Luigi Mangione.

It’s a like watching a country committing harakiri. Almost unfathomable.

ITT: lots of generic VPN advice by people who have no experience with the specific problem.

It’s FOSS and available free on F-Droid. Small app transactions are not paying for that staff list.

Completely agree. Derailleurs have always seemed to me such a fragile technology. In decades of experience cycling I don’t think I have ever encountered a derailleur where the chain turned completely smoothly, without rubbing, in all 7 or 8 gears. There’s always a couple of gears that are good and couple you have to avoid. Even if you do manage to fine-tune the thing so that it works perfectly, good luck keeping it that way once the bike gets bashed around a bit.

OsmAnd is a genuinely amazing app that I have been using for literally 14 years. For everything other than business information, it’s clearly the best in class. Far better than the new kid on the FOSS block Organic Maps, let alone certain commercial apps that shall remain nameless. It’s always a surprise to me how few normies have even heard of OsmAnd. Possibly not helped by the awkward semi-pronouncable name.

I’m just bothered by one thing: the ongoing opacity about OsmAnd’s business model. They provide no explanations at all, despite the slick site and what appears to be an impressive staff list. They need to be more transparent about who’s paying for all this and how.

There’s a small silver lining: the absolute certainty that a century from now Dubai will be a ravaged ghost city of crumbling sand-filled towers. It will serve nicely as the Unesco monument to humankind’s folly.

French fries, shorly.

There is nothing inherent about technology that means it must be used for evil.

Sure. In theory. But there are things we know about humans and their weaknesses, and these things are not going to change overnight (except perhaps in the fever dreams of some Marxists, of whom you might be one). Technology of this power did not exist before, and now it does. So technology is indeed the proximate problem.

While this is essentially true, IMO it’s become a bit of a distraction. The immediate problem we face today is technology.

In the 90s, people believed technology (i.e. the internet) would protect liberty against power (or “security”). We thought that removing the barriers to information would put our rulers in a goldfish bowl where we could keep an eye on them. It was a reasonable expectation. But it turns out to be us in the goldfish bowl.

It seems those with power simply have more time and resources available for surveillance. And now the technology is reaching a point where rulers will soon have awesome tools at their disposal, and they’re sure gonna be tempted to use them.

Our problem is technology. Not sure how to put a positive spin on this. Technology itself will provide some solutions. But IMO it’s more important than ever to get involved in politics. In any appropriate way.

Personally I agree with this take, but you undermine your own point with the completely gratuitous (and indecorous) “fucking” tossed in there. IMO.

Conversely, as I just learned with surprise from an episode of The Ancients podcast, homo erectus seems to have been somewhat carnivorous for a period of a million or so years.

But sure, the primate family and related rodents and lagomorphs are generally herbivorous.

Just that photo I find hard to look at.

This is what superpower competition should look like.

Sad if true. I don’t see it being practical to tell people to use different apps depending on the number of interlocutors.

Surely as a career scientist you could find the rigor to spellcheck a 5-word post title.

Yes, it was called Pidgin. But things become more complex when you add E2E encryption. The ideal destination is a single agreed protocol, just like one exists for things like telephones, the web, and email.

The snag seems to be that the microplastic ends up in the soil rather than the water. After all, it’s not being digested. For that, we’ll have to wait for bacteria or fungi to evolve. But getting it out of waterways would surely count as progress.

Seems this is the standard response in animals in times of stress and penury, and humans are no exception. The challenge is to find a way to surmount it. Tough times coming.

Hats off.