Few of you might know today it is election day for the Republic of Moldova. Moldovans have to elect the president, as well as answer to the question of whether Moldova should change its Constitution for a future EU membership. While the election results seem to be pretty clear in favor of the current, pro-european president Maia Sandu:  Things are different regarding the vote for the referendum:  The "Da" yellow bar, for someone who does know a bit of Russian, means yes (*Da* is actually one of the few words that Romanian and the Slavic languages have in common). The blue bar on the right means *No* and as you can see is a bit longer as of now. These are just the preliminary results, as votes are being counted as we speak. The hope comes from the urban centers, where votes are still to be counted, and more people support the European direction than the rural areas (Although at the current growth rate, the Yes camp doesn't seem to be hitting the 50%+1 mark) and the diaspora which has a solid majority in favor of the revision of the constitution:  As I understood, the diaspora vote will only account for something like 5-10% of the total result (which is a bummer, since the diaspora has increased a lot in the latest years), it will not be the average (I'll update this part of the post if things are different). Why is this important? ---------- Moldova is a small country, sandwiched between the war-torn Ukraine, and the already EU and NATO member Romania. Its current land and some more which is part of Ukraine, (also known as Bessarabia) belonged to the medieval-era Principality of Moldova, which lost it to the Tsarist (Russian) Empire in 1812. That Moldova later united with Wallachia to form the modern-day Romania in 1859. After WWI, Bessarabia united with Romania and stayed so until the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact between Nazi Germany and the USSR in 1939, when Romania retreated its administration following a Soviet ultimatum. The current borders of modern Moldova were drawn by them, as it was only an administrative province. Nowadays, compared to Ukraine and Georgia, Moldova is the EU candidate in Eastern Europe which is the most advanced on the path to accession. The referendum has currently passed the threshold for validation, which means that enough people have voted, irrespective of their option. If the majority of the votes are no, it will be a huge blow to Maia Sandu and her pro-European program. Besides that, the economic situation might get worse with some foreign investors fleeing the country. It is highly likely that Maia Sandu herself will even lose the elections in the 2nd turn - which would bring even more trouble for Moldova and for Ukraine, which already has two hostile neighbors (Russia and Belarus). If the referendum does pass, but with a small majority, there will be room for contestation, and it will be a huge headache going forward. **It is necessary that the referendum will pass with an as high percent of *Yes* votes as possible, in order to eliminate any doubt concerning the European integration of Moldova**. If you've reached all the way here reading this, thank you! Here in Romania it is 01:28 AM Monday morning, just like in Moldova, so the polling stations have closed a while ago (my Friendica node also seems to currently have a 2-hour delay, so you might see this post even later when I'm already sleeping). But across the Atlantic, voting booths should still be open. As anyone has seen with the Brexit, the results of a referendum can hardly be overturned, if at all. If you have any friend or acquitance from Moldova, go tell them to go out there and vote, and vote **Yes** no matter the other option they're choosing for president (I hope they vote for Maia Sandu tho, but I believe in the free will of the others). There is no way one could choose "No", absolutely no way! By choosing this, they will choose for their country to have relations **with a country under international embargo**. Source of the pics/realtime info: [Referendum](https://pv.cec.md/cec-template-referendum-results.html), [Presidential Elections](https://pv.cec.md/cec-template-presidential-results.html) (it's basically the same page but I made it easier for you since it's only in Romanian and Russian. To view the diaspora votes select *Externe* in the drop-down above the map of Moldova.
petrescatraian
1d ago
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@0x815 wow. This is actually comforting to know. It seems we haven't lost our direction, at least yet...
petrescatraian
2d ago
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@tardigrada it isn't escalation if Russia does it
petrescatraian
5d ago
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93%
@14th_cylon they're using duckduckgo though.
petrescatraian
6d ago
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@Pyflixia This one might be a very obscure thing, but back when I was in high school, I used to download music from a website called mp3ostrov.rucom (edit: it was .com, apparently). Of course, the website was in Russian and I couldn't understand a damn thing, so I had to resort to the Chrome translation for it (Or I guided myself with the icons). But it had so much music on it, and it was really easy to get. And whatever I could not source from there, I downloaded from YouTube, but the downloader I used had too many ads.
petrescatraian
1w ago
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100%
I think the West as a collective should at least stop being so passive and draw some red lines itself.
petrescatraian
2w ago
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@MrMakabar @sunzu2 less than 5 months left...
petrescatraian
2w ago
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90%
@LaFinlandia Assholes! They more than certainly want to make sure the right person wins the election, before postponing that indefinitely.
Hope the orange man will be beaten decisively at the ballots or things in all Eastern Europe will be terrible.
petrescatraian
2w ago
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100%
@LaFinlandia Every single day, the brutality and the malice of the Russian army never ceases to amaze me (in a bad way)
petrescatraian
2w ago
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@Varyk Unfortunately the YouTube video is not my upload, the uploader has to add them afaik.
And given the video is a few days old, I think this is a re-upload. Probably the channel owner re-uploads these videos regularly so he can keep a low profile.
[youtube.com/watch?v=xttRKOFuoK…](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xttRKOFuoK0) [Subtitles can be downloaded separately from here](https://www.opensubtitles.com/en/all/search-movie/q-osdb:36104/hearing_impaired-hearing_impaired-1/machine_translated-machine_translated-1/trusted_sources-trusted_sources-1)
petrescatraian
2w ago
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100%
@BarHocker If you don't find one, as an alternative, you could buy a set of 4 rechargeable batteries and use and recharge them interchangeably, so you can always have a set of 2 spare batteries at hand when the other 2 get discharged.
petrescatraian
3w ago
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100%
@0x815 just like in any totalitarian regime...
petrescatraian
3w ago
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100%
@BarHocker I guess you also want to use your mouse while charging, right?
petrescatraian
3w ago
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100%
@BarHocker There are likely still mice using standard AAA batteries out there.
petrescatraian
3w ago
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100%
@BrikoX voter bribe sometimes happens in my country too (or at least there were documented cases in the past 35 years since we had free elections). But candidates themselves expressly telling people they would pay them to vote in a way or another is... a totally different level.
petrescatraian
3w ago
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100%
@Swedneck trams are generally designed to transport people, that's why lines usually go to the densest areas. And they're also a more local type of transport, so these would generally have to wait for the regular trams to leave the stops before going ahead. Or you would likely need lots of switches to allow for the cargo trams to overpass the passenger ones. Clearly not practical, although nice as a concept. For cargo, trains are the best solution.
[wired.com/story/energy-act-fou…](https://www.wired.com/story/energy-act-foundation-ukraine-russian-invasion-solar-yuliana-onishchuk/)
petrescatraian
3w ago
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100%
@Faydaikin Eh, there were some efforts in the '90s-2010s to make things less dangerous, but it now seems that everyone moved away from these smh
Too bad my netbook is dead. Don't know if I can find a replacement motherboard for it... [](https://libranet.de/photos/petrescatraian/image/198134474266f3ea4ea2a62742235219) [](https://libranet.de/photos/petrescatraian/image/450947206866f3ea4dd159e634549489)
[studiolo.online/2024/08/24/bor…](https://studiolo.online/2024/08/24/border-marks-a-project-at-the-border-of-cities-and-times/)
[arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/0…](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/music-industrys-1990s-hard-drives-like-all-hdds-are-dying/) Seems like someone needs to pirate their content back.
[english.elpais.com/internation…](https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-09-03/elderly-romanian-woman-used-amber-nugget-worth-over-1-million-as-a-doorstop-for-decades.html)
[english.elpais.com/internation…](https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-09-03/elderly-romanian-woman-used-amber-nugget-worth-over-1-million-as-a-doorstop-for-decades.html)
([Source](https://www.facebook.com/brilliantmaps/posts/pfbid0Ws3hK8fUM1S75AkXK5QFLn8HtGNNi5ubEJtS6cJdmVLCRFiAgXscLaA5Dbj5vuF5l)) 
[euromaidanpress.com/2024/08/19…](https://euromaidanpress.com/2024/08/19/frontline-report-russia-initiates-pow-exchange-talks-after-ukraine-captures-2000-russian-soldiers-in-kursk-oblast/) Apparently it takes 2000 at minimum for them to give a damn.
[euromaidanpress.com/2024/08/19…](https://euromaidanpress.com/2024/08/19/frontline-report-russia-initiates-pow-exchange-talks-after-ukraine-captures-2000-russian-soldiers-in-kursk-oblast/)
([Source](https://scavengedluxury.tumblr.com/post/758852505983696896)) 
[Source](https://www.facebook.com/100067769341553/posts/816391703963134/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v) (FB) 
([Source](https://threads.net/ap/users/17841401746480004/post/18055149988663750/)) 
[meduza.io/en/feature/2024/08/0…](https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/08/07/i-put-myself-in-this-trap)
([Where I first found this](https://www.facebook.com/100053570550513/posts/pfbid0NSsLc2vg4WEEQPgeeKMecc4nAryiL6p5y9ij5Vxx8c2f2SJHuyEx6M1UGiCt1RTNl/)) 
More of a showerthought, but still. Yesterday, I just pulled out from the dead my [opendesktop](https://www.opendesktop.org/) account and discovered that they are now offering multiple online services as well: There is GitLab, Mastodon and Nextcloud for pretty much anything you want. I, myself, am not a developer, so the most useful for me would be the latter two - specifically Nextcloud, where they offer a whopping (for me) 5 GB free storage. I am not new to Nextcloud, as my Friendica node admin also provides a Nextcloud instance with some storage available, and the availability to increase it by mounting external storage sources, such as Amazon S3, WebDAV or even other Nextcloud mounts. For note-taking, I am using [Notable](https://notable.app/) and keeping my notes in `.md` files, as this allows me to use just about any program I want to edit them on other devices (or switch from it seamlessly if I don't like it), but the way it works is to have a subfolder called `notes` on every "data directory" that you point it to. However, the Nextcloud notes app just wants to use the folder named in your default locale (in my case, it was called "Note") So what did I do? I mounted the folder "Note" on opendesktop, as "notes" back on my node's Nextcloud server. On my phone, I do not have this issue, so I can use it with whatever name I want. Now, I know I could simply use another note-taking app instead on my desktop, or just switch the locale on the other side. But I am sure there are plenty of use cases where a program just expects a certain folder to be somewhere, but you're unable to rename it there or use a different folder, so that is a welcome feature. And I now have the ability to access my notes both online and on whichever device I use, which is super handy. Next-up, I plan to store some music there, as it also has a music app. Then I want to mount the folder as WebDAV on my phone, for [foobar2000](https://www.foobar2000.org/mobile). I just love Open Source 😁 Below there are some pics with the whole setup in action:   
[pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/08…](https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/08/2/7468633/)
