Microsoft is starting to enable ads inside the Start menu on Windows 11 for all users. After testing these briefly with Windows Insiders earlier this month, Microsoft has started to distribute update KB5036980 to Windows 11 users this week, which includes “recommendations” for apps from the Microsoft Store in the Start menu....
Not really. With the super easy, friendly distros it basically just goes.
I switched to Linux Mint Cinnamon a while ago expecting to just fool around a bit but mostly boot back into windows to do stuff. I've now found that the ONLY thing I need to go back to windows for is when I'm forced by dumb policies to use an MSOffice product, which fortunately doesn't happen to often (and no, LibreOffice is absolutely not a sub for MS Office. The spreadsheet app is worse than google docs, and I'd rather work in typst than have to deal with the libreoffice writer -- especially as soon as I need to display an equation/figure/table of contents. Of course, I'd rather work in typst than deal with MSWord too...)
That said, I don't really play games anymore. Games may still require frequent windows visits. But... I've been looking forward to a complete edition of horizon forbidden west and all accounts say it's linux compatibility is near perfect, so maybe things aren't so bad these days on the gaming front.
Doesn't sound like winner winner chicken dinner for housing affordability -- rooftop solar doesn't make sense for all installs and the last thing California needs is more cumbersome, one-size-fits-all riders added to its building codes. Solar already makes financial sense for many people even with the dumb changes to CA net metering. You don't need to require people to do things that make financial sense -- you just need to make sure there aren't odious barriers in the way.
What they should be doing -- and certainly are -- is funding green banks and the like to create low/no cost financing for people who want to install residential renewables. Or for neighborhoods/communities that want to go in together on solar gardens et al.. Dollar for dollar way more effective, and carrots always work better than sticks in the body of US politics plus (and are harder for conservatives to snatch away down the line thanks to delicious loss aversion).
If they're modifying building codes, it should be to reduce/eliminate the scope of expensive, leaky, anti-consumer natural gas and increasing home efficiency standards overall. And more important, eliminating cumbersome restrictive zoning/parking requirements and encouraging locally-driven infill development at the smallest scales. Also be strict as hell with urban green bands which are proven effective at improving urban density/fighting sprawl over time. Sprawl is the worst thing a city can do both environmentally and for its financial sustainability and don't let the YIMBY types tell you otherwise.
If he wants to stay he'll just change the rules to allow himself to stay. He's done it before and has consistently proven no one can stand up to him in Florida.
A lot of US states are starting to close the classic vehicle exceptions too. Because their pickup-loving busybody mid-level bureaucrats are aesthetically displeased by kei trucks and so wield the levers of the administrative state to ban them for bullshit reasons.
I was definitely already amid doing the research for getting an old Kei truck and converting it to electric when I found out my state wouldn't tolerate me doing it anymore. Because evidently a kei is super dangerous to be in on the road. More dangerous than a motorcycle or bicycle. Somehow.
This is in fact the only coherent argument for why US electric vehicles all have such absurdly huge ranges - so that they still have decent ranges even when old.
EV battery recycling is already a thing. Hopefully the relevant authorities start putting out some standards for battery packs to keep them at least somewhat recyclable though, since that's getting to be a problem given that every single auto manufacturer seems to be building custom packs for every car.
President Joe Biden is marking Earth Day by announcing $7 billion in federal grants for residential solar projects serving 900,000-plus households in low- and middle-income communities. He also plans to expand his New Deal-style American Climate Corps green jobs training program.
Better, money is mostly going to green banks, which are by FAR the most effective way dollar-for-dollar to get renewable projects going.
They work by providing low-interest loans to applicants doing these specific projects. Sometimes not even the full value -- just enough to make it work and get off the ground. They then collect back the loan over time, and use the proceeds to fund further projects. So long as the loans don't overwhelmingly fail, they can then continue financing more and more projects according to their mission forever. These institutions can activate 5, 10 dollars worth of projects for every federal dollar sent to them. They're multipliers. They're amazingly effective. And they cut through a lot of the worst bureaucratic bullshit -- at least until the GOP manages to create miles of red tape in the pursuit of "accountability" on the incredibly low-risk investment they represent.
I'm real damn tired of progressives pretending Biden and his administration are bad on climate. They aren't. They're kicking ass on it. The IRA has me hoping for the first time in a decade, and so long as Trump doesn't get back in and murder it next year it will become at least as sticky and hard-to-repeal as the ACA because of the inertia and constituency it builds and reinforces. Plenty of legitimate stuff to criticize in this administration. I'm so tired of all the "bitch eating crackers" he gets on climate from people who don't know what they're talking about.
That's pretty normal for construction sector helper job starting wages, though, depending on region. Probably shouldn't be, but is. The nature of federal programs is that they have really strong guardrails to keep their wages on prevailing, which can go both ways and this is the rare occasion of it going a worse way, in my opinion.
Those jobs tend to see significant pay bumps for people who last and are useful.
Not to mention the huge amount of this funding going to green banks. Green banks are just flatly good programs. Highly effective at making renewable projects happen, very high return on investment.
I think a lot of people might be sympathetic to the idea that in wartime, you need to be stricter because of the incredibly high stakes. That Ukraine is at war, so they need to find and deal with these sources of disinformation.
I think those same people need to realize that the policies never get rolled back to a more liberal state when the war is over.
It sucks that this is a systemic advantage for authoritarians. It really sucks. It feels bad. But it's the handicap you have to accept to resist authoritarianism.
We've successfully done this, to pretty decent success, once. In the north Atlantic.
Of course, the reflective material was an enormously harmful pollutant that was the reason for the entire acid rain crisis (anyone else remember how we used to have worldwide environmental crises that we would band together and solve? ah, memories).
I think the unfortunate reality is that part of the survival of our species is going to require this shit. And that it will, probably, cause major other problems -- we just have to hope they aren't worse than the ones being averted. It's going to happen. If by no one else, China or Saudi Arabia or some such will deploy the tech for selfish reasons. Better to be ahead of the R&D curve to make sure we have the best handle we can on what's going to happen with it.
Pretty much everyone on the science side of this, even the startups and researchers behind this tech, agree that we'd be better off not needing to use it. That it's a tragedy we're even considering it. But... it is. We're experiencing a global tragedy right now and need to be collectively realistic about it.
Home Assistant is now part of the Open Home Foundation, a non-profit aiming to fight against surveillance capitalism and offer privacy, choice, and sustainability....
I had it briefly up and running and can only say... it's a bear, at least if you are trying to use it as a drop-in replacement with existing hardware. I'm sure I'll go back and sort it out at some point, but it left me just feeling tired and frustrated even when I had it doing most of what I wanted.
If you were thoughtful about hardware from the ground up, maybe it would be more straightforward, but I tried getting it running on just an old workstation with ubuntu installed on it that I use for very basic stuff like syncthing and it was just painful. Mix of Kasa/Wyze/Philips devices that are just what I've somehow collected over time.
It would be nice to see better first-class add-on support. I found myself needing to SSH into a VM to get stuff into it, and even then it was twitchy in all the wrong ways. Would also be nice to see better support for the containerized version, because that's so much easier to distribute and execute compared to a VM. Next time I'll probably just try to do it all with docker and see if it hurts less, since I don't think any addons I was using were critical to begin with.
That said, if you're doing HA, get a dedicated piece of hardware for it. I suspect it vastly simplifies things.
That was the point that hit my limit, now that you mention it -- getting it to show up on a duckdns address on the https public internet. Not being able to make that work after fiddling with all kinds of contradictory guides nor with 2 or 3 completely different reverse proxy tools just left me mad. Especially since a regular ngix reverse proxy manager container works fine on the same computer, but for some reason was just refusing to connect to HA (SSL issues, I think).
Having HA just working locally didn't really make it a replacement for the big tech solutions that already work fairly smoothly. I'm sure I'll go back to get it the way I want one day, but the learning curve on any selfhosting is still pretty rough.
Archived copies of the article (podcast wrapper): [archive.today](Trump’s Bizarre Rants Over Wind Power Are More Ominous Than You Think) web.archive.org
I will ALWAYS tell people they need to be strategic about voting. A vote is not an endorsement. It's not a pledge of deep personal conviction for a cause. Your vote is currency to be spent, and it should be spent in such a way that gives you the best possible rate of return. Refusing to vote, letting a Trump win, actions like that? Pretty poor return on investment. If you're in a place like California where you know the state is going Biden anyway and you think you can spend that vote in a way to protest and create more impact that way, that's reasonable and cool. If you're in Georgia, where every damn vote counts, and you do the same, you are being anything but.
But on climate, I'll defend Biden. The IRA is a good piece of legislation. It's hard to overstate how good it is. He somehow got the biggest climate policy in US and likely the entire world's history past an essentially-hostile congress (including 51+ anti-climate senators), and the law is almost entirely sound, reasonable, effective policy. It's even baked into its design to have a self-reinforcing constituency -- every year it survives, its repeal becomes less likely, just like with something like medicare or the ACA -- since it promotes and creates entire slow-moving industries to respond to its built-in incentives.
And sorry not sorry to piss off a lot of people, but climate is hierarchically the most important issue. If we do not address climate, all these other issues are irrelevant. We're talking about something with possibly-apocalyptic ramifications. Our civilization has the potential to exist a very long time. We have the potential to make a lot of changes, right a lot of wrongs, make the future way better. Climate change is very nearly the only threat that cannot take advantage of all that time, because the deadlines are fast approaching -- some already blown away.
I'll be voting for Biden in the next cycle. I think his entire foreign policy related to the middle east is asinine and evil. I think that if he does lose in November, it will be 100% his own fault for throwing in with the undeniably-genocidal regime of Benjamin Netanyahu. But I know that things will be worse for Gaza with Trump in the white house, because then what little resistance to the slaughter exists will go away; Trump loves a dead Arab, after all. And more important, I know things will be way worse for absolutely everyone if the hard-won progress we have had on climate since 2020 is all thrown in the bin. That may well be the point of no recovery for the entire world.
The legal situation is more complex and nuanced than the headline implies, so the article is worth reading. This adds another ruling to the confusing case history regarding forced biometric unlocking.
Absent an idiotic carrier/mfg skin that disables the feature, you just long-press power then click "lockdown".
Or reboot the device. Rebooting the device will also leave it encrypted if your device has encryption (the PIN/password is needed to decrypt, essentially).
Preventing the collection of data by the state may be impossible, but they should be accountable for who has it, who it's given to, and they should need to go through proper due process to use it against you in any kind of official proceeding.
It might be impossible to get everyone out of the databases, but we can at least force warrant requirements and the like.
I will never, ever understand the cooking with gas meme after using a modern electric oven. Meaning NOT coils.
I generally cook 2 hot meals a day, every day. Occasionally more. I cook a lot, and it's almost entirely on the range in pans.
For cleaning, there's no question. A glass-top range is better, which means electric. Not even debatable. And for MOST home cooks, the time they spend cleaning alone justifies not using gas. Gas ranges are basically always filthy, or else you have to clean them constantly, obsessively, and aggressively with harsh oven cleaner chemicals. A glass top just takes a quick wipe with some surface cleaner. Maybe an occasional scrub with a brush/sponge and barkeeper's friend. Never a huge chore to keep it clean.
For cooking in the oven, electric is also better. This is also not really debated. They're more consistent and controllable, they keep the heat inside the oven where you want it, they preheat faster and more efficiently since they aren't constantly venting some portion of their heat. The really high-end kitchens have long been a gas range with a separate electric oven because it was essentially common knowledge that electric is better for baking.
But even for the range, electric is better. Even a fairly modern ceramic electric is better -- they almost all have "quick boil" or similar 5000W hobs. Those get your pans hot and do it crazy fast. Faster than gas. They also tend to always get you the same heat for the same settings. You're never constantly fiddling with them like you have to with the variability of gas, aside from when learning.
The only, only, only downside of a gas range is you can't char something directly on the flame. Buy a handheld torch or use the broiler, it's really not a big deal. You probably should be doing it under the broiler for consistency anyway.
And induction takes all those electric advantages and just amplifies them.
Get a stove that has knobs if you can. Knobs are definitely better. It's only the REALLY cheap ones that are all touch panel all the time. I agree with you -- I hate the modern trend of cheapening out on components by putting everything on a touch panel. They're unreliable and obnoxious. Gas ranges can't cut this corner because there are valves to operate -- but you know they would if they could, and gas ovens have the same exact terrible panels pretty routinely these days.
The heat cycling is still a thing with resistive ranges sometimes. Induction doesn't really do that. Since I cook almost entirely on cast iron, I never noticed it either way, so you may be right that it's an annoyance if you have a different style.
Pretty standard for induction ranges to also have a (ceramic) warmer hob these days for when you need really low heat, though I don't find it very useful. My induction hobs, on low, get the pan barely warm to the touch. On high, they get it blindingly hot in seconds.
I have old Facebook and Twitter accounts, maybe some others. I’m old so there’s a MySpace account out there. But I’ve mostly been using reddit the last decade or so, and have migrated to Lemmy. Now, Lemmy is the only social media i use. Recent news got me thinking about this question.
Good answers here, but ignoring probably the most realistic and practical truth of the matter in my opinion.
You won't immediately be sent to the stocks for saying "I don't want to answer", the worst case scenario is that some officer of the court informs you that you must answer the question even if you don't want to. And even that is only going to happen if the attorney asking the question insists. And I struggle to imagine a situation where a competent attorney would do so.
Being hostile towards your prospective jurors, making them feel exposed and uncomfortable, is not a way to march to victory in a trial. They want to ensure you aren't prejudiced against their client/case. Making you dislike them personally IS prejudice. Causing prejudice is a bad way to eliminate prejudice.
They will ask questions, mostly yes/no ones, that you need to answer honestly. They may ask for clarification. If you don't want to answer and say so, it's unlikely anyone will press you because that unnwillingness to answer is just as clear an indication of who you are as anything else.
It’s high time someone in the Republican Party told Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to turn all that bombastic self-serving showmanship and drama queen energy on Democrats, and stop trying to defeat her own party.
The flaw with this is that bullies ALWAYS prefer to pick on weak* and insecure targets. Not saying the Dems are the chads in this schoolyard by any means, but why would the bully go after the normal, well-adjusted kids when they could go after the insecure, cringy, desperate ones? It's time to stop pretending she's anything other than a garden-variety cheer squad bully. She's never pretended to be otherwise, after all.
Though the war has taken a terrible toll on the valiant people of Ukraine, it has revealed Russia to be vulnerable. If President Biden had allowed an all-out aggressive war against Moscow, we would not be at a seeming stalemate. Because he dithered, Ukraine is now losing ground and urgently needs weapons and ammunition.
Holy fuck this commentator actually wanted us to invade Russia. What the flying fuck. That shit is so crazy it's hard to even put it to words.
Then goes on to defend FISA based on "trust me bro the turrurists are comming" even while claiming to once be wary of it.
If Democrats win control of Congress, which Ms. Greene may well facilitate, they will likely push through tax increases that will undermine investment and productivity, thereby depressing wage increases, and open the door to even more wasteful spending.
The bipartisan infrastructure bill and IRA both represent HISTORIC investment and productivity throughout all sectors of the US economy and the GOP was opposed to them. They aren't interested in investment and productivity. They just want tax cuts. We've been trying to get wages to go up their way for my entire life. It hasn't worked yet.
I sure fucking hope she's right that the dems plan to empower unions and pack the court. They need to do that. Decades ago. Yesterday. Right now. Tomorrow.
“I hate wind,” Trump told the executives over a meal of chopped steak at his Mar-a-Lago Club and resort in Florida, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation....
Solar is vastly cheaper -- it costs so little that it becomes hard to model it. Wind works out to ~$32/MWh in the US. Compare that to fossil gas at $5-$30/MWh, depending on the region, and wind is decidedly not out-competing gas. At least not yet. If it continues to get invested in and allowed to deployed, the learning curves on it should be able to bring its price down quite a lot, though.
And yes, those are LCA prices. No one is going to be as simplistic as to just look at one cost center and ignore the other the real costs of energy generation.
Energy is sold at market prices, aside from that which is sold via purchase agreements with utilities that set the prices manually (this happened a lot with coal and ended up being a huge blunder for many utilities who later had to go back and buy out coal plants just to shut them down because they were stupid expensive). Solar being very profitable because fossil energy is pumping up the price is a good thing, not a bad thing -- this creates huge market incentives to scale up solar production, which is exactly what is actually happening all over the country right now. There's no universe in which it is a "travesty" that solar or any renewable has profit potential to deploy right now. We need as much of it deployed as fast as possible. We need it to be profitable enough to get projects off the ground, especially while interest rates are still painfully high and utility interconnection queues are years long and interconnection is often punishingly expensive for no good reason.
This is a discussion about US climate policy. The inflation reduction act is the most important piece of legislation in US history on the subject of climate. Maybe even including the clean air and water acts. I'd encourage you to read up on it.
Windows 11 Start menu ads are now rolling out to everyone (www.theverge.com)
Microsoft is starting to enable ads inside the Start menu on Windows 11 for all users. After testing these briefly with Windows Insiders earlier this month, Microsoft has started to distribute update KB5036980 to Windows 11 users this week, which includes “recommendations” for apps from the Microsoft Store in the Start menu....
Drivers, start your electric motors! Imagine an auto race with speed but no engine noise. That battery-powered future is already here, with Formula E. (wapo.st)
Apple AirPods are designed to die: Here’s what you should know (pirg.org)
California wants to harness more than half its land to combat climate change by 2045. Here's how (www.latimes.com)
Archived copies of the article: archive.today ghostarchive.org
DeSantis has one of the highest governor disapproval ratings, poll finds (www.tampabay.com)
Three Places Changing Quickly to Fight Climate Change | Paris is becoming a city of bikes. Across China, people are snapping up $5,000 electric cars. (www.nytimes.com)
Biden is marking Earth Day by announcing $7 billion in federal solar power grants (apnews.com)
On Earth Day, Biden is launching a new site to apply for Climate Corps jobs (www.npr.org)
Ukraine's GUR head believes "anonymous" Telegram channel owners should register so the Agency knows who's behind them (www.bbc.com)
Just for the context GUR is Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Agency. Practically like the CIA is in the US....
Startups want to geoengineer a cooler planet. With few rules, experts see big risks (www.npr.org)
The little smart home platform that could (www.theverge.com)
Home Assistant is now part of the Open Home Foundation, a non-profit aiming to fight against surveillance capitalism and offer privacy, choice, and sustainability....
Although not peer reviewed or replicated, a NASA veteran claims their Propellantless Propulsion Drive, that physics says shouldn’t work, just produced enough thrust to overcome Earth’s gravity (thedebrief.org)
Trump’s Bizarre Rants Over Wind Power Are More Ominous Than You Think (newrepublic.com)
Archived copies of the article (podcast wrapper): [archive.today](Trump’s Bizarre Rants Over Wind Power Are More Ominous Than You Think) web.archive.org
Cops can force suspect to unlock phone with thumbprint, US court rules (arstechnica.com)
The legal situation is more complex and nuanced than the headline implies, so the article is worth reading. This adds another ruling to the confusing case history regarding forced biometric unlocking.
California can share your baby's DNA sample without permission, but new bill could force state to publicly reveal who they're giving it to (www.cbsnews.com)
Victoria [Australia] bans gas rebates and incentives for homes as shift to all-electric gathers pace (reneweconomy.com.au)
If you're selected for jury duty (US), should you give up your anonymous social media accounts?
I have old Facebook and Twitter accounts, maybe some others. I’m old so there’s a MySpace account out there. But I’ve mostly been using reddit the last decade or so, and have migrated to Lemmy. Now, Lemmy is the only social media i use. Recent news got me thinking about this question.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is an idiot. She is trying to wreck the GOP (www.foxnews.com)
*** Technically this is news from a far right-wing source. In reality it’s priceless comedy. ***...
We Need to Make Cities Less Car-Dependent | Reducing the need for car travel is better for health, the environment and public safety (www.scientificamerican.com)
Archived copies of the article: ghostarchive.org archive.today
Trump rails against wind energy in fundraising pitch to oil executives | At a Mar-a-Lago dinner, Donald Trump doubles down on promises to derail a key form of clean energy (wapo.st)
“I hate wind,” Trump told the executives over a meal of chopped steak at his Mar-a-Lago Club and resort in Florida, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation....