[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago

Also I can understand taking that risk for yourself. Certainly it's way outside my comfort zone, but I'm not going to tell someone else they can't do something dangerous. But how can you go out and hire people to help you knowing there's a 25% chance they'll be giving their lives for you?

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago

I can see that they are a bit caught in the middle here, but it seems insane that they can leave a package and send a COD bill later. That part is bonkers... doesn't COD stand for Cash on Delivery?

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago

It'll be interesting to see if Americans would ever go for a "City Car". I believe Citreon are bringing the ami to the USA and I'd be tempted to get one a second car - it's certainly well under that pricepoint.

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As a resident of Longmont CO who's had municipal fiber for 5 or 6 years it's been nothing but a win for the city. Conveniently Centurytel and Comcast both offer gigabit (or faster) speeds, but they didn't do that before they were forced to compete.

Hard to say if the number of tech people buying homes here is a result of that or a result of the increase in prices in Boulder, but I'm sure it's helped bring people here (and further drive up prices). Plus it meant during covid that the city was able to give free fiber to low income kids who needed to switch to remote school.

Plus it's had a 60% take rate, which is way higher than the original projections. That did certainly increase the capital costs of the rollout but it's meaning the bond payback is ahead of schedule. I'm just trying to find a good excuse for why I need 10G service.

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

Also the "Narrator" segments which are inexplicably read in Morgan Freeman's voice in my head

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 37 points 1 year ago

Yes - it's been the job of the DRAM controller for almost the entire history of computing. But that's still a part of the computer and if it stops working then your RAM will go blank in a fraction of a second

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 35 points 1 year ago

Even if it's powered, RAM will lose its data on the order of a tenth of a second. RAM doesn't just require power, it requires that your computer constantly read and rewrite it - so every 64ms your computer has to read every gigabyte of RAM and write it back.

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 33 points 1 year ago

Yeah, especially when you imagine that they are accustomed to not having to seek out knowledge or even entertainment. When algorithms feed you everything and your attention becomes a commodity you don't need to develop the skill to actually find it, or the wherewithal to even imagine that you need to go out and find it.

I believe those of us who were online in the 1995-2010 era remember what it was like to have an internet full of possibilities that you could explore and discover, but that was the exception.

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago

The economics just don't work for short stays. It's expensive to clean an entire house, particularly if that involves washing multiple sets of sheets and towels.

Hotels are set up to be efficient at that with commercial laundry equipment and lots of identical rooms with no travel time between them.

Airbnb is almost always better value if you need multiple days and multiple rooms, but if you need one room for 2 nights then it can only really compete if labor costs are really low

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago

If you buy eggs preshelled in the US then they are required to be pasteurized - something like this would be good https://vitalfarms.com/pasture-raised-liquid-whole-eggs/

In theory you can pasteurize an egg in its shell, but they aren't very common round here.

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 16 points 1 year ago

But I think we focus on the wrong loopholes. The ability to accrue capital gains forever and not pay taxes on it, then die and let your heirs take advantage of a basis step-up is fucked up. Maybe if your net worth exceeds a certain amount then you should have to mark-to-market annually and pay taxes as if you sold and rebought at the market price.

[-] grahamsz@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago

I think the problem is that most of us define "rich" by the accumulation of wealth, but for tax purposes it's usually defined as annualized earned income. Many billionaires pull no salary, and manage to defer capital gains so effectively pay very little tax.

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grahamsz

joined 1 year ago