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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!



  • I agree with the sentiment but I work in IT and yearn for when we will get rid of Microsoft, Amazon, and the tech giants.

    My mother won’t buy anything American at the grocery store but uses Amazon and Facebook every day.

    My coworkers won’t buy American products but use Windows, Teams, and Office every day.

    I may be using Linux, open source software, and avoid American tech when possible, but I still use Google and Gmail.

    At some point we may want to (or should) also extend that boycott to software and tech services. Have our governments, institutions and people not dependent on American corporations. It can only be good for our sovereignty anyway.





  • 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.