Old guy in the USA. My first car was a sport motorcycle so six speed with clutch and shifter. I have a sedan with an auto trans, but also a 4WD truck with manual. When I learned to drive in my teens automatic transmissions were not as nice as they are now, just three speeds and not very smooth. Now they’re typically six speed and much nicer. I really dislike a manual trans in heavy traffic, quite a chore.

I do 76F in the summer for AC and 68F in the winter for heating. Try to use minimal heating and air and still maintain a comfortable range. Can get expensive if working the system too hard. If it wasn’t a matter of cost I’d leave it on 72F all the time.

Evaporative coolers are great if you live where you can use one, much cheaper to run and they can work pretty good as long as humidity isn’t too high. I had one in a house I lived in before along with a regular AC system. It was a good to have and saved a lot on the electric bill. If it was dry enough out the AC unit was not needed.

Haven’t used a heat pump before and don’t know much about them. If they work as well and cost less to operate that would be a good option, but I wouldn’t use one if it’s a downgrade in performance. Rather pay for the comfort.

CO meter for sure, but a CO2 meter? It’s actually a good idea to have CO alarms in your house if using natural gas powered appliances. However CO2 is only a concern if you’re in a hermetically sealed environment like a submarine or space ship. I suppose it could be useful to check proper ventilation in the home, but normally you can just open a window.

Anyway the Earth has a carbon cycle, in other words it filters natural CO2 emissions through environmental processes. The problem is the amount added by industry is more than the natural carbon cycle can process. So levels are steadily increasing.

When we talk about zero carbon footprint we mean sources from industry like driving gasoline powered cars, generation of electricity, and production of consumer goods. A good amount already comes from natural processes like volcanos and erosion so we don’t actually need a zero carbon footprint, just need it low enough to avoid overwhelming the natural cycle.

At a personal level it would be just about impossible to have a zero carbon footprint. If you had a solar and wind powered home off-grid and used it to charge an electric car you could be well below average. However any consumer goods you use put carbon in the air to produce them. Even if you went full native you’d still be putting carbon in the air burning wood and candles.

Stardew Valley: I really enjoy the game and play it on PC. It saves the game only at end of turn which is a game day. If I’m not able to finish my turn I have to put the computer to sleep instead of shut it down. Also if I make a mistake which is easy to do I have to start from the last save which can lose a good amount of progress and sometimes random pickups. Though it’s my only peeve with the game so it’s still doing better than most.

I never thought Reddit was addictive. I actually spend more time on Lemmy in a day than I did on Reddit. My browsing habits changed though. Reddit is so big I only looked at a few niche subreddits. Lemmy being much smaller I view a much wider range of topics. It’s a different and better experience for me.

Lemm.ee best instance, lemmy.world worst instance.

It doesn’t matter how many communities an instance hosts since you can interact with any community on any instance (barring any defederation). Lemm.ee’s strength is in being a fast, reliable instance with the best admin.

I got a laugh out of that even though I think you’re being serious, maybe just because it’s so true. With the software and network integration of cars it’s like they’re becoming a platform to squeeze as much money as possible out of you. And like commercial software you can buy a car, but you sure as hell don’t own it. The automaker is in control.

So yeah, fuck cars. And Tesla is spearheading that approach to automobile ownership so fuck Tesla too. If someone makes a car free of that evil network to maker shit, it’s a buy for me.

As you mentioned chip lithography is hitting a wall. They’re not going to be able to make things much smaller with current technology. People have been working on new ways to build these mechanisms. They’re researching ways to do things at the quantum level, that’s some seriously sci-fi tech.

This is the reason why all corporate media has become the dumpster fire it is (not just social media). They use negative emotion like fear and anger to promote engagement. So all you get as a viewer is stuff that gets you fired up. The quality of journalism is so low now they’re fabricating stuff to engage the viewer. Then there’s no journalistic accountability when they do get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Threads is pretty blatant about censorship and sharing of user data. They use terms like “a friendly space” and “convenient” to sell it to users. So you’re actually losing something by jumping ship from Twitter. The one positive for Musk era Twitter was an attempt to reduce censorship, but the crazy things the company did otherwise far outweigh it.

One of the shitty things profit driven social media sites do is curate content to create a more advertiser friendly space. It even extends to special interests and government interests. I mean what do you call that when public information is curated by the government. I sure as hell don’t want my US government telling me what I can and can not discuss in a public venue.

In the USA there’s a little thing called the first amendment. Granted these are companies and don’t necessarily have to adhere to civil rights in the same way government agencies do, but in effect they’re doing the same thing. The US government should absolutely not be coercing these US companies into censoring content, which they are.

A smart sort would be great. Maybe even some custom settings for it, like weights for community, upvotes, replies, etc.

This is how the tried and true agenda goes using Meta’s threads.net and the Fediverse as an example.

• Meta’s site gets wildly popular because of corporate backing
• Meta’s site does something on purpose to cause poor operability with the rest of the Fediverse
• People not on Meta’s site can no longer properly communicate with people on Meta’s site, they go to Meta’s site
• The Fediverse gets fractured and nobody cares because everyone is on Meta’s site
• Meta’s site is the sole survivor and the rest of the platform dies.
• Meta enshitifies their site as corporations typically do (think Twitter)

So yeah, ban the shit out of them. The proper term is defederate them, but do it with extreme prejudice.

So Meta is up and running now on threads.net, news to me. Hell yeah, ban the crap out of them.