With the satellite megaconstellations being launched it seems important to ban it before it becomes common. Mercury-based fuels are cheaper than alternatives.
Coal as being burned for electricity has an industry standard of scrubbing 90% of mercury emissions, but is moving towards 99% using newer technologies.
So, it will be four orders of magnitude more for coal than for mega constellations. Seven minus one order of magnitude for better scrubbing and two orders of magnitude for the size of the constellations. Still a ridiculous thing to focus on.
If they would focus on reducing atmospheric mercury and direct their efforts against all offenders, I would completely agree. But singling out satellites or deliberately ignoring coal hints that they have a different agenda, and "atmospheric mercury" is their parallel construction.
Efforts are being directed against all offenders, that's why coal is moving to 99% scrubbing instead of 90% as mentioned up thread. As a species and civilization I think we can manage 'focusing' on more than one thing at a time.
Apart from anything else we should at least be consistent, right? If Mercury can reasonably be avoided in any form of polluting usage, it should be.
Yes, but that resolves only one order of magnitude difference between the coal plant and the satellite constellations. Another two orders of magnitude are accounted for in the increasing size of the megaconstellations.
So even after those issues are addressed, earth-based coal is four orders of magnitude more problematic. Sure, focus on multiple targets. But don't pick a target 1000 times less significant to "diversify focus".
I think even if 1,000 people are getting cancer a year from a particular cause, that doesn't mean we can ignore this other cause that's only killing 1 person a year.
Should we also exclude small coal plants that only emit <1% of global emissions? What other cost effectively preventable emissions of mercury should we allow? Where do we draw the line? We should be consistent, especially since the costs of compliance don't seem to be all that great.
I hate to belittle a point, but this group is addressing the cause that is metaphorically killing 1 person per year while ignoring the cause that is killing 1,000 people per year.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that this cause is deflecting energy from any anti-coal movement by offering an new, shiny, space-age target for activists to concentrate on.
I have already addressed that point in this thread. The emissions from coal plants are being addressed with a 10x reduction already in the works. It is not being ignored, at all.
On the contrary, every effort to minimise mercury emissions and highlight their danger is worthwhile and raises awareness. The only reason we are talking about coal emissions now is because of this effort. If anything, consciously choosing not to address this specific issue and applying mercury emissions controls inconsistently would weaken the case for cracking down on other sources of emissions. It would smack of exceptionalism and preferential treatment. If you can carve out an exception for this source, why not others? Why do high tech rich world projects like a satellite fleet get a pass, but not a specific coal plant in a third world country with the same emissions?
> I have already addressed that point in this thread. The emissions from coal
> plants are being addressed with a 10x reduction already in the works.
What about the remaining four orders of magnitude? I've already factored in the 90% -> 99% reduction in my comments.
This is why I feel that such "feel good" efforts, such as focusing on the space industry, actually distract from the coal burning issue. You feel that things are being done to rectify coal, and I'm demonstrating that a 90% reduction in emissions (from 90% to 99% scrubbed) still pollutes four orders of magnitude (10,000 time more, though I accidentally said 1,000 more previously) than the proposed satellite constellations.
> What about the remaining four orders of magnitude? I've already factored in the 90% -> 99% reduction in my comments.
This thread started with a statement that satellite thrusters are at "first thought ... about 7 orders of magnitude less" than coal power plants, but where did that number come from? Others are noting that some proposed constellation would have emitted more mercury than the US, which contradicts that thought:
> The US emits 52 tonnes/year into the air, apparently. The article claims _hundreds_ of tonnes for one constellation. Which does seem concerning if correct.
> Apollo Constellation Engine designed their propulsion systems for mega constellations to use mercury, which is what got PEER involved in this. Popular Mechanics also reported on their plans. Even if Apollo changed their minds since, that's a pretty significant 'near miss'.
I have already addressed the question of orders of magnitude but I will try to be more explicit. The emissions from a single specific coal plant is a tiny fraction of total emissions. The emissions from a satellite fleet is a similarly tiny fraction of total emissions. Why should we crack down on one, but not the other? Your argument is a slippery slope that can be applied to any individual source of mercury emissions in that way.
You see coal emissions and satellite emissions as fundamentally different for some reason, but from the perspective of protecting the environment they are not. They are all just mercury emissions.
The solution is not to slice up mercury emissions sources into categories and issue exemptions or special treatment. We should consistently crack down on all sources of emissions, unless there is an actual specific reason to exempt them.
Of course there's a scale below which chasing down a small source of emissions might not be worth it due to costs, but banning mercury use in satellite propulsion is not a very costly use to crack down on. In fact it's already been done.
It's a smaller problem, but also easier to solve. The costs of a few suppliers changing their satellite propellants are orders of magnitude less than ending global coal usage (though both would be nice, of course).
It is simply easier to ban mercury propellants than it is to ban coal plant mercury emissions. A lot more people are dependent on the coal plants so the time and energy it takes to make changes there is just way bigger. Of course work is being done there as well, it just takes way longer.
What is your argument exactly? That as long as coal power plants emit airborne mercury, then anyone else can emit mercury as well as long as they emit less? This is just a form of whataboutism. We don't have ready, scalable alternatives to coal power at the moment, or don't have the will / money to bring alternatives into service. We do have alternatives to mercury-based space fuels.
That would seem an obvious agenda, possibly. If you've ever seen the slander against electric vehicles or Tesla, you'll believe that the fossil fuel companies are promoting an agenda.
You must have missed the "before it becomes common" part of the post you've replied to. No one is suggesting it's being used a lot. The ban is to stop it before it does.
Apollo Constellation Engine designed their propulsion systems for mega constellations to use mercury, which is what got PEER involved in this. Popular Mechanics also reported on their plans. Even if Apollo changed their minds since, that's a pretty significant 'near miss'.
By charging a tax upon fossil fuel use it discourages the use of fossil fuels. It uses the market to control pollution and companies would be forced to consider the full environmental cost of their actions due to it impacting the price.
But would it be enough to make airlines relinquish lucrative slots?
I personally feel the problem is more related to a bogus slot allocation/deallocation policy that forces an airline to fly an empty plane around to hold a slot. Could they not just remove that rather pointless requirement, and have some sort of market based approach to auction slots for a set period (say 1 year at a time)?!
> Could they not just remove that rather pointless requirement, and have some sort of market based approach to auction slots for a set period (say 1 year at a time)?!
The whole point of the current system is to combat old carriers that had local monopolies and refused to allow competition ( e.g. British Airways at Heathrow). Such a carrier could afford to spend money to prevent competitors from flying from their hubs, making themselves the only ( and thus more expensive) option.
The regulation is good, it just needs more fine tuning ( e.g. they should add a minimal passenger and/or cargo load, to make sure the flights aren't there just to keep the slots and are actually used).
They already did, the slot needs to "only" be used at 50% (it was 80-90% before), but obviously that isn't enough ( which couldn't have been easily predicted though, the pandemic is constantly evolving).
If you make fuel more expensive tickets will be more expensive and these empty flights will be a quite similar proportion of cost for airlines because the tax is the same with or without passengers.
You genuinely think a carbon tax would cost more than all the other costs associated with flying an empty plane? Pilots, cabin crew, ground services, fuel, depreciation of the aircraft, landing fees, ATC service fees, etc?
It wouldn’t be. The massive cost already isn’t stopping it.
Right, but that's just boilerplate you'll find on any such agreement. It means that they may be compelled legally to provide whatever information they collect and that you should be aware of that fact. It's not like they're secretly plotting ways to steal your secrets.
Count me on Team Crash Report, for sure. Anyone who's worked on any kind of project like this knows how valuable live user telemetry is. These features make software better for all of us. If you really don't like them don't use them and carefully audit the opt-out mechanism to make sure it works. Don't throw poop on the walls.
It is not about steal secrets. In almost every single privacy focused discussion, one side always built up this argument about "stealing secrets" in order to provide counter arguments.
Software should not collect information in the first place if it may get necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities to demand it. If the information is interesting for a third-party then the collection filter is not fine grained.
Live user telemetry does not have to mean Personal Data. If I know that 80% of users who download version 1.2.3 got a crash within 5 minutes, which living person can I identify with it? If I however get download logs of IP addresses, browser identity tags, file names, windows profile names, user directory names (and so on), then that cash report is providing unnecessary personal data.
If I have access to the crash reports, can I do business intelligence gathering? Can I discover information which gives stock market insights? If the answer is yes, then you are collecting too much information.
The only reason to not publish all crash reports openly on the web for anyone to download should be undiscovered security vulnerabilities. The data itself should be inert.
I assume you have not read these type of privacy policies before, but it's extremely common for web sites and online services to disallow children under 13, at least in the US because of COPPA compliance. In general, it is illegal for commercial entities operating in the US to collect data on children under 13 (although in some cases there are some exceptions). See for example the Github privacy policy which includes a similar clause: https://docs.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-privacy...
This is a perfect example of how the less money you charge, the worse your users will behave. Audacity is collecting crash reports. Plenty of software collects crash reports. Crash reports are necessary for building reliable desktop software.
For some reason free (gratis) software attracts the most entitled users ever. If I were in charge of Audacity I'd be inclined to charge a $1 "distribution fee" just to weed these users out.
I don't think this is an example of entitled users.
I think rather it is rather an example of an external company (Muse group) not understanding the community behind the piece of software they have taken over.
Why is the crash report collecting information about children, and not filtering out the information so only information about the software is collected?
While that is possible, I strongly suspect that in Audacity case it is because they are outsourcing the data collecting to google analytic services, and google uses the personal data as payment for the service.
They could do the data collection themselves and chose not to store personal identifiable information, in which case they can remove the legal boilerplate since it won't be needed. This suggestion naturally already exist in the GitHub issue.
I'm not sure what you mean, these laws aren't strictly concerning telemetry. Did you mean that telemetry is bad because children under 13 years old could accidentally use it? If so, that's the purpose of the law -- to prevent that. You can sue a company that is found to be unlawfully collecting data on children.
Generally, no, that's not what that law in the US is acknowledging. It doesn't make any special consideration for any definition of "spyware" or any other similar concept, it talks about all kinds of data collection, including ones that would be otherwise voluntary and beneficial for an adult. There might be some other US law that talks about that, but COPPA doesn't.
It’s audio editing software. Kids should be allowed to use audio editing software freely. If the law requires no-one collect data on kids, stop collecting data from kids rather than tell kids they can’t use the software. That way, adults and kids have the ability to use the software.
Leaving the data collection on all the time, makes data-collection part of the terms of use of the software. Which makes data-collection part of the business model. Which makes the software spyware. It is always watching you.
If I followed you around all day, you’d label me a stalker, If I didn’t approach you, didn’t proactively threaten you, didn’t tell anyone else what I knew about you, you could still legally bring sone level of force against me. How is constant telemetry any different?
If you think that collecting anything from your users that would put you in violation of COPPA should a child decide to use a local application against local data on a local computer is appropriate in any way, you probably ought to think again. There is no justifiable need, period.
I'm not sure what you mean. It can still be operated offline, in which case there is no telemetry sent. The analytics is just another service that you can use.
Audacity is not a website or online service. It's a completely offline audio editing program that has worked fine without telemetry for over twenty years. My kids were using it just fine, and now they're suddenly not allowed to and the only difference is the telemetry.
Yeah I’m kinda confused with the huge amount of anger surrounding this. Yes the text is scary, and it’s scary because being made aware that governments do have the power to make pretty much everyone turn over information they have on you isn’t fun. But this really isn’t Audacity’s problem specific.
This still requires the adversary to coerce your friends/family members into snitching on you - it involves effort and risk for them and doesn't scale.
Compromising a telemetry server is a one-off operation, would work at scale and is much less risky as the targets have no way to detect it.
With that, I would say good luck troubleshooting your server if you don't collect any logs whatsoever. I wonder how you would even protect against bruteforcing and DDOS attacks if you never stored IP addresses for any amount of time.
The issue here is that the server you downloaded the desktop app from is. You can reduce the amount of this you have to deal with by shipping a native app, but you can't get rid of it entirely as long as you plan to host a web site or a download of something, or if you plan to let users communicate useful things back to you (such as their hardware specs, OS version, crash reports, usage patterns, etc).
I'm personally not confused, just disappointed. Sadly I've seen far too many FOSS discussions that become overrun with irrationally paranoid rhetoric, sometimes bordering on the reactionary. This stuff is nothing new. You'd think that with the ability to quickly check the code and recompile it to get rid of any unwanted bits, that would make this kind of attitude go away, but for whatever reason it only seems to make it worse.
It's usually what happens when a software project has a lawyer involved. Copy left spooks people, anonymous contributions that may or may not be licensed spook people, lack of a privacy policy spooks people, etc.
In my opinion, if it's desired to have FOSS driven by individual contributors, the legal education aspect for each contributor is just as important as the contributors knowing how to code. Sadly I think some projects are way behind on that.
The division happened when they added telemetry to Audacity. Forking it is the only move forward. Time will judge the projects on their own merits. In the meantime, we can all at least rest well knowing the chance to defend against greed is available to us because of FOSS.
I understand that you feel upset that they added something that you didn't want, but you don't have to continue adding to the division and cynicism. Forking is not the only move, and I would actually suggest against it -- what you want is simply a build with the telemetry disabled. I don't think you want to throw away any other new features that aren't related to the telemetry (and in fact, you may still be able to indirectly benefit from it that way if it leads to some valuable product insights from them). So characterizing this as greed seems to not make so much sense. If they were getting super rich off this and not making any other improvements then maybe you could say that, and I would join you in saying hey, something's not right here, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
More exhausting than developing towards an entirely different (and often redundant) feature set without any help from upstream? That's what is usually meant by "fork." If you want the minimal effort option and you don't care about new features or security fixes at all, you can just stick with an old version, no fork is necessary there either.
Complacency about these things is how our freedoms get eroded. At some point these organizations need to be called out for such behavior to send a message to the rest of the corporate world looking to sink their claws into OSS acquisitions.
This specific complaint seems to be about data privacy, not about a freedom being eroded.
Also, since you can fork it, as has been previously mentioned, there seems to be no purpose in objecting to this type of FOSS acquisition. Worst case, the project ends as it was before the acquisition, with no corporate support or funding whatsoever, at which point it seems it won't make any difference whether there was a complaint or not.
> When do we share your information with others? ...When the law requires it. We follow the law whenever we receive requests about you from a government or related to a lawsuit.
Maybe I'm nitpicking here, but isn't Mozilla saying they will share any data they've already collected with law enforcement (which should be just basic telemetry stuff) while the Audacity EULA says it will actively collect data if compelled by law enforcement ? Doesn't that imply collecting any other type of data LE wants? Again maybe the exact wording makes no real difference but the way it is phrased can make it enough of a valid concern to "justify' a fork imo.
A free account on Adobe Acrobat online can sign PDFs, you don't need to have any kind of subscription. I'm not sure why the author felt they needed to subscribe if they were just signing PDFs. https://documentcloud.adobe.com
I know there's a tendency to trust Adobe because they're a large company, but how do you know what they're doing with your data? How do you know what they'll do with it at any time in the future? Is the other party okay with giving them your data? What if they decide to sell your data in the future?
Sure, you could presumably try to get to the bottom of this, but it's easier to just use a local option.
I first read it as that too. But upon more careful reading, I understood what he meant is that since Adobe has bad subscription practices, he doesn't want to use any Adobe products, even free ones. This type of signing (image signature as opposed to cryptographic signature) is supported in free Adobe Reader software too, on all platforms, including Android.
Inverted became inferior to me once I found out how to create negative pressure with the plunger on top of a cup. Same taste and process but without the flip.
care to elaborate?
isn't the whole point that water escapes before you manage to put the plunger in place?
or do you mean that you've gotten fast at putting the plunger on, and then leave it there for a bit before pushing it down? (in which case, do you skip the stirrer step?)
Yes, a minimal amount of water will escape but I haven't found it to negatively impact my brew. One of the best things about the aeropress is the experimentation and variety, so I encourage you to try this and see if it makes a difference. James Hoffmann has a video on this technique (jump to 2:00 to see the start of the recipe): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6VlT_jUVPc
I have both an N900 and a Pro1 and it's everything I wanted in a phone/device. I'm using self-compiled LineageOS on it right now and it is as "Linux-y" as I need and want, complete with a usable terminal and SSH apps.
I'm not sure why you haven't been able to get a review unit of the new Pro1-x model, but I'll get in contact with someone at f(x)tec for you.
One thing from the N900 that I really miss on the Pro1 is the ability to multi-boot different operating systems. I think at one point I had five OS's running on my N900, mostly off of various microSD cards - Maemo, Android, Meego, SHR and Plasma Mobile. For the Pro1 I'd settle for being able to dual-boot Sailfish and LineageOS, but as it is now you need to pick one or the other.
Many people in the community are getting around this limitation by running virtual machines of the various operating systems they want. With the modern processor (compared to the N900) and the 6GB of RAM, performance seems to be totally usable on the Pro1.
If all it takes to prevent the poisoning of an entire city's water supply is two employees, I certainly hope my governments are choosing to hire those two employees.
> (HTML+JS+CSS is even less efficient, but have somehow taken over thanks to Google and the like.)
Adobe themselves pushed for using open web tech. I was working at Adobe in AS3/Flex during the transition and they were going to great lengths to promote and encourage development of open standards.
