Battery fires get more news coverage not because their more common, but because they are so catastrophic when they do happen. As for comparisons to gasoline, I’d be leaving the tank empty so that’s not a concern for me.
I would prefer not to use waste rubber and money thicker tyres carrying around a huge battery I don’t need. Worst case I can use those same tires on a car with a lighter battery.
Good point about regenerative braking, I forgot about that.
I’ve been hoping to get a PHEV because I don’t want some 300km-range battery (nor the resulting fire risk, tyre wear, or brake wear), but there aren’t any really cheap plug in hybrids. I’m probably gonna be stuck getting a used EV with an oversized battery when my sister’s old car dies.
I, as an Australian, have been saying all along that the social media ban should focus on the addictive and problematic features of social media, rather than a blanket ban. Hell there was a good quote I saw recently on Bluesky by Lance MacDonald:
“People saying “kids will find a way around this” have no idea what “this” is. When it comes to YouTube, there’s nothing for them to find a way around. The government is forcing all kids to have raw unfiltered access to YouTube. The only thing they’re removing is parental controls.”
The EU is at least acknowledging the harmful elements. Here’s hoping they go “ban on the harmful features of social media without age verification”. Then again if the Google Play Store can serve as a middleman on that front then Google will get their wish of being an internet gatekeeper and these features will be enabled by default even for adults (which it shouldn’t be).
Finally, something decent to come out of the surveillance state.
I tried that, Windows FOR SOME FUCKING REASON keeps opening new holes in the firewall anyway.
I’m not really interested in maximum privacy, at least right now. I’m slowly moving there though.
I don’t see many ads, and the ads I do see are never food items. I think this canned rambutan was the first food ad I’ve seen in years.
I can’t even fathom this being a coincidence.
Except the only sites I visited where I mentioned rambutan were Duckduckgo, Startpage, and Wikipedia.
This isn’t a matter for fingerprinting. I haven’t directly visited any sites about rambutan other than Startpage, Duckduckgo, and Wikipedia.
I should’ve known that but forgot. You’re right, my ISP shouldn’t be able to see anything but that I visited Wikipedia. They wouldn’t know that I searched for rambutan.
And it also could not. Either way it wasn’t active at the time so it’s down to whether my ISP is selling it.
Firefox only stores the time of my most recent visit so I don’t have that information anymore, so let’s just assume I went to YouTube immediately afterwards.
If my exit point is my ISP, and my ISP is selling my data to advertisers (hypothetically), then a VPN would make a difference. That’s why I mentioned it.
AdGuard, ProtonPass, TamperMonkey, Time Tracker, and 10ten have those permissions. The others don’t. I don’t think any of these extensions would be able to function without these permissions.
I use AdGuard rather than uBlock Origin for adblocking, because it allows me to opt-in and only block ads when they are aggressive enough to be annoying. But I’ve not been trying to minimize fingerprinting. The issue is just that everything I used in this instance came with either a tacit or explicit promise not to track me and I don’t know which is lying.
Other extensions I use are:
September 2025
I had removed all but Duckduckgo and Startpage from my browser.
My browser extensions are a good angle. If they’re selling my data to fund themselves that’d explain some things.
Apparently Startpage and Duckduckgo use contextual advertising (rather than targeted advertising) so the advertisers on an unrelated website shouldn’t know I was looking up rambutan.
Oh, looking it up they do come to about the same weight in the end (information that was very difficult to source BTW). Guess that eliminates much of the entire point of this. All I would need is 80km of range at most so I’m put off by all these cars offering 500km that I don’t want or need.
I guess an old EV is probably the better option. With the added advantage that I’ll probably get physical controls instead of a damn touch-screen.