gwentlarry

@BastilleBSD@fosstodon.org Well done to those who really know what they are doing and are using Unix. Then there are the ones who just do everything Microsoft because "everybody" else does. And if anything goes wrong, they have the excuse that they were just doing what everyone else does … I've met a few of these, usually in small organisations.

@jordgubben@mastodon.gamedev.place I've visited Japan often and it is definitely doing pretty well for most people although out in the countryside, farmers aren't doing as well as others. As for employment, a lot is created so people have work to do. I have seen women sweeping streets with hand brushes & when there are road works, there are usually 2 or 3 people with batons managing the traffic when in Europe certainly there would be automated traffic lights. Mental illness is also very hidden.

@mwl@io.mwl.io You almost never see cybertrucks anywhere on public roads in Europe because, among other issues, they don't meet European safety regulations 🤣

@iFixit From 2027, the EU will require all new smart phones to have user-replaceable batteries. How this is actually going to work out in practise is not clear. https://www.cereport.eu/news/european-union/91054

@SrRochardBunson The USA is probably the only country in the world where slavery is actually enshrined by law in the constitution.

@jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net In theory but in reality almost none of my local communities use the Fediverse. There does also seem to be quite a high proportion of US users.

@openrightsgroup@social.openrightsgroup.org Local councils have in the past tried to use anti-terror laws to check people's bins …! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1095094/No-bin-snooping-Council-bureaucrats-banned-using-anti-terror-spy-laws.html

@nixCraft@mastodon.social VPN?

@ScottishGreens@mastodon.scot Well yes but I doubt "Scotland" has any authority to so do … After all, the UK's nuclear "deterrent" is based in Scotland

@greenpeace@mastodon.social

To my mind being a civilised nation requires that everyone living in that nation has access to:

• clean water,

• sufficient food,

• effective sanitation,

• basic medical care,

• effective shelter from the weather.

According to this, I suspect no nation on planet earth can be regarded as civilised.

@europeanspodcast@mastodon.social @jon@gruene.social Try the UK, some of the worst train services in Europe, a consequence of privatisation leading to multiple train operating companies. Slowly being put right as train companies come back under government control but still not great. The best example of the problem is Ticket Splitting - depending on starting point, final destination and intermediate stations, how and where you buy tickets results in different costs. I have saved up to 50% by ticket splitting.

@Tutanota@mastodon.social It doesn't mention search engines at all which I consider one of the most invidious big tech tools - tracking, biasing, advertising …

@leanderlindahl@social.folkdata.se @sirrichard@social.vivaldi.net @Vivaldi@social.vivaldi.net I only discovered it very recently. https://www.onlyoffice.com Wikipedia say it was originally developed by Ascensio System SIA (Latvian) + New Communication Technologies (Russian) in 2009 as a collaborative project TeamLab. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyOffice Currently a complicated set up with the holding company based in Singapore. There are, it seems both open source versions hosted on GitHub and commercial versions. It works for me & isn't Google, MS or Apple.

@sirrichard@social.vivaldi.net @Vivaldi@social.vivaldi.net I only discovered it very recently. https://www.onlyoffice.com Wikipedia say it was originally developed by Ascensio System SIA (Latvian) and New Communication Technologies (Russian) in 2009 as a collaborative project TeamLab. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyOffice Currently a complicated set up with the ultimate holding company based in Singapore. There are, it seems both open source versions hosted on GitHub and commercial versions. It works for me & isn't Google, MS or Apple.

@alfiekohn And her "Oryx and Crake" books …

@Vivaldi@social.vivaldi.net Just switched to Vivaldi from Firefox, seems pretty good. Also trying out OnlyOffice (Latvian?) office suite of apps and Qwant (French?) search engine - both looking good. Thinking about ProtonVPN (Swiss?). The problem is persuading others to change - most of the people I know just keep on using what they were given years ago. MS Windows, MS Office, Outlook, Google …

@pikesley@mastodon.me.uk It doesn't help that almost nobody learns from history. The detail changes but the basics remain the same. In the middles ages, it was rich, powerful barons surrounded by sycophants stealing from ordinary people, controlling their lives, punishing them if they dared question anything or just asked to be treated fairly. Today, very similar rich, powerful people are doing very much the same.

@Tinido Keep in mind there was no such thing as standard written English well understood across the whole country until relatively recently; spoken English even less so. Even today, someone in rural Northumberland would not necessarily clearly understand every word spoken by somebody from rural Devon. Personally, as a reasonably well educated native speaker of English, most (>95%) of Shakespeare is clear to me. Chaucer (late 14th/early 15th C) starts to be a struggle.

@tiotasram@kolektiva.social @btschumy@mas.to @benlockwood@ecoevo.social Timber can be used for surprisingly large buildings. Companies in Sweden have constructed buildings 18 storeys tall from timber. https://www.sweco.co.uk/services/buildings-urban/structural-engineering/mass-timber-frame-construction/

@btschumy@mas.to @benlockwood@ecoevo.social The technology for metal processing exists. Sweden has demonstrated fossil fuel free steel production, from processing the ore to iron and then on to steel. A commercial plant is under construction. https://www.hybritdevelopment.se/en/hybrit-six-years-of-research-paves-the-way-for-fossil-free-iron-and-steel-production-on-an-industrial-scale/ Most other metals can similarly be produced with effectively zero CO2 emissions. I would agree that cement is a bigger problem but the science is progressing. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352710224004297