isykt

If you want cars made in the US by people making a living wage, something has to give. The demographics of manufacturing workers is already hollowed out, and will only get progressively worse as the years roll on.

The system in question is the one linked in the article :)

> Reality upper class and upper middle class students get free tuition from their parents

Yes, they get free tuition from their parents which is why they don’t need government assistance for college. We don’t give food stamps to millionaires either.

Another poster in this comment thread said that the money is clawed back automatically through tax returns. So which is it?

The key phrase here is “regardless of household income.” There’s a very simple way to make sure rich people don’t get free shit, and that’s capping stuff like this so that rich people don’t get to take advantage of it.

I’ll give you an example: there is no universe in which I personally ought to have had my student loans forgiven. My household income tipped into the seven figures during the pandemic. But some debt forgiveness advocates insisted on cancelling “all student debt, no exceptions.” Absolutely not!

The “good for consumers” test is not encoded in law in the US, it’s just a framework that has been recently used to evaluate whether an action is sufficiently anti-competitive to warrant intervention.

It’s also very short sighted.

I always hear about how modern laptops and smartphones “aren’t repairable” and then I spent a week in Shenzhen.. where there were floors and floors of independent repair people doing specialized fixes to the most intricate parts. I had an old Apple Watch repair for about $20, only to discover that I got ripped off — I could have negotiated it down to much less.

The point was that real estate ain’t cheap, and I’m certainly not lending it to my gigacorp employer for free.

I don’t own car.

My employer pays for transit. They didn’t buy my umbrella though, so you got me there

And if my grandmother had wheels she’d be a bicycle :) Indeed, if my situation were totally different I would feel differently about it. That’s why I made my situation the way it is.

I’m expecting them to give me $25k tax free to devote space in my home for the purpose of working during my work hours. I retain ownership of the property itself, but not the equipment; I would also reserve the right to use the space as I please outside of work hours, because it’s located in my home.

Those are my WFH terms. Companies can take those or provide me an office.

I paid $983/sqft for my apartment in the city, so unless my company wants to give me a $25k tax free bonus, and pay for a desk, chair, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and my internet, it’s a bad deal for me. Glad it works for you though.

> Do you not have a computer at home?

I have several and I would never install work software or store work materials on it. The privacy and security risk alone is just not worth it — and I work for a company that respects privacy.

I would also never pay any money to maintain a computer to do work for a company.

I value my commute tremendously. It’s one of my favorite parts of the day.

When I go into the office, it’s after taking a brisk 21 minute walk or a 6 minute train ride. I listen to music. I prepare myself mentally for the day. When I’m done, I leave my computer and my work phone sitting on my desk, and walk or take the train home.

I don’t devote a single square foot of my home to my employer. When I’m home, it has nothing to do with work.

I would never allow my employer to colonize my home.

>people who can't afford iPhones and Apple Care

A refurbished iPhone 12 is $449. A brand new iPhone SE is $429, $17.87/mo. for 24 months... or $11.91/month from a carrier. AppleCare+ with Theft and Loss is $7.50/month So you're looking at ~$20/month for a phone that Apple will replace instantly if it breaks or gets stolen. Is someone who doesn't have access to credit really going to be able to afford a cheaper android phone and the tools to repair it and the parts to repair it?

Surprised that this post doesn’t include the fact that Kirkland brand is identical, at a lower price, to another brand of that item that they stock on their shelves and brands must compete to get this label. It benefits them because they get 2x the shelf space (more sales) and it benefits Costco’s customers because it’s a lower price for a high quality item. Oh, and Costco has a QA team with specific quality metrics, and if the item with the Kirkland label falls below a certain target, they’ll get swapped for something better.

Costco is what Amazon wishes it could be, if it didn’t fall down the rabbit hole of being a rebadged Ali Express.

What's really infuriating to me is that, at one point, Apple took a reasonable stand with their music streaming and said "256kbps AAC is CD quality" (it is). And now they've turned around and starting pushing this snake-oil, DRM'd "Hi-Res Lossless" nonsense.

The only reason to have "Hi-Res Lossless" is if you're going to do something besides listening with it... and you can't with Apple's streaming.

Have you considered using dictation? It’s come along way since the Nuance Dragon Speech days.

Amazon has offices in Germany, and the comment I was responding to called this kind of surveillance “perfectly reasonable” as if this were a globally uncontroversial policy. It’s not.

This ruling is about recording the number of hours worked, not the presence or absence of workers in a certain place.

> People can debate endlessly over the benefits, or not, of working in an office but it’s a perfectly reasonable thing for a company to want its workers to show up at an office and reasonable to measure if they actually do. This is a non story.

Germany disagrees with you. This kind of employee surveillance is illegal.

What do you think happens when people don’t get enough to eat? Do you think the lay down and die, or do you think they commit crimes?

History tells us which is the right answer.

Your comment reminded me of the fugitive group from the movie “The Lobster” (2015).

Anyway, it’s not clear to me why these should be prevented or how. Let people do what they want.

This reminds me that the Alamo Drafthouse used to have a program called “TV at the Alamo” and it was brilliant.

It was $5 to reserve a seat, and that $5 went towards food and drink purchases. They would show the previous week’s episode while the current episode was airing, strip out the ads and then project the current week’s episode. I watched Mad Men and Breaking Bad this way.

And in the mean time, all my browsing, payment, and location data collected by corporate ad brokers got handed over to the NSA for just the cost of a letter.

I don’t see the point in constantly changing hardware that I don’t even know is safe, just to prevent what will already happen.

So you’re saying that no matter what hardware you have, the NSA will buy that specific hardware and take the time to break it.

100% agreed. If you’re concerned about privacy, being tracked online by corporations is a bigger concern than the the NSA. If you’re the target of an NSA investigation, you’re already fucked. Changing your network equipment is not going to help.

I think in order to address this question, we need to know more about your threat model.

Are you a journalist working in a sensitive/dangerous area?

Do you often participate in discussions with dissident groups?

Do you frequently access content that is illegal in your jurisdiction?

Ahistorical as this take is, I’m kind of jealous that you weren’t around for microUSB.