berkeleyjunk

Looking out for the interests of the future generations. Reminded me of Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Ministry for the Future"

I used to think like you but there are quite a few things that justify this

* Out of the 5K some fraction, say 2K, is going towards the principal (i.e. it is building your wealth). So now we are down to the same 3K you were paying for rent

* The government encourages home ownership with tax breaks. Out of the 3K left some part becomes tax deductible (mortgage interest and property taxes) until a cap. Say this is ~800 per month. So now you are already down below 3K

* The amount you pay is fairly fixed over long periods (10, 15, 30 years) based on your mortgage while the rent keeps going up.

* Finally, you get to pass this on to your heirs without paying any taxes on the gains (hence building generational wealth)

Yes. Agree. The only thing preventing this going all the way is the friction in timezones and difficulty in co-ordination (i.e. still requires someone local to the remote people to manage their work).

Or if you want a more uncharitable take, Google used its position in search, email, videos to keep nagging people to install Chrome in order to be able to get performance benefits.

> Telling them the Earth is flat doesn't seem like something that would make much difference--offhand I can't think of anything I would actually do different if I believed the Earth was flat--so I'd expect there to not be much money in it.

I would think that buying into the Flat earth theories could be a way to identify marks for the other profitable theories.

Something along these lines:

“It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job. It’s a depression when you lose your own.”

― Harry S. Truman

I know you were joking but it was really a thing

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

I think this depends a lot on how you are wired. Not everyone thinks of their job as their identity (some certainly do). Some people would just do the job for the lots of money/security and do something more meaningful in their spare time.

This will probably continue to happen. Google/FB etc. used content that was created by others to monetize them but kept the profits away from the content creators. This resulted in a lot of original content going away (See the death spiral of the local newspapers) and getting replaced by clickbait, algorithmic content, misinformation etc. I don't think there is room for the same amount of growth going forward and this is simply the market adjusting their P/E multiple to account for the lower growth rate (FB is being hit harder because of the Meta overspending debacle).

Yep. And even worse they probably would have had to switch from Micro USB to USB-C again when they upgraded.

Don't kick yourself. I had a locked in family price of $14.99 and it is going up to $22.99 (more than a 50% hike). My consolation mail started with

"Thank you for being a loyal member throughout our journey. "

It would not surprise me if we come to find out that some people in the know (not Twitter insiders) were stocking up on TWTR shares during the lawsuit drama. Wonder if SEC has any restrictions on non-insiders with material knowledge.

What you are probably missing is that the subsidy is not a lump sup at the time of purchase. e.g. If you get a phone subsidized by $720 from the MSRP the carrier provides a subsidy of $30 per month for the next 24 months or $20 per month for the next 36 months. If you leave early the credits stop and the remaining balance is due. The problem here is that even after the phone is paid off it remains locked to the operator.

Let me present one of my favorite quotes:

“What's the point of having a library full of books you've already read?”

― Ray Bradbury

Surprised that this post does not talk about one of the most successful referral programs I have seen (way before Dropbox): Paypal. I certainly made a bunch of money and got a few friends signed up back in the day.

I have done this but it is not really a matter of "opting in". This is simply paying more for removing ads. People on the cheaper plans do not get to check a box to opt out of an ad. The price for the ad free plan is almost double that of the plan with ads ($13 vs $7).

Yep. There are subscription levels with and without ads. I believe the ad free is $7 more per month.

Section 2.1 specifically talks about the concerns including creating a monoculture, inhibiting competition and limiting innovation.

Not to be pedantic but this is not an RFC (yet). It is only a draft and should hopefully become an RFC in the future. The basic difference is that a draft is versioned and can change in content but an RFC is stable.

Also, RFCs are certainly not only standards track. There is a mix of types including Informational, Experimental and Standards track RFCs.

Thank you for that pointer. You made my day!

I really got excited and thought this was about the other (IMHO better) Avatar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar:_The_Last_Airbender

But this font looks cool too.

I think it is worse. The people who are willing to pay $57 to opt out of ads are probably the most profitable (I am guessing here: no citation available). Seems like a case of Adverse selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_selection

Info about what products sell well? Amazon has a thriving white label business and they can use it to decide what to make.

I would speculate that the Palo Alto (P.A. Semi) acquisition is what kicked off this round of the Apple semiconductor (r)evolution.

Yes. It is available on both.

Source: Another convert from PIA to Mullvad post Kape.

Facebook made approximately $30 (USD) per user in advertising revenue last year. I think the bigger issue (IMHO) is that the people who are prepared to pay to not be profiled are the people who are the most valuable to advertise to. i.e. they are worth way more than $30 in revenue per year.

Montreal is significantly cheaper than Toronto (even though prices have picked up in the past 5 years or so) and would provide something similar to Toronto 90's prices with arguably similar services.

I think Singapore is really ahead in the affordable housing front. They have nice places where people actually want to live. I am not sure if and how it is possible to replicate this on a larger scale.

Yes. This is the worry. "Airplane" is considered one of the funniest movies ever made and most of the jokes would probably never see the light of the day today.

This is very sad. Kraftwerk were hugely influential in bringing technology into music. If you have not seen it yet, the Kraftwerk Pop Art documentary from BBC is a must watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaQQCW0wH0k