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allthedatas

17 karma · joined July 12, 2025

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allthedatas··on Electric cars produce far less brake dust pollution than combustion-engine cars
Very urban focused of course given the site and there's nothing wrong with an urban focus for EVs.

EVs as they are being pushed on us are made for cities. Outside of a dense urban area, EVs without a gas/diesel powered charger (aka hybrid) are much less useful, but I do not want to see charging stations everywhere either.

Kinetic recovery is great, but as there are orders of magnitude less braking required driving outside of cities, the recovered energy is also much less, and the brake dust generated is also much less. Also there are far fewer cars per mile of road (let alone size of the area) and any brake dust pollution is spread over a much wider area.

Many of the negative pollution issues associated with cars are due to excessive density in urban areas, the added amount of braking, the added idling, and the extra acceleration repeatedly required in a city with a stop light every block.

allthedatas··on Cops say criminals use a Google Pixel with GrapheneOS – I say that's freedom
Cops say low speed limits and speeding tickets are for your safety and not just another tax.

Cops say guns are only for bad guys.

Cops say 3d printers and bitcoin are for terrorists

Cops say a lot of dumb things because they are generally (and necessarily) not that bright, but also because they are lazy and frequently corrupt.

allthedatas··on TODOs aren't for doing
I also use a tiered strategy and FIXME for things that really need to be fixed or I have a solid idea what the next step would be to fixing it.

TODOs are something less solid than a FIXME and are also just about getting it out of your head so you can devote more mental energy to something else or just relax.

Maybe the idea is not fully formed yet, maybe you are not sure you really want to do it, maybe it is waiting on something else, but it needs to be captured or you will have to keep thinking about it lest you forget.

As soon as I write down a TODO (code or other) that was only in my head, I can relax a little more, because now it's captured for future reference.

allthedatas··on Where's Firefox going next?
As an original firefox backer I knew the daily version updates were the beginning of the end.

I knew people at mozilla at that time and complained loudly to them about breaking my extensions with their constant releases.

And then there's all the dark pattern default config values which are totally unethical

The list of user hating behavior is long.

There is no saving anything there now. The good people have left and been replaced by the author of that awful article.

allthedatas··on Where's Firefox going next?
The same place the author should go.
allthedatas··on Oakland cops gave ICE license plate data; SFPD also illegally shared with feds
Datasets are created to be used. Once created they will eventually likely be used for purposes other than the original intention. Depending on the power dynamics in play this may be more or less likely.

There are many many such cases and they are obviously not limited to the current regime. Governments will collect all the data they are permitted to collect without a harsh public response, and they will always have a 'good' reason -- just ask them! After all it's for your own good!

Datasets with personal data create a target for crime and for abuses. The problem is these datasets exist at all, thereby reducing humans to numbers. People are not resources and not material not matter what HR says. Reducing people to numbers is to reduce them to something less than they are -- no dataset (model trained on it) captures everything.

We need real privacy laws not the ridiculous current situation. There should be clear consent required without coercion for any data collection -- a necessarily very high bar.

Unauthorized collection of personal data (i.e. without explicit consent not tied to any benefit bait) should be a federal crime and the organizational leadership should always be held to account. That and that alone will curtail future abuses. Otherwise we are just always complaining after the fact and it will keep happening.

That said, good luck getting any government in this world to go along without a revolution.

allthedatas··on OpenICE: Open-Source US Immigration Detention Dashboard
Seems more like a scoreboard -- this may have the opposite effect the creators intended? The top 10 virus lists published by some vendors became that for virus writers.
allthedatas··on Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
The prose immediately made me think of a clockwork orange when I read it way back. Two of my favorites and that is a big reason. Not easy to pull off.
allthedatas··on Commodore 64 Ultimate
Keep manually refreshing that AS400 screen! In the late 90s while I was in college, for a while I had a graveyard shift job running backups and printing shipping labels at a large retailer and most of the work was done on an AS400 and also SCO UNIX before they became a zombie copyright troll.
allthedatas··on Commodore 64 Ultimate
While I did get to use a Vic20 in school I did not have a c64 but my friend did. At home I had an Apple IIe (which I still have) and it was great but boy was I jealous of all those color C64 games and also the modem they had for it! I didn't get a modem until I switched to a PC in 1989.