What are your favourites?

Strange times when a government contract gets cancelled because the government themselves are hopelessly corrupt, rather than it getting cancelled because the company is atrocious.

This extremely cool.

you can expect 0-2% output from a panel in the winter time

I can confirm this. My family is off-grid and there have been extended periods the last two winters when it has simply been too dark for too long to depend on the solar without installing 50x more panels.

Also, the problem with having larger battery capacity to span these periods is that if they don’t get fully recharged or cycled properly the batteries get damaged and eventually die. We learnt that the hard way.

Solar is the undisputed champion for 80-90% of the year but needs to be complemented with something else for the remainder, if you want uninterrupted on-demand electricity.

Medical care is fantastic and should be accessible to everyone, but it’s not magic. If you eat terrible food it will send you to the afterlife, even with the best healthcare in the world.

The only book reviews that get me excited to read a book are from BBC Radio 4. I have no idea why.

You can share screen and camera on Jitsi Meet, which is a video-conferencing app. Not sure if there is any recording function built-in but you could just record everything with OBS.

Guix has a cool logo IMO.

I love being on Debian, everything just working and not living in fear of updates. And any software that I must have the latest version of I just install via flatpak, appimage, distrobox etc.

The idea of the UK not having a ‘sovereign’ nuclear deterrent is based on supply chain stuff.

There’s nothing stopping us launching all our nukes if we wanted to, it’s just that we’d have to order some bits in from outside of the country to replenish the missiles used to carry the warheads (which are made here). That’s if any of the suppliers were still alive after we’d started nuclear Armageddon…

Check out the YUNOhost repos. If everything you need is there (or equivalents thereof), you could start using that. After running the installation script you can do everything graphically via a web UI. Mine runs for months at a time with no intervention whatsoever. To be on the safe side I make a backup before I update or make any changes, and if there is a problem just restore with a couple of clicks via my hosting control panel.

I got into it because it’s designed for noobs but I think it would be great for anyone who just want to relax. Highly recommend.

I love this. It will be great if more kids in towns and cities can grow up with wild creatures around.

I’ve been wondering if something like this existed! It seems like a cross between Cherrytree and Minder, both of which are very cool.

A GUI would be great. I wonder if something like Faircamp could be used as a backend to essentially make a simple static website which can be viewed offline with a browser. With a template it’s just a case of dropping files into a folder.

Great idea 👍 I really like this. Does it require use of the command line to make the mixtapes/playlists?

Brean Down has you covered

The impact on kids is bigger but as adults we are also not immune. I suspect that a significant number of parents are putting their kids in front of a screen so they can use a screen themselves.

I think that as we indulge more and more in high dopamine-stimumating things like screens, processed foods and drugs of various kinds, and as those things get more and more potent, it gets harder and harder to find the motivation and competence to maintain what they replace, like good relationships and community. This a compounding and self-reinforcing problem because the worse life gets, the more attractive these things become as an escape, and the more you escape the more the rest of your life gets worse.

Its the classic downward spiral of addiction. On a massive scale.

Thank god. I feel like I’ve been cringing for months.

Good idea, I should have thought of this!

The nuclear warheads are actually made in Berkshire. The ‘delivery systems’ i.e missiles they are mounted on and the surrounding tech often comes from the states and gets sent back there for refurbishment and testing every few years. The UK could do a lot of damage with what it already has in stock before needing to get more. I agree that the US should be cut out of all important supply chains though.