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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 7th, 2023

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  • Yeah. My parents live in a rural area and coverage has been abysmal for years. They barely even get 4G/LTE signal outside the house. They see ads promising them more speed and more coverage but in reality, it’s going the opposite way for them. And they don’t understand it at all.

    Now that the telcos are turning off the 3G network soon in that region, it’s going to be even worse. And because there’s not a lot of people in that rural region, it’s not worth it for the cell companies to improve anything.


  • It’s so disappointing when you live in a region that has had multiple providers with even some that are offering decent services and competition to the monopolies, only to be bought by the monopolies a few years later.

    For a while, I lived in a rural region in Quebec with a “big” town of 5000 people surrounded by small villages. Because the big telcos were considering the villages too small and were always late to offer any service in the region, multiple small providers (and even a cooperative) started offering phone (and later internet) service in their own village. So around 2010, when FTTH was not even offered in big cities, the small municipality of Béthanie, with 300 people and no village, had FTTH from its local cooperative.

    Unfortunately, from the 4 local ISPs I knew growing up there, they have all been bought by Bell, except the cooperative. And villages that had plans to get FTTH now get nothing because they’re not important enough anymore.

    My parents still live on a rural road in that region and surprise, the monopolies are not offering broadband, but the local cooperative is offering them FTTH. It’s always been a bit surreal that my parents living in the middle of nowhere have FTTH before me in Montreal. The power of cooperatives!


  • DB doesn’t hold a candle to VIA Rail. Germans and Europeans in general like to mock DB, and with reason, but as a Canadian, I’m still so very jealous of DB.

    Due to [these] restrictions, 80 per cent of trips suffered delays of more than 10 to 15 minutes in February between Quebec City and Windsor, where the majority of Via trains operate. In January, 67 per cent of trains were late on the same corridor. Delays have been even greater between Quebec City and Ottawa this year, affecting 94 per cent of trains last month and 86 per cent in January.


  • I wish it wouldn’t be that complicated just to sit. I’m a short man (5’6") and it’s impossible to sit correctly in most office chairs, as the seats are simply too big. My knees can’t bend if my back is against the backrest.

    Also they are often too tall and my feet don’t touch the ground, so I need a foot stool.

    Even fucking desks are too high.

    So I have a chair that’s too big and too high, and a desk that’s also too high when I’m sitting.

    I hate that the world is standardized around an average. Finding an appropriate desk or chair for smaller people, at an affordable price, is a pretty good challenge.


  • I still have an IRC server but the eggdrop’s usefulness has pretty much been reduced to fetching YouTube titles and the URL of images on tenor. Its main use was to fetch titles for all URLs pasted on channels where it is, but because me and most of the users are now using TheLounge as a client, there is no need for that anymore, except for a few exceptions. At one point it was also displaying all the things my friends upvoted on reddit, but since reddit closed its API and I came here…

    IRC with TheLounge is still very useful though.




  • pedz@lemmy.catoPrivacy@lemmy.mlWhat car stickers say about you
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    27 days ago

    This looks more like paranoia than tips about privacy. Everyone has a fucking giant TV inside their home. Everyone has hobbies.

    Unless you are actively targeted by some psycho… or the police. This just makes everyone thinks everyone else around them is out to rob and steal from them. But being from the US and from the police, it’s not very surprising. You also need a gun to protect yourself and your family from potential home invaders, you never know because the country is full of robbers and violent people! Don’t trust anyone! Just get your kids from school in your giant bulletproof SUV and drive straight to your McMansion where you can barricade yourself with all your precious stuff. In fact you should also take care to hide your McMansion behind a fake facade of poor people’s houses to avoid having less fortunate people target it as a potential place to rob.

    Every poor person is plotting to rob you! So if you show clues and get robbed, it’s gonna be your fault and the police will let you know you were stupid for putting a dirt bike sticker on your expensive SUV.

    Anyway, this is all just ridiculous in the first place. If someone wants to know you’re not home and steal crap from you, stickers or not, you’re already sitting in your fucking car, while not being home. It’s already a pretty big clue. Otherwise, are home invaders that diligent in the first place? Are they going to stalk people before robbing their home? Really, the stickers on my expensive SUV parked in front of my big house and the big garage is indicating that there might be expensive crap in my house and in my garage? I’m shocked to see how revealing those stickers can be!

    In fact, this being from the police just shows how much they profile and judge the shit out of people before even speaking to them.




  • Depends where I guess. And this also depends on your type of work.

    I know that people live year round on narrow boats in the UK, for example. But where I live, unless it’s a very very big boat, living on it year round would be very difficult if not impossible. Most marinas will close in fall/autumn and have a service to lift boats out of the water (and wrap them). If a (small) boat stays in the water for winter, it risks being iced in for months, and having its hull damaged by the pressure created by the ice. There are thawing and de-icing systems for boats and house boats but at this point, one may also want to live somewhere else during winter. Or move to warmer climates, if the job allows it.

    Anyways, marinas are still full here in summer, even if people have to lift their boats out of the water in fall and wrap them up in plastic for several months.




  • pedz@lemmy.catoMemes@lemmy.mlI do what I want
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    2 months ago

    Hah. I live alone, no kids, no house, no car. And I am usually fine with that.

    I live in a tower in the downtown of a big city and have a very nice view. I share a pool, a terrasse and gym on the roof. No need to maintain the pool, the concierge does that. No driveway to plow in winter, no grass to cut in summer. No house maintenance.

    I have free time and disposable income. I can travel anywhere I want, pretty much when I want it. I’m on my second trip in the Carribean since the beginning of the year.

    In summer I take multiple days to cycle for hundreds of kilometres to go camping/hiking in national parks and explore the great bike network of my region. I live on an island, pull my kayak with my bike and explore the waters around whenever I feel like it.

    Seeing my friends with kids not being able to get a free weekend once every few months, I don’t mind how things have turned out for me.