Such an underrated point. The economics and strategic impact of renewables is obvious at this point. Every time there’s a price surge in petrol, I hope that the US would wake up and hasten the transition, but we just keep kicking our feet like toddlers.

Upvoted and agreed. But I think the US financial collapse has more to do with:

∙	Short-term incentives — businesses chasing next quarter while ignoring the long game. CEO tenure averages around 7 years, but comp structures reward short-term predictability over long-term health. Make the number go up, cash out, someone else’s problem.
∙	Crushing debt — not “insolvency” in the household sense, since the US prints its own currency, but debt-to-GDP at ~120% and interest payments consuming an increasing share of federal revenue creates real risks: inflation, dollar credibility erosion, and crowding out actual investment.
∙	No savings cushion — ~57% of Americans can’t cover a $1,000 emergency. That’s not a recession risk, that’s a detonator.

Empires don’t fall suddenly — they transform. The Roman Empire never really “ended”; the eastern half ran unbroken from Constantinople for nearly a thousand years after Rome’s western collapse. The threat isn’t a single dramatic crash. It’s a long, slow institutional rot that’s already underway.m

I’ve totally fallen for markdown. I want more normies to know about it.

All the nice things about rich text with none of the Word.

Not leveraging solar energy, which abundant , decentralized, and is the cheapest unit of energy there is.

Passkeys or oauthn/fido. I just can’t believe we’re still talking about passwords in 2025 when these very robust, user friendly features have been widely available for years.

Not at all. You get to say what happens with your body. The fact that he took offense to it is on him. It’s also a smart move.

Personally, I can’t stand condoms, but I wouldn’t hook up without one. “This is a strange car, in a foreign dense highway; why would I need a seat belt?”

Also, if I heard a woman say “it was a fine night” in a meh tone, I’d be gutted lol.

Gentleman reading this, remember the golden rule: women always come first.

Travel. Ignore him. I’ve had the pleasure visiting 7 countries, 5 non English native. Top of the list are Italy, Sweden, Czech Republic, England, Ireland, Canada (Montreal). I’d travel more if I had more money and time to. It’s been one of the most impactful things on me as a human.

The US has no national language by design. We’re a melting pot; a country of immigrants. That is our greatest strength. Taking the often humble, mixing it, mutating it, and making it our own.

I don’t speak any other languages, but I try. Only on very rare occasions was language a barrier. I understand I’m a guest in other people’s countries so I mind my p’s & q’s. You’re representing your country, so be kind. Approach other cultures with genuine curiosity. At least learn basic phrases like hello, goodbye, please, thank you, and anything else you can manage, but you don’t need to fluent.

IMO, US born tourist are the worst. Loud, entitled, obnoxious, ignorant. They expect everywhere to be just perfect for them and how they like to live, like it’s Disney World. Those people won’t get a whole lot out of travel and just make us look worse than we already do on the international stage. Oh and the “influencers”… In Venice, they were like locusts.

I’ve also traveled all over the US and it can be beautiful, but you live here; you’ll get much more of a perspective shift going somewhere completely different. Also, by comparison of other countries, the US is pretty mid. Traveling help you see the US for what it is, not for what we’re told it is.

Definitely go with your instinct here. Foster that curiosity. I promise it will pay dividends you can’t imagine now.

I’m curious how energy costs affect public transit. Of course they have very good bargaining power and are well set up to augment energy prices.

To Google DuckDuckGo!

This! I think twice before commenting because of blowback. And everything is _ so_ dramatic. Also, consistently, if my world view and lived experience doesn’t align with the group think of the post and comments, then I’m automatically disqualified as a “bot” or “fedposting”. In all honesty, it’s not the most welcoming community. Diverse discourse is discouraged.

I migrated openaw from docker running on my raspberry pi to an old nuc I had lying around. Backed it with mainly models off of OpenRouter or my local Ollama instance. For very difficult tasks it uses anthropic. Added it to my GitHub repo and implemented Plane for task management. Added a subagent for coding and have it work on touch up or research tasks I don’t have personal time to do. Made an sdlc document that it follows so I can review all of its work. Added a cron so it checks for work every hour. It ran out of tasks in five days. Work quality: C+, but it’s a hell of a lot better than having nothing.

It helped research and implement SilverBullet for personal notes management in one shot.

I also migrated all of my services’ DNS resolution to CloudFlare so I get automatic TLS handoff and set up nginx with deny rules so any app I don’t want exposed don’t get proxied.

This weekend I’m resurrecting my HomeAssistant build.

We need more of this. I bought my SO stickers for Christmas. Time to put them everywhere.

Yakkety Sax

Look more closely. There’s another planned in April.

Most of the corporate world runs mixed operating system environments. If you plan on working at a company, and will use a computer, chances are it’ll be Windows. Being able to use both is an advantage. In my 25 year IT career across all spectrum of industry, more Windows is used and Linux is niche. But the Linux users typically really know their shit. There’s a lot of skills carryover between the two operating systems. I could get into specifics if desired.

The law does not require photo ID uploadsor facial recognition, with users instead simply self-reporting their age, setting AB 1043 apart from similar laws passed in Texas and Utah that require “commercially reasonable” verification methods, such as government-issued ID checks.

Seems toothless. Good.

I’ve been using both for about 20 years. I can honestly say most people can and should use both.

I just wiped a trash celeron pc that ran windows awful. I put Ubuntu 24 LTS on it and it screams. Took about an hour.

If you have old hardware that you want to extend the life of or repurpose, consider Linux before buying something new.

On that note: https://generalstrike2026.com/

100%

I reply with “yes and”.

If someone tells me I’m an idiot, NEXT! It immediately invalidates their argument.

“A Splendid Torch” by George Bernard Shaw

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Exactly this. If I had to chose between hundreds of third party websites having my ID and my phone, I’ll take my phone.

We already have very sophisticated ways of validating payment and passport information with our devices. Validating age could be as simple as a registration procedure between the device and the identity issuer , validating the device is held by a person “of age” and then that’s it. If that user successfully completes a biometric challenge, then allow the activity.

So web browsing goes from “I’m John Doe and here’s my ID proving it” to every site (which has HUUUUUGE PRIVACY ISSUES) to “This anonymous user is over 18; this one is over 21, this one’s not”.

Also, if this behavior of forcing websites to ID you continues, it will enable a renaissance in data mining. Right now companies see “actor is in ZIP code 90210; rain in the forecast “ and put the two together to show “maybe they need a new slicker”. That’s simplified of course, but that’s basically the trick. You can use hundreds or thousands of these data points to paint an ever clearer picture of the person, but you never know exactly who they are. These ID laws are changing this rapidly.

This also has the potential to be used for some very dark purposes. Example: said something on Instagram critical of the US President? You don’t get to vote because of some label.

My position is still if the site or service requires my ID, then I don’t need it that badly.