Since October 1, 'Israeli' forces have detained 223 international activists participating in the Gaza-bound Sumud Flotilla.
The flotilla, which aims to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, has faced repeated interceptions at sea, with authorities labeling many of the attempts as illegal under international law.
Despite more than 20 such interventions, one vessel, the Mikeno, managed to evade 'Israeli' forces and successfully reach Palestinian waters according to the Sumud Flotilla tracker. The breakthrough marks a rare success for the flotilla.
As many others have noted, this is probably just a glitch or already has been intercepted. Its hasnt moved for hours. The IDF would just bomb them if they ever got even close to shore.
The assumption of a malfunction was mentioned on one of the the social media accounts of the GSF and by one of the people on another boat last night during the livestream. But you can also just use your own head. The IDF has full coverage of the entire area with drones and satellites. Nothing will get through if they dont want it to. There is no slipping by undetected or anything like that. They have thermal cameras on those drones so not even at night.
If that boat was actually ever there then it was either already captured or somehow locked in place by the IDF or it was emptied and drifted there.
My friend that works in a sea rescue org always rants to me about how Frontex knows everything going on in the mediterranean sea. When their rescue group finds a sinking boat with people in the water they often struggle to find all the people in the waves. Frontex with their drones flying above them knows about every single person in the water, but they dont share any information with civilians...
The flotilla, which aims to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, has faced repeated interceptions at sea, with authorities labeling many of the attempts as illegal under international law.
The fuck?! Israel is illegal under international law. Fuck all the fucking way off.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Wednesday expelled all remaining ‘Israeli’ diplomats in the country over ‘Israel's’ interception of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla and reported detention of two Colombian activists.
Petro said two Colombian women, "who were engaged in human solidarity activities with Palestine," were detained by ‘Israeli’ forces in international waters.
In a statement, his office said Manuela Bedoya and Luna Barreto were part of the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) and called for their immediate release.
They changed it quite some while ago but you were still able to get books in the older format by using an older Kindle (or Kindle app version). I haven’t checked myself, but heard rumours that this loophole was closed recently.
It's still working, set myself up the other day. You have to use a specific version of the app, an older one, and turn off Internet when installing so you can toggle the auto update off. There is a fork of Alfs code, but I just used the regular one and it was fine.
Epubor Ultimate is the only solution I know of that was updated to handle Amazon's change from earlier this year. It's a commercial package, but worth the money. It took them a couple of months to work around the last changes, but they did it. I expect they will continue to do that as needed going forward.
Hiya! Any recommendations for a nice flash for the Sony A7 series?
I currently own an A7iii, but I'm debating an upgrade to the A7iv or A7v whenever it's released. I mostly shoot with my Sony 40mm G, Tamron 35-150mm, and Tamron 17-28mm.
Links to good buying guides would be great, too! (not AI generated slop recapping Amazon's top 10)
Budget is rather arbitrary as long as price/quality is upheld.
Türkiye froze the assets of numerous individuals and entities connected to Iran's uranium enrichment activities on Wednesday, coordinating with broader international efforts to pressure Tehran over its nuclear program.
The decision, issued Oct. 1 under presidential decree number 10438, targets people and organizations involved in Iran's nuclear development program. The move comes as the United States imposed parallel sanctions on Iranian weapons procurement networks, marking a coordinated response to renewed concerns about Iran's nuclear capabilities.
Türkiye's asset freezes affect individuals and companies across multiple sectors, including Iranian nuclear facilities, shipping companies, energy firms, and research centers. Among the targeted entities are the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, several banks, and companies involved in uranium conversion and nuclear fuel production.
Unfortunately, if you've been using those third-party clients for a long time, you know Google plays a game of cat and mouse with them, to discourage users from using them:
Google breaks something or other (usually the player API) or Google blocks your IP because it detects a non-Google player.
The developers of those clients play catch-up, make their clients work again for a while.
Google breaks them again. Rinse. Repeat.
And Google now having free rein to be as abusive as they want under the Trump regime, it's not getting any better ☹️
The developers who react most quickly to Google's shenanigans are the FUTO developers behind Grayjay: when Google breaks it, usually they have a fix within hours, if not less. And there's a reason for that: they're paid to do it. Incidentally, I encourage you to purchase a FUTO license: it's money well spent to encourage FUTO. They've really earned it.
The Newpipe developers are also fairly quick to fix their client. Not always, but they do a pretty decent job.
Freetube however can take many days to get fixed. For instance, the native Freetube player is currently broken and it's been broken for a week.
When Google plays with everybody's balls, if you're on mobile, at least Grayjay will almost always get the job done, so you don't have to compromise your privacy and hit the official client.
On the desktop however, ~~unless you have an ARM64 machine and you use Grayjay as a desktop app in Waydroid - which is a totally valid solution that works great, in case you didn't know~~ [EDIT: this is incorrect: there is in fact an x64 Grayjay desktop client - Thanks @portnull@lemmy.dbzer0.com], Freetube will sadly let you down regularly for a long time.
The official workaround recommended by the Freetube developers when Google breaks their player is to use an external player. But there are two problems with that:
If you don't use the right external players - which Google likely broke too - or the player isn't configured to use the latest and greatest Google evasion code, it's not going to work.
When spawning Freetube with a URL (typically by LibRedirect from your browser), Freetube ignores the external player and tries to play the video with its broken internal player anyway. You can always manually tell it to use the external player after it's failed trying to play the video itself, but it's an extra step, and you end up running both Freetube and the external player just to view a Youtube video from a website.
So I figured I'd post a little guide on how to setup an external video player that works with Freetube (and gets fixed quickly when Google breaks it) and how to spawn it directly from your browser to view a video and bypass LibRedirect / Freetube entirely.
This little guide is mostly for Linux. If you're not running Linux, the principle should be the same, but the details of how to make this work are different of course.
So the player you need is SMPlayer. SMPlayer is a great mpv player frontend in its own right. Don't worry, both mpv and SMPlayer are usually available in most distros, so you can install it normally with your favorite package manager.
But the thing that makes SMPlayer great is, to play Youtube video, it can use yt-dlp as a backend to fetch the video from Youtube:
And it turns out, the developers of yt-dlp are usually very quick to unfuck Google's fuckeries and make it work again. Almost as quick as FUTO's developers: when Google breaks things, yt-dlp is usually one of the first Youtube clients to start working again.
The problem is, the version of yt-dlp that comes in most distributions is usually hopelessly behind, so it won't work with your distro's official package.
To use the latest and greatest yt-dlp with SMPlayer, you need to use the version in the Github repo. To do this:
Clone the repo (for example in your home directory): git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp.git
Make yt-dlp available in your PATH: ln -s ~/yt-dlp/yt-dlp.sh ~/.local/bin/yt-dlp
Then if you invoke yt-dlp from any directory, it should start it correctly:
$ yt-dlp
Usage: yt-dlp [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]
yt-dlp: error: You must provide at least one URL.
Type yt-dlp --help to see a list of all options.
Then you can try if SMPlayer now plays a Youtube video correctly: smplayer https://youtu.be/jNQXAC9IVRw
Finally, configure Freetube to use SMPlayer as an external player:
Now try to play a video from Freetube: it should open SMPlayer and SMPlayer should play the video correctly.
When Google breaks yt-dlp again, simply go into the repo and do a git pull --recurse-submodules. Do this regularly until the yt-dlp folks work their magic and fix it, which should happen a lot quicker than fixing the internal Freetube player.
Finally, how to spawn SMPlayer directly from the browser:
Install the RunWith browser extension: this little thing is a simple tool to spawn an external program from the browser and it's really underrated. Not terribly user-friendly to install but it does the job fine.
In the RunWith extension preferences, configure RunWith like so:
Then if you right-click on a Youtube video link, you'll get an option in the context menu to open it with SMPlayer through RunWith:
Guidelines I have encountered this bug in the latest release of FreeTube. I have encountered this bug in the official downloads of FreeTube. I have searched the issue tracker for open and closed is...
Thank you for the recommendation. I have been wanting to try out the FUTO apps (which grayjay) for a while but couldn't find it on f-droid. It looks like they have their own repo which you need to add.
Grayjay is really much more than a YouTube frontend. It's a cross-platform video player, which I find is the only way to watch PeerTube videos! Outside of PieFed! And I think is really the best way to end YTs reign.
I use FreeTube since time with the SMplayer, or using direct the SMplayer, entering the Video URL. SMplayer is a Gem. It works also in Windows in a similar way, described in your great post, not only in Linux, setting SMplayer as extern player in FreeTube and when FreeTube won't play the Video in the list, clicking on the little square icon at the bottom left of the video thumbnail and it will open in the SMplayer. except few times in Videos with special protections, these can be watched only in YouTube itself, luckily only few.
Thanks for the suggestion to use sm-player via freetube with youtube-dl -- It's been frustrating recently trying to watch the odd video on youtube (which is essentially a monopoly if you ask me).
Ethics, control over your own content, the possibility to avoid bot-farms, censorship, a more engaged audience, the possibility to make content that is true to the creators wishes, and doesn't have to conform to algorithms that often change. There's a lot of upsides to it - but feel free to keep the shitty system going, for your comfort.
Their stance on open source is really questionable, I just can't buy their excuses when there's so many counterexamples out there of both keeping their software actually open/libre and with a revenue stream
I'm on a Mac, so I have to wait for the FreeTube community to fix the problems getting imposed by Google that is putting all it's efforts in further enshittification of the YouTube API as it seems.
without a proxy google can still connect your watching habits to you by IP, and see how often you pause or rewind, but at least they can't feed you with garbage you don't need and can't fingerprint your client and how you move your mouse.
You guys ever wonder if maybe if the answer is to stop stealing s*?
There are two ways to be honest with normal companies:
1/ You pay them and they stop monetizing your data 2/ You don't patronize their services and you choose a competitor instead
Unfortunately, with Google as with most other surveillance capitalism monopolies, it doesn't work that way:
1/ If you don't pay Google, they violate your privacy and abuse your data. If you pay them, they don't stop: you just gave them extra money because you're gullible. 2/ Youtube is a virtual monopoly. There is no valid competition to speak of. And unfortunately, a lot of the societal discourse now happens on Youtube. So it's kind of unavoidable.
Therefore, Google being the abusive monopoly that it is, you have no way to deal with the essential service they provide honestly and pay your fair share - which I honestly would gladly do - without compromising your privacy. They put themselves in a position to be this abusive.
Therefore, I consider my duty towards paying honestly for Youtube waived. That's why I'm happy to pay for a FUTO license for the work they do with the Grayjay client, but I'll never give Google a cent: FUTO respects me while Google spits in my face.
who is the thief here? One who wants outsized profit beyond 10 generations of children? Or the average overworked joe who hates dealing with the 3rd 2 minute ad on a 10 minute video?
Maybe realise that there's more important things to worry than denying "projected profits" from a billion dollar megacorp which steals regularly from people (in the form of bribing politicians to make policies that benefit them and disadvantage actual people, or destroying the earth for training LLMs, or stealing content to use for the same LLMs)
Dont think we all should need to suffer because creators and ad agencies "need" to make a living. The entire internet economy is built on centralized platforms owned by big tech now. It sucks so much.
Not much remains of the original ideas of the web. People think social media is the web.
Fair enough, no content then. Those people who quite their jobs to make the streams are only doing it because they get paid. They're not going to spend 60 hours a week moving over to peertube and having to go back to their 9-5.
All the people who will make content for nothing are already on Peertube. If you don't want anything else, you're already good to go.
Very thought out write-up! I generally use Freetube, as I'm primarily a desktop user, but since it's been down, I learned how to use yt-dlp, and picked up some GUIs that sit on it to try out. It's been a little surreal watching everything as a self contained file, but almost nostalgic in a way too.
That said, I look forward to when things get patched up on the Freetube front.
It’s been a little surreal watching everything as a self contained file
Yes the main .py is quite a pile of code 🙂
It's one of those projects that grew organically and never got reorganized. I maintain a niche open-source project like that that has a few dozen kilobyte main Python file and I'm ashamed of it. But then it's so niche I don't really want to spend the time reorganizing it.
Just so you know, if you like freetube, you can configure the external player to mpv, which underneath uses yt-dlp when streaming, and use the button to load the external player. Of course one can also launch smplayer, which underneath is using mpv, which underneath...
But the thing is content creators don't move out of YT cause they're there to monetize in the first place. So this thing seems never ending no matter alternatives like peertube exist.
Just a heads up for people though the method you describe where you set a hotkey to open a video externally to mpv currently isn't working as google has essentially borked youtube-dl. Just tried it right now via qutebrowser and youtube-dl can't read the urls anymore.
Hmm, youtube-dl? I believe it's no longer the one to use, it's yt-dlp, and mpv has support yt-dlp for quite some time, but it could be any player as long as it supports yt-dlp. What I've noticed is that nothing gets as fast to fix these YT issues than yt-dlp. It's working fine for me on Artix for quite some time. And unless wanting ton use a browser, that's what freetube has been documenting every time receiving related bugs. See for example:
Guidelines I have encountered this bug in the latest release of FreeTube. I have encountered this bug in the official downloads of FreeTube. I have searched the issue tracker for open and closed is...
Is Invidous still a thing? I tried it earlier this year and it couldn't play a single video, I gave up after reading about extracting tokens from a google account
I have been using yt.dlp with links generated through freetube. This is the first Ive heard of a desktop version for Grayjay Ill check it and consider a license.
Russ Vought, director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget, and a top Trump administration official, said the U.S. Department of Energy will cut funding for energy projects in 16 Democratic states.
Republican states working on similar efforts — such as Texas, the largest producer of wind energy in the U.S. — were not among Vought’s list of cuts, despite also receiving funding from the Department of Energy.
Thats ridiculous, but I guess it's better than them cutting everything....
Building an accurate model of Earth’s climate requires a lot of data. Photography reveals the extreme efforts scientists have undertaken to measure gases, glaciers, clouds and more.
The glaciers of California's Sierra Nevada are disappearing as temperatures rise. Scientists recently found that the glaciers probably have never before melted in human history.
I'm the other way. I'd rather have battery life on cell phones, and turn the refresh rate down.
On a desktop, where the power usage is basically irrelevant, then sure, I'll crank the refresh rate way up. One of the most-immediately-noticeable things is the mouse pointer, and that doesn't exist on touch interfaces.
there's probably a lot to improve here, took forever to get this working, did not do a cleanup pass, jfc this took forever, replace tofi with your menu of choice, thought people should have this.
That's tofi, the dmenu alternative I'm using, I set its height and width, the oga is a media file, that plays the same ding as a volume change so you know what sink you're playing from now.
I don't like doing that because i'm working on nixos which already makes it complicated but i also have a script that fully sets up my entire system and that would add some complexity to that, plus i just have a strange aversion to making it a bash script purely because it would be the only common function in my setup that's on a bash script
and it wouldn't be that hard to convert it to one for future debugging anyway
I can see how that could be a hassle on nixos and if you don't have more scripts
FWIW, I use chezmoi for stuff like this, I guess it might be easier to make it work with nixos by setting up chezmoi in HOME, instead of defining scripts directly
You need 3 backticks to get a code formatting block.
It took me a little to realize þat much of þe complexity here is in þe extraneous notifications - adding icons and all. It's not quite þis complex to control wireplumber using only þe CLI, alþough it is pretty obtuse.
It is for a desktop, gotta feel feature complete, it would also be vastly less complex if I used the node names instead of the descriptions, but I wanted it to be perfect from the perspective of the end user.
I don't think it's much worse than what you have to do with pulseaudio, TBH. Here is my Haskell take on switching devices: github.com/balsoft/lambda-laun… and Rust take on displaying device status changes as notifications: github.com/balsoft/simple-osd-… .
Israeli navy is moving to block a flotilla carrying aid toward Gaza. Activists onboard are demanding humanitarian access, calling the blockade illegal. Reports say the ships are being shadowed as they approach. Situation is still developing.
Microsoft says its Agent Mode in Excel has an accuracy rate of 57.2 percent in SpreadsheetBench, a benchmark for evaluating an AI model’s ability to edit real world spreadsheets.
They probably view that as a statistic worth bragging about. It's not. If Excel got calculations right 57.2% of the time it would be completely worthless.
That’s not at all what this means. In this instance, 70% is basically “human level”. For AI to already get 57% it means that it’s approaching the same level as people do in Excel.
I wonder where that "human accuracy" statistic is coming from. Plenty of people don't know how to read and interpret data, much less use excel in the first place. There's a difference between 1/4 of people in the workforce not being able to complete a task, and a specialized AI not being able to complete a task. Additionally, this is how you get into the KPI as a goal rather than a proxy issue. AI will never understand context isn't directly provided in the workbook. If you introduced a new drink at your restaurant in 2020 AI will tell you that the introduction of the drink caused a 100% decrease in foot traffic since there's no line item for "global pandemic". I'm not saying AI will never be there, but people using this version of AI instead of actual analysis don't care about the facts and just want an answer and for that answer to be cheap.
As I’ve said many times, though not in this topic - AI is a tool to be used, and using it is a skill that needs to be learned.
For your pandemic example, that’s something that you would need to provide the AI with the context of. The joke of a “prompt engineer” being a job soon actually has merit, in that you want people who know how to use their tools the best. It’s constantly learning through iteration to give the AI a specific instruction set to get the results you want/need.
I asked copilot to look through my every spreadsheet and find how many instances of a category occurred. I was curious to see if it was any good. Gave me 2 different numbers. Neither were correct.
So let me fast forward a bit, ->underpaid stressed out techworkers in the global south pretending to be AI for incompetent upper management in wealthy countries?
Excel is one place where AI makes sense. All the data is there, in a nice structured and typed format with headings etc. Easily verifiable and to provide the reasoning for its work.
LLMs lose context over a short session. They all have input limits. Very small input limits usually. Best it can probably do is suggest formulas for you based on your natural language, maybe some copy/paste. Which means it can beat a 9 year old, great news everyone! Or show a help article on pivot tables (which the help function already does!)
Excel is very simple to work with, hence its ubiquity. LLMs also get shit wrong about half the time, way more than half with difficult things ime. Meaning they cost experienced operators time, a few studies are showing this now with coding. And are expensive as fuck. And slow as fuck. And reduce capacity for learning. Meaning they actually cap what excel can achieve, as the user won't grow at the same rate, renoving the one advantage excel actually has: the learning rate is phenomenal
The C-Suite which insisted on this integration is basically an subservient idiot themselves at this stage who doesn't understand their product, their market fit, or their userbase. They should replace thenselves with an LLM
I think you didn’t even read the article or read up about this integration.
This isn’t just an LLM, it’s Agentic AI.
AI is a tool that needs to be learned how to be used properly. Anyone can pick it up and get results that are “good enough“, but in the right hands what can be done is incredible - just like with any tool.
Look at something like minecraft as a perfect example of what can be done with a tool in the right hands.
Most people don’t understand “AI” as it is, and mistakenly think it’s just a school assignment cheating tool and a chat bot that makes things up.
People in here have been saying since LLMs can’t do maths perfectly it’s terrible for numbers, but they can’t see that it doesn’t need to do maths here because it’s in excel and excel has formulas and functions that can.
It’s crazy how the mere mention of AI makes some people lose any and all semblance of critical thinking and intelligence.
Excel is very simple to work with
Ok so your idea of excel is just what your average person might do at home with it - that’s not what or who this stuff is for.
And it will fuck up around half of even the simple formulas. This is really bad, and the idiots in charge should feel bad. Excel basically runs the world and they are about to fuck it up
I swear none of you guys have even attempted to use AI to do data analysis. I have, I built a MCP and integrated a copilot agent into Teams which has access to specific database data, and refined the rules for it to the point where the CFO rigorously tested it (and still does) and trusts the results it returns.
Video game openings help set the stage for the game itself. What are your favorite video game openings? Could be the title screen, or the first bit in-game before the play starts. Could be that you like the music, or that they have a clever twist, or that they're technically impressive. Bonus points if you can link to a PeerTube or YouTube clip of them to let other people here who haven't yet seen them watch them!
It starts off with such hope, the promise of new beginnings. Then the the initial sense that something is wrong.
Hurry back and the adagio swells as you realize the emensity of the tragedy. Then the desperate attempt to save as much of what's left as you can before fleeing.
Promessa de campanha do presidente Lula, texto é o único projeto previsto na pauta; proposta prevê alíquota progressiva de até 10% para rendimentos acima de R$ 600 mil por ano.
Câmara aprova projeto que isenta do Imposto de Renda quem ganha até R$ 5 mil, promessa de campanha de Lula. Veja como fica a alíquota para rendimentos maiores.
Before we start, I want to stress that I deleted my facebook account since 2015 (almost 10 years now). Deleted = find the the delete account page, agree to delete and do not log back in. In 2012, I tried to delete but ended up logging back in due to addiction. Before I deleted, I switched the email I was using to some temp email.
Also, this is not some story I pulled out of my ass to get upvotes here on on reddit, r/nosleep. It is true and it shows how fucked up and how deep our privacy is being violated.
Anyway, as this is about privacy, here are somethings that are very disturbing:
1) Back in 2015 (months after the account was "officially deleted"), while browsing the web with a different browser but the same computer and same network, I got ads on the side from facebook showing "My Account Name and 100 like this". It even retained the profile pic I used before deleted.
2) This one is tricky, I'm not sure if I'm paranoid but it scares the shit out of me. Months ago, my family wanted to check out the menu items of a local restaurant before going there. The menu was posted on facebook and half of it is covered unless you log in.
Nobody in my family uses facebook. Nothing on phones or computers.
So we decide to create a fake account with a fake name using a temporary email. This is before the identity validation bullshit. We log on using a burner computer at a different wifi. After viewing the menu, we scrolled down a bit.
Remember, this is a blank account: no friends, no pages, no likes...etc. So there was nothing on the news feed. We clicked on some local posts, liked some others just to get the newsfeed populate.
This time we can see posts on the feed. As we scrolled down, we saw posts from this news sites and from local celebrities, game ads...etc. There was this random post. Underneath, it showed "A B C and 100 like this".
The problem? A B C is my actual last name, middle and first name !
I have never ever used A B C on any facebook accounts. Nick name, yes so like: Z C. But never A B C. In the messages of the deleted account, sometimes I use A like when a friend talk to you using your name: hey sup A. The middle B i never use.
Those log in with Facebook buttons tracking you all over the web even if you don't log in with them.
My guess maybe a website like LinkedIn for example had your middle name and facebook used that to build your full name on your deleted account (that's still floating around out there by the long last of it)
Months ago, my family wanted to check out the menu items of a local restaurant before going there. The menu was posted on facebook and half of it is covered unless you log in.
Brother....
Ask for a fucking paper menu
Walk the fuck out
Please. Don't allow this. I walked away from a place just yesterday because they wanted me to download an app and create a login and give them my phone number just to order some fucking food. Don't tolerate this horseshit.
The funny part? It was a food truck park. I took 5 steps to my left and walked up to a different window.
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party has pledged to ditch the U.K.’s flagship climate law if they get back into government, in the latest signal that the party is firmly walking back on net zero commitments.
Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party has pledged to ditch the U.K.’s flagship climate law if they get back into government, in the latest signal that the party is firmly walking back on net zero commitments.
A judge in Idaho is blocking the release of graphic photos taken by investigators after Bryan Kohberger killed four University of Idaho students in 2022
The Dekaif channel has 434 videos, but YouTube is only showing 275 to clients, whether logged in or not, whether yt-dlp or official access.
This isn't the first channel I've witnessed this, and weirder stuff, on. Another example is - it is accessible on Grayjay, yet not on YouTube, meaning (I think) that publicly shared videos are being deindexed, and yet they are still hosted.
You used to be able to take the video code from the URL (everything after '?v=' and before '&') and get the exact video in search results. Not now. The second YouTuber, Sparky, has 35 uploads, only 9 of which are visible. And I can attest that at least one of the remaining 26 is hosted, but invisible. I don't even know how it came up using Grayjay but not YouTube or Revanced.
Basically, there's a TON of shady underhanded shit happening at YTHQ and everyone needs to jump ship to Odysee, Peertube or some platform that won't be clogged with AI. This is bad for everyone.
I'm posting it here mainly because I verified my findings with yt-dlp, and this new bs is successfully thwarting my attempts to archive.
3rd Oct edit: I am seeing massive differences in indexed videos versus archived videos. I am currently aggregating but the definitely affected videos range from 10% to 50%
All the stuff that doesn't make it to the main channel!
Contacts
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Website: saltraiders.com
YouTube is not doing good. I get flickering on Apple TV. On my Mac videos play without sound (computer isn’t muted) or they take way too long to load. Granted I don’t pay, but wow. Google is not doing so well.
I too see issues, but my clients are all some form of alternate app so I don't have a true baseline. On Grayjay some videos just stop loading halfway through, and I can't view it unless I switch to one of the other clients, and SmartTubeNext and YouTube with Sponsorblock both give me about a minute of black screen. NGL I prefer the black to unnecessarily invasive advertising
You shouldn't really have to pay, not when advertising is the way Google funds everything. Iirc advertising is 90% of their substantial income.
I am seeing more rules and system changes hurt creators, and more creators quit, complain about it, and/or actively recommend adblockers and Patreon donations.
and SmartTubeNext and YouTube with Sponsorblock both give me about a minute of black screen
I just read somewhere that it's because clients need to wait until the pre-roll ad ends. until that the servers will block requests to the actual video for your client
I'm not, but the sheer amount (nearly 50% in some cases) is suspicious. Save getting answers from the creators themselves, best I can do is keep collating data. Some of the affected channels' videos have no harmful content and millions of views per.. But I don't fully know yet.
Is there a reason you're not doing this? If I made income from you tube I'd want someone to draw my attention to this.
I'd think that a "hey, I noticed this weird thing, is that you delisting or is yt being shady?" type communication would be appreciated and help flesh out the picture.
I am not an established researcher, so I believe I have no legacy to justify a response from busy folk. I was referring less to myself not reaching out, and more to the unlikelihood of any responses. I am absolutely messaging creators who I see have a significant disparity between published and indexed videos.
Not sure these channels even are (they look like slop vids) , but YouTube is supposed to be taking the ban hammer to low effort and slop videos starting this month. A little housekeeping will be greatly appreciated, as the slop/low effort/"look at me bro!" videos have gotten out of hand.
It's ok: Google and all other ad-supported search is about to go the way of the dinosaur as soon as local AI search catches on. When your own PC runs a search for you, it basically googles on your behalf and you never see those ads.
Someone would have to pay for the API calls though. And that tends to mean either pay a subscription or view ads. There's no technical reason your local LLM couldn't call a search engine's API to give you an ad-free search experience, and in fact you don't need an LLM to run a local ad-free search frontend. But there is a commercial reason, namely that whoever runs the search engine API will want payment. It would be some progress to have an ad-free search subscription, but it wouldn't get around all the megacorp fuckery that decides what search results you get.
Not to mention that the scraped indexes can and should be shared. Unfortunately what OP is seeing may be a move to thwart this type of brute force scraping, and might resolve as dynamically assigned domain addresses, where the URL of a set object is temporarily assigned and streamed only to a single or group of IP addresses that request it within a given timeframe before being rotated out until found in search again and then reassigned a new URL, etc. This is a frankly stupid use of resources, but can effectively be used to prevent crowdsourced indexes from proliferating, and to punish IPs or even MAC addresses or browser fingerprints associated with downloading and reuploading videos which almost certainly have stegnographic fingerprinting embedded that associate with who the video was served up to at the time it was downloaded.
Also, you know what would make this all even worse? Laws requiring that people prove their identity in order to consume content or pull videos... just like age verification laws now being passed in several countries. What a coincidence.
It's not going to change everything. Why would you ever use an LLM for anything information related ever? I can make up wrong answers just as fast as it can.
I really hope that this is a joke and I'm making a fool of myself.
You're joking right? "making up answers" in the case of search results just means a dead link. If you get a good link 99% of the time and don't have to use an enshitified service, that's good enough for 99% of people. Try again is the worst case scenario.
Finding search terms is the one task I consistently use LLMs for. They did not say that though, they said replacing traditional search with LLMs, that traditional search is about to "go the way of the dinosaur". I dont trust any local LLM to accurately recall anything it read.
Not to mention that once we gain dependence on LLMs, which is something big tech is trying really hard to achieve right now, it will not be all that difficult for the creators to introduce biases that give us many of the same problems as search engines. Product placement, political censorship, etc. There would not be billions of dollars in investment if they thought they weren't going to get anything out of it.
(the best) Local LLMs are FOSS though, if bias is introduced it can be detected and the user base can shift away to another version, unlike centralized cloud LLMs that are private silos.
I also don't think LLMs of any kind will fully replace search engines, but I do think they will be one of a suite of ML tools that will enable running efficient local (or distributed) indexing and search of the web.
First of all, they are not FOSS. I know it seems tangential to the discussion, but it's important because biases cannot be reliably detected without the starting data. You should also not trust humans to see bias because humans themselves are quite biased and will generally assume that the LLM is behaving correctly if it aligns with their biases, which can be shifted in various ways over time, too.
Second, local LLMs don't have the benefit of free software where we can modify them freely or make forks if there are problems. Sure, there's fine tuning, but you don't get full control that way, and you need access to your own tuning data set. We would really just have the option to switch products, which doesn't put us much further ahead than using the closed off products available online.
I'm all for adding them to the arsenal of tools, but they are deceptively difficult to use correctly, which makes it so hard for me to be excited about them. I hardly see anyone using these tools for the purposes they are actually good for, and the things they are good for are also deceptively limited.
Google search: "scientific articles about (whatever)" Then you get tons of ads and irrelevant results.
LLM search: "Find me scientific articles about (whatever)" Then you get just the titles and links (with maybe a short summary).
It's 100% better and you don't have to worry about hallucinations since you it's wasn't actually trying to find an answer... Just helping you perform a search.
I agree with local search, but I prefer more of a traditional algorithm-based search to generative AI. A solution I've seen (that is far more attainable than building your own search engine) is hosting a metasearch engine, which collates results from search engines, based on your own preferences of results. Or perhaps using someone else's established server if their preferences align with yours. Localised (on-device) search will be a gamechanger in many ways, but I believe a meaningful version of that is far off and potentially impractical to implement.
youtube fucking sucks now. Seriously. All i ever used it for was NEWS/POLITICS and HISTORY/RELIGION and it asked me for my id. The only childish thing i can even imagine it flagged was frogger overwatch. Now, as im downloading stuff, a bunch of the political content i like is 'unavailable' and near impossible to download. Join peertub. Please.
Youtube seems to be blocking access to a seriously large amount of publicly listed videos
Creators can choose whether their videos should be accessible and whether they should be listed anywhere. Which you don't seem to have ruled out being the case here. So I'd say you're jumping the gun here.
I have seen channels which delisted (and later privated entirely) almost all their videos for legitimate reasons, so it's certainly possible.
And I can attest that at least one of the remaining 26 is hosted, but invisible.
This one is almost certainly just delisted.
everyone needs to jump ship to Odysee
The fediverse has its own video platform (peertube).
PeerTube is a hard sell. Finding things to watch on there is a pain since most instances are trash. Only ones I can think of that are worth using are diode.zone and tilvids. Tilvids is nice but a lot of their material is uploaded from YouTube and the sponsorships are still embedded. If Sponsorblock was configured to work with it though it would be interesting.
You can always roll your own instance if you have the hardware to spare. I don't recommend hosting on a VPS as that defeats the purpose of self-hosting as you're hosting on someone else's computer at the end of the day and that's no different than signing up for an existing public instance and posting there, other than you're paying for that VPS.
I'm talking from a viewer's perspective. There is very little I can watch on PeerTube. Now, if I wanted to share videos on the internet as a hobby PeerTube would be the obvious choice. But as a platform to spend time in, it falls short.
It's not PeerTube's fault, it's just sadly Google can walk all over YouTubers all year long and they wouldn't even consider publishing on multiple platforms. It's quite telling that only YouTube competetor that got any traction at all is one with a video library mirroring tool so that the channel owner never has to touch it.
Unless you've got Google/Alphabet money, and a willingness to be in the red for years before maybe becoming profitable, it's essentially impossible to create a platform like YouTube.
I think it is possible, either by charging money, or by decentralizing like PeerTube. The thing is, it doesn't matter. YouTubers won't switch, they just don't care.
You also can't download them without JS, most alt front-ends are broken, and Google is pushing their own AI slop now.
How long before Widevine enters the picture and alt front-ends and downloaders are killed off entirely, you're forced to watch YT only through the official client on approved software/hardware if you want full quality (like Netflix), and even competing platforms are stamped out by the ability to mirror YT content over being taken away by that DRM if it's actually implemented?
I also wouldn't be surprised if Google straight-up made YT a paid service that you had to have Android-dev-style verification to create anything on, successfully turning it into the Netflix clone they so desperately want it to be.
Precisely. I know some creators (Sam Time, Legal Eagle) that dual upload to Odysee as a failsafe for YouTube's inevitable censorship, and Odysee being a decentralised space that prioritises freedom of speech means I see it as a good alternative, or stepping stone to Peertube.
Back in the day creators had their own blog websites for folk to access and subscribe. I believe this fragmentation is the best solution when aggregating sites like YouTube and Dailymotion become hostile.
Sadly Odysee being a place for freedom of speech in practise just means more hate speech, bigotry and fascism which is why we will never recommend it over peertube which is well moderated by actual people.
Low effort/slop videos are different than your right-wing mis/disinformation, conspiracy theory, white supremacy videos though. By all the platforms giving Trump back his accounts they have said they are OK with those again, it's just the low effort/slop they care about. However, if those circles cross, I'm sure AI slop spreading hate would be now OK.
True. I appreciate the call for free speech, but ever since the hateful have upped their public image significantly I learned that minimal tolerance moderation of said hateful folk would make for a much healthier society. I've also heard Odysee has been filling up with AI slop. Maybe there should be a dedicated switch for the user to decide if they want to see AI gen content. If we can't stop them, we can ignore them and close the door
Without disinformation, people will naturally work to improve democracy which will eventually expand it to the economy (socialism), so disinformation is arguably a necessary evil to protect the capital class from democracy
I tried Kodi with Libelec but it's still so jank. The Plex app is broken, there is no invidious or YouTube app I found that works. And sometimes it just "thinks" forever and I need to get up and unplug it.
I saw that Plasma Bigscreen was revived and it looks promising, but they don't have a release yet.
Lineageos I have several of these and they work great for the price. It is still android TV if that's an issue, but they run fine without Google services for jellyfin, kodi and smartube.
Amlogic GXL/GXM/G12*/SM1 Family Devices
- Your warranty is now void.
- You have been warned.
- Use at your own risk.
Introduction:
This is the Official Lineage OS thread for the Amlogic...
Oh cool, thanks, it works with hdmi-cec? Android is not an issue exactly, I basically just want something to replace my TV "apps" but without ads and more private.
EDIT: did not fully read the comment. I have a raspbnerry pi.
Thanks, I found a LineageOS build of Android TV I'm currently trying to get it up and running. CEC seems like it might be broken however which would sadly be a dealbreaker.
I use mythtv (FOSS) and it's fine as a PVR (schedule, record and playback broadcast TV) with a SiliconDust HDHomeRun network-attached tuner. It also has playback for downloaded files but I prefer to use mpv for that. Mine is still connected to the internet and I use firefox/transmission for youtube and other functions.
I wasn't going to reply, but when I thought about it, you can install wayland on top of linux. The kind of benefit you're getting out of this is better driver support (from the kernel) & less resource usage (lightweight distro + wayland on background = 2GB~ish ram usage). Also it'd be easier to get Gapps running (if you need it) on waydroid rather than rooting lineageOS TV to do so. I tried it once & it was more than enough for light gaming, IDK about plex but hardware acceleration is supported since there's no VM tech utilized (nividia isn't supported tho).
Most linux distros with wayland should be enough, but check Wayland install page just to be sure it's well supported (by distro), I see void-linux & ether configured labwc or KDE plasma should fit your needs better.
??? No? I said you can run way waydroid on a Wayland Desktop to natively run streaming apps on your RPI5. (Plex, Youtube, netflix or whatever service you're on) This has nothing to do with your TV remotes nor hdmi-cec. (reads description again) oh...
No, IR input support is now integrated into the linux kernel [BPF] & can be manually done with LIRC, Well I don't have a RPI to test this nor use my TV remote to control media, just for volume; Can't say for sure if Rasbarian supports most remotes ether, but LineageOS TV Does (Scroll),
Sorry, I can't help with that, however, a budget, 2.4GHz, wireless mouse was enough for me, maybe KDE Connect or Unified Remote (non-free) can help if you wanna use your phone instead.
CEC support is up to the (media) software &or OS you're using, waydroid is a container-like "runtime" to boot android on linux without virtualization, it's not a an OS that supports IR input or shutting your TV with your TV Remote, I don't think most desktop enviroment does support it nor must, KDE Bigscreen might but it's a DE tailored for such use...
Ah ok I got it thanks, yes the goal is to replace the apps on my TV as seamlessly as possible.
KDE bigscreen says it supports CEC but there is no official release yet. I still might give it a shot. I actually tried the Android TV you linked to (which also says it supports CEC) but it doesn't work. I know the hardware supports it because Libelec was seamless.
Came to PieFed.social from Lemm.ee about a month ago. Currently only using PieFed on my desktop because my brief Android client search gave me a non-working app.
I normally sort by Top 12 Hours and on my phone (Lemmy Connect logged into sh.itjust.works) I can see NSFW post once I get down to posts with less than 100 upvotes. Using PieFed.social on my desktop I don't see them. I checked settings but nothing popped out to me.
Yeah but you are using piefed.social which doesn't have any NSFW communities, so the only nsfw posts are occasional random things.
If you go to crust.piefed.social/auth/insta… and then filter by 'NSFW content available' you'll see the instances that allow NSFW communities. Of those feddit.online has been around the longest and will have the deepest back catalogue but any of them will be fine for casual browsing.
This is a staging area where we test out the latest PieFed code, before releasing it. Expect occasional breakages which will be more than compensated for by the exhilaration of living on the edge!
There really isn't a feature for it. I've been asking for this for a long time. I just want a box I can toggle with effectively 3 options: I don't want to see NSFW posts, I want to see NSFW posts when they occur, I want to see ONLY nsfw posts.
Mi è capitato, a caso, di trovare qualcosa di strano su YouTube stasera, del tipo… Jubilee, eccetto che non è una roba ragebait fatta per fare soldi a discapito della morale aumentando la polarizzazione politica per mezzo di “dibattiti” in malafede con conseguente peggioramento del mondo, ma tipo l’esatto opposto…! Non direi che è perfettissimo, […]
“Transgender: A Transitioned Woman and a MAGA Mama”
Mi è capitato, a caso, di trovare qualcosa di strano su YouTube stasera, del tipo… Jubilee, eccetto che non è una roba ragebait fatta per fare soldi a discapito della morale aumentando la polarizzazione politica per mezzo di “dibattiti” in malafede con conseguente peggioramento del mondo, ma tipo l’esatto opposto…!Non direi che è perfettissimo, ma certamente un’occhiata se la merita, in un contesto in cui l’unica alternativa sono la distruzione (“liberal destroyed!“), l’umiliazione (“conservative humiliated!“), e gira che ti rigira non c’è mai conversione di più gente verso il bene assoluto… 💔
(In questo caso sulla questione transgender, ma non è questo il punto che voglio fare.) A primo impatto pareva un altro di quei video che puzzano, ma, guardando meglio, vedendo che ruota attorno al fatto di “un modo diverso di fare politica“, effettivamente devo dire che non viene dal gabinetto, affatto. L’idea pare sia che, per argomenti che oggettivamente non sono politicamente dibattibili in buona coscienza — perché è buono dibattere sul sistema economico migliore, o sul sistema elettorale, o sull’urbanistica, o su tremila altre cose, ma mai e poi mai sulla natura delle persone o sui diritti o cose di quel tipo — appunto non si fa un dibattito, ma una conversazione basata su ascolto, immedesimazione, ed empatia (questa che negli Stati Uniti viene trattata come una parolaccia… e nel resto dell’occidente non a tal punto, ma comunque con disprezzo, siamo rovinati). 😿
Ora… un po’ di fetore comunque l’ho percepito, ma spero sia perché questi qui ancora devono prendere la mano (questo è il loro primo video, ne hanno anche altri più nuovi ma non li ho visti). Per dire, la signora nera, per i primi 20 minuti buoni, come si evince gravemente dal linguaggio del corpo, ha tenuto questo brutto atteggiamento di superiorità e distacco, che ovviamente è l’opposto dell’accettazione che si voleva raggiungere (e che si è raggiunta, menomale, per una buona volta) alla fine… e non penso che le si possa dare la colpa di questo perché, come si vede, è una persona normale, che è arrivata lì con purtroppo il cervello lavato da idee di odio da parte dei politici, però credo il moderatore avrebbe dovuto tentare di spegnerla un po’. (E poi, quando si è resa più alla pari dell’altra tizia, ha menzionato delle cose che paiono proprio false; di nuovo, non colpa sua, perché appare in buona fede, e dunque la vera colpa è di chi gli ha fatto credere le stronzate… però il fact-checking live ci potrebbe stare.) 🥱
Insomma… chi mai lo avrebbe detto che, forse, se si spera di rendere il mondo un posto migliore, e distruggere, eliminare, annichilire (in questo caso si, è lecito sperarlo proprio in questi termini) tutto ciò che rappresenta l’odio e la divisione umana, non bisogna rispondere al male con il male, ma con il bene… e quindi, con oggi abbiamo magicamente risolto la merda nel mondo??? 😳
…Purtroppo, a fine post, è il momento delle cose tristi: tutto ciò temo sia proprio utopia. Se è servita 1 (una) ora di conversazione per unire così due persone altrimenti radicalmente incomprese, temo sia impossibile risanare l’umanità intera; ed è un problema, perché questa sarebbe condizione necessaria se si spera di eradicare davvero il male… perché esso è come un virus latente che tutti portiamo dentro, e che in ogni momento può attecchire in noi o contagiare altri, e dunque se non lo si elimina in un solo colpo non lo si eliminerà mai. E purtroppo lo sappiamo bene: 2000 anni fa ci avrebbe provato Gesù Cristo, a salvare l’umanità, e lo hanno crocifisso… poi si può forse dire che ci ha provato Gandhi a suo modo, e lo hanno perseguitato… E ora io quindi sono estremamente triste, quindi buonanotte così. (Malanotte, cioè; spero davvero che nel sonno io mi trasformi in un gatto, così da non dover avere mai più a che fare con questa umanità intrinsecamente corrotta, di cui vorrei non essere parte anche io, perché mi rendo conto di avere anche io i miei difetti e non riuscire ad essere perfetta come vorrei tutti lo fossimo… 😭)
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.
mysite.com points to a server which only opens port 443, and each connection will need to go through that and deal with Caddy reverse proxy.
I want to host more services on it.
Let's say I want to host an email service, the easiest thing would be using a subdomain such as mail.mysite.com and reverse proxy each connection to the internal port on which the service run.
Same with a chat service chat.mysite.com.
But for the sake of readability it would be much better to simply have username@mysite.com than username@mail.mysite.com or username@chat.mysite.com.
reverse proxying every request from a subdomain to the right port is pretty straightforward with Caddy, also if you use cloudflare you can proxy with cloudflare each subdomain and have auto SSL certificate without further set up, which is amazing!
But what if I do want my services to be accessed through mysite.com directly instead of a specific per-service subdomain?
Some federated services also have two separate ports for server requests and client requests, which further complicates the process..
Is this service specific and must configured individually for each service? Or there is a way to tell caddy that a specific request going through mysite.com should be redirected through port X.X.X.X? Is there a way Caddy can recognize where requests need to be directed?
You don't ssh in at ssh.mysite.com. Port 443 is form HTTPS traffic only. SMTP and IMAP traffic will require additional ports exposed that don't need to go through caddy. Only the web UIs for your email will be exposed on the subdomains via caddy.
Registering a mail domain is done through DNS records too not via caddy.
It can be done, but only if the service your trying to use makes all of its requests using a specific port. There's no way to do it with a reverse proxy to my knowledge though. I've got both my email and my blog at myname.tld, for example. I just had to configure both of them with DNS.
If what your trying to do is have all requests for one port be directed to another port... your out of luck. I've been trying for ages to have nginx forward all 443 traffic on proxy.mynane.tld to 30018 and 80 traffic on proxy.myname.tld to 30024 but no luck so far.
If you've been trying for a while and still haven't gotten it working, then I'm probably missing something regarding your requirements.
But at first glance, it seems like it would be solved with 2 server blocks, 1 for 80, 1 for 443, each with their own proxy config passing / to their respective target ports.
So, you want to have two services accessible via the same URL? How do you want that to work? Can you give a list of services and the URLs you would like to access them by?
At least for mail, its actually not too hard, because SMTP/POP etc are all on different ports, so you can host your mail at mysite.com, and still have a website at the same address.
But for the sake of readability it would be much better to simply have username@mysite.com than username@mail.mysite.com
That's kind of unrelated. You can configure a mail server at mail.mysite.com to handle mail to/from username@mysite.com. You don't need a proxy for that.
But what if I do want my services to be accessed through mysite.com directly instead of a specific per-service subdomain?
If they're all http(s) services, then that should be possible. I don't know anything about caddy, but with apache or nginx you can proxy based on path, so I'd assume you can with caddy also.
For example mysite.com/chat could route to your chat app, mysite.com/webmail route to your webmail app, etc. But this isn't necessarily plug-and-play, because depending on the app you might need to set up proxy rules for cookie rewriting, link rewriting, etc.
If you want to proxy non-http(s) traffic from 1 port to multiple destination apps, then it gets a LOT more complicated.
Doing the /service_name thing can get really messy if the web service has non-relative links. It gets very messy trying to do rewrite rules to fix that. Wouldnt recommend it.
Each month, we create a post to keep you abreast of news and happenings regarding the server, discuss recent events, and to act as town square for the community.
🌟 Community Highlights 🌟
!riotporn@slrpnk.net - Showcasing and celebrating resistance against regimes.
!sea@slrpnk.net - A community for Southeast Asia.
!firefly@slrpnk.net - A place to discuss the shiniest damn place in the 'Verse.
!outland@slrpnk.net - Community for the vintage comic strip Outland, a left-leaning comic for its era.
2️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ Solarpunks!
We were so close, we nearly announced this last month, but since the instance's founding in March 2022, 2000 accounts have been created on this server. That number doesn't mean much beside being big and round, but it's still fun to celebrate.
The most important numerical statistic is active users, where we're coming up on 400/month. More important than all of that is the kind and quality of your activity on this server and across the Fediverse. We're extremely proud of the quality of posts and level of discourse members of this server are contributing to our shared and distributed social media experiment. Thanks so much for joining us on this adventure.
🧙♀️ Meta Post Image Breakdown: W.I.T.C.H. ✊
On October 29, 1969, officers of the court bound Black Panther leader Bobby Seale in rope, chained him to his defendant's chair, filled his mouth with gauze, and wrapped it tightly around his mouth and jaw. He had demanded his constitutional rights to speech and to be defended by a lawyer. The bigoted, racist, and fascist judge's order shocked the world, inspiring outrage and protest. That Halloween, women dressed as witches organized an impromptu act of guerilla theater:
Slowly, solemnly, the Witches filed around the Federal Building in Chicago's Loop, faces painted white, staring straight ahead, flowing black capes swirling around them. "Our sister justice lies chained and tied," they chanted. "We curse the ground on which she died."
This was one of the many hexes for which the ephemeral organization known as W.I.T.C.H. is famous. The post image is a frame from the Documentary She's Beautiful When She's Angry (2014), of a coven in Washington D.C. performing a hex on U.S. president Richard Nixon's inauguration on the steps of the United States Capitol building.
W.I.T.C.H. most often stands for "Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell," but could just as easily mean "Women Inspired to Tell their Collective History," or "Women Interested in Toppling Consumer Holidays." This seasonal political theater has seen a recent resurgence, adding "Welcoming Immigrants & Their Children Here" to the auspicious name.
While white facepaint and black masks were integral to the theatre in the 60's and 70's, a thick black veil has become popular during recent events.
Our Monthly Meta posts are sometimes home to more in-depth sections written by our admins. Many of our newer members may not be familiar with some of the past guides, so for those interested, we've compiled a list below.
February 2025 - How to avoid Big Tech and maximize your digital security & privacy
June 2025 - A brief guide on Security Culture & Adopting FOSS as prefiguration
July 2025 - How to build community with fun projects!
💬 Open Discussion 💬
Now it’s your turn to share whatever you’d like down below; your thoughts, ideas, concerns, hopes, or anything related to the server. If you have a new community you’d like to shine a spotlight, shine away! If you’re a new user wanting to say hi, feel free to post an introduction 😀
SLRPNK Community Resources:
Community Wiki - Moderators, you can create your own Wiki here for your communities!
Movim Chat - Open to all members (use your SLRPNK login credentials)
::: spoiler ⬛ Union Resources 🟥 These are unions from around the world who can train you to become an effective organizer to form a grassroots union with your co-workers!
Each month, we create a post to keep you abreast of news and happenings regarding the server, discuss recent events, and to act as town square for the community.
This June, we'll be discussing Security Culture, as well as the importance of Free & Open-Source Software in building the world we want to live in. And let's give a shoutout to Pride Month of course! 🏳️🌈
🌟 Community Highlights 🌟
!Cooperatives@[url=https://slrpnk.net/]SLRPNK[/url] - All things about democratic businesses that serve their communities first
!Zines@[url=https://slrpnk.net/]SLRPNK[/url] - A place to share tiny, self-published texts (usually small printable magazines)
!Abc@[url=https://slrpnk.net/]SLRPNK[/url] - News about incarcerated anarchists & resources for prisoner support.
🏳️🌈 The First Pride was a Riot ✊
The month of June is widely celebrated as Pride Month because of the Stonewall Inn riot on June 28, 1969. Just yesterday, videos are spreading across the internet of an ICE Raid on the Buona Forchetta restaurant was pushed back by a crowd of San Diego's South Park residents. It's important to reflect on the lasting systemic change that can be achieved through community cohesion and spontaneous revolt.
As transgender people are currently being specifically targeted by the current fascist wave, I'd like to draw attention to Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera - two prominent participants in the Stonewall Riot that created Pride. Pride has always been and must always be trans-inclusive. Attacks on transgender people are an attack on our communities, and if the attacks succeed, other sections of the queer community will soon follow.
To all our fellow solarpunks, happy Pride!
🤐 Security Culture 🛡️
Sometimes benign seeming efforts can turn into unexpected personal data collecting traps. Like an obscure website for exchanging contact info with other students turning into a global ad-tech surveillance network (Facebook), or innocent seeming online personality tests being use to harvest character profiles. Even Etsy, Reddit, Tinder, and Duolingo are feeding information to US Government Agencies like ICE.
Security culture is commonly used to describe the general awareness of such potential traps and how it can affect groups or entire communities. This goes beyond mere individual privacy efforts, as without joint efforts these often fail to work.
Especially in activist circles, security culture is paramount. For opsec reasons not everyone in the group might be aware of what clandestine efforts others are involved in, but with a general security culture many potential data leaks can be avoided.
Movements are made by the volume of their participants, and the easier and less dangerous it is to participate, the more people will get involved. As more people get involved, individual involvement becomes even less dangerous, creating a virtuous cycle.
Perhaps you, dear Solarpunk reader, could help boost that cycle by sharing your own examples of best practices, lessons learned, or traps to watch out for online in the comments below. Security culture is a collective effort, so our best defense is sharing our knowledge with others!
We'll start it off with some ::: spoiler General Advice * Mentally wall off personal uniquely identifying info from your online presence, actively build a habit of opsec so that withholding information is your default mental state * Be careful about who you meet online * Use different, unrelated usernames, passwords & emails for every account. And try not to connect to those accounts with your real IP address (use Tor or a VPN) * Be mindful that anything done online leaves a trail * agents provocateurs may seek to find patsies willing to perform an ill-advised illegal activity in order to legitimize police repression. If someone is trying to pressure you, especially if you don't have a long and proven history with them, be extremely wary. :::
But we're excited to see what ideas, suggestions and advice you may have for safer patterns of behavior to use online. 😀
💽 Free & Open-Source Software as Praxis 🖥️
I think it’s safe to assume most of us grew up surrounded by proprietary software, it was simply what software was. Normal. Cozy. Familiar.
Our current reality is anything but normal, with our lives dominated by , and much of it damned difficult to escape after dedicating years or even decades to committing it to muscle memory. But part of being a solarpunk is choosing to stare the failings of our society in the face and saying “No more. There has to be a better way.” Despite how difficult it may be to change our current habits.
Free & Open-Source Software (FOSS) is a candle in the dark, and luckily for us has never burned brighter than today. It gives us a pure example of mutual aid in action, built with the cooperation of tens of thousands of individuals who offer their work, often for free, to all who wish to use or build upon it. We won’t be able to achieve a solarpunk future without it, and any victory it achieves is a tangible step toward prefiguring the world toward our shared vision.
So how can we help it along its way? The first step is to use it! Let’s give some examples of alternatives to popular software you may use or even rely upon (click the spoiler below to expand it):
::: spoiler 🔽 FOSS Alternatives 🔽 | Proprietary 🚫 | FOSS ✅ | Links 🌐 | |:--- | :--- | ---:| | WIndows & MacOS | Linux - Perhaps the most essential piece of software to switch to to avoid extreme surveillance with the addition of Recall in Windows, making it a huge liability if you're are an activist of any kind, or even anyone you talk to who also uses Windows 11, as it'll be recording on their end as well. Linux Mint is the most beginner friendly version of Linux, and it's what I'll be recommending and link to. | Linux Mint Website & | | Google Android | GrapheneOS & LineageOS - GrapheneOS is only available for Google Pixel Phones, but it's the most secure option. LineageOS is available to a much wider variety of phones. | GrapheneOS Website & LineageOS Website & | | Google Maps | CoMaps - Currently in the process of forking from Organic Maps, but should become the premier alternative soon, so keep an eye out for its release | CoMaps Website | | Google Chrome | LibreWolf - A security and privacy focused version of Firefox. Can sometimes break websites, so have an install of Firefox too! | LibreWolf Website | | Adobe Photoshop | Krita - with the recent addition of the G’mic Toolset which adds powerful features like and Crop Assist, it can serve admirably as a Photoshop replacement, especially if you enable the Photoshop shortcuts! | Krita Website & | | Adobe Premiere | Kdenlive - not quite 1-to-1 in a professional sense, but with the use of Proxy Clips, should cover most people's needs. | Kdenlive Website & | | Adobe Illustrator | Inkscape - Excellent vector art editor that even does things Adobe Illustrator can't. | Inkscape Website & | | Paint.NET | Pinta | Pinta Website | | Obsidian Notes | TrilliumNext Notes | TrilliumNext Github & | | Scrivener | NovelWriter - A bit different since it uses Markdown instead of being a WYSIWYG editor, but mimics most of the functionality of Scrivener in other ways. Very stable and well made app. | NovelWriter Website & | :::
Alright, so now we're using some sweet FOSS stuff, but if we want the FOSS ecosystem to improve or gain more adoption even faster, here's what else we can do to help:
If you're financially able to, seriously consider donating to the projects you use! Most are almost entirely reliant on user contributions to support themselves, meaning you'd have a big impact even with a small donation!
Contribute to projects directly with your fancy skills: Most projects would be elated by volunteers capable of translating documentation or apps into different languages, contributing code, or even just providing good bug reports.
Spread the word! Show your circle how well these alternatives work, make cool stuff with it, and mention what you used if you share it around to help prove that it's a viable alternative.
We're likely at a critical crossroads in history as we tackle the polycrisis that's encroaching into our lives more each year. If we're to successfully tackle them and free ourselves from the grip that is our current system of exploitation and domination, we'll need to preconfigure as much of the world as we can, as quickly as we can. FOSS is a foundational component of that preparation, without which we expose ourselves to the likely possibility of our tools betraying us, derailing our attempts before they have a chance to gain a foothold.
If you're able to set aside an afternoon, I implore you to try out these alternatives with the hopes of switching over. There is nothing else they fear more.
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A well-written bug report is essential in software testing to facilitate effective communication between testers and developers, leading to improved program quality and user satisfaction.
Honestly, could be worse. Hydrogen is a greenwashing scam anyway.
The bad part is that funding for wind and solar projects is apparently being cancelled, too.
On an unrelated note, I had to read that article with some bullshit popup about ToS demanding binding arbitration and a class action waiver superimposed on it because I refused to tap "accept." Binding arbitration and a class-action waiver, just to read a damn web page! Fucking delusional.
On the contrary, hydrogen itself is fossil fuel propaganda. They sell it on its "potential" for being generated via electrolysis using renewable electricity ("green hydrogen"), but in practice the vast majority of it comes from cracking natural gas ("gray hydrogen"). And that "potential" will never come to fruition, because by the time it would battery electric vehicle ("BEV") tech and infrastructure will be so far ahead there won't be a point anymore.
We should just face facts: a hydrogen car is, in practice, a CNG car, except that you've converted the fuel into a form that makes it (even more of) a pain in the ass to handle for no good reason.
If anything, if we're really Hell-bent on non-BEV solutions then we should go the opposite way and work on synthesizing "green hydrogen" into hydrocarbon liquid fuel so that we can use it with the fueling infrastructure and internal-combustion vehicles we already have, making that stuff carbon-neutral.
Except that's total bullshit. In fact, it's literally same argument used against BEVs in the past. There was a time when any talk of BEVs were shouted down by people who kept insisting that the grid is being powered by coal or natural gas, and that BEVs were nothing more than "coal-powered cars" and the like. But now we know that's nonsense. Electricity can be made green, whereas fossil fuels cannot. Same is true of hydrogen.
The other point is that we are push hard towards the limits of BEVs can really achieve. We'll never see long-ranged airplanes powered by batteries, and same can be said of ocean-going ships. Many industries stand no chance of switching to batteries either. They either require a fire source, or need the chemistry provided by hydrogen. Nor will the grid reach zero emissions without long-duration energy storage, which will require hydrogen in most cases. So if you actually think this problem through, you'll realize that batteries alone are only going to solve a small part of the problem. Everything else will require hydrogen in some way.
E-fuels will require prodigious amounts of green hydrogen to exist at scale. They are produced by combining H2 with CO2. While I don't rule them out as a solution, it will require massive investments in hydrogen first. It is not an excuse to dismiss hydrogen.
E-fuels will require prodigious amounts of green hydrogen to exist at scale. They are produced by combining H2 with CO2. While I don’t rule them out as a solution, it will require massive investments in hydrogen first. It is not an excuse to dismiss hydrogen.
It doesn't require "massive investments in hydrogen," though! It just requires electrolyzing the hydrogen, and that's the easy part. It can be done right there in the same facility as the Fischer-Tropsch reactions, so the end product you're distributing everywhere is a convenient liquid and all you need to handle the hydrogen gas itself is a short chunk of pipe going between reaction vessels.
The "massive investments in hydrogen" for the "hydrogen economy" are all the absurd cryogenic or ludicrously high-pressure storage tanks to build out the entire distribution and fuel station network that we'd need to use actual H~2~ as an energy storage medium instead of just an intermediate step in an industrial process. None of it is necessary for synthetic liquid fuels.
Having enough electrolyzers for that is still a huge investment. Plenty of naysayers have said, and still are saying, that this alone is impossible. Also, if we can make the Fischer-Tropsch process cost-effective for making synthetic fuels, then green hydrogen would have already become really cheap by then.
No one is wedded to the idea of always using pure H2 for everything. The pro-H2 position is simply pointing out that green hydrogen is necessary for solving climate change, even if that means making synthetic fuels in the end. But it is worth saying that using pure H2 is not some huge challenge. Having to use cryogenic fuels or high pressure tanks are already possible in cars today.
Having enough electrolyzers for that is still a huge investment. Plenty of naysayers have said, and still are saying, that this alone is impossible.
Wat?
An electrolytic cell is just a couple of chunks of metal stuck in some water and hooked up to a voltage source, plus some tubes to collect the gases. It's so simple elementary school kids could build one in science class, and (unlike the proton exchange membrane in a fuel cell) requires no exotic materials or complicated-to-manufacture components.
No one is wedded to the idea of always using pure H2 for everything. The pro-H2 position is simply pointing out that green hydrogen is necessary for solving climate change, even if that means making synthetic fuels in the end.
If that's true, we've been talking past each other and don't disagree as much as it seemed. But I'm not convinced it is. Every time I've seen folks talking about the "hydrogen economy," it's in the context of building out a shitload of infrastructure for carting gaseous H~2~ around, with zero mention of making synthetic liquid fuels.
And that latter part is the point I care about: it's true that batteries are never gonna be viable for stuff like aviation, but gaseous H~2~ fuel cells won't be either. The real future for that stuff looks a lot like the present, except using non-fossil feedstocks to make the same sorts of fuels we're already using. That could mean fuel synthesized from hydrogen, or biofuel, or some mix of both -- it doesn't even matter as long as it performs the same as the Jet A or whatever you're trying to replace -- but it's definitely gonna be a liquid that's easy to handle with the infrastructure we already have and it's probably gonna be burned in the same sorts of combustion engines we're already using, not reacted in a fuel cell.
The goal is carbon-neutral fuel made from non-fossil sources, for those use-cases batteries aren't good for. Hydrogen is only part of one possible solution, and a pretty incidental part at that. Talking about the "hydrogen economy" is missing the point.
But it is worth saying that using pure H2 is not some huge challenge. Having to use cryogenic fuels or high pressure tanks are already possible in cars today.
It's "possible," sure, but at huge cost and complexity that means it's flat out dumb compared to using a liquid fuel. And that's never gonna change.
By the way, I'd like to get back to my original "greenwashing scam" point for a minute. Consider that there are two orthogonal issues here:
the feedstock for the fuel (fossil coal/petroleum/natural gas vs. sustainable "green" H~2~ or biofuels)
the technology for distributing and using it (liquid fuels and combustion engines vs. gaseous fuels and fuel cells that provide electricity)
With "the hydrogen economy," a huge emphasis is placed on the latter of those two issues, while the former is just sort of hand-waved as a trivial detail we'll get to later, even though transitioning from "gray" to "green" hydrogen is also a huge unsolved problem that isn't trivial at all.
Meanwhile, with liquid fuels and combustion engines, the latter is a solved problem, so there's no excuse to direct less than full attention to the former.
So if you're an entity with a vested interest in fossil fuel extraction, what're you gonna do? You're gonna push for hydrogen, of course, because it provides a whole extra set of distracting issues for engjneers and tree-huggers to occupy themselves with that aren't getting down to the brass tacks of actually replacing the fossil feedstock with a sustainable one.
An electrolytic cell is just a couple of chunks of metal stuck in some water and hooked up to a voltage source, plus some tubes to collect the gases. It’s so simple elementary school kids could build one in science class, and (unlike the proton exchange membrane in a fuel cell) requires no exotic materials or complicated-to-manufacture components.
You and I might know that, but the loudest critics of hydrogen do not. They really think that this step is impossible.
If that’s true, we’ve been talking past each other and don’t disagree as much as it seemed. But I’m not convinced it is. Every time I’ve seen folks talking about the “hydrogen economy,” it’s in the context of building out a shitload of infrastructure for carting gaseous H2 around, with zero mention of making synthetic liquid fuels.
Just to be clear, green synthetic fuels are a huge ask. We will need direct air capture of CO2 before it is feasible at scale. It is a technology only now coming into view, and is still effectively impossible at this very moment.
And that latter part is the point I care about: it’s true that batteries are never gonna be viable for stuff like aviation, but gaseous H2 fuel cells won’t be either. The real future for that stuff looks a lot like the present, except using non-fossil feedstocks to make the same sorts of fuels we’re already using.
For aviation, the conversation was always centered around either SAF (either biofuels or synthetic fuels) or LH2.
The goal is carbon-neutral fuel made from non-fossil sources, for those use-cases batteries aren’t good for. Hydrogen is only part of one possible solution, and a pretty incidental part at that. Talking about the “hydrogen economy” is missing the point.
FYI, batteries are themselves never going to be truly green. You will always have a dirty supply chain for their production and mining. Today, that requires vast amounts of fossil fuels to be used. Even if you really believe batteries can solve most of transportation, there will still be a major reason to abandon BEVs in transportation at some point in the future.
It’s “possible,” sure, but at huge cost and complexity that means it’s flat out dumb compared to using a liquid fuel. And that’s never gonna change.
Then you are making a similar mistake that the critics of electrolyzers are making: Forgetting that this is just a series of pipes and tanks, and those are dirt cheap to scale up. Cheaper than expanding the grid BTW. If we have to use gaseous or liquid hydrogen, we could easily do it.
By the way, I’d like to get back to my original “greenwashing scam” point for a minute. Consider that there are two orthogonal issues here: - the feedstock for the fuel (fossil coal/petroleum/natural gas vs. sustainable “green” H2 or biofuels) - the technology for distributing and using it (liquid fuels and combustion engines vs. gaseous fuels and fuel cells that provide electricity)
With “the hydrogen economy,” a huge emphasis is placed on the latter of those two issues, while the former is just sort of hand-waved as a trivial detail we’ll get to later, even though transitioning from “gray” to “green” hydrogen is also a huge unsolved problem that isn’t trivial at all.
Transitioning from gray to green hydrogen is trivial. It's literally the same process that the grid is going through now. Nothing changes for the end-user, since it is the same thing to them, just like green electricity. In fact, the reason why this conversation is happening at all is because pro-hydrogen people are certain this step is easily solved.
Meanwhile, with liquid fuels and combustion engines, the latter is a solved problem, so there’s no excuse to direct less than full attention to the former.
Actually making green hydrocarbon fuels in the quantities needed is not a trivial problem. It is likely just as difficult, if not more so, than figuring out how to distribute pure hydrogen. It needs to be mentioned that we can pipe hydrogen just like natural gas. The infrastructure for that is already largely built.
So if you’re an entity with a vested interest in fossil fuel extraction, what’re you gonna do? You’re gonna push for hydrogen, of course, because it provides a whole extra set of distracting issues for engjneers and tree-huggers to occupy themselves with that aren’t getting down to the brass tacks of actually replacing the fossil feedstock with a sustainable one.
Fossil fuel companies would strongly oppose any kind of green energy. It's a conspiracy theory to think that would support the lesser of two apocalyptic outcomes. At best, only the pipeline companies would accept a transition to green hydrogen. But that is the same situation as the utility companies, and we don't spread conspiracy theories about the BEVs being a trick by the utility companies.
Just to be clear, green synthetic fuels are a huge ask. We will need direct air capture of CO2 before it is feasible at scale.
Okay, good point. I was thinking about how we have all that point-source CO~2~ coming from our legacy fossil fuel power plants, but we'd still also need a separate source of clean electricity. If we built that, it would make more sense to replace the fossil fuel plant with it than to augment it. You'd have to refine the transportation fuel from petroleum the normal way, but that's more efficient than doing the hydrogen synthesis thing using dirty electricity.
FYI, batteries are themselves never going to be truly green. You will always have a dirty supply chain for their production and mining. Today, that requires vast amounts of fossil fuels to be used. Even if you really believe batteries can solve most of transportation, there will still be a major reason to abandon BEVs in transportation at some point in the future.
Hey now, I didn't say that! I was just talking about the relative merits of batteries vs. fuel cells vs. normal combustion engines running on synthetic or bio fuels.
The real way to "solve most of transportation" is zoning reform that results in cities with walkable density. Bicycles come in second, and rail transit a distant third. Cars of any type are really only suitable for the 20% of the population that's rural, service vehicles, contractors and delivery people that need to haul bigger loads than fit on a cargo bike, etc.
(Speaking of which, once you reduce the demand for vehicle fuel that much, stuff like biodiesel made from waste veggie oil starts to look plentiful enough to make a decent dent in the market. That, at least, has been a solved problem for decades, and I've got the '90s VW and B100 fuel receipts to prove it.)
Anyway, I'm still pretty skeptical about building out an entire "economy" around storage and distribution of a gas that's so famously difficult to store that it can leak straight through metal, and more bullish than you are on synthetic fuel processes that we've known how to do for a century but just haven't bothered commercializing/scaling up because fossil fuels have been too cheap, but I'm kinda running out of motivation to continue defending my position on it. Thanks for the interesting discussion!
(Speaking of which, once you reduce the demand for vehicle fuel that much, stuff like biodiesel made from waste veggie oil starts to look plentiful enough to make a decent dent in the market. That, at least, has been a solved problem for decades, and I’ve got the ‘90s VW and B100 fuel receipts to prove it.)
Not even close. Even if all cars were eliminated, there will still be enormous commercial need for fuels, such as commercial trucking, shipping, aviation, mining, construction, etc. Not to mention that growing crops for biodiesel require massive energy inputs in the form of fertilizers, pesticides, farm equipment, etc. And of course, the farmland needed will displace food production, which is its own major problem.
Which is why biofuels can never really be taken seriously as part of a green economy.
Mostly unnecessary; that's what freight trains are for. (Short-haul from freight depot to loading dock can be handled by battery electric trucks.)
shipping
Believe it or not, sails! Obviously you're not going to get a 100% reduction because modern shipping companies wouldn't tolerate being becalmed (and I'm not falling for that article's "up to 90%" claim either, BTW -- I only picked that one to link because it has a decent overview of multiple different technologies), but it can still make a big dent in the fuel requirements.
aviation
Not much you can do about how much fuel a given flight uses... but you can reduce the number of flights by shifting travelers to high-speed passenger rail instead.
mining, construction, etc.
In other words, stuff that doesn't actually go anywhere (instead just driving back and forth on a site that probably has good access to the grid or a generator), which means it's (comparatively) real easy to electrify.
growing crops for biodiesel
Who said anything about that? I was talking about waste veggie oil.
I'm not sure you fully appreciate how large a reduction in automobile/trucking/shipping/construction equipment fuel use I'm proposing. I'm saying we should electrify or modal-shift so much of the demand that biodiesel made from just the stuff thrown out by restaurants and meat-packing plants and whatnot -- without even growing bespoke crops for it -- could satisfy most of what remains.
Believe it or not, sails! Obviously you’re not going to get a 100% reduction because modern shipping companies wouldn’t tolerate being becalmed (and I’m not falling for that article’s “up to 90%” claim either, BTW – I only picked that one to link because it has a decent overview of multiple different technologies), but it can still make a big dent in the fuel requirements.
No. Absolutely not. Sorry, but I cannot this claim seriously at all. We are not going to switch to sail ships again. I don't think you grasp just how big modern shipping actually is, and how impossible such an idea really is.
I doubt you have any grasp of how massive the problem really is, and how tiny your proposed solutions are in comparison. For instance, you keep citing the possibility of using waste cooking oil for biofuels. Well, the world only makes 3.7 billion gallons of that per year: oilandenergyonline.com/article…
Converted to barrels of oil equivalence, that's around 100 million barrels. The problem? That's literally one day's worth of petroleum consumption: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_…
So you are about 0.3% of the way of solving the problem with that idea. Even if we could radically reduce petroleum use in the way you are imagining, that's still going to be a negligible impact. And the world's GDP is still growing. There's still multiple billions of people that will want to live like the first world. So demand for energy will skyrocket in the coming decades, not decrease. The problem will only get exponentially larger and harder to solve.
Ultimately, this is eco-Ludditism, and is more about wishing away the problem than actually solving it. Worse, you enabling the worse stereotypes about environmentalists. Namely that they are crazy wackos who aren't willing to engage with reality. Any solution must take seriously the idea that there >8 billion people on Earth now, and they all want to live in convenience.
We are not going to switch to sail ships again. I don’t think you grasp just how big modern shipping actually is, and how impossible such an idea really is.
I'm hopeful for wind powered shipping. An abundant H2 supply would accelerate this youtu.be/HFIzcPBGGEQ (1.2mw high altitude turbine thethered to large ship) that can scale even higher.
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the feedstock for the fuel (fossil coal/petroleum/natural gas vs. sustainable “green” H2 or biofuels)
the technology for distributing and using it (liquid fuels and combustion engines vs. gaseous fuels and fuel cells that provide electricity)
With “the hydrogen economy,” a huge emphasis is placed on the latter of those two issues, while the former is just sort of hand-waved as a trivial detail we’ll get to later, even though transitioning from “gray” to “green” hydrogen is also a huge unsolved problem that isn’t trivial at all.
e-fuels or bio fuels are only short term solutions that are greenwashing because in the short term there is insufficient green H2 abundance. Their only value is to keep using your existing machinery.
For new machinery/transportation, a fuel cell is 2x the efficiency of a combustion engine. It is a range extender for any battery electric machine/home, with usable waste heat. A green economy involves people eventually going back to buy fossil fuels from drug stores, because there eventually are so few machines that use them. It is greenwashing to say "we want to keep everything the same except just have very expensive gasoline".
It's simply ok to make new H2/Ammonia consuming machines that displace older machines even as people are not forced to upgrade until they are ready. In long term, H2 will always be cheaper than e-fuels in addition to being 2x the energy value with far more flexible use.
can be done right there in the same facility as the Fischer-Tropsch reactions
That happens to be fossil fuel propaganda for e-fuels. The process is a heat based industrial scale, where fossil fuel supply chains are already developed, and H2 "extraction" is part of a continuous heat process, and ample CO (often co2 processed into CO) generation is part of the process. Furthermore these are net 0 fuels which are not good enough, or as good as green fuels. A reasonable carbon tax is $300/ton. Direct air capture can reach costs below this amount, and compete with green transition, but only if the CO2 is permanently sequestered or solidified. 0 credit would be given if e-fuels CO2/CO content comes from fossil fuels or air capture.
Again, H2 or Ammonia, are the right long term fuels. They can be synthesized without the heat-based industrial processes, or at least use H2 for the heat. H2 economy means smaller scale production distributed closer to customers.
That happens to be fossil fuel propaganda for e-fuels.
No, it doesn't, because it's my own original thought and I'm not a fossil fuel propaganist.
I'm not talking about fucking cracking natural gas; I'm talking about building an electrolysis plant running on renewable electricity next to a former refinery doing all the hydrocarbon chemistry that has been adaptively reused to make synthetic fuel. The hydrogen is not supposed to be coming from petroleum!
Furthermore these are net 0 fuels which are not good enough, or as good as green fuels.
On the contrary, carbon neutral is absolutely good enough. Why the hell wouldn't it be?!
Again, H2 or Ammonia, are the right long term fuels.
Again, you're wrong about H~2~ because throwing out all the liquid fuel infrastructure we already have to switch to the most difficult-to-handle choice short of something hypergolic is just fundamentally stupid.
I don't know anything about ammonia; maybe it really is the right solution. It's kind of a different topic, though. Do you want to start talking about that instead?
carbon neutral is absolutely good enough. Why the hell wouldn’t it be?!
H2 (or green electricity) is carbon negative when it displaces FF use. unnecessary and expensive efuels are not. DAC is/can be carbon negative. But sequestering the CO2 is less expense than combining it with H2 into an efuel that negates the capture value of DAC. A carbon tax and dividend is a better social mechanism for cost (including climate cost) reductions even when investing in DAC reduces the tax collections and dividends.
throwing out all the liquid fuel infrastructure
A misunderstanding, that stems from extreme volume of disinformation, is that energy transition means "first we have to nuke all infrastructure from orbit" strawman, that is used to protect the status quo. Instead, less then no new dead ender energy infrastructure investments should be made during transition, and then one day, fairly far away, old inefficient machinery will not be worth repairing, even though access to fuel will continue existing for a very long time, and no matter how inneficient it is, a machine will be sold for something greater than 0 to someone who needs it for backup, or because it is cheap.
Just because you can't hold H2 in your existing beer mug container doesn't mean H2 handling is not a largely solved problem. Ammonia is higher energy density than liquid H2 with propane container handling solutions.
On the contrary, hydrogen itself is fossil fuel propaganda.
Obviously, an H2 economy has to be green H2 based. Pure H2 will always be cheaper than e-fuels, because the latter is more steps. An airplane costs 100x in lifetime fuel as its purchase price, and H2 will always be cheaper in addition to more range due to it being the highest energy density fuel.
Much anti-H2 propaganda has come from BEV stockholder base. H2 is not a threat to BEVs, and can help refuel them quicker/cheaper in public chargers, but in no way does it stop the people who understand batteries to make better batteries.
Obviously, an H2 economy has to be green H2 based.
It has to be that to be a good thing, but it doesn't have to be that to exist. There are plenty of people pushing for spending $$$$$$$$$ on fuel cell cars and hydrogen fuel stations even when they're just being used with cracked natural gas for no actual environmental benefit.
It's like pretending your diesel car is green even though you've never put a drop of B100 in it.
Pure H2 will always be cheaper than e-fuels, because the latter is more steps.
At the point of production, sure. At the point of use, not so much, since hydrogen is so much more difficult/expensive to store and transport.
more range due to [H~2~] being the highest energy density fuel.
Energy density by weight, not by volume. It doesn't do much good to have longer range if you can't carry enough cargo because too much of the plane is taken up by fuel tanks.
It has to be that to be a good thing, but it doesn’t have to be that to exist.
It actually does. Making H2 from NG, for heat/transportation, is using NG with extra expensive steps. H2 already exists as a fundamental chemical (including Ammonia) for agriculture and rocket fuel. An H2 economy is for expanded use, and green H2 is only economic possible case.
It doesn’t do much good to have longer range if you can’t carry enough cargo because too much of the plane is taken up by fuel tanks.
There are both processes which need it to decarbonize like nitrate fertilizer manufacturing, and things like cars where you can get the same outcome more cheaply via other methods, leaving hydrogen based systems as greenwashing.
On the whole, this is not great.
And I'm unwilling to ditch Bloomberg; they're doing a meaningful chunk of the environmental tech reporting right now, and gift links like this one enable almost everyone to access it.
You should let go of your BEV obsession too. Hydrogen cars will be very cost effective once the technology get scaled up. FCEVs can be cheaper than ICE cars to make, and green hydrogen can get cheaper than fossil fuels. They will be valid options in the future.
We've already waited decades for BEVs to be ready. It's hypocritical to say we cannot wait for anything else. And besides, hydrogen cars are in production right now, so we don't have to wait much longer for it be mainstream.
And given that the BEV is simply not going to the universal solution, there will be many people that will have to wait anyways. So we should be open to other options regardless.
Yes, hydrogen cars exist in tiny numbers...but there is wildly inadequate fueling infrastructure, and no sign that it will be built out. Meanwhile, you can charge at home, and there is a massive buildout of fast chargers underway in most of the world. I don't expect hydrogen for ground surface transportation to be meaningful as a result.
That's closed-minded thinking. There is nothing stopping the rapid deployment of hydrogen cars. The obsession with only one type of green car is a major detriment to the green car movement. For many people, green transportation is a threat to their lifestyle, since they are not allowed to look at any option other than the BEV.
That is the exact opposite of reality. BEVs are heavily subsidized globally. Without enormous government support, the market for them would be very small.
The case for H2 is just to make it (electrolysis). The case for consumer FCEVs comes well after the production capacity is abundant, but then also after heavier transport refueling is deployed sufficiently.
Also to compress it, chill it, transport it, and store it, while avoiding leaks and fires. You're absolutely right though, first comes renewables (and a shit ton of batteries), hopefully in parallel some green steel and chemical processes, then heavy transit and the harder edge cases to electrify, assuming electrification hasn't already solved those issues by then. Talking about regular folks buying fuel cell cars is not realistic.
What are you actually advocating for here? Not electrifying and waiting another few decades for hydrogen? You come off as excessively defensive of the practically nonexistent H2 industry and excessively critical of electrification, which is basically the Shell and Exxon position. We don't have time wait for anything, we need to use the tech we have now to reduce warming. Where do we get the hydrogen in your world? Is it blue or green? Blue is just fossil fuels with extra steps and green doesn't make sense until we have significant excess renewables and already electrified the easy stuff (buildings) and then it might still make sense only for industry/shipping and niche stuff. H2 itself has a GWP of 11 or so, and we will leak quite a bit. So again, what are you actually arguing for? I can't buy hydrogen, period. I can't buy a hydrogen vehicle, or a hydrogen furnace, or a hydrogen anything. What do you actually think we plebs should be doing here? I already want green steel as much as you do.
The first point to make is that hydrogen is not decades off. Green hydrogen is happening now, and its production is rapidly expanding alongside the expansion of renewable energy production. Many sectors can rapidly adopt green hydrogen right away. This is similar to the conversation we we had about solar power about a decade ago. Critics of solar power back then were being Luddites (and sometimes secret fossil fuel industry stooges). They were convinced that solar could not be cost-effective or scale, based off of very outdated understandings of the issue, but they were wrong. This conversation is repeating with green hydrogen.
On a related note, pro-electrification crusaders are being hypocrites on this subject. They themselves are demanding that we wait decades for miracle batteries or multi-decadal long electrification programs. Because they want "perfect" solutions rather than "good" solutions. A good example is how they demand we fully electrify all rail, a process that will take decades, rather than doing something faster like switching diesel trains to hydrogen trains. In reality, adopting hydrogen now, alongside more reasonable forms of electrification, will be a faster path for reducing CO2 emissions.
Also note that most "fearmongering" types of argument against hydrogen originated from the fossil fuel industry. They are always spreading propaganda intended to undermine green energy projects, and make similar claims about all green technologies. Claims that hydrogen is dangerous, or a GHG, or will leak, etc., are all fear tactics created with minimal amounts of evidence. In reality, hydrogen has very few problems, and adopting it will drastically make transportation and industry safer and more green. It is unfortunate that many environmentalists have fallen for this tactic, but I suppose every green idea had to overcome it.
Finally, you can buy hydrogen and hydrogen-related products. Sure, we are still a bit early on the adoption curve, but that is true of every new idea. Someone can buy a hydrogen car, or a furnace, or whatever right now. Many more are also capable, but don't know it yet. So rather than demonizing something for not being able to basically time travel, environmentalists should promote green ideas in order to accelerate their adoption.
H2 is complimentary to batteries. You can discharge battery capacity that will recharge to full the next day. It's affordable enough to make already, and as a fuel, is tradeable/exportable power. Making H2 is needed to support more renewables so that surpluses aren't wasted.
Making H2 just doesn't stop you from using BEVs today or tomorrow. Faster charging for more range using a fuel that was made when, and priced because, it was conveniently sunny.
The world can get there without the US, and energy sabotage was always a GOP magnet. But anti-H2 sentiment, based on genuine disinformation, but ok perhaps overhyped Toyota prototypes prior to infrastructure maturity, has made adoption/progress slower, if only because renewables adoption has been slower than what was possible.
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Tim Berners-Lee may have the smallest fame-to-impact ratio of anyone living. Strangers hardly ever recognize his face; on “Jeopardy!,” his name usually goes for at least sixteen hundred dollars. Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, in 1989, but people informed of this often respond with a joke: Wasn’t that Al Gore? Still, his creation keeps growing, absorbing our reality in the process. If you’re reading this online, Berners-Lee wrote the hypertext markup language (HTML) that your browser is interpreting. He’s the necessary condition behind everything from Amazon to Wikipedia, and if A.I. brings about what Sam Altman recently called “the gentle singularity”—or else buries us in slop—that, too, will be an outgrowth of his global collective consciousness.
Somehow, the man responsible for all of this is a mild-mannered British Unitarian who loves model trains and folk music, and recently celebrated his seventieth birthday with a picnic on a Welsh mountain. An emeritus professor at Oxford and M.I.T., he divides his time between the U.K., Canada, and Concord, Massachusetts, where he and his wife, Rosemary Leith, live in a stout greige house older than the Republic. On the summer morning when I visited, geese honked and cicadas whined. Leith, an investor and a nonprofit director who co-founded a dot-com-era women’s portal called Flametree, greeted me at the door. “We’re basically guardians of the house,” she said, showing me its antique features. I almost missed Berners-Lee in the converted-barn kitchen, standing, expectantly, in a blue plaid shirt. He shook my hand, then glanced at Leith. “Are you a canoer?” she asked. Minutes later, he and I were gliding across a pond behind the house.
Berners-Lee is bronzed and wiry, with sharp cheekbones and faraway blue eyes, the right one underscored by an X-shaped wrinkle. There’s a recalcitrant blond tuft at the back of his balding head; in quiet moments, I could picture Ralph Fiennes playing him in a movie—the internet’s careworn steward, ruminating on some techno-political conundrum. A twitchier figure emerged when he spoke. He muttered and trailed off, eyes darting, or froze midsentence, as though to buffer, before delivering a verbal torrent. It was the arrhythmia of a disciplined demeanor struggling with a restless mind. “Tim has always been difficult to understand,” a former colleague of his told me. “He speaks in hypertext.”
He visibly relaxed as we paddled onto the water. Berners-Lee swims daily when it’s warm, and sometimes invites members of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to “pondithons,” or pond-based hackathons. “We have a joke that if you get any number of them on the island, then they form a quorum, and can make decisions,” he said, indicating a gazebo-size clump of foliage. He spoke of the web as though it were a small New England town and he one of the selectmen. Berners-Lee raised his two children in nearby Lexington, the cradle of the American Revolution, and rose early for the annual Patriots’ Day festivities. “We took them to the reënactment on the Battle Green,” he recalled, “and the midnight ride of Paul Revere.”
The Founding Fathers idolized Cincinnatus, who was appointed dictator to save the Roman Republic, then peacefully returned to his fields. Berners-Lee is admired in a similar spirit—not only for inventing the web but for refusing to patent it. Others wrung riches from the network; Berners-Lee assumed the mantle of moral authority, fighting to safeguard the web’s openness and promote equitable access. He’s been honored accordingly: a knighthood, in 2004; the million-dollar Turing Award, in 2016.
Now Sir Tim has written a memoir, “This Is for Everyone,” with the journalist Stephen Witt. It might have been a victory lap, but for the web’s dire situation—viral misinformation, addictive algorithms, the escalating disruptions of A.I. In such times, Berners-Lee can no longer be Cincinnatus. He has taken up the role of Paul Revere.
“They thought they were safe,” he said, as the boat startled a flock of geese. Platforms had lulled users into complacent dependency, then sealed off the exits, revealing themselves as extractive monopolies. Berners-Lee’s escape hatch is a project called the Solid Protocol, whose mission is to revolutionize the web by giving users control over their data. To accelerate its adoption, he launched a company, Inrupt, in 2017. “We can build a new world in which we get the functionality of things like Facebook and Instagram,” he told me. “And we don’t need to ask for permission.”
Berners-Lee knows that the obstacles are formidable. But he’s pulled off a miracle before. “Young people don’t understand what it took to make the web,” he said. “It took companies giving up their patent rights, it took individuals giving up their time and energy, it took bright people giving up their ideas for the sake of a common idea.” The dock slid into view just as he reached a crescendo. Smiling, he set down his paddle. “Shall I drop you here?”
cabbage
in reply to geneva_convenience • • •unexposedhazard
in reply to geneva_convenience • • •like this
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bdonvr
in reply to unexposedhazard • • •According to news sources they "lost contact" with this ship so I kinda wonder if that's not what happened.
like this
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eldavi
in reply to unexposedhazard • • •unexposedhazard
in reply to eldavi • • •The assumption of a malfunction was mentioned on one of the the social media accounts of the GSF and by one of the people on another boat last night during the livestream.
But you can also just use your own head. The IDF has full coverage of the entire area with drones and satellites. Nothing will get through if they dont want it to. There is no slipping by undetected or anything like that. They have thermal cameras on those drones so not even at night.
If that boat was actually ever there then it was either already captured or somehow locked in place by the IDF or it was emptied and drifted there.
My friend that works in a sea rescue org always rants to me about how Frontex knows everything going on in the mediterranean sea. When their rescue group finds a sinking boat with people in the water they often struggle to find all the people in the waves. Frontex with their drones flying above them knows about every single person in the water, but they dont share any information with civilians...
MarxOverflow
in reply to geneva_convenience • • •52fighters
in reply to geneva_convenience • • •SulaymanF
in reply to 52fighters • • •Nakoichi [they/them]
in reply to geneva_convenience • • •The fuck?! Israel is illegal under international law. Fuck all the fucking way off.