Sudden culture shock from a Norwegian:

Still open is the transition of heat and cars to electricity…

Almost all electricity used by Norwegian homes goes towards heating (including cooking and hot water), and charging cars. So counting heating separate from electricity suddenly makes the electric transition sound less impressive. (And the transition away from nuclear more baffling). It’s still impressive to see Germany really follow through on renewables though. 60% renewable electricity is still a lot

Is there a plan to transition away from burning fossil fuels for heating?

“10ft away from the screen”. I.e. sitting in a sofa playing on a TV, compared to sitting at a desk close to a monitor

No they’re not, in fact Cosmic is almost ready for Alpha release (Sorry, couldn’t help myself)

You make a valid point.

One counterpoint does come to mind: Cost. The hardware to run it on ain’t cheap

(Im not up to date on the used market and the cut off point where old macs become unsupported and stop receiving software updates)

Had great success on Kubuntu. Set up the desktop to have two giant icons only: Firefox, and shutdown.

On Windows the constant popups for updating various components were causing much confusion Java, flash (back in the day), printer “drivers”, and of course windows itself would throw popups about updates requiring clicking buttons every time they used the computer, which was very infrequently, and cause them much confusion (“what does update mean” ?")

Meanwhile on Kubuntu all updates go “shhhh” in the background, and no more confusing “To shutdown, press Start”

This happens when a small project has 12 developers each scratching their own itch in their own time, not a team of 120 developers getting paid to work on the same itch 8 hours a day.

In the case of FreeCAD they’re actually starting to reign in and focus more now, and there are more contributors.

Instead of one super chunky battery, how about a laptop with replaceable batteries, in combination with a UPS?

UPS is so you can actually replace the laptop battery with a spare one , even during a power outage. Just run the laptop on AC from the UPS while changing batteries. Or see if you can find a UPS with a long lasting battery. Entry level ones only have like 15-30 minutes of battery life though, since they’re more intended for safe shutdowns or brownouts.

Good explanation! And thanks for the CoreHunt suggestion :)

Probably more what MangoKangoroo and B0rax talked about, that enterprises can opt out of this telemetry, due to compliance or Intellectual Property protection.

So only the commoners get mandatory full-scale surveillance, Ehm I mean “ai enhancement”

Why did they have their own builds of these projects in the first place? Did they have custom patches they maintained?

They were too preoccupied on wether they could, they never stopped to question wether they should

I know your pain! (Cries in Nvidia laptop) when i bought mine i literally couldn’t find a laptop with AMD graphics in my region.

There is some hope these days. In addition to the previously mentioned Frameworks laptop, there’s also this TUXEDO Sirius 16 - Gen1. (Tuxedo is a German company specializing in Linux-compatible computers). It might not be exactly what your looking for, but AMD graphics laptops are so few and far between I thought I should put it out there.

Maybe it’s a different culture, or matter of car and people density, but in my country (Norway) most people cycle on the sidewalk. Including kids of course, from the age of 10 they can cycle to school instead of having to walk.

Many footpaths here are also officially designated “cycling and walking paths”. Generally the only cyclists you see in the road are sports cyclists in racing bicycles and tight skin suits.

The thinking here is that cyclists and pedestrians are both “soft traffic participants” so they share a space, while “hard traffic participants” like cars, trucks and motorcycles are kept separate.

Pedestrians do have right of way over cyclists. As the heavier faster party, cyclists have the responsibility to avoid conflict, by giving right of way, and slowing down and/or chiming their bell to signal their presence before passing pedestrians.

Personally, if I was told that tomorrow I’m only allowed to cycle on the road, I would get rid of my bike. If I’m gonna be on the road full of lorries busses and SUVs going 60kph, I’d rather just be in my car. It’s just not worth the risk and constant peril. This is in a more suburban and industrial/commercial setting, where the sidewalks have gaps to buildings, and pedestrians are far apart.

I can however see how in a dense, crowded downtown area where the cars mostly drive slow and the sidewalks are dense with people, that cycling in the road makes more sense.

Thinking about it the only roads with 30kph limit and a sidewalk are in the very center of the city. All other places with 30kph are basically neighbourhoods etc where there are no sidewalks and everybody shares the road. Roads here with a dedicated sidewalk also have higher speed limits that what a casual cyclist can achieve

People often rode them on sidewalks posing a danger to people walking.

I’ve seen this sentiment around, but where else are you supposed to ride eScoooters and bicycles? Of course ideally they belong in the bike lane, but most places don’t have bike lines, so the alternatives are sidewalks or in the road with cars.

If we’re gonna get people out of cars, we need to recognize that walking+transit doesn’t work for everyone a lot of people and that a bicycle/ eScooter is the solution (look at Amsterdam/ Copenhagen how well bicycles work) , but bike lanes don’t get built overnight, especially when few people cycle, if their banished from the safe sidewalk and only allowed to cycle in the dangerous road.

(I’ve lumped bikes and eScooters together since they both solve the same problem of rapid personal transport, both having speeds of 20-30 kph which is significantly more than pedestrians but less than cars)

+2 for KDE Connect, the integration is amazing. I’ve used it on KDE and Gnome (gsconnect), all works very well

How much of this is Spotify’s fault and how much is the major record labels sitting between Spotify and the individual artists?

And is there a better place for us consumers to go and vote with our wallet? Ideally somewhere that isn’t one of the 5 major tech giants that control everything

Thanks for explaining (For some reason my mind went to Dodge Challenger the car, not the Challenger shuttle)

I never new there were that many ignored warnings for the Challenger shuttle disaster. It remains an important cautionary tale to this day. The poor crew never saw it coming

Story time?

Damn, finally! A gaming laptop with AMD graphics :D it looks overall well specced too

Sadly I’m not in the market cause I bought a gaming laptop with Nvidia 2 years ago, and it’s still way too good to justify replacing. Too bad laptops with AMD graphics were made of Unobtainium until now

That’s brilliant! I always forget KDE Connect also works fine PC <–> PC, not just PC <–> Mobile