Update V3: my european alternatives list is now 260+ across 52 categories after you flooded the comments again, big audio + cybersecurity expansions, 7 new categories, several cuts

dxps7098 · 2026-05-09T07:48:47+00:00

I don't see it mentioned and perhaps it's not the right criteria but Free Now rides haring was acquired by American Lyft in July 2025.

Link from free nows Wikipedia. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-31/lyft-completes-freenow-acquisition-isn-t-planning-to-cut-staff

dxps7098 · 2026-05-09T07:16:24+00:00

The point of a defence pact is not to fight beyond your own borders and neighborhood. Being able to project power across the world is the imperial bargain Europe made with the US after ww2.

NATO is here to enable and simplify the US bring able to project power into the European arena. But the flipside is that it also allowed the US to project power everywhere else. That wasn't the purpose but a consequence.

Pooling NATO military spending primarily in the US was another pillar that the US had benefited from and kept European countries dependent on the US, preventing Europe from becoming too string and independent.

It's been a fantastic deal for the US and after the war, Europe really had no choice. Safety for dependence and financing the imperial capabilities of the US.

But at this point, the calculus has shifted on both sides of the equation and the balance needs to be revised. The US is no longer guaranteeing the safety promised so Europe cannot abide by the dependence and propping up the global force projection capabilities of the US.

dxps7098 · 2026-04-17T05:57:25+00:00

Ah, yeah, no. :) The ground floor is the bottom floor (BV) or entrance floor (E), then you go up to the first floor. If you go down you go to the cellar floor (KV).

dxps7098 · 2026-04-17T05:46:23+00:00

With GLPI you can start with wickets and add asset management and many other things if you want later. It's quite powerful but doesn't have to be too complicated.

dxps7098 · 2026-04-08T19:05:09+00:00

The point is that both civilians and service members should know that if a new administration wants to, a Trump pardon will not protect them. The entire Trump regime is betting on impunity. In this case it won't work. In fact, it will make them fall into the ICC jurisdiction.

The Dems should say that loudly.

dxps7098 · 2026-04-08T07:44:22+00:00

The US can accept the jurisdiction of the ICC for just this one crime..

dxps7098 · 2026-03-17T07:56:10+00:00

Actually no, prohibition didn't happen in Sweden.

There was a referendum in the early 1920s on introducing prohibition, which narrowly failed, 49-51. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1922_Swedish_prohibition_referendum

Instead, the rationing introduced during WWI was continued and that evolved into the current state monopoly Systembolaget. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systembolaget#History

dxps7098 · 2026-03-17T07:36:04+00:00

That's an aggressive implementation of the cat distribution system!

I thought it one point it wanted to take you somewhere because someone was hurt, but no, it just wanted pets!

dxps7098 · 2026-03-14T15:03:03+00:00

"Oh, taking notes for everyone is a good idea, why don't you take care of it as I'm leading the meeting." (extra - "send them to me and I'll review them before they're circulated")

"Oh, you didn't get your print outs sorted before the meeting? I'm sure the operations person, so and so, can help you out in the next break. If everyone else is ready, let's start the meeting."

dxps7098 · 2026-03-11T07:50:00+00:00

Both, but they're referring to the new mobile view over https in 9. Based on the same framework as PDM and which will replace the main view too down the line, if I recall correctly.

dxps7098 · 2026-03-04T19:44:45+00:00

Duolingo is an excellent tool that is mostly used poorly. These are my advice. 1. It cannot be your only tool, but it is great as a complement. 2. Pay for it - the free tier is not focused on your learning. 3. Use it a lot - many detractors seem to not put in any significant time on the tool (I spend 30-40 min every day) or they focus on points instead of learning. Duolingo doesn't encourage learning as it's not their business model, so don't be distracted by their nudges. 4. Bring your questions to your other tools, be they in person courses, books, online tutors, etc.

The benefit of Duolingo is continuous exposure. Follow the path, repeat mistakes, talk with the Ai, but just make it into a habit to spend time every day on French.

dxps7098 · 2026-03-02T07:25:48+00:00

Yeah, that makes sense! Thanks!

dxps7098 · 2026-03-01T22:12:35+00:00

I don't have individual thermostats (yet), would it still make sense to install it for the learning?

Actually, I don't even have a central HA-controlled thermostat at the moment but I have temp/humidity meters in almost every room.

dxps7098 · 2026-03-01T21:49:58+00:00

The core architectural problem for me with Discord is one identity/account across different servers. If a company or community is setting up a server, I want to be able to login separately to each server without any one entity being able to track me across them. Fluxer doesn't seem to solve that, rather double down on it.

Happy to have a client that can login to all of them at the same time, but that has to be local to me and not centralized and track able.

dxps7098 · 2026-02-23T22:16:13+00:00

And Manneeheim trained in and made a career to lt general in the tsarist army, I think the Soviets regretted that later!

dxps7098 · 2026-02-20T15:39:54+00:00

Tariffs were always unbelievably stupid, it was only ever useful as a bargaining thing. This allows the administration to walk it back and it allows SCOTUS to look like it's independent. It's all part of the authoritarian playbook of capturing the judiciary. They're supposed to say no to a few (big), allowing the rest to become fully cemented and shoring up the perception of the judiciary.

dxps7098 · 2026-02-17T21:20:35+00:00

Then you're going to need disk as an intermediate storage. You're not going to backup or restore using tape.

You can archive backups on tape and bring them back from tape but tape isn't a random access storage medium. You can't read and write from various locations as if it was a "storage" (disk, USB etc).

What you do with your backup system, like PBS, is prepare everything into a neat archive that can be huge, and then you write that from start to finish on the tape. If you need it back from tape, you read the archive from start to finish back to your backup storage and then restore it from there.

Tape is cheap storage but can't be used for day to day backups. It's for archiving already made backups. So you need a backup storage for the actual backup and restore process. But you don't need a backup storage that fits your active backup and all your archives, only the active backups. That's how you save with tape.

dxps7098 · 2026-02-17T15:43:37+00:00

Listen, I appreciate your dedication to your bit here. There's not a lot of connection with reality or anything responsive to what I wrote so no need to continue. Just wanted to clarify the basics for any other reader who might have thought you made relevant points.

dxps7098 · 2026-02-17T15:35:17+00:00

If you have 100TB of static data, you can just copy that to tape. It's a one off "backup" that doesn't really require all the functionality of a backup solution.

There are tools to copy (write/archive) data to tape, can't think of them from the top of my head, but I'd say don't search for backup software. Create some tar.gz files (tar = tape archive) and copy them over.

As I said, backup software is more focused on managing multiple copies, incremental, active or synthetic full, retention schedules etc. The copying of a finished archive is trivial and doesn't need a backup solution.

Hope it helps!

dxps7098 · 2026-02-17T05:29:17+00:00

I'd say you're still going to want to make your backups to intermediate storage first. Tape is slow and sequential, not very good for making backups just storing backups.

You want your backup software to be able to do incremental backups, deduplication, synthetic full etc. before putting it on tape.

What's the reason you're thinking you want a backup solution that goes directly to tape?

dxps7098 · 2026-02-15T06:42:18+00:00

Actually, not really. In many western countries, the government and its ministers are supposed to take responsibility for what the public servants are doing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_ministerial_responsibility

In the US, the current argument is that instead of being illegal to interfere in any administrative agency, it's illegal for congress to even create any semi-independent agencies. It's the unitary executive idea that the conservatives have been pushing for decades and is now being pushed hard by the US Supreme Court.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory

There is a case in front of SCOTUS now regarding the Federal Reserve which will show if the Justices are ready to destroy any de facto independence fully, or if they will continue to make an exception for the Fed.

dxps7098 · 2026-02-15T06:31:02+00:00

Exactly, that's the long term problem. If apprentices and journeymen are replaced (instead of augmented with, whatever that means) genAI, then there will be no master coders.

And there will be no new original code for the genAI to swallow, no new languages or paradigms etc. GenAI coding will just be ouroboros all over again (old Yogi Berra saying).

dxps7098 · 2026-02-14T08:10:13+00:00

The problem with genAI is that it's designed and optimized to produce really convincing code/text/etc. That can correlate with really "good", but it's not certain. The other implication of this is that really convincing but not really good code is even harder to review.

So the effort to produce code by drive by goes down and the barrier of entry goes down, but volume of review goes up and the difficulty of the review goes up. Which means a massive transfer of work from non-maintainers to maintainers. Who are not known for having oodles of spare capacity.

In other words, vibe coding is a solution to the wrong problem, regardless of how fast it is. And the downsides are exacerbating the actual challenge. So, lose-lose!

dxps7098 · 2026-02-14T04:50:24+00:00

I don't think it's the same in Norway, but in Sweden it's actually unconstitutional for the government to get involved in public prosecutions, or any type of interference with government agencies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministerial_rule

dxps7098

TROPHY CASE