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  • 49 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: May 17th, 2022
  • UprisingVoltage@feddit.ittoWorld News@lemmy.world•Climate protesters try to break into Tesla's Germany factory, multiple people arrestedEnglish
    3125·
    6 months ago

    Electric cars do not address any of the main issues cars bring to our society, which are:

    • Pollution – Cars are responsible for a significant amount of global and local pollution (microplastic waste, brake dust, embodiment emissions, tailpipe emissions, and noise pollution). Electric cars eliminate tailpipe emissions, but the other pollution-related problems largely remain.

    • Infrastructure (Costs. An Unsustainable Pattern of Development) – Cars create an unwanted economic burden on their communities. The infrastructure for cars is expensive to maintain and the maintenance burden for local communities is expected to increase with the adoption of more electric and (someday) fully self-driving cars. This is partly due to the increased weight of the vehicles and also the increased traffic of autonomous vehicles.

    • Infrastructure (Land Usage & Induced Demand) – Cities allocate a vast amount of space to cars. This is space that could be used more effectively for other things such as parks, schools, businesses, homes, and so on. We miss out on these things and are forced to pile on additional sprawl when we build vast parking lots and widen roads and highways. This creates part of what is called induced demand. This effect means that the more capacity for cars we add, the more cars we’ll get, and then the more capacity we’ll need to add.

    • Independence and Community Access – Cars are not accessible to everyone. Simply put, many people either can’t drive or don’t want to drive. Car-centric city planning is an obstacle for these groups, to name a few: children and teenagers, parents who must chauffeur children to and from all forms of childhood activities, people who can’t afford a car, and many other people who are unable to drive. Imagine the challenge of giving up your car in the late stages of your life. In car-centric areas, you face a great loss of independence.

    • Safety – Cars are dangerous to both occupants and non-occupants, but especially the non-occupants. As time goes on cars admittedly become better at protecting the people inside them, but they remain hazardous to the people not inside them. For people walking, riding, or otherwise trying to exercise some form of car-free liberty cars are a constant threat. In car-centric areas, streets and roads are optimized to move cars fast and efficiently rather than protect other road users and pedestrians.

    • Social Isolation – A combination of the issues above produces the additional effect of social isolation. There are fewer opportunities for serendipitous interactions with other members of the public. Although there may be many people sharing the road with you (a public space), there are some obvious limitations to the quality of interaction one can have through metal, glass, and plastic boxes.

    (Batantly copypasted from the pinned thread on r/fuckcars)

  • UprisingVoltage@feddit.ittoLinux@lemmy.ml•Kaspersky analysis of the backdoor in XZ
    2·
    7 months ago

    Kaspersky has faced controversy over allegations that it has engaged with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB)—ties which the company has actively denied. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security banned Kaspersky products from all government departments on September 13, 2017. In October 2017, subsequent reports alleged that hackers working for the Russian government stole confidential data from the home computer of an American National Security Agency contractor via Kaspersky antivirus software. Kaspersky denied the allegations, reporting that the software had detected Equation Group malware samples which it uploaded to its servers for analysis in its normal course of operation.[13] The company has since announced commitments to increased accountability, such as soliciting independent reviews and verification of its software’s source code, and announcing that it would migrate some of its core infrastructure for foreign customers from Russia to Switzerland. In November 2020, Kaspersky finished relocating the data of its customers from Russia to Switzerland.[14][15] The company has also opened multiple transparency centers in Switzerland, Brazil, Canada, Spain and Malaysia which allow state agencies, government experts and regulators to review its source code.[16][17]

  • UprisingVoltage@feddit.ittoLinux@lemmy.ml•Kaspersky analysis of the backdoor in XZ
    71·
    7 months ago

    I was curious whether some scandal about data being sent to russian govt had emerged after the war, but apparently things are as they used to be.

    Mind you, AVs have a scary control over your system, and I totally respect not wanting to use one headquartered in Russia (and since the government security agencies have ties within those companies even in the “free world” (lmao) it’s safe to assume Russian govt has them inside Kaspersky too).

    With that being said, kaspersky is actually a multinational corporation present in many areas of the world, I wonder how much influence Moscow actuallt has over them.