Xavier

Really‽ I just checked and many of the small subreddits I used to follow became much less interesting/active if not dead.

Meanwhile, some of the bigger subs became a repost dumping ground of years old posts/images/videos/memes by fairly new accounts (i'm guessing those are bots karma farming).

The fediverse is the much better way IMHO.

In any case, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit have become too toxic to use I will keep away (though, I never had a Facebook nor a Twitter account)

I wonder if games that require such farfetched amounts of money should be included in the Luxury tax?

A lot of those "whales" have cognitive difficulties and/or gambling addictions issues. Since many if these game developers/publishers have no qualm blindly milking and profiteering. It should be no surprise if some sort of tax is levied to help societies (à-la-tobacco or sugar tax) attenuate the ravages of gambling addictions.

Moreover, Star Citizen has been released over 10 years ago while been continually updated.

At what point is it just senseless greed that has taken over the game?

Copyright should have stayed the original initial 14 years with possible renewal to 28 years. But like in France back then, also include the original authors (last one alive, if several) lifespan. Hence, a copyright would last either the authors lifespans or 28 years, whichever is longer.

Moreover, the patent system is being abused and does not serve the original goal of "any useful art, manufacture, engine, machine, or device, or any improvement there on not before known or used." It granted the applicant the "sole and exclusive right and liberty of making, constructing, using and vending to others to be used" of his invention.. It needs major changes, including the requirement to have the "invention" be under examination by reputable third-party laboratories (such as Intertek, SGI, Underwriters Laboratories, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Technischer Überwachungsverein, SGS - Société Générale de Surveillance, etc…) before being granted a patent. Nowadays, patents are given almost willy-nilly to anyone no matter how vague or obvious the supposed invention.

Nowadays, patents are being misused in Patent Ambush mechanisms and scenarios, meanwhile Patent Trolls and Hoarders whole existence is are to impede/obstruct legally and impose exorbitant levies/fees onto organization and companies actually innovating and developing useful art/process/devices. Even more incredible, there are Submarine Patents being hidden away to suddenly take hostage existing products and process of various companies by imposing extortionate royalties.

The essential part at the end:

“ When reached for comment, Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt directed me to Reddit's API FAQ page and said the company couldn't comment further because it's in a quiet period and doesn't "comment on confidential business conversations and/or agreements." ”

We can infer that it was not the fountain of money they thought it would become.

More telling is their silence. Who doesn't want to promote and advertise how profitable they are to potential shareholders just before an IPO.

The essential part at the end:

“ When reached for comment, Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt directed me to Reddit's API FAQ page and said the company couldn't comment further because it's in a quiet period and doesn't "comment on confidential business conversations and/or agreements." ”

We can infer that it was not the fountain of money they thought it would become. Hence, all the special exception for leftover third-party apps to not abandon a leaking ship.

More telling is their silence. Who doesn't want to promote and advertise how profitable they are to potential shareholders just before an IPO.

I wish there was a cheap simple laser engraver that could just “burn” black the surface of generic bulk printer paper. As in an inkless monochrome printer.

A bit like How to Cut, Score, and Engrave Paper With a Laser but without the need to use dedicated laser cutter.

With the explosion of interest in 3D printing, machining and laser cutters, I'm just eager to get hold of a printer like that and forever give up on liquid ink and toners of all sorts.

Honestly, I am embarrassed with the whole "look like were doing something" shtick by my government. An expensive gathering of decision makers from various sectors, a National Summit, just to say: we are now gonna be soooo tough on crime and let's ban the toy we just saw on TikTok.

Car theft was a major problem before 2010 until engine immobilizers became mandatory since 2007 on all vehicles made in Canada

Then everyone got too comfortable. The regulatory bodies and car manufacturers were too focused pretending doing some work and publishing all the buzzword-of-the-day "accomplishments" they were doing while patting each others backs without explicitely requiring manufacturers to comply/implement immediately anything. Meanwhile, manufacturers were happy to integrate almost off-the-shelf "children's RC" car starter pack obfuscated through invisible/non-existent security and protected under dubious industrial secrets.

Obviously, criminals smelled the easy money. Starting around 2013 — mystery car unlocking device | 2015 — signal repeater car burglary, car thefts by relay attacks were known by automakers but ignored as one-offs, too technical, already dealt with by law enforcement to lets pretent it's not that big of a problem or leave it to the police. Meanwhile, insurance claim replacement vehicles are selling like hotcakes and it is "convenient" to ignore the problem.

The following years various reprogramming theft become known and finally CAN bus injection — new form of keyless car theft that works in under 2 minutes or in depth investigation by Dr. Ken Tindell, becomes so easy, so cheap and widely available that even kids uses them to gain Youtube/TikTok followers.

Car hacking was a becoming serious concern during the pandemic, but now it's simply ridiculous and as if current automaker included/provided anti-theft/GPS tracking were (un)knowingly made "defective".

Hence, everyone is playing catch up and blaming left and right on who is responsible for this in-slow-motion public safety disaster.

Brian Kingston, president and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association, which includes Ford Motor Company of Canada, General Motors of Canada and Stellantis, said increasing the risk of prosecution is the most effective way to deter vehicle theft.

"And at the same time, providing more outbound inspection controls at the ports to prevent the flow of stolen vehicles to foreign markets by organized criminal organizations," he added.

New vehicle safety standards have been published (rushed?) recently. We will see if all the panic settles down like after 2007.

Moreover, the exponential prevalence of car theft also laid bare the incredibly poor and ineffective security at the various ports of Canada. Unsurprisingly, it has been a known constant devolution:

The devolution of port authorities in Canada has not been without debate over the past 70 years. This paper provides a brief introduction to the role of ports in Canada and then examines the history of port policy and devolution, concluding that past policies were considered to have failed due to their inability to respond to changing circumstances.

TerraCycle dumping "recycling" items in poor countries with inadequate regulations/enforcement (article in French). Moreover, a insightful documentary available on CBC The Recycling Myth regarding all the recycling fraud many multinational companies engages in.

It is not surprising to see environmental fraud happening so overtly under our nose or in plain sight in front of our eyes when there is little to no repercussions for doing so (legal or otherwise). I would even go as far as to suggest it is currently financially extremely profitable for corporation (and people) to lie about all the greewashing they carry out.

Youtube: The Recycling Myth

Excellent writeup! With constant updates to boot 🥳

I'm saving it for future reference.

Thank you for putting your time and effort on this.

Like most others have stated here, I'll also add my recommendations for Linux Mint.

I have helped most of my family, relatives and several friends move and familiarize themselves with Linux Mint, especially those that do almost everything within the web browser (shopping/email/Facebook/youtube/travel reservation/etc…). Since I already was their goto tech support, I showed them around on Linux Mint and they pretty easily got going as everything was intuitively similar to Windows. All was point and click (after my initial setup with their network, peripherals, printer and some basic automatic updates configuration), no terminal voodoo magic for them.

For the younger ones I typically set them up with Pop!OS and Steam and they are ready to jump without me having to explain much. Sometimes, I had to install and help setup a server (Minecraft) so they can play with their friends.

Personally, I use a mix of LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition), Alpine Linux, TrueNAS Scale, OPNsense and VMware ESXi/Workstation/vSphere for virtual machines.

Mind you, I would not recommend VMware as I am currently evaluating my transition options toward XCP-ng with Xen Orchestra or LXD/Incus or something else entirely.

I am not sufficiently qualified to comment on this particular sociocultural trends nor can I give medical recommendations. However, some may want to inform themselves by evaluating the current status of relevant research. A number of studies have found that greater ejaculation frequency is associated with a reduced risk of prostate cancer.

One such research in question :

Ejaculation Frequency and Risk of Prostate Cancer: Updated Results with an Additional Decade of Follow-up | doi:10.1016/j.eururo.2016.03.027

I have a single windows 11 system while everything else is on some form of Linux distro.

That windows system has never been connected to the internet, and it has been great without ever causing any of the typical update issues (although I update applications/components manually over an isolated NAS link).

It's sad to see that everyday users have gotten habituated to these constant workflow braking updates. No wonder many people I know are jumping to the Apple ecosystem after getting a taste with a M2.

Yup… and just after they are done setting up their manufacturing plant or tech hub, they will act all surprised (surprised-pikachu.jpg) when some made up excuse are fabricated to shake down their newly minted “investment” just like Several foreign businesses have been raided by the authorities. and cry how could this possibly have happened, all offended, while demanding for a bailout or a loss carryover of their future taxes.

Then there is the multitude of spying and theft: Allegations of intellectual property theft by China or through their Thousand Talents Program by offering high salaries, privileges and rewards to the chinese diaspora in various countries to bring back sensitive documents, blueprints, diagrams, formulas, and manufacturing-related proprietary data before leaving their previous workplace.

Unfortunately, China is at the crossroad of multiple extraordinary challenges it had been delaying, exacerbating or skipping for the last few decades :

• demographic collapse, whereas population over 65 will increase from 200 million today to 400 million by 2049, while the overall population will decline slightly caused by the one-child policy since 1979 but also the high cost of raising a child in China to be successful

• hundreds of entire cities of unproductive tofu dreg construction and litany of unfinished projects (roads, bridges and train lines to factories, airports and houses) causing huge insolvent debt among Chinese property developers, all amounting to a beleaguered US$55 trillion property sector, which accounts for between 22% and 29% of the Chinese economy

• numerous environmental challenges that have only accelerated, including air and water pollution, deforestation, and dealing with increasing local natural disasters (flashfloods, heatwaves, heat domes, droughts, soil erosion, desertification, typhoons, etc…) due to Climate Change

• feeding 22% of the world population with 7% (and decreasing) of their global arable land

• youth-unemployment crisis whereas millions of well-educated graduates (21,3% of jobseekers between the ages of 16 and 25) are struggling to find decent white-collar jobs in urban areas

• prevalence of corruption, nepotism, grift and extortion by every level of governance and institutions (local, city, regional, medical, education, police, etc…)

All of the above while an ongoing China-U.S. trade war.

Hence, my doubt on foreign investor's (voluntary, well informed and rational) return into a unfriendly and drastically changed Chinese economy.

I hope I am wrong and I absolutely wish for the best for China and the everyday peoples of China currently struggling to eke out a living due a series of unfortunate natural and/or preventable human caused disasters, all amplified by a leadership prioritising ideology over effective governance, or control over pragmatism.

With all the interest in 3D printer and large communities building their own printers, where are the amateur 2D printers? Did we just jump to 3D printing because it was cooler (which I also admit is amaizing)?

I just want a basic 2D inkjet or laser printer that doesn't stop printing because magenta is low or doesn't waste ink to “clean” the print head, nor make up weird errors because it doesn't have access to the internet.

What about printers without ink? Would it be too hard/complicated to use a lower power laser (instead of a laser cutter) to burn/scorch a thin micrometric, if not nanometric, layer of normal everyday printing/copy white paper?

As a child, I remember scorching magazine/journal paper and all sorts of wood materials with my grandmother's handheld magnifying lens under the summer sun in the yard. I was able to draw stuff without burning some of the material completely.

In Canada, Apple is taking most of the increase, I wish Linux was more prevalent but I'm happy to see the downward slope for Windows:

It is fairly easy to differenciate DNA samples from different species and exclude them. Since it has always been an issue to have contamination by foreign DNA (bacterias, fungus, virus, plancton, fauna and flora of all sorts, etc.), tools/methods/protocols are specifically made to quickly separate out (amplify the DNA we are interested in) from whatever is not to focus of the current study.

Moreover, a random anonymous sample without associated information can quickly be analysed and compared against large libraries of genome datasets/maps to ascertain and corroborate what it is from, closest species, even family trees of related inviduals and most importantly get an overview of multiple phenotype of interest.

From the day the full human genome map had been declared complete in 2003 (at 85% of the genome), research has only accelerated in improving the map while understanding the various functions of many different parts of our DNA.

What‽ Why would such a thing exist ??? 🤔

Testing your electrical panel? and how fast the firefighters are to get to your house?

In Canada, car theft was a major problem before 2010 until engine immobilizers became mandatory since 2007 on all vehicles made in Canada

Then everyone got too comfortable. The regulatory bodies and car manufacturers were too focused pretending doing some work and publishing all the buzzword-of-the-day "accomplishments" they were doing while patting each others backs without explicitely requiring manufacturers to comply/implement immediately anything. Meanwhile, manufacturers were happy to integrate almost off-the-shelf "children's RC" car starter pack obfuscated through invisible/non-existent security and protected under dubious industrial secrets.

Obviously, criminals smelled the easy money. Starting around 2013 — mystery car unlocking device | 2015 — signal repeater car burglary, car thefts by relay attacks were known by automakers but ignored as one-offs, too technical, already dealt with by law enforcement to lets pretent it's not that big of a problem or leave it to the police. Meanwhile, insurance claim replacement vehicles are selling like hotcakes and it is "convenient" to ignore the problem.

The following years various reprogramming theft become known and finally CAN bus injection — new form of keyless car theft that works in under 2 minutes or in depth investigation by Dr. Ken Tindell, becomes so easy, so cheap and widely available that even kids uses them to gain Youtube/TikTok followers.

Car hacking was a becoming serious concern during the pandemic, but now it's simply ridiculous and as if current automaker included/provided anti-theft/GPS tracking were (un)knowingly made "defective".

Hence, everyone is playing catch up and blaming left and right on who is responsible for this in-slow-motion public safety disaster.

Brian Kingston, president and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association, which includes Ford Motor Company of Canada, General Motors of Canada and Stellantis, said increasing the risk of prosecution is the most effective way to deter vehicle theft.

"And at the same time, providing more outbound inspection controls at the ports to prevent the flow of stolen vehicles to foreign markets by organized criminal organizations," he added.

New vehicle safety standards have been published (rushed?) recently. We will see if all the panic settles down like after 2007.

Moreover, the exponential prevalence of car theft also laid bare the incredibly poor and ineffective security at the various ports of Canada. Unsurprisingly, it has been a known constant devolution:

The devolution of port authorities in Canada has not been without debate over the past 70 years. This paper provides a brief introduction to the role of ports in Canada and then examines the history of port policy and devolution, concluding that past policies were considered to have failed due to their inability to respond to changing circumstances.

(A partial repost of my same reply for a similar thread about the Canadian Government rushing to look like they are doing something, please check my post history for the other thread)

Finally logged in with Sync. 😆

I created my account a while ago but not having an App back then was more annoying/cumbersome to use the web front-end. Hence I quickly lost interest.

Learned about Sync today and just started to actually use Lemmy and subscribing to all the different communities.

Awesome to see so many vibrant communities now 🥳.

Provide me the complete schema with detailed step-by-step manufacturing processes of a >98% energy efficient, functionning, space-time stable, user fine tuneable teleportation system or device pair made from material available on earth with overly detailed explanations of every aspects and mathematical proofs behind of all its functions.

(No requirements to perfectly preserve quantum states, nor to preserve life, just as a mean of transportation of raw materials/energy within and beyond our solar system)

Honestly, I am embarrassed with the whole "look like were doing something" shtick by my government. An expensive gathering of decision makers from various sectors, a National Summit, just to say: we are now gonna be soooo tough on crime and let's ban the toy we just saw on TikTok.

Car theft was a major problem before 2010 until engine immobilizers became mandatory since 2007 on all vehicles made in Canada

Then everyone got too comfortable. The regulatory bodies and car manufacturers were too focused pretending doing some work and publishing all the buzzword-of-the-day "accomplishments" they were doing while patting each others backs without explicitely requiring manufacturers to comply/implement immediately anything. Meanwhile, manufacturers were happy to integrate almost off-the-shelf "children's RC" car starter pack obfuscated through invisible/non-existent security and protected under dubious industrial secrets.

Obviously, criminals smelled the easy money. Starting around 2013 — mystery car unlocking device | 2015 — signal repeater car burglary, car thefts by relay attacks were known by automakers but ignored as one-offs, too technical, already dealt with by law enforcement to lets pretent it's not that big of a problem or leave it to the police. Meanwhile, insurance claim replacement vehicles are selling like hotcakes and it is "convenient" to ignore the problem.

The following years various reprogramming theft become known and finally CAN bus injection — new form of keyless car theft that works in under 2 minutes or in depth investigation by Dr. Ken Tindell, becomes so easy, so cheap and widely available that even kids uses them to gain Youtube/TikTok followers.

Car hacking was a becoming serious concern during the pandemic, but now it's simply ridiculous and as if current automaker included/provided anti-theft/GPS tracking were (un)knowingly made "defective".

Hence, everyone is playing catch up and blaming left and right on who is responsible for this in-slow-motion public safety disaster.

Brian Kingston, president and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association, which includes Ford Motor Company of Canada, General Motors of Canada and Stellantis, said increasing the risk of prosecution is the most effective way to deter vehicle theft.

"And at the same time, providing more outbound inspection controls at the ports to prevent the flow of stolen vehicles to foreign markets by organized criminal organizations," he added.

New vehicle safety standards have been published (rushed?) recently. We will see if all the panic settles down like after 2007.

Moreover, the exponential prevalence of car theft also laid bare the incredibly poor and ineffective security at the various ports of Canada. Unsurprisingly, it has been a known constant devolution:

The devolution of port authorities in Canada has not been without debate over the past 70 years. This paper provides a brief introduction to the role of ports in Canada and then examines the history of port policy and devolution, concluding that past policies were considered to have failed due to their inability to respond to changing circumstances.

(Reposting my same reply for a similar thread about the Canadian Government banning the Flipper Zero, please check my post history for the other thread)

I'll skip. Just like how I skipped AOL, MySpace, LiveJournal, 4Chan, Friendster, Hi5, Orkut, Bebo, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest, Blogger, Google+, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, Quora, Twitch, YouTube, Vine, Netflix, OkCupid, Tinder, Grindr, Bumble, Discord, TikTok… oh all of the Apple ecosystem, and many other I missed by being oblivious or simply never heard of…

I liked the Slashdot, Digg, Reddit and now the Lemmy format/style. Will continue to move on to whatever I find stupid simple and publicly accessible I guess. I am naturally lazy, advertisement averse and hate having to provide personal info just to use something non-governmental or non-essential.

Now, with the increasing prevalence of LLM based bots, I will probably ineluctably reduce my time spent posting anything (I certainly hope it doesn't get that bad, only time will tell) on any kind of “social media” and focus on current and new family, friends, coworkers, colleagues and acquaintances.

I want that‽ 😆

When I'm old and decrepit with an out of sync heart, I would like to go with a nuclear pacemaker.

I could then say that I am henceforth Plutonium powered 😎.

Henceforth, the building code shall make mandatory that every room be perfectly grounded Faraday cages (/s).

Still, imagine lethal drones integrated with that technology (of course, they already have infrared, maybe even some adequate wavelength of X-rays).

Nevertheless, pretty cool to see how far we can take preexisting technology with the help of some deep learning layers.

This is beautifully familiar.

Am I seeing too many similarities between how Twitter/X was taken over and singlehandedly being irreversibly ruined?

While Windows is stubbornly becoming increasingly user-adversarial (advertising, constant intrusive updates, forced transition from your favorite browser to Microsoft Edge, etc.) and unintuitive (sometimes even counter intuitive) interface design, placement and inaccessible settings.

Well, delighting in schadenfreude, I won't complain. Microsoft is inadvertently helping me help transition many friends, family and colleagues to various flavors of Linux systems, namely Linux Mint (whichever desktop they prefer) and/or Pop!OS most of the time, but also occasionally Fedora or a particular flavor of Ubuntu.

I never recommend Arch or rolling release systems or immutable systems to first time Linux user so as to preemptively avoid additional layers of complexity, learning curve, downtime and troubleshooting.

Hopefully I'm safe-ish in Québec…

It's sad to see all these climate tipping points taking hold with humans not even (really) trying to slow them down, forget reversing them.

Continiously bickering over pointless things. With wars taking over unexpectedly one after another (in retrospect, maybe not that unexpected). China just itching for anything to start their own little "special operation" next door. While some other militarized countries/organizations are too trigger happy and in fear of missing out on the action.

We may indeed not make it past the hyperobject that is Climate Change simply because we are too busy blaming inflation, opposing political views, illusions of our own imagination and an unending amount of irrationality. Since it is inconvenient/difficult to try and understand slightly complex concept such as taxation, vaccination, immigration, or even just a map amongst so many things, let alone complex systems feeding into each other such as the Human-Ecology-Climate systems.

Moreover, the prevalence of misinformation doesn't help.

Nevertheless, let us hope for better times. 🥹

Whelp.

Is this some LLM copy-paste meme? Did I miss some viral post/thread that led to the above text?

I may need some help/context trying to understand all this…

That is fine too. Better be more expensive for them.

However, I'm rather inclined to suspect that they have enough "blackmail" over the course of his life's proclivity (including some before he even became a judge) hence money is probably not going to sway him that much.

Usually, I help family and friends setup their computer to something familiar/similar to their routine (especially those that do everything in their browser). Otherwise, I let them slowly adapt to some new alternative software for their case use by preconfiguring it with them.

Generally, I recommend Linux Mint for those that are used to the Windows "feel".

Guide: Linux Mint Installation Guide

Video: Linux Mint 21.3 (Wayland) Install Guide Note: I have not watched the whole video, I just quickly skipped around to see if they made sense.

Ideally, try to get a relative or friend who already use some flavor of Linux to sit down with you and help you get going with the transition, guaranteed they would be overjoyed. It'll help avoid some obvious pitfall/mistake depending on your expertise level on IT stuff and streamline the experience by sharing knowledge.

I am not sufficiently qualified to comment on this particular sociocultural trends nor can I give medical recommendations. However, some may want to inform themselves by evaluating the current status of relevant research. A number of studies have found that greater ejaculation frequency is associated with a reduced risk of prostate cancer.

One such research in question :

Ejaculation Frequency and Risk of Prostate Cancer: Updated Results with an Additional Decade of Follow-up | doi:10.1016/j.eururo.2016.03.027

Thus, our human brain are incapable of grasping or begin to comprehend the scale and severity of the climate crisis with just soundbites, anecdotes, news-rants and tiktok videos.

Understanding complex systems is hard and requires continuous concentration over months and years. Even more so for the Hyperobject that is ephemerally understood as Climate Change.

We can barely begin to collectively acknowledge that perhaps something is indeed wrong with :

• all the burning forests just because of the smoke/smog "inconveniently" smothers our cities (occasionally burning them for being too close)

• atmospheric rivers drowning towns and cities in flash floods

• high altitude glaciers irreversibly melting and disappearing

• Greenland and Antarctic have only accelerated their ice loss from sustained glacier retreat

• the thermohaline circulation slowing down due to all that melted water (less dense due to higher temperature and less salt) staying on the surface of the water column

• the migration of millions of humans mostly from regions with latitude between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn due to drought, crops loss, famine, extreme storms, natural disasters and violence or wars

• the increase in frequency and length of heatwaves

Unfortunately, we will probably sooner or later go to war over made-up fantasies or leftovers of a ruined planet before finally collectively understanding and tackling the complex thing that is currently (for now) known as Climate Change.

I would welcome US and other countries to purchase drug made in canada. Whiles drugs imported by Canada should be restricted or some kind of reexportation fee should be levied to avoid shortages.

There are several manufacturer based in Canada such as Apotex Inc., Johnson&Johnson/Actelion, AbbVie, Novartis, Merck/Cubist, Pfizer/Hospira, Bayer, Roche, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, etc… Statistics from 2020

I would love to see Canada become a major influence in making high quality generic drugs more afordable to every one on the planet.

Here we go again… 🤣

https://lemmy.world/post/5730713

The result last time:

In that case, what would you consider to be a suitable “timing” then?

Is it just after a victim (children/teenagers/men/women/anyone) was verbally/physically assaulted? Within an hour? Within 24/48/72 hours? A week? A month? A year?

When is the appropriate inconvenient (in contrast to your “too convenient”) time for you?

Whether the victim feels safe or not, ready or not, supported or not, free of any retaliation or not, when is it too late for a victim to speak out or tell their story? Is 2 years already too much? How about 5 years, 10 years or 20 years?

Why is Canada also excluded from side-loading? 😭

Please freeze your credit file at Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. It's free and you can unfreeze it anytime you want (or whenever you judge its a valid credit check for something you actually requested yourself).

Whether you have a low/medium/good/perfect credit score and are satified with the credit cards and mortgage/loans you already have or lived without ever having a credit card and loans, it is of utmost importance to freeze your credit files to preempt any future identity theft from becoming a life upending disaster.

Some helpful links:

American Express | How to Freeze Your Credit at All 3 Bureaus—For Free

nerdwallet | How to Freeze Your Credit

Federal Trade Commission | What To Know About Credit Freezes and Fraud Alerts

For the fellow Canadians reading this, freezing your credit file has been enshrined in law in Québec since February 2023. I have frozen mine on the first week of February. However, I am unaware of the availability of that option in other provinces, please check with your bank or provincial service bureau (equivalent to Services Québec here) or directly contact Equifax and TransUnion.

Can I get the reverse?

I know some-tiny-bit of history (enough to see we are repeating too many mistakes) and sure wish I was born way into the future after we've solved climate change (or simply just accepted it and therefore adapted/reduced everyday life to it) and also after the next potential world war as things seem to be getting more and more spicier geopolitically.

Man, is this seriously going turn into into the Iraq has WMD boondoggle/fiasco:

“Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a presentation to the UN on February 5, 2003, in which he detailed false intelligence gatherings provided by the Israeli government regarding Iraqi WMD.”

Source 1: Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence

Source 2: Israel knew Iraq had no WMD, says MP

I forgot it was Israeli Intelligence source back then 🤔. I only remember Bush insisting there are WMDs and Colin Powell's declaration at the UN. All of it was proven fake of course, and 20 years later it has become the biggest and most expensive Intelligence blunder.

Hopefully, I am wrong and we were smarter to verify everything before repeating the same reckless mistake.

I try to not comment on controversial issues particularly when I don't have any qualification or first hand knowledge/experience, however this is looking more and more like an unmitigated overreaction.

Concentrated lemonade…? 😳

• You let it it dilute as you go, as per your taste.

A block of hard cheese…? 😆

• It would be water resistant (waterproof) enough to last the whole shower.

That is an interesting thought experiment that never occurred to me.

Sad to see another country descending into perpetual civil war and slowly turning into a failed state (hopefully not, and I'm completely wrong).

The people deserve better, but old power cannot let go of their darn solid gold toilet (metaphor).

Good for them for fighting back, but it should not have gone this far. As too many innocent are being sacrificed.