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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • I can see those kinds of things working in or near cities, but out where I am - fairly rural - there’s just too many miles of road to install a bunch of speed humps or similar things. It would take a monumental amount of money. They don’t even have shoulders on most of the roads. I admit even I speed when I’m driving them, although I’ll slow down for bends in the road so as not to clobber a deer, cyclist, pedestrian, etc. that might be lurking out of sight.

    (I got into a fun argument here on Lemmy a few months back with someone who insisted horse and buggies should have lights, and I was like, “What happens when you come around the bend too fast and there’s a tree laying in the road?” He just couldn’t accept the problem is the driver, not the horse and buggy. Basically, that’s what’s wrong with drivers in the US: We, as a group, have a bizarre expectation that things will always go to plan.)

    I’m also nervous about these solutions for another reason - I’ve seen towns install those kinds of calming measures in a way that hurts cyclists. In one example, they extended the curbs out to the lane, which does slow down traffic - but it forces cyclists who could previously ride on the shoulder into the lane, thereby further enraging drivers. I had one asshole pass me in that very narrow section some years ago, so now I make sure to ride in the middle of it, so they’d actually have to hit me. They won’t do that because they don’t want to damage their precious car, so I’m safe.

    And I say this as someone that lives in an area that’s actually pretty good for cycling, that is, most drivers are actually pretty good about passing safely and all that.


  • Interesting. Mostly what I see is people slam on their brakes near the camera, then take off again after it.

    My theory: There’s so little enforcement of the traffic laws here, they might as well not exist. You’re almost certain NOT to get caught, so people will do whatever they want and will practically always get away with it. I don’t really want to argue for more cops, but when I’ve driven in areas with more traffic enforcement and visible police presence, people tend to drive much more sedately.

    I drive and ride bicycle, and I would LOVE if the cops came riding with me some time. I see some of them doing the 100 mile ride for charity in our county, so I know they have people on the force who ride fairly seriously. Join one of our regular group rides wearing cycling clothes (not police gear), get another cop stationed ahead in a car or motorcycle…and start pulling over some people who buzz us or roll coal. Word would get out very quickly.




  • limelight79@lemm.eetoLinux@lemmy.mlThe Dislike to Ubuntu
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    5 days ago

    Every time this is asked, I post the same comment. I used Kubuntu for years and liked it, but more recently they started doing things that annoyed me. The biggest was related to snaps and Firefox. Now, sandboxing a browser is probably a great idea, but I wanted to use the regular deb install, so I followed the directions to disable the snap install and used the deb. However, Ubuntu overrode that decision several times - I’d start browsing, then realize I was using a snap AGAIN. Happened a few times over a couple years. If it happened once, eh, maybe an error, but it happened 3 or 4 times. I came to the conclusion I wasn’t in control of my system, Ubuntu was.

    I switched to Debian and am happy with my choice.









  • Yeah. I grew up in the days of serial ports and parallel ports, and USB in general is so much better for most purposes. (I recall plugging my first mouse into the serial port…but wait! Where will my Hayes Smartmodem modem plug into then? Also, don’t plug and unplug things from the serial port while the computer is running.)

    And USB-C is even better. My tablet needs a charge? Well my laptop charger is right here… My phone is low and needs a quick charge? Well my USB-C tablet charger will give it a decent boost very quickly. No worries about getting it plugged in the wrong way, either.

    I have a docking station for my work laptop, so when I had to replace my personal laptop, a laptop that supported USB-C power delivery was mandatory. I don’t use it with the docking station very often, but knowing I can without an issue is great. My wife also has a Macbook that works on the docking station, too, in case she ever wants to use my dual monitor setup. All three laptops, from three different brands, are just plug in and go.






  • “If you want to know how Linux works, ask a Slackware user.”

    I’ve mentioned this a lot lately, but I used Slackware from the late 90s (3.x days) until about 2009 on my desktop and laptop, and about 2017 on my server. I just got tired of dealing with dependencies and switched to Debian (all three run Debian now). I had the CD subscription and would automatically receive the latest version about twice a year.

    Patrick Volkerding (if my memory is accurate) has my utmost respect, and I do feel a little bad about abandoning it, but I just didn’t have the time to deal with it any more.



  • That reminds me - for my Lenovo laptop, no issues at all with suspend and resume (just like Kubuntu). But my desktop was going to sleep when I first installed Debian, and it was NOT waking up gracefully; in fact I had to reboot it each time. Since I didn’t want it to go to sleep at all, I didn’t attempt to diagnose the issue beyond turning off the suspend mode in power management.