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I have embroidery software and cs3 suite that won't run on linux so I'm planning an offline windows 8.1 just for them on an old computer.


Fixed my son's computer by shredding all evidence of Microsoft off his computer and installing Linux Devuan OS. Fortunatly his files were all stored on his separate ssd dut to a previous issue.


poker, without the money, isn't much different from any other card game. We used to play poker as a family game with a butter tub of pennies that all went back into the pot when we were done. It's very similar to rummy or bridge. Part skill part luck. Like pretty much any board game.


Solar panels are not degradable and are piling up in toxic landfills as are windmill blades.


Solar panels are made of exactly the stuff needed to make solar panels.


The ability to recycle solar panels will only get better with time.


Nuclear waste is not biodegradable either...


I'm not pro nuclear, but FWiW:

There are bioremedition techniques used to treat contaminated sites, just as there are similar techniques for toxic metals contamination.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioremediation_of_radioactive_...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266676572...


The radioactive material doesn’t go away, it’s either diluted until safe or concentrated until you can bury it somewhere safe.


So we shouldn't bioremediate radioactive or heavy metals contaminated sites then?

The point being, there are biological processes that address toxic waste.

Further, there are waste issues with pretty much all human uses of energy and resources, including "green" technologies. It's impossible to have green tech w/out rare earths, and impossible to have rare earth end products w/out creating radioactive waste.

* https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/business/china-rare-earth...

* https://hamiltonlocke.com.au/unlocking-clean-energy-the-cruc...

The sane approach is to address external costs from the get go, not assert that there are none.


The point is that solar panels in landfills are not a problem and nuclear is not a panacea.


Either path leaves us with radioactive waste to treat.


> It's impossible to have green tech w/out rare earths, and impossible to have rare earth end products w/out creating radioactive waste.

Where do you get this idea from? (If it's NYT, paywall, can't read it).

Solar power does not leave us with radioactive waste.

Considering radiation and heavy metals as the same problem because they're both bad for you and involve remediation processes when things go wrong is like treating a lack of seatbelts in cars the same as sugar induced diabetes.

Closest I can think of for why someone might think "rare earths" are "radioactive" is lithium deposits come in salt flats, salt flats contain potassium, some potassium is radioactive. But that's already diffused everywhere on the planet making *all life* radioactive well before we arrived in the pre-neolithic.


> Where do you get this idea from..

a few decades in mineral and energy exploration, processing, etc. Several million line kilometres of environmental radiometric surveying, covering both exploration and industrial settling ponds across many countries. Had a 42 litre crystal pack and spectrometer airborne in Northern India over the 1998 Pokhran-II test series.

> (If it's NYT, paywall, can't read it).

Try archive.md et al.

See second link:

Unlocking Clean Energy: The Crucial Role of Rare Earth Minerals: What’s all the Fuss About?

  Without an abundance of rare earth minerals, renewable energy technologies would not exist in their current form or would be highly inefficient when compared with traditional generation methods such as oil, coal and gas. 
> Closest I can think of for why someone might think "rare earths" are "radioactive"

Any reason your "thinks" might be better than actual exposure to mineral processing IRL ?

China, Malaysia, other rare earth processing locations have concentrations of radioactive waste as a result of refining concentrates to end product (see NYT article).


Right, got it.

I'm one of today's lucky 10,000, this is a new and exciting definition of "radioactive waste" that I was previously unaware of.

All previous uses of the phrase "radioactive waste" I have encountered, have been "things produced in a nuclear reactor or by a nuclear weapon detonation", and not simply "found in ores that also have thorium and uranium". (While this is broader than my potassium example, I think it's of the same category).

I'll note that alternative meaning for future use. I'm sure you're not the only one on here who would use it in this sense, and wouldn't want to mix up these two very different risks.

Of course, the consequence of this definition is that there is, in this sense, "radioactive waste" from coal mining. What with the trace levels of, IIRC, both uranium and thorium in coal.


Don't forget that they have power shortages and strict rationing in that equation. So at the end of the day they have 75% solar but it is not adequate for the population.


Thats not true. It's 75% renewable. Means, biomass, wind, solar etc.. And in Winter it is 55% renewable. Shortages are compensate mostly with fast booting Gas, Coal and Hydrogen plants. Also trading[1] in Germany is relatively even (in/out).

[1] https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.ht...


This is the first time I hear that there is strict (or any) electricity rationing in Germany and I've lived here all my life.


They might be mixing up Germany and South Africa i think. IIRC they do have times where they have planned outages in the different areas as the grid can't handle it if all were able to use it at the same time.


South Africa has outages but it's more down to corruption and mismanagement than grid issues.


We do not have shortages or power rationing. As another poster said, you may be confusing Germany with South Africa, though that's not a common confusion usually.


When people lie they bother less with the truth, by definition.


Faux fur retail costs 20-45 dollars a yard and requires a multithread overlock machine. Liner fabric costs 1-4 dollars a yard and requires less skill and a plain (single stitch) machine. Obviously they will be paying wholesale prices but the cost difference remains. The real difference in the costs between China and the US is the labour. Americans want cheap prices at the store but a living wage at their job. China is the capital of slave labour and Americans are supporting it with their wallets.


And slave labour. Nobody cares that their cheap products are the fruit of slave labour.


Louis CK deserves credit for calling this out in a brilliant bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl-1jc1oDRk

(Yes, this video is framed and has Italian subtitles, but all the others I found do weird things with panning and clipping to evade censorship filters, and I believe that his body language is an important part of the delivery.)


Because wrapping it around a pencil is clearly a benefit(:


Flexible PCBs are convenient to embed in fabric.


Most of the comments below are citing statistics for Canada or the whole Province of Quebec,not Montreal, which is like using the US housing statistics for NYC.


Tourism is a major industry in Montreal, probably as much as venice and Kyoto with year long festivals and the fact that it is an Island is also an issue.


If opposition to AirBNB in Montreal is mainly coming from locals being upset about the excess of tourists rather than the deficiency of rental vacancies, then I stand corrected.


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