MS started shoving adverts for McDonalds which couldn't be removed from the dashboard. That's when I lost interest in using my Xbox, it's for games, it isn't for them to shill products I would never buy on me. That said, I've not used my playstation in a while either, been enjoying my Steam library and seriously looking at getting a Steam Deck.
"Let's be fair. This isn't on MS. It's on Crowdstrike. And don't forget, Crowdstrike wound up kernel panicking Linux a few months back."
True, and frankly it's stupid to allow software like this on your system but often we're forced to by 'policy'. It's frustrating running Linux when policy makers insist on treating it like Windows and making us install all this anti-malware code which requires deep access to the system.
However, although might be unpopular here, Apple is unaffected because they won't let tools directly access the kernel and instead provide an API that allows the kernel to vet connections. MacOS has been unaffected by this issue as a result.
Crowdstrike developers were also very stupid in allowing their code to ingest faulty data without a sanity check but seriously, this stuff shouldn't be running in ring 0.
One of my streaming providers introduced ads in shows for the cheaper option and the so called ad free tier would show ads if you paused a show. I immediately unsubscribed as I won't tolerate this and I'll drop any other service that does this. We've had an ad free experience for so long that going back to even a short break is intolerable so increase prices if you must, but forget about ads.
I've got an Xbox Series X which I really enjoyed until MS pushed sponsored ads on the home page which you can't hide, there are no options to mark them as objectionable or feedback. I'm vegetarian and seeing a big ad for some murder flesh dog burger from McBurgerJnr or something is sickening to see. It prompted me to not buy the game I was considering on the platform and I'm seriously considering getting rid of the thing. My Windows PC is also about to find itself wiped and I'll switch to Linux as Steam seems to run games on there pretty well thanks to the SteamDeck. At least the ads in Steam are relevant I suppose but ads are toxic anywhere, I should just read a book. Advertising is destroying entertainment.
| It's difficult to make a go on just suspension components, tires, alignments, and brakes.
Iâ(TM)ve driven EVs for 8 years now and never had to do anything to their brakes. Regenerative braking leaves the discs and pads so barely used that every now and then it is a good idea to stomp on the pedal to knock the rust off. Iâ(TM)ve no idea when the brakes and pads will need to be replaced, the discs look brand new at 85,000km on my current car and were the same on the one I just sold. The car comes completely to a halt on regen and then the brakes will click on to hold it in place.
So far, the only maintenance has been tyre replacements, wiper blades, cabin filters and screen wash. 8 years and thatâ(TM)s it. No wonder the Nissan dealer tried to push us to an SUV when we went to buy our new LEAF.
I live in the largest city in my country and I have rooftop solar and a powerwall. We have trains too, and ferries, and buses, and cycle paths. Still way too many cars, but we have all the stuff and it isnâ(TM)t a stinking backwater. Rooftop solar and batteries arenâ(TM)t a big deal these days and our solar has already been paid off by the savings on our power bills. I added the battery later and it allows us to use all the solar power rather than exporting it for about 1/3rd of the buyback cost so that saves us more money.
With companies stopping selling ICE vehicles, and with an annual replacement rate of around 10%, it wonâ(TM)t be long before ICE vehicle owners start struggling to find fuel. Just this year Norway has seen a 9% decline in fossil fuel sales compared with last year and a number of sites are removing fossil fuel pumps and replacing them with fast chargers.
So hereâ(TM)s the thing, everything I saw on Reddit was from somewhere else so in the last few months since they killed Apollo with their ridiculous API price hike I stopped going and you know what? I still get all the same info from other sites and all without the toxic reddit-think. Some of the dumbest discussions and opinions Iâ(TM)ve ever seen and I can do without. Reddit can go the same way as Digg.
My comment will get lost in the noise but I just wanted to agree with you directly. We have a regular morning coffee meeting in our group and none of us are in the office. The thing with remote work is to ensure you all stay connected and you also feel part of a team. If anything, those who do go into the office are losing out because it costs them time and most of the office is empty so it is a waste of time. When we were all in the office, they moved us to hot desks so we rarely got to be in the same place anyway and the noise made working very difficult. The commute adds an hour each side of the day along with a lot of cost. Productivity is way up with WFH and we still chat, show pictures, crack jokes etc, but we can also turn that noise off and focus. I canâ(TM)t do that at the office, the noise is always there. Times have changed, WFH is better if you need the peace, and Teams etc give us the contact. Oddly enough, next week I will be going into the office but it is a rare occurrence and just because my boss is coming to town and would like to have lunch.
There are a few things at work here, yes there are managers who are vexed by empty desks because their empire has disappeared. There are also property owners who invested heavily in office space who are looking huge losses as a result.
For companies that react properly though, there are greatly reduced costs for office space and parking, plus less time lost to sickness because staff aren't mixing and spreading germs, happier workers with more free time and lower costs due to not paying to commute and just overall a much better work environment.
The town centres are devastated for sure with all the empty offices but this is an opportunity to redevelop with walkable cities and cost effective accommodation to bring life back to these places.
Before COVID, my workplace was in the process of moving offices to open plan and hot desking. It was disastrous for productivity, arriving and having to find a desk and get set up, often in a location that was different each day with all the associated noise of an office, but different and distracting each day. I struggled to get more than a couple of hours of productive work done with the noise, the disturbance, the general lack of feeling like I was in MY workspace.
Then COVID hit and we were ordered to work from home, the company funded our home office setup and I settled into a comfortable space with a door and no disturbances and with everything where I needed it. Productivity went way up and we got a nice schedule of Teams meetings, a morning coffee with my colleagues and so on. Highly available, quick to turn around work and not spending three hours a day in a damn car. We havenâ(TM)t been called back but Iâ(TM)ve been quick to point out that I would be much less productive if forced to and would immediately start looking for another job.
Working from home in a properly set up office is the ideal. We should be pushing to get everyone who can work from home to do so permanently, we have the technology to make it work and it would take a huge amount of pressure off the roads and reduce greenhouse gas emissions dramatically.
Having big UK meat-eaters cut some of it out of their diet would be like taking 8 million cars off the road. That's just one of the findings of new research that scientists say gives the most reliable calculation yet of how what we eat impacts our planet. The Oxford University study is the first to pinpoint the difference high- and low-meat diets have on greenhouse gas emissions, researchers say.
Prof Peter Scarborough, of Oxford, who led the new research, told BBC News: ''Our results show that if everyone in the UK who is a big meat-eater reduced the amount of meat they ate, it would make a really big difference." "You don't need to completely eradicate meat from your diet."
Prof Scarborough surveyed 55,000 people who were divided into big meat-eaters, who ate more than 100g of meat a day, which equates to a big burger, low meat-eaters, whose daily intake was 50g or less, approximately a couple of chipolata sausages, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans.
While it is well established that producing meat has a bigger environmental footprint than plant-based food, it has never been calculated in such detail, according to Prof Susan Jebb, who is head of the Food Standards Agency and a world leading nutrition scientist at Oxford University.
The research shows that a big meat-eater's diet produces an average of 10.24 kg of planet-warming greenhouse gasses each day. A low meat-eater produces almost half that at 5.37 kg per day. And for vegan diets — it's halved again to 2.47 kg a day.
A separate study also published in Nature Food in 2021 concluded that food production was responsible for a third of all global greenhouse gas emissions. And an independent review for the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) called for a 30% reduction in meat consumption by 2032 in order to meet the UK's net zero target.
"In the UK it is still not accepted that we are eating an amount of meat which is inconsistent with our environmental goals. At the moment, the conversation is not how we are going to do this, but whether it is really necessary," she said. "In the case of obesity people know they shouldn't be eating confectionary cakes and biscuits. They may not want to hear it, but they know it to be true. With meat they are not wholly convinced."
I bought the first M1 Mac mini as Iâ(TM)m a developer and wanted to try it out. Back then, it was pretty tough but at least as smooth as the shift from PPC to Intel was back in the day. The major difference was the temps, my Intel Mac mini routinely runs at 80+C and the M1 runs at 35 under the same loads. Iâ(TM)ve now got an M1Pro MacBook Pro which slaughters the old Intel MacBook Pro I used.
I do all the same stuff I did on the Intel Macs, including virtualisation with UTM which being based on Qemu can run a lot of different operating systems and for ARM code it properly virtualises so thereâ(TM)s little speed penalty. Rocky Linux 9 ARM version in a VM is my go to Linux on the machine and Docker/Singularity support on ARM is coming along nicely but if I need x86 I can do that. Itâ(TM)s not as quick as Rosetta 2 which basically runs at native speeds unlike the original Rosetta which was about 10x slower than the PPC chips it was emulating and only usable because the code was able to use native libs a lot of the time but compile a command line PPC binary and run that to see the real speed. Rosetta 2 is about 80% of the speed of native.
The next few years will be interesting but I have no regrets switching to Apple Silicon. The very low temps, high performance and all day battery life on my laptop are all very worthwhile and the downsides are pretty much gone now that devs have figured out the platform.
Been a long time since I was active on here because I discovered reddit. But with the loss of Apollo and how utterly terrible the official app is, Iâ(TM)m done with reddit. The moderation and voting on reddit is terrible anyway as it produces group-think on wrong ideas. Not as much going on here on Slashdot but the moderation has always meant good comments hit the top.
So, Iâ(TM)m back. What did I miss?
Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks.
