lotsofpulp

This type of stuff gives me PTSD flashbacks from trying timo de-crapify Windows.

Comcast (an ISP) purchased NBC Universal in 2013, ATT (also an IPS) purchased Time Warner in 2018. But that was it, and both of those deals ended up being bad for the ISPs, with ATT already divested of Time Warner and Comcast trying to get rid of NBC Universal or whatever is left of it.

I do not think blocking websites was a goal in either of those mergers, they were just trying to become big like Apple/Amazon/etc and not just be a dumb pipe like ISPs should be.

Because everyone promised themselves a lot of benefits in old age that they want someone else to provide them.

Can you define profit? Would a doctor be allowed to earn more than $200 per hour? $300 per hour? $400 per hour? Is a doctor allowed to be paid per procedure or time?

How much would you want to sacrifice your 20s and early 30s? How much would you need to work in the middle of nowhere where your kids won’t have the best opportunities?

How is a marginal land value tax not a far, far better way? It’s already taxed, just need to multiply it by a different number.

The only reason a solution is needed is because a problem was created by promising old people a ton of benefits. To deliver those benefits or expected quality of life, the country has to allocate a greater and greater proportion of the country’s productivity to old people.

Obviously, this means less purchasing power for younger people, and they might not like that so much.

>will it crater property values for all of the hard-working townies who sunk their money into their own homes?

It already has. Rural land prices going down in real terms is a decades old thing.

>What if you would like to stop spending 1/3 of your budget on the military?

Then you would be happy, because the US spends 1/7th [13%] of the budget on the military.

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

Since I find it difficult to judge quality, I just buy the cheapest thing at Costco now and replace it when it wears out. They have some hideous sneakers for $20 right now, but I run in them just fine for at least a few months. I'd have to buy 6 of these to offset the price of an actual running shoe.

I don't see it getting more efficient than taking a picture of your stuff, and putting up a post on Facebook telling everyone it's free at x date and y address.

No human contact is a plus for security, as the human is the weakest link that can give up your authentication to someone that isn’t you.

Not if Apple can identify the dog as belonging to someone else.

All the money is (or will be) spent on land near other rich people so your kids can have a school peer group with parents who have higher education/wealth/social network achievements, and after that, healthcare, and after that, liability coverage.

If there is money left over, then you decorate. But you’ve probably bought into a new housing development with an HOA that doesn’t allow exterior modifications without approval.

>My other question that I've never found a good answer to, is with mechanization, how is it that "cheap" modern buildings are so expensive. Or were old, traditional buildings super expensive? What is the cost of a unit of beauty per year, then and now...?

The land is far more expensive now. Plus legal liability insurance costs. And costs of permitting/zoning/bureaucracy is much higher.

No, the teller is not sufficiently qualified to be liable enough to match the picture on the ID to the person in front.

The 2nd factor is the phone number on file, which offloads liability for errors in that mechanism to the phone company.

The goal is to reduce the amount of decisions the teller makes, so as to reduce the amount of errors they can make, which also reduces the amount of training they need, all of which reduces costs.

It’s really interesting how the lack of US federal government stepping in to provide an official electronic identity verification API has resulted in the mobile phone networks becoming the de facto arbiters of identity. Even for government services.

I don’t even think I could trust having my phone number on someone else’s mobile phone plan, as I would want to ensure I have as much control over it as possible.

May I ask why?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_moat

It seems like a very appropriate term that quickly conveys its meaning if your business is presumed to be the castle you want to protect.

I only buy the stuff that says free returns (for any reason) up front.

Amazon's biggest feature is free returns. I would not buy even a quarter of the stuff on Amazon if I was not confident that I could easily return it.

The only reason I can think of that houses don’t usually have metal roofs is because they cost at least double, if not triple. I have seen homeowners use metal roofs, but it’s one of the first cost reductions because a good shingle roof is already good for 30+ years.

For a business, it can make more sense as it might be a more long term structure, plus it would contain more valuable items (or at least cause more loss if business is interrupted).

No one is screaming. Nike’s market cap is just being right-sized to reflect the lack of moat in the clothing/shoe business. Personally, Nike’s $54B vs Adidas’ $28B is still too high.

I always assumed 30%+ of the price of a Nike product is to pay for marketing, and shoes and clothing are not some top secret tech, so removing Nike from the list of brands to buy was easy.

>the real issue is the owner is the only one without the record

I don't understand what "the record" is referring to here. The mileage is presumably still on the odometer of the car. So what is "the record" that the owner does not have and how is that causing the owner an issue?

Can you explain how the statement below makes sense?

>The fuse stops it but the real issue is the owner is the only one without the record.

What public infrastructure is replaced by Waymo? All the roads, traffic lights, signs, etc are all still there. Seems equivalent to any other vehicle that is not replacing public infrastructure.

In the US, that would be considered urban, not suburban.

This is a US suburb:

https://www.planetizen.com/news/2024/02/127466-changing-shap...

Far less density of people.

What am I missing out on if I cannot tell what is and is not fiction? It seems detrimental to assume something is real and then it turns out to be fake (but I will never know).

I don’t see how that differs from any other fiction. Either the whole thing is non fiction, or it’s fictional.

I would even go so far as to label only videos of an event itself, like security recordings, to be non fiction as re-enactments and whatnot can have a lot of extra information that was not there in real life.

Vision and dental "insurance" in the USA is a mechanism of paying someone with non taxable income, it is not insurance.

>Second, if you live in a cold country, improve your house heating efficiency and/or switch to heat pumps.

Almost everything is inconsequential compared to living in a (detached) house. The detached house increases consumption of all kinds by orders of magnitude due to greatly increasing the distance everything moves to and around the house.

They want a bad guy to implicate that isn’t them and their detached single family home in a suburb with their large cars and vacations involving flights and foreign made toys and out of season fruits and vegetables.