ebc

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[–] ebc@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Air temperature is strictly in celcius in Québec. I have no idea what it means to set the thermostat to 70F. Is it hot, is it cold, who knows 🤷

[–] ebc@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 years ago

Since you mention Canada, I'd just like to let you know that in Québec (2nd-most populous province), more than 90% of homes are all-electric. I've never even lived in a house that had a gas connection, and in all my relatives I only know of one who does. And yes, that means we use electricity for heat in our -30°C winters.

It's at the point where if somebody wants a gas range, they have to install a tank outside their home, because the gas network just isn't there. It's much cheaper to cook electric (and almost everybody does). The only common use for gas is for barbecues, and that's almost always using 20-lbs propane tanks.

[–] ebc@lemmy.ca 35 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Lexical (rich text editor by Facebook) recently "migrated" their Github discussions to Discord... I have a question that I can see was asked on the discussion, as it appears in my search results on DDG, but I get a 404 when I try to open it. The fuckers deleted the discussions!

Of course, Discord only has poor-quality answers to that questions as it gets asked every week and maybe gets answered in a different way every time. Quality of discussion is much lower.

[–] ebc@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Well, yes. But when all your friends are already on Facebook Messenger, good luck getting them to install Signal only to talk with you. Network effects are important; a messaging app has no use when you have nobody to message on the app. Supporting SMS was taking advantage of its network effect, and I don't think their network was big enough to be self-sustaining for most users (it wasn't in my case, my only contact in there is my wife).

[–] ebc@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago

I wasn't actually quoting this, but yeah, I think that's the point. Supporting SMS was helping adoption by promoting a seamless transition for users. Dropping it feels like prioritizing #2 to me. (All this comment thread about opsec, compartimentalization, activism, etc is really about #2, IMO)

[–] ebc@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Well, I happen to disagree. I'm a privacy-conscious person, but I'm not an activist. Most of my contacts in real life (i.e the people I need a messaging app to talk to) are non-technical, and not really privacy-conscious. They're not going to install a different app just to talk to me. The big draw of TextSecure (before it became Signal) was that they could just set that as their default SMS app, and it'd magically start to send encrypted messages if the other end was also using TextSecure, and they had to change exactly 0 of their habits.

I guess it depends on how you view it:

  1. Move as many people as possible over to encrypted comms with the least friction possible, or
  2. Provide a niche secure messaging platform for niche activists with niche needs.

I thought the goal was 1, but turns out it was 2. All my contacts are now back to Facebook Messenger...

[–] ebc@lemmy.ca 29 points 2 years ago (31 children)

Signal had something good when it could simply be your default messaging app on your phone, and it'd transparently send either encrypted messages, or plain-text SMS. Now that they've removed SMS, they've just turned into a worse Whatsapp (because nobody is on it). Network effects are important in messaging apps.

[–] ebc@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I really like GL.iNET's line of routers. They come with OpenWRT pre-installed, too!

[–] ebc@lemmy.ca 39 points 2 years ago (7 children)

So you patiently wait for your little white man signal, and as soon as it finally comes on (after 2 full cycles of the traffic lights) you start crossing only to get honked at by some lady who wants to turn right on her red light...

[–] ebc@lemmy.ca 57 points 2 years ago

I'm in this picture and I don't like it.

[–] ebc@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago

Ça dépend t'es où... À Montréal ou dans les autres grandes villes, je suis d'accord avec toi. Mais dans d'autres villes comme Trois-Rivières, qui vient d'y aller all-in avec encore un autre power-center à la 10-30 (ils l'ont même appelé 40-55), faut densifier avant que le transport en commun puisse avoir du sens.

Et dans mon cas, j'habite dans un petit village de moins de 1000 habitants. Le transport en commun ça arrivera jamais ici. Au moins tout est assez proche dans le village pour faire tes commissions à pied (et le monde marche vraiment beaucoup, même l'hiver), mais souvent faut aller dans le village voisin alors là ça prend un char. Les autos électriques c'est une excellente option pour nous.

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