There's a reason for the lack of widespread public transportation in North America, and that's scale. European countries are literally the size of US states. Texas (the second largest state) is almost twice the size of Germany, and nearly three times the size of the UK. In fact the only European country larger than Texas is Russia.

The more interesting number is population. While Germany is about half the size of Texas, they have almost three times the population. More people moving in the same direction, with less empty space between destinations makes mass transportation not only more practical, but a necessity.

Fewer people traveling to destinations more spread out is what lead to the automobile culture in the US. You could drive through multiple European countries in the time it would take to cross Texas.

Now for an interesting factoid. You could fit the entire world population (8bn) into Texas, and each person would still have ~86 square meters (925 sq ft) to themselves.

Canada? They can do better with mass transportation, simply because more than 85%of their population lives within 100 miles of the US border. Despite being the second largest country in the world, they have population densities similar to European countries.

I say do whatever you can to avoid ads. It's not just about the wasted time and bandwidth. I work in IT. I get regular calls from people that got malware from a clickbait ad. My SOP is a cleaning, a good adblocker, and a TedTalk on avoiding malware vectors. If Google can't be bothered to check ads and ad links for malware, they have no right forcing ads on me.

Work pc is windows 11, secured with pluton. WSL is a good replacement for cygwin in my use case. I get access to my favorite tools, and it feels more like Linux.

Honestly, I'm happy to see Microsoft embracing Linux & Android.

I think those are called death throes.

death throes noun : the violent movements and noises that are sometimes made during passing.

The doctor can wave any/all that insurance doesn't cover. And/Or offer a payment plan.

Jerboa was doing fine for me until Jerboa got updated beyond the Lemmy instances I've been browsing (which aren't updating because the new Lemmy release removes the captcha, which then prevents new sign ups). Now Jerboa says the biggest Lemmy instance is below the minimum version Jerboa supports, and refuses to open the instance. Helluva bump in the road...

There are 18 states that have followed suit, providing for deletion requests. The latest being Tennessee, which goes into affect July 1.

The following is from Data Guidance

On 11 May 2023, the Tennessee Governor signed the TIPA into law, which shall enter into force on 1 July 2025. The TIPA sets out obligations for businesses covered by its scope, such as risk assessments, data minimisation requirements, and obtaining opt-in consent for processing sensitive personal information, and establishes consumer rights, including the right to know, access, correction, deletion, and data portability, as well as a right to opt out of the sale of personal information, targeted advertising, and profiling.

As a Linux home user that uses windows for work, I recommend you start by debloating your windows. I prefer the Powershell script found here. There are multiple options for debloating windows on github, some also include tools to disable telemetry. I prefer more control over what telemetry gets disabled, and use O&O Shutup to manage that separately.

Then install a few Linux distros in a free hypervisor (Hyper-V/VirtualBox/VMware Player) on your lean windows. Note, Hyper-V is only avaliable on Pro versions of windows. Experiment until you find a Linux distro you are comfortable with. Build your confidence before you take that jump, and you'll be more likely to stick with it.

If you still find you may occasionally need windows, you can always dual boot, or run windows inside a hypervisor on Linux.

There are 18 states now that have data protection laws modeled after NIST that include allowances for data deletion requests.