Good luck :)

It says “UNSUPPORTED: VSYNC is not available on the Linux platform.” and runs at a stuttery 133 fps. This test shows 144 Hz: https://fpstest.org/refresh-rate-test/ The Nvidia settings app shows 144 Hz + VRR are active and I can see that the cursor is rendered at >70 fps.

I’m pretty sure that my desktop is drawn at 144 Hz (on the primary display) and xrandr also tells me that that’s the active mode. 🤷‍♂️

Edit: This is with Nvidia (proprietary drivers) and VRR monitors.

Is that generally an issue on Linux Mint / Cinnamon X11? I have a 144 Hz and a 70 Hz monitor and they seem to work fine…

One way to do it is have a small Python (or any other scripting language really) script that performs text replacements in the Latex source file. This is much easier in Latex because it’s plain text. I don’t know of a solution that doesn’t involve writing your own code (apart from LO/Word serial letters).

Is using Latex an option? I’ve done that and it works quite nicely. You can easily populate a template e.g. using Python.

I’m not sure I follow… Did the Fedora Council actually take a decision?

I understood Matthew’s position as “this should be discussed in the Workstation WG first”, not as a “no”:

in favor of the process outlined above (tl;dr: talk to the Workstation WG, and if that does not come to a satisfying outcome, file a Council ticket for next possibilities).

Post

It also seemed more likely that they would promote KDE without demoting Gnome.

But was there a follow-up on that (e.g. in the Workstation WG)?

I would argue that any majoritarian electoral system (winner-takes-all), including ranked choice, incentivizes large parties. There is some nuance between them, but I don’t think that ranked choice can fundamentally solve that issue. Sure, you can enter a protest vote, but will it really change anything? I think that parties need realistic changes at gaining (some) power in order to be viable in the long term.

Would you mind explaining how introducing ranked choice voting would substantially help smaller/additional political parties? I always find it confusing how much Americans focus on the presidency and ranked choice voting when it comes to breaking the party duopoly. At the end of the day, there is only a single president and he/she will probably always come from one of the largest parties. The presidency somewhat inherently limits the influence of smaller parties.

What I would focus on, if I wanted to increase the number of political parties in the US, is the House of Representatives. If proportional representation (e.g. biproportional appointment, party lists, MMP, …) was introduced there, it would allow smaller parties to hold real power. (With biproportional appointment, the seats are distributed according to party voter share while also ensuring regional representation). Do you know why this hardly ever comes up in the context of the US?

You’re right that the calories burned while riding the E-Bike would also need to be considered. The site you linked gives 220 kcal/hr for “Motor scooter, motorcycle” and 630 kcal/hr for “Bicycling, 12 - 13.9 mph, leisure, moderate effort”. This corresponds to 1960 kcal / 100km excess calories for biking (at 75kg weight). Going slower than that (which I certainly don’t do ;-) ) somewhat reduces the difference. But then the E-Bike is faster and you somehow have to account for that… I’m sure that people have written scientific publications on such considerations. My napkin math certainly doesn’t have that level of rigor.

Overall there’s certainly better ways to reduce your CO2 footprint than switching from a bike to an E-Bike. But perhaps E-Bikes are better than their reputation.

Of course it was patched in all affected Debian versions: https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2014-0160

I agree that the comparison between the two is quite complex (given the many side effects). But I was interested in this question and have done a few back-of-the-envelope calculations on the ongoing CO2 emissions:

Regular Cycling:

• The caloric consumption of cycling is approximately 2300 kcal / 100 km [1]. Or 2.7 kWh / 100 km.
• The CO2 footprint of 1 kcal is approximately 1 (vegan) to 3 (meat-heavy) gCO2/kcal [2]. The average is approximately 2 gCO2/kcal.
• This yields 2.3 kgCO2 / 100 km for a vegan diet and 4.6 kgCO2 / 100km.
  • The result is in the same ballpark as the Guardian article [3] at 2.5 to 3.5 kgCO2/100km.
  • The 96 kgCO2 for production [3] would correspond to 0.5 kgCO2/100km over the 19200km lifetime [3].

(Motor-only) E-bikes:

• The energy use is about 2 kWh / 100 km (3.3 kWh per 100 miles) [4].
  • But pedal-assisted commuter e-bikes only use 0.7 kWh / 100km (1.1 kWh per 100 miles) [4]??
  • This also seems quite high compared to the 2.7 kWh / 100 km above, given that human muscles are only about 30% efficient [6].
• With the US carbon intensity (0.368 kgCO2/kWh [5]), this yields 0.736 kgCO2/100km.
  • This result is much lower than the Guardian article [3], probably because it doesn’t include manufacturing.
  • The 165 kgCO2 for production [3] would correspond to 0.86 kgCO2/100km over the 19200km lifetime [3].

Based on this, it seems quite plausible that an E-Bike is significantly more efficient than a regular bike, even if the rider is a vegan. But, both are way better than all types of cars and even public transport.

References

• [1] https://www.canyon.com/en-ch/blog-content/advice/calories-burned-cycling/b24062022.html
• [2] https://bitsabout.me/en/the-carbon-footprint-of-your-diet/
• [3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2021/sep/23/why-arent-more-big-bike-firms-tracking-their-environmental-impact
• [4] https://sites.google.com/view/ebikestudy/results
• [5] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity?country=~USA
• [6] https://www.germanjournalsportsmedicine.com/fileadmin/content/archiv2017/Heft_9/Standard_EN_Boening_Wirkungsgrad_Muskelarbeit_9-2017.pdf

You could try to downgrade simple64 to an older version: https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/tips-and-tricks.html

The article says they are aiming for 1W in the next couple of years, which can probably do it.

They won’t magically improve the power density by three orders of magnitude. They’re just trying to defraud their investors.

Do you have a source for that? According to WikiChip Fuse, Intel 4 is comparable to TSMC N3 in density and offers better performance: https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/6720/a-look-at-intel-4-process-technology/4/

On paper, those PPA characteristics positions the company’s new Intel 4 process at performance levels better than TSMC N3 and Samsung 3GAE. On the density front, Intel 4 appears highly competitive against N3 high-performance libraries.

The GPL (and AGPL) do place some restrictions on how you can integrate it into another application but this doesn’t have anything to do with commercial use.

Basically, if you create a derivative work and publish/sell it, you also need to license it under the AGPL. In case of the AGPL it also applied if you use it to offer a service. But if you only use the unmodified version (same source code) and the intended application interfaces, this does not apply.

Running the application on Windows is clearly allowed. The second case also sounds ok (allowing this is kinda the point of FOSS). However, if you create an improved version of PDFCreater, then you’ll need to publish it under the same AGPL license.

I’m not a legal expert, but the AGPL seems to be quite clear on this point:

2. Basic Permissions.

All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met. This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program. […]

You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains in force. […]

However, depending on the exact thing that they said, they may be in violation of the AGPL. Once they have given you (conveyed) a copy of the program, they cannot impose a license fee for the use of the software.

10. Automatic Licensing of Downstream Recipients.

Each time you convey a covered work, the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensors, to run, modify and propagate that work, subject to this License. […]

You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License, and you may not initiate litigation […]

Switzerland has since introduced a law that changed this to self determination.

I agree that the Tuxedo Nano Pro is very expensive, but the Mac Mini is much more expensive. When you look at the comparable, German prices, it looks like this:

• 8GB/512GB: 849€ vs 929€
• 16GB/1TB: 924€ vs 1389€
• 32GB/2TB: 1044€ vs 2079€ (24 GB only)

The minimum config prices from Apple look quite good, but they fleece you for the RAM and SSD capacity. And of course you can’t upgrade them on your own. And of course the Mac Mini doesn’t support Linux (maybe Asahi Linux will get there in a few years, but Apple certainly isn’t helping).