noad

"The frugal economy" is a weird title for it, they are basically advocating abolishing shareholders and the whole equity system because it keeps failing us repeatedly.

I lost count of how many months its been since I paid my mortgage, just waiting for the deputies to show up now and make me officially homeless. I guess I'm a squatter now? The word "frugal" is just not in my vocabulary any more.

I'm trying to think of any company I would trust for a camera in my house and am drawing a blank. Google is pure evil for sure, but which company is better?

It it even possible to roll your own LAN solution any more? The tech giants have become so hostile to anyone who dares to try to control their own data that I never even hear it discussed any more.

The CDC already failed us. Public health figures have been wrong repeatedly at the local, state, and national level.

I understand people's frustration with them, and I understand why people don't care about their "signoffs" on what we're allowed to do, especially when the guidelines are completely nonsensical like in California.

Where are the free clinics? Where are the free tests? Where is the free quarantine hotel room? None of that, instead we just get chided for being stupid and uncooperative by leaders. This is completely unacceptable, they failed us, not the other way around.

And the police might actually kill me today, unlike the virus.

Or maybe there are just bigger problems than the virus right now.

It seems like pushing through massive budget cuts and busting up police unions is the next logical step. I understand this is easier said than done, but the sooner we get started on actually fighting this fight the easier it will be to get through.

There is nothing praise-worthy about taking a stand now, you should have been out of there ten years ago or never started to begin with. Zuckerberg has been consistently out of control and unaccountable since the Beacon fiasco, which was in like 2008.

This is slightly more annoying than all the government officials who only dare criticize the executive branch after they retire. We have way more data over a longer period of time about how horrible this company is, you should have figured it out a long time ago.

The last thing I want to read in 2020 is essays from wealthy tech workers who already cashed out talking about "taking a stand". You're not brave, you're a coward.

I have seen no evidence of any positive outcome from companies policing themselves, only negative results and coverups.

I'm sure there have been a few instances, somewhere, there must be, right? I just don't recall reading or hearing about them in my entire life, ever.

Your local representative is spending 90% of their day talking to lobbyists who pay to talk to them and doing fundraising calls with rich people.

People press the button on a machine in lots of countries, that doesn't necessarily make them a republic. The practical reality of the situation is they are spending every day NOT representing people as much as possible. This isn't an abstract thought experiment in political science definitions, this is the actual reality we are living under.

Like when Wells Fargo investigated their mortgage department and found no problems, right? Or when Google investigated Andy Rubin and decided he wasn't that bad and protected him for three more years? Why on earth would you ever trust a corporation to police themselves? They always lie, they always fail.

We have not been a democracy or a representative republic for a long time, at a bare minimum we would need a new amendment to overturn citizens united and move to publicly financed elections to get back to that. You can claim you're represented in this current system, I understand that need, but it's not really accurate.

Google appears to be claiming that because they warn you about 3rd party trackers this is all fine. They are just another 3rd party tracker it seems.

Maybe it's time to stop treating Google like a technology company. They don't seem to be pushing the internet forward, instead every decision makes the internet worse and has to be rallied against. There is very little research going on outside of increasing advertising effectiveness to scale up the size of the stock buybacks. Watching them continually screw up products like hangouts and chat and stadia and then just abandon them to increase stock buybacks yet again is just infuriating.

Maybe it's time to start treating Google like they are just another annoying 3rd party tracker. That seems to be what they want now.

Why are you assuming that? You just really want to force weed into this story somehow, is that the prism through which you see the world?

This had nothing to do with marijuana. They usually use GMC Suburbans + men with rifles, but sometimes you see Brinks armored trucks too. I am quite familiar with the weed trucks.

I saw an armored Mercedes car on the streets of Denver for the first time a couple years ago. I have seen dozens of them in Africa and Latin America, but it was a really depressing moment for me when I first recognized that in my home town.

I think that people who are not well traveled are not even aware of this slide, but we have been moving towards becoming a highly stratified developing nation for 20 years now. The armored car is just one striking example, but there are dozens more I can think of off the top of my head.

This is exactly what people speculated would eventually happen when they first announced AMP. Google continues to disappoint and harm the internet in a very predictable way, year after year.

I guess if you want to only look back at 2019 data you will miss the fact that renewables passed coal this year. The rate at which the coal industry is dying is remarkable and is well covered in the media.

It's really not though, renewables have already surpassed coal in the USA for the first time while hyrdo is treading water. The change already happened and all the concerns about peak load capacity and storage were largely mythical. Coal plants are racing to shut themselves down, the miners are all filing for bankruptcy.

We didn't need to build dozens of new fission plants either. Another myth from the think tanks.

Yeah all the naturally occuring ferric metal in Kansas sure is a plague upon our lands. So much natural ferric material just laying around, I'm getting sick of it all!

Let's bring that up instead of talking about the massive amounts of pollution above and below ground. Hilarious.

Ok I think you're just being obtuse for the sake of being obtuse for some other mysterious reason, can't help you there.

There is so much pollution in the fields we have to feed the cows magnets to get it out. That is the funniest thing I've read all day.

So we are driving company decision making based on the needs of synthetic fake financial instruments? Is there any other way to run a company that is more stupid than striving to fulfill the needs of someone else's derivative product?

I cannot imagine a worse basis on which to steer a company. It makes zero sense. Using a random number generator to pick every decision would result in better results than what we are currently doing.

An example of a company that has completely succumbed to Wall Street is Texas Instruments. They are (or used to be) a tech company. They used to have research. They used to create new products.

But in the past few years they have started committing to "returning 100% of free cash flow to investors" (quoting their own earnings release) via stock buybacks and dividends. They actually put it down in writing: we are committed to NOT reinvesting in employees, NOT doing R&D, NOT creating new products. In every earnings call about how they are still committed to getting all the cash into stock buybacks and dividends. That's it. That's the whole company now.

Wall Street loves Texas Instruments. The shiny bucket of treasure known as stock buybacks + equity based compensation is irresistible. This is going to keep happening until we make it stop happening.

No, the VCs exit when their mountains of data say to exit. It has nothing to do with the business, just valuations.

If you get in at or before Series A you are going to make money nearly every time. If you get in after that you are going to lose money nearly every time. This has nothing to do with the industry or the business model or smart people making savvy choices.

You can actually read the article instead of just scratching your head, it goes through the numbers on how they are not being approved for assistance loans at nearly the same rates as white-owned small businesses.

I am not sure if they are the "worst investors" or just "the ones left holding the bag at the end".

Lots of super smart VC people in the valley just exited a little bit sooner. That's quite literally the only difference. This whole investment ecosystem was built around this, gotta exit ASAP

That is not how gases work. Anyone who took high school chemistry can shred the absurd reasoning this quack is pushing. Also he's a retired "nutritional researcher" so uh...

The dawning realization that there are very little to no checks or balances on the executive branch has not led to calls for reform, it has not led to calls to ratchet back power in the executive branch at all.

Just the opposite, it seems like both Democrats and Republicans top priority seems to be seizing and expanding their own power. Nothing else matters, they just want this newfound freedom to operate in the margins for themselves. All the messaging is about how the other side is evil and THIS election is the most important of our lifetimes, you absolutely have to vote for our team and not the truly evil other team.

The first competent authoritarian demagogue is going to do much more damage than this administration. Nobody seems to care at all about the side effects, they just want their team to stay in power or get back in power.

The writer Tom Warren makes the case that the Windows Store is so awful it is effectively abandonware now. I have been using Windows since 1993 and have still never used the Windows Store so I tend to agree with him.

No because the amount of money they spend on this is negligible compared to the shell game of pumping up equity valuations and getting out at the right time.

It's like running a shell game on the street, you let the first person win $20 so other people think it's possible then you scam all them. Except in this shell game we are also crushing small companies whenever possible.

This is a good step in the right direction, but after we break up the tech monopolies we need a new law barring all 3rd party tracking, data brokering, and all individually tailored advertising.

Even if all those steps were taken it might not be enough to save the internet.

What a stupid headline. Just a blatant falsehood in the title of the article. Why are journalists (still) so bad at this?