I don't see that happening. The US puts large tariffs on imported cars to stifle competition. That's why if you look at Japanese cars in Japan or German cars in Germany they're often much cheaper and more powerful than their American counterparts.

Almost every car company does something similar and has as long as they've had on board computers.

VW/Audi/Porche are all the same company and generally share the same electronics. A lot of gauges and features are considered "premium" so they just disable them for VW branded vehicles. There's also regional feature lockouts; IIRC North American VW's can't have their fog-lights and headlights on at the same time but you can enable it through VAGCOM.

LineageOS and Grpahene OS exist for some androids. Lineage can be made very private and Graphene is the best for privacy out of the box.

There's another launcher that I'm forgetting the name of that will launch Epic and GoG games. Following that proton guide should make NTFS (windows) drives usable for anything in Linux though. I can boot games downloaded from "alternate sites" if I add them to steam as "non steam games" regardless of how the drive is mounted.

Its just a continued effort to obfuscate modern tech. They discontinued the program then got a rich rube (Tom DeLonge) to foot the bill.

The F-22 raptor was developed to be the most advanced stealth fighter known to man. Its only combat mission it will ever fly was against a balloon, and it missed the first shot.

Seems to me that the US has some kind of new tech that they just don't want to share so they're going hard with this new disclosure movement. Probably something like an unmanned version of the AEREON 26 hybrid airship. Essentially half-blimp half-jet, its close to neutrally buoyant so it could "tumble" through the air like what we've seen in the tic-tac video released by the Navy.

If you use this guide to mount the Windows drives you can run it and Linux side by side. It works just as good as Windows these days for 90% of games. You can add games downloaded from unofficial sites to Steam as a "Non-steam game" and it works. Installing Nvidia drivers on Mint is easier than Windows, there's a built in utility.

The US has a blend of public and private infrastructure. Cities like Chicago sold the rights to their parking to private companies. Red light and speeding cameras are also privatized. Some states have sold their turnpike system to non public entities. Busses are unreliable in most metro areas because bus systems don't turn a profit.
Amtrak, America's only passenger train system, operates nearly entirely on private tracks. Its nearly always as expensive or more for a train ticket than it would be to just fly. At that the system is unreliable with trains constantly having to wait hours for freight trains to pass because they have the right of way on private tracks.
Nearly all utilities (power, water, gas) are ran by for profit companies. Americas "social safety net" reads like a punishment most of the time. Seniors living on social security eat cat food to get by. Politicians want work requirements on food assistance. Homelessness is at epidemic levels, in a more liberal area there are some depression era hoovervilles built. Conservative areas just buy bus tickets to the liberal areas.

The song’s lyrics include the lines: “Cuss out a cop, spit in his face / Stomp on the flag and light it up / Yeah, you think you’re tough / Well, try that in a small town / See how far you make it down the road / Around here, we take care of our own.”

Later, Aldean alludes to a conspiracy theory that the US government intends to round up its citizens: “Got a gun that my granddad gave me / They say one day they’re gonna round up / Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck.”

Who does he think does the rounding up?

I have a 2001 VW TDi, the radio is a standard Double Din so I just replaced it with a touchscreen bluetooth receiver for around $150.

Fascism as defined by Merriam-Webster says

A political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

The emphasis on race and economic / social regimentation are the major break from the left.

What would cause a person to go out that scantily clad is the real question? She must have been up to something.

HBO told the show runners(D&D) they could take as long as they wanted to finish the series. D&D had just landed jobs at the helm of a new Star Wars trilogy so they were eager to wrap up Thrones and start raking in that Disney cash. They made the last season shorter than other seasons, it sucked and they ended up losing the Star Wars deal.

Sure but that's not the point, film is wholly uncompressed. When theaters get 4k digital releases they get mailed a hard drive with the movie on it.

Probably not. 3 hours of uncompressed 1080p video is around 2tb. The film is closer to 16k which is 64 times more pixels than 1080p. This ain't your web rip off pirate bay.

Emphasis on "you've encrypted." If you don't have the keys its not safe. Imessage has great encryption but Apple will just hand over the keys if asked so its useless.

They could just incorporate a gasket + screws. There are a ton of waterproof devices that have replaceable batteries.

Centurylink/Quest/Whatever it was before received something like a billion dollars from the Obama administration to "connect the entire nation" with modern phone service. They didn't do that.

This was a decade ago, but when my mom signed up for Dish Network I asked the installer about getting the internet package. He laughed and said to avoid it like the plague. The guy claimed that at the time Direct Tv and Dish Network used the same satellites for internet, two of them to be exact. The rates for using the service went up with high server load and it was only really usable after midnight.

I ended up building a Cantenna from two Bush's Baked Beans cans and $15 worth of radio equipment from radio shack and "borrowing" free Wi-Fi from a mansion about a mile away.

It sounds insane but you should look into building a rural ISP. This guy in Michigan did it and he can barely keep up with demand in his rural community.

I'll do ya one better than that.
Because of existing telecom networks its nearly impossible for new fiber companies to do any work in large to medium cities in the US. Even Google couldn't do it because Comcast/Spectrum/TW wouldn't allow them to lay cable. In areas not already served by the big ISPs though there's nearly no red tape. Sandy, Oregon (pop 12,000) laid a municipal fiber network for $30/month. This guy in Michigan said fuck it after he couldn't get anything laid to his house and built his own ISP.

Because while you wait for housing to be built there is currently a housing shortage, and existing houses are being used as short term rentals. And you're assuming developers will act in good faith and not just use multiple floors as short term rentals which already happens. I'm all for building more housing and saying fuck short term Air B&B's. There's no reason we can't do both.

I live in a place that is plagued by short term rentals. It sucks for the neighbors to have a different bachelorette parties next door every week of the summer. Lime scooters get littered all over the sidewalks in front of said houses. And we've already voted to ban them in residential areas but there is 0 enforcement.

Cuz weed fuckin rocks bruv.

I showed up during the Slough-people drama. Started with a guy asking why seemingly homeless people were being dropped off on the shore of the Columbia Slough via pontoon boat every morning. Ended with a guy getting his drone shot out of the air by pirates.

That was my kind of content.

...Or actually enforce zoning and regulations that ban short term rentals in residential areas? Most Air B&B's in America are already illegal, real estate interests just have a ton of sway in local governments.

Phish hasn't announced anything for Halloween yet, they've done Vegas a few times and they've also sold out MSG proper more than any other band. Fingers crossed.

IIRC the study that the "X% of companies are responsible for X% emissions" is somewhat misleading. For example they use the combined output of everyone's car exhaust and attribute that to the major oil companies since they provide the gas. Not saying that large corporations and the wealthy in general contributing to climate change exponentially more than the average person, but its misleading to say that as an individual it doesn't matter if we try to use less energy.

While I agree the right gets more of a pass, the capitol does actually have its own cell network and they did bust people whose phones were connected inside.

The major difference between January 6th and Portland was that on J 6 the police presence was minimal while Portland had paramilitary outfits roaming the streets.

They don't. If you're going to have a smart phone and don't want them up in your shit get LineageOS or GrapheneOS.

During the 2020 protests in Portland, Or the US Marshalls flew a plane equipped cell phone snooping equipment over downtown for hours every day. The equipment acts as a mock cell tower so mobile phone traffic in the area gets routed through their tools before going to an actual tower. It also collects data from wifi in the area, in addition to whatever unknown abilities it has. This was around the time anonymous federal agents were picking up people off the streets in white vans and hiding in bushes shooting pepperballs at people walking by.

A friend and former coworker of mine went dark about a year ago. We both got laid off from a restaurant in Portland, Or during the pandemic. He elected to use his unemployment money to get super addicted to fentanyl. Once all the unemployment money and government eviction protections ran out he went out on the streets and disappeared.

Flash forward to last week, another friend and I were drinking on the sidewalk in front of a bar. Our old friend happened to walk by. Neither of us recognized him at first, he had become straight stereotypical homeless guy. All scabby and hauling a cart of stolen goods. We made contact with him and figured out where he was staying at a "safe rest village" not far away. I walked back there with him and met a few of his new crew, they all smoked fent and passed out in front of me. Homeless friend and I were both from the same hometown and I've known his family have been trying to get a hold of him for months, so I arranged a time to meet with him the next day so he could use my phone and get some shit together.

He didn't show up to the meeting, so I walked down to the SRV. Security at the SRV doesn't let outsiders in and won't say the names of anyone inside, I paid a guy walking in to go grab my buddy. After waiting about 45 minutes he finally rolled out. I walked with him down to the needle exchange and caught up with his life more. Him and his friends generally buy fentanyl for $1 a pill. It works on a barter system a lot of the time, trading bikes and power tools straight for pills. After he picked up his supplies for the day he said he needed to pick up something back at the village and would meet me outside in a couple minutes. Never came back out.

I'll try again next week.

Going for that Q vote.