• 0 Posts
  • 67 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: August 7th, 2023
  • pedz@lemmy.catoTechnology@beehaw.org•Those YouTube ads everyone hates made $10.4 billion in just three months
    3·
    16 days ago

    Lately, Firefox + uBlock Origin and YouTube on Linux is sometimes horribly slow for me. It uses all the CPU and chokes my computers. Sometimes it’s even difficult to just seek in the video, as it’s so sluggish.

    It seems to vary depending on the type of ads. It’s not “random” because a video that has this behavior will always do it, even if I restart FF, while others will be fine.

    I thought it was my old computer at first, or that I was out of memory, but the same thing happens on my modern Ryzen.

    Although I notice it less and less, so maybe it was a bug with YT + uBlock.

    And it’s only on my Linux computers. On Android, FF + uBlock works super well.

  • pedz@lemmy.catoTechnology@beehaw.org•Those YouTube ads everyone hates made $10.4 billion in just three months
    10·
    16 days ago

    My pet peeve about ads everywhere now is on Android.

    Your Android phone doesn’t come with a voice recorder? Download one, with ads every time you record.

    You want a different calculator? Ads!

    Flashlight app? Ads!

    Notepad? Ads!

    And people just apparently accept ads in nearly every app, even the most basic ones.

    I don’t remember the Sound Recorder, or Notepad having ads. But because people are now used to ads everywhere, it’s certainly coming as MS is trying to jam ads in everywhere possible in Windows too, now.

    I’m so grateful for Linux. The apps I get through apt-get don’t make me watch ads. Unfortunately even if based on Linux, the Android world is so infuriatingly crammed with ads.

    I wish I could find a “phone” or portable device in that format, with an OS that works like “true” Linux.

  • pedz@lemmy.catoFuck Cars@lemmy.world•Does having to drive make you less likely to go places?English
    2·
    1 month ago

    I can understand. I could have stayed in a small town and just accepted it, and try to just use it as sparingly as possible, but stubborn me decided that I wouldn’t cave to this.

    That’s why choice was in quotes. As much as I could drive, it scares me and makes me anxious. And the easiest way to avoid that was to move.

    Obviously I can only encourage you to continue finding ways to avoid drive a big metal box around!

  • pedz@lemmy.catoFuck Cars@lemmy.world•Does having to drive make you less likely to go places?English
    1·
    1 month ago

    I have a health card with my picture and it’s official ID where I live. I can buy alcohol, cannabis (legal here), rent bikes, whatever. I can even vote without a driver’s license, imagine that!

    And for everything else, I have a passport. I have been in multiple countries, booked hotels, bought booze, et al., without the need of a driver’s license.

    Would it sometimes have saved me trouble with stubborn people thinking it’s the only valid form of ID? Yes. But they’re in the wrong.

    I will gladly insist that my health card is a valid ID where I live, and use my passport elsewhere.

  • pedz@lemmy.catoFuck Cars@lemmy.world•Does having to drive make you less likely to go places?English
    151·
    1 month ago

    Yes. But it’s more than this for me.

    I got my license years ago but it expired because I didn’t want to drive a car. I have none and don’t really need one where I live. I really really didn’t want to drive a car so I moved in a city where it’s not needed. My whole life is organized around avoiding cars.

    However my family still lives in the countryside and there is no public transit to go there. In summer I cycle the 130km ride to go there, and back. But in winter, it’s a problem and I just stop going to see them. It’s unfortunately too much of a hassle. I will not get a license back, rent a car and drive there. They have to come and get me at the closest bus station. If they don’t want to, I’m not going.

    I also mainly refuse to take taxis because it’s also perpetuating car dependency.

    Also, if I want to go to a national park, I cycle there. Not in winter, but I plan a trip in summer and just cycle to some of the closest parks. It makes me pass through villages and towns that I would never have seen by taking a car.

    In fact, I left the fuckcars subreddit two years ago because people there were telling me that I was too much against cars.

    Sometimes my “choice” of not wanting to drive is obviously limiting, but it pushes me to find other ways and in the end, it makes me glad I did.

  • pedz@lemmy.catoFuck Cars@lemmy.world•CommunicationEnglish
    12·
    2 months ago

    I saw this on another community and was pleasantly surprised to see some (hopefully) sarcastic comments about being the cyclist’s fault.

    As someone using a bike to get around, I’m so used to people in cars being mad at me for existing, that it’s refreshing when they are not.

  • pedz@lemmy.catoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Why do People Choose BlueSky Over Mastodon?
    8·
    3 months ago

    I can’t tell for BlueSky because I have not joined yet, but I did create a Mastodon account months ago and I’m not sure what to do with it or how to interact with others. I find it confusing.

    On Twitter I was mostly following a bunch of like minded people, liking their stuff, and I could see what they liked too. But on Mastodon there’s uuh, boosts and favorites?! I’m not sure of how it works or what I’m doing. I can’t just “like” posts? I have to boost them?! I found the people I liked that were on Twitter, but on Mastodon I feel like there’s nothing I can do aside from seeing posts and it’s just not attractive.

  • pedz@lemmy.catoFuck Cars@lemmy.world•[Misc] Less parking more green evolution in a Parisian streetEnglish
    11·
    4 months ago

    You don’t even need to go live somewhere else; just visit.

    I’m from Canada and went back to visit Germany and Belgium a few months ago. I already went to Germany and the Netherlands a few years ago and just used the trains. I had no fixed itinerary and was deciding where to go a day in advance before buying a train ticket to go there. It was obviously fine (most of the time) but because of how trains “work” here, I was anxious about buying tickets a day in advance, thinking it was “last minute”.

    Then while I was in Belgium I had to plan a train ride in Canada a week later, and there was no affordable tickets left. I was sitting in Liège, and just bought a train ticket to Bruxelles that was departing in the next hour… while trying to book a train a week in advance in Canada, and failing to do so.

    Every time I have to use a train in Canada, or just any kind or intercity service, even a coach, I’m painfully reminded of how bad it is here.

  • pedz@lemmy.catopics@lemmy.world•The Arctic ocean photographed in the same place, 107 years ago vs today.
    4·
    5 months ago

    It depends what. Plastic recycling is mostly a scam/fraud and does not fix nor change much.

    The industry has long known that plastics recycling is not economically or practically viable, the report shows. An internal 1986 report from the trade association the Vinyl Institute noted that “recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution [to plastics], as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of”.

    In 1989, the founding director of the Vinyl Institute told attendees of a trade conference: “Recycling cannot go on indefinitely, and does not solve the solid waste problem.”

    Despite this knowledge, the Society of the Plastics Industry established the Plastics Recycling Foundation in 1984, bringing together petrochemical companies and bottlers, and launched a campaign focused on the sector’s commitment to recycling.

    In 1988, the trade group rolled out the “chasing arrows” – the widely recognized symbol for recyclable plastic – and began using it on packaging. Experts have long said the symbol is highly misleading, and recently federal regulators have echoed their concerns.

    Cited article, and the report’s source

    Recycling paper, metal and glass will help and make a difference, keeping in mind that we need to use less in the first place. However plastic recycling is broken by default, pretty much everywhere.

  • pedz@lemmy.catoGames@sh.itjust.works•Ubisoft targets staff to be in the office at least three days a weekEnglish
    111·
    5 months ago

    Four to five weeks of vacation is pretty standard in Europe and I don’t think it has anything to do with productivity. AFAIK, a German or Belgian would pretty much get the same amount of vacation. I’m in Montreal and the standard by law here is two weeks but my contract with a local employer is giving me four weeks. And, I’m still working when I’m working, even if I have some vacation time at some point?!

    I took eight weeks this year. So you’re saying I (or a French person?) am not getting anything done when I work, because I took some extended vacation time?

  • pedz@lemmy.catoGames@sh.itjust.works•Ubisoft targets staff to be in the office at least three days a weekEnglish
    17·
    5 months ago

    I know this behaviour from big corporations is not exclusive to French companies but my type of work allows me to work from home and I’ve never seen a company despise WFH so much than my once French employer.

    This was before the pandemic and I had the habit of working from home with my previous employer when I was sick. When I changed employer to work for a French hosting company in Montreal, they were adamantly against WFH. Even if sick. They preferred that you missed a day (or two, you know, take your time to recover!1!!) from work, taking “generous” sick days, than letting anyone from the lower ranks WFH. This was a pretty big red flag for me. Anyway their work culture was pretty toxic and I ended up quitting after a few months, but the “no work from home even if sick” policy is the first thing that hit me when I started there.

    My current employer allows me to WFH and I’ve been looking a bit around to see if I could find something else, but they mostly all seem to require some sort of hybrid schedules at the office now, which obviously sucks.

  • pedz@lemmy.catoFuck Cars@lemmy.world•Noise Pollution ruins quality of lifeEnglish
    263·
    5 months ago

    And those motocross. My family lives in a rural area with a rail trail. So to go there I often just cycle on the rail trail.

    Unfortunately it’s also used by a local motocross group. They’re not supposed to but they obviously don’t give a fuck.

    At least you can hear them coming from kilometres away. Which is interesting because the police or whoever is supposed to enforce “bicycles only” on that bike path doesn’t seem to hear them. Nor see the very obvious tracks.

    The most insulting part is that they close the path in fall, winter and spring because they don’t want CYCLISTS to damage the bike path, yet there’s assholes on motocross driving on it.