I made that choice two decades ago and I’m really glad to be car free. I moved away from a town without public transit and got jobs closer th where I live, or where I wouldn’t need a car. Even today I’m passing lots of job opportunities in my field because they want me to drive a car from one site to another, and I insist on taking public transit, or a bike. I’ve even been told I’m not a real adult as long as I don’t drive a car.

I’m telling the people around me that if they are to have a car, it should at least be electric, but both my mother and my sister bought a new car last year, and they’re gas powered, because they “don’t trust electric cars1!!1!”. Well, pay and whine. Be real adults and pay for your fucking expensive gas.

Millions of people could try to get rid of their bad habits, free themselves from their addiction to cars, drive less, switch to electric, find alternatives. But no. The only solution is cheap gas. Everyone just needs cheap gas. The US and the west can interfere in other countries’ elections, invade them, kidnap foreign leaders, hang them, kill a few hundred thousand civilians as “collateral damage”, as long as we have cheap gas, all is well in the world. There’s simply no other solution!

Turn the death of a pet from tragedy to opportunity. With this pet incinerator, you will be able to boost your income and recoup your investment in no time at all.

Can we just have trains please? Plain normal slow intercity trains, that have more than 5 departures a day. That would be great.

But no, we can only have one big high speed project that will take years and risk failing, like other mega projects.

Meanwhile VIA Rail sucks ass and it won’t ever get better. Just wait for Alto!

Yeah, Fizz told me the same thing in Québec last year, except that I have a Chinese phone from Mexico. I told them it was e-waste generation, that I’d keep mine until the last minute, and would just change provider and/or phone when it would stop working.

I guess I was lucky because a few weeks before the shutdown, the VoLTE icon appeared and it “magically” became compatible.

I took three trains to get from Wuppertal to Brussels. The first one was going to be late (you can make jokes about DB) and I was going to miss my connection but I was early at the station, so I took the one that passed an hour before and had to kill a bit of time in Köln.

There was a vegan demo outside the station and I was stupid enough to walk nearby. One of them started to ask me questions. I said I’m not vegan but I agree in general with their cause, that I’m never cooking meat myself, but still eat it on occasion when I’m visiting family or going to a fast food. But she kept insisting about the exploitation while pointing the bloody images. It made me a bit mad, since I’m at least aware and trying. I managed to walk away but I wanted to go back and ask if any of them were driving cars, because that my obsession and those are also killing billions of animals every year (and a few million humans).

Anyway, I managed to catch my connection and finally got to Brussels for my flight back to Montréal tomorrow morning.

I did plan this day, and I did suspect very much that there would be a train delayed for my journey, but the first one was a bit of a surprise. I’m just glad I’ll be home soon, because I did what I wanted to do this week (cycle to and fro between Aachen and Monschau, and on the Nordbahnstrasse in Wuppertal) and now I’m just annoyed by this noisy hotel room.

There’s a Mennonite community in the next village where I come from (in Roxton Falls, Québec). They are good neighbours, speak French, and are integrated into the region. But since my province requires them to follow the curriculum we all learn in school, and they don’t agree with that, apparently some of them have been moving elsewhere. But AFAIK, aside from the quirk with their school, they still have a church there and are still present.

However I do agree with our government about the curriculum. We all learn about science, evolution, philosophy, sexuality, and the acceptance of others in school, and they should too. Some of them say this is religious intolerance but IDGAF about this argument. They can have the religion they want, and teach their kids what is a dichotomy.

It’s my only beef with them. Those I met are all very nice, and sometimes, you don’t even realize your’re talking with a Mennonite. Well, the men anyway. The women are kind of obvious because of how they dress.

Cycling and touring on dedicated bike paths and rail trails. Sometimes I just stay in my city and do a 40 km loop of dedicated path along the canal and the river. Sometimes I pack my camping stuff in my panniers and cycle a few hundred km on rail trails, camp in a national park or along the trail of allowed, and come back.

It makes me discover villages and regions I would never have.

I even do international trips for this. Last week I fled Montréal because the cycling championship closed my whole neighbourhood for two weeks, and I went in Germany/Belgium to cycle on the Vennbahn.

If anyone comes in the Montréal region just to do bike touring, I recommend trying Le P’tit Train du Nord, La Route des Champs, La Montérégiade, and l’Estriade. Even a bit further in Montérégie, theres La Campagnarde, going through very rural areas. There’s also Le Corridor Aérobique branching from Le P’tit train du Nord, but it’s a bit less accessible.

This is slowly happening worldwide and just a capitalist thing. Solutions that are working for a few people but not profitable will be shut down. At least it’s not a device needed to live.

EDIT: You can blame whoever you want but here’s a link about the shutdown of 3G networks on the world: https://iot.cards/en/resources/guides/sunset-3g

Not strictly a Mint issue, but it’s still sotfware from them.

The development of Cinnamon began by the Linux Mint team following the April 2011 release of GNOME 3…

Its unfortunate for those that are still using 3G, because if they do, they generally have a reason.

The range of 3G is far better than 4G or 5G, so it’s probably still used by people in rural regions, just to get any type of connectivity. Once 3G is shut down, their reception will probably get worse.

But since we live in a world where profit rules and this costs a lot for a handful of people, well, sucks to be them.

It’s what happened to my parents living in the countryside in Québec. At least they have internet at home and can use WiFi calls, otherwise they have simply no reception at all on most of their land. It used to work OK with 3G, but now that they are forced to use VoLTE, it sucks in rural regions.

I don’t want to spam multiple links with examples, but you can look this up on your favourite search engine to find multiple current problems with Cinnamon’s screensaver. It seems pretty common and that’s why I’m asking.

Here’s a link that’s from a month ago listing all the possible causes.

Here’s another one from a few months ago.

And now you have started the game of experimentation until you find your favourite recipe.

Does Mint have screensaver and locking issues with Cinnamon?

I install Mint on computers of people that don’t want Windows and that I have to help, but I personally use Debian and MATE. Recently I tried to use Cinnamon on Debian but the screensaver was not always working. Sometimes I was away for days and when I was coming back, my monitor was still on. And sometimes the screensaver got stuck, impossible to remove without restarting my session.

I have a friend that tried Mint too, and he basically told me the same thibg was happening to him.

I have not heard about this from other folks to whom I installed Mint, but since they’re all very basic users that turn off their computer every time they are done, it never came up.

It would be my only issue with Mint for beginners. If they leave their computer running and come back later, there’s a slight chance that the screensaver will either not be started, or very difficult to exit.

It’s good they’re respecting that. We have a similar law in Québec that requires drivers to leave 1,5m when overtaking on a fast road, and 1m in towns and urban environments. It’s unfortunately not very respected.

I can’t find the article back but some police forces bought tools to measure that, but they thought it was too dangerous to send police officers on bikes to use that tool and fine the drivers not respecting the law. They just gave up.

EDIT: Is the police enforcing this in Spain? I’m guessing there are fines?

Without invading, the US is alreafy attacking Canada’s sovereignty. And we can’t believe anything a Unitedstater politician says anyway.

The governors and politicians always say the US won’t do such and such, only for their orange turd in charge to do it anyway.

This is just air. Those words are meaningless.

My only problem with the EU are the digital laws. I know Canada is unfortunately going this way without the EU anyway, but asking everyone to scan their face on the internet and prove their identity to “protect the children” is absolutely unacceptable.

It’s not for the general public, it’s for municipalities and authorities.

How would the French government benefit from spying on three cities and one ISP that works with local authorities using Matrix? And why would that be worse than Microsoft doing it instead of them?

I thought about Ethernet but apparently the run is too long, even with repeaters. It will probably not have enough power. It’s also a few hundred dollars for 400 meters of direct burial Ethernet cable, without counting the injectors and repeaters.

And most importantly, I wonder how the equipment would fare during winter when the ground is frozen solid for several months.

But maybe my fear of a few -25°C days is not justified, as I already left a Raspberry Pi in a barn with those temperatures, and it did fine. I’d have to check the temperature operating range for the equipment I use.

That’s why in the end, if I have to use a cable, I was leaning towards direct burial fibre, as it can easily cover that distance without messing with PoE on long runs, would “only” cost a few hundred dollars more, and avoid the need to try to protect the repeaters/switches.

I’m still curious though, so I guess I could just try it for fun with a cheap Ethernet cable run for a summer, then see if it’s really worth investing a bit more for the future.

It depends on the conditions Cables are always the winner, but I have an off grid cabin that has very poor cell reception. I usually end up getting less than 2 Mbps.

But my parents live about 400 meters away and have FTTH, in the countryside, because of a local cooperative.

I looked for using a fibre but it would cost several hundred dollars to have one that resists outdoor conditions in Quebec for a few years. So I settled for Wi-Fi. I get 10 Mbps with the two repeaters and very basic antenna alignment, which is better than 2.

I’d really like to use a cable but I’m only there a few weeks a year, so this works ok.

It’s slang. In Canada ‘gosses’ (pronounced goss singular or plural) means testicles. In France, it means ‘kid/child’. There’s lots of jokes about that when a French visitor says they brought their ‘gosses’ with them.