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Most of the venture capital that fueled the techno booms were Russian - hence all this dumb “Let’s make everything family friendly!” (anti-LBGTQ, anti-NSFW) mindset. Now that money is going … elsewhere.
Source: my tinfoil hat
No, you don’t understand. The tin foil hat protects me from the government brainwashing 5g cell towers.
Those things are useful as fuck. At first they blocked mind controlling aliens. Then it also worked against mind-reading NSA. And now it blocks brainwashing 5G. The DoD must be spending trillions to bypass tinfoil technology.
Anti-capitalist regulations, I imagine.
Anti monopoly and regulations against anti competitive practices are cornerstones of capitalism ensuring free and fair competition.
So no, what we need is a return back to when these practices weren’t allowed, away from allowing these things more than ever as we do now.
It’s easy to see Russia has become an oligarchy, why can’t we see it’s happening to us too?
But we can’t dismantle capitalism altogether, without creating an even bigger monopoly problem, the monopoly being corrupt governments like the soviet union and their 5 year plan economy, that very obviously wasn’t a very good concept.Maybe that’s what you meant, I’d just not call it anti-capitalism, when regulations are for the purpose of making capitalism work better.
So just “regulation” is better.That’s why they do regulatory capture to prevent that from happening. It all starts with money being equal to influence. This can temporarily be reset after a big crash of the system but sooner or later they start again.
Let me tell you about the Nordic model
Repubtard: HEY THAT’S SOCIALISM!!!
Except Scandinavians have more freedom, and better free market than USA.
Repubtard: BUT IT’S SOCIALISM!!!
Ehrm, they also have better freedom of speech.
Repubtard: WHAT? ARE YOU A FUCKING COMMIE?
Actually they also rank way higher on democracy.
Repubtard: WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA?
I don’t, but wouldn’t it be nice if everybody had healthcare, free education and social security so you didn’t have to fear to starve if you got ill and lost yopur job?
Repubtard: HEY THAT’S SOCIALISM!!!
…
Ugh, my elderly neighbor was going on about how Harris was going to take away this and that, most of which I’d never heard her say or even read about her plans doing, and I said, “where did you hear that? It was Fox News wasn’t it?” He replied with, “well, what news do you watch?” I said, “it sure isn’t Fox where they lie constantly. Harris hasn’t said any of that crap … you need to get your news from multiple sources.”
We’d be a heck of a lot better off if the news agencies were held accountable for telling lies and making up stories. Yeah, I know it’s a fine line but it’s one I’m willing to walk at this point.
What is your elderly neighbor’s view on Republican policies for the elderly compared to the Democrats; and does Fox care more about their elderly viewers half as much as their younger viewers—i.e. the ones who justify more money from advertisers?
In 30 years, Trump will be as cited by Republicans as much as Reagan is today—i.e. rarely if ever—probably less—Reagan at least won twice and in one election he won 49 states—as did Nixon in 1972—and back then, Nixon was about the same age as Harris is now.
Did your elderly neighbour support Ross Perot back in 1992?
a Texan speaks:
Ross Perot [Independent] 1992 Campaign Ad “Snapshot - :60”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naHdnyogJjA
1:02
We’d be a heck of a lot better off if the news agencies were held accountable for telling lies
Yes, other countries have that, it’s called responsible journalism.
You can’t just parrot some source, and claim it’s reporting. You need to check your sources.
When they help spread lies, they are part of the problem.
I wonder if a typical Republican could point out Sweden on a map.
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No unregulated capitalism is super capitalism.
Regulated capitalism is capitalism we actually try to get to work as intended or “normal” capitalism.
Social democracy is “Caring” capitalism. Where free markets and capitalism still exist, but is regulated to prevent exploitation of ordinary people.Normal capitalism has a drive to become super capitalism. You can try to stop it, maybe you’ll succeed, but it will always strive to turn itself into super capitalism.
Regulations only exist because Capitalism would consume itself without guardrails.
I wonder if it’s consuming itself a bit right now.
Late stage capiyalims, Baybee!
I’ll be optimistic about technology when the last techbro is strangled with the entrails of the last angel investor
The use of open, decentralized platforms such as the fediverse is one small step in the right direction at least.
FOSS / fediverse is really the only tech stuff that isn’t massively disappointing as of late.
And sodium batteries, or so I hope.
And yet this community seems more techno-pessimistic than even /r/technology, which is a challenge.
Well, only techno-pessimistic about mainstream technologies that are used by most people, which is warranted I guess. Most people don’t use the fediverse after all.
Great article, totally agree with the author. I would still be concerned with that power moving to the government, particularly in countries with limited options for true representation (eg. two party systems, where it is usually more a matter of “lesser evil” voting), but that then becomes the next challenge; still more appropriate in the government’s hands than the level of power corporations currently wield.
Taking patent, trademark, and copyright laws to what they were in, say, 1790, might be a good start.
Regard today’s billionaires with the same contempt that one does of criminals.
Wait at least 5 years before buying a new computer.
Don’t pay by credit card.
Don’t pay by credit card.
This is bad advice for anyone with good credit and spending habits. A credit card with rewards is just free money if you’re responsible with it. I haven’t paid interest in over a decade and have made thousands from rewards.
Yep, the rich are rich because they borrow other peoples money. 0% free interest lines are about the best discount you can get on anything. I get to make the interest while you hold the loan? Sign me up! Siri, remind me in 11 months to pay off the X loan.
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Depends on the situation honestly. We offer financing through my work for our clients and the 0% option is still a good deal. Not all of them are designed to screw people.
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Fair enough, but they know what you bought.
Yes, but you can also do a chargeback if the company you purchased from sold you a lousy product and isn’t being reasonable about returning it. If you had paid with cash, that cash is GONE.
Each method has its pros and cons.
If you had paid with cash, that cash is GONE.
not if I have a receipt.
And? How has that harmed you overall?
Not saying I like that they track everything but I’ve yet to see it impact me personally.
Not to mention the security that comes from being able to not pay if you get scammed for whatever reason. I paid for a course at a community college with a credit card, but then my schedule changed so I tried to cancel the class before it even started. The college gave me a whole runaround, and whether it was willful or just simple incompetence, I wasn’t able to get a refund. So I called my credit card company and explained the situation to them, and they resolved the whole thing for me. Sometimes even mentioning that you’ll refer such a problem to the fraud department at your credit card company is enough to get someone to back down and give you a refund.
Credit cards have issues, especially if you have problems with using them responsibly, but that’s one particular way in which they can save you a lot of headache.
There are no free money. These are loans. And making them attractive with cashbacks and rewards is done to trap unresponsible spenders. 95% of the time you don’t need to borrow money from the bank, unless you are in emergency or you are to invest these to achieve some payback (e.g. a loan to open your business).
These are loans. And making them attractive with cashbacks and rewards is done to trap unresponsible spenders
I am aware, which is why I specifically said
This is bad advice for anyone with good credit and spending habits.
For people who aren’t irresponsible spenders, it’s a bad financial decision not to take the short term bank loan. Sure, I don’t need to spend the banks money because I have enough in my checking account to cover it. But by not doing so, I lose money on any transactions that don’t charge me a fee to run my card.
If you’re not responsible enough to use a credit card and not destroy your finances, absolutely do not use them. But for those of us who are, it’s a dumb idea to eschew it just because you have the money on hand. Like I said, I haven’t paid interest in a decade and have made thousands from my normal spending habits.
If I followed your advice, I would be objectively worse off, because I’d be losing money from my rewards for no benefit whatsoever. And I can guarantee I’d be materially worse off, since my credit card is the reason my credit is as good as it is, and that bullshit has a pervasive and perverse effect on your life. It’s not only loans that are impacted, but insurance, housing and employment can be as well. So maybe I should have left good credit off, since responsible spending will build your credit up even if it is bad currently.
TL;DR - responsible credit card use is a good thing, and foregoing it just because you have money on hand is a bad financial decision. Pay that shit off immediately and there’s no material downside and you still get all the benefits.
Irresponsible vs responsible is how the credit card companies frame it, but I think most of the time it’s about luck. The kind of luck where the primary income gets hit by a car or someone in the family gets cancer.
I haven’t paid interest in over a decade and have made thousands from rewards.
I’m not too familiar with credit cards, do you mean this in a literal money sense or something more complex, i.e. the value of rewards & money?
We pay for EVERYTHING on our credit card, shared account with my partner. 2% money back. Pay it off in full every month. Zero interest paid, thousands of monies back.
One of the better credit card rewards is a small percentage cash back, so literally free money. Money is fungible though, so any discounts on things you were going to buy anyway are effectively the same thing.
You pay with your data lol
The reason why corpos been able to price gouge the peasants is particulaly to tp them having access to data this granular. Same reason why they want dynamic pricing schemes.
My almost six year old 9900k machine is still playing everything amazingly, with a video card update being my only change. I love it so much.
My iPhone is also six years old and the only reason I’m upgrading this month is to get 120hz, USB-C, and a better low light camera for cat pictures. A terabyte would be nice, too.
“AI will make all of your work obsolete, there’s nothing we can do about it. Shame…”
I’m fine with losing my job, it’s tedious anyway. I’m not with losing my income though. Let automation and programs do the work and share the fruit of their labor to the people. Get rid of CEOs.
Then we can talk about optimism.
AI-CEOs should be a thing to work towards.
Who decides their programming? Are they bound to ethics or shareholder wealth? Better get rid of shareholders as well.
Ah yes, like a CEO but for the workers.
I can live with that
Get rot economists out of tech companies and return to private ownership.
When I see technology actively making the world consistently better rather than constantly trashing the ecosystem that literally keeps us alive, I’ll have optimism about it.
In a capitalist economy, corporations act within the free market established by the government. Government is responsible for establishing fair and transparent ways of doing business, such as maintaining a currency, and legal and accounting frameworks. But that’s not enough.
The article has a good starting point about breaking up monopolies to reestablish competition. We’ve let so many monopolies grow in the last few decades, to our detriment.
But that’s not enough. It’s also governments role to incorporate externalities into the market so corporate actions are fairly priced instead of costing society, and to ensure the market is working for the citizens. As prime examples, corporations need to bear the costs of resource extraction or an imposition on the environment. How could the free market work effectively, if some corporations are allowed to impose costs on society that are not priced into their goods? They’re effectively being subsidized, given an unfair advantage against their competitors, while also working against the future of the citizens forming this market.
But a fair market is only fair, if all the participants have standing, including the consumers who are the focus of the market, and workers who make it all happen. Currently we’ve let corporation ps dominate other roles in the market, we’re following a corporate economy and of course are not happy with the results. For example, consider “terms of service” imposed for just about everything these days. They’re always phrased as a contract and as if customers agree, yet are completely one sided, imposed without recourse or even any reasonable standard for a legal contract, and without any real choice. How can that be called a free market?
We could go a long way toward a free market that serves society if government does it’s part of establishing fairness, transparency, honesty for all entities in that market, and remembering that both governments and the market serve society, rather than the other way around
The only way is to build technologies that allow humans to escape the capitalist system and allow us to build our own communities in direct opposition to capitalist greed and exploitation.
All power to the users. And I do mean ALL. Complete control over cellular modems for one. Control over every little bit of hardware in the consumers hands.
That includes warranty promises, that includes schematics, source code for firmware, everything. For all current, past and future devices.
You’re not wrong, but users should then be held accountable if they fuck up their device. For example, if you decide to force companies to allow unlocking of bootloaders, and the user decides to flash something that they shouldn’t, and the device bricks, whose fault is it?
Then they can just get it repaired, at a shop that has the flasher to re-flash the device. Cuz it’s open source
And pay a shop to do it? Do you realistically think the average person is gonna be willing to do that? I think it’s more likely they’ll complain to the phone company about their bricked phone.
I also don’t know enough, but is a bricked phone “fixable”? If it is, the person could do it themselves. But that’s just one example. Other examples include installing unsafe OSes because social media said so. I don’t think the average person is tech savvy enough to give them this kind of freedom.
This may be symptomatic of the issue being addressed. Would we be more willing to get the phone repaired if we felt more ownership of it? My hands are tied if the device was designed without repeatability in mind and the manufacturer has no intention of volunteering assistance - so I must complain. In our current system, we don’t have many options to choose from. I look forward to your thoughts.
Also I believe ‘bricked’ is a result of it becoming inoperable. Our devices aren’t easily repaired so they will become ‘bricked’ SOONER than if designed to run unlocked boot systems and OS’s. Feeling more ownership of your device may lead you to be more careful with it and only entrust it with reputable technicians.
This very much depends. Are there technical ways to restore this? Something like a jumper to make the flash storage writable. This would be possible with access to the firmware source code. So yeah, they can fix it themselves. Who is responsible? If the device is bricked after this: the company.
Build locked up products? Die.
Build in fuses? Better make those chips accessible by providing the plans to build them, otherwise refund your customers and die. Now everyone can build them, this won’t be a monopoly and everyone wins.
But that’s terrorism!
I am aware of this narrative. I don’t agree.
So you’re saying you side with the terrrists!
“I’m on my side.”
The users already have a lot of control; many just don’t use it.
Can any of you live without Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for one calendar month? 25 years ago, millions of Americans did, and their lives were hardly the poorer for it. 25 years before that it was over 150 million Americans, including the 12 who walked the Moon.
The kind of control we are talking about are different. You look at the law, in which I have only little trust, while I look at the ability to manipulate the hardware.
So no, they do not have control over the hardware, they just don’t care that much. They do care if they are inconvenienced in any way, say by a service that disallows some parts that were previously offered. They don’t understand and don’t care, but they do win from some more control over their stuff.
I already live without any of the services you mentioned, I suspect most of Lemmy do. Well, not without YouTube (for me), I guess, but that gets more and more replaced by stuff like peertube.
Millions of Americans would still only occasionally visit those things if they had more options to plan their recreational time. Those options are mostly limited by less free time available while also having less money available. In that regard, and mostly limited to that regard, was then better than now.
If we are going to wait for the right legislation, then we are probably going to wait a very long time.
You’re not on Facebook and Twitter? Good. It’s entry-level stance, but nonetheless a good one, particularly if you are under 40 years of age.
YouTube is more difficult as it is, for me at least, mostly a replacement for television, videotape, and DVDs. My search for alternatives haven’t been too fruitful, but I often go to Vimeo, Archives, niconoco (they’re back in service starting early August), occasionally RuTube and vk (I support Ukraine in the war, but I’m not going to hate Russia), for a while the Chinese sites (though there seems to be less selection these days, too many ads, and some of it is YouTube embeds), Jamendo, and WikiCommons, and yes PeerTube (I suppose searching in time will get easier). (I’m also thinking of going back to P2P a bit.)
FWIW, I have this https://lemmy.world/c/musicnoytnosnofbnoff on Lemmy, and so far I might be the only contributor. The one I have on reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/musicNoYTNoSNoFBNoFF/ I can no longer access as the account I used to create it has been suspended (and yes, suspended for no good reason). I could be the sole contributor for the next few years and I won’t give up.
Yes, many Americans, many people, are stuck in shitty jobs that take too much of their time, and a lot of it is nonessential. However, over a trillion hours (e.g. say over 250 million people x over 4000 hours in less than 10 years) have been spent on FB, Twitter, and YouTube. If 1% of that time was spent on alternatives, choices could improve dramatically. But they might not, it might be that they probably won’t, at least not for most of the Fox and CNN viewership. No matter: the search for alternatives continue and if people like us remain a small minority for years, maybe decades, to come, then we will nonetheless continue. We will be our own 1%ers.
I’ve been living without the first two for years now. I could live without youtube if I really needed to, though I do watch a lot of stuff about farming that is really helpful. Most of my youtube watching is educational with a slight smattering of games and entertainment and a tiny bit of news.
Fuck locked bootloaders.
You know something is wrong when Google is one of the most consumer friendly companies.
Yes, even if you try to use the controls we have left, you will discover that they always clip out one little obscure but critical detail that means you can’t actually use your device your way.
Example, starting ADB at boot in tcpip 5555 mode when your bootloader is locked
means you can’t actually use your device your way.
Then don’t use the device.
(I myself can wait longer than many of their shareholders.)
I don’t have the luxury of buying another.
I want legislative actions to make this illegal.
What do you need this device for?
Remotely operated wireless camera
I respect the sentiment, but most users neither know nor care about that. They want to take their new device out of it’s box, power it on, log in to whatever accounts they have, and carry on with their day.
The number of people who actually care about that is very small.
It doesn’t matter if they care about this. They are too dumb to do anything about it anyway. They still can get to take advantage of this. Most notable would be that stuff like “bank apps only through play/apple store” would be much harder to pull of.
I’m a developer posting on Lemmy so maybe take this with a huge grain of salt but I think we need to focus less on STEM/finance and more on humanities education. Definitely in the United States but probably most of the world considering India and China focus on tech too.
When I was learning to code (in the 90’s and 2000’s unless you count a 9 year old making BASIC do loops), my mentors basically all had majored in something besides computer science because there wasn’t necessarily even a computer science major available if your college didn’t have “Tech” in the name. It was a lot of hippies who spent their weekends making pottery and got into IT or software development almost by accident; it was a job to fund their non-lucrative hobby or passion.
Basically, we lost something when being a programmer became a goal and not a way to reach some other goal. I’m not sure we can return to a time when it was tinkerers and hobbyists coming to the field with different backgrounds but more creatives should learn to code and more coders should be forced to make art.
Steve Jobs said taking a calligraphy class was the reason that having a wide variety of attractive fonts was important to him when designing the Mac.
Uh, NOT put surveillance and extremely questionable AI into everything? I don’t need my toilet tweeting how healthy I am
Get rid of the billionaire tech-lords. The ones that create the only new tech we’re allowed to have: fees, ads, and enshittification.
