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.

This can also be practical in places where the police can force you to unlock your phone with biometrics but not with the PIN.

Ever since I’ve seen the police here force people to delete the videos of them abusing citizens, I have been very wary of biometric identification.

So far my ‘emergency’ procedure would be to restart my phone, as it’s asking for a PIN after a reboot.

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.

Nope. I don’t have a car and consider it a money pit in the first place. A car costs a driving license. It also costs insurance. And fuel to move it. And it will break down at some point. Plus, winters are pretty brutal where I live and heating this thing/myself would be a nightmare. To me, a car is an anchor; a heavy ball attached to your foot.

If I had a car, and it was for a few weeks in summer, I may consider it. But I prefer have a proper place instead, and save money by not having a car.

I use it to consume huge quantities of energy because I despise the human race and life on earth.

I’m using Android but I can give you a few personal examples on why I still prefer mobile websites to apps.

1. The place where I take weather has a shitty app full of ads and always sending notifications. They don’t have PWA offered on their site but just going through a browser instead of the app is significantly better.

2. YouTube’s app is also full of ads. So I use the mobile website in Firefox with uBlock Origin.

3. Again with awful apps full of ads. Twitter is also much more tolerable through the mobile website. There’s no autoplay on FF and again, ads blocked.

4. I still use IRC and my client is web based, so that I can see pictures and videos in my chats. The web based IRC client (The Lounge) offers PWA and it’s very nice to have the thing in a “clean” browser.

Again, I don’t use Apple for reasons like this, but Firefox is already pretty bad with PWA and having those possibilities mangled or removed wouldn’t be acceptable to me.

Maybe you don’t use a browser on mobile and just do everything through terrible apps. Maybe most people do the same. But if you don’t use it, why do you care if those using it want to retain the possibility to do so?

I personally don’t watch TV so nobody watches TV anymore, right?

The poor.

As long as it’s not à la Musk where the new versions will be inferior to the previous one because “no modern trains should rely on antiquated technology so we’re scrapping everything from before to start from scratch”.

I’d be curious to see any numbers on that. Uber and Lyft played the card of “but it’s car sharing and thus reducing trafic” but in the end, it doesn’t really change much, and sometimes even increase trafic.

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/uber-lyft-traffic-congestion-car-ownership-study/

As someone that doesn’t have a licence, never have driven a car and avoids them if possible, taxis (autonomous or not) are generally useless to me. They are still cars and they keep people dependent on cars.

In a city, people shouldn’t need a taxi (read, a car) to get around. In urban areas, people can walk, bike or use public transit. And if you want to go from one city to another, one shouldn’t also need a taxi (car) to get there.

I’m aware that this is kind of “utopist” and requires efforts to change things but, if the solution to wanting less cars is “cars but shared!”, this is not a solution. It’s just proof of failed policies. It will not encourage any change, just stagnation. Things will stay based on cars… but autonomous… and electric (oh so green)! Oh and also, now big tech knows exactly where you’re going, and when.

EDIT: And if robotaxis would be “part of the solution” for the last mile, why wouldn’t a normal taxi already fulfil that role? We don’t have enough? So we’d need more vehicles on the road, But autonomous? Why do they need to be autonomous? How come is the last mile such a huge problem for most people? Is walking or cycling a mile that difficult for most people? Is everyone carrying a 42" TV around?