Inutt @inutt@mastodon.me.uk

Certain types of vehicles get exemptions from safety, criteria pollutant emissions, and fuel efficiency (CO2 emissions) standards, as well as in some cases tax credits, because of their perceived utility. This isn't a bad thing - there are legitimately many jobs that need a less efficient, more polluting, and potentially less safe vehicle, because their job isn't to transport people and minimal cargo on paved roads, it's to transport heavy loads, or to go into remote areas, or both.

However, there's a whole class of vehicle - the crossover sport utility vehicle - that was designed to meet the criteria of being a SUV to get those exemptions, while also being designed for use solely on roads. Additionally, many people buy "true" off-road-capable SUVs and pickup trucks for workloads that simply don't need them, or that only rarely need them.

My opinion is that if a vehicle gets exemptions from the law on the basis of its utility, a Class C Commercial Driver's License (I'm speaking in the American context) should be required. This creates a barrier to these classes of vehicles being driven when unnecessary (the training requirements are significantly higher than for a Class D driver's license, the standard license in most US states), as well as holding drivers of these vehicles to a higher standard to compensate for their increased mass and reduced safety.

Websites that have cookie banners saying closing the banner means accepting cookies. Websites blocking me from their content if they realize I’m using a privacy mode. I think I’m going to read something else instead.

When it comes to #privacy, it's not that I have nothing to hide, I simply don't have anything I would like to share, especially unknowingly.

I really really dislike it when the only way to create an account in app is by using your phone number, I don't have one and even if I did I won't be giving it to an app, phone numbers are like one of the most private pieces of data a person has and these app developers just expect it to be handed over.

I don't understand why accounts can't just be created with a username and password or even email address if one must since anonymous or throwaway email accounts can be created pretty easily nowadays.

opponents of EVs say that EVs don't solve pollution because the power plants still run on coal or whatever.

but what they don't mention is that coal plants have less emissions in general than the hundreds of thousands of cars on the road every day, so it's still a net positive

and of course, if we fix the power plants...

but fukushima scared neoliberals away from nuclear, even though there are several modern reactor designs that are near impossible to push into a run-away meltdown state

Wired, 1993: Rebels with a Cause - Your Privacy. "On the cover were Eric Hughes, Tim May, John Gilmore, holding up an American flag, faces hidden behind white mask, their PGP fingerprints written on the foreheads. Gilmore even sporting an newly-founded EFF T-shirt. (from Thomas Rid, CS Monitor)"

Wired, 2019: YOU'RE IN PRIVATE MODE. To continue using a private window, sign in or subscribe. The title of the article being denied reads "It's Time to Switch to a Privacy Browser. Ad trackers are out of control".

Announcing this year’s new gadget—which you do every year—as “the ______est version we’ve EVER made” is so entirely pointless. Yes, I would hope the latest model is the best you’ve ever made. That’s not impressive. Stop saying it as if it’s some grandiose achievement.

That's a good definition...

Fun fact: you can't name any file anywhere in windows 10 "aux.txt" or "aux" anything with any extension, because it was a reserved name in CP/M before dos was a thing.

If you commit "aux.txt" to a git repo, you break it for windows users. If you distribute "aux.txt" in a zip file, windows computers cannot extract it without error.

Last week, I discovered #xpra ("Screen for X11"), and after a week of use, I'm impressed! https://xpra.org

I've used it to run graphical applications on one computer and interact with them from a different computer. And I can honestly say that I can't notice a difference compared to running the app locally.

It's basically what I always wanted #vnc to be—but without any of the lag I always experienced with VNC.

Shower thought: in the 80s it was more common to have a protocol rather than a single canonical implementation (e.g. SMTP).

Presumably this was partly due to the diversity of computing platforms then? These days it's often sufficient to have a website and a mobile app.

This new Google live view for directions is ridiculously good.

RT @brookLYNevery1@twitter.com

just learned with horror that deleting any of the "family" emojis in google slides does not remove the emoji, but rather kills off each individual family member one by one, starting with the children

Happy 28th birthday Linux! https://www.networkworld.com/article/3434780/celebrating-linux.html "By some accounts, more than 95% of the top 1 million web servers run Linux, along with over 90% of the public cloud and well over 80% of smartphones. So, even if you're walking around offices still dominated by Windows desktops, Linux is winning big time in some of the most important markets and remains the beating heart of the open source movement."

My boss stops me from fixing the site to tell me that the site is not fixed and that I should be fixing it. Useful meeting.

They're much-loved, but even then I think people under-appreciate how amazing tech standards/RFC sets are compared to basically every other document set.

To read a big long thing in the modern era, get to the end wanting to read more, and then the every little piece of the "more" is *also* in RFC form, easily accessed, rather than a bunch of references locked away behind books and subscriptions an individual may not be able to find or afford? ​

@jlelse @kev

I wrote my own podcast rss feed generator a while back because I needed a clean, simple website for the podcast that automatically generated a feed and couldn't find any good options out there.

RSS is such a simple technology that brings so much utility that I'm surprised it's so rare these days.