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vividspecter

@vividspecter@lemm.ee

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vividspecter ,

Seems to be a repeat of the misleading (and outright cheating) scam that diesel emissions turned out to be, although presumably not quite as egregious as what VW did. Although perhaps part of the hybrid problem is that people aren't actually charging them electrically most of the time, but that is also why hybrids are such a pointless half measure (even more than electric cars are a half measure compared to reducing car dependency).

vividspecter ,

Ledger/hledger may be an option if you're command line inclined although more local only then self-hosted per-se.

vividspecter , (edited )

Here's another article that counters this just a little:
https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/02/28/taylor-swift-mcg-parking-urban-planning/

tl;dr Australia is still a quite a car-centric place relative to most of Europe and only marginally better than Canada and the US

EDIT: Looks like Victoria is planning to remove parking minimums from housing near public transport which is a good start.

vividspecter ,

What do you do if the city has high slopes making walking and biking too hard?

E-bikes and regular bikes with good gearing. And walking up slopes generally isn't too challenging it's just slow. Infrastructure can help here too by making sure there are paths that don't go up hills unnecessarily. Fast and frequent public transport provides another option where walking and biking is less viable.

For example, how do you travel to another city?

Trains and buses. Car as a last resort (preferably one that is hired rather than owned, and preferably electric rather than an ICE).

Or how do elders deal with what other citizens would take for granted in terms of mobility?

Elderly people can't (or shouldn't) drive either so better walkability = better for the elderly since it gives options to get around without relying on a car. Good infrastructure design can help with disability access, and many disabled people can't drive anyway.

vividspecter ,

The term "city" can actually be confusing too since it might mean the most central district of a metropolitan area, or it could mean the whole metropolitan area. There is some desire to make the most central parts car free in the way you thought (usually street by street in the centre of the CBD etc), but generally the broader area will not be.

vividspecter ,

I have trailers I use haul firewood and such. I burn about 3 quarts a year.

If that's for heating, ideally you'd be using a heat pump / reverse cycle AC as wood burning heaters are harmful to health due to PM2.5 particles and bad for the environment due to emissions. But I get that there is a bit of an upfront cost that may be dissuading you.

vividspecter ,

ignore bike lanes and try to get as close as they can to you when they pass you

That's why protected bike lanes are the ideal, preferably grade separated from the road. Remove the problem via infrastructure, and more people will bike.

ajsadauskas , to Fuck Cars
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

Sydney has opened up consultation on a strategy to reduce car traffic and make the city more walkable

"Driving in central Sydney will become harder under a plan to make the city more comfortable for pedestrians.

"The City of Sydney wants to narrow roads for wider footpaths and push for lower speed limits to discourage drivers from the CBD and transform Sydney into a walkable city.

"The council will also install more pedestrian crossings and prioritise people over cars... five times more pedestrians than motorists on the average street, yet just 40 per cent of road space is allocated to footpaths."

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/greener-safer-calmer-the-plan-to-discourage-drivers-from-central-sydney-20240312-p5fbr7.html

Some key points of the strategy are:

We will ensure that there is sufficient space for people to walk.

We will improve connectivity for people walking by ensuring there are frequent street crossings that give people priority and that align with people’s walking routes.

We will ensure that footpaths and crossings are accessible so that everyone can use them.

We will plan our city based on 10-minute neighbourhoods so that people are able to meet their daily needs easily by walking.

We will make it safer for people to walk by reducing vehicle speeds.

We will reduce traffic volumes on surface streets and manage through-traffic in residential neighbourhood streets to improve both safety and experience for people walking.

We will work to make all people feel safer while walking around our city.

We will work to improve compliance with road rules, especially the lesser-known rules that benefit people walking.

We will make our streets and public spaces comfortable and inviting by ensuring that they
are green and cool.

We will make sure that there are frequent opportunities for people to stop and rest, use the toilet or have a drink of water.

We will make our city more pleasant to walk in by reducing noise and air pollution from
traffic.

We will make all streets interesting to walk along by ensuring that built form has active, permeable frontages that invite engagement and curiosity.

We will use design, activations and installations to create neighbourhood-based community and encourage people to interact with their streets.

Full details here: https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/policy-planning-changes/your-feedback-walking-strategy-action-plan#strategy

Unfortunately, the car-brained leader of the local business lobby isn't on board:

"Business Sydney executive director Paul Nicolaou welcomed efforts to make the city pedestrian-friendly... But Nicolaou said it was difficult to see how making Sydney a predominantly walking city would benefit businesses such as retailers."

(Worth repeating that 80% of people on an average city street are pedestrians, so it already is a predominantly walking city.)

Anyway, if you think the plan's a good idea, make sure you let the Sydney City Council know by emailing sydneyyoursay@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au

@fuck_cars

vividspecter ,

Survey, including the plan itself (pdf): https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/policy-planning-changes/your-feedback-walking-strategy-action-plan#strategy

And the plan for cycling:
https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/strategies-action-plans/cycling-strategy-and-action-plan

Looks like they are saying the right things at least, so hopefully this pans out. And if you're from Sydney I encourage you to fill out the survey as governments do listen to this stuff, and it's a good counter to the complainers that are usually carbrain types.

Polestar Joins Tesla in Departure from Auto Lobby Over Proposed Vehicle Efficiency Standard (www.infoterkiniviral.com)

In a bold move echoing Tesla's recent decision, Polestar, the renowned Swedish electric vehicle manufacturer, has announced its departure from a prominent auto industry lobby. This withdrawal reflects growing discontent with the lobby's opposition to a crucial proposed vehicle efficiency standard, seen as pivotal for...

vividspecter ,

I'm not sure why the article doesn't mention this anywhere, but the legislation is concerning Australia, which currently has zero fuel efficiency standards.

Because of the lack of a standard, Australia is currently a dumping ground for inefficient trash that other countries won't take, and ICE car companies don't want to lose that. Electric vehicle makers prefer the regulation because it puts them on a more equal footing.

Yes, many of these ICE companies are transitioning away from fossil fuels, but they are being dragged kicking and screaming, and any delay in legislation means they can continue to profit from these outdated cars a bit longer while they catch up on electric cars. Pretty much the same type of delay tactics that the fossil fuel industry is pushing across the board.

Here's a better article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/08/polestar-quits-australian-auto-lobby-fcai-vehicle-efficiency-standards

vividspecter ,

or running multiple monitors with different high refresh rates and freesync simultaneously are still rocky.

Not really an issue anymore with most Wayland compositors (KDE and wlroots, soon to be fixed with Gnome). That's mainly an X11 specific problem.

vividspecter ,

Oh and I can’t get windows subsystem for Linux to work in my windows VM on my Linux machine.

You need nested virtualization since it's a VM within a VM. It's supported by KVM/libvirt but may need additional config. I believe virtualbox now supports it too, but that it's a bit undercooked.

vividspecter ,

Maybe just buy a monitor, particularly if you only need streaming.

vividspecter ,

You'd normally use a software raid implementation these days, and Linux has a number of those. But yeah, dual booting can expose some quirks and filesystems and disk setup in general is one of the most prominent.

vividspecter ,

You can be forced to do something while still being aware of the issues. Your interpretation seems to be: I can't change it therefore it makes sense to mentally ignore it. But being forced to drive while being aware that car fumes are toxic to health aren't mutually exclusive positions.

vividspecter ,

Yeah it's fine, especially with recent codecs like AV1 and you'd expect future codecs to improve further.

vividspecter ,

Try jellyfin-mpv-shim. It directly uses mpv (either a built in version or even your system mpv) and if it doesn't play well there, it's likely not going to play well anywhere.

ajsadauskas , to Fuck Cars
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

What can you get to within a 15-minute walk of your house?

A recent YouGov survey asked Americans what they think they should be able to get to within a 15-minute walk of their house.

Of these choices, I can currently walk to all of them from my apartment, aside from a university (no biggie, I'm not currently studying, although there is a Tafe within walking distance), a hospital, and a sports arena.

How many can you get to with a 15 minute walk from your house?

@fuck_cars

vividspecter ,

It doesn't have to be high rise apartments though. Duplexes, quadplexes, small apartment buildings, row houses, and so on can increase density without huge buildings (although I don't mind them personally).

vividspecter ,

Just to add to the other comments, you probably want to use a wildcard cert so you don't need to individually certify each subdomain (or expose them at all).

vividspecter ,

At the same time, I hate Apple the least of big tech, since they actually do give a crap about building good products and have done quite a bit of that.

That's an incredibly low bar. There are exceptions of course but I'd argue there really is no need to use "big tech" software much of the time. Smartphones are probably the most challenging, but desktops and laptops? Easy to avoid.

vividspecter ,

They might mean it's happening even with requests routed through the VPN.

vividspecter , (edited )

There's a discount for low income residents from what I recall (although I believe it's small). I agree that SUVs and pickup trucks should be hit harder, but perhaps that can be added down the line.

EDIT: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/nyregion/tolls-congestion-pricing-nyc.html

Low-income drivers will get 50 percent off tolls during the day after the first 10 trips in a calendar month. It will also be much cheaper to drive at night: Between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m., fees will be reduced by 75 percent.

And:

people whose primary residence is inside the tolling district and whose income is below $60,000 would be eligible for a state tax credit equal to the amount of their tolls.

On the car model point, perhaps SUVs and pickup trucks could be pushed into the "small truck" category, raising the fee to $24. These "cars" exist due to dodging the efficiency standards that apply to normal cars, so they should be treated as the light trucks that they actually are.

vividspecter ,

Maybe Jellyfin, where I believe you can force a low bitrate for every remote client. It wouldn't be "adjust to internet speed" but you could minimise buffering that way.

vividspecter ,

Of course. Youtube and the like "pre-transcode" it so that would be one way for Jellyfin to better solve it, at the cost of a significant amount of disk space.

vividspecter ,

I suspect the delay would still be longer than a Youtube like implementation which may need to switch transcodes multiple times, but that's probably unrealistic at this point anyway.

Transcoding everything to AV1 could be a solution too, since high resolutions can look quite good at low bitrates, so you could limit it to 5mbps or 10mbps for any resolution and be done with it. But I'm not sure Jellyfin supports that, and at least from the UI it doesn't give you particularly fine grained control over resolution/bitrates. Perhaps having a secondary library of just AV1 transcodes that you handle manually (perhaps even using a software encoder) could be an option for some.

The client side is also an issue, with not that many devices supporting hardware decoding (although I've found it's fast enough in software with most modern smartphones at least).

vividspecter ,

Except for ipv6 (usually). Although most routers will block incoming traffic anyway by default.

vividspecter ,

Sites that have discussions almost always have useless search functions. Using site: on those would likely give you better results then searching globally (even if it takes multiple searches).

vividspecter ,

having them VPN into shit is a hurdle that none of them are going to overcome.

If you have a lot of people connecting, then that's fair. But setting up a VPN for one or two households isn't hard. Even easier if you use Tailscale (apparently, never tried it myself).

vividspecter ,

I hope to see Jellyfin support this too (Plex is already getting support apparently) and hopefully it will work desktop-to-desktop and not just between streaming devices and phones.

Although it's probably not massively needed as Jellyfin can already control remote devices.

vividspecter ,

Is there a list of these takedowns? I know Mazda NA is another company that has killed a HA integration.

vividspecter ,

Buy Zigbee in cases where there isn't a Matter alternative. It's not quite as interoperable as Matter but it's fully offline once setup (and some newer coordinators have dual zigbee/Matter support). Avoid cloud connected WiFi devices like the plague.

vividspecter , (edited )

I don't bother with "mesh" type setups specifically, but yeah, router/switch in one device (usually with one or more additional switches for more ports and/or newer wired standards) and APs in separate devices with ethernet backhaul.

These APs could still be all-in-one routers if they have good wifi hardware/drivers and have OpenWrt support, but they are treated as dumb APs that could be swapped in/out if problems occur.

vividspecter ,

I have the Flint 2. I'm only using it as a dumb AP and managed switch but the wireless performance has been a significant step up over previous APs and routers I've owned, even if it doesn't support 6E. And it comes with a couple of 2.5GbE ports so you can integrate it with a 2.5GbE LAN and use with a 2.5GbE+ internet connection (not that it's very common yet).

To OP: the firmware is in its early days (both stock and snapshot openwrt) so you may run into problems with some use cases.

vividspecter ,

There's a decent amount of WiFi 6 routers/APs supported by OpenWrt, but not really 6e:
https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_16128_ax-wifi

vividspecter ,

Oh is abortion not banned in Austin but only the rest of the state? That's a relief.

Screens keep getting faster. Can you even tell? | CES saw the launch of several 360Hz and even 480Hz OLED monitors. Are manufacturers stuck in a questionable spec war, or are we one day going to wo... (www.theverge.com)

Screens keep getting faster. Can you even tell? | CES saw the launch of several 360Hz and even 480Hz OLED monitors. Are manufacturers stuck in a questionable spec war, or are we one day going to wo...::CES saw the launch of several 360Hz and even 480Hz OLED monitors. Are manufacturers stuck in a questionable spec war, or are we...

vividspecter ,

These have an actual perceivable difference even if subtle. Hires audio, however, is inaudible by humans.

vividspecter ,

I'd somewhat call myself an audiophile, just one that cares about actual measurements and audibility, and not snake oil. Haven't heard a good term for that yet, though.

Audiophiles also tend to care about some some sort of audio purity, but I'm willing to go wild with EQ, room correction, and impulse responses, which is pretty much the opposite of purity.

vividspecter ,

Opus is the way these days. Pretty much transparent even at 128kbps (arguably with even lower bitrates in most cases).

vividspecter ,

Looks like it would eat power in a 24/7 setup but might be useful as an alternative to multiple systems.

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