I'd love to also have a low smell airport.
So many airports direct passenger flow through a shopping zone drenched in perfume fumes. Disgusting as far as I'm concerned.
Not to mention the screaming visual pollution of course.
2,587 karma · joined March 15, 2013
I take short to medium term consulting projects on things I like:
- where free software and video touch - small to medium functional web applications using django - and more ...
Contact me through mark@fosdem.org .
So many airports direct passenger flow through a shopping zone drenched in perfume fumes. Disgusting as far as I'm concerned.
Not to mention the screaming visual pollution of course.
I'm not holding my breath.
For some perspective, look at how something with a much smaller scope is being "revolutionised". I'm speaking of intra-EU dividend taxation, as regulated in EU directive 2025/50 ("FASTER"). A slightly less complicated dividend double taxation regime between EU member states. Applies to dividends on shares in public companies only. If the shares in question have not been traded within 5 days from the ex-dividend date. If the gross dividend is below 100k€. If the member state is not very small. From 2030. Using EU standardised forms. In some cases, resulting in direct reduction of the double taxation at source. In other cases, refund of excess double dividend tax within 60 days.
The clean solution would be to tax dividends in the tax residency member state of the receiving individual only. That would require a rather large leap of trust from very financialised EU member states like .ie, .lu or .nl. Perhaps possible with a long transition period and compensations. Only there's also bad faith state actors like .hu randomly torpedoing EU legislation to extract concessions. This discourages other member states from even trying to implement the clean solution.
Short-term negative-sum transactionalists are governing the US. Even if November stabilises things somewhat, the cat is probably out of the bag.
Trust comes on foot, but leaves on horseback. _That_ is why a well-integrated EU-based payment system is needed.
Pro musician here.
There's piles upon piles of human-generated music soullessly regurgitating stock patterns with inane lyrics since long before Alan Turing was even flown in by the stork. Most recent popular music by far is bland sausage factory production.
Why not allow yourself to be moved by beautiful music, wheter it's machine generated or not?
Sharing one's opinion in a respectful way is possible. Less spectacle, so less eyeballs, but worth it. Try it.
Why would one at this very moment look with suspicion at a FOSS contributor for the sole reason (s)he's American?
- Superb domain name.
- I'd clean up less relevant bits as much as possible. The subtitle for example says "Share text and images instantly and securely across all your devices". I'd s/and\ images// and s/across\ all\ your devices//.
- There is a strong use case for sharing just text. I'd encourage you to focus this app on just that. If tempted to add file/image/whatever sharing, I'd break that out into something separate.
- Shortening the url would be an expression of focus. Think https://pinsend.app/sessioncode .
- The copy functionality for each text string shared is great.
- Why not make the qr code visible by default?
- Let your audience decide how they want to use string sharing functionality. Don't presume on their behalf. What if two technicians on either side of a theatre want to use this to share secret streaming strings? You'd want to make sure your messaging is welcoming to them too.
- The productivity growth really has had incredibly strong deflationary effects. So much more, more diverse, tastier and healthier food for example, for so much less money.
- The growing affluence has really created incredible opportunities for scavenging from the waste stream. A practical example. About half of the food I eat is leftovers from a nearby school. I'm proud to be saving good food from going to waste _and_ it lowers our expenses quite significantly.
Keynes was almost right. He underestimated the ability of future generations to consume conspicuously. Also, the need for many to fit in by working, but I digress.
Many don't _have_ to work more and longer. I'm speaking of a large class, very much overrepresented on HN, of smart, healthy westerners with no dependents to care for. We have only one major problem. We live in this bubble nudging us towards conspicuous consumption - gently or less so.
My job closely resembles Keynes' 1930's prediction. Sometimes I work (much) more. Not because I need money, but because the job is interesting. Interesting as in, me learning, contributing something positive to other people's lives, growing my family's financial resilience and robustness, or just enjoying the flow.
Isn't that something for the individual to decide, not the collective? Many derive from work a lot of meaning in life. If working is what makes some people happy, it would be nice to not punish people for working until they die.
> I'm not saying this is an economically easy problem to solve, but we focus so much on economics and so little on policies that make people happy.
Absolutely!
In most places, solar is perfectly competitive without subsidies. Take my prosperous corner of the EU. No direct subsidies, nor the indirect subsidy net metering is. .37€/kWh average residential all-in electricity price caused a solar boom anyway.
The short term result of that solar boom is an ever steeper duck curve [0]. Negative electricity pricing more frequently and longer. Lots of creativity aligning production and demand. Think dynamic pricing, energy storage both as heat and electricity, and more. Great to see these products and services springing up.
I see early signs of much larger actors adjusting to the changed electricity landscape. Ever larger scale industrial scale clients are embracing the entire spectrum of solar, electric steam generation, heat pumps and battery storage. Exciting things with the market providing a strong tail wind.
> There is no “shortcut” to vast wealth, because if there were then everybody would be using it as the default and it would no longer be a shortcut.
Absolutely. I was not writing about shortcuts to vast wealth though.
> What are often described as “shortcuts” are highly situational opportunities with lower-than-typical risk, which by virtue of announcing them to others means the opportunity has passed and the risk has increased.
Of course the shortcuts are highly situational opportunities with lower-than-typical risk. "above median earner", "healthy", "dual income", "without dependents" are situational to a large extent. Yes, that means some people have more agency.
Some will play the personal finance game smart. They realise the smart way is to focus their game away from the situational, to where they have most control: on the expenses side.
Where we disagree is about announcing a shortcut to wealth equaling it disappearing. Not every informed actor decides to take the shortcut. Not all the situationally blessed want to ruthlessly focus on expenses.
> For there to be vast amounts of wealth hoarded by a few, there must also be vast amounts of exploited people desperately getting by on table scraps.
I share this analysis.
> There is a finite supply of wealth, and if we do not build systems to redistribute it equitably then it will always and inevitably by hoarded by the few lacking a moral compass or basic empathy for their fellow man.
Redistribution of wealth is a tricky problem. It requires a delicate balance between individual agency and collective force. Push too far towards either and humans will be suffering unnecessarily.
Not diminish your analysis. I just hope it adds a bit of perspective.
- moderately overbuild solar
- batteries for short term storage
- natural gas for seasonal storage