“We’ve installed malicious spyware on your computer without you asking for it, but don’t worry, it’s off by default.”

“No.” (Installs GNU/Linux)

There were apps out there to help with this when I switched from Spotify to Tidal. I can’t remember the name anymore though. It just sucks up all your saved songs and playlists, matches them in the other service then adds them. Almost everything I had moved over without a problem. I do miss the social aspect of Spotify, being able to share links with friends. No one I know has tidal except the people on my family plan. There are services that will turn your song link into a linktree like page with links for Spotify, tidal, YouTube music, deezer, etc., but that’s clunky.

Also, the worst hemmeroids ever and a special CEO diet consisting of nothing but exlax and habanero peppers.

I’m no expert. I want to include that disclaimer up front.

Nextcloud with block storage on btrfs with snapshots seems like it could work for you. No idea about VFS though. I’ll leave that question for someone more knowledgeable. The “drive” portion of Nextcloud is quite decent. I regularly use it to pass large files between my phone (Android), laptop (Linux) and gaming desktop (Windows).

Yes, I’m several years into my de-googling process and a solid email client is not something I’m worried about. K9 is great and, as Thunderbird, we can only hope that it gets better.

I wish more people, more ordinary non-Lemmings, understood this.

Even if you can’t get everywhere with a bike, you can definitely go some places. Last year, completely on accident, I went a whole month only using my car twice. 90% of my trips were to the grocery store and other close-by destinations.

Electric cars are just an evolution of the status quo designed as a pressure valve to prevent the momentum for real change from building up.

I bought my first handheld anything, the Palm Zire 31 in high school. Everyone thought I was weird, but I was also organized. :P

I think this is mostly because people who know about it have a mental block that it’s only for nerds. Millions have been using Android on their phones for years, though we’ll limit ourselves to desktop GNU/Linux type distributions for this discussion.

Actual usage of Linux has gotten much easier since 2006ish when I first tried it out. With all the popups and ads in Windows nowadays, its rapidly becoming harder to use than Linux, something I did not expect. I don’t see a combined Linux User Group/ Bingo Club/ Bridge Group forming anytime soon, but Linux Mint isn’t any harder to use than Windows, even for normies with an average level of tech skills.

I was outside the path of totality, but saw one during my childhood. Today I made a pinhole camera and took a quick look before my meeting started and was able to see the shadow of the moon maybe 50%-60% over the sun. When I came back out after my meeting it was cloudy.

Sorry you had clouds :-(

Facebook/Meta and the like have proven to be untrustworthy. If they were a person, would you let them federate with your friend group? I wouldn’t. I hope they’re not invited to the party because the things that brought me here are the things that drove me away from there.

This appears to be what I’ve been looking for. I can’t wait to try it. Thanks for sharing.

You mean after the price hike they also hiked the number of ads? I canceled when they hiked the price and managed to get it down to the old price a few months later, so I renewed for the personal heatmap. Looks like I’m definitely canceling again. I doubt they’ll give me the price break twice anyway.

Baking ads into a timeline like Strava and some other apps do has to be the worst app trend ever.

While I wouldn’t have an ounce of sympathy for UHC and the execs in the healthcare industry if this happened, I agree that threats, no matter where they are sent, are not a smart move. While the people who work there are a bunch of Judas traitors against their fellow Americans, they’re probably just trying to feed their kids. Hope those sheckles will buy their own kiddos some non-UHC insurance. The real devils are the corporate types, the lobbyists, the politicians who take their bribes, and the ones moving money in a way that perpetuates this system.

There are much more creative ways to wish them ill. I will pray every night that everything they eat tastes like moldy rotten meat left in a car in the Phoenix summer for a week straight. I hope their CEO breaks the world record for most hemeroids on a single person and can’t get any pain meds because he has to go through Optums mail order pharmacy. I hope ants swarm them in their sleep and eat off their limbs until they wake up screaming as a disembodied head and torsoe. I hope they fall asleep on the top deck of the yacht they bought with our healthcare premiums and get so sunburnt their skin wins a baking competition for flakiest croissant.

This system is absolutely inhumane. I can’t imagine the kind of mental gymnastics a non-narcessist, non-sociopath would have to do to run this kind of business.

They’ve killed so many trees sending me letters to convince me how great their mail order pharmacy is. I don’t even fill any fucking meds other than the occasional antibiotic or something if I get sick. I bet they would have sent me some Paxlovid when I got covid too. It probably would have arrived just in time for me to be all better. Thankfully I haven’t been forced to use them…yet.

Decoupling work and health insurance is one of the absolute biggest wins we could have as Americans right now. What’s it gonna take? I’m happy for the entire economy to crash if they lose power. That’s a nonpartisan statement too. Even though they’re not equally bad, its like ball cancer vs lung cancer. I want to lecture these nitwits while metaphorically shaking them until they get a concussion. This is not how you treat human beings. We are truly a third world shithole in a crappy disguise.

Sad, but in a lot of places unenforceable. My city can ban whatever they want, but they don’t have the manpower to wipe after they shit. :D

I hope the Karen’s leave you alone.

Odd, may I ask about your approximate geography? My area is very suburban and bikes mix with peds better than cars here because most of our streets are 6 lane roads with 40-55 mph speed limits. (45-70 mph actual speed) If the speed limits were 25-35 mph I would probably ride on the road a lot more.

I’ll run a test at some point. Definitely faster than a car, but my bike has nice brakes. Not every cheap Chinese budget bike is going to have these brakes.

Also, because my ebike is relatively light/average, there is a “wind wall” at around 20 mph where aerodynamics become more effective than pedaling. Sitting up and stopping pedaling when I’ve been hunched over pushing hard will quickly bring me back to 15-20 mph. I don’t know where this wind wall is on a heavy ebike with fat tires, a heavy rider, and a rack full of luggage.

To the point of braking for pedestrians, on paved trails, I always ring my bell until people acknowledge me in some nonverbal way and I slow down for dogs because they can be startled by fast bikes. I’ve had many peds thank me for ringing the bell on a trail and I’m convinced if everyone did it, 2/3 of the bike/pedestrian animosity would instantly dry up.

Cars don’t care around here. They only see their phones, traffic lights, and the back of the car in front of them.

Its largely by state here in the US, but it is kind of staring to converge on similar guidelines.

In Colorado

Class 1: The electric motor provides assistance only while the rider is pedaling and stops assisting at 20 mph.

Class 2: The electric motor can propel the bike without pedaling, but stops assisting at 20 mph.

Class 3: The electric motor provides assistance only while the rider is pedaling and stops assisting at 28 mph.

All must be less than 750 watts, but it doesn’t specify how that is measured. Also, these rules aren’t reliably enforced.

My city just has a 20mph limit on urban trails and tolerates ebikes that don’t do stupid stuff and ring their bell for peds.

Mobile convergence has tried to hard to kill this, but we’re not having it. Cut, copy, paste, save 4 lyfe!

I ride a class 3 and 30mph is not that bad. I regularly hit that coming down hills, even on a non-ebike. It does require your attention to be on the road and it would hurt if you wiped out. My fastest ever was 44mph