SpiceDealer

Ever since ditching car culture and joining the urbanist cause (on the internet at least but that has to change), I've noticed that some countries always top the list when it comes to good urbanism. The first and most oblivious one tends to be The Netherlands but Germany and Japan also come pretty close. But that's strange considering that both countries have huge car industries. Germany is (arguably) the birthplace of the car (Benz Patent-Motorwagen) and is home to Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. Japan is home to Toyota, Honda, Nissan and among others. How is it that these countries have been able to keep the auto lobby at bay and continue investing in their infrastructure?

Trying to move to escape America's car-centric hell. The Netherlands is pretty high on the list but I wanted to explore other options. How do the following countries and their cities fair in terms of urbanism:

-Ireland

-Spain

-Belgium

-France

-Denmark

-Portugal

-Sweden

I could list more but I'll be here all night.

We've all seen this "question" thrown around. It's a smear disguised as an inquiry meant to present climate activists and climate-conscious people as trying to take jobs away from "hard working" farmers. When talking about climate issues with people, this one of the most common responses I get. But here's the thing: I know it's a bullshit question but I don't how to explain why it's a bullshit question. Any help? Thanks in advance.

I'm trying to get a job in IT that will (hopefully) pay more than a usual 9 to 5. I'm been daily driving Linux exclusively for about 2 1/2 years now and I'm trying to improve my skills to the point that I could be considered a so-called "power user." My question is this: will this increase my hiring chances significantly or marginally?

My original question was "How do we disincentivize the purchase of pickup trucks/SUVs" but then I thought it would be better to approach the larger problem of car dependency and car ownership. One option is, of course, to create public transit infrastructure and improve it where it already exist. This, however, doesn't change the fact that some will still choose to drive. What would be the best ways to discourage people from owning personal cars?

Yesterday, I made this post about getting my old Xbox 360 controller working wirelessly on Manjaro. The comments suggested using xpadneo- more specifically xpadneo-dkms. xpadneo-dkms only works Xbox One and Series X controllers. Doing a little more research, I came across xboxdrv. I installed the AUR package but gave me an error message saying that I was missing two dependencies: scons and glib2-devel. scons installed with but glib2-devel has been a bit tricky. If I used yay -S glib2-devel it returns this error: -> No AUR package found for glib2-devel there is nothing to do. If I use sudo pacman -S glib2-devel it returns this error: error: target not found: glib2-devel. I could go on but we would be here all day. Any help? Thanks in advance.

I was going through my old stuff and found an Xbox 360 controller and the wireless PC receiver that was once a requirement before the bluetooth-enabled controllers. I remember using it when I was a Windows user but I'm completely stuck on how to use it under Manjaro. Any advice? Thanks in advance.

I'm thinking of buying a Pixel tablet secondhand for my wife who is a graphic designer. I'm trying to move her away from propriety software but I don't any of any apps for graphic design on F-Droid. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

I'm trying to build a workstation for my wife who is a graphic design by trade. She has only ever used Window so I thought that this would be a great way to introduce her to Linux. I just have some questions about getting this project off the ground.

1. Am I better off buying a cheap, prebuilt desktop and adding some extra parts like a GPU and more memory or building it from the ground up?

2. For a distro, I was thinking about Linux Mint but would other distros be better options?

3. Other than GIMP, what are some essential software for graphic design and digital art on Linux?

I'm trying to mount one of my SSDs on my systems but it gives me this error when trying to mount from File System: "Failed to mount "New Volume" - No object for D-Bus interface." If I go into Gparted and check the description of the device in question it gives me this: $MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 3). Failed to mount '/dev/nvme0n1p2': Input/output error NTFS is inconsistent. Run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot it TWICE! The usage of the /f parameter is very IMPORTANT! No modification was made to NTFS by this software.

Failed to open '/dev/nvme0n1p2'.

$MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 3). Failed to mount '/dev/nvme0n1p2': Input/output error NTFS is inconsistent. Run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot it TWICE! The usage of the /f parameter is very IMPORTANT! No modification was made to NTFS by this software.

Unable to read the contents of this file system! Because of this some operations may be unavailable. The cause might be a missing software package. The following list of software packages is required for ntfs file system support: ntfs-3g / ntfsprogs.

If I run fsck -l in the terminal It returns this:

fsck from util-linux 2.40.1 e2fsck 1.47.0 (5-Feb-2023) ext2fs_open2: Bad magic number in super-block fsck.ext2: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks... fsck.ext2: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/nvme0n1

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a valid ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 <device> or e2fsck -b 32768 <device>

/dev/nvme0n1 contains DOS/MBR boot sector MS-MBR Windows 7 english at offset 0x163 "Invalid partition table" at offset 0x17b "Error loading operating system" at offset 0x19a "Missing operating system"; partition 1 : ID=0xee, start-CHS (0x0,0,2), end-CHS (0x30,254,63), startsector 1, 4294967295 sectors' data

Any advice? Thanks in advance.

Edit: I have since solved this issue with the help of @[email protected]. For anyone having a similar problem, the comment thread that led to the eventual solution is down below.

If you ever find yourself tempted to buy a truck and/or SUV, just remember one thing: they're not worth it. They're a societal nuisance. They're a massive pollutant. The maintenance, repair, and insurance will cost you a whole lot more. Aside from the aforementioned pollution, They're overall environmental impact is egregious. These monstrosities are best left alone.

If you ever have to do any sort heavy work, rent one instead. Want to live that outdoors lifestyle? A sedan and/or hatchback will do. Just buy a bike and roof rack. Got a family? Again, sedan and/or hatchback will do but also consider a station wagon. Better yet, buy a cargo bike like the Urban Arrow or the Dutch bakfiets. These are way better options to those climate-changing abominations.

I know what I'm writing isn't anything groundbreaking but I'm writing this mostly get something off my chest in relation to a dream I had last night. The dream itself was quite boring: I was driving around in a new Ford Bronco. The thing was that, in the dream, I was quite happy about it. This happy feeling was still felt when I woke up. For a brief moment, I was thinking about buying a Bronco. I soon returned to reality. But I'm not going to lie; the temptation was strong. The temptation was made stronger by nostalgia. I grew up with these kinds of vehicles. My dad worked in labor-intense, blue collar jobs that used trucks. He even owned some himself. But, once again, they're not worth it.

Firstly, I'm aware that my question gives the impression that I hold anti-urbaninst views but that's not the case. If such a measure were to be implemented I would fully support it. I'm merely curious as to what would happen to emergency services if a total ban on personal, motorized vehicles was enacted. I'm especially curious to how cities or even countries with low car dependency handle EMS.