psivchaz

Fun fact: America was actually created as the world's largest scale Prisoner's Dilemma experiment. Sure, you could do the right thing but it only works if a bunch of other people also do the right thing, and you kind of know they won't.

A lot of people don't follow their own advice or beliefs. It'd actually be super cool to find someone who does.

We all know that the hate for Mexico is nonsense. They aren't coming over the border and stealing highly coveted jobs. The jobs that have actually been taken by immigrants are largely middle class jobs that require degrees, things like IT and medicine.

In part, this has been fine. It drives the salaries down a bit because they're willing to accept less to move to the country and even the lower salary is still much more than they would make at home. Companies win because there weren't enough qualified people to go around for a while, so immigration closes the gaps.

This is pure conservatism though. Allow foreigners to come study here in unlimited numbers, then let them stay to take middle class jobs at lower salaries in these non-union industries. It's like outsourcing but everyone is in the same time zone and they won't resist your return-to-office mandate.

They already remade Little Mermaid too recently. Terry Crews as Rapunzel, though, is still on the table.

I don't think I've ever gotten an ad from the OS on Android. I know some manufacturers, Samsung in particular, include ads but that's not "Android" so much as "Samsung's shitty skin of Android."

The closest I've gotten to an ad on Pixel is a thing to review new features after updates.

It's the downside of open source: You're at the mercy of companies that don't care and developers who are primarily interested in the hardware they're using rather than the hardware you're using.

The best experience is going to be hardware that's built and certified for Linux. System76, Tuxedo, a bunch of other smaller names and the rare Dell or Lenovo. But that's definitely not practical for everyone, or a good idea to convince people to buy new hardware for Linux.

It'll be a slow transition. The more enthusiasts hop on the bandwagon, the more manufacturers and hardware vendors will care about support. The more Microsoft keeps irritating their customers, the more companies will move away. The support will come, it's been improving for a long time.

All that said. I'd recommend CachyOS or PopOS if you get the urge to try again. I've tried a bunch of distributions and those seem to have the best focus on "just make consumer hardware work right out of the box." That's no guarantee of course, but it's a start.

I'm not saying, "Hey, it's fine" I'm saying that people and cultures change, and should be allowed to change. Never before have people been so unable to escape their past. Yeah, occasionally you get a Bernie Sanders who seems to nail it right off. But most people have some skeletons or some shit they'd be embarrassed about if it were dug up and went viral.

When you dig up the past and hit people with it, you discourage progress. People are more likely to dig in their heels, knowing that the opinions they have today they'll have to answer for tomorrow.

I agree but I do sympathize with one part of it. Things that were widely considered funny a few years ago are not today. I do think it's unfair to hold people in the past to the standards of today, but people love digging up old footage and bludgeoning people with it.

If a comic makes a joke and it bombs, maybe it's not funny. Maybe they used it with the wrong audience. Reading the culture and the room and choosing wisely is part of the job, like you say. But if it bombs 5 years later on Twitter, maybe it should have just been left in the past with the context it belonged in and not dug up and resurrected for clicks.

Those who don't mostly seem to assume that every other country is still doing bloodletting and that America is the only place with MRI machines. Those that understand that's not the case will probably say something about wait times.

My fear is them going public or selling. If that happens, it'll probably be Microsoft willing to spend any amount, and the government hasn't really been in a "preventing monopolies" mood for a while now.

I was mostly focused on how irritating it is that there's yet another way that basic necessities are monetized, rather than on the actual implementation details.

The government already tracks average home and property values for determining property tax and also for determining what is a reasonable mortgage for a given area. I was kind of thinking that it would just be in addition to property tax so based on your home value, so those with very large houses would already be paying proportionally more into it.