About the cover picture: at that altitude, shouldn't the plume look completelu different? Com to think of it, shouldn't the first stage and srbs be long gone?
This youtube video explains why plastic recycling exists, how it's mostly ineffective and why is it a scam created to normalize one-use plastic. This basically applies to electronics and others. "Why would I reuse or reduce, I can buy, consume an recycle".
Here's an interview (in Czech) with Vojta, the main (only) developer. There might be follow up articles discussing specific issues he's facing as user and as a developer.
I so don't know how to feel about beavers. I live in a country where beavers are quite strictly protected, but volves and bears are regularly hunted "to protect the people from them". This causes an imbalance: beavers have zero natural enemies, are not hunted and are capable of changing the countryside. I find myself sympathetic to the people who lose portions of their lands, I am sad for the many trees felled near a lake by my home, I understand why some people are frustrated.
In general, we messed up the ecosystem - the most complex system on this planet and we insist on messing it further by one-sided protection of the "cute" speciess.
Don't get me wrong, I admire beavers: hard workers, creative, imaginative, resilient, with strong families. All in all, a role model for humanity.
I just wish we would look at the big system and strive to fix that as a whole.
The problem with maproulette is the same thing that makes it fun: the gamification.
Some people value imaginary internet points so highly, they edit OSM willy-nilly to make it conform to maproulette, disregarding ground truth, not checking if the tasks analysis is complete and mapping slightly wrong around the world.
This is mad MUCH worse by the fact that the default setting in maproulette is that when you finish a task, the system takes you to an another one at a random position in the world. I have no idea, for instance, if this Italian restaurant in Minsk has a correct web address (or if it exists at all), but I'm incentivized to jut remove the tag and get those sweet points.
Okay, so I thought I would check this in my "gps" and I see OsmAnd+ from f-droid lets you enter vehicle parameters, including height, and will avoid low overpasses, given the height restriction is tagged in OSM data. You can also enter a type of vehicke and the navigation will avoid roads you shouldn't enter (dangerous load, no entrance for HGV, etc.).
Those drivers should just use a better software.
Rolex and it's secrecy and structure was explored by one of my favourite youtube channels. Goes deeper into history and marketing side of things, less about the non-profit structure and philanthropic endeavors
Burning plastic/paper/other packaging gets you a lot of toxic stuff in the atmosphere. I know there are filters and processes and whatnot, but it just feels wrong and smelly.
Aluminium recycling actually works great, recycled aluminium is 95% less energy expensive and some 75% of aluminium comes from recycling. (1)
Steel could also be recycled like that, I guess ships are a lot more difficult to cut apart and melt down than cars, because they are heavier and larger (citation needed). At any rate, we put a lot of resources and energy into the steel for cars, maybe we should use that steel as much as possible instead of putting more energy into more steel.
I would envision it as a money that don't go to the general pile of tax-raised money which becomes the country's government budget, but be kept separate and be used for investments in recycling and environemtn protection. I am not a lawyer and have no idea if this is a thing anywhere, but it seems so logical. You raise money off an ecological problem and use them, directly, to solve the ecological problem (and others).
Consider the economics. There are HUGE companies with a history of influencing legislature, lobbying an lying to everyone, whose existence depends on us to continue not caring about climate change. People like us can hardly imagine the amount of money they are throwing at us in the form of marketing, lobbying, astroturfing, etc. They are literally making money off us not taking action.
Otoh, I cannot think of a single billion dollar company that got where it is by being climate friendly.
I've thought about this a lot. Is it worth wasting water, derergent and energy to clean a yogurt cup, for instance? Does the plastic-waste-recycled outweigh the water-wasted? I never found an answer, maybe this is a really tough comparison? Too apple vs. orange?
(Edited for spelling)
We're way off topic now, but well.
OSM is insistently not focused on a map, but on the data. On this data a lot of other mapping projects can (and are being) built.
In central Europe, we have freemap.sk, which combines OSM data, hi-quality aerial imagery - for Slovakia only, these were shot by the government and are licensed in a way that they can be combined with OSM data - resulting in possibilities such as displaying bike paths over super detailed aerial maps.
Also check out mapy.cz, they are based on OSM (outside of Czechia) and in some parts of the world can be switched to satellite/aerial imagery with roads overlayed over it.
So they will invest probably hundreds of thousands of dollars into a tech that will make them use a lot less electricity for heating and cooling, only to stop using that technology 5 years later and pay for expensive energies? Or will they completely uninstall the heat pumps?
The thing with this kind of investment is, it's cash heavy at the beginning and then lets you save a lot of money. It makes no sense to ditch the installed technology once it's working for you and saves you money.
I am #3 in a similarly sized country, I was #1 for a few weeks about a year ago. It should be noted that this is "only" streetcomplete. Many mappers don't use it at all - instead mapping in JOSM or iD and greatly outperforming StreetComplete folk.
According to HDYC [1], the author of TFA is currently ranked at 37 in New Zealand. I don't know if HDYC can show historic data.
All that said, this is not a competition. It's just fun to enhance the maps and see the enhancements in real life - better driving directions, more naturally shaped roads, sidewalks being replaced with stairs where needed, traffic lights and pedestrian crossings showing up where they should.
The gamification is only a cherry on top. Now I have to go out, score a few hundred edits and maybe grab #2.
I have been running pihole for quite some time (coupled with wireguard, that's a great way to stay ad-free on the go as well), but a question is nagging at my brain the whole time: What's stopping the bad guys from circumventing DNS entirely by calling their ad/data collection/malware C&C by IP rather than FQDN? Provided it's a public IP, that should slip through all the DNS based filtering, wouldn't it?