The renter system is fine in my opinion

It’s the result of the power imbalance that creates the problems. Specifically that property owners hold all the power and have structured society in such a way that housing is artificially scarce and more difficult to build than it should be, which has led to inflated prices

Politicians being “pro coal” has reached the point of being comical to me

Coal is dead

We are never going to build another coal power plant in the US. Everything politicians do, and say, around coal is nothing but pandering

The content of the posts are egotistical, not the bot itself. He’s describing the tone of the writing

Service has a lot of stability issues

Lack of competition. No other app store is allowed to operate on Apple devices. They have a monopoly, which is the only reason they can charge as much as they do

Sure, Apple are providing a payments platform, but why do they deserve 10x what Stripe charges?

I don’t believe that 30% cut includes payment processing. That’s an additional fee

Sad to think about how little creators actually get at the end of the day. Example of a $100 donation/subscription:

• Apple takes 30%

• Card companies take ~4%

• Patreon takes 10%

• Taxes take another big chunk

After all that a the creator would have, what, $40?

The platform is enormous and highly successful solely because it is a monopoly in the Apple ecosystem

I guarantee you if other app stores were allowed on Apple devices, they would take significant market share with a far smaller cut of revenue

It’s also an option many people would be fine with. I’m okay with Google having my money. Paying companies for products is perfectly fine. I just don’t want them to have my data and invade my privacy

We have study after study showing various prominent social media platforms are bad for mental health, so that part feels pretty clear

Destabilizing society is a harder one to show, but I’d argue Cambridge Analytica, and similar programs are what got Trump elected in 2016. Social media played a very interesting part in elections in the Philippines as well, due to the inability for most to fact check any information shared on social media (Meta/Facebook provided cell service for free only to their platforms)

It’s undeniable that large numbers of bots are used to shape public perception of topics. Several talks at Black Hat and Defcon have investigated specific attack chains used, and how sock puppets are used to spread specific misinformation

Given those factors, I think it’s fair to say social media is destabilizing society. It’s far too easy for relatively small groups to affect public perception. That isn’t to say propaganda didn’t exist before, just that it’s a far more powerful tool than has ever existed in history

How do you feel about the TikTok takeover?

Obviously negatively, and I think it’s irrational for Americans to feel positively about it. For an average citizen, a foreign country controlling a platform like that should be a good thing. China can’t do anything to me. I don’t have to fear reprisal from China for speaking out against the government. I do have to worry about reprisal from the US

Further, China has far fewer incentives to shape the opinions and discourse of Americans. Obviously they want to push a pro-China message, but that’s a relatively small sub-sect of American politics compared to the issues the US government would like to shape public opinion on

FYI, there is a USD index, DXY. It lost ~12% overall compared to a basket of other currencies

I thought crypto was really cool back in the day. I had a guy ask me about Bitconnect because he was considering buying some. I looked into it and told him it looked sketchy, and I didn’t understand how they could possibly promise those returns

He dumped all his money into it. Only weeks before it collapsed too. Lost his house and wife. Ended up moving across the country to live with his brother

Nice guy though

I think I speak for every American under-40 when I say: What pension?

The stock price is just showing what price the shares are selling for, so it is the realized loss of value for some investors

Very few people would use it. You’d have all the issues of Linux where very little is made for the OS, so community made ports would be the only way to get things running. Those downsides are counteracted by the upside of Windows… which is what?

I’m a bit confused about your DNS config. DNS is generally public, that’s the point of it

AI scrapers, like most scrapers, just crawls every new DNS entry that is created

That isn’t blocking VPNs, it’s blocking requests from data centers. Important distinction

There headlines have only ever been successful at driving apathy

A more impactful would describe the expected economic costs of passing 1.5C, along the lines of, “Climate change expected to cost 1.5T per year, and growing, as earth passes 1.5C threshold”

The only thing the average person actually cares about is money

Note: 1.5T is an arbitrary number. Look up an actual analysis of the economic impact of climate change to find a more reliable number

That’s the beauty of hybrids - we’re dependent on both

…wait

Damn that’s cheap. I pay $50/month per person, for unlimited

That’s going to be highly dependent on where you live. In Tokyo I easily got around without service for years since there was wifi at every train station and convenience store

It’s not 2005 any more. Public wifi can easily be used securely these days