Indeed

If they come back, I hope they will be more accessible on foot, with a bike, or with efficient public transit. Because if they are still surrounded by deserts of parking lots, only filled with EVs instead of ICEs, they can continue to die.

I hope it’s using a shit load of energy, like other “AI” stuff. Because we’re absolutely not in a climate crisis where reducing consumption is necessary. More “AI” that consumes more power, that’s exactly what we need.

I do tech support on the phone.

When I can’t take remote control, the person on the other side is not following instructions, and they just keep repeating “no, not working!” while trying multiple things one after another, that I can’t see.

Like, I can understand not being good with technology, I’ll be patient. But if I tell them to try loading the site in a private/incognito window and they’re telling me “but I tried in Firefox and it’s not working”, it’s not what I’m asking them to do. And if they’re like “wait, I’ll try again in Chrome” then repeat “nope, not working!”, it’s still not what I’m asking them to try!

I do try to be aware of my water supply. If I’m in a place where water is limited by default, like having a well, or when in a Caribbean country, I’ll be careful as I know others will depend on that source in the very near future. But I live in Canada and from my immediate point of view, the St-Lawrence and the Great Lakes are not going to be dry soon. The only scarcity here is the energy required to pump the water (also provided by water), and its treatment.

And I do understand that our little collective efforts do add up. However, the issues are systemic. Only in a single region of my province (a region!), around 18 corporations and businesses are using more than 75 000 litres a day. We know just because they have to report it past that point. It adds up to billions of litres in a year. For a single region. The provincial government here also allows corporations to just pump the ground water for about $35 CAD by million of litres.

So again, I know that I could make a difference, if we all really tried. But because of the system, and since the pandemic, I’ve lost faith in our societies. I don’t think most people care. While all hiding in our places a few years ago, while the production slowed down, people have seen the changes in nature, the air clean up… and they said fuck it we just want to go back to how it was before.

Just seeing multiple police cars running their engines 24/7 to stalk and bully some oh so dangerous anti-genocide students made me see that any effort to reduce air pollution on my part will be nullified by the system in general. It doesn’t matter if I have car or not, if I recycle plastic while it’s produced in the first place, or if I try to save a few litres of water while Nestlé… sigh.

Sorry but… yeah.

Yes I let it run. Because honestly, I don’t care. People will try make you feel guilty over using water while continuing to make excuses to drive everywhere and why they really need an electric car to “save the planet”. Oh and please recycle while the city that collects the recycling sends it to the dump because this industry is not profitable. And use less water because giant tech companies are going to need it in order to cool and power some more AI servers.

I never owned a car and have driven only once in 40 years. But I know that whatever I do individually to reduce the amount of pollution in the air, it is absolutely useless and pointless. The army or the police will annihilate a lifetime of individual efforts in one day, or even a few hours. I could get a car right now and 90% of people would probably tell me I did the right thing, as a car is sooo useful. No problem as long as it’s electric!

So uuh, I let the water run when I feel like it.

Your PC is now Stoned.

This thing is from 1987 and I still have it on some of my old floppies.

I use them to worsen my personal impact on climate change, since those things are consuming vast quantities of energy. It makes me feel more manly to know that I’m contributing to the slow destruction of our habitat every time I use them. It’s like having a second SUV to go to the closest corner store multiple times a day. These changed my life for the better, made it easier, and I can’t live without them now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism

Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.

I’m a middle age Québécois and we learn about that system in secondary school when we talk about the early ages of New France. AFAIK it was however a bit different from empire to empire. In New France there were seigneurs (lords) holding vast pieces of land for the crown, called a seigneurie (lordship). Within that there were censitaires (serfs) that had to make use of the land and pay taxes.

For me it’s an old habit from IRC. Instead of sending 5/6/7 lines of text, I just cut it with … and continue typing on the same line. I could make complete sentences with capitals and periods but instant messaging is not a medium well suited for full sentences and paragraphs, so you get …

After having a TCL smart TV that constantly smells like burning plastic, even a year after using it, I’m not sure I would want another of their product in my home.

But with a dead battery you have to haul it plis your stuff, which was supposed to be there to make it easier in the first place.

And by fast charge, I mean like an electric car, that can fully cjarge in about 15 to 20 minutes instead of hours.

I pull my inflatable kayak with a bike trailer and thought about an ebike but then, I also do touring and the places I go to are beyond battery life. For example this weekend I’m cycling 90 km to my camp site and there’s no electricity. And I need to get back.

And the second issue with this is that AFAIK there’s no fast charging on most ebikes. So if I need to stop somewhere to charge it when the battery will be dead after 75 km, it will take an eternity to charge.

So in the end, for my case, as someone cycling a few thousand kilometres a year, for “longer distances”, it’s wouldn’t be very practical.

My bash scripts. They are saving me lots of time at work, performing screen scraping, filling reports and monitoring old servers.

At home they are making backups and automating repetitive tasks.

I just love shell scripting in general. I should probably own a shirt that says “go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script”.

Yeah, the others were unremarkable but the first one made an impression on me.

That’s excellent for their clients. I’m guessing it set a precedent and the industry stopped trying anything else.

I didn’t follow the most recent developments here in Canada but AFAIK, a decade ago the industry tried to sue individuals that were “pirating”, and lost because they couldn’t proof that an IP could be associated with a single person, or something like that. Then the industry pretty much stopped trying to sue individuals from that point. They still send the threatening letters, but they don’t do anything else because past experiences with our courts didn’t go well for them.

Of course, there is a very very slim chance that the industry will try to sue a few individuals to scare others and create a new precedent, but it’s going to be a civil suit because it’s not even criminal here.

Cube

Edit: Apparently there’s a remake so I should precise that it’s the movie from 1997.

Meh. I don’t know about OP but where I live ISPs are forced to relay the legal notice, but nothing more happens. There is no prosecution and nobody will knock on my door.

I have been torrenting on and off since the protocol exists and never once hid my IP. My ISP relays me the threats from the industry, I ignore them, and continue what I was doing before. Same for everyone in my country. Those that end up paying for a VPN and hiding their IP are just intimidated onto doing so, because of the threats. But again, aside from getting that threatening email, nobody will knock on your door for torrenting here.

I don’t like the idea of wasting energy on inefficient things so I don’t use “AI”.

A.I. use is directly responsible for carbon emissions from non-renewable electricity and for the consumption of millions of gallons of fresh water, and it indirectly boosts impacts from building and maintaining the power-hungry equipment on which A.I. runs.

As Use of A.I. Soars, So Does the Energy and Water It Requires

But I don’t need a car to go anywhere in my daily life. My bike can bring me where I need to, it doesn’t cost gas, and doesn’t require yearly fees for a license. Public transit for the rest. Groceries are hauled with a bike trailer or I make multiple trips on foot.

Seriously, I prefer to live with 3 roommates close to work, and have access to a toilet, shower kitchen… rather than pay for a car and gas to “live in it” and get to work.

If you have a car and drive, you may see it as some sort of tool, and have some value and utility over an apartment, but for people that already live without a car, they often just seem like a burden.

I don’t want to have a 1.5 ton block of metal and need to pay gas to move it. I can move by other means.