much either, nor the technology I was running.
Fair enough, that’d explain it. I did expect air conditioning to be a big part of it, kind of makes a lot of sense that you do run servers as well.
Still, that’s a huge bill to eat each month.
could be because I told them I’ll buy once I can get net zero.
I'm not following your logic. You aren't willing to accept any savings unless you can completely zero out your power bill? Judging from your consumption I'm assuming a good chunk of that is for cooling your home? If so that means you're likely in a pretty great place to harvest solar power. You'd reach payback of your investment on your array much faster than most, and be saving money for probably 35 years or more with little to no additional investment.
Making some guesses for how much your electricity rates are, and how much you're consuming (assuming much from cooling), you might be a full payback in less than 7 years if you took advantage of the tax credit. Then, every month after that you'd be gaining money back.
my house is over 120 years old. it still has knob and tube in half the house. I have even found gas lines for the old sconces, that were "conveniently" used as grounds for said knob and tube in some places. the house is a nightmare, electrically speaking. the only new-ish electrical are the HVAC systems, the 200amp panel, and the basement (where the rack lives).
for me to get proper solar installed, it would cost more than the house cost to buy. For me to find it in any way cost effective, I would need my $900 a month power bill to pay for the $200k loan on top of my mortgage.
appreciate the sound advice. I've rewired plenty of houses that I'm comfortable with DIMS and know most of the NEC.
the problem is time and effort. I'm getting older and just don't have the drive I used to have 20 years ago. the biggest problem is the house is still mostly original plaster lathe which is a huge pita for running new electrical across four floors. add to that the other litany of projects I have to do plus daily life/work. it's a lot.
if I was 10 years younger I'd probably start one room at a time, but I'm old enough now that I look forward to taking my daily naps before bedtime.
I reserved myself to a modest retirement when I bought this house because I knew the risks going in.
Plaster Lathe. My old nemesis. Probably with reed or peat for stabilization, so it explodes everywhere once you touch it.. Wish you the best of Luck.
Also: napping is important at our age.
How ? Is it just AC ?
We oscillate between 300 and 800kwh per month and it's with an old water heater, an electric car charged at home, a dryer and electric oven.
Basically why the grid exists to begin with. You're not supposed to be solving these engineering problems on a household budget inside a single home.
You'd be better off simply reducing your consumption or finding alternative methods of power (nat gas or maybe wind or geothermal) during the longer winter nights.
If you really want to go crazy, you should consider investing in a bigger home with better insulation and roommates. An apartment/condo block can at least leverage economies of scale, if you're dead set on DIY. More people benefiting from the setup dilutes the cost per person.
Basically why the grid exists to begin with
Agreed this is the best option. Economy of scales and our consumers wishes should dictate the Grids plan to incorporate cheap energy ( and emergency) storages.
And, also like you said, change your energy life style and insulate your house wherever you can.
I'm very ignorant on this subject, but couldn't you just sell excess to grid and get it back for a minimal markup?
Sure, but it depends on the incentives in your country. Afaik, excess energy could be sold, but you'll have to checkout your local incentives and energy suppliers for specifics. In most parts of Europe, the are scaling down the prices for excess energy. Therefore, battery systems are being forwarded in some cases as sort of solution for solar panels maintaining like ca. 80% +? integrity efficiency over 20 to 30 years.
For example, I read that in The Netherlands the solar panel market has crashed completely or is crashing. Note here that saturation of the market ( many existing solar panels) can also cause that.
You need to find out;
- energy usage
- insulation options and materials
- costs /benefits
- energy contracts and energy incentives.
- check out current physical electricity wiring and fuses in the house
- DIY or professional?
- budget
etc
TLDR: dont buy solarpanels if you want to be rich. And buy them according and after you've done everything possible to insulate your house, whether in the colder or warmer climates. The efficiency, added value, and comfort reached by insulation outweighs everything else. Then , after doing that, check your kwh usage, and buy solars according to that.
Hope this is helpful, but seems you need to go outthere and do some exploration on the topic.
(Ed: layout)
And buy them according and after you’ve done everything possible to insulate your house, whether in the colder or warmer climates.
In the USA there are silly rules that you can only get 120% capacity of your last years worth grid consumption as solar installed. So if one were to follow your advice and do all the energy efficient improvement prior to solar, then you would be restricted to getting a much smaller array. I understand why they have the rule, but its easy to circumvent by just having artificially oversized consumption for a year in your house, and you can then get the larger array you want before then doing all the energy improvements post-array installation.
In the USA there are silly rules that you can only get 120% capacity of your last years worth grid consumption as solar installed.
Yes , I can see how that impacts the process.
indeed checking the rules and doing some prior info digging is essential.
It's also important to check whether solar overcacity is worthwhile in the UsA. Her3 it is not( anymore).
It’s also important to check whether solar overcacity is worthwhile in the UsA. Her3 it is not( anymore).
I'll say generally speaking in most places it isn't, however, once you go solar, you may increase your electricity usage as you move away from carbon based energy. Before solar we had natural gas furnace heating and two gasoline cars. Now we have two EVs and a cold climate heat pump with zero natural gas and zero gasoline consumption. So I wanted the larger solar capacity to cover the increases in electricity we knew we'd have.
Its worked out pretty well. We have fairly large electricity bills ($400ish) in Jan and Feb, a small bill in March, and usually a tiny bill (under $10) in April. Then no bills for the rest of the year. Also keep in mind that is TOTAL energy costs, no gas or gasoline bought anymore.
I recently got a solar system and came to the conclusion that if you can sell power back to the grid (not everyone can) for some reasonable percentage of what it costs to buy it, then it will always be worth it to be connected (assuming you already are).
Quite simply, if you have enough solar capacity to get you through the winter (no house is going to have months of battery storage), then you will always be creating far more than you need in the summer. Selling this excess will easily cover any costs associated to being on the grid.
Also at current prices batteries are good for backup power only, it's always cheaper to sell excess power to the grid in the day and buy it back at night than it is to have battery capacity to get through the night. I worked out it would take 40 years for our battery to pay for itself (assuming the battery kept a constant battery capacity for 40 years...) but less than 10 years for the rest of the system to pay for itself.
Net metering is great, much better than being paid for the surplus.
With net metering the grid is basically an free, infinite, 100% effective battery.
I disagree, but in not in your situation so I can be wrong.
Unless you are producing way, way more electricity than you can use I think net metering is a great arrangement for the customer. (Not so much for the utility company)
The electricity is usually bought by the utility company at a much lower cost than what the customer is paying. Because the generation cost is only a percentage of the cost, there is taxes, maintenance of the grid ...
For example in France we pay 0.1952€/kWh, but the utility is buying the solar electricity produced by household at 0.04€/kWh.
Meanwhile with net metering your electricity is virtually bought at the same price as what you are buying your electricity for.
What an odd pricing structure! I would normally expect higher usage to mean lower prices per unit.
I guess that gives you a large incentive to have at least a little solar, as there would be a big financial benefit.
Its pretty bad. They only show a couple of the tiers here. pge.com/assets/pge/docs/accoun…
This is an old pdf but the only one they have on the website. They haven't updated it in a while so its not counting the latest 2 rate increases.
Interesting! Your power seems super expensive.
We pay a daily lines maintenance charge of 60c, then 29c/kWh during the day and a little under 27c for off peak night time. Then add 15% tax to these. These are in NZD, so almost halve them to get USD (e.g. 60cNZD is 35cUSD)
We also get about 17.5c for each kWh sold to the grid. So to sell it in the day and buy back at night is a 10c additional cost. A 10kWh battery can save a max of $1 per night, meaning it's really hard to make your money back on a battery that's $10-15k NZD on it's own.
4 years ago it was 18c per kwh. Which was nice.
Yours is very good. and selling back to the grid would be nice! Making me jealous lol.
I'm feeling very lucky now!
We have a national grid that is shared by all power companies, and is open to all. Power companies just buy and sell power on the grid based on a spot pricing system. Because of this, we have very easy movement between power companies, and have dozens to choose from, leading to a lot of competition. Mine is a tiny company that specialises in solar, having sell to grid rates well above most companies.
The company that did our solar install had their top recommended companies, they worked out the best for us, and organised getting set up with them. Was I pretty nice experience to have everything taken care of like that!
battery and solar at the home level is what makes the most sense.
60% of the planet lives between the subtropics and tropics. There is way more than plenty of sunlight hitting our earth to support all of our energy demands, and any naysaying around battery technology is missing the forest for the trees.
I believe it would attribute to cheaper of free energy and to more peace. I am agreeing with you.
And I imagined a all encompassing " worldgrid" across all continents and islands. We did it with phone networks, now we should do energy.
What I want to do is find out what the maximum size battery I would need in order to store all of summer's electricity for use in winter.
I mean, I think that it's probably not a good idea for this guy to try to go fully off-grid if he has access to the grid, but for the sake of discussion, if one were honestly wanting to try it and one is in the UK, I'd think that one is probably rather better off adding a wind turbine, since some of the time that the sun isn't shining, the wind is blowing.
statista.com/statistics/322789…
Wind speed averages in the United Kingdom are generally highest in the first and fourth quarters of each calendar year – the winter months.
The UK is one of the worst places in the world in terms of solar potential:
But it's one of the best in terms of wind potential:
Quarterly average wind speed UK 2025| Statista
Is the UK getting windier? Wind speeds in the UK have been on a downward trend in recent years, with the first quarter of the year usually the being windiest.Statista
Sure, why not. But I was thinking a 4/5G router takes very little power, then a steam deck doesn't take that much either. If that is all you need, few hundred w solar panels and a decent sized camping battery will probably do just fine. You don't need to store a years worth of energy in one go if you can produce more than you use which helps during lower output times.
Then if your employer is mandating return to office, charge the battery there. Make the fuckers pay for it.
Then if your employer is mandating return to office, charge the battery there. Make the fuckers pay for it.
based
"I'll go absolutely barebones on electricity usage. Just a router and my gaming console!"
I don't think it's a good idea to opt out of something like a fridge or lighting.
I lived without a fridge for several months before, it's not that difficult. Half the things I keep in a fridge don't really need it anyway, like chutney and jam would last a fairly long time without it. Eggs in the UK don't need the fridge either. IIRC the US wash off the protective layer on them so they do have to go in the fridge there.
LEDs use very little energy.
Sure it's possible to reduce it, but there is a limit where it becomes extremely inconvenient.
LEDs use very little power, with the cabin in the woods idea I would think its fairly safe to say a log fire is used for cooking, same thing to heat some water for cleaning. Fridge really doesn't use much power if you look for something energy efficient, or just don't have one. Its not like you can't live without it.
I would have thought saying cabin in the woods kinda implies not having some things and living a simpler lifestyle?
Here the problem is regulation that makes it impossible if you have neighbors within 500 m.
If it wasn't for regulation a wind turbine would be a clearly better investment than solar panels.
A huge advantage with turbines is also that it tend to generate power when you need it the most for heating your house.
Something very important that anti-nuclear but otherwise environmental minded people should realize is this sentence:
" There's no practical way to build domestic batteries with this capacity using the technology of 2025."
Also applies to grid storage. There does not exist a chemical energy storage solution that can substitute for "baseload" power. It's purely theoretical much like fusion power. Sure maybe in 50 years, but right now IT DOESN'T EXIST. Economically, practically, or even theoretically.
Why do I bring this up? Because I've seen too many people think that solar and wind can replace all traditional power plants. But if you are anti-nuclear, you are just advocating for more fossil fuels. Every megawatt of wind or solar, has a megawatt of coal or gas behind it and thus we are increasing our greenhouse gas emission everytime we build "green" generation unless we also build Nuclear power plants.
/soapbox
Another myth is that hydroelectric is "green." It's absolutely not. The huge amount of land required to build something like the hoover dam or the three-gorges dam is massively destructive to the existing ecology. It's often overlooked, but land use has to be part of any environmentally sound analysis.
I would say that while the Hoover Dam, or the Three-gorges dam by themselves are acceptable, they are wholly impossible solutions for grid level storage for the entire united states/China. How practical do you think it would be to build thousands of hoover dams?
Other options like kinetic batteries etc, all come down to energy density. The highest energy density options that humans can harness are nuclear Isotopes like Uranium 238, or Plutonium 239 (what powers the voyager probes) After that is lithium batteries at ~<1% density of a nuclear battery. Everything else is fractions of a percent as efficient. Sure there are some specific use cases where a huge fly-wheel makes sense to build (data centers for example) but those cases are highly specific, and cannot be scaled out to "grid-level." The amount of resources required per kilowatt is way too high, and you'd be better off just building some more power-plants.
Unclear if you’re misinformed or disingenuous.
Hoover Dam does generate power, but it’s not an energy storage project to time-shift intermittent clean energy generation to match grid consumption. That’s known as pumped hydroelectric energy storage, and it requires having paired reservoirs in close geographic proximity with a substantial elevation difference. It’s not an ideal technology for several reasons, but it’s the largest type of grid-scale storage currently deployed. Fundamentally it’s gravitational potential energy storage using water as the transport medium.
A higher-efficiency but not yet fully proven technology also uses gravity and elevation differences, but relies on train rails and massive cars. Here’s one company leading the charge, as it were.
Nuclear isn’t a good option to balance out the variability of wind and solar because it’s slow to ramp up and down. Nuclear is much better suited to baseline generation.
There are plenty of other wacky energy storage ideas out there, such as pumping compressed air into depleted natural gas mines, and letting it drive turbines on its way back out. That might also be riddled with problems, but it’s disingenuous to claim that chemical energy storage is the only (non-) option and therefore increasing wind and solar necessarily also increase fossil fuel scaling.
Again, i'm talking energy density. All those other wacky ideas aren't viable at all. Yes I know that the hoover dam is for generation, but the idea of pumped reserve power is literally identical to hydroelectric generation. The only difference is we would have a man-made solar/wind powered pump fill the resevoir, instead a natural source of solar power fill the resevoir. Either way, it's a huge amount of land use for it to be considered "green."
Additionally I never claimed nuclear power should be used as a peak generation, it should 100% used for baseload replacing all of our fossil fuel generators, with huge taxes being applied to carbon generators.
As an aside:
A higher-efficiency but not yet fully proven technology also uses gravity and elevation differences, but relies on train rails and massive cars. Here’s one company leading the charge, as it were.
This idea is trash and as far as I can tell the hypothetical existence of this is an oil industry fud campaign. The only viable version of this is pumped hydro, which has the land use problem I've already described.
Pumped hydroelectric storage obviously works with the same kind of turbines as dams located on rivers, but the land use is far from “literally identical”. For one, I agree with you that damming rivers is generally a bad thing. Large dam sites are chosen to min-max construction effort and reservoir capacity, and usually double as flood control. A grid storage project only needs to hold enough water for its daily power use, and it doesn’t need to be located directly on a water course. That’s not to say that there are unlimited suitable sites, but it’s more flexible.
Pumped hydro storage is quite green in its lack of carbon emissions and ability to time-shift green generation capacity to match grid demand timing. Land use is a consideration, but large anything requires land. You haven’t actually attacked the weakest part of pumped hydro, which is that there just aren’t very many geographically suitable locations for it.
You’ve also neglected to acknowledge the pesky spent nuclear fuel storage problem, which is unsolved and distinctly not eco-friendly. There are potentially better paths available such as the thorium fuel cycle, but they all either have no economic traction or are actively opposed by various governments (which don’t have any good solutions for existing spent fuel).
The solution to nuclear waste is recycling it, which was something France has done quite successfully. The US can't do it because of cold-war era treaties, but realistically it's because Nuclear power is the only thing that can threaten fossil fuel primacy in our society and obviously there are trillions of dollars in the fossil fuel status quo.
As an aside, the aftermath of Chernobyl shows exactly how eco-friendly massive radiation events are, Prypiat is a lush nature reserve now. Human activity is much worse for any given area then radiation is.
Non recycled radioactive waste could be incinerated like we do with Coal and no one seems to be upset about it. /s
nuclear power is the only thing that can threaten fossil fuel primacy
Solar and wind are cheap and easy to build now, and a huge threat to fossil fuel primacy, which in turn makes them a threat to the dominance of the petrodollar as the world’s reserve currency. That’s why the Trump administration has gone all-out to quash their momentum.
Spent nuclear fuel reprocessing is theoretically possible but not politically or economically viable at present. Neither is 100,000+ year storage that has been the concept of a plan of record in the US for decades. I’m not saying that nuclear is inherently unworkable, but your net viewpoint doesn’t seem to be based in reality.
The disaster response in Chernobyl was absolutely heroic but also incredibly lucky. If the melted core had reached the water underneath the concrete pad, the steam explosion would have spread the core atmospherically with devastating results. You’re making light of the disaster that was, and ignoring how close it came to being so much larger. Furthermore, the enormous irresponsibility of the Russian military’s damage to the sarcophagus cannot be overstated. If maintaining isolation for a few decades is difficult, there’s just no chance over 100,000+ years.
But I don’t think you’re arguing in good faith, so I’m done here. I hope you can find your way to more nuanced views in the future.
Hoover Dam does generate power, but it’s not an energy storage project to time-shift intermittent clean energy generation to match grid consumption
All hydro is automatically "time shifting storage" when new solar is added to power the daytime. Just turn on the turbines at evening peak full blast, and at night. Average global capacity factor of hydro is 45% because the water reservoir is not sufficient to go full blast 24/7/365. Obviously, hydro time shifting is also highly complementary to wind.
Hoover dam’s water release schedule is driven by requests from water rightsholders further downstream. Power generation is great, but the dam’s primary design purpose has always been facilitating agricultural irrigation.
That said, I bet you’re right that the water flow rate could be varied throughout each day to help balance electric grid needs. I assume that will likely come into play as we get further along the path to intermittent green power generation.
This is why you have HVDC lines.
The longest one is in Brazil, and is about 2400km long. With that kind of reach, solar in Arizona can power Chicago, wind in Nebraska can power New York, and every single existing hydro dam along the way can provide storage.
These problems are solved. We do not need new nuclear.
Building a dam causes massive amounts of ecological damage, plus unless you're building it in the middle of nowhere you're probably going to be turning people out of their homes, out of their entire towns. We could never build enough dams to be able to meet demand so even trying would be pointless. You would be destroying huge amounts of landscape for no reason.
Kinetic batteries can only store power up to a point, the more power you want them to store the larger they need to be. Again to compensate for base load you would have to have a either a lot of kinetic batteries or a few enormous ones. Plus they are maintenance intensive since they are giant spinning things, or great big heavy falling things.
Heat batteries are a good idea and have relatively little in the way of downsides, but they only work where it's hot, not just sunny but hot. So the number of places you can build them is limited.
If only we could get hold of some astrophage or something.
A country like France would need around 20 truly massive STEPs like Grand’Maison to provide for a single winter night (~60GW for ~14h). That’s 100-200km² to put under water, a massive ecological disaster, and a massive hazard.
And you must find a way to produce enough energy and find enough water to recharge your STEPs in the next 10h before the next night.
And that’s with the current France needs, having only 25-30% of its energy being decarbonized electricity, it’s getting even worse if we go to electrical heating and transports.
Powering an entire country without hydro, geo, nuclear or fossils is just plain science fiction. And hydro and geo cannot be built everywhere, so realistically, you either go fossils, or nuclear to have clean electricity.
And you can verify it empirically: even with trillion invested in solar and wind, the only countries which have decarbonized their electricity have massive hydro/geo/nuclear.
Interactive App | Electricity Maps
Track real-time and historical electricity data worldwide — see production mix, CO2 emissions, prices, cross-border exports, and much more.app.electricitymaps.com
I'm pro-nuclear energy in theory. But I've got to ask - where do you get them spicy rocks from? Do you have to dig them up from a mine? Do they regularly replenish themselves? Does the energy generation have to be constantly checked for pollution leaks?
OK, they may not literally be fossilised bio-matter - but the end result is pretty much the same. Scar the landscape as you dig, release pollutants as you refine, hope you don't run out of material, make sure someone else pays to clean up the mess.
Yes mining still exists. Unlike how Solar Panels and Wind Turbines grow like plants and replenish year over year with no other industrial process required right?
But again, you don't appreciate the energy density that is contained in a reactor fuel. The volume of material is minuscule compared to coal. While oil/gas are a lot better then coal energy density-wise, they have the significant downside of greenhouse gases and causing global warming.
It isn't so much limited by the geography but is made far more cost effective because of it. A long valley with a narrow exit means you don't need to build much dam and store a vast amount of water.
As far as distance from populated areas, I dunno, I live in the UK so its kinda close enough not to matter too much.
I guess if you don't understand units of water per area, then there is no reason to expect you to be able to do any kind of critical analysis about why "pumped hydro" is a problem.
That's a completely unnecessary way to do things. The mistake you're making is that this specific way must provide all power.
It doesn't. You combine methods for a reason. The wind blows at times when the sun isn't shining, and vice versa. We have weather data stretching back many decades to tell us how much a given region will give us of each. From there, you can calculate the maximum lull where neither is providing enough. Have enough storage to cover that lull, and double it as a safety factor.
Getting to 95% water/wind/solar with this method is relatively easy and would be an extraordinary change. Getting all the way to 100% is possible, just more difficult.
It's very infuriating talking to people about this because they never really accept that nuclear power is necessary. They spend all their time complaining about how it's dangerous (it isn't) and how it's very expensive, and how you don't have a lot of control over its output capacity. And yeah, all of those are true, but so what, the only other option is to burn some dead trees which obviously we don't want to do.
Just because nuclear has downsides doesn't mean you can ignore it, unless of course you want to invent fusion just to spite me, in which case I'll be fine with that.
There is absolutely nothing required about baseload power. It's there because the economics of generating power favored it in the past. You could build a baseload plant that spits out a GW or so all day, everyday for relatively cheap.
That economic advantage is no longer there, and no longer relevant.
What makes power when the sun isn’t out and the wind isn’t blowing? Nuclear, gas, or coal.
By being anti-nuclear, you force it to be gas or coal.
Honestly it's like talking to a conspiracy theorist.
What are you talking about, what's "an accounting thing" do you even know what base load is? Go look up brownouts, actually for that matter go look up the term baseload because I don't think you're using it right
You don't need baseload. You need to follow the duck curve of demand.
You had baseload because those plants used to be the cheapest one you could find. That's not true anymore, and the model needs to shift with it.
nrdc.org/bio/kevin-steinberger…
In the past, coal and nuclear were perceived to be the cheapest resources, and the prior electricity system structure relied upon large power plants without valuing flexibility. Today, low natural gas prices, declining renewables costs, flat electricity demand due to more efficient energy use, and stronger climate and public health protections are all driving an irreversible shift in the underlying economics of the electricity industry. As a result, the term “baseload”—which historically has been used to refer to coal and nuclear plants—is no longer useful.
Yes if you ignore all externalities the "economics" means that you can use Natural Gas "peaking" plants instead. But one of the main advantages of nuclear power is zero green-house gas emissions.
If fossil fuels were taxed appropriately, the economics of them wouldn't be viable anymore. A modest tax of a $million USD per ton of CO2 would fix up that price discrepancy.
Most of this is being driven by renewables. Natural gas gets mentioned because its price has dropped due to fracking, but it's not a strictly necessary part of this argument, either. Water/wind/solar solutions have undercut even the plummet in natural gas prices.
Nuclear has no place. Nobody is building it, and it's not because regulators are blocking it. It's also completely unnecessary.
Nobody is building it
France built the fuck out of it, 71% of their power is nuclear. Works darn well.
it’s not because regulators are blocking it
In the US, the over-regulation makes it horrifically expensive. Every plant is bespoke instead of mass produced, with exchangeable parts, personnel, and knowledge. Mass produce nuclear plants and the costs come way down.
Water/wind/solar solutions have undercut even the plummet in natural gas prices.
Wind and solar are paired with natural gas. People still want power in the winter and at night and right now that is natural gas. By opposing nuclear, you ensure it will continue to be natural gas paired with wind and solar.
This has been studied, and we don't need nuclear. All the solutions are sitting right there.
Almost like we can have many solutions where one of them is workable in any given situation.
Edit: also, as for "explody" batteries, that's a factor of certain lithium chemistries. It's not even all lithium chemistries. Sodium and flow batteries are usually better options for grid storage, anyway, and neither has particularly notable safety issues.
In US, and EU is having similar nightmare, nuclear was last built at $15/watt. Installing solar is under $1/watt, and for 20 equivalent hours of nuclear per day (less demand at night means not full production even if available) equivalent to $5/watt-day. $1/watt capital costs is 2c/kwh for solar, and for full day production needs 10c/kwh. All before financing. Nuclear is 30c/kwh. It adds 10 extra years of construction financing, requires political bribes to suppress alternative supply whenever they decide to begin operations, uranium purchases/disposal, expensive skilled operations staff, security, disaster insurance.
Solar does need batteries for time shifting its daily supply. At current LFP prices of $100/kwh, 1c/kwh full cycle is prefinancing cost. and so 3c/kwh if triple the charging/discharging daily capacity. 6 hours of storage is a very high number in power systems. It will capture all energy from a northern summer. It will rarely fully discharge with any time shifting incentives to daytime (much higher convenience to consumers and industry) providing resilience to rainy days. A 2c/kwh value (before financing which is apples to apples comparison to nucclear) means a 5gw solar + 30gwh (much lower if enough private EVs are available for time shifting needs) battery costs 12c/kwh or $8B vs a $15B equivalent 1GW nuclear solution. Both last 60 years due to low battery charge/discharge rates and capacity cycle use, with much lower maintenance costs/downtime for life extension costs for solar/battery system vs keeping a nuclear reactor operational. No/minimal operations costs.
It’s very infuriating talking to people about this
Yes. Nuclear shills are frauds who should be frustrated in their theft of the commons.
Well, unfortunately some people are using nuclear as an excuse to argue that we don't need any renewables at all and that they should be banned entirely. They do this because they know that nuclear faces extreme regulatory and societal challenges and it would allow coal, diesel and gas to continue unabated.
So it creates a backlash where renewable advocates feel they have to fight nuclear to survive.
See, that's a trap that keeps the argument within a frame where you can win. That's not how it works.
What you're doing is focusing on a singular solution, and then showing why it can't solve all the problems. Each individual solution is attacked on its own, and then nuclear ends up being the only option.
Except that's a dumb way of going about it.
Each of these solutions has pros and cons. You use the pros of one to cover the cons of another.
As one example I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, Brazil has an HDVC line 2400km long. With that kind of reach, solar in Arizona can power Chicago, wind in Nebraska can power New York, and every single existing hydro dam along the way can provide storage. What you end up with is the possibility of not needing to build a single MWh of new storage or hydro dams. If nothing else, you don't need very much. Long distance transmission is thus very important, but it tends to get left out of these discussions because it's boring.
I'll leave you with an excerpt from "No Miracles Needed", written by Mark Z Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering:
On July 11, 2011, I was invited to a dinner at the Axis Café and Gallery in San Francisco to discuss the potential of renewable energy as an alternative to natural gas hydrofracking in New York State. Little did I know it at the time, but that dinner would set off a chain reaction of events that turned a scientific theory, that the world has the technical and economic ability to run on 100 percent clean, renewable energy and storage for all purposes, into a mass popular movement to do just that. The movement catalyzed an explosion of worldwide country, state, and city laws and proposed laws, including the Green New Deal, and business commitments. Ten years after that meeting, critics were no longer mocking our ideas as pie-in-the-sky and tooth-fairy-esque. They were no longer claiming that transitioning to more than 20 percent renewables would cripple power grids. Instead, the discussion had changed to what is the cost of 100 percent renewables, how fast can we get there, and should we leave a few percent for non-renewables?
This was from the first edition of the book published in 2023. So quite contrary to your claim that "there’s no practical way to build domestic batteries with this capacity using the technology of 2025", the technology has existed for over a decade. We just need to build it. And we are building it, just not as fast as we need to.
Meanwhile, the NRC continues to stamp permits for new nuclear, but nobody is building. There's a reason for that, too.
I can dismiss the the other solutions that are worse then pumped hydro because pumped hydro is actually the best case scenario for grid-level storage and it requires A LOT of space. Anything else, batteries, pneumatic mines etc etc are going to be worse in terms of space by orders of magnitude, not to mention the actual costs. Hand waving the need for grid-level storage by saying we would us hydro shows you don't understand the scale of the problem.
That excerpt from that engineer is great, but WHERE IS THE STORAGE? Show it to me on a map. You can't because it does not exist. New Nuclear plants are being built, finally, but there is a reason that no grid-level storage exists. It's literally not possible today. There exists a pilot battery plant in Australia, and there exists a few megawatts of storage in Scotland, but these are few and far between and none of them are suitable for massive deployment.
I can dismiss the the other solutions that are worse then pumped hydro because pumped hydro is actually the best case scenario for grid-level storage and it requires A LOT of space.
It's like you didn't even read the bit about how HVDC makes this a non-issue.
. . . but WHERE IS THE STORAGE? Show it to me on a map. You can’t because it does not exist.
It's in every hydro dam that's already built in between Arizona and New York. If we even do need more, there is plenty of land to use.
How about this: I throw out everything I said about synergizing different solutions. We just have solar and storage. No long distance transmission or wind. How much does that cost to power a city?
That study has been done. Going by Lazard's levelized cost of energy 2025 report, the most optimistic cost to build new nuclear is $141/MWh--and keep in mind that I'm giving nuclear the best case scenario here. A solar+storage solution that would provide 97% of the power needed for Las Vegas would cost $104/MWh. "But that's sunny desert with lots of empty land around it", I hear you say. The bigger deal is that Washington DC could have 81% of power done at $124/MWh. Northern city where it snows a lot, and it's still more viable than nuclear.
"But 81% isn't 100%". No, please stop. You get to 81% before you get to 100%. This isn't even the best way to get to 100%.
This study has a comprehensive wind/water/solar solution fighting with two arms tied behind its back, and it's still kicking nuclear's ass.
. . . New Nuclear plants are being built, finally
Nope, not in the US, they aren't.
Here's a map of NRC licenses. The green pips are the ones where licenses are already approved. Here's the list and where they are at:
- William States - Licensed to go ahead in 2016. Canceled in 2017 with a contributing factor being the bankruptcy of Westinghouse (which itself happened because of cost overruns at the Vogtle nuclear plant build)
- Turkey Point - Licensed new builds in 2018. No news on actually going forward.
- North Anna - Licensed new builds in 2017. No news on actually going forward.
- PSEG - Issued an early site permit, but not the full license. The ESP was set in 2016 with no movement noted since then.
- Fermi - This was licensed just in the past few months. They want to have it in operation by 2032, which, lol, no it isn't.
That's not a list of success stories. Add the Vogtle debacle to the list and it's all a bucket of failure.
The AP1000 design at Vogtle was supposed to prevent the need for botique engineering that had been a problem with reactors in the past. You could use one design everywhere. That was hoped to prevent all these cost and schedule overruns. It didn't. In addition to Vogtle, it was also built in China at the Sanmen and Haiyang plants. Like Vogtle, Sanmen went over budget and over schedule, but managed in the end. There's less information about what happened at Haiyang, but the timeline of beginning construction and reaching first criticality is roughly the same as Sanmen; we can assume it went about the same.
There's a very clear reason why this is happening, and it comes down to this chart:
energyskeptic.com/wp-content/u…
This is a list of megaprojects and their tendency to go overbudget. Everything from rail to mining to airports. The third worst budgetary offender is nuclear power at a mean cost overrun of 120%. It managed to be better than Olympic Games, at least. The very worst is the related issue of nuclear storage at a whopping 238% mean budget overrun.
Way down at the bottom, you will find solar, power transmission, and wind. Solar projects have a mean overrun of 1%, energy transmission 8%, and wind 13%.
That should make it very clear why the list above has approved licenses with no actual movement. Who the hell would want to put their money into that? You can invest in wind or solar, have a very good chance of it staying within budget, and it will be making revenue within 6-12 months. You put that in nuclear, and you better hope that other investors will pitch in when the budget doubles, or else you have to do it if you hope to see your money again. In the very best case scenario, you're not going to see a cent of revenue for at least 5 years, but probably more like 10.
Meanwhile, old nuclear is being taken offline because it's too expensive. If it's not even worthwhile to keep what we have, what hope is there for building new?
It's not a matter of regulation, either. The industry would really like it to be, but they've been putting their thumb on that scale for a while now. Even with that, nobody wants to finance this shit.
It's not just that nuclear is expensive. It's a boneheaded thing to drop money into at all.
Biden can rescue the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from industry capture - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Over the past two decades, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been captured by the nuclear power companies it is supposed to regulate.John Mecklin (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
It’s in every hydro dam that’s already built in between Arizona and New York. If we even do need more, there is plenty of land to use.
This is the key factor I'm talking about. There is not "plenty of land" for hydro storage, and flooding the amount of land required to provide grid level storage is an ecological disaster. Plus your analysis of mega-project like nuclear plants going over budget and over-time absolutely applies to any grid-level storage project you would need to go 100% solar/wind.
But just for fun, how much space would the grid level storage projects take up? I'll let you use Hydro because it's the best case scenario that exists today as far as energy density.
But beyond that what is your point, that humans shouldn't build big projects, and any attempt to do so is "boneheaded?" Capitalism can't build big projects I agree, but the problem isn't the projects themselves it's the profit-motive.
There is not “plenty of land” for hydro storage, and flooding the amount of land required to provide grid level storage is an ecological disaster.
We already built it. Good bye.
Author's diagram is about summer. Fall, winter, spring is about heating-degree days. If you're heating your home with electricity, you'll not get there with batteries.
So, working towards a solution, there are other ways to store excess energy than in batteries. One example is sand, which can be heated to very high temperatures. Insulate a sand container well and its storage can do a lot of home-heating.
Example: livescience.com/technology/eng…
We'll need to put a lot of different methods into use. There are many practical ideas out there, and they'll need to be tried.
The sand storage is used for district heating. It's not much of a substitute for single homes that have electrical heating or are off-grid.
It's a great way to balance both the electrical and the heating grids so that more electricity from renewables can be used to offset other means of heat production, but it needs to be done by the district heating supplier. I doubt it makes sense for individual houses.
Right, you really need scale for sand batteries to work. It would be difficult for individual people to do, especially in suburban London.
District heating also works better in denser housing. In other words, not suburban London.
Dunno what heat pumps are available in England, but that's probably the best option here.
Suburbs are fine for district heating, but it's a massive long term investment.
For UK in particular, I also think proper insulation and triple/quadruple window panes are much needed to curb with the increasingly scorching summers and freezing winters. I was surprised to see soo many houses with single paned windows in London.
Oof. If they're running around with single pane windows, yeah, that's pretty bad, but also the easiest thing to fix.
IMO, triple pane and onward provide only marginal benefits over double pane. But the jump from single to double is a big one.
you really need scale for sand batteries to work
Not at all. First, (hot) water batteries are excellent for home heat storage. Sand/dirt is even more storage per volume required, and completely complimentary in sending hot water through it (pipes) to make it hotter. No combustion heat means less air exchanges, and a 300C rock/dirt/sand pit has losses that radiate through house.
When I was a kid my parents had electric resistance heat with some very effective thermal storage.
Each room had a unit about the size of a typical radiator. The unit was basically an insulated box with a small circulation fan. I’m not sure what was inside but always assumed some form of brick - they weren’t expensive so it couldn’t be anything exotic. At night when electric rates were low, whatever was inside the units was heated up. During the day, the only power usage was a small circulation fan controlled by the thermostat.
I just got a heat pump installed and thought thermal storage would be worth considering since I was also looking into solar, but contractors acted like they never heard of it, and there really didn’t seem to be any consumer units available.
The solar panels are another story. I don’t see how such a scammy (in the us) industry even exists. They make it really hard to give them my money
Not that old, plus I don’t see it.
Asbestos is great at insulating really hot things so was used on boilers , especially ships and industrial to insulate the hot pipes and improve efficiency. However in this case we need something with thermal mass: any sand or rock might do, or water, or oil, or a modern phase change material. That material next to the heater will get hot but the entire mass won’t, so can be insulated with standard materials. There’s no point in something like asbestos
An important part of my point was also that what I assume were cheap materials was enough to take advantage of nightly time of use metering. In upstate NY, a standard “radiator” per room was sufficient, similar to hot water or steam heat
Storage Heaters
Storage heaters can help those on time-of-use tariffs (such as Economy 7 and Economy 10) to save money with cheaper off-peak electricity. Find out how storage heaters work, and what type of storage heater is right for your home.Sarah Ingrams (Which?)
It's practical for someone with limited space for panels on a small room, but I ran these calculations by moving almost all loads to daytime, sizing the panel array to the (minimum daily usage + efficiency losses) * buffer factor for days long storms or equipment failure.
Start with the comparitively cheap panels if you have the space, move electrical loads to the daytime and design the house for thermal momentum, and size storage to the minimum inclusive efficiency losses times buffer. If you have the roof space the panels are the cheapest part and you should usually way, way over panel.
The most important thing is having thermal mass enough or living in a climate that allows your home to not need thermal input or extraction at night. Heat is expensive and exponentially moreso if you need to produce it from conventional storage.
It is possible that, not too long in the future, every home could also have a 1 MegaWatt-hour battery. They would be able to capture all the excess solar power generated in a year.
Braindead strategy, that most likely is discrete fossil fuel shilling, for purposes of making decision inpractical.
The cost of storage as a baselines is how much you can charge/discharge per day. Bonus for smaller (= cheaper) that can have more discharge/charge than its capacity per day. Plus the resilience/reserve capacity value which is a convenience factor. Resilience alternatives include fire places or gas generators (that are not expected to be used often) which tend to be cheap per kw. But noise, smell, variable costs, and startup effort are all inconveniences. Driving an EV to a public charger can be a similar inconvenience level to a generator for resilience value. If a 1mwh battery is used 10kwh/day it costs 100 times more per kwh than a 10kwh battery.
OP gives an example of 12kwh summer use (no AC?) which is very high for most people, but can include cooking and floodlights.
The braindead analysis parts are "because 100 days of 10kwh surpluses happen, I need 1mwh battery". Actual battery storage requirements are the lowest theoretical winter solar production over 1-2 weeks, together with running pumps for heat (stored mostly in fall) distribution. A 10kwh/day maximum deficit for 1 week straight, with 60 day average deficit of 5kwh/day (without requiring additional heat input), means that any consideration for a large static battery should stop at 70kwh. This is sharply reduced with 1 or 2 EVs where summer surpluses are free fuel, and EV provides backcharging at 3kw whenever needed. 30kwh battery is plenty to charge an EV overnight (300km range for small car) before next day's sunlight exceeds needs. Even less battery with 2nd lightly used EV, but 30kwh will be cheaper than un-needed EV.
Instead of relying on batteries for heat generation, which is where $100k 1mwh delusion proposition comes, heat generated from solar stored in under $1/kwh hot water and dirt storage. Outside of winter, this also provides completely unlimited showers and hot tub use, and a $10-20k heat pump and heating system (fossil fuel systems often cost the same) and insulation improvements is the the unquestionable non-distracting path.
Do you like our hot sand?
euronews.com/green/2025/06/15/…
‘A very Finnish thing’: Big sand battery starts storing wind and solar energy in crushed soapstone
The 15 metres wide battery can store a month's heat demand in summer - how does it work?Lottie Limb (Euronews.com)
hot water to everywhere in a home is efficient, quiet
Have you never lived in an apartment building?
I don't know why we haven't come up with better solutions for piping. Or maybe it's just because this building was built very cheaply. But anyway... the pipes make quite a loud banging sound if you shut them fast enough. And a lot of whoooshing in the walls just when using hot water.
High rise apartment buildings have a challenge with pumping water up more than 3-5 floors. This can be solved with intermediate storage on floors, but for high rises, forced air is the usual solution. Heat storage still works well enough with forced air, but water is much better due to internal piping through heat source, where air volume is harder to do there, and if gaining heat from outer shell, then insulation meant to keep heat in is not as good at heat transfer. Water is most perfect heat fluid in world. Air not so much.
And a lot of whoooshing in the walls just when using hot water.
This doesn't apply for heat delivery. Tends to be continuous. A faucet is different.
This doesn’t apply for heat delivery.
Pegging your pardon, mister.
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I did math for Toronto, Canada. 2000l of hot water was enough (2m^3^). Winters here have gotten cloudier from great lakes warming. Instead of more water as a buffer, dirt is much more space efficient, and just needs the hot water routed through it to get heat transfer.
The volume looks more like a room than a box, unless you can somehow make it molten that is
If hydronic heating system was already being directed towards outer walls instead of straight up from water storage, then a tall "hot dirt" storage, and dual cold water mixing valves (pre and post dirt flow) next to each other, it's less in additional storage costs per heat unit than water, though it does use more electricity to input heat compared to heat pump.
No need for temperatures higher than melting/softening point of copper to get useful heat storage for a home. Just water can be enough if you have the room.
I looked into one of these thermal systems for my own place but the outlay is just massive for the 11 weeks a year I really need heat, and the rest of the year it's just a stupidly oversized hot water heater that is cooking my glycol and DC pumps.
I ended up paneling up and putting a dumb 9kw resistive boiler for my hydronic floors. The house slab is the battery and although inefficient in terms of strict energy use, winter sun on my cheap pallet of panels dumps plenty into the slab all day. I do have to light the stove if we get a snow storm for a day or two though
Yes. Hydronic flooring is cheap at construction time. Complicated if drilling into finished ceilings/floor with thicker under floor space making. But instead of 9kw of winter electricity you are forced to import, it is free fall surplus generation. 100w of pump circulation.
But you are saying, a resistive boiler made more sense than a heat pump, with the hydronic floor conversion. At first I thought you were just saying resistive heating electric floor. The latter, to me, would be the cheapest capital outlay conversion, and then a heat pump would beat a resistive boiler on operation costs if hydronic.
Did you investigate all of these alternatives?
Yeah I already had the hydronic floors and ran numbers on heating the floors off thermal solar panels, propane, heat pump, and the resistive boiler. The thermal panels made the least sense because they are useless eight months of the year.
The heat pump might have worked but when I really needed it my semi-outdoor closet would be in single digits and full of water supply pipes so the heat pump would be least efficient when I needed it most, and would not help keep the closet warm.
The resistive boiler meant I could add a bunch of panels to run it during the day and get the floors up to 85F, then run all electric appliances with no worries during the day the rest of the year with the extra capacity. So instead of being net positive generation from 10am to 4pm in summer, its now 8 am to 6pm with way more than I can use at peak.
(OP here) Sorry mate, are you accusing me of being in the pocket of Big Oil? Here's everything I've written about solar over the last decade - shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar/ - feel free to point out where I've said "yay fossil fuels!"
I didn't include AC because that's not a thing in the UK.
Oh, and I don't use electricity for primary heating. Solar thermal is pretty useless in my part of the world because you don't need much hot water in summer (mmmm! Cold showers!)
As I said in my post, this is a purely theoretical discussion about what future technology might look like. Your argument is like someone from 2001 going "a recordable CD can hold 650MB - so you only need two for a really long car trip. There's no way people in the future will have 1TB hard drives! For anything else, just use AM radio."
Basically, one of us is braindead - and I'm not so sure it is me!
I'm sorry you didn't read my article. If you had, you would have seen me say…
Remember, this is just a bit of fun. There's no practical way to build domestic batteries with this capacity using the technology of 2025.
And
Is this sensible? Probably not, no.
And
remember, this is an exercise in wishful thinking.
At no point did I say it was a reasonable idea. I went out of my way to demonstrate how impractical it was.
I accept your admission that you didn't read my post means you are stupid rather than evil etc.
The energy math doesn't make sense for grid scale applications with solid objects.
However if you can get water between two places it can work quite well. You need to live close to a big change in altitude and do a bit of geoengineering to create the upper and lower reservoirs, which can be destructive to local ecology, but not as much as a dam.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped…
You can also use pumped air underwater with higher energy losses than pumped storage hydro because of compatibility of air.
electricalindustry.ca/changing…
World’s First Utility-Scale Underwater Compressed Air Energy Storage System Activated in Lake Ontario -
Located 2.5 km offshore from Toronto, the Hydrostor Corp. underwater compressed air energy storage systemis designed to store electricity during off-peak hours when demand is low and electricity is cheapest, and return the stored electricity during t…GravityStack Marketing (Electrical Industry Newsweek)
1 Watt is the equivalent of moving 1Kg 1 metre in 1 second.
If you want a kilowatt - you need to move 1,000Kg 1 metre in 1 second. Or, I guess, 1Kg a Km.
Plug the numbers together and you'll see that you need a massive physical load and a huge distance in order to store a useful amount of energy.
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Potential energy (in joules) is mass (in g) times height (in meters) times 9.8 m/s^2 .
So in order to store the 30 kWh per day that the typical American house uses, you'd need to convert the 30 kWh into 108,000,000 joules, and divide by 9.8, to determine how you'd want to store that energy. You'd need the height times mass to be about 11 million. ~~So do you take a 1500 kg weight (about the weight of a Toyota Camry) and raise it about 7.3 meters (about 2 stories in a typical residential home)?~~ (this is wrong, it's only 0.001 as much as the energy needed, see edit below)
And if that's only one day's worth of energy, how would you store a month's worth? Or the 3800kwh (13.68 x 10^9 joules) discussed in the article?
At that point, we're talking about raising 10 Camrys 93 meters into the air, just for one household. Without accounting for the lost energy and inefficiencies in the charging/discharging cycle.
Chemical energy is way easier to store.
Edit: whoops I was off by using grams instead of kg. It actually needs to be 1000 times the weight or 1000 the height. The two story Camry is around a tablet battery's worth of storage, not very much at all.
Actually, yes. Lifting the weight of a Toyota Camry 2 stories seems reasonable for a day's worth of energy storage for a house.
I'm not sure how expensive the lift and generator will be, but the weight itself can be anything that's sufficiently heavy.
You say chemical energy is way easier to store, but is it really easier and cheaper to store the energy needed for a home in a chemical battery?
So do you take a 1500 kg weight (about the weight of a Toyota Camry) and raise it about 7.3 meters (about 2 stories in a typical residential home)?
Honestly that is way, way more reasonable than I was expecting. This isn't half as bad of an idea as I thought it would be
- Is HVAC excluded?
- Do you have an EV?
With an EV you can have 80%-90% of days covered, and top up with EV. You also get to dump daily surpluses into EV, and you can think of covering winter heating with solar and a heat pump. Easier if you have a fireplace for extreme cold possibility.
Storing heat with fall surpluses is path to get winter heating covered. Heat pump can make hot water very efficiently, and resistance heating can make a pile of dirt 300+C. Radiant floor heating is most efficient because water is distributed around 30C. This means your 90C water volume is 60C effective heat storage that is generated at 600% efficiency in fall, and 300% efficiency in typical UK winter, and your dirt heat storage can be 5x more dense.
A 2nd EV even if not frequently used during the day can be an attractive option, especially if used, and tax credits will go away soon, or have gone away (makes used prices lower) can be much easier than home batteries, and much cheaper if it remains uninsured/unused, and resale value doesn't go down much because of few miles driven. Where utility service includes a high fixed monthly charge, ($50/month in Toronto), $12000 over 20 years savings creates high incentive to remove electric utility. Gas utility has similar fixed vs variable equation, but for Toronto, heat is somewhat reasonable from high supply on our continent.
(OP here) Typically, UK homes don't use HVAC.
I've had a few EVs, but moved somewhere with electric buses instead.
Most homes here are heated with gas - ours is.
So electricity doesn't factor in to heating (other than a tiny amount for controlling the boiler and thermostat).
To be completely off grid you would ideally want to be able to go at least a week with minimal to no power generation. Personally that would mean I would need at least 100kWh of batteries.
I would also then want/need a petrol generator powerful enough to power everything that would usually run in a normal day, so that meant be a 15000W one which would be very expensive.
Anyone using "Speech Note" (speech to text) with good results?
I've been using Speech Note (github link) for months, but it often gets things wildly wrong.
I thought it was my mic, so I got one that's crystal clear. I also tried a ton of different models, and other than being slow (or fast), their accuracy is usually pretty similar.
But I'm still needing to take a lot of time to edit the results, and I wonder if there's something I should be doing to get better results.
On other speech-to-text platforms (like Futo keyboard on Android), the results are fast and very accurate. I have a hard time believing that Speech Note can't be as good.
Can any other users share their experience?
UPDATE: Ok, the best model that I've found for Speech Note is the WhisterCpp FUTO English-244, which, funny enough, is the model I use on Futo Keyboard for Android. It's not the fastest, but fast enough. It is quite accurate, and that means less time editing text.
GitHub - mkiol/dsnote: Speech Note Linux app. Note taking, reading and translating with offline Speech to Text, Text to Speech and Machine translation.
Speech Note Linux app. Note taking, reading and translating with offline Speech to Text, Text to Speech and Machine translation. - mkiol/dsnoteGitHub
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I really wanted to use it, because on my Android phone I use voice input all the time.
That's why I'm thinking it's a problem with Speech Note and not my mic, or how I'm speaking to it.
That's a real shame. I can type quite fast, but my hand joints called it quite a while ago. 😵
GitHub - openai/whisper: Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervision
Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervision - openai/whisperGitHub
I've used it for a short while to test it out. Accuracy was pretty good, as was correct punctuation. Response time also good.
It's using my Nvidia GPU to do the LLM thing, so that may be the difference.
It’s using my Nvidia GPU to do the LLM thing, so that may be the difference.
This could be!
Interestingly enough, I was playing around with LLama, as they have speech to text to interact with their chat bot, and it converts in near real-time with very good accuracy. So I do know that things can be fast and accurate, but I wish it was in Speech Note. LOL
For now, I may just to STT through my phone on a shared document with my laptop.
Chairman Comer Invites CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit to Testify on Radicalization of Online Forum Users - United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Chairman Comer Invites CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit to Testify on Radicalization of Online Forum Users - United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
United States House Committee on Oversight and Government ReformOversight Committee Republicans Verified account
As long as its on the internet, there will be strange people saying strange things.
Also good more censorship! /s
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I hope they all say the same thing:
Shit rolls down hill. You're the hill DC. Fox news and the media are the hill. We're the ditch where the people congregate in and drown in your shit.
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Truth and "Truth social" are different things.
Truth is good.
Truth social is an orwellian social network that is at war with the truth.
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~~Oracle~~ TikTok isn't on there either.
Oh, that's because they already have a government overseer. And owned by a Party loyalist.
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Like everything else, the same laws and rules they have hidden behind to justify and protect their absolute dogshit behavior will be the first things the regime will get rid of for protecting anyone other than their in-group.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
Well, it’ll be a difficult transition. But in the long run, maybe not?
As long as the Fourth Estate gets their shit together.
Ah, good point. I guess things would rapidly re-form in the favor of the fediverse if this law was overturned…
Sounds like a monkey paw situation to me!
probably james comer runs onto fox news and whines for an hour and then moves onto the next outrage since his hearings mean dick.
and if it's a subpoena it means even less considering james comer ignored his own subpoena during the jan 6th hearings.
Most people aren’t celebrating the killing of Kirk
I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure
Elon sieg heilling twice and then signal boosting facists and illegally cutting democratically approved and institutionally valid spending, that hasn't radicalized anyone.
Totally normal behavior.
It's gotta be the video games and the dark web. What's dark web? It is any web space I don't know about. Duh.
I am not a fan of a few billionaires locking up every freedom we used to have so they can keep trucking toward the world's first trillionaire.
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Right wing extremism and radicalization?
Nooo problem
A right wing radicalizer gets shot?
We need to investigate radicalization of the online left!
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Right wing influencers and pundits are calling for war and killings as we speak.
We'll see how they will be investigated.
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Something is preventing shutdown...
Does anyone how how I can diagnose and fix this problem:
Sometimes, but not always, when shutting down the process does not actually complete and the computer does not turn off.
The screen turns off but the keyboard backlight is still responsive, the fan is still going and the power-on LED is lit. Because the screen is turned off I can't interact graphically with the computer and have to just hold down the power button and do a hard reboot.
I haven't tested it properly but I get the feeling it happens more often if I have been doing audio work.
Debian 13
GNOME 48
Intel Core Ultra 7 Laptop
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Have you updated the firmware recently? us.starlabs.systems/blogs/news…
They've fixed a lot of ACPI and power issues with various models, including the mk7: github.com/StarLabsLtd/firmwar…
[Starbook MkVI - Intel][coreboot] Don't wake-up from suspend on lid close
Closing the lid when the laptop is in suspend will wake it up. I've observed this on Coreboot 8.99 and ITE 1.21 This sequence reproduces the issue: With the lid open, put the machine in suspend blu...divico (GitHub)
Try running sudo shutdown -h now and see if it still does the same thing.
If so, try forcing ACPI actions like so and see what happens: askubuntu.com/questions/125844…
I know this an ACPI tables issue, but there's a wide variety of debug steps to figure out which one.
Shutdown does not power off computer
I recently upgraded from Ubuntu 11.10 to 12.04. If it makes any difference, my system is a Dell Inspiron 1520. I encounter a problem whenever I shutdown or restart; it kills all running processes...Ask Ubuntu
I'm not familiar with using logs but looking at them now and filtering for the word 'failed', most of the entries around shutdown contain "dbus-daemon[1248]: [system] Activation via systemd failed for unit 'dbus-org.freedesktop.nm-dispatcher.service': Refusing activation, D-Bus is shutting down."
There are also a couple of "fwupd[2375]: 17:22:25.596 FuPluginUpower failed to query lid state"
And one of these: "NetworkManager[1332]: [1757956947.0782] dispatcher: (51) failed (after 0.004 sec): Refusing activation, D-Bus is shutting down."
Does any of that shed light on the problem?
That's just saying that things are tripping each other up whilst trying to shutdown.
Try sudo journalctl -b-1 --reverse
That will show the last system log in reverse order, and might help see what's going on.
There's an old bug report (notice I say report, as it's locked and not solved - & I don't have the link to hand) with several people saying that systemd causes this, but, it might be applications or services that have user accounts open, etc, etc...
but... try shutting down services and unmounting any shares / filesystems that might be causing this to see if you can isolate something.
As mentioned in the other thread, try shutting down from the command line on a new TTY (text-only screen) and see if that shows anything else.
journalctl -b -1 but to make it easier maybe this one should be more helpful journalctl -b -1 | grep -i shutdown
I was also experiencing your same issue, just tried @muhyb@programming.dev's recommendation, and my computer shut off completely as desired.
Edit: I also opened a terminal and "sudo poweroff" and "sudo shutdown now" both work, so for me, I didn't need to switch to a TTY console.
I was also experiencing your same issue, just tried @muhyb@programming.dev’s recommendation, and my computer shut off completely as desired.
Which recommendation?
Alt + SysRq(/PrtSc) + o. If that turns off your computer, then the kernel is still running and something is preventing shutdown; if it doesn't, either SysRq is disabled, or ACPI is broken.
Spanish PM calls for Israel to be barred from international sport
Spanish PM calls for Israel to be barred from international sport
Pedro Sánchez says Israel should be treated in the same way as Russia over its war in Ukraine.Guy Hedgecoe (BBC News)
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[Solved] Can I upgrade my server directly from Debian 11 to 13 without problems?
Or should I go 11 > 12 > 13?
Edit: Thanks for all the replies. I asked this out of laziness and apparently trying this is not a lazy thing to do. I'm not Bilbo Baggins seeking an adventure. Will go with 11 > 12 > 13 way, though might stay at 12 for a while at this point. You know, lazy. 😀
Edit 2: Updated to 12. Haven't checked all the configs yet but so far so good, at least every function I expect works. If I finish this checking sequence, I might go for 13 soon too.
Edit 3: Updated to 13 as well. It actually took shorter than updating from 11 to 12. Though for some reason Jellyfin is marked as obsolete, however it works and I couldn't care less. My things are working and hopefully I won't see problems. If I do, I'll check them one by one at this point since it's a small home server.
Gotta add this: I had 325 packages on Debian 11, and now I have 450 packages on Debian 13. Some of them are marked as obsolete but must review them one by one. I feel like this upgrade process brake my minimalism and introduced some bloat but gotta care about that later.
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11-12 should be well tested. 12-13 should be well tested. 11-13 may work, but you may be the tester.
I'd step through one at a time.
Major version changes for any software from the OS right down to a simple notepad app should update as sequentially as possible (11>12>13>etc). Skipping over versions is just asking for trouble, as it's rarely tested throughly.
It might work, but why risk it.
An example: if 12 makes a big database change but you skip over that version, 13 may not recognize the databases left by 11 because 12 had the code to recognize and reformat the old database while that code was seen as unnecessary and removed from 13.
Stuff like this is also why you can't always revert to an older version while keeping the data/databases from the newer software.
It seems nobody really tested 11 to 13, or maybe any kind of major-version-skipping and you won't find direct experiences here.
Your best bet is to follow the official procedure, so 11 -> 12 -> 13. I'll leave you with the official upgrade guide for 11 to 12 and 12 to 13.
It seems longer than it is, as not every step is actually required for every system. When upgrading VMs, a snapshot pre-upgrade can also help you skip backup-steps in the guides.
No.
By itself, apt will give you headaches.
Debian migrated to new paths for security non-free firmware in repositories from 11 to 12, and apt goes to v3 in 12 to 13, which changes the format of sources. There is a new apt modernize-sources command, but it assumes your paths are correct.
If you know what you're doing, you can do this by correcting the repo paths and do the without-new-packages upgrade, but be prepared to fix apt.
If you're a casual user, maybe stick with 11>12>13.
Honestly, there were so many fundamental changes in the 13 upgrade for certain packages that I had to fix on a couple of machines that I'd be hesitant to try no-scoping the 11 > 13 upgrade.
I flew by the seat of my pants and managed to pull off 10 directly to 12, but I wouldn't do it for this one.
Well, if there are issues like even in normal upgrade, it's better not to jump on a thing like this.
Still, it's good to know that this is technically possible, though it's not for a lazy person who just wants to update his server. Gotta check Debian changelog.
For fixed-release distros (Debian/Ubuntu), the upgrade path is usually sequential.
The main implication: if you skip, you’re outside the tested upgrade path. That can mean broken packages, orphaned configs, security regressions, or a system that simply won’t boot. Sometimes you can force it and it’ll work, but it’s a gamble...
Hey. I'm going through this right now. My server was 11, and I wanted to go to 13. I definitely didn't want to get into a situation where the server required hours and hours of repair.
I'm halfway there. The upgrade to 12 went smoothly. The biggest headache was glances, first from the lack of web interface (which I was ready for), and the lack of RAID support (not ready). I might do the switch to 13 next week.
I feel like 13 introduced more changes than 12. By the way, I finally took the leap and upgraded to 13. Kinda YOLO'd though and it needs some fixing in configs but currently everything I expect works, so this will be a very slow fixing process I reckon. 😀
Good luck with the upgrade!
When I upgraded the desktop and laptop machines, I didn't run into many issues. Had to reinstall the Nvidia drivers on the game machine. And deal with glances, but I mentioned that before.
I'll probably update the server to 13 next week.
I had to rewrite part of my php-based photo management system, as it relied on a library that was originally written for php 4 or 5 and hasn't been updated. Fortunately that wasn't too hard. There might be other things lurking like that, but they aren't critical problems - I can deal with them at leisure.
Global Samud Flotilla Boat Tracker
An interactive map of the progress of the flotilla fleet headed to Gaza to challenge the unlawful Israeli siege on aid to Gaza.
Their safety and success relies on public pressure and alertness. Demand from your country that your citizens be protected and that those around you are made aware. We must break Israel’s policy of systematic starvation.
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As the world recognizes a Palestinian state, Israel’s E1 plan moves to bury it
https://www.972mag.com/palestinian-state-israel-e1-plan-west-bank/
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Any plans to support Piefed?
Peter Thiel Antichrist lecture: We asked guests what the hell it is
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/46219073
Lecture attendees started trickling out around 8:30 p.m., carrying mousses, cookies, and various other desserts to their awaiting Ubers. Most of the audience members were hesitant to provide their thoughts on the record, for fear of being disinvited from future events, but a few shared their opinions on condition of anonymity.The consensus was that the talk largely repeated the points Thiel had made in previous interviews on the subject — namely, that the Antichrist would use the threat of Armageddon, or some looming crisis, in order to consolidate control and create a “one-world government.”
One attendee recalled Thiel specifying that this figure could not be a state figurehead like Chinese President Xi Jinping, because it needs to be more global. He couldn’t recall if Thiel suggested Thunberg would make the cut.
One attendee recalled that Thiel’s discussion of the Antichrist was more about a scenario than an individual. Thiel’s Antichrist scenario is one in which a unified government suppresses technology to impose order, or armageddon, wherein AI takes over and ushers in the end of the world.
"We’ll either have the one government that destroys technology and takes over, or you have the AI that destroys everything,” he said.
Another guest, when asked about the talk, shot back a single word: “Mid.”
A group of three French men, all living in SF and working in tech, gave the talk a 7 out of 10 because of its repetitiveness. But they did appreciate some of Thiel’s jokes — including, apparently, saying it would be a travesty for Elon Musk to go to therapy because it would make him less productive.
"He was really anti-introspection,” one recalled. “[He said] we are very selfish and we care a lot about ourselves as individuals, and that therapy and yoga and stuff like that is not good for the world. We should not care so much about ourselves and care more about the world.”
Another attendee said the talk revealed a less well-known, more scholarly side of Thiel. He noted that Thiel is different from his expectations of a tech investor, pointing to the billionaire’s “cynical” view of technology’s impact on the world.
What the hell happened at Peter Thiel’s Antichrist talk? We asked the guests
We didn’t get a ticket, but we did speak with attendees — and protesters.Garrett Leahy (The San Francisco Standard)
Thiel's so high on his own supply that his brain is failing him. Any of the more recent videos of his public speaking show a many who is less and less cognizant of the world around him and more up his own asshole than any human has a right to be.
The guy was always a libertarian-flavored fascist, going back to his early Paypal days. But now that he's fully enmeshed in the national security state with his Palantir project, he's getting the weapon's grade Reagan Era anti-communism directly from the firehose. That, plus the drugs and the orgies and the crazy sleepless jet-setting schedule all topped off with his flirtations in digital immortality. Dude's brain is cooked like hamburger.
I mean a lot of old people are like this. They slowly lose their minds are start believing in all sorts of crazy shit. My grandmother kept telling us how people were plotting to break into her home and steal her precious china. (It was worthless shit).
The issue is that this guy is super rich and people want to listen to his crazy old person nonsense.
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[He said] we are very selfish and we care a lot about ourselves as individuals, and that therapy and yoga and stuff like that is not good for the world. We should not care so much about ourselves and care more about the world.”
This guy has such a massive ego that he fears introspection. So much of his shit is projection that he'll never realise.
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Hes saying that caring for oneself is the only thing that matters, that others should fend for themselves.
Thiel is a pure randian. Hes not advocating for building strength to help build up a community. Hes advocating for communities where only the strong can afford to buy into, while everyone else dies.
Another attendee said the talk revealed a less well-known, more scholarly side of Thiel.
I call bullshit. How can it be that we went from people like Currie and Einstein to fucktards like this, and people actually nearly worship them?
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I'm curious, has anybody ever just asked Thiel why it would make a difference if the globe was ruled by one corporation instead of one government?
the Antichrist would use the threat of Armageddon, or some looming crisis, in order to consolidate control and create a “one-world government.”
So to avoid this, we need one corporation to rule them all instead? You literally have a single corporation building global access to everyone's data. It's like you're creating little nodes of authoritarian easy buttons, but ultimately it will be you with consolidated control of all these nodes. So consolidated control of all the authoritarian easy buttons.
Thiel’s Antichrist scenario is one in which a unified government suppresses technology to impose order, or armageddon, wherein AI takes over and ushers in the end of the world.
So as long as you, Peter Thiel, are the only one controlling it, we should believe that this won't happen?
I wonder if Thiel's ultimate scapegoat is progress/technology itself? He builds these fears while also making these claims about regulations and stagnation, so that he is allowed to build and control the technology that he knows will result in this scenario.
When everything goes to shit because he was allowed to knock down so many regulations and speed bumps, he will claim it's not his fault, it's just the inevitable progress of technology. As though this is the only way it ever could have been.
Because in his mind, this is the only possible outcome if technology progresses. So even though he's the one that builds it, it's not really his fault if it goes off the rails because it was going to happen one way or another. Oh well, at least he tried to save humanity.
This has all been making me think about mapping the human genome, and how people feared all the potential for a society like Gattaca where genetic discrimination determines your entire future.
It definitely wasn't an unfounded fear, and that was why we created laws and regulations. Most (ethical) scientists would agree that genetics as a field did not stagnate as result of these regulations.
If anything, we thankfully learned a lot about unintentional side effects of cloning, and the impact of epigenetics and telomeres on longevity via Dolly the sheep. But what if we had said, we figured it out, no need for regulations and stagnation let's make some human copies!
There was a doctor in China that ignored the rules and regulations, and jumped ahead and created a set of human twins with CRISPR technology. I think he is in prison now, and I don't think there has been any updates about the twins due to privacy concerns.
What that guy did wasn't just unethical bc it ignored the agreement about not wanting to live in a real life Gattaca. It was extremely dangerous bc even with CRISPR there is the possibility of off target effects, which can emerge immediately or even decades later in development.
Once again, digging a new hole to fill an old one. You fixed one problem, but you may have inadvertently caused an exponential number of new problems. That is straight up Nazi human experimentation, and the humans you created had zero consent.
Imagine what the world would look like today if somebody like Thiel had taken control of human genome research. Imagine Peter Thiel being allowed to just go full speed ahead with cloning and CRISPR technology in humans without any kind of knowledge or consideration of off target effects or downstream consequences. Where every educated or knowledgeable individual that tried to slow him down or warn him is completely ignored and dismissed.
Maybe the world would look like his fantasy where only a race with superior genetics exists. Everybody thrives and everybody is immortal, happy, and healthy as can be.
More likely it would be a world full of horrific genetic mutations and diseases with no treatment or cure. A world where everyone with money keeps cloning humans to bring them back to life, unable to understand or explain why they all seem to be falling apart more rapidly with each additional clone.
This guy has no fucking chill. His ego does not allow for the time to stop and think about all the unforeseen consequences that develop with progress. In his mind it's just inevitable, and the way he fantasizes about it working out is the only possible outcome.
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We should not care so much about ourselves and care more about the world
Jackass has a private bunker in New Zealand for when shit hits the fan
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Could American Evangelicals Spot the Antichrist? Here Are the Biblical Predictions: - Benjamin L. Corey
I've reviewed every prophecy on the Antichrist, and what I read blew my mind. (Updated with new signs, 6/10/2020)Benjamin L. Corey
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I don't know.
The fact that someone wants to listen to this man gives me a mix of respect and fear.
techies worship other techies. It's a cult of personality.
I've never met a techie who didn't have a weird fetishization thing going on for one or another of the tech oligarchs or their crazy nonsense theories about the world. a lot of them think code sprinting and doing drugs is some form of enlightenment that elevates them above the 'normies' who don't code and do drugs.
This is not just about tech or drugs, these people has deeper problems (thinking about Musk or Thiel). Narcissism? Inferiority complex? Probably both.
They always been on the wrong side of the history, they made plenty of money and still they look akward.
"We’ll either have the one government that destroys technology and takes over, or you have the AI that destroys everything,” he said.
He's literally calling himself the Antichrist and no-one is calling it out.
Unpopular opinion: he is onto something…
However, he is also projecting (and yes, both can be true simultaneously). This leaves me with another question: since Thiel is not a genius AND is a son of a bitch, there must be others that have a very similar idea; creating chaos to bring “order”. Who are they?
The thing is, he seems to be setting up a future where technology and progress becomes his ultimate scapegoat.
The future he describes is where we're headed if we continue down the path he's leading us.
Once he becomes the centralized figure controlling all the nodes of authoritarian easy buttons he created across the globe, he will just claim that he tried to prevent it, but ultimately it's just the inevitable result of progress. Like it was going to happen one way or another.
I wrote a very long comment about this, but essentially, dystopia is not an inevitable result of progress. That is why regulations exist. Look at the fears of dystopia following mapping of the human genome and the regulations that were created that have kept modern society from becoming Gattaca (although I know Thiel actually believes this too has led to "stagnation").
Basically, there is the reality of what can and will happen when you cut the brake lines in a speeding car, and the fantasy of people like Thiel who believe that cutting the brakes will allow you to go much faster, and as long as he's steering, his fantasy where the car suddenly flies instead of crashing might come true.
When it inevitably crashes he can claim it would have happened one way or the other, but at least he tried.
“I’m personally ready for horns to grow out of his head in the middle of talking,” said one attendee, who identified himself as Dick Gay. “That would be great.”Mr. Gay, who had flown in for the event from Los Angeles and said he was one of the investors of Sperm Racing (which is an actual thing wherein men compete to see whose sperm is “fastest” under a microscope), said he attended the University of Austin, or UATX, an “anti-woke” college reportedly partially funded by Thiel, and built his career around the principles outlined in Thiel’s book “Zero to One.”
I don't think "Dick Gay" is this man's real name.
Thiel’s Antichrist scenario is one in which a unified government suppresses technology to impose order, or armageddon, wherein AI takes over and ushers in the end of the world.Another attendee said the talk revealed a less well-known, more scholarly side of Thiel.
Scholarly, lol. What is it that makes people think that billionaires are more intelligent than they really are, while those billionaires are actually going off the deep end?
Isn't the first part what's going on in the US? I assume the AI part isn't part of the government here.
Also isn't Vance funded by Theil?
Now comic books are kinda out of date, they used to assume you couldn't be that evil and say you are while no one stops you from your plan while you talk about it non stop.
Now comic books are kinda out of date, they used to assume you couldn’t be that evil and say you are while no one stops you from your plan while you talk about it non stop.
I don't have an answer for your first two questions, but I hear you on your comic book take.
A GooD but BoooriNG AlternaTive to BeReal
Good because:
1) Can click images with both cameras
2) Daily notifications
3) Privacy focussed
3) If you want any new feature in the app, just email the devs and they will build and ship it in 15days or less
4) FREE, No Ads even
5) Can write long Journal entries
Boring bcoz:
1) Cant chat with friends
2) cant create gifs (videos)
3) cant see friends pics. Which is a deal breaker for me
So i have currently started using DD-DigitalDiary and clicking pics with DD-DigitalDiary everytime i get a BeReal notification.
Also i have kept BeReal in order to chat with girls & stuff. And see their pics since thats the only way you can see and catch up with their daily life's
I mostly post black bereals. Downloaded all my 2yr old BeReal pics and put it in my HardDisk
(i suggest you guys to do the same btw)
Have any of you guys switched from BeReal to DD-DigitalDiary or any other such application?
Is there any other better alternatives (than DD-DigitalDiary)?
NOTE: I use Android but for the community link ios, mac, linux alternatives as well if a better is available
I know many of u wont even know about DD-DigitalDiary coz it only has like 500 downloads or something, so here goes the link. DD-DigitalDiary
DD-DigitalDiary: Photo Journal - Apps on Google Play
Click 1 Image Everyday To REMEMBER your LIFE Foreverplay.google.com
European Commission proposes ending preferential treatment for Israeli trade
cross-posted from: feddit.org/post/18956969
The proposal would suspend the central plank of a decades-old free trade deal that removed tariffs on imports of goods between Europe and Israel.However, suspension of the agreement requires the backing of a weighted majority of EU capitals, meaning Germany or Italy would first need to lift their opposition to the 27-state union sanctioning Israel.
European Commission proposes ending preferential treatment for Israeli trade
If approved, EU move would represent major economic and diplomatic blow for IsraelJack Power (The Irish Times)
And that's only because they are defended by the US.
Orherwise, there should be a wide coalition of countries cooperating in a military intervention inside Israel to stop the genocide.
Courage™️
At this rate, only a few hundred thousand more Palestinian civilians will have to die for us to have a concept of a plan, for potentially having a meeting about doing something to talk about the possibility of sending a sternly worded letter to end the genocide.
Update: I did it! Old: Help! Installing Linux with no external media.
Edit: holy shit, I did it! The install media is booting off a little SSD partition! It was ultimately quite simple. Will update with instructions once done, for posterity.
Edit 2: I did it...and you can too! Here's what I did to install Linux from a disk partition on a gen 1 Surface Go with no functioning USB ports. I don't know if it's the ideal process, but it worked for me. Suggestions for refinements are gratefully accepted.
Prep Step: Make enough room for your partition and empty space for Linux by shrinking your Windows system partition. I made a 6 GB partition and left 30 GB free for Linux. If diskmgmt is being an asshole about it, turn off your page file and hibernate, then reboot to clear both files. Windows is now struggling along with a ~22 GB partition, 4 GB of free space, all visual enhancements turned off, and no page file. Tough shit, Windows: you exist to install Linux now.
Hot tip: you may have rebooted Windows a bajillion times already. If you're logged into a microsoft account, those jackanapes will lock your system down for two hours for excessive booting. It happened to me twice. Just select "forgot my password/pin", reset it, and you should get back in. Fuck you, Bill Gates!
- Download the install ISO for your desired Linux (or whatever, you're an adult) distro.
- Create a FAT32 partition with enough size for the contents of your install media.
2.1 Optional: Name it something silly to blow off steam. - Copy contents of ISO to new partition.
- Turn off secure boot in UEFI settngs since Grub2Win is NOT "secure" in the eyes of UEFI.
- Download and install Grub2Win.
- In Grub2Win, click "view partition list". Save the UUID of the partition you made for the install files for later use. It'll say it's not a legitimate EFI. Just ignore it - you don't need its validation.
- Click "Manage Boot Menu", then add a boot entry. I selected the template for Linux Mint, the distro I was installing, and used the example code to start. Don't save it yet, you need to fill in more info.
- Examine the boot.cfg file present in the distro install media for required parameters, then find the location of the linux kernel (vmlinuz) and initial ramdisk image (often initrd.lz or initrd.img) files. I literally just copied the "linux /casper/vmlinuz..." line to get my parameters.
- Update your code in the boot entry. Here's what mine ended up looking like:
set rootuuid=9889-99F1
getpartition uuid $rootuuid root
g2wsetprefix
linux /casper/vmlinuz root=UUID=$rootuuid persistent boot=casper username=mint hostname=mint iso-scan/filename=${iso_path} quiet splash --
initrd /casper/initrd.lz
if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then g2werror Linux load error ; fi- Save the boot entry. Reboot your system, then select your shiny new boot entry. Linux should start. Be patient, it's slow AF. Select the installation shortcut to get started. Everything proceeded smoothly for me.
Note: I left my Windows install as ANY perturbations to UEFI settings end up with it reverting to the Windows boot manager, which points at the Windows install only. If I didn't have Windows to run Grub2Win, I'd be out of luck. - After installation, I found the boot manager went back to the default Windows one and updating through Grub2Win did exactly nothing. I ended up uninstalling, then reinstalling Grub2Win, then it was fixed. Mostly. It still didn't have a Linux boot entry.
- Manually add your Linux boot entry. Similar to the install media, you need to tack on some paramaters. Here's what I ended up with, with the UUID being that of the new Linux install partition:
set rootuuid=4d23295b-03db-49d4-858b-e7403d983269
getpartition uuid $rootuuid root
g2wsetprefix
echo Boot disk address is $root
echo The boot mode is Partition UUID
linux $pathprefix/vmlinuz root=UUID=$rootuuid verbose
initrd $pathprefix/initrd.img
if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then g2werror Linux load error ; fiAnd that should do it! Secure boot remains off as Win2Grub's EFI isn't signed by Microsoft, so turning it back on will revert the system to the Windows boot manager. Just to tie things up: Fuck you, Bill Gates!
Hope that helps, and good luck!
Original:
This is a weird one. My partner was gifted a Surface Go model 1824 (gen 1) by their best friend, who unexpectedly died a couple of weeks back. It's nearing the Windows 10 end of support date, so my plan was to install Mint, but there's a hitch: the only goddamned USB port on the system is shot. It's the USB controller, which I've given up on trying to fix as it looks like a hardware issue.
I still want to install Linux because this thing now has super sentimental value. I've freed up 16 gb on the SSD, so I have some space to work with. There's a micro SD slot that still functions, but the stupid system doesn't support booting from it (although a Reddit post suggested you can still do so if you set it up in Grub, which I don't know how to do properly at all). The only thing I can think of is installing something on a partition or partitions that acts as install media, but I have no idea how to do that.
Ive tried using Grub2Win's ISOboot function with the Mint install ISO and I can get it to start, but it stalls out waiting ad nauseum for DHCP. I think it thinks it's a PXE install. Maybe my parameters are set wrong? Actual PXE is a no-go because no network adapter. I tried intently staring at the Mint ISO, then staring at the tablet; no data was transferred, but I did develop a headache.
I'm so, so stumped. Any ideas, anyone?___*___**___*-
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Ive personally had a surface and i think mint and ubunto did absolutely not work to install. (7Pro)
But arch worked (some kind nerds in the area helped me install it) and at least to me it was surprisingly easy
But you probably should use a backup in case you manage to break arch
This repo is your friend: github.com/linux-surface/linux…
GitHub - linux-surface/linux-surface: Linux Kernel for Surface Devices
Linux Kernel for Surface Devices. Contribute to linux-surface/linux-surface development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
Does the Surface Go have a SSD in it? And/or can you install a SSD into it? The specs do imply that it supports SSD so you should at least have a port in there for that. If so, as long as you have a spare machine you can install the Surface's SSD into another system, then install Linux Mint normally there, then re-install the SSD back into the Surface Go.
I've never done that but it's been mentioned a few times in the Linux Mint forums so apparently that is a roundabout way of installing on a machine without working USB ports. e.g.
forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic…
forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic…
Not sure how well Mint works specifically on Surface Go but it's worth a try, most likely you'd use the same steps to install other distros on there.
EDIT: Without a spare system you might be able to download then write the Mint ISO onto a second partition inside Windows and boot from the Mint installer partition afterwards. Not sure how well that would work but someone else in the forums mentioned it forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic…
Surface Go (1st Gen) specs and features - Microsoft Support
Get an overview of Microsoft Surface Go features, including available configurations and accessories, ports and connectors, and included software.support.microsoft.com
This
You can use an external ssd adapter too, or clone an existing install with Clonezilla (but should be resizable)
Depending on the specific model it is either an SSD or eMMC storage but you won't be able to get to it without major disassembly of the device which includes removing the glued-on screen.
This surface is an absolute bitch to repair
Yikes! Yeah if the SSD storage isn't easily accessible then it's not worth the disassembly headache.
If that is the case then OP's only option is to try writing the bootable ISO onto a second partition on the current drive while in Windows and boot off that partition.. assuming getting the USB port repaired is a no-go.
Random idea that might work:
Try to install ReFind from windows, it should work and allow you to boot from random thing more easily. Then try using it to boot from the SD card. Don't forget to turn off secure boot.
If that doesn't work, the right idea is indeed to "burn" the media on a partition, however you will also encounter some amount of headache with this option: an installer is not a single partition, but multiple ones. You could try only having the "main" partition on disk, and use refind to boot it too.
TL;DR: ReFind could help you. Turn off secure boot.
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Install Ventoy on internal hdd.
ventoy.net/en/doc_non_destruct…
I have a folder called ISO on my hdd. I just drop an iso there and reboot into ventoy.
I also added ventoy to my grub, but it was pretty hacky, something like adding the uuids of ventoy and my data partition.
You can even boot some isos directly from grub without ventoy.
Ventoy
Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO files. With ventoy, you don't need to format the disk again and again, you just need to copy the iso file to the USB drive and boot it.www.ventoy.net
I think we can safely rule out anything on the hardware side since accessing any internal component of the Surface Go is tantamount to destroying it.
Assuming Microsoft's UEFI implementation is somewhat standard, Grub2Win should set you on the right path. Have you inspected the underlying grub.cfg? Make sure the entry for the ISO doesn't make any attempt to boot from network.
Yeah, this thing is super inaccessible. Damn you, Gates!
You nailed it: I inspected the grub.cfg on the install media, which gave me the required parameters to get my hacked together install partition working. After that, it was really easy!
Using USB Headphones on Linux
Hi! I have an Audeze Maxwell. My wireless USB adapter broke. I tried bluetooth, but it only works well with my phone. I tried both a PCI-E bluetooth/wifi adapter and a USB bluetooth/wifi adapter on my desktop, and neither give a good connection. It's ok for listening to music, but like they share on Audeze's website -- although it may kind of work, the quality will be unpleasant.
I'm trying to instead plug a USB cable from my headphones to my computer, and I'm not sure how to get my ARCH LINUX install to recognize the USB.
When I plug in the computer, I got a couple popups. One saying
"USB Device Connected MediaTek Inc. MT6227 phone has been plugged in."
Then another notification that says
"USB Device Removed MediaTek Inc. MT6227 phone has been unplugged."
Bluetooth protocol support for audio is a bit of a mess, and many Bluetooth devices (especially knock off or no-name budget brand headphones/headsets) skimp on applying the standard properly.
Absent the absolute latest Bluetooth standard support (5.3 or better), you're usually limited by the protocol to very poor quality audio. It gets even worse of your device shows up as a headset inst4ad of heaphones/speaker since it has a mic return channel crammed into the very restricted bandwidth too.
The way (mostly quality) vendors have worked around this prior to the latest Bluetooth protocol versions was to use raw data channels with negotiated compression formats and a special "escape hatch" protocol supported by Bluetooth (A2DP). Both sides had to negotiate a shared compression algorithm and implement it for sending the compressed audio so it could be decided at the destination. Poorer quality or older headphones, and older Bluetooth Linix stacks didn't do this very well.
Not sure if any of that is applicable, but in general Bluetooth is always worse quality than wired because of bandwidth restrictions. And until Bluetooth 5.3 that added LE Audio and a related very efficient audio compression algorithm, it was a compatibility crap shoot.
It will depend on the drivers that Audeze Maxwell supply? I can't see any USB drivers for Linux beyond the dongle but they may exist.
However if they have a 3.5mm port then I'd use that. I have a Sony headset and while I don't have any issues with Bluetooth, I do like to use 3.5mm analogue conenctions to save battery (even with noise cancelling on the battery lasts way longer off Bluetooth). I bought a long 3.5mm cable online and plug it into the front of my PC. No USB or Bluetooth faff, it just works, and at high quality.
However note that if you want the mic to work too it will depend on whether the headset's 3.5mm jack is set up for both audio and mic (if it's good quality it should be), plus you will need a 4pin 3.5mm plug and cable to pick up the mic from the headset and cable instead of the common 3pin audio only plug. At the other end if your pc has separate 3.5mm audio and mic jacks you will need an adaptor that splits the audio/mic into two cables to plug in to both jacks. If it's a desktop there will be separate jacks around the back although sometimes the front jack may be a combined mic/audio jack, or you may also have one joint jack if it's a laptop. If you do need to split the audio and mic then you can find these adaptors and also 4pin 3.5mm cables on ebay or amazon.
Edit: Just in case you're not aware - an audio only 3.5mm cable has 2 coloured bands on the plug (splitting it into 3 metal rings or pins). An audio + mic 3.5mm cable has 3 coloured bands on the plug (splitting it into 4 metal rings or pins).
Edit 2: sorry look for 4 pole 3.5mm rather than 4 pin; you'll see the better quality stuff when searching as pole is the correct term!
This should just be working if it’s standard USB audio; I’d recommend just researching issues with USB headphones in general. Maybe also try another cable.
If nothing works, it looks like you can use a double 3.5mm cable on this model, which pretty much every large retailer with an electronics section should have.
Possibly a stupid question, but are you using the wireless dongle that came with the headphones? I have the same headphones and run arch as well, and my pc recognizes the dongle as “Audeze Maxwell usb” or something like that.
I’m running pipewire for my audio system and iirc it worked out of the gate with these headphones, though I did some modifications to get digital surround sound working too.
It works great but only with the wireless dongle. It works poorly with Bluetooth, and doesn't work at all with direct USB connection. My original question was hoping to see if I could quickly resolve direct USB connection with the headphones since that seems like it may be the easier to get a great connection.
I'm also on ArchLinux!
Big Tech Walkout 2025
In case anyone is interested in a digital exodus:
mastodon.social/@patrickleavy/…
ETA a link with more details: rebeltechalliance.org/collecti…
Patrick Leavy (@patrickleavy@mastodon.social)
@watchfulcitizen@goingdark.social @Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange a small resistance step you can take is to starve #bigtech of data.Patrick Leavy (Mastodon)
Interesting timing to read this :
Earlier today, I left to do errands and pick up groceries and managed to forget my cellphone. First thing I thought I was "oh no, can't play my music" but then I just kinda drove and did my errands.
It was kinda nice not to have my cellphone during the car ride. Had a feeling of being "untethered".
I just listen to public radio or local FM music stations.
But then I'm an elderly millennial, so. Until recently, the fanciest feature in my car was a CD player.
Hi there, fair enough that's true for now, but we tried to future proof it by putting Freemium based on what they say here
simplex.chat/faq/#how-are-you-…
"What will be the business model?
We are focusing on product-market fit, and as such the business model is still a work in progress. However, the app will have a freemium model with extra features or capabilities for paid users (taking into consideration a potential formula like 5% paying $5/month is $3/user/year - ~90% gross profit margin)."
I'm afraid that the crowd that cares about BigTech meddling in our world has already done all of those. It's the other majority that we somehow need to convince
Personally, I'm done with preaching. I just use the better services when I can, so when the eyes open, I will be ready to be a guide
BTW, wasn't Signal so-so? I don't remember what the critique was but I remember making mental note that it's also not a solution
But Signal is a solution (if you can't self-host nor convince your friends to use something whatsapp-y).
funded by three-letter agencies
That for sure can feel iffy but if the code is sound and the keys are stored on client only, that does not have to mean they can snoop. Leveraging access might be a vector, though.
The agencies do need something that is a. really secure and b. present in global population, so it's not a dead giveaway "that guy is a spy"
using your phone number
They haven't dropped that yet?
Freedom Flotilla departs Tunisia for Gaza after attacks, weather delays
An international activist flotilla seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza left Tunisia on Saturday, after a stopover in the North African country marked by weather delays and suspected drone attacks.
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mrdown
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