Well, an oil spill is still probably worse. Depends on volume of spilled oil. Also depends on if that oil is replaced by using renewables.

The typical spill playbook is to slowly clean this up while also creating emissions elsewhere and also disrupting the environment more to repair the pipeline or whatever alternative they have.

It really isn’t. Many salient points here that you breezed over. Focus on the US because that’s who we need to fix right now. Solar panel waste is a big problem. Does the US recycle them? Or anything? No not really. They recycle 10% of them.

Now that doesn’t kill the idea, but I would need to see the US sign laws to recycle them or improve that rate before I’d believe that the panels wouldn’t end up wasted.

Next: wind turbines killing bird populations is real even if it’s a minor concern because it stacks on everything you mentioned. Our estimates aren’t great but the ecological impact of these turbines is not well understood over the whole of the US. I like them more than solar, sure, and they’re better than fossil fuels absolutely. Just wish we can understand that these two have issues we need to solve to deploy them everywhere.

As for the land comparison, that’s not a great statistic. The parking lots will only get bigger in the US, I promise. Cars are too prevalent. Maybe in 30 years, not now though. So we have to increase land use. I have yet to see US cities do much more than putting the turbines on pasture land and they usually choose undeveloped land in the middle of nowhere. So yes, valid concern.

The thing about transport is fine if they’re equal, I’m not about to fight you on something you’re this passionate about.

As for the uranium ore extraction problem, my point is that it’s a problem that the west actually has a chance at fixing. They can mine their own uranium, they can find other sources. Meanwhile china owns most of the solar power production. Most of the panels are made by slaves. The cobalt mines involve entire countries worth of human rights issues.

I don’t dislike the use of solar and wind, I just feel that the takes here have been far from balanced when nuclear has some real advantages if you’re being honest about the weaknesses of current renewables.

While I agree that these renewables can be effective, they have many problems that stop me from supporting them over nuclear even at a lower cost.

We aren’t recycling solar panels enough, so I’m not optimistic that heavy metals won’t be polluting our dirt in the future. Wind still is killing birds and uses massive amounts of land. And that’s before we get into the cost of transporting these things from china which requires pollution from shipping and also kills wildlife. And then on top of that, there’s a very real human rights problem as solar currently is made mostly by slaves at multiple steps in the supply chain.

You’re not wrong. But I was just pointing out the validity of talking about the semantics of piracy. I ultimately don’t care what people decide to do, just be aware of what it is you’re doing by blocking ads. Which is most of what Linus was saying.

It’s not like you see the ads that have trackers, they get blocked. So it’s still part of the agreement sort of. And you’re also aware that it’s revenue for them. People assume it’s a moral argument, it’s not. You can pirate from absolutely evil people, but it’s still piracy. That’s why I don’t view it as worth arguing over for the most part. I WANT people to realize that it’s piracy but that they’re actually doing something ethical.

I want to be clear still, piracy isn’t a problem or wrong necessarily. I’m not pushing a corporate narrative by saying this, I’m more concerned about creators and other sites that use ads for revenue such as newspapers. So if you want to “pay” a site without money, don’t pirate their content. That’s all. That’s similar to what Linus has said.

But I think this is somewhat similar to asking you for a ticket at the door for a movie. If the “ticket” is watching the ad and they’re asking you to buy the ticket (with premium) or get it from ads, bypassing the doorman would mean it’s piracy. Doesn’t even matter if the doorman doesn’t try to stop you. Doesn’t matter if they don’t pull you out of the movie.

You being the product is irrelevant to the piracy thing. But it is relevant to the moral thing

Purchasing and pirating don’t have contractural agreements. You don’t have to have a ToS to pirate something.

If DuckDuckGo does block the ad in their browser, they’ve done the work for you. And if they do not but instead Google decides to serve it to you without ads in a browser, it’s not piracy to not have ads.

As long as the intended revenue of the content you’re viewing is being blocked, you’re pretty much pirating it. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong, it’s just a definitional thing.

It is, yes. It’s a separate conversation of if it should be illegal or immoral to keep your privacy this way. But as long as you are violating the intended method of revenue for the content you’re viewing, that’s piracy to me.

I think most people hear piracy and think it’s immoral or illegal, but there are very valid reasons to pirate content such as game and movie preservation.

I see what you mean but I don’t agree. The deal being made here is obvious and you’re signing up to give them data in exchange for watching a video. You’re also signing up to view their ads. You have an option not to be the product at all. You already have the wheat, but you’re giving the middleman less than what was arranged, not just producing less.

And if you view it as okay to not give them what they’re asking for while getting the content anyways, that’s chill. Just recognize that you’re paying less for the content than they’re asking. This is even more enforced by YouTube and news papers who charge for ad free experiences.

Believe it or not, I think he has a point and isn’t at all a hypocrite. He’d show you how to pirate and torrent stuff (and has before) while also telling you he doesn’t recommend stealing. What he was saying is that the content isn’t meant to be free. The ads pay for the content. So not watching ads means the producer doesn’t get paid. Its a soft form of piracy but he wasn’t telling you what to do about that. He just said “Be aware you’re not giving people anything for their content”. I don’t know why thats controversial, he’s not even suggesting its illegal or even immoral. I never understood the arguments here but I also dont visit twitter

I think repairability is a discussion. But we can also talk about how android makers cut updates off sooner which dooms the hardware to be trashed quicker. Or the very real human cost of google killing projects related to android and selling data. Also, a lot of the Apple stuff has to do with cost to repair, not repairability. At the end of the day, Apple can and does repair and resell their stuff. They just charge more to do so. But a lot of their users pay up for it. Would be interesting to see the stats on where broken devices end up for each

I’ll give them some fairness. When lightning originally launched, it was a great interface for lightweight power delivery and was more sturdy than the deplorable micro USB. I can’t explain just how bad microUSB is. So it made sense. I think USB-C just put in the legwork to be a much better adapter.

Also the giant plot hole missing here is that Apple sits on the USB forum I believe and so has some say in what the billions of devices they produce use to charge. They just can’t make money off of a standard now.

I hadn’t heard this. Good on the EU not letting them squirrel out of this (hopefully)

It makes them a very small amount of money. But they’ve also been rumored to be making iPhones use a “Made for Apple” type of cable for faster charging speeds. I think that would be really dumb but here we are.