Where scrappy Berlin shines as the A+ example

Some interesting points:

That may mean that Amsterdam residents will have to “wait a little longer” during rush hour, motorists may spend longer at red lights, and locals may have to accept that same-day delivery is a thing of the past.

Cyclists will also have to adapt. Next year, the city will introduce streets where faster cyclists, often on e-bikes and fatbikes, can choose between the motorway or the bike path. Those who choose the bike path must adhere to a speed limit of 20 kilometers per hour.

For a city moving in the opposite direction: Change to the mobility law - Berlin CDU wants to abolish priority for cyclists

More of a classification question, but I'm really curious about what the metric would look like if we try to be systematic about it.

For context, there's several countries that are more or less famous for being geographically discontinuous. Top of the mind nowadays is Azerbaijan, whose sizeable territory of Nakhchivan has no land connections with the rest of the country. There's also Equatorial Guinea, whose capital city is on island which is smaller than the continental territory. That's the same for Denmark, although we seem to think of it less, because of the much smaller distances and significantly more connectivity. Then you have Indonesia which I currently think might be the most discontinuous country, with territory spanning across at least 4 major landmasses but which are shared with other countries.

But then you have countries such as Greece, Japan, or even Sweden, which are more or less archipelagic countries but do not stand out in the way Indonesia or Azerbaijan does.

How can we define a measure of geographic discontinuity that gives us a reasonable ranking? I would imagine we start with some measure that looks how much of the whole territory is in one contagious unit (less prominent main landmass = more discontinuity) but perhaps we also introduce average distance between units.

The cabinet approved the proposal for the creation of a digital platform, known as the e-kalathi (e-basket), that would list prices of 300 consumer goods in different supermarkets in April. The idea was to inform people during this period of high prices what was being charged for similar products in different shops, with the main emphasis being on food, baby items and household products.This would enable people to buy the most competitively priced goods.

It's no exaggeration that as someone raised on the island of Cyprus, I was astonished by how green the cities looked from above when I first travelled to Europe.

My first idea was to use the Gitea instance of the Free Software Foundation Europe, but T&Cs strongly encourage only projects with direct relation to the FSFE activities, so personal projects don't seem welcome.

The first-party Gitea platform seems to be in risk of becoming for-profit.

Edit: And in the end, it's back to good old Fedora with Xfce. I guess I'm an old man, fixed in my ways. Haiku was interesting, but not nearly as stable as needed. OpenSuSE with Xfce was rough, it requires more polish.

I've been a Fedora Linux user for a million years by now, and I haven't touched any other OS (outside of Windows 10 and 11 at work).

Lately I got a refurbished ThinkCentre from ca 2018 (7th generation Intel i5, 16GB RAM, Intel HD 630). The initial idea was to use it as a media PC but the small form factor ended up not being small enough for my living room.

Now I'm thinking of using it as a desktop PC for a while, to see if it can make my laptop be a portable machine again instead of always plugged, always on. If it doesn't work out, I'll use it as a home server.

Since this is all an experiment, I want to give a new OS a shot before I settle for the familiar Fedora.

OpenSuSE is the first on my list, but even from the LiveUSB I noticed that the software selection is more limited than I'm used to.

I'm thinking of giving HaikuOS a shot as well.

What else has been going on in the world of free OSes since 2007? What's one that you are excited about?

I have been living with depression since a teenager and after so many years, I recently finally started receiving psychotherapy (CBT). While I'm already seeing some modest changes in my thinking patterns, my therapist noted that in the last few weeks the severity of the condition is worsening and it might be a good time to talk with my primary care provider about antidepressants as a combination therapy.

This got a reaction out of me, specifically that I don't like the idea of chemically altering my mental state and losing access to what "I really feel" (as I perceive it).

I know that the logic behind this sentiment is not very solid, but we can't reason ourselves out of our feelings that easily. For me this is also challenging because I don't take any recreational substances that affect my mental state, so I can't tell to myself that it's like e.g. smoking weed only more targeted and supervised.

I'm curious if this sentiment is familiar to anyone else, and how you dealt with it (whether you decided for or against medication).

So, I will make no secret that I'm rolling my eyes at all of that marketing stuff that goes up every year. But I've been thinking, it doesn't have to be so superficial and pointless. Maybe there's some rare exception out there that took the opportunity to say or do something meaningful.

Did you come across a company or organisation lately that use the occasion to take some stance beyond feelgood buzzwords or implement a policy internally or in their area of operations that is of at least some importance?