The US Regular Army (RA) was founded in 1775. State militias supported the RA through the various wars fought on what is now US soil (including the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812). In the Civil War, the RA was supported by volunteers and fought on the side that ultimately won. The Confederate Army was similar to the RA at the time. Currently, the RA has been absorbed into the US Army (including Army Reserve and National Guard).

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_Army_(United_States) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_Army

So… yes there was a federal military, but it was a different thing than the US Army is now. How that would play out if things went bonkers in 2025… who knows. There are a LOT of people around the world watching VERY closely though… and really hoping (not that confidently though) that sanity will prevail.

Yeah I see it (as a not American looking in from outside the country). Every time I visit the USA, the changes in things are more and more visible.

There’s probably not going to be a civil war.

So… there’s still a chance then…

They manufacture and sell the buses in Canada… There are BYD buses in operation in at least Toronto, Victoria, Longeuil, St. Albert and Grand Prairie (and probably more by now). https://en.byd.com/news/byd-opens-first-canadian-bus-assembly-plant/ If you’re in Montreal, there’s a decent chance you’ll see BYD E6 taxis.

There’s been rumors of the cars being prepped for general sale in Canada… but I can’t find any proof of that right now.

Generally, you use the radio network from mobile phone to cell tower, and then fibre optic to the switches. Sometimes they use microwave line of sight for surface-to-surface connections where fibre doesn’t make sense, or is unviable (terrain, distance, cost, difficulty of laying fibre, etc.). It’s possible that there could be a satellite connection in the process, but unlikely unless you’re on an airplane, a ship, etc.

The GPS on the mobile phone definitely does use satellite (receive only though, no transmit).

It’s a problem with Canonical. They stepped up and created the snaps and then abandoned them instead of maintaining them. They still maintain the core that they include with the distro… it’s all the extras they created to pad out the store… and then abandoned. “Look the snap store has so many packages”… yeah… no… it doesn’t.

Why would a company who makes a commercial level open source package want to add snaps to their already broad Linux offering? They typically already build RPM (covering RHEL, Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva, etc.) and DEB (covering Debian, Ubuntu, all Ubuntu derivatives, etc.)… and have a tar.gz to cover anything they missed. Why should they add the special snowflake snap just to cover Ubuntu which is already well covered by the DEB hey already make?

Sure, show vendors what’s possible, but if Canonical stepped up to make the snaps, then they should still be maintaining them. It’s not a business opportunity… its more bullshit from Canonical that no one wants.

Snap is a steaming pile of excrement. So much of the crap on the Snap Store is obsolete and out of date. Anyone and their monkey can post a snap on snapcraft, and… they do. Canonical is just as bad. They took it upon themselves to package up a lot of commercial-level open-source software 3 or 4 years ago… and then have done fuck all with it ever since. Zero updates to the original snaps they put there in the initial population of the Snap store (yes they do maintain a select few things, but only a small percentage of the flood of obsolete software in the Snap store). The result is people looking to install apps who poke the Snap store, go “oh hey, the application I want is there”, install it, and then get all pissy with the vendor… who looks about in surprise wondering how a potential customer managed to find such an old version (happened with at least 2 of my employers, and I’ve come across many more). Go search Reddit (or Google) for obsolete snap discussions. There’s no shortage people pointing at the same issue.

And if you deleted all your comments… they undeleted everything.

Lol. You’re not a parent are you?

It’s not lazy, it’s being involved as a parent. I teach them. I council them. I explain the good and the bad.

They don’t have unfettered access to the internet either. I carefully limit to what is appropriate to their ages. As they get older and are more able to understand the implications I relax the restrictions.

My kids will survive just fine not playing in an environment that encourages bed behavior.

Roblox is filled with “quality” content like this: https://www.roblox.com/games/8110845141/POOP-WITH-FRIENDS

My kids used to play on Roblox… then they invited me to try it… and I started watching what is going on in there. It’s pretty bad. LOADS of grooming going on… shitty games… games that encourage anti-social behavior… horror games targeting under 5s… now they aren’t allowed to play it anymore.

I feel this so much. I own a property. I rented it out. I ran into that exact same lineup of expenses vs income you note here and… I ended up taking my house OFF the rental market. It’s just not worth it.

I keep getting into these discussions with people who yell “It’s immoral to buy a house and rent it out. Landlords must provide housing for renters at a loss so I can have cheap housing” and then… “It’s an investment and you as the owner must fund my low cost housing because you might earn equity in the property when you sell it in the future.”