Lots of reasons to dislike Google. That is not one of them.

Is it fair? Probably, yeah. But I don’t think it’s an effective way of framing or addressing the problem.

The challenge is always getting enough people to do enough of an action that it makes an impact. It is certainly more effective, in terms of reducing emissions, to target policy interventions at leverage points - like forcing energy companies to adopt renewables by law and banning further fossil fuel extraction.

Personal action can be useful to live in alignment with your values and to provide examples to others for ways to get involved in the climate movement, but we can’t consume our way out of this.

Why am I not surprised? In the words of the Wu Tang Clan - “cash rules everything around me”

What do you typically use your computer for? That’s going to have a major impact. If it’s pretty basic stuff (web browsing, text editing, etc) you shouldn’t have any issue. If it’s something that’s more complicated or unusual, then sometimes it’s easy to do and sometimes not, depending on what you want to do. In general, a little bit of comfort searching the web and working in the command line helps a lot with troubleshooting Linux

As someone who is solidly left and visibly queer, but doesn’t particularly like living in big cities, that’s the question- how do you live near trees, but not Republicans?

Sometimes I want something bitter. If I want hot and bitter, I’ll drink coffee. If I want cold and bitter, I’ll have an IPA. I also like dark chocolate. Must just be something about bitterness that I enjoy.

Of all the words in the world, those are certainly some of them

• Knowledge Fight
• Behind the Bastards
• Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Wind has come down a lot, just over a longer time. Solar and storage are what have really plummeted recently. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/levelized-cost-of-energy

One of the big challenges now in the US is streamlining permitting, for renewables and for transmission upgrades and expansions.

I’d be interested to see the video you mention!

This is true, but investing in research and subsidizing its production is how we drive costs down. We’ve done a really incredible job of getting clean energy costs down from where they were, but there’s no need to slow our efforts down now

The internet is such a strange place

Yep! It’s a good way to get over the fear of a blank page, but I don’t trust it for more than outlines or summaries

Seconding Voyager!

You can critique UI design without using an ableist slur

I think scripting is certainly a level 4 activity, since to even get started solving the problem you would need to navigate an IDE and have basic knowledge of a scripting language. Most people wouldn’t even know where to start.

Okay. They do have port forwarding though

ProtonVPN

On the tracking and phoning home: gross, I wish they didn’t do that. I’ll stick with FreeCAD.

It makes sense though, that they don’t care about pirated software unless you’re making money off it. It’s probably in their interest of hobbyists can learn how to use the software from pirated copies - that’s just a potential future paid user, if they develop the skills to eventually want to use it professionally.

How would Autodesk or Dassault discover that you are using a pirated copy of their software in the first place?

Yep! That’s what I do. I use just about everything else in Proton’s ecosystem, but I choose to use Bitwarden as my password manager. Just feels like better practice to not be wholly dependent on Proton for all my security.