The whole Fediverse is still a little on the niche side, but if growth continues, I think this is exactly another development. When you work for Company X, your work email is usually somebody@companyx.com, likewise I would expect official Fediverse presences.

Where it will probably take off though is when somebody starts selling corporations a turn-key solution. Kind of how products like Outlook took over corporate email.

The police also knocked and only entered after he answered it sounded like. While certainly armed and probably prepared for something wild, they didn't force entry with guns at the ready.

Once again, mostly comparing to videos of US police interactions, which is kind of weird as a non-USian commenting on a German police interrogation. Would be curious to see an "audit the audit" type review of this.

Respect. Only through destruction can we be purified.

Thanks to KDE on the SD, I've switched my main DE on my desktop. Still have a soft spot for XFCE, but KDE Plasma on the SD was polished and was very "coherent".

One thing the SD is missing for being a complete "serious" computer is printing support. I'm sure I could it installed, the SD is eminently hackable, but a Flatpak solution or a Steam default solution would really justify using a SD in Desktop mode for school and work.

Yeah, it being Lauren Southern is more notable than a former candidate as a Langley MP.

I'm assuming this is related to those two Russians with RTv recently indicted funneling something like 9.7 million USD through presumably Tenet Media, where Lauren is a… media personality? Influencer? Pundit? Host? Streamer? Cam girl?

Relevant XKCD

TIL.

For purposes of this post though, RFC 3339 and ISO8601 are identical. Dates in the format YYYY-MM-DD, so 2024-08-29 is both RFC3339 and ISO8601 compliant.

Not an expert, just spent around 2 minutes looking at https://ijmacd.github.io/rfc3339-iso8601/

First, the largest electoral district in 2021 was Edmonton-Wetaskawin, with 209, 431. The smallest was Labrador with 26,655. Elections Canada does try and even out the sizes of the ridings in population, but that is only one of several considerations, but still a smaller gap than 1,000,000 and 100. But your point does still stand, in that this could be seen as a problem with our pure FPTP system. Labrador voters have around 8 times the say Edmonton voters do. To be fair, the extremes narrow pretty fast and do converge fairly solidly around the 70-110k range.

So as to how that would change in some sort of PR system... it depends.

First, do you keep 338 seats in Parliament? Are they all going to be tied to ridings or will you be using some sort of list-based PR system? I'll use two examples, STV and MMP, since they are more well know.

Single Transferable Vote (STV) would group several smaller ridings together to form larger multicandidate ridings. Voters rank the candidates numerically. The least popular candidates are dropped sequentially until Depending on how you want to divide up and group the ridings and how big you want them is pretty much open. Typically, I don't think you want more than 7 candidates or it gets confusing, and in much of Canada you already have big ridings. Plus population centres can skew things. Do you make all of Vancouver Island a bigger 7 seat district, or do you break Victoria out into it's own 4 seater and the rest of Vancouver Island a 3 seater? The Territories each have one riding that is pretty darn big, and already much smaller than average (all three would make a single average sized riding). You could just have single seaters, so basically exactly what we have now but with IRV (Instant Runoff Voting). Better than FPTP, but not very proportional

Mixed Member Proportional would keep the single seat ridings and add "top-up" seats assigned from party lists, or have fewer bigger ridings to free up seats to be assigned from party seats. Voters would vote for their local candidate as currently, and local candidates are assigned as under FPTP. The voters might also mark a party preference which would be used to assign the makeup seats, or the vote for the local candidate would be also used to indicate party preference. Or there could also be an open list.

So I guess the final answer is it depends. And balancing people vs. area is already a problem, and although a new voting system might solve some of those problems, you are going to have disagreements on what the problem even is. Arguably using some flavour of MMP the most "fair" (for some definitions of fair) since even if Labrador's 26,000 people have way more say than Edmonton-Wetaskawin's 209,000, it will pretty much all come out in the wash since their votes will be evened out in the make-up seats assigned by party list.

Also, this is not exhaustive. There are other systems and tweaks to systems (q.v. RUP, Rural-Urban Proportional ) that could work even better for Canada federally.

Rarely drink bottled water, because the tap water is great where I grew up. I absolutely thought it was weird how much some people drank bottled water. Then I tried Edmonton (Canada) water.

Heck Nestle bottles the tap water from Hope, BC. They claim they filter it, and I'm sure they do, but the municipal water in Hope is great, and I'm sure their purification equipment don't have to do much. Hope isn't even the best municipal water in BC.

Good to hear that if I ever get around to visiting Utrecht I can try some competitive municipal water.

VAX/VMS was still around then, and as far as I recall, that was the king for uptime.

Linux back then supported much less hardware. I can remember even in the early aughts, there was while families of popular wireless network chipsets that weren't supported.

Sounds fair. Everyone back to the pre-2014 borders. Even Stevens.

Pretty much exactly what happened to me. Mostly open source apps on Windows. Set up dual boot with Windows default. One day I noticed I was switching to Linux more often than not, so changed to Linux default.

I watched the final, it was impressive, but I have no technical knowledge about what was happening.

I remember in the 3rd round, Dany Dan made a mistake, the announcers commented on it, and I had no idea what the mistake was.

If you can get one of those cassette adapters, you can test the tape deck of interest first.

Technology Connections on YouTube had an episode on those tape adapters, but I can't remember the reason why she some tape decks don't work with those cassette adapters.

So far I've only had that one tape deck not work.

Love mine, but the newer version that my wife has is just a little bit better all around. Plus the extras it comes with are a pure nostalgia hit.

Yes… in the cassette players that work with those adapters. Annoyingly, the old stereo we have set up at work in one shop doesn't work with those casette adapters or the Mixxtape.

Also, if you use it in a tape deck, it doesn't use the spools as inputs. You just set it playing and pop it in. Similar to my old Digisette Duo Aria.

I will admit, I have rarely used the tape deck function, but it has been useful on occasion.

I use the Kickstarter version of the Mixxtape. My wife uses the newer version, which offers some improvements.

It's fantastically retro, but you will need to use a micro-SD.

Some controllers are almost integral to the experience. Intellivision and Colecovision come to mind. Having said that, emulation and modern controls are generally great, and generally my preference.

I like the old yearbook photo and yearbook write-up. Cute! Good thing I'll never ascend to high office, since I never submitted a write-up for my year book. Boring!

Considering that her HS yearbook write-up mentions "California" first among "Cher Mem" (cherished memories presumably) and that Kamala grew up in California before Montreal, and returned to California after Montreal, I would expect her attachment to Montreal and Canada is little more than (hopefully) some fond memories.

But do you have stale doughnuts?¹

¹ Tim Horton's spells it donuts as well now anyways. Canada is a failed state.

I've got a 15 year old SD/USB combo card on my keychain. I plugged it into a TV around 6-7 years ago because there were a couple of kids movies on there.

I also know I have some Portable apps on there, but probably a little out of date

Howdy neighbour! You are absolutely correct, there are several different Co-ops all using the same logos and such. There has also been some consolidation. Peninsula Co-op merged with the Comox Valley Co-op and North-Island Co-op. There used to be more co-ops.

Although the US/Aus deal scuppered a Aus/France deal for subs IIRC.

Could be argued that the US administration is more interested in making military equipment sales than bolstering NATO.

I figure you're right though. All our allies should be happy when Canada pulls it's own weight.

We usually walk on for day trips to Vancouver and use transit (or even Uber). Horseshoe Bay is well served by the 257 Express bus to downtown.

There's also Uber/Lyft/taxis and Shaw Go bike rentals. Saves a fair bit. Also opens up the Hullo walk on ferry.

As to the local/commuter vs. tourist thing, it's debatable either way which is the bigger benefit.

As a local, I think you have a fair amount of flexibility. Not as much as would be ideal, but Hullo has certainly taken some of the load off of BC Ferries (similar to the Seaspan barge for commercial traffic).

Have you looked at the Stop Killing Games campaign?

FPTP was fine when elections were held within a riding, and results were delivered by horseback. You were voting based on a local candidate, not the national party.

Then the railroad, telegraph, telephone, and internet were invented, politics became national, and we're still using FPTP.

Oh well, if it might be an official act, then I guess he's presumptively immune, so no one could possibly investigate.

I think the Windows thing is spot on. You're going to be using a handheld gaming device for gaming mostly (if not entirely). You don't need to run Excel.

I think the justification for Windows on a gaming device though is kernel level anti-cheat. The problem is that you are chasing a pretty select audience. People who will play one of those games on a handheld, and will also only buy a handheld that can pay those games. Also won't install Windows on a Deck either.

An aside, I probably use Desktop mode more than average, and I have LibreOffice installed on my deck. Jokes on Microsoft though, I've been using Linux primarily for ages anyways, so I don't even need Windows for that.

I was 95% k+m until the Steam Deck (the 5% being my old Saitek Flightstick).

Since the Steam Deck I'm probably 90% controller.

I will say that k+m offers superior speed and precision, especially in FPSes, but the biggest improvement that I noticed was that I was getting a sore shoulder from repetitive strain sitting too much time in front of computers. Controllers are more ergonomic.

Ironically, the Atari -like joystick from the 2000's from Walmart for $15 that plugs directly into your TV with games stored in the joystick is a better joysticks than the original 2600 joysticks.

However, I would contend that the Intellivision controller was worse.

I had a Colecovision (and Vic 20), and although I will say that was better than the 2600 and Intellivision joystick, I have to emphasize to all these youngsters complaining about the original NES controllers that those were still an improvement over previous default joysticks.

Flashbacks! This reminds me of my first Gravis Gamepad (IIRC). Was a disappointing joystick, even compared to old Intellivision controllers.

It was okay with fighting games, and I do recall a nineties PC giant robot fighting game (One Must Fall maybe?)

Still, my first joystick that I actually loved and made a game much better was an old CH Products flightstick. Early flightstick, so it only added a throttle to the base, so no rudder control.

I remember playing Comanche Maximum Overkill with that stick and just popping in and out of canyons. Also Earthsiege and Strike Force Centauri. I ended up with a Saitek Flightstick, and it was even better (Independence War is a fond memory) but the difference was not as revolutionary as going from a regular joystick to that first CH Products flightstick.

For sure. Easily half (likely more) of my unplayed games are Bundle games from a bundle I got primarily for something else. There's a few gems I'm sure.

There are a few games I bought on sale to play later as well (I'll get to you!) but the other glaring flaw I see is a selection bias. The people who use this service or similar services are going to be the heavier Steam users with collections in the hundreds.

So heavier users, with lots of bundle games and sales. I'd divide that total by 10 at least

Probably why I actually leave multiplayer on in No Man's Sky. There's people around, stuff happens, but there is no need to engage if you aren't in the mood.

Plus, if you are feeling sociable and want to, you can go to the anomaly and team up for bonuses.

This has been my experience. I used Fedora for a while years ago, but rpm was already second fiddle to deb. Plus, I was already selling into my "old man distro" so I kept ending up with some Ubuntu version.

I did recently Manjaro and Linux Mint, but ended up with Ubuntu again, although this time Kubuntu, Ubuntu with KDE!

No shade from me though for going with Red Hat.

Probably, but I think that every month that CDL went unchallenged was slowly building a precedent. I wonder if they had stuck to CDL if we'd still be waiting for the publishers to blink.

I think if they hadn't abandoned the CDL modern during the pandemic, they could have kept it going indefinitely. Even if it wasn't likely fair use, it might have been. More than that, it would have been bad press for the publisher to make the first move.

Abandoning CDL during the pandemic was just waving a red flag and giving the publishers a slam dunk case.

I think if IA had just held the line with CDL, they could have over time just effectively established a precedent. Lost opportunity.

I got a Betty Crocker borosilicate glass casserole baking pan at the Dollar store. I've used it several times, and it hasn't broken. If a Dollar store can sell glass cookware at a profit, how many fractional pennies did they save by making these glass mugs?

100% agree. You're not selling the hardware anymore, leave it in an unlocked state. Same with games.

Seems valid. Declare world peace next!