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20·1 month agoOr destroying the ozone layer.
Up to 4-5 Starlink satellites now burn up in Earth’s atmosphere daily, releasing aluminum oxide particles that catalyze ozone destruction. Each 250kg satellite releases about 30 kg of aluminum oxide when it burns up, forming nanoparticles that persist in the stratosphere for 20–30 years, continuously damaging the ozone layer. With plans for up to 42,000 Starlink satellites (plus thousands more from other companies) all on 5-year replacement cycles, annual reentries could exceed 8,000 by the 2030s, adding 360 metric tons of aluminum oxide per year, 640% above natural levels.
The Montreal Protocol, which successfully phased out CFCs and enabled ozone recovery, does not cover aluminum oxide pollution from satellites. The FCC currently categorizes satellites as “extraterritorial activities” exempt from National Environmental Policy Act review, meaning no environmental assessment is required before launch approval. By the time the full impacts appear in the 2040s–2050s, the damage could be irreversible.
23·1 month agoAmazon just did more layoffs today.
Exactly. For a lot of people, the end of the day is your time. The beginning of the day is just getting ready and going to work. It serves the interest of the corporate employers to put more daylight (so to speak) at the start of the workday rather than letting us have that daylight for ourselves after work. It’s daylight theft!
2·2 months agoMullvad or Proton are both easy recommendations
39·3 months agoI’m trying to understand who (and where) to donate to here.
The blog post talks about various costs for the Worlds communities - the highest of which is server costs, and one line item is for “Monthly contribution to the FHF”. Then below, the donation links say “As a reminder, you can donate to FHF here”. So are those links for donating only to FHF? The Patreon link goes to “Mastodon.world (Fedihosting Foundation)”.
Some clarity here would be helpful so it’s easy for folks to understand who needs donations and where they can help with that.
3·3 months agoPerhaps so, but it should be up to a medical professional (doctor) whether or not those treatments are appropriate for the patient. Not for-profit companies run by sociopathic executives. (Although in this case we are talking about state-run Medicare using private companies’ AI to make the determination.)
Agreed. By their logic, it would be illegal to write on a newspaper or cut parts out of it because that’s not how the copyright holder intended it lol
I just searched and found this one:
The code is open source, and it supports several ways to install it on your device (PWA, shortcut, bookmarklet, and more).
Cheers :)
Btw, I was dreading checking this all day as I expected to get chewed out by an internet stranger. Thanks for your reply :)
“Amtrak is a state-owned enterprise. This means that Amtrak is a for-profit company, but that the federal government owns all its preferred stock.”
“ Yes, your tax dollars (a tiny portion of them, at least) winds up keeping Amtrak trains on the tracks. Amtrak makes a significant portion of its money from ticket sales, but the company could not exist without the help of federal/state subsidies and billions of dollars in grants.
Amtrak typically sees between 1 and 2 billion dollars of federal money come its way each year. That’s roughly equivalent to a few thousandths of the federal government’s budget. If we took a super simple view of our tax bills, we could say that most Americans spend a couple bucks each year to subsidize Amtrak. Obviously, taxes are way more complicated than that, but it’s helpful to think about.
64% of Amtrak’s money comes directly from ticket sales. The rest comes from a combination of other things, most especially subsidies and grants, though investments and other business activities account for significant revenue as well.”
Funny you mention Amtrak, as I just yesterday watched this video which shows the current Amtrak experience, explains the history and why it’s currently so far behind the rest of the world. Turns out, it’s been starved of funding from the government for a long time.
3·2 years agoI just learned about the Do Not Track standard, which seems like a much better solution. Just tell your browser once that you don’t want to be tracked, and websites are required to respect that. Rather than each website implementing its own banner UI.
That’s such a great idea, can’t believe I never heard of it! Thanks for sharing!
Lol, just yesterday I got a YouTube recommendation for “Growing rat neurons to play video games” with the thumbnail “Can this play Doom?” So yeah, things might be getting kinda weird…
13·2 years ago+1 Seeing every commenter name in blue throws me off every time. In my mind, blue is for OP, orange is for myself, green is for mods/admins, purple is for the app developer, and black/gray for everyone else. Or some variant like that, I don’t remember exactly which colors Apollo used for reference.
In Apollo, you could just swipe from the right side of the screen to go back to where you were (this also works between a Post and the feed as well). It was a great feature I used every day. It doesn’t seem to work on Voyager though. Definitely miss that feature.