😂

Or you just block them.

I will note that in my experience the bot army from META is by far the most aggressive and destructive. At one point, traffic from their systems was tenfold all the others combined.

Hmm … I confess that I really appreciate and enjoy the company of the neighbours all around me … although there is one … let me work on that …

Very cute … I don’t even have space for the little rodent, let alone a distant cousin ten times its size.

I’m guessing that you’d need a big backyard for either … so I’m out.

I’m guessing in the same way as Bit Torrent and others before it … with big flaming headlines, politicians foaming at the mouth, lawyers rubbing their hands with glee and the world for the general public becoming a little bit more shit whilst the actual miscreants carry on with impunity on some other platform or get funded by venture capitalists who make everything legal but no less palatable.

Source: I’ve been here for a while.

I’m not familiar with how many telephones in Spain are landlines, but looking at Australia, where I am, the majority of connections don’t have an SLA battery, made even more power dependent because we have been rolling out fibre optic cable everywhere and the copper wire in the ground has been disconnected, preventing telephone exchanges from powering much of anything anymore.

The idea that generators will keep the essentials running is incomplete if not outright incorrect. Most of these systems have never been actually tested with an actual outage, look at Heathrow airport for a recent example.

At best a generator will run for up to 12 hours, and only if you have multiple generators and the fuel to run them will you have much in the way of energy security.

Of course if you’re already running on a generator then the picture is different, but even then, in the case of a country wide power outage, getting fuel for longer periods of time is going to be a challenge.

Do you mean this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical concept suggesting that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance; thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance.

Does it matter?

A polished turd is still a turd.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorodango

The news reports I’ve read suggest that it started at 6:33 am, hours before the actual outage.

Edit: I must be remembering this wrong, I can only find references to 9:30 am, not 6:33.

See: https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20250430-what-we-know-so-far-about-the-massive-blackout-that-hit-spain-and-portugal

It’s interesting that the “worst” corporations mentioned by others here do not include any media companies.

Perhaps you might contemplate why it is that they appear to be “invisible” in a discussion about damage to society.

Is it possible that the narrative around “evil companies” is told by media companies?

Off the top of my head in no particular order:

• sewerage pumps
• fresh water pumps
• telecommunications systems
• refrigeration equipment in homes, restaurants, hotels, factories
• transport infrastructure like street lights, traffic lights, railway crossing lights
• trains, consider for example control of signalling and switching, let alone electric trains
• fuel distribution like petrol pumps
• hospitals
• broadcasting like TV and radio
• aviation

Essentially society as we know it stops, at least for a while. Generators are used, but are often of limited use, since getting fuel to them is non-trivial and many are scaled for short outages.

Without knowing what happened in Spain, I can say that events like this can and do happen around the world. It’s likely that this will increase.

Given how interconnected the electricity grid is, I’m surprised that this didn’t cascade across Europe.

My gender goal is that we build a society where your gender matters less than your hair colour and that your hair colour is a matter of personal preference.

Here’s a better question:

Scientists. . how many laws have been gazetted that completely ignore or contradict actual science?

Here’s an idea

Cook double the rice you need for a meal and put half in the fridge for the next day.

Convenient, cheap and available from your own fridge.

Make sure you have warm Coke, are open in the morning and home deliver.

Only downside is that the 1080p monitor that’s currently got a full screen digital clock on it, facilitated by a recently dying Chromecast, will still be dying and the analogue clock attached to the hole in the Apple TV won’t allow me to see the time from the other side of the room in the dark.

I suppose I could strategically drill the hole and do both, but my hands aren’t that stable and my eyesight is fading, so other suggestions welcome.

As an aside, I just went hunting for the old Apple TV and haven’t yet found it, so there’s plenty of time before I have to commit either way.

You just reminded me that I have one. I’m going to see if I can repurpose it into a clock.

So … six months and nobody notices?

What’s the problem?

If only for a moment…