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Comment Re:Fuck Trump (Score 1) 297

It doesn't matter if the cost of climate change is paid by the company extracting the oil or the end individual. The resulting is the same. The oil company will try to pass the cost to the individual, which will then have a choice to make: is it worth it or not? Suddenly spending that weekend on that motor boat may not be as interesting as it was before and maybe he'll play volleyball on the beach instead.

Comment Re:Fuck Trump (Score 1) 297

I'm not saying it's perfect and I am not aware of this anecdotal example in particular. But at least there is a will to do something.
In theory if the Chinese plant can prove that it is making aluminium using solar panels, while the Mozambique one is using coal, then it is operating as it should. It gives an incentive to Mozambique to reduce emissions.

Comment Re:Fuck Trump (Score 1) 297

By exporting CO2 "polluters" elsewhere to a large extent.

Not really. Just check the amount of gasoline burned per year in Europe compared to USA (per capita ratio of about 10:1). And the amount of energy used by houses (per capita ratio of 2:1)
If people travel less by car, and have smaller or more energy-efficient homes, that's in part a consequence of policies.

People in the USA drive more, and in larger cars, resulting in much more fuel consumption for personal use. I'm not talking about industry use here. Both Europe and USA outsourced consumer goods manufacturing to China anyway.

even EU-level measures applied worldwide are insufficient to do much.

On the contrary, a world-wide $100/ton tax on carbon would do a lot. It could replace part of income or sales tax in each country.

If I may use an analogy, we're meters away from a nuclear bomb which has already exploded, the fission has ended, the fission pieces, the gammas and the neutrons are leaving the nucleus. In 5 or 10 microseconds we'll be clobbered. But we live short lives, and on the microsecond scale we have a lot of time. But our societies, who live on the explosion scale are fucked.

This is another common, but false myth. Just because we can't avoid +1.5C change doesn't mean it's too late for +2 or +3C, which would be a lot better than +4 or +5C.
"We are fucked so we may as well emit as much CO2 as possible and let people pollute for free" is dumb. Our kids and grandkids will still be there to live on this planet.

Comment Re:Fuck Trump (Score 1) 297

It's not a scam and it wasn't invented by oil companies.
On the contrary, they pushed for years against the scientific consensus of anthropogenic climate change.
Each emitted ton of CO2 has an environnemental cost. Now we can argue on how much that cost is worth, but it's not $0 like Trump want it to be.
In Trump's view, if you can produce electricity using coal for 10/kWh or using gas for 10.1/kWh, we should choose coal even if it emits much more CO2.

Comment Re:Fuck Trump (Score 3, Insightful) 297

This is not something that can be solved at the individual level. You need policies. Now, you have the politicians who tried to do something, and those who did everything they can to torpedo any effort to reduce CO2 emissions.
Of course in democracies, the fault lays on those who voted for those politicians, in the end. We all know who they are. Republicans (not just Trump) in the USA, Conservatives in Canada, etc.

Comment Re:TP-Link (Score 1) 114

Phone app configuration only?

Pretty much, unfortunately. I was quite shocked to discover this as well. Exact model is Deco X50, in case you want to avoid. There is a web page, but it has almost no function. I think you can update the firmware from a file, but not configure the WiFi SSID.

Granted, for most IoT devices, phone app config is the way to go, since they can just clone the phone's WiFi SSID/password.

I'd still pick a web page (or telnet or whatever) over a cloud-based phone app any day. I can enter my WiFi password myself, I will save more time than having to figure out what crappy name they chose for the app. Mitsubishi heatpump is called "kumo cloud". Midea dehumidifier is called "SmartHome". I have another one which is called "SmartLife" and Samsung has "SmartThings".

Comment Re:TP-Link (Score 2) 114

They are the new Linksys. Cheap but reliable and available routers for the masses. Some of their models support OpenWRT so you don't have to deal with their proprietary firmware.
One bad thing they did recently is their Deco lineup, which can only be configured through an Android or iOS "app". There is a web page but the features are limited I don't even think you can change the IP address. But otherwise I was impressed by their support, after going to 3-4 levels of script followers, I was able to reach competent support who was able to fix a bug in their wireguard client implementation (preventing reconnection if the server restarts).

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