Mass transit doesn't solve the problem of high rent prices, unfortunately.

The cost of having a car is much less than the cost of renting an apartment in a large city. And you usually don't need to pay for parking in rural areas, everyone has a driveway or a garage, and many places have free parking.

Because rural areas have smaller population density, there are fewer passengers. In such places, there are usually fewer routes, bigger interval between buses, no service during nights and/or weekends. If you need to go somewhere where there is no direct bus line, you may need to take a long detour. Running buses where there are few passengers is uneconomical: an empty bus uses more fuel than a full car. Bicycles can help, but not everyone is fit enough to ride long distance. Also people don't want to ride bicycles during rain, snow or heat. In such places, most people have cars. At least there is no shortage of parking space.

I returned with four beer boxes of about 15 kilogram each, which is about 60 kilograms, a full load of the trailer.

Did you try riding uphill with that much load? In hilly places with steep inclines, a bicycle is almost useless, because it is easier to walk uphill than to ride.

Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin, Vienna and Paris are large cities. If you try to run as many buses in a rural area, they will be empty most of the time. If you try to have as many supermarkets as in a large city, they will be empty too.

Also, all of those cities have a mild climate. In a harsh climate, even walking to a bus stop is untenable for some people.

Not everyone can afford a place in a large city.

Running buses in rural areas just doesn't make economic sense. There are just too few people, buses are running empty most of the time, buses are rare and bus stops are far away. Also, in those rural areas many people don't have supermarkets within walking distance. Did you ever try to bring an entire shopping cart full of groceries home by bus? Because that's how much a family can consume in a week.

This article could have been several times shorter.

The best way to opt out is by not using GitHub. Also opts you out of Copilot and a bunch of other stuff.

It's not just cards. Many banks today require using a mobile app for online banking, and those apps require an Apple- or Google-certified device and an Apple or Google account. While it is possible to open those accounts under a false name (the apps are free so you don't need to enter payment info), this is still an absurd amount of leverage the US has on everyday people's activities in other countries.

It's about time.

The article doesn't say what the rules are, so I did some searching and found this:

According to the rules:

• Political advertisements must be made available with a transparency label and an easily retrievable transparency notice. These must clearly identify political advertisements as such and provide some key information about them, including their sponsor, the election or referendum to which they are linked, the amounts paid, and any use of targeting techniques.
• Targeting political advertising online will be permitted only under strict conditions. The data has to be collected from the data subject and it can be used only after the data subject have given explicit and separate consent for its use for political advertising. Special categories of personal data, such as data revealing racial or ethnic origin or political opinions, cannot be used for profiling.
• To prevent foreign interference, there will be a ban on the provision of advertising services to third country sponsors three months before an election or referendum.

The second point seems to be the most painful. Meta is all about nonconsensual data collection and targeting.