Reach for the Stars @antares@qoto.org

Despite sensational media about EV fires, the data says EVs are much less likely to catch fire than their gasoline counterparts:

"The Guardian compiled a list of reported data sets from several countries, including Norway (the country with the highest concentration of electric vehicles in the world), Australia, and from Tesla's global fleet. In every case, the numbers are conclusive: EVs are much less likely to catch fire than gasoline or diesel vehicles."
https://www.autoblog.com/2023/11/23/electric-cars-are-less-likely-to-catch-fire-than-gas-cars/
—
#auto #EV

Watching a mutual ask for printer recs and receive a chorus of tired tech folk going "Just get a Brother, they're fine" and man

MAN

Like this is actually kinda fascinating honestly, Brother is now the best printer brand, the one that every Computer Person recommends, and is it because their printers are good? Their printers are fine, they print, whatever, no, it's because everybody else's printers have gotten Innovated out the wazoo, every innovation making them way worse, until it's gotten to the point where I wouldn't have one in the house even if it were free, and meanwhile Brother's have remained consistently Fine I Guess, which now makes them the best printer manufacturer simply by virtue of them opting out of the Who Can Get Crappiest Fastest race

Brother have gotten to where they are now, by NOT innovating

in a way, the past five years have been a gradual process of going through these stages:

1. i'm a computer programmer.

2. why am i so exhausted all the time?

3. i just need to find an employer who doesn't burn me out.

4. i have ADHD and ASD diagnoses now.

5. the medications are doing bad things to me.

6. loss of family member, burnout, mental breakdown.

7. every programming job seems to burn me out.

8. the job i had wanted since i was a kid was the wrong job for me.

9. i have no career now and i'm also unemployable.

10. you know, i never developed a social life and i never started a family. it wasn't important to me at 20 or 30 but now, at 40, it feels like something's missing.

11. i'm an adult now and i'm no longer very interested in the hobbies i had at 20. there's nothing to do now.

12. i have a drinking problem.

13. why could i never do housework properly? oh, right, the AuDHD...

14. i have nothing to lose, so i guess i'll try to ask the government to help me.

15. practical home assistance granted. admitted to back-to-work programme. applies for a social support contact today, to give myself more to do.

16. i'm nothing at the moment. i have to create a new me, from scratch.

If God wanted us to have unlimited free energy He’d have put a giant fusion reactor in the sky.

Dear Microsoft. Here is a list of things I want the Start Menu to do:

* Show my installed programs
* Search my local files
* Provide access to system settings

Here is a list of things I do *not* want the Start Menu to do:

* Show the weather for a randomly-selected town near my network's public IP infrastructure
* Show tabloid headlines
* Show programs I *don't* have installed
* Search the web via Bing
* Show adverts(!)
* Attempt to engage me in conversation with a hallucinating LLM

Thanks.

How Canadians confuse the world ¯\_(ツ)_/¯:

We measure outside temp in Celsius & oven temp in Fahrenheit
Length in meters & our height in feet
Produce is weighed in kilograms, but people are in pounds
We speak like Americans, spell like Brits & randomly throw in French words
We measure driving distance in hours instead of kms.
Liquids are in litres, unless it's for a recipe - then it's in cups.
Property is measured in hectares, but house size is by square footage
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://reclaimthenet.org/nikki-haley-demands-an-end-to-online-anonymity
This would be a clear violation of the First Amendment. The First Amendment protects anonymous speech (and rightly so).

Anonymity is important for free expression, and activism.

https://qoto.org/@olives/111407938871651520
I've covered why "age verification" (which is similar to this) is problematic here. The arguments there also apply here. As I've mentioned elsewhere, scammers are also known to impersonate "age verification" providers.

"The First Amendment of the US Constitution protects freedom of speech and expression. Mandatory ID verification on social media could be seen as a form of censorship, limiting individuals’ ability to speak freely online. Historically, the Supreme Court has been protective of anonymous speech as a vital part of the freedom of expression, as seen in cases like Talley v. California (1960) and McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (1995). These cases underscore the right to distribute anonymous literature and the protection of anonymous speech, respectively."

"Related to the First Amendment, there’s a historical precedent for the right to anonymity in political speech. In the Federalist Papers, for example, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote under the pseudonym “Publius” to argue for the ratification of the Constitution itself. Without the right to anonymity, there would be no America as we know it."

#privacy

@drmaddkap
I reconcile it thus:

Its creator who created spec 87a was allowed to be a doofus and decree that it be pronounced like peanut butter, because he created it.

But then CompuServ came out with 89a.

By all the nonexistent authority vested in me, "GIF" (with a soft G) refers explicitly to 87a, and "GIF" (with a hard G) refers to all versions of the format including and subsequent to 89a.

Important one to remember. #chatcontrol

What should I work on?