Adam Richard @adamrichard@qoto.org

I finally figured out how to set up a website on my own computer in my own house, something I'd been trying to do for a long time. So my game, Algebrain, is now available for you to try for free via that method at this URL, at least until I get a power outage:

https://algebrain.duckdns.org/

This is an improvement over the previous URL in that it's set up with SSL which means you can play with a game controller (e.g. an XBox controller or PS3/4/5 controller or whatever controller you may have for playing PC games), and also the multiplayer mode should work. Feedback would be appreciated both in terms of whether you have any problems accessing the website (e.g. warnings or errors) and also feedback on the game itself (i.e. is it fun, did you find any bugs, does it succeed as a proof of concept, etc). I'm definitely a noob at web admin so I probably screwed up something.

To see the controls for using a game controller, go here:

https://adam4235.github.io/algebra/algebrain.html

I also documentated the steps I had to go through to set up a website on my own computer in my own house:

https://adam4235.github.io/encyclopedia/computer/setting_up_web_server.txt

It was frustrating how difficult it was compared to setting up a webpage through a service or through a server that you rent, which I've had little difficulty with in the past. To me that discrepancy is a gaping flaw in the structure of the internet. If we want a free, open, and democratic internet, then why should it be /easier/ to share my stuff from someone else's computer who I pay a fee to, rather than just sharing it from my own computer? The common advice I hear: "it's only $10/month" and "that's less than the cost of maintaining your own computer" is dogma as far as I'm concerned. The server I'm using is an old laptop with a broken screen which would otherwise be basically garbage, so my method is free and saves resources.

I found this episode of the Philosophize This podcast to be quite interesting:

https://philosophizethis.libsyn.com/episode-072-insecurity

It's about how insecurity is similar in some ways (but also kind of opposite) to morality, or at least the way many people perceive morality. In both cases, you're letting other people's approval or disapproval change your behaviour, and possibly your happiness. Of course, there can be a big difference in the type of approval you're caring about - e.g. being insecure about whether your clothes are out of style is much less serious than a murderer not wanting someone to know they've committed murder.

I think morality goes beyond the approval of other people though, and I think a lot of people perceive morality as being merely the approval of other people.

I'm also probably a person that does what the podcast says people don't really do: constantly think about whether a choice is the most moral choice. I was wondering if it might be because of being aware of climate change that I'm that way, because in the face of climate change lots of little actions that people do regularly, or which weren't possible hundreds of years ago, gain moral weight. But I don't think that's it - I think even without climate change I'd be often thinking about the wider impact of my actions, for some reason. E.g. enslavement of workers or animal rights or genocide, and even pollution without climate change is still pollution.

However, maybe I don't constantly think about morality that often after all: one thing the podcast neglects to mention that seems relevant is the role of habits in morality. If you decide in advance one and for all what a good action is, then develop habits that are in line with your morality, then you've "programmed" yourself to automatically avoid immoral actions and don't need to think about them for each action. E.g. by having the habit of biking / walking to get places I just go places, and don't need to optimize the trip or weigh its benefits against the carbon footprint like I'd do if I drove. It's sufficient to philosophize once in a while to re-evaluate whether your (habitual) actions match your beliefs, as well as to look for errors in those beliefs themselves.

But in many cases the habit of trying to do the right thing can also give you the habit of trying to do what other people expect of you even when their expectations are morally neutral (or wrong). Changing to ignore those expectations has the potential to increase your happiness significantly, by causing new connections with different people. E.g. I can sometimes impress people by rambling on about money, but since money is boring to me, I may be meeting those people's expectations while failing to meet the expectations of some different people who would be more interesting. (But sometimes I ramble on about a boring thing because I can't think of anything interesting to say, and that might be different.)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/homeless-encampments-bc-1.6783020

The situation in Vancouver with the tent city removal makes me very disturbed and also ask questions about the (prejudiced) assumptions people make. For example: is the word "homeless" actually appropriate? In some cases, people who live in tents consider it their home, and it seems they sometimes decline an offer of an "official" shelter when it's offered. That means their tent is their home. You might not like it being their home, and maybe they aren't happy either (though there was a philosopher who was happy living in a barrel), but if they consider it their home, then it is. Maybe "houseless" is a better word?

Viewed that way, the removal of a whole tent city because of some crimes that some people commit is ludicrous, even if those crimes are legitimate concerns. Imagine if a street got bulldozed while its occupants were away at work just because it was a neighborhood with high crime? If we treat that situation as ludicrous, but the tent city removal situation as normal, it proves our discrimination on the basis of wealth.

When I visited South Africa the townships in cities seemed to have many similarities: people who couldn't get a house ending up living in smaller, more temporary dwellings closer together. They had purportedly higher crime which the police also didn't do anything about because they didn't care about the townships. Yet even in that country with relatively racist policies and its enormous gap between the rich who lived in "big" houses and the poor who lived in townships, I never heard anyone even consider the idea of the police going through and *removing* a township. It would just be understood that the idea wouldn't make any sense because that's just where a large number of people live. So I guess South Africa 1, Canada 0: but in both cases, the police should change to treat *individual* criminals who live in the poor, temporary dwellings exactly the same as they treat criminals who live in houses.

Of course it would be great for Canada to do something to house anyone who wants to be housed, but even if you want to argue that it doesn't have enough money to do that, at the very least cities could remove the by-laws that hinder it from happening, as I've been saying for years. That costs $0. I.e. let people build tiny houses, or 2 small houses on one plot of land, or put trailers in someone's driveway with permission, or build a tiny house in a friend's yard with permission. And people can give someone permission to camp in their yard. And the government(s) *must* give people some spot where they're allowed to live in a tent for free, because otherwise they're being illogical, because all the other options cost money, and not everybody has money, so logically there will otherwise be some people who have no valid place to exist. Even having money doesn't guarantee you can find housing - currently houses and apartments require outbidding someone else or being chosen by someone else in an interview, and the only reason I have a place to live is because of being very blessed to be born in the situation I was born in.

Another option I found is various charities who donate solar panels to people in poor countries, or their communities (e.g. to power hospitals). That helps people as well as reduces their reliance on fossil fuels. I don't know what the best such charity is though.

@hasmis What's a conxxx influencer job?

I found this interesting estimate of the number of future deaths from global warming, something I'd always wondered about.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02323/full

They estimate (only) a billion deaths projected if we can stay under 2C of global warming (which is optimistic and would require becoming a more energy efficient society and diverting from our present path but not totally leaving civilization). Based on that scenario, they estimate that 1000 tons of emissions kills about one future person. That means the average Canadian, who burns about 20 tons per year, is killing about 1-2 people during their lives. From a slightly more positive stance, by not driving and living frugally I'm only killing about 1/4 to 1/2 of my future grandchildren, which is still pretty sad, but I'm also saving approximately one of their lives, which is pretty cool!

Of course these estimates are very inaccurate, as they say, but they're better than making random guesses and being off by orders of magnitude (such as thinking your lifestyle is only killing a tiny fraction of a person so is fine, or thinking that humans will all be wiped out by our lifestyles).

@hasmis I didn't look into too much detail and don't know much about it, but where do you see that? Could it be that you were just looking at an example power plant? From my understanding their goal is to convert lots of power plants around the world of varying sizes. I'm guessing the ones that are falling down are better off just being decommissioned rather than converted, and they'd probably start with the most cost-effective ones.

This looks like a decent charity. They plan to convert coal power plants to nuclear to fight climate change without having a lot of the infrastructure of the power plant go to waste.

https://www.terrapraxis.org/projects/repowering-coal

I did find this example of an individual donating a lot of money to try to end coal:

https://thebulletin.org/2019/06/bloomberg-donates-500-million-to-help-end-coal/

However, looking into the details of the article, a lot of the money apparently just went for political campaigning to try to get governments to change their minds. I was hoping for a way to donate to or invest in an actual project that replaces coal with solar panels, something that people want to do but need funding to make happen. So far I still can't find anything, at least for ordinary people. The best I can think of is to do energy upgrades, or lend money to people who want to do energy upgrades but need money to do them sooner. We have enough money in the world to stop climate change, and it sucks that I can't find a way to coordinate enough people with that money to do it.

Something frequently discussed with regard to climate change, e.g. in the latest IPCC report, is that it's up to governments to shut down coal and oil power plants and provide financial aid to poor countries so they can also do so.

However, hasn't it been governments that have been consistently failing us? Or rather, oil and gas companies failing us, and governments not standing up to them, or helping them? For example, I want to divest from coal and oil, but my country's pension fund, which I'm forced to contribute to if I work at most jobs in my country, is forcing some of "my" investments to be in oil and gas:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/pension-funds-ties-to-fossil-fuel-industry-1.6781293

This makes me ask: is it possible for individuals or non-government institutions, etc., to provide the money that's apparently "needed" to switch to renewable energy? It's of course possible to buy stocks in solar panel companies or buy green bonds to finance climate-related projects (similar to how government bonds supply the government's debt and lets them spend money they don't have). Could it be as easy as switching some of our investments to raise the financing needed to cause coal and oil projects to disappear? Or is there something to donate to that would cause them to disappear? If governments of rich countries can do that to help governments of poor countries, then why couldn't individuals or non-government groups?

Even just thinking about the coal power plants in NB, what can individuals do to get them shut down? If NB power doesn't have the money to replace them, then shouldn't individuals be able to invest in something to cause them to be replaced? Or at least buy their electricity elsewhere? But because of, again, the connection of NB power to government and not having another place I can buy electricity (other than buying solar panels, if I own a house), I don't see how we (the people) can shut down those plants.

Of course, it would be a lot easier if we could choose what our pension fund gets invested in. And of course, there are lots of other lifestyle things you can do in your life to reduce your carbon footprint, but I think money is one that is often overlooked, and I don't think most people, including me, have much knowledge of how to use their money to fight climate change.

In Star Trek, they have a money-less society which comes about as a result of replicator technology: since people can assemble molecules into anything they need from a specification, there's no need or motivation to buy and sell things. Instead, the motivation to do things becomes based on reputation or seeking meaning or status.

People usually accept that story as a sensible possible future. But to use the language and ideas of many people today, the replicators in Star Trek would need to be ad-supported. I.e. the replicators would have to show ads to the people who use them, with the people who make the specifications for the different things to replicate getting money from the advertisers.

But doesn't the Star Trek story seem saner? Why then is it hard to accept webpages and software made and shared by people who are just wanting to share it for the same reasons as the characters in Star Trek? Why is it hard to accept that there are enough of us to provide for our basic technological needs? Software and information can be replicated for free, just like in Star Trek. We don't need ads.

Tried using Jitsi Meet for a tutoring meeting and I'm impressed with it. Used it right from within my web browser, no account setup, no software to install, free and open source, just created a name for the meeting and got a URL for the meeting. Has a whiteboard and screen sharing.

https://meet.jit.si/

Things I don't like about relationships that other people like:
-candlelight
-restaurants
-gifts
-modifying appearance to impress
-flowers
-weird names such as "honey"
-meeting people at a bar
-expectation to pay money to go places
-being popular by owning a car
-drinking alcohol to become closer to someone
-weddings
-expectation to dress in clothes that are fancy or match
-expectation for men to ask out women but not vice versa
-sharing money and being attracted to someone with money
-going to ceremonies / concerts / performances / sports games / something where you buy a ticket to watch something that's supposedly serious

Things I like about relationships that other people also like:
-physical touch
-emotions
-having someone to do activities with
-being able to afford a house or apartment

Things I associate with relationships that other people don't:
-zombies
-sword fights

Happy "Understand Aromantics A Bit Better" Day!

This is a good guide for how to reduce Surveillance Capitalism by big tech:

https://gofoss.net/

Of course, you could instead just let them collect data on you but take the effort to block increasingly invasive ads. But there's just no beating that clean feeling of switching to software or sites which are offering something helpful, no strings attached. That's why I love finding out about these kinds of tools.

Not all the steps are easy, so, like me, you'll probably end up making compromises. For example, look at the patheticness I had to do as a result of being stuck with an Apple product:

https://adam4235.github.io/encyclopedia/computer/iphone_reduced_tracking.html

@voidabyss No I'm not sure, but I assume the most prevalent version of Omicron. It was very mild for me in any case, maybe because I got my booster shot shortly beforehand.

Something that is often unclear concerning Covid is: what does it mean for a person to be recovered from Covid? There's an ambiguity: a person can be recovered in the sense that the virus has left their body, or they can be recovered in the sense that they feel the same as they did before getting Covid.

I've found that I was faced with an uncomfortable dilemma when people ask whether I was recovered from Covid. I'm recovered in the sense that it's been almost a month and I'm testing negative and the virus has left my body. But I still have a slight long term symptom (feel like I have to clear my throat more often than usual), so I don't feel the same as before I had Covid. (Long term symptoms also often happen to me when I get a cold, ever since about 2008, maybe because I got pneumonia at that time. So far they're no worse than that, and I hope it lasts no longer than that. I don't have the loss of energy.)

If I say I'm recovered, then I reinforce the following mistaken idea about Covid - that it's a temporary sickness that you get for a few days and then get better and, if you're lucky, don't die from. But the scary thing about Covid is not the possibility of dying. It's the possibility of never recovering, of having some kind of permanent damage. Since I don't know yet if that's the situation for me, celebrating being "over" it seems out of place. Is my immune system permanently weakened? Are my lungs permanently weakened? I have no clue, so as a result it bothers me when people are like "yay, you're over Covid".

But if I say I'm not recovered, then people might think I'm still sick in the contagious sense. In many cases, people take months or even more than a year before they feel back to being the same again, but obviously the virus has long left their body and it's safe for them to go places.

So it's no wonder people with long Covid feel like nobody is listening to them. The significance of Covid compared to other sickness is not the serious immediate effects, which are rare for vaccinated people, but the fact that it very often has a long-term impact.

The next step of my obsession to rid myself of companies tracking me for advertising is to escape cloud file storage. For that purpose I've discovered a great open source way to sync files locally called Syncthing:

https://syncthing.net/

Rather than storing files in the cloud on a company's server, it just syncs files between your different devices. It doesn't work on iOS, though, only Android, but I also want to get rid of my iPhone anyway and use LineageOS now that I've figured out how degoogle Android phones and since iOS doesn't allow an adblocker in Firefox.

Ever since syncing my data with a Palm Pilot 15 or 20 years ago I've found syncing to be a challenge, and I also want to keep things backed up, so like many people I've resigned myself to using cloud services for some of this. You can also use SSH or other file sharing systems but the advantage of Syncthing is you don't have to configure it with a username/password/IP address or things like that - it just connects devices that you physically have in your possession and disallows other people with other devices from connecting to you.

Another reason I've been thinking of doing more local syncing and less relying on internet services is from reading about the carbon footprint of the internet. It's difficult to tell how much of an impact various internet actions have in the grand scheme of things, but since I have many GB of data to keep backed up, I'm sure it's more environmentally friendly to keep it local and not cause companies to build infrastructure to store it, especially when their apparent incentive for doing so is to access my data for advertising.

I took an old tablet with a broken screen and installed LineageOS on it, as my first attempt at rooting a device and trying an open mobile OS. This is a great post giving some of the reasons for doing so and a basic outline of the process:

https://brainbaking.com/post/2021/03/getting-rid-of-tracking-using-lineageos/

For me it went pretty smoothly. The most difficult part was actually getting the back cover off my tablet, which isn't necessary for rooting all devices - I had one of the more challenging ones (Amazon Fire HD 8).

I get the impression that privacy is a big motivation for people to switch to open source these days. There are different reasons people care about privacy or sound alarms about privacy violations: for me, it's not so much that I don't want people to know things about me, it's that I don't consent to the economic model of companies tracking me and storing data about me for advertising purposes. So any time I find a way to be in control of the computers I buy and the data I create, I consider it a win.

December kale harvest. I love my kale and my kale loves me! #foodnotlawns #foodisfree
https://adam4235.github.io/recipes/supper/kale_potato_soup.txt

I set up a second mini PC with Linux Mint XFCE edition which I found for only $70 used (it's a bit old but still has an SSD) and which uses only 15W of electricity. The XFCE edition is ideal for older hardware.

One piece of software that makes this setup extra useful is barrier, which is a free virtual (software) KVM switch, i.e. lets you use the same keyboard and mouse on 2 computers that are both turn on, and switch between them without unplugging things:

https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

Setting up barrier took a bit more effort that their page indicates - you also have to ensure that one computer always has the same IP address by configuring your router (in my case, go to http://192.168.2.1, login, Advanced setup -> DHCP reservation). And I had to disable SSL in the barrier options to get it to work.

Since I play PC games, my other computer pretty much has to have Windows and be powerful and consume a lot of electricity, and I think a lot of people are in my situation. The advantages of having a second Linux mini-PC beside it is to save electricity when I'm not gaming and be able to use Linux for all other tasks besides gaming, without needing to reboot whenever I want to switch between a game and another application. A virtual machine is another thing people do but I think my setup is better because VMs are slow, it saves electricity, it prevents me from having to deal with the annoyances of using Windows all the time, and it means I have a spare computer for when one dies.