vord's recent activity

  1. Comment on Microsoft is adding AI facial recognition to OneDrive and users can only turn it off three times a year in ~tech

    vord
    Link Parent
    Especially on NVME drives, pretty much every downside of BTRFS is negated by 'but if you're willing to set it up, you can have database-like point in time recovery for your whole disk'

    Especially on NVME drives, pretty much every downside of BTRFS is negated by 'but if you're willing to set it up, you can have database-like point in time recovery for your whole disk'

  2. Comment on Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ in ~society

    vord
    Link Parent
    And that's why those people don't get invited to my parties.

    And that's why those people don't get invited to my parties.

  3. Comment on Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ in ~society

    vord
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    You're not wrong for being fooled by it. The various mainstream news sites cover this like he's proposing Mao-like "reforms" and not just a super small scale trial program.

    You're not wrong for being fooled by it. The various mainstream news sites cover this like he's proposing Mao-like "reforms" and not just a super small scale trial program.

    1 vote

  4. Comment on Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ in ~society

    vord
    Link Parent
    In that category I put 'every single business that relies on a loss leader (undercutting legitimate options) and then making it up with overpriced continuing costs.' If your business model tanks...

    that causes people to justify the existence of ones that don't deserve to exist.

    In that category I put 'every single business that relies on a loss leader (undercutting legitimate options) and then making it up with overpriced continuing costs.'

    If your business model tanks because somebody with a tap and die is able to sell refills for your product for 1/100th of what you do, then you didn't have a business model. If you can use a legal bludgeon to prevent people from doing so, then you have more of an extortion model.

  5. Comment on Microsoft is adding AI facial recognition to OneDrive and users can only turn it off three times a year in ~tech

    vord
    Link Parent
    Yea, but then user engagement would be abysmal and shareholders won't understand why they wasted money on developing it. That is the only logical explaination for why Windows will also reset a ton...

    Yea, but then user engagement would be abysmal and shareholders won't understand why they wasted money on developing it.

    That is the only logical explaination for why Windows will also reset a ton of settings each update, without so much of a prompt like 'Hey, a lot has changed, care for a settings reset?' If they did that, the backlash would be virtually silent.

    But then it also would be harder to perpetually shove ads in new margins.

    4 votes

  6. Comment on Microsoft is adding AI facial recognition to OneDrive and users can only turn it off three times a year in ~tech

    vord
    Link Parent
    I would be shocked if Apple doesn't have plans in the works to sunset OSX, replace with iOS, and then charge increasingly exorbitant fees for admin-level access.

    I would be shocked if Apple doesn't have plans in the works to sunset OSX, replace with iOS, and then charge increasingly exorbitant fees for admin-level access.

    3 votes

  7. Comment on Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ in ~society

    vord
    Link Parent
    This is true. I worked for a gas station. The majority of the actual revenue came from fountain soda and cigarettes and hot roller food. Everything else was more or less to draw them in.

    This is true. I worked for a gas station. The majority of the actual revenue came from fountain soda and cigarettes and hot roller food. Everything else was more or less to draw them in.

    2 votes

  8. Comment on Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ in ~society

    vord
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    He also doesn't have the direct authority to do most of what he ran on, which is probably the biggest blocker. But is also fundementally a good thing. His best odds is to name and shame people...

    He also doesn't have the direct authority to do most of what he ran on, which is probably the biggest blocker. But is also fundementally a good thing.

    His best odds is to name and shame people actively preventing things moving forward, and endorsing candidates to primary them if they aren't responsive to their constituents. He didn't win by a small margin.

    5 votes

  9. Comment on Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ in ~society

    vord
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I don't doubt that your country was impoverished and heavily exploited. But comparing against Austria is a lot like comparing Philadelphia's Independence Hall to Kensington. They are less than 5...

    I don't doubt that your country was impoverished and heavily exploited. But comparing against Austria is a lot like comparing Philadelphia's Independence Hall to Kensington. They are less than 5 miles apart, and I can promise you a lot more of America looks like Kensington than Independence Hall.

    The equivalent would be comparing your country (as you describe) against the Kremlin.

    The propanda you got about helping each other is roughly equivalent to America's 'pull yourself up by your own bootstraps' propaganda. America's from that era was also happy to paint your entire population as ruthless greedy murderers trying to steal America's wealth. And the realities of both are much the same: 10-20% of the population lives in luxury, and the rest struggles with a rapid cliff of wellbeing once you're below median. And genuine curiousity: Did your country have a lot of people sleeping under bridges in the winter? Cause we've got an awful lot of them.

    be skeptical of public programs that have the potential to hurt private initiative.

    See, that has not been my experience in America. Basically every single time that any sort of public service has been privatized, it gets more expensive and worse. The public service tends to get worse too, because the private sector also extracts dollars from it.

    And conversely, when a public option is introduced to compete against the private option, the private options magically get better. Like they were shitty on purpose.

    America has many fantastic public schools. All of the public schools would be better if we took the money the rich people spend on private schools and gave it to the public schools. Sure, there might not be any ultra-amazing schools for the top 5% anymore. But the bottom 50% will be much better off.

    And so it goes with grocery stores. Their margins are small, but their volume is huge. They can afford to throw away about 10 to 30% of all they get and still be profitable. There are already dozens of grocers at various price points and luxuries. If a city-run grocer can disrupt a walmart-equivalent, there is no loss. I doubt a city-run store is gonna be putting Trader Joes, or the smaller niche stores out of business.

    Heck, I'll bet if they expand beyond a trial the city will provide the funding directly to the people who are already running the smaller stores to expand and restructure the employment. Probably paying the workers more in the process.

    5 votes

  10. Comment on Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ in ~society

    vord
    Link Parent
    If bodga owners benefit more by affordable housing, transit, and free pre-K it makes sense. A city-run store isn't likely to offer a wide variety of stuff. And those above things likely mean more...

    If bodga owners benefit more by affordable housing, transit, and free pre-K it makes sense.

    A city-run store isn't likely to offer a wide variety of stuff. And those above things likely mean more customers that will shop at bodegas instead of Whole Foods.

    4 votes

  11. Comment on Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ in ~society

    vord
    Link Parent
    This is really the crux of it. Everyone talks about how important global trade is to bringing about prosperity and then completely ignores that the USA wages both economic and literal war against...

    I think acknowledging just how much the US purposely destabilized and undermined the rest of the world is important as we discuss where we go from here.

    This is really the crux of it. Everyone talks about how important global trade is to bringing about prosperity and then completely ignores that the USA wages both economic and literal war against any remotely non-capitalist government.

    I posit it much like trade unions: If they were really so bad for the worker, why do companies fight so hard to prevent them from forming?

    The most terrifying thing to a capitalist is not an authoritarian communist superpower. It's a prosperous socialist country. Such a country would be a shining beacon which would prove that the top of the wealth pyramid doesn't really need to exist.

    15 votes

  12. Comment on Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ in ~society

    vord
    Link Parent
    Much how Hitler killed a good mustache. I propose we use the term 'Collective ownership with equitable distribution of gains and minimal wealth disparity, governed by a democratic system using...

    Much how Hitler killed a good mustache.

    I propose we use the term 'Collective ownership with equitable distribution of gains and minimal wealth disparity, governed by a democratic system using advancememts like ranked choice voting to prevent mono-party systems.'

    On the other hand, Democratic Socialism is a lot easier to say. It's easy enough to see that the problem wasn't the socialism/communism....it was the authoritarianism (and economic wars waged against the communist countries by the capitalist ones, but that's a bigger discussion).

    3 votes

  13. Comment on Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ in ~society

    vord
    Link Parent
    Considering that Republicans aim to dismantle democracy, I don't think it's as far-fetched as you'd say.

    Considering that Republicans aim to dismantle democracy, I don't think it's as far-fetched as you'd say.

    7 votes

  14. Comment on Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ in ~society

    vord
    Link Parent
    Most of the proposals are like, free pre-K, and completely unremarkable. The city-run grocery store is not replacing any privately owned ones, mereley supplementing them. f the city-run grocery...
    • Exemplary

    Most of the proposals are like, free pre-K, and completely unremarkable.

    The city-run grocery store is not replacing any privately owned ones, mereley supplementing them. f the city-run grocery store is such a bad idea, it will fall flat on its face inside of 5 years. I don't think it will, as it's a great secular alternative to 'pray to get fed' religious food pantries. And having been to more than one corner store in a poor neighborhood, you're talking about paying $4 for a box of plain pasta which would normally be $0.75 because the local corner store has a monopoly on groceries for a mile.

    Free public transit is not a radical idea at all. It may be pitched by opponents as such, but the reality is that most public transit is already heavily subsidized. And if you want to increase ridership and improve service by banning cars from bus routes to speed them up exponentially, making it free at point of use is a good first step.

    My local library actually decreased costs by eliminating late fees. They got more books returned, and they no longer had to deal with the logistics of managing cash at the front desk. There would definitely be cost savings by completely doing away with all fare-collection infrastructure and staff to run it.

    And for a practical example, in Philadelphia, the public transit system is SEPTA. It has an annual budget of $3 billion (actually $2.6 but it should be higher). If you amortized that across the whole population of the four counties nearby that rely heavily on it, it comes down to about $80 per person a month. But currently, to subsidize fares for the elderly (and the state not properly funding it), riders pay between $120 and $250. If you were to have every person of the state fund it (given it's the largest economic hub in the state), that's $20 a month.

    If you double that to $40 a month, with the rest funding the rest of the large cities, you've provided free fares for the top 20 cities with greater funding than any have them have ever seen, because most of the rest only have ever had a handful of bus routes and no rail. If you funded them at half the rate of philly because of lower infrastructure costs, you've covered pretty much every municipality with more than 5,000 people.

    All of this primarily benefiting the poorer folks who cannot afford cars. And would decrease car dependence exponentially.

    14 votes

  15. Comment on Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ in ~society

    vord
    Link Parent
    You are right, but I was supposed to be sleeping.

    You are right, but I was supposed to be sleeping.

    7 votes

  16. Comment on Idle complaints of indebtedness and isolation in ~talk

    vord
    (edited )
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    I feel for you. You're feeling first hand what so many wealthy talking heads will dismiss with dumb statements like: I wish every single person who ever told somebody to pull themselves up by...

    I feel for you. You're feeling first hand what so many wealthy talking heads will dismiss with dumb statements like:

    But you have a cellphone and a microwave, you're obviously not in poverty.

    I wish every single person who ever told somebody to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to live your experience. Because what you're experiencing is the most common experience in America. And anybody above it doesn't really comprehend all of the poverty beartraps keeping you on a treadmill of "just getting by" and how incredibly shitty it feels.

    I was in a similar position as you when Bitcoin first came around. I ended up earning about 26 of them passively while using my computer before GPU mining was even a thing. Ended selling them back when it was around $2 to avoid getting my utilities shut off instead of getting a payday loan. It was a good financial decision at the time, but it sucks that I could have been a millionaire if I just held on to that figurative lottery ticket.

    I'm unemployed at the moment. I dumped more than half of my money out of my 401k to subside on because unemployment doesn't even pay the mortgage. My kids are not medically insured because of beuracracy, I'm not going to be medically insured in January because the Republicans are killing the only thing that keeps my horrible, shitty "good" ACA healh plan under $900 a month.

    I've been completely nicotine free shince 2020, but each passing day since being laid off the cravings grow stronger. Nothing helps your financial wellbeing like a stress-induced addition relapse. And they pretend to wonder why there is an opioid crisis like a 3 year old trying to hide a broken vase.

    We're in the process of uprooting our family, because we can no longer afford to live here. Even if I could find a wage at what I was earning before, the lack of job security means the risk if having to move anyway is too high. Hopefully we're doing so early enough that we won't inflict too much trauma on our children, one of whom is just now starting to make friends, and the other whom has several. Hell, the trauma for us parents too...we were finally starting to make new adult friends again too.

    Fuck this country, fuck everyone who claims that simple improvements are simply impossible as they perpetually lower taxes for the wealthy, whom are throwing Great Gatsby parties with dancers in martini glasses while they kill food stamps and what piss-poor solution they insist is medical care.

    Political violence is bad and all, but it's like they're daring people to have a Marie Antoinette reenactment.

    11 votes

  17. Comment on US Federal Aviation Administration reducing air traffic by 10% across forty ‘high-volume’ markets during government shutdown in ~transport

  18. Comment on Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ in ~society

    vord
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    It astounds me to no end that the vast majority of the American politicians and political commentary can claim that things that exist in other countries and are very successful are impossible....

    It astounds me to no end that the vast majority of the American politicians and political commentary can claim that things that exist in other countries and are very successful are impossible.

    Turns out if you tax wealthy people, you can get an awful lot of money back to provide services for everyone.To crib from Josh Johnson's great bit on the topic:

    Zohran himself has said, yall spending more money on ads to campaign against me to defeat me than I was even going to tax you. You don't want it that bad, and why don't you want it that bad?

    31 votes

  20. Comment on Are cooperatives more virtuous than corporations? in ~society

    vord
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    While I have not dug into the paper yet, if it's based upon the same reasoning as the blog post, given this is the author's promotion of it, I'm going to dismiss it as drek based upon, in his own...

    While I have not dug into the paper yet, if it's based upon the same reasoning as the blog post, given this is the author's promotion of it, I'm going to dismiss it as drek based upon, in his own words, the gist of the arguement. He's arguing that there is essentially no reason we should be promoting co-ops over traditional ownership. I'm going to quote the key bit.

    My point is that there are very few additional benefits, to society in general, above and beyond the benefits that are enjoyed by the members. Cooperatives are good for their owners, just as corporations are good for their owners, with the implication that neither is intrinsically better than the other. The appearance of superior virtue for the cooperative form is most often based on differential sympathy, and in particular, a rather striking lack of sympathy for investors as a constituency. If one adopts an impartial perspective, treating the economic interests of all individuals equally, there is no real basis for this asymmetry.

    The problem with this dismissal of sympathy of co-ops is that, broadly speaking, the vast majority of people are not investors. Co-ops thus recieve more sympathy because they create investors out of laborers. So when you hone on the specific answer to the clickbait title:

    My point is that there are very few additional benefits, to society in general, above and beyond the benefits that are enjoyed by the members.

    It is easily dismissed by rudimentary logic.

    1. Cooperatives are better for members than traditional companies
    2. Members are people
    3. People are part of society
    4. Therefore, having all people being members of a co-op is better for society
    5. Thus, we should promote cooperative ownership so more people are members

    This does not dig into whether the co-ops will make more moral choices than companies, but if they are otherwise equal, there is still a net benefit to society. You could argue that it is not a net benefit because investors lose out, but you would be wrong because it's been proven time and again that societies with low income inequality provide a better quality of life.

    20 votes