People who keep going to the ballot box and hoping for change will not get it.
To change, you must exit the system and build your own.
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CryogenicNighthawk
@CryogenicNighthawk@4d2.social
mastodon 4.7.2598 Followers
334 Following
50 Posts
Joined December 11, 2024
Just got a 1W #Meshtastic node up and running. This is going to be fun.
I spent a few hours reading the #Matrix specifications last night (I still have much more to read).
Overall, they seem good.
There's a lot there, but it's laid out in a way that makes it work reasonable well as reference material. I can jump to what I'm interested in at the moment, and there are links to the other sections that I might want/need to read about in order to understand the task at hand.
My current focus is cross-signing and the trust between accounts and devices.
The Wio Tracker L1 Pro case was clearly designed to be injection molded, not 3D-printed. It's a nice case, and I say that as someone very familiar with it, as I just recreated it from scratch in #FreeCAD
I have three main goals with my remodel:
1. Modify it to be easily 3D printable
2. Keep compatibility with stock parts (e.g. buttons, faceplate, etc)
3. Make it modifiable to fit a 3Ah battery
The 3Ah battery version will only lose backward compatibility with the faceplate/shell.
It seems Flock felt people weren't concerned enough, so they made a drone that can self-launch, fly 60 mph, read a license plate from 2000 ft away, use thermal imaging, and record wireless activity, and send it all back over LTE.
Meet Flock Alpha.
https://r2.primal.net/cache/3/19/ca/319ca901af314d1f64de73583de6255d3499bd28b9b34e5de23aa78a2433f25c.mp4
If this isn't terrifying, I don't know what is.
"A monetary system built on debt needs tomorrow to be larger than today. Larger tax receipts. Larger labor forces. Larger asset values. Larger nominal output. The interest bill does not care whether those assumptions survive."
This is the reason industry has to keep expanding.
A monetary system built on savings instead of debt would encourage less consumerism. Expansion would happen when it makes sense. Increasing military budgets would mean having to sell war bonds or cut spending.
Apple chips are done! 😋
If we're going to judge people based on how they use electricity, I think the question of "Does it result in more CO² emissions, or less?" is a reasonable one.
Not emissions per kWh. Just the total emissions. Full stop.
Inflexible loads (e.g. AI training) raises emissions.
Flexible loads reduces emissions. Yes, you read that right. Using more energy for flexible loads reduces the TOTAL CO² emissions.
How? Because more power comes from wind & solar and we don't need as many gas peaker plants.
If you want to introduce someone to the ideals that:
- technology should benefit people, rather than to exploit them
- information should be free instead of being controlled by gatekeepers and
- privacy is better than mass surveillance
Buy them a copy of the novella "Connection Timeout".
https://rek2.hispagatos.org/2025/09/21/Connection_Timeout_Book_Release/
The author (Rek2) is the real deal. While the story is fiction, it's setting it not. The tools he talks about are real. They exist now. He got the tech and the ethos exactly right.
Replying to
Yes, solar panels take a lot of energy (and thus emissions) to produce, but they also avoid a lot of emissions as compared to not producing them. Scopes 1-3 quantify the CO²e costs, and Scope 4 quantifies the benefit.
So if one solar manufacturer uses slightly less energy to produce a dramatically less powerful solar panel, they may not look so good against whomever they are being compared.
And that's the point. To give a reasonable basis for comparison.
Hope you enjoyed the explanation.
Good news everyone, health insurance is 20% cheaper than it was 5 years ago, according to the Consumer Price Index data.
Anyone who pays for health insurance knows how absurd this claim is. They've been cooking the books on inflation for a long time. It's not partisan. It's structurally required when the money is continually debased, otherwise the public will catch on to how badly they're being fleeced. And a loss in confidence would destroy the ponzi scheme.
Source: https://x.com/charliebilello/status/2056046323015532932
I don't know who needs to hear it, but the price of eggs is down nearly 25%.
From $8.50 a flat, down to $6.50.
A flat is 30 eggs (2.5 dozen)
Here's your good news for the #environment today:
2/3 of investors plan to increase allocation to sustainable investments over the next 12 months.
Arguably the best part is that it's not limited to people trying to do the right thing.
"Financial performance expectations, more than values alignment alone, are driving renewed interest in sustainable investing, according to Morgan Stanley's latest Sustainable Signals survey."
This means it'll be more durable to the political/social winds.
I don't know who needs to hear this, but zucchini seeds are huge. Despite not really noticing them when you chow down on a zucchini, they're like the size of a pumpkin seed when they are fully developed.
Replying to on 4d2.social
TL;DR Support practical solutions to clean energy and don't let the nuclear issue splinter our efforts when we agree on SO MANY things. Thanks.
Replying to on 4d2.social
I'd encourage those who are seriously concerned with #climate change, #pollution, and clean #energy to push for making the alternatives to fossil fuels and nuclear power more economical. That's how we got over 90% of new generation capacity to be solar. It's not that power companies are altruistic or that people are willing to pay more for electricity generated by solar panels, it's just the cheapest option.
My mission this week is to fix the .deb package building for the MXE project.
This is no small feat because it is a cross-compiling toolchain that compiles hundreds of packages and makes hundreds of .deb files as a result.
I suspect the issue to be in the packaging scripts for binutils, or possibly in the upstream build scripts. It's going to be a grind, but that's what it takes to track these things down and get them fixed. 💪
#FOSS #OpenSource
Apples were on sale, so I bought 30 pounds and have been making them into apple chips over the past 4 days.
In the end, it was $30 in apples and about 4.5 hours of my time to get 4 lbs of chips.
A little cheaper than commercial apple chips, depending on how I value my time, but more importantly, I have the tools and skills to be self sufficient.
I can get apples from a local orchard, too. More $, but there's no long supply chain. I don't even use gasoline to get there, I can just bike over.
Replying to
There was a previous chapter about how this destabilizes developing countries, here she talks about how these monetary policies result in a very angry working class.
I'm on page 158 and there have been 183 citations thus far. It's a very well researched book, and Lyn cites her sources.
I hope subsequent chapters will go beyond describing the problem and show concrete things that individuals can do to make things better, or at least mitigate some of the pain.
For those who are posting about #SmallWeb
Have you read "Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered" by E.F. Schumacher (published in 1973)?
Replying to
Replying to
There's compressed air, lifting heavy masses, and the more traditional version of that which is pumping water uphill. There's hydroelectric and geothermal electricity production which are both reliable. And then there's demand response, which is vital for avoiding emergencies like power outages during the big freeze in Texas a few years back.
Replying to
All of these will be (or are) arguably better than nuclear, but the storage solutions don't exist at the scale we need, and demand respond is unpopular, largely due to misunderstandings (e.g. we can't have nice things like heat or A/C, or that anyone who gets compensated by the power company to not use power during an emergency is somehow exploiting society).
#Nuclear is something that can be spun up more quickly, and unless the equation changes, that's what we're going to get.
Replying to on 4d2.social
Furthermore, demand response eliminates the need to gas peaker plants, which are expensive, emit more air pollution than baseload gas plants, and are more likely to be in historically disadvantaged communities.
It's 2026. What is your go to tool for hijacking network traffic.
Ideally:
- Works with IPs and FQDNs
- Works when src/dst are on the same subnet
- Doesn't require physical access
- Doesn't require rooting anything
- Doesn't require some atypical setup to exploit
- Realistically exploitable in a way that isn't going to get instantly detected & fixed (e.g. BGP hijacking)
Best I have is ARP poisoning (which I haven't used in a decade) or 0-days in DNS servers. I want something better.
Replying to
This means that if anyone cares to look at how they came up with that number should be able to make a judgement call over whether they think they're cooking the books. If the life expectancy doesn't match the warranty, that's suspicious and you might choose to just avoid a company like that.
So they can hide it from people who only read the headlines and don't read the articles, at least until someone blows the whistle on them and says "look at these ridiculous assumptions".
🤣 People still use Google for search? 🤣
Another insightful comment by Lyn Alden's book, "Broken Money" that I wanted to share.
She doesn't stop at identifying the symptoms of these problems, but really gets down to the root causes.
And it's written in a way that is easy to understand and relate to.
It doesn't matter who is elected, big companies keep getting bailouts, wealth continues to concentrate, money is continuously devalued, debt increases exponentially in both the public and private sectors...
The good news: The top may be in on RAM, AI, and so forth.
The bad news: Nobody is going to like the abrupt repricing that comes next, as it's not going to be limited to the tech companies.
Main Street will be hurting [even more] from inflation and Wall Street is only being held up by a half dozen big tech companies.
They're too big to fail, so the government will print money to bail them out, devaluing everyones savings & wages.
Or maybe not. It's not like I can see the future, right? 😂😅
"I always say what I feel and that is a promise
Nothing in life is above being honest"
--311
Words to live by 🫶
I hesitate to ask this on here, but are there any Fediverse apps that let you see your feed with an algorithm other than chronological?
I don't necessarily want to see a person more often just because they post more frequently, nor do I want to miss things posted by someone who only posts occassionally, or at different times than when I happen to tune in.
And I want to be in control of the algorithm for my own feed. I don't wasn't to delegate this to my server admin.
Please be kind.
What are you doing to solve society's problems aside from begging politicians to pass another law?
Who on here is doing food rescue?
Repair Café?
Really really free market?
Community gardening?
Joined one or more cooperatives?
Share your success stories. Make sure everyone at every protest knows about these projects and that they can materially contribute. Help them direct some of that anger towards constructing a better local community.
❤️
Reminder: PayPal was founded by Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. The company makes $5,230,000,000/year in profit.
If this is how you pay for things, or send money to people, you might want to take a moment and pause to think about if you want to support this corporation.
If you do, cool, you do you. I'm just asking that people make an intentional choice here.
Replying to
To review, the 3 traditional scopes of emissions are:
- Emissions you cause (burning fuel)
- Emissions caused by purchased energy (electricity)
- Other emissions, which include those of your customers using your product, you employees using gasoline to get to work, and from your suppliers.
The first two are easier to calculate than the third, but they're based on past and current data. These are frequently mandatory to disclose.
In contrast, scope 4 is about the future.
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Scope 4 is about the amount of emissions that are not going to be generated based on the work you are doing. It assumes some baseline, and compares that to your alternative.
For example, lets look at heat pumps as compared to gas boilers.
Lets say a gas boiler produces 40 tonnes of CO²e when you factor in the extraction, processing, and combusting natural gas over the boiler's lifetime.
Lets say that a heat pump would cause 15 tonnes CO²e for its manufacturing, electricity usage & disposal.
The Labor Department has released the jobless numbers and Reuters is saying the numbers are "pointing to stable labor market conditions and a rebound in job growth"
Does that seem right based on what you've seen?
I know people who have been out of work for a long time, and it feels like the government numbers are suspect. It's like they lowball their estimates, which gets the headlines, and then revise them upward later, which flies under the radar.
Replying to
In this chapter (13), she does talk about policies that politicians could enact to unwind this mess: reduce military spending, improve our monetary system, invest domestically and return to thinking of us being a country instead of an empire.
She also explains how most empires don't do this and how it usually ends. 🫤
I expect chapters 20-30 will provide information about what people can do that doesn't rely 100% on American politicians solving society's problems.
Replying to
Getting more energy generation capacity is key not just to satisfying new demand, but also for decarbonizing the grid for the existing demand as well. The most cost effective way to do that is solar photovoltaic. Period. But people use electricity when it's dark, and Microsoft is no exception. And that's where the problem lies: matching energy production with consumption.
Replying to
More about the value being siphoned away from the workers when the money is manipulated during a trade surplus, and political leaders, multinational corporations, and wealthy elite thriving when there it is manipulated while there is a deficit.
It's important to note that these things don't have to happen in either case (surplus or deficit).
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien
via
https://njump.me/nevent1qqsvuz4e5exvsj5m6vvjnwzt3m3q5csnhqadgs8ltyfm320lqx3hnzsppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qgsr8djpqa2nr8cm8zuuxly3gfgujk58wmaweh3ke58uvdwr2kc88fgrqsqqqqqpdju0j2
Replying to
To keep the math simple, we'll also assume they have the same lifespan.
That's 25 tonnes CO²e of avoided emissions.
It's worth calling out the assumptions here:
a. That the baseline is gas, not oil, coal, or wood
b. The emissions from electricity many years into the future
c. The life expectancy of the unit
These are all choices, so does this make is a meaningless, subjective measurement? Not entirely, because there's an inherent requirement to disclose these choices.
Replying to
The idea is that nuclear can power us when the sun and the wind are lacking, and reduce their output when the intermittent sources are plentiful.
Before someone criticizes me and tries to put words in my mouth because I called nuclear "carbon-free power", I'd like to point out that there are other solutions here. We don't currently have large scale energy storage. There are people working on that, and not just in the form of lithium batteries.
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Humanity did this for electricity generation, now we need to do it for the problem of matching supply & demand.
Take the time to understand how grids work. Learn how we can roll out more solar, faster.
Get informed on ways to make methane capture more economical and promote them.
Don't let the conversation be dominated by fossil fuels and nuclear as if those are the only two options.
And if you think nuclear is superior, or a necessary evil, that's fine too. But lets focus on where we agree
Replying to
Production and consumption always match. If a bunch of people turn off their electric heat at once, there's a surge until the supply side can adjust downwards. The same is true in the opposite direction where the power can dip when there's a sudden large demand. The most relatable is to sometimes see the lights flicker when your home air conditioning kicks on.
That's why Mircosoft is restarting a nuclear plant. It does provide carbon-free power 24/7.
Replying to
The people who were looking at scope 4 emissions in the first place are they types of people who do care about companies trying to pull a fast one on them. It could be investment firms, or consumers, but if they are motivated to pass judgements based on these numbers, they're unlikely to overlook those sorts of details
So what's the upshot here? Well, solar manufacturers have a lot of scope 1-3 emissions. Manufacturing them requires energy, and quite a bit of it. Scope 4 shows the other side.
I was trying to follow along with https://www.jurisic.org/pages/Self-Hosted-Services to add your repo on trixie, but apt update is throwing an error: "Unknown error executing apt-key"
This is presumably because apt-key was deprecated and the removed, but I don't understand why it's trying to use apt-key to begin with.
I didn't see any issues about it on the nextcloud-deb repo. Is this a known issue? Is there a workaround?
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@ketan@climatejustice.social
Gas peaker plants are the worst.
Context: I'm an environmentalist.