Finding a feral cat among dense subalpine scrub and treacherous cliffs is like a morbidly satisfying treasure hunt.

Another episode in the (sometimes darkly amusing) soap opera of New Zealand's battle to eradicate the feral invasive species that are preventing its native birds from thriving.

This is a consistently excellent blog. Consider subscribing.

PPS: Please at least TRY to read the following (if possible, not just the title) with an open mind and in a spirit of tolerance. It was written in good faith by a Linux user who will be staying on Linux.

PPPS: Among all the mean-spirited downvoting and insults and calumny (hey, this is social media) I actually learned a few useful things from this discussion. Perhaps the highlight was the tip about an obscure crowdfunded project which really fits the bill. Too late this time but I'm hopeful such projects, including Pine and Framework, might be become more available and more affordable in future.

PPPPS: I do not reply to downvoters (after all, you're declaring you don't care what I have to say). Or to people who obviously have not read beyond the title. Sorry. My post is very clear and I cannot express what I wrote better. In summary: There is a worsening problem with Linux compatibility on low-end hardware, due to the decline of desktop computing and in particular to the insurgency of ARM and Mediatek. It may hurt to hear it but it's true and we should care about it. Thanks to those who offered constructive feedback.

I'm frustrated. Once again, I have had to buy a computer I didn't want in order to stay on Linux.

Some background. Compared to most people in this forum, I am a somewhat normal computer user. That is, I have not touched a mouse in decades, I use a small lightweight low-end laptop (which is not slow on Linux), and I do not take anything to pieces. To be clear, I'm a programmer and a massive FOSS idealist. But I've never been interested in hardware, and in this respect I'm a complete normie. Let's not forget that for most ordinary people, a "computer" these days is the tethered corporate toy in their pocket.

For me this slide away from free personal computing is now getting impossible to ignore.

• 20 years ago I could buy a laptop (a Fujitsu) from a major European electronics retailer which came with a Linux CD - a Linux CD! (Kanotix, a Debian variant).
• In the late 2010s, I had a nice choice of cheap Taiwanese Wintel netbooks. So there was a Windows tax to pay but at least the hardware worked fine.
• 4 years ago, the options were getting thin on the ground. For 400€ I could find only one Linux-compatible X86 laptop, made by Acer. And since I didn't have a Linux live USB, I had to (fake-) register the thing with Microsoft in order to get access to the damn web.
• Today, there's almost nothing left. Intel laptops have all but disappeared from the budget aisle, replaced by ARM-powered Chromebooks and, increasingly, big Android tablets with keyboards. Putting non-spyware Linux on these things is often possible, sort of, but it's a nightmare. You're back to the 2010 era of ROM-flashing on Android, using repos from random developers and wading through impenetrable forum discussions. It's a massive PITA. This is not the way computing should be done, and normal users will never do it even if they were capable. It's hardly secure either.

The geeky suggestion which I can hear coming, "buy a secondhand Thinkpad", is not a proper solution. It's a band-aid fix with a timeout (PS: meaning it's on the way to EOL). Hardware from the likes of Tuxedo and Framework is nice but too heavy (PS: correction, Framework is not heavy) and way too expensive for me. The Pinebook Pro is always out of stock.

And anyway, for years I have wanted to move from a laptop to a convertible tablet (like the Surface or Lenovo's Yoga and Duet lines) (PS: meaning the form factor pioneered by those models, the cheap options these days are invariably on ARM). It makes so much sense ergonomically and even in terms of maintenance. (Keyboards have moving parts. I have to change my Acer because it has a faulty keyboard which cannot be fixed except professionally at prohibitive cost. Crazy.) But none of these computers are easily compatible with Linux. It's possible, yes, but hardly simple.

I considered, for a fleeting moment, throwing in the towel. After 20 years.

And then bought yet another laptop, basically the same model as last time except a Chromebook. I know I'll get an OS I control onto it without too much stress. That's a relief. But I'm more worried than ever about how this story is going to end.

PS: I should have predicted the bitterness and negativity and cynicism I would provoke simply by sharing my thoughts and feelings in good faith. Social media is absolutely incorrigible. In the meantime I will of course be staying on Linux, as I thought I described.

Taken yesterday.

The backstory: I have now done over 3000 km of touring on this fat-tire Engwe e-bike since buying it last year.

Engwe's target market for this bike seems to be food-delivery riders and city-tour guides. People constantly tell me that it looks like a motorbike. In fact it's the EU-regs-respecting model (so: power-capped pedelec with no throttle). I have done lots of touring on regular bikes and I can say that riding this thing is more comfortable, but not radically. The suspension and tires help with bumps and the motor takes the edge off hills, basically.

The airport is in fact an airplane-storage park near Teruel, Spain. During international crises it fills up with furloughed jets, so it's currently quite full.

A touching portrait of a dirt-poor young female construction worker from Sichuan who became an unintentional celebrity on social media.

Source (Sixth Tone) is a Chinese state-funded soft-power outlet. That should not be relevant to this report, which is simply decent journalism.

Looking for some maintenance advice.

I'm about to embark on some touring. I don't have space to take more than one canned product. Is WD-40 what I need?

As I understand it from some research, WD-40 is by some magic both a degreaser and a lubricant. This is mysterious to me. In my mental model of chemistry, you degrease with detergent, not more grease. So now I'm imagining that WD-40 is a sort of "light grease" which dissolves "heavy grease". Is that right?

So if I can only take one product, is WD-40 it? PS: If not, then what? Also, is there a generic name for it, or cheaper similar products to look for which do the same thing?

PPS: The consensus seems to be that WD-40 is not a miracle product, by which really I meant "a single portable product that can somehow de-gunk and lubricate" and is less risky than what I was doing before: using chain oil for the lubrication and dish soap for the cleaning.

PPPS: This question was asked in the best possible faith. I have been a cyclist for decades and always been curious about this product. And yet still I get downvoted. What is about social media that makes people so toxic and mean-spirited? It's almost as mysterious as WD-40.

First time I've seen this. On an intercity train in Andalusia, Spain.

Doubly useful because they also serve to hold the bike in place. In France some trains have (lockless) racks with bungees which you pull over the bike.

Both ideas seem to be experimental replacements for the more common hanger racks (where you hang the bike by the wheel). Those were never great for tourists with paniers and they're becoming untenable in the era of weird-geometry bikes and, um, fat lazy electric ones like the one you see there.

Taken earlier this month on the Cabo de Gata (Cat Cape, literally) in Almería province, southeastern Spain. Almería itself is faintly visible on the far side of the gulf. Getting there involved a two-hour battle with a terrible headwind down on the plain. Rarely have I so appreciated the motor assistance on my (regs-respecting) pedelec bike.

PS: As can be seen, this is a desert region, and the Cabo de Gata is a particularly beautiful natural park. Many films have been shot there, including one of the Indiana Jones movies. It's one of the driest and sunniest places in Europe, which is partly why I am cycling there in December and not July.

NB: Sixth Tone is a Chinese state-owned soft-power outlet, a bit like an inverse Voice of America. The journalism steers away from politics and seems mostly legit.

Saw this oddity last month in Murcia province, Spain. A dedicated bike path that extends for over 30 km and appears to have zero users. It follows the service road of the main RM-1 highway from Murcia city all the way to the coast (just south of Alicante). The service road has almost zero traffic (I passed two cars in 20 km), rendering the bike path completely superfluous, hence its state.

An interesting even-handed article.

In Beijing’s view, whoever builds the clean-energy economy will write the rules of the next world order — just as the United States once did through oil, arms and the dollar. Decarbonisation, by this logic, is statecraft, not climate stewardship. Domestically, it doubles as an insurance policy, securing water, food, and energy on China’s terms before scarcity and climate shocks arrive.

There is perennial discussion about what fediverse servers (Lemmy or otherwise) to recommend to new users. I have a proposal, perhaps not very original but I haven't seen it made often.

Let's just recommend that newbies pick an instance that is located close to them geographically. That's to say: their country, their region, or (ideally) their town.

Some context. Personally, I am not totally sold on social media, federated or otherwise. The evidence is now pretty clear that it causes major social harms. One way it does this is by fuelling polarization around hot-button national and international debates, at the expense of local issues. Reviving democracy is going to mean boosting communities at a local level. This could be a small way to do that.

As part of an ongoing bike odyssey, I just did about 30km on a stretch of road with rather too many cars for comfort. That's to say, about a couple per minute in each direction. So hardly any, but still way too many for me.

The appearance of lights in the mirror, the rising din, the need to carefully keep a straight line to minimize risk, the rush of wind, the parting gift of NOx and PM10. As an aside, the pollution issue has always been my main objection to private cars, since it's so obviously unfair to eject your toxic effluent behind you. In the case of cigarettes, at least the smoker actually has to inhale the smoke before everyone else does!

Perhaps the most annoying of all: the motorists who want to help. They creep up behind you and hang around, waiting for a good moment to overtake even though there's not another car on the horizon. Often when this happens I'm actually riding on the hard shoulder, but no, it's not enough for them! "Get in the ditch so I have some more space, it's safer", they seem to say. When finally it's good enough, they (and often the tail of traffic they've accumulated) will step on the gas and leave me in a cloud of diesel fumes. Absolutely. Infuriating.

These are the kind of experiences that remind me why for many years I hardly got on a bike. For me, the main problem with cycling has never been the physical effort or the discomfort. It's the damn cars.