kbal

joined 2 years ago
[–] kbal@fedia.io 1 points 13 hours ago

No, and I didn't really mean to pick on you specifically — it just seems that way in general.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 1 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

There's something magical about solar power which makes people think "it's only 12 thousand acres of solar panels, sounds easy!" You could probably fit them all in an area the size of Manitoba's second-largest city, no problem. Let's go ahead and start building a city-sized grid of access roads out in the woods to be completely levelled and filled with high-tech electronics, batteries, inverters, transmission lines, switching stations, and more solar panels than currently exist in Canada — how hard can it be?

I dunno, it's not impossible. It's just... there might be better ways to solve the problem.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 3 points 1 day ago

Retention of metadata may not even be considered a search or seizure, it's unclear to me how likely it is that it might be declared "reasonable", taking it to the supreme court would require many years of work during which irreparable harm would be done, and whichever parts of the law were struck down it's likely that others would stand — and every part of it is irredeemable.

The whole bill is so blunt, crude, and stupid that I think there's hope that it might be somehow arranged that it gets stuck in committee until it's forgotten about.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 8 points 1 day ago (17 children)

the potential to generate an average of 6.6 kilowatt-hours of electricity per square metre, per month.

That seems like not much. A household using 1kW (slightly below average) would need more than 100m² of solar panels, which seems like a lot. I'm open to being convinced that solar pv has gotten so cheap that it's worth using on a large scale even in Canada, but I'm not sure if those numbers are going to add up. I'd expect wind power to be a better bet.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 3 points 1 day ago (4 children)

If it gets to the courts we're probably lost.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 31 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Personally identifying information here, but I don't mind telling you all that my exact time of birth was 1970-01-01-00:00:00.000000.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

What's really needed is a rigorous toilet-user certification regime where people are granted a license to use the appropriate facilities based on their demonstrated ability to pee standing up, to consistently avoid pissing on the toilet seat, and to correctly wash their hands afterwards.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 0 points 2 days ago

A very popular one. I didn't name it since I don't want to offend its fans when I've only seen like half of one episode and may have been too hasty to judge it. But I just don't like that style where it's all about explaining everything completely as it happens and then wallowing in emotional vibes.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 3 points 2 days ago

Most likely they are pointing out that you lack a certain subtlety of understanding and have made a mistake.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 35 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Based on everything I learned about history from watching Blackadder, probably not.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The people who appointed him UN special envoy for climate action probably thought he was a climate guy. The people who read his book (not me) seemed to think he was a climate guy. The people who believed his election campaign promises might've thought he was a climate guy. He probably still thinks he's a climate guy.

He talks a lot about the importance of climate change, so it comes as a surprise to quite a few people that he doesn't seem to be in favour of doing anything about it.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 13 points 3 days ago

Mark Carney should call for an end to the genocide. It's not too much to ask. The taboo that once stopped people calling it for what it is has been shattered.

 

Does anyone happen to know how to change the tab view on firefox android from "grid" to "list" without using the UI meant for that?

Is it buried in about:config somewhere? I can't find it. When I try "tab settings" where it's supposed to be controlled, the browser just crashes.

#firefox

 

Environmental groups said the proposals would gut Canada’s environmental laws simply to fast-track infrastructure projects.

“The government’s main rationale is, it’s complicated and it takes time. Basically, our job is too hard. This is also not a convincing argument for removing environmental assessment for pipelines and nuclear projects,” said Marc-André Viau of the environmental group Équiterre.

“This policy paper rather suggests they only want to rubber stamp any projects that are put in front of them. They don’t want to assess, they only want to approve.”

 

They kept saying "cyberhacker" on the evening news and it sounded funnier each time.

It's like waking up one day and finding that everyone is suddenly saying poochie-woochie instead of dog, even in formal contexts.

 

Letter signatories include the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council (CMPAC), the Canadian Council for Refugees, Centre for Free Expression, Clinique pour la justice migrante, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, Ligue des droits et libertés, Migrant Workers’ Alliance for Change, OCASI, OpenMedia, and individual experts including Ron Deibert (Director, Citizen Lab), Teresa Scassa (Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy), and Michael Karanicolas (Dalhousie University).

It's another open letter opposing C-22, this one with imo a more clear explanation of the many things that are wrong with it. There is also this: Tell your MP

 

The undersigned civil society organizations, companies, and cybersecurity experts, including members of the Global Encryption Coalition, urge the federal government to withdraw Bill C-22, An Act respecting lawful access.

The Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act, will force services to install “technical capabilities” to access Canadians’ communications and sensitive data. The consensus among cybersecurity experts is clear. There is no way to provide backdoor access to encrypted data and communications without compromising the privacy and security of millions of law-abiding citizens.

 

I have just noticed that there is a hole in my boots.

To test the hypothesis that modern materials science and manufacturing techniques had rendered obsolete Sam Vimes' famous saying about boots, last autumn I bought the cheapest winter boots available at Walmart.

They are not fashionable, well-fitting, or particularly warm, but they looked indestructible and waterproof — made of seemingly tough material with good think soles. The soles probably are indeed indestructible, but just at the heel where they meet the other part of the boot, some kind of design flaw has resulted in a hole in exactly the same spot on each boot after only one winter of light use.

I will patch them and see if the repair holds next year.

 

Bicycle Day is an unofficial celebration on April 19 of the psychedelic revolution and the first psychedelic trip on LSD by Albert Hofmann in 1943, in tandem with his bicycle ride home from Sandoz Labs.

 

I just did 20 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise per day for 8 weeks.

It was pretty good, I guess. My fitness is much improved. 150 minutes per week is what all the public health information websites recommend that everyone should get, so according to them I'm almost doing the bare minimum for the first time in my life. I'm pretty old, so it took some time for it to start having an effect. It feels like it will probably take another 8 weeks before my body actually starts getting used to it and stops getting stronger so quickly as it still is doing for now.

 

"Austerity begets fascism" is one of those things that makes a lot of intuitive sense, but it turns out that there's a good empirical basis for believing it. In "Public Service Decline and Support for the Populist Right" four economists from the LSE and Bocconi provide an excellent look at the linkage between austerity and support for fascists

(Avi Lewis gets a mention towards the end, but the whole premise is increasingly relevant to Canada.)

 

Bixonimania doesn’t exist except in a clutch of obviously bogus academic papers. So why did AI chatbots warn people about this fictional illness?

 

After many years, at last I have become sufficiently cantankerous that one egregiously stupid post to c/showerthoughts is enough to make me block someone.

 

When you stop to think about it, puns are actually pretty neat.

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