One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered [Linux Mint] community when IDC confirmed that [Linux Mint] market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming close on the heels of a recent craft survey which plainly states that [Linux Mint] has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. [Linux Mint] is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive working test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict [Linux Mint]'s future. The hand writing is on the wall: [Linux Mint] faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for [Linux Mint] because [Linux Mint] is dying. Things are looking very bad for [Linux Mint]. As many of us are already aware, [Linux Mint] continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

[Linux Mint] is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time [Linux Mint] developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: [Linux Mint] is dying.

All major surveys show that [Linux Mint] has steadily declined in market share. [Linux Mint] is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If [Linux Mint] is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. [Linux Mint] continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save [Linux Mint] from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, [Linux Mint] is dead.

I already know that people are going to be stupid and easily manipulated. So does everyone else who has an IQ in the triple digits.

If we already know a substantial percentage of the population is easily manipulable and that they can be manipulated to do terrible terrible things then those of us who aren't in that boat have a basic moral responsibility to prevent the people who can't see past bullshit for whatever reason from screwing everything up in their lives and ours.

It's like the old quote, for evil to win all that has to happen is for good men to do nothing.

But screw morality, I'm talking about basic self-interest here. Again we know what those stupid motherfuckers in America are going to do if we let Russia do whatever with them. We also know that the people in America who aren't idiots have already lost out to Russia because of course we did Russia is a nation state.

So given that the most obvious line of defense has fallen I'm saying Europe just in terms of self-interest should have prevented Russia from tricking dumb Americans into being dumb Americans.

Instead Europe followed a different line of self-interest the predominantly benefits a handful of European billionaires at a very very high risk of total world devastation from a batshit insane United States.

If you're a billionaire trying to become a trillionaire and a borderline God then that's probably an okay gamble. You own private islands with bunkers that you have a chance of hiding out in.

But for the other several hundred million Europeans that's not a good gamble to make since you're not on your way to becoming a trillionaire and you don't own a private island that you can try to ride out nuclear war at.

It doesn't fucking matter whether or not it's the job of the American voter to stop being stupid or not. The point I'm trying to make here is that the American voter failed at that job and now Europe has the option of either helping us clean up our mess or getting dragged into it.

Protectionism isn't an option because we have a huge military here in America and we are fucking insane. It's like if your neighbor has a shitload of firearms and psychosis. You can't just pretend that's not happening. Well I mean you can but you'll wish you hadn't eventually when he inevitably starts just randomly firing off high powered rifles in your vicinity.

And again remember the reason Europe is ignoring Russia attacking America with propaganda and cyber warfare is because Europe's billionaires are hoping that America going down the tubes will give them a chance to become trillionaires. It's not that you guys are over in Europe are washing your hands of everything you're actively participating in the downfall of America because you think, or rather your ruling class thanks, that it will benefit them personally. As for the people of Europe I don't blame you for wanting to ignore your crazy neighbor but unfortunately you can't evict an entire nation state from planet Earth.

Basically nobody, European or american, gets to pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist anymore. Christ that hasn't been true in at least 300 years.

That's the problem. Luls you into a false sense of security, then when you aren't paying attention it fails and you die.

It's easier to capture the emissions of gas electricity plants. Everything else can be electric.

Europe knew that Russia was running roughshod over the United States voters and working hard successfully to put Trump back in the White House. They also knew the Democrats weren't going to do shit because they were too weak and trusted the voters too much.

Europe's intelligence agencies should have stepped in and prevented Russia from installing Trump but their billionaires are hoping the United States gets knocked down a bit and maybe even they can get the euro and as the world's default currency if the United States crashes hard enough. Which was Trump president is definitely on the table.

If they can pull that off then the first trillionaire will be a European instead of Elon Musk. Meanwhile they'll have lots of great economic opportunities while the rest of the world collapses.

It's all well and good but it's a hell of a gamble because the United States still has the largest military on the planet. The only reason we didn't steam roll Iran is that we are still a little constrained when it comes to war crimes, we can do some but a total genocide of 60 million people isn't on the table yet. Yet. And to do an occupation we would have to do a large scale draft and we still nominally have elections so that wasn't on the table.

I keep bringing this up but I don't think the rest of the world realizes just how batshit insane most Americans are. You would think electing a convicted felon, pedophile, rapist and six-time bankrupt businessman to be the most powerful person on our planet would have been a clue but nope. People still think Americans have the slightest shred of sanity.

About 40% of us believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old and about 35% of us believe Noah's flood is real. We absolutely would launch nuclear weapons safe in the knowledge that God would protect us from a counter-attack. We are that fucking insane.

The rest of the world needs to do something about how crazy we are because we obviously can't. And you can't just quarantine us because sooner or later we're not going to have elections anymore and that means we can start drafting people to invade your countries and we don't care if you have nukes because as I mentioned above we are crazy.

If you're going to do something now is the time but it does mean you're going to have to give up on having the first trillionaire.

To an extent, but nobody in Europe is building nuclear at a reasonable cost. It's worse here, but once France is forced to replace its reactors, if it goes for more nuclear I expect we will soon find out how little doing lots of them really helps.

Maybe you don't understand what 95% renewables means. It means that over the course of a year, 95% of electrical energy is generated by renewables.

Interconnects allow us to buy renewable energy from other countries.

The UK's current goal is 95% renewables and nuclear over a year, by 2030. What will probably scupper us is Hinkley Point C, the new nuclear plant, being delayed.

The trains are so reliable, not just the bullet trains, that if they are delayed by more than a few minutes they have a bit of paper you can collect and show to your boss so you don't get into trouble.

The bullet trains operate on a 15 second interval timetable, but the drivers typically try to arrive within 1 second of the advertised time. They have a system where they make up time by accelerating a little harder, so they never need to exceed the speed limit. They do the calculations in their head to figure out how to arrive at exactly the right time.

They have been trialling driverless Shinkansen (bullet trains), and one of the parts they had trouble with was replicating that system in software. The new maglev ones are driven by humans, but because the trains are so fast they can't really see things like signals and speed limit signs, so the communication systems with the train have to be extremely reliable. The stopping distance at 500kph is 6.6km, although even the conventional railed ones need 4km.

Even in the conventional Shinkansen, the human drivers are not allowed to do too much themselves. If there is a fault, they are required to open the fault resolution manual, look it up, and follow the instructions precisely, similar to aircraft pilots. There are very few "memory items" that they are supposed to resolve without consulting the book.

The way it is supposed to work is that it allows the site to do a cryptographic challenge and response. The site can't tell which device was used, or even if the same device is used each time. There is not communication with the government after the initial confirmation of ID.

That is assuming that all the crypto works properly, of course. Hopefully they have some experts involved.

I'll still VPN into a country that doesn't have such laws as a matter of course, but given that most people seem to think this is a good thing, and we live in a democracy, it's probably the best possible outcome. The current situation in the UK, for example, where you need to prove your age to each site individually, and they all get your real ID and then abuse it and it gets stolen, is close to the worst.

Every country has problems with the Epstein class. Some more than others. These laws are getting pushed by social media, AI and surveillance companies so they can track us and control us.

If you don't like it you need to convince the rest of the world that they don't need a ruling class.

I think the government did everything they could to make it happen and support EDF/Chinese Nuclear. It's just insanely expensive. Sizewell C is the largest building site in Europe. It's not just reactors, it's fuel storage, waste storage, processing, maintenance, monitoring, emergency systems, all on site.

They even had a head start, since the site already had the grid connection and other infrastructure like roads and security that were needed for the two old nuclear plants.

I'm not exaggerating when I say nuclear is expensive. SMRs won't make it cheaper either, because the reactor is only a small part of the cost.

It only seems absurd because your premise is absurd - a whole country UPS.

In reality there is always a minimal amount of renewables, we have gas backup plants (that's what the 5% is), and we have interconnects to other countries.

That's the thing I don't get about Britain why don't they just kick out their ruling class. All those Epstein Islanders. If you got rid of the hereditary ruling class I think that you'd see projects getting done and done more or less on time and on budget. I mean humans are always wasteful so there'd be some overrun but when you look into a big projects they've done that failed you always find some nepo baby getting the contracts.

Then again I'm American so I shouldn't be throwing stones in my glass house over here.

At least not like you're thinking of them. There are lots of ways to store energy at scale besides regular batteries. When you start doing things at these scale of a public utility all sorts of options open up that don't work for the home or even large buildings or structures.

Honestly if we here in America were still a functioning society the only thing we would be doing is just building out massive amounts of wind and solar and energy storage.

So I guess they've got that going for them...

Yes we do use slave labor through the prisons but it is not fully integrated into our supply chains. It's mostly around periphery. This is not to say that we shouldn't do away with slave labor. We should. But I'm explicitly talking about why American car companies cannot compete with Chinese car companies here.

If American car companies can start tapping slave labor in prisons yeah you would have a point but so far they haven't been able to do that, although that's probably mostly up to the unions preventing it. Still it does mean that American car companies can't possibly compete. Because again, you cannot compete with someone who is using slave labor.