The only flour that defeats the stone!

Very nice. How tall is that mast?

BTW, I created a new sub recently. Might want to subscribe, since you like sailing: https://thebrainbin.org/m/Sailing

Current short-list, based on Three Points of the Compass post, with too-small items crossed out:

• DCF Repair Patches
• DCF Repair Tape
• McNett GearAid Tenacious Tape (as recommended above)
• Multimat Repair Kit
• Sea to Summit Repair Kit
• Stormsure Inflatable Tent Repair Kit
• Stormsure Tuff Tape
• Stormsure Universal Repair Kit
• Tear-Aid Type A
• Tear-Aid Therm-a-rest Instant Field Repair Kit*
• Tear-Aid Therm-a-rest Permanent Home Repair Kit*

* Three Points of the Compass says Tear-Aid makes the patches included in the Thermarest repair kit.

I wasn’t referring to their legal department, I was thinking of Greyball.

And things like this.

Yet another reason to rejoin the EU.

As a Keynesian, I’m in favour of gas pump attendants, while gas stations exist.

As an environmentalist, I’m in favour of phasing out fossil fuel.

As a human, I’m opposed to companies that engage in union-busting, labour casualisation, and surge pricing. AFAICT, all the robotaxi companies engage in those practices.

So-called “ride-share” companies scam people on a bigger scale than individual cabbies ever could. Uber had a whole team devoted to avoiding legal scrutiny.

Robotaxi companies will most likely be just as shady, since they’re backed by the same investors.

As for NJ gas, that’s a false equivalence. A better analogy would be that NJ gas stations are like having a chauffeur, everywhere else is like doing your own driving.

What a pointless reply.

I debunked your concerns. Hopefully, that reassures you schools can function just as well, if not better, without smartphones or even cell phones.

Thanks, I’ll add it to the shortlist!

gonna be a shitshow

Pure doomerism.

The schools where I grew up had one landline for over a thousand kids. The sole school secretary answered it as well as handling other duties. It had a call-waiting system. If there was an issue that might prompt lots of parents to call in, they’d just update the OGM: “If you’re calling about the such-and-such, here’s the latest information. Blah blah. Otherwise, please hold to speak to someone.” It was always fine.

As for checking-in to class, no need to use smartphones: teachers can take the register (roll-call) at the start of each class.

Landlines worked fine for a century or so. Any specific reason you think they wouldn’t work today?

Or the other issues listed at the site posted by the OP: https://nosystemd.org/

Ideally we’d eliminate copyright law and replace it with copyleft law

Fair enough, but it would still regulate what people can legally do with creative works. So, it would still be IP law - which a few comments ago you implied couldn’t/shouldn’t exist.

How does resale value “support Google”?

spoken like someone who has copyleft all of my work… fuck copyright laws

You seem to be confusing copyleft with public domain.

They are not the same.

Copyleft licenses entirely rely on copyright law. In the words of the people who invented copyleft:

Copyleft is a way of using the copyright on the program. It doesn’t mean abandoning the copyright; in fact, doing so would make copyleft impossible. The “left” in “copyleft” is not a reference to the verb “to leave”—only to the direction which is the mirror image of “right.”

Public domain, OTOH, which is what you seem to be promoting, is a gift to AI tech bros, who want to behave as the middlemen described in the same article:

[IP] in the public domain, uncopyrighted … allows people to share [it], if they are so minded. But it also allows uncooperative people to convert [it] into proprietary [IP]. They can make changes, many or few, and distribute the result as a proprietary product. People who receive the [latter] do not have the freedom that the original author gave them; the middleman has stripped it away.

If you want GrapheneOS without funding Google, why not get a secondhand Pixel?

Spoken like a plagiarism-happy AI tech bro, repackaging other people’s effort for profit.

In the context of IP, “theft” is an idiomatic way to say “infringement”. It’s bizarre of you to suggest it doesn’t exist: infringement law is quite well settled in most parts of the world.

IP doesn’t refer to “ideas”. It refers to creative works. If you’ve ever spent effortful hours/weeks/years:

• composing music
• recording music
• writing a novel, textbook, poem, teaching plan, essay, or a scientific paper
• painting a portrait
• etc

then you’ll know why the difference between “an idea” and a creative work is sometimes called “sweat of the brow”.

It’s run by Bambu Labs, a Chinese state-subsidised company that’s notorious for nudging users globally to let Internet-connected 3D printers map their home LANs and upload that info, plus name, address & other billing details, plus all their 3D models, to Chinese “cloud” servers where the CCP can siphon off any models useful for advancing Chinese industry.

They’re also notorious for letting Makerworld users rip off each others’ designs in flagrant violation of the design licenses. Look on Reddit or 3D printing forums and you’ll see tons of people complaining about this.

Bambu Labs also recently egregiously violated the AGPL by threatening a lawsuit against Pavel Jarczak, a hobbyist who found a perfectly legal workaround to reduce BL control over people’s printers. This was a big deal: the Software Freedom Conservancy, Louis Rossmann, and Gamers Nexus all pledged action.

Bambu Labs and Makerworld stand for dictatorship, authoritarianism, and kleptocracy.

If you support FOSS, user rights, and democracy, you really ought to boycott them.

https://sfconservancy.org/news/2026/may/18/bambu-studio-3d-printer-agpl-violation-response/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLLVn6XT7v0

How ironic that it’s hosted at Makerworld, which is effectively a CCP platform for widespread surveillance and IP theft.

Thanks, I’ll try that.

The issue has happening on an increasing number of websites, though: Ecosia, ScienceDirect, TrainSplit (which thankfully has a fallback to hCaptcha), Indeed, and more.