FYI, I’m not Canadian. Just an observer from the other side of the pond, watching America die in morbid horror.

Agreed. It turns down the shocks, making things a little more controllable.

Tbh, that sounds more bipolar than ADHD.

ADHD is chronically low dopamine level. We try and self medicate with novelty seeking behaviours. Unfortunately, there is no reliable way to boost dopamine (hedonistic treadmill in effect). We also have to deal with the effects of low dopamine on our executive functions. Basically, we lose most of our ability to direct our focus. This leads to both hyperfocus and hypofocus on various topics.

In a car analogy. We get painful electric shocks if the accelerator isn’t to the floor. We also have the steering wheel replaced by a toggle switch (full left turn, or full right, no middle position). Oh and we only have a certain number of switch flips before it starts zapping us too.

It’s also worth noting that Canada has a land border with the USA. They can also pass as generic American, if required.

Asymmetric warfare wouldn’t only be focused in Canada. E.g. a coordinated set of drone strikes could basically shatter large portions of the American power grid. There are too many soft, unmanned targets to viably protect, and the lead time of spares is measured in months to years, on some parts.

I believe it was old school analogue electronics, but I’m speculating there.

I just looked it up, it was ultrasonic signals. The main one was the Zenith Space Command.

Not fully related, but early TV remotes used sound rather than IR. The buttons made a distinctive “click” noise, from a mechanical mechanism. The different clicks were detected in the TV and used as input.

Plus side, no batteries to deal with.

Down side, about as (un)reliable as you would expect.

I need to jump back into that story. 😁

Charities paying for the e-waste is not universal. Depends on your local waste management. But nonetheless, when a machine is disposed of /someone/ must pay for it one way or another. It’s cheaper to actually use it.

Your forgetting storage costs. The value of older computers often doesn’t compare well with storage costs, particularly given the amount of time they sit there for. That’s what does us in. We only have so much space, and dozens of computers can eat that quickly. It’s similar with old monitors.

The pre-spychip AMDs have anywhere between 2 and 8 cores just before the last segment of 15h chips were made.

I wasn’t sure where the cutoff was, in practice.

It’s a marketing problem. Consumers don’t know to demand pre-spychip machines because they are wholly clueless about it. A charity shop can manufacture demand just by being transparent in their sales info.

In practice, most can’t. They don’t have the reach to change people’s views on the scale needed. They would also need to deal with people who didn’t understand what they were buying. Older computers often need a bit of finessing to get the most out of. Sticking windoze 11 on them, and giving them out to OAPs or single mums is asking for very frustrated complaints.

That’s a good idea. Either way, it requires an intervention in the status quo. In my region, the public is blocked from getting access to rejected hardware, which goes straight to the (apparently secret) disposal site.

If you think it’s viable, make a small business out of it. Tell the charity shops you will take the old laptops off their hands to repurpose them. Extra qudos to you, if you can mix and match to make, and donate a few “supercharged” computers that would be of use to their customers. Unfortunately I suspect the number of customers is too small however, and you would run into the same issues they do.

I’m involved in a charity that also ends up with a good amount of computer donations. Unfortunately, we have to be ruthless with what we accept. We have to pay to dispose of ewaste.

In practice, laptops with a dual core processor or higher can be put to use or given a new home. Anything older is useless. We still need to sort through and thin out the numbers at that level however.

Unless you’re willing to store the computers for them, until a unicorn comes in asking for one, it’s likely a practicality issue. While it’s far from perfect, it’s required to keep shops like that functioning at all.

A better option might be to go to a retro gaming shop/cafe. They are more likely to stock old hardware to play older games natively. It’s mostly consoles, but some also have PCs.

Ironically, historically, that’s a bad plan. Most of the major gains in rights for the lower classes have come due to labour shortages.

There’s a reason the rich suddenly got a lot more accepting of feminism just after WWII, and it wasn’t an epiphany that women actually deserved those rights.

Tbh, I would love an appropriate pair. I have issues with memory, particularly regarding faces. A set of smart glasses would be an almost perfect aid to me.

Unfortunately, I don’t trust any of the manufacturers not to abuse the hell out of all the data they generate. I’m also fully aware of the idiots abusing them, and ruining things for everyone else.

I love the idea of Q effectively teasing an ant, knowing it won’t even bother trying to hurt him, because it knows it can’t. Only to find himself on his arse with a black eye, thinking WTF just happened… HOW!!!

We see it with a lot of animals. E.g. penguins can quite easily pick out known penguins from a group. Meanwhile, the average human wouldn’t be able to tell you much more than “it’s a penguin”.

With humans it’s (at least partially) a learnt skill. Farmers can tell cows etc apart easily. I would struggle. We even run into it within our own species. E.g. I struggle differentiating people of races I don’t see as often. It can be very annoying at times. I’m also definitely not the only one.

I’ve actually got one myself. I would have to get creative to get it recharged from my solar panels. The inverter is grid tied, and would need to be bypassed.

The original comment was talking about having a server up. That, and the networking kit to make it useful, would draw quite a bit. A lot more than you would get with a portable solar panel in the UK. To keep that up would require significant panels and storage capability, which implies fixed solar. Hence my comment warning them.

I know a few people who thought they would be fine in a power cut, due to having solar. I set them straight on that, before it caught them flat footed at least.

Supermarkets rely on just in time deliveries. We learnt during COVID that even a slight delay can cause problems. Enough people then panic buy to snowball it.

It would take remarkably few road closures to leave towns isolated from supply chains. A 72 hour buffer is very useful in those cases. Even if it’s just to relieve short term pressure on those supply chains when they reconnect.

FYI, most home solar setups are grid tied. This lets you sell power to the grid, as well as supplement it with grid power, when required. The downside is that it goes down with the grid, so not to back feed and electrocute linesmen.

To go independent you need a more expensive system with a fail over mode. It drops out with the mains, but then fires a switch that disconnects you from the grid. It can then fire up again in off-grid mode. The reverse process is needed to reconnect to the grid.

I’ve seen it happen in the UK. Large protests and UK news barely touches it. Even Facebook etc seems to push it down the rankings.

Because of this, the next protest is less effective, and so gets even less coverage on the international stage.

The revolution will not be televised.

The right wing, the world over, has realised that they don’t need to suppress protests. They just need to suppress the news coverage that lets them grow.

I’m not American, but I suspect there have been far more attempts at counter action that just didn’t get traction. You just never heard about them due to media capture.

You also need a trifacta to really gain ground. A ‘body’ of popular support (marches etc). A political ‘brain’ to focus and guide it. Finally, you need the option of teeth, to make the other side pay proper attention to you. The Irish troubles are an excellent example of this at play. 95% of it was peaceful marches etc. The last 5% was the IRA and political parties.

Right now, your political party has been captured by the rich, and a media blackout is stopping the body growing to the size that can actually support the teeth.

They also produce a huge amount of the world’s goods. It effectively outsources the pollution to them at the same time.

They have also flooded the world with cheap solar panels. Some of the credit for those savings should go to them too.

They are also fighting for the lead on fusion research, while also bringing some of the first new generation nuclear power systems online, at scale.

While I dislike China’s government, what they are doing, is both impressive, and sustained. Unlike most of the rest of us.

A lot technically are electric motorbikes (or would be under UK law, where I live).

To be an ebike, it needs to have no more than 250W peak power, have a power assist speed limit of 25kph (15mph) and require pedaling for power assist.

If it goes outside any of these, it becomes a electric motorbike, and requires a numberplate, insurance etc.

These rules seem very reasonable to me. Though I can see an argument for a slightly higher power limit for electric cargo bikes (400/500W). They are also starting to be enforced more critically now.

I’ve no issues with electric dirt bikes, but they belong with the road traffic at that point, not on the cycling infrastructure.