Sorry about the LLM thing - I literally thought “boyfriend” here was used with a wink and a nod to mean an LLM in the same way that people on some forums say “my dog” to mean themselves.

As far as not knowing what I’m talking about though, I’ve spent times on both sides of the Atlantic and used both rooftop and ground based solar where appropriate (though not grid tied) to good effect.

Rebutting your LLM’s points:

1. “Older” houses in much of Europe are often made of stone, newer are frequently cinderblock, and the roof beams in both are massive. They’re holding up tile and slate roofs - the weight of solar panels is a rounding error, and not the concern it is with shoddy US stick-frame construction. So if that’s the “main reason” we’re doing pretty well already.

2. Sub-optimal angle just means the panel doesn’t produce AS MUCH power as it theoretically could. Not that it produces none, and many sub-optimal placements are still financially viable. Beyond that, any south-facing roof available is going to do very well.

3. Fire risks are again much lower on the very common hard-surface roofs. And that same space that allows the oxygen in also separates the fire from the roof, so the only things burning are the panels themselves and the fire soesn’t spread as it might with a ground-based installation which, by the way, also has air under the panels and are often over grass.

4. Higher installation and maintenance costs are partially offset by the fact that the cost of land purchase and taxes are €0. That was already covered by the building’s main use. Then you can add the social and financial benefit of keeping those fields in food production. Moving away from animal agriculture would not only mean more food available locally, but also for export as crop yields in other places fall due to climate change.

Finally, the whole framing presents a false dichotomy. This doesn’t have to be an either-or proposition - both-and is an option. We can have solar panels on buildings AND in fields. We can convert growing fields from feed production to food production AND put solar panels on the former pig farms that can’t support crops. Particularly in warmer climates (maybe less applicable in Denmark) we can even raise the solar panels a bit higher AND still grow crops underneath (Agrivoltaics)!

Is it really so unbelievable that a politician might tip off a friend, or assuage an enemy, by giving them inside information that would allow them to profit on betting markets? Is it really so incredible to believe that a government official would try to align policy with a betting position that stood to earn them, or an allied group, hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Congratulations - you just described the stock market.

One of those senators (Ron Wyden) is the one that asked the question Patel was answering in this hearing.

Is there anybody here who thinks that following the orders takes away the blame?

Sure, once I was young and impulsive, I wore every conceivable pin. Even went to socialist meetings. Learned all the old union hymns. But I’ve grown older and wiser, And that’s why I’m turning you in! So loveme, love me, love me, I’m a libral.

That was actually a followup to the 1990 April Fools RFC classic A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers .

The most recent installment in the official IPoAC series was 2011’s Adaptation of RFC 1149 for IPv6.

Except that I didn’t accuse you of clickbaiting - I pointed out that the style was similar and has unfortunate consequences. Because the headlines we’re used to reading are so pervasively clickbait, it’s an easy trap to fall into because that’s how we’re used to seeing things titled.

Edit: On rereading my comment - yeah, that did come off pretty confrontational. Signal gets a lot of bad-faith criticism from people pushing alternatives that are provably less secure, so it’s a knee-jerk reaction for me at this point. In my defense, there’s a reason the more confrontational statements were in a “tinfoil hat” tag - it was meant to make clear they were not literal accusations.

If we take your TLDR at face value, then the result is in no way specific to Signal. Threema, Session, Matrix, Briar, RocketChat, and any other messenger (including the closed source ones) would be equally affected. For that matter, so would Keybase, any encrypted e-mail provider you access from your phone, your VPN (personal or paid) … everything.

Given that, singling out Signal in the post title is clickbaity at best. If I’m putting on my <tinfoilhat> it could be seen as an attempt to drive people to less secure options by scaremongering the one that provides the most protection.

But if we make the assumptions you suggest, why stop there? An undisclosed vulnerability needn’t be limited to stock Android - any fork is potentially vulnerable. And why aren’t they calling for LUKS backdoors? Or the elimination of VPNs? Or … </tinfoilhat>

The reality is that there is another axis to security this type of all-or-nothing aproach to security ignores - how interested are they in you as a target. When that is factored in, the conclusion is that the use of encryption as secure as possible wherever possible helps everyone, because:

1. Most approaches to retrieving that data take time and effort to apply. The governments have vast resources, but not unlimited, so they pick their targets based on priority. More people using encryption helps with this.
2. The more often they use a backdoor or vulnerability, the more likely they are to be caught at it. So they will probably save it for higher priority targets. More people using encryption helps with this.
3. High priority targets remain vulnerable to the hammer attack. With governments, this more often looks like terrorism charges, tax audits, obvious surveillance for intimidation, etc. In extreme cases though, everything up to and including disappearing and assassination are on the table. This one encryption doesn’t help with.

TLDR: Even if true (big if), this type of scaremongering is unhelpful at best, and probably counterproductive. Name checking the most secure option when the threat model applies to any possible messenger is clickbaity and definitely counterproductive.

“Ukraina”, in addition to being the name of the country in both Ukrainian and Russian, is also a Russian word that means “borderland”. Because of that, many Ukrainians take issue with referring to it as “the” Ukraine (and doubly so without capitalization). Doing so is seen as ignoring their existence as an independent nation and reducing it to a geographic region defined by its function as a buffer between Russia and Europe.

No.

Knowing the “average” is all well and good, but doesn’t give that clear a picture. Does anyone have a source for the the median age, or better yet an age distribution graph?

Yes, it really is.

No bother!

For customization, you want a MUD client rather than a standard telnet client. I used zMUD back in the day, but FLOSS was harder to come by back then. These days, I’d go with mudlet.

I never really paid attention to the level gain ratio. I’d look here for that kind of question.

That’s an easy one - no. You can look back to various periods during middle ages Europe for examples. An even stronger one would be China from about 400 CE-800 CE

Of course, those weren’t capitalist economies - but they were economies. Capitalism’s instability is what requires constant growth to maintain. The better (and harder) questions would be what to transition to that avoids the issues of feudalism and how to transition with a minimum of societal upheaval (violence and death).

Since people are posting games, I’ll throw in Realms of Despair

But it would not work on older non-GNU versions of tar.

GNU introduced the “–foo” style long options, and it was a long time before Unix versions began adopting them.

$126,500 per person, plus another $20,240 in housing expenses. Plus your $13,850 standard deduction (though if you’re making that much you’re probably itemizing for more). So $160,590 for an individual or $321,180 for married filing jointly. That’s assuming no kids and no other deductions or credits - which is pretty unlikely at that income level.

$160,590 is the 93rd percentile for US income distribution. So yeah, if you (AND your partner, if any) are both in the top 7% income bracket, bad at tax preparation, and don’t hire an accountant, you might still pay tax on the income over that amount. Of course, making that much while keeping the kind of ethics that let you care about anyone other than yourself is a nontrivial endeavor.

Don’t forget that your foreign employer won’t be reporting to the IRS. So if your protest extends to not voluntarily reporting that excess income …

Not tipping only punishes the victim, not the employer.