Nah, he’s a cool guy. Everyone around enjoys his company. A little bit of the philosopher of the town.

He does not work, if that is what you mean by giving something in return. However he also does not use many things. We live in a rich country and things are plentiful. What he gets is either stuff that people throw away or that they are happy to give him.

Everyone gets free healthcare in Spain. No matter whether you do pay taxes or not, as long as you’re a resident. There’s places where they offer showers for free in town, however I believe he doesn’t use those places and just washes in the river. To survive the cold of the winter, he has the tent and blankets. To be fair, it doesn’t get too cold where I live. It never snows. The guy goes around in shorts and sandals all year round, doesn’t appear to suffer too much cold. In fact he often complains he has to leave the tent half opened because of heat.

The place where he set up tent is private and owned by someone. It’s a small spot in the woods. Nobody could ever care less. Police can not kick him out because the place is private, and I guess the owner doesn’t give a damn and would rather have someone live there in peace rather than kick them out for no reason. He’s now been staying in that spot for over seven years. I’ve been in the place a few times as he invited me for lunch, it’s pretty nice.

Now, I’m not romanticising anything. This is not a lifestyle I would conduct. I know this is possible and works out because I know people who live this way and they are happy.

I guess tarp is what I meant.

I have a good friend of mine who may be related to this comic. He was a trucker and lost his job in the 2008 crisis. After that he decided he did not want to get a job anymore.

He set up a tent in the woods and lives there. He goes down town to read books every day and people give him some money. He has food, he has his place full of books and with the money he gets he can buy some wine to enjoy the day. Cool guy to be around and have nice chats.

He’s got a good life he enjoys. What should he plan for? If he ever gets sick (and with his lifestyle he really doesn’t get sick) he can go to the hospital and they’ll treat him for free. He’s got more clothes and stuff he may ever need as people just throw stuff away and he collects it. In fact he gifted me clothes, backpacks, pans and other stuff.

I do not think he needs to plan much more to maintain his lifestyle. I mean, some planning is good. I know he took down a few trees as he’s planning to make a teepee to have a better kitchen area. But I don’t think much more planning than that would significantly improve his life.

I am convinced editors got the joke and now shuffle reviewers around just so that the worst one is reviewer 2.

Anything that involves statistical mechanics is just black magic. There should be a Nobel prize just for people who are able to wrap their mind around it.

Me: oh it’s a reaction scheme, so they start with this and end up with this. I’ll assume everything in the middle is correct and they get what I asked them.

Also you harvest them every two weeks. Want to sell them already? Just stick them under a plastic carp for a couple of days and they’ll be ripe and yellow.

The bad part is loading trucks of bananas is hard work, those things are heavy.

Are you advising breaking the law just because nobody checks?

I’m pretty sure GDPR requires websites to abide to user requests to delete their data. You may wish to review that with your company.

Unless it’s for salad, I just run them under some water. Same for potatoes.

Time is too short for peeling vegetables.

Fair enough, prioritise people who actually work and do things. They deserve housing before anyone else.

Then also people who do not work and make money off of others people’s work may have a house.

Would not advise Debian to a new user. Old packages and difficulties installing non free software may frustrate people.

I did use Debian as my daily driver and I have it in a few servers, it is a very good system. But to the common user stability is not the priority which should prevail over everything else.

General use package? Sure Specialized package to do something specific in a specific field? Good luck.

I still have flashbacks of installing a c++ library which had to be transpired (or whatever the term is) to c# for another library to work, and having to go manually fix several function and type declarations manually to make it work. And we are talking about the golden standard library in the field…

I at times have to install completely undocumented software. I love ccmake as it lists all available options. I guess there are other ways, but that makes it so easy.

Then it’s just a couple of days figuring out all necessary libraries.

How do you have more available space on your machine than on your nas? You can exclude directories easily with rsync, but in this case the best solution to me feels like buying an additional drive to stick into your nas.

Rented a flat from a family for 3 years. The flat had not been renewed in over 60 years, but I was alright with that. The flat had several problems, they never wanted to fix.

One day the electrical system starts going out over and over again, fuses would burn every few days. I had to tell them that in case of fire they’d be responsible for everything I had in the house before they agreed they should fix the electric system.

Since they were going to fix the electric system, they decided to do a bit more work and change the floor and a few things more. They wanted to increase the rent 50% to account for these improvements; even though that is illegal I accepted, since they were in fact improving the flat.

I had to move out for two months while the works were going on. One week before the end of the works, the flat was really not done yet. I asked several times whether it would be ready, because I’d need to find and accomodation in the meanwhile. I asked for a discount of half a month so that I could cover expenses and because nobody knew when they would actually complete the works.

The day before I was supposed to get back into the flat, they decided that I was posing way too many conditions and kicked me out. They decided to keep the safety deposit because a plastic floor old over 60 years had started cracking. 8 months later, they still have some boxes of stuff which is mine but never have time to meet me to give it back to me.

Time has passed and I still have to go to a lawyer, because I the meanwhile I had a bunch of trouble to solve. I’m sure I can win a trial against them, but even if I do win the trial I’ll have gone through a bunch of trouble just to get my safety deposit back. I’ll be doing it just because they need to fuck off, but still…

Now, most people renting places were I live are exactly like this. It is not big corporations, it people who got one or maybe a few flats on rent.

Professors started writing books for the students to study. Will students get smarter or stop thinking?

Oh, that is great pricing then compared to what I’m seeing now. However, in here 4 years ago car prices were much lower, even during COVID.

I’ll explain a few things which may not be obvious. When I say lowest price available I mean you’re buying a car which is over 20 years old directly from the owner. The most likely reason the owner is selling it is that it needs some repairs, and he decided he does not want to bother and is getting a new one. Repairs will likely be 1,000€ upfront, you may be lucky and spend a little less; but that is unlikely.

Someone may consider that it may be worth spending a bit more in order to get a more reliable car with a longer life.

Car prices went up very much: my mother bought a car for 500€ 8 years ago and is now considering selling it for 3,000€.

I don’t know whether this is the same in the US, it may very well be that people just want new shiny cars. In here, I know many people who have been working for over 20 years who wish to change car but are now screwed because it is not feasible with their finances.

In my experience, used cars always need immediate repairs to get them running. That is what I’d expect from a car I’d pay 2,000€ now. I’d assume an immediate payment of another 2,000€ in repairs to get it running. Probably you can run it immediately, but with several problems which will quickly deteriorate its life span if you don’t do that.

It would be different if you were to buy a refurbished car, but those are more expensive.

The difference in price anyway accounts for the high difference in prices between my country and most parts of the US. I live in a cheap European country, the US is way more expensive. I do not know car prices in the US, but if price difference with other things I do know of stands, I would not be surprised for a 50%-100% increase in prices compared to the ones I know.