1,089 karma · joined March 27, 2008
That's my main takeaway from this discussion. All the other points became secondary.
At first it does sound wrong, but as I think back to all successful people I've known, including the ones that I could not for the life of me figure out how they got more success than I (eg, grade school dropouts, alcoholics, etc), I _can_ see how they leveraged an insight about PMF to achieve many things that I've always wanted and never achieved for myself. Very enlightening, but still kinda sad, actually, lol.
I realized that interesting tweets (or rather, Twitter threads) have a way of finding me through other means. That's the only time I visit Twitter.
I'm ok on missing out on ideas that do not find me through other means. The vomit to caviar ratio on Twitter is way too high.
No one is saying that (at least on this thread).
All I'm saying laypeople assume the mfg is the bad guy when it comes to high drug prices. Time and time again on the news we are told that X drug costs $$$$$ in the US and the exact same drug costs orders of magnitude less in some other country. Everyone points the finger at the drug mfgs.
What I'm saying is that it's good that the secret is getting out that the mfgs are not necessarily the bad guys, and there's all these other companies involved in the drug price crisis.
Maybe you can do the analysis you mention and publish it? The worst that will happen is that all us laypeople will be better informed.
I think though that CostPlus, if nothing else, has opened the eyes of a great many people who just assumed medicine was like any other product where the manufacturer controls the price and if someone is making obscene profit, it's an outlier like the Shkreli douchebag. Now a lot more people know that it's possible to pay a lot less. Even on TikTok I'm seeing people paying much less for their prescriptions when they bypass the insurance company and pay full retail price, which is counterintuitive as hell, and I personally would have never guessed.
So all in all, I think it's hugely positive that the secrets are getting out, and CostPlus is invariably a large part of that.
The priorities have shown very clearly over time.
If that happens to pretty tech savvy software engineers, the average user has zero chance of using Linux as a desktop effectively.
EDIT: But read the other comments on here and they actually prove you right: First hand reports of low build quality by the same manufacturer (downvoted, of course), someone saying "someone should just add X feature and I'd buy it" (as opposed to true-to-open-source "I'll add X feature, which will make it it a kick ass product")." Another comment that says "Yeah it runs many distros, but none of them polished". It all just sort of proves what you are saying.
Here's one that touches on your question: https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/what-is-microsoft...
I highly recommend something like this if you want to learn the cloud and do not have an employer to sponsor an account for you.
All these suggestions of using a throw-away CC number to avoid paying the bill are just unethical, IMO. No need to resort to those measures.
Also given some f-ing ingenuity. This quote is just disingenuous: "the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels". Can't you just install solar panels vertically as well? A single web search for "vertical solar panels" brings up alternatives and even this article from 2017: https://offgridworld.com/3d-solar-panel-towers-increase-ener... . I'm sure a thorough search will solve that problem right away.
I just think the author has a beef against this type of farming and is playing dumb to validate his opinion.
I'd not have the gall to demand evidence and pass judgement on the life experience of others.
This person owes us nothing, and if anything, we should thank her for sharing her story, and no more.
Alas, that was not to be. Modern languages are fun and all, but not Delphi-back-in-the-day level fun :-).