If you don’t mind clarifying, what do you mean by DoD?

Frankly the best solution i have seen is always a combination of things. At least in the city I live in, people can take bikes on buses and trains, many people walk, and for trips that require trunk space (e.g furniture, DIY supplies etc) there is a Car sharing service that is cheaper than owning a car, or using ride share / taxi.

I don’t think waymo is a better option than a combination of what’s above, I think it can perhaps compliment it but it should not be the sole last-kilometre solution.

I would like to see waymo-like tech provide better public transit for the disabled. As of now, people in my city with disabilities can book special routes which are serviced by specialized buses/ taxis, and existing lines are all wheelchair accessible as well.

Self driving cars give the opportunity for those people to have even more freedom in booking, since as of now they can’t do last minute booking for the custom routes. It wouldn’t really create a traffic problem and massively would increase quality of life for those who are sadly disadvantages in society

I’m pretty sure they still are a defence contractor in the US, they also are generally the option for biking computers. There are competitors but Garmin has a chokehold on that sector, with other options just feeling worse.

So while their smart watches are more niche than Apple, Samsung etc, they still have found a solid niche in the smart tracking sector.

Frankly I would like to not use Apple CarPlay / Android Auto — however, the built in software needs to actually usable and continuously updated.

I particularly want to see better non-touch input. Rotary dial + buttons à la Mazda, and much better voice input. I live in a multilingual region, and it consequently renders most in-built navigation voice commands useless, as it won’t understand language switching. Even Google assitant has issues with this despite supporting multiple input languages, usually resulting in me saying the entire command in the same language as the address. (Or just giving up if the name and street are in two languages).

But with built in systems that only support one language at a time, I just can’t say some of the addresses since I don’t know how it wants me to mispronounce them in English.

I also have found media playback frustrating in any modern vehicle. This is likely a lot harder to solve, but the inability to switch playlists or change playback settings without my phone connected to Android Auto is frustrating when in vehicles without it.

I know this is very ranty and not that big of a deal, it’s just frustrating seeing so little progress in the past decade on this front — and in some aspects like human interface design of vehicles, they have frankly regressed. If I look at the voice input systems on cars from 15-20 years ago there has been huge improvement, but even 10 years ago to now it doesn’t feel that different. Maybe a few new commands, but the quality of recognition / utility of the system is lacking.

I think there’s an element of prestige people are missing. At least in my country there were online options prior to the pandemic even, they however lacked the prestige / name recognition that other institutions had. Keeping mandatory in-person classes is another way to maintain this prestige, a differentiating factor, from the other institutions.

I also have to agree with most of the comments here. From an instructional point of view online classes are lacking, they can be less engaging, and pedagogically neutered. And in fields with lots of laboratory work, it’s frankly impossible to get rid of at least part of the in-person educational component. Even for the humanities, having access to a large on-campus library of scholarly resources is integral to research.

In my personal experience I’ve been quite grateful to have access to a large archival collection, items that could not be shipped to remote students because they are too old to leave a temperature & humidity controlled environment. An online experience would prevent someone like me from doing some manuscript / original publication related research.

Now, I do think online options are helpful. ESPECIALLY for summer classes, where students may wish to retake a class while also moving away for summer work. But I do not think they should become the default, they should be an option where possible, but not the new normal.

Normally I would say community forks have the power to continue the project. However, in this case I think chrome / safari would eventually add enough new features that Firefox forks can’t add quick enough. Mozilla at least has some power in pushing the direction of web-standards, which these forks would lack, as well as the larger development team and some corporate usage of the browser which Mozilla has. I also don’t see the smaller development community keeping up with security issues found in the browser, particularly pertinent for corporate marketshare and individuals with a stricter threat model (journalists, dissidents, etc.)

The only other factor, is whether Firefox dissapearing would officially create impetus for an anti-trust case against Google. I doubt so under the current American presidency, but I could see the EU being concerned (even if they lack the power the US has to force the company to split). If something were to happen here there would be substantial change in the browser market, but I wouldn’t be too hopeful of this happening.

One of the advantages of Relay is that it is agnostic of your email provider, making it easier to switch providers without having to change the email on every account that has an alias.

Considering this, I’d be tempted to go with Addy.io instead of ProtonMail / SimpleLogin (subsidiary of Proton AG).

If you’re concerned with having to trust a third-party to process your emails however, Proton may be the better option with built-in aliasing. Mailbox.org is another option recommended by privacy guides with built-in aliasing.

If you’re concerned with Mozilla’s TOS change however, you may also be concerned with the Proton CEO implicitly supporting the current Trump presidency, believing that the Republicans will do a better job reigning big tech in (While I’ll agree that the democrats are not anti-corp, that died with Bernie, I think it’s foolish to believe the republicans will be better). They also pulled their entire media presence on Mastodon, and recently integrated Zoom despite explicitly stating that it has privacy issues in their blog.

I think some people are being a bit extreme in their characterization of Proton AG right now, but it definitely feels like they’re making some peculiar choices when looking at their guiding mission of privacy / security.

What are your goals?

I would say it’s really a combination of the instances policies and their jurisdiction, and in terms of jurisdiction it also depends on where you live (e.g. you may have more protections under law if the instance is hosted in your country)

There’s also nothing stopping you from using multiple instances — siloing your interaction in different types of communities in different accounts on different instances. This may be useful if part of your privacy concerns are having all of your post / comment data on one account on one instance.

Edit: You can also use an email aliasing service to avoid even giving your email out. There are aliasing services such as Addy.io, Simplelogin (subsidiary of Proton AG), Firefox Relay (Mozilla), as well as some email providers which provide (iCloud, Proton, Mailbox.org to name a few)

If you don’t mind me asking, what makes gnome more adaptable in terms of functionality than KDE?

For iOS devices the most up to date client is “Strongbox”. I don’t think it is FOSS, but is compliant with the standard. It’s sadly a freemium app, but is quite well made in my testing. It cannot sync with syncthing, but does support several cloud services, its own service (which uses iCloud), and local file transfer over LAN. They also have a version of the app with all network connectivity removed for security (if you prefer)

This is perhaps overkill, but you can also encrypt the contents of your online cloud storage with CryFS / Cryptomater. This is particularly useful if you wish to store sensitive documents (healthcare, finances etc) in a cloud environment in case of catastrophic destruction of property (destroying computers / on site backups of data).

In this case you can also backup your keepass file in this encrypted virtual storage medium, on top of the prexisting encryption of the database itself.

My personal choice right now is KeePassXC (PC) / KeePassDX (Android) + Syncthing And Aegis (Android) for 2FA codes, with a yubikey for services that support FIDO keys.

Overall I like this setup because it’s decentralized and does not rely on a third party server structure. The only “weak” point would be the Syncthing relay servers or the Tailscale VPN that I use, but this goes back to ensuring encryption of the database is adequate with a long password, and using an open source synchronization protocol that ideally has been vetted by a trusted third party (or yourself if you’re capable)

I used to use Bitwarden, and I highly recommend it. I really appreciated it’s ability to integrate with email aliasing solutions to generate new aliases from within the bitwarden UI itself. However, my main reasons for switching were the following

• I don’t have the money to pay for it (uni student)
• I prefer a more self-hosted approach (I will consider using vaultwarden in the future when I have more money)
• I wanted to move away from using a browser extension for password management on desktop. KeePass’ auto type feature is really good, and a more secure input method than a browser extension autofill.

The only additional advice I have for both recommendations is that I do not think it advisable to add Totp 2fa information to your password manager even if it supports it. I feel like this should be separate, on a single device, and backed up in ~2 locations (one preferably off site). This is really to avoid problems if a device is compromised and if your password manager is compromised, but this is definitely in the more unlikely category I feel.

My only major issues with keepass are the potential for sync conflicts and the some feature differences between platforms. A centralized server config like vault/bitwarden prevents the sync conflict issues, at the cost of having one point of failure. The feature differences problem isn’t too great, but autotype doesn’t work on Linux if you install with flatpak, and you can’t prevent screen capture of the app on Linux (only on Android and Windows from my understanding)

Edit: I also tried gopass, it’s really fun to have an entire CLI based password manager, but frankly the state of mobile companion apps are appalling. The Android option only is good if you use a dev version, and the iOS one I thought was just ok. I also dislike the metadata leaking that is inherent to the format, and that PGP is the main form of encryption for the time being (some clients were looking at using AGE at some point). Overall it’s a cool but flawed concept, and I feel my other two recommendations are superior.

I think it’s important to see these types of efforts, while I’ll never go out and buy a MacBook the effort isn’t wasted since it gives current users more freedom and future people buying used laptops more options for Linux compatible hardware.

Without a project like this, that hardware will end up being e-waste a lot sooner than it should be, when Apple drops support. At least to me I see an ethical and moral imperative for projects like this, but I also understand people’s grievances with Apple.

I think you summed up my thoughts on the matter much better than I could have. In particular, the “digital” / “corporate” right to be forgotten is distinct and much more specific in its scope than a broader right, and is a rather important consumer protection in my opinion.

Some older consoles have very negligible size libraries in modern day terms, and who knows what sources of ROMs will be taken down by lawsuits in the next few decades. I feel like there is some sense in making a complete archive of a systems game library, but for my personal use I usually just download / dump / rip what I need specifically.

Whatever file format I use them in is also how I back them up, I backup my entire desktop’s and laptop’s data to an external hard drive and an online service provider. I’m sure a compressed format would be more space efficient but that would take much more time given my use case.

In the case of my laptop it runs Linux and the filesystem I use supports “transparent compression” (almost all contents of the drive are compressed with zstd), so I’m guessing any of the ROMs on there will have already been compressed as nuch as they can (but I’m not knowledgeable enough on the file format specs)

Assuming the NAT type is one that supports peer to peer connectivity, you could try using Ethernet instead of wireless (of course this only helps when docked). This would alleviate issues with WiFi signal not being strong enough, potentially increase bandwidth, and reduce latency. Ethernet can’t improve the connection beyond the incoming connection from the ISP, it only will improve issues that stem from wireless connectivity.

I live in the countryside with my family, so maybe that’s why my Internet is so wonky?

it could very well be this, when I visit my parents in the countryside the internet is sometimes not good enough, and other times it is adequate (satellite internet, so weather can impact it).

I have a few shortlisted

My parent’s 2010 Ram 1500, the interior is rather comfy but the reliability is just not there. At 100k km the engine blew up, apparently this is still an issue with the current ones as the 5.7L V8 still has the same flaw allowing for some components to drop into the cylinder. There’s also been random electrical components that have died relatively fast, and whatever metal was used rusted exponentially even with rust proofing being applied twice a year. It had more rust than their 2011 Toyota Highlander that had greater than 300k km

I also just hated when I had to drive it downtown, but I can’t exactly blame the vehicle for that.

2011 Toyota highlander, it went through 3 transmissions, 5 rear wiper motors, and it was about to go on to its 4th transmission when they sold it. The 3rd one didn’t even last much more than a year.

2006 Rav 4 (V6), this car also went through 2 transmissions, and then had to have the entire steering column replaced by year 2

~2016 Ford Fusion, this was a rental car for when my Civic was being repaired after an accident and my god was it awful. It handled like a massive boat despite being a medium sized car and the transmission felt significantly less responsive than even the CVT in the honda. The seats also sucked but i think that was how the rental company cleaned them, they made this awful noise every time you sat in them and looked and felt like a “casting couch” with several generations of children dried up in them…

Honorary Mention: my friends Nissan Versa, seemingly unreliable and falling apart but it refuses to ever give up. That thing will survive nuclear winter, and will remind you with every pothole that its existence is torture.

I understand why they wouldn’t want to suddenly change the branding of existing projects though.

I’m not sure if I agree, I feel like the long term damage of keeping the names is greater than changing them now to Fedora Plasma Atomic (Formerly Kinoite) / Fedora Atomic Workstation (Formerly Silverblue). Leaving them as is, is just going to create more confusion in the future to new users who won’t immediately understand why the naming convention is different for the other spins and will create more confusion for documentation / support threads online.

I feel that I am 50:50 on it, immutable at least conveyed more information about what it is while Atomic feels a lot more “buzz-word-y” and does not convey as well what it means. Regardless, I’d say the bigger issue is keeping the old Silverblue & Kinoite names, they really should change them even if it means having a ~2 year period of having “Formerly Silverblue / Kinoite”.