supportlocal4h

Instead we need to be growing more chicken feed?

Surely the irony is not lost that USians fret over alfalfa and oranges getting shipped overseas after so many decades of shipping oil, autos, bananas, etc. into the US from around the world.

"Free" means different things to different people. For instance, a free phone that records everything you do (not just phone calls) and posts the recordings to soyouwanttobeastar.com might appeal to some and horrify others.

If this free 3D product only required a DNA sample, the group who considers it free might change. Or if it required your signature. Or your corporate username.

It clearly is not free. It has a price. The question is how much different people value that price.

What kind of friend do you have that you can't just say, "Hey, what's your handle?"?

The dinner is not necessarily buying support. It is buying access. The lobbyist can drown out my voice because I don't get the same access to my supposed representative. Welcome to a republic.

Do you have an idea to improve on this? Perhaps there could be 100 designated dinners per rep per year and up to four competing voices could be at the table. We could vote for the candidate who has a 100 dinner topics list that we like the best.

The wisdom of the founding fathers of the U.S. impresses me. They didn't all agree on solutions and they didn't all agree on what was a problem. But together they chewed through a lot of tangly weeds.

Many people think the foundations of the U.S. are outdated and ill-informed of modern society. Most of those people are poor students of history. The U.S. founders were not poor students.

Regarding lobbyists and special interests in politics, the founders were not the least bit ignorant. In the end they settled on a clever mechanism to control them. The answer to special interests is special interests.

It might be argued that some special interests have escaped containment. Big oil is too big? But Biden just sent massive funding into solar and batteries and electric vehicles. Big chemical is too big? Trump gutted EPA? What about Big Pharma? Well, any system is going to have pendulums, and none of them will be perfect. But can they self heal? History suggests the current system is pretty good at that even if any given moment seems a bit off-kilter.

I'm not opposed to exploring other options. But to improve requires a recognition of the weanesses and the strengths of alternatives. Don't be too quick to dismiss the strengths of the current alternative.

Terrorism works to... what? Sell xray machines? Decrease tourism? Convince Lithuanians to quit interfering in Kentucky? Fund the security industrial complex?

The point can be easy to miss.

I interpret "works" to mean that it accomplishes its goal. For instance, if somebody threatens to break your storefront windows unless you pay protection money, so you pay the money, then the threat worked. We used to use a different word than "terrorism" for that, but you get the idea.

But you rarely hear that grafitti works. Or that road rage works. They might accomplish some goal, but that goal may be difficult to discern. So we tend to qualify the success. "If the goal is..."

If the goal of running a marathon is to improve personal performance...

When the point is unclear to say the least, it is pointless to say it works without saying what it works to accomplish. It's like saying, "dying your hair works."

No, it is not a thing except in the mind of a confused ill-informed customer. There is only so much Apple or anyone else can do to protect their users. If somebody sends you instructions on how to convert your life savings to Bitcoin and put it in their wallet, owning an Apple device won't protect you.

Advocating that buying expensive Apple products saves you from vampires is also a scam.

It's a scam text message. But your grandma can't tell the difference. It just illustrates that Apple is not a silver bullet. In the end, there is no substitute for education.

My employer standardized to iPhones. Recently I have been getting notifications that my Netflix account has been suspended.

It greatly irritates me that Apple is sharing profile information with Netflix. I have never used Netflix on my iPhone and don't even have the app installed. Worse, no matter how many times I respond to the notification, my account keeps getting suspended. I never had a Netflix problem before the iPhone.

So, giving up and buying an expensive Apple device does not protect you from life.

P.S. Please don't try to educate me on HN to recognize the difference between a system notification and a scam text message.

I remember a day when WordPerfect employed thousands of local college students to staff top-notch help lines. They had what at the time was state-of-the-art phone queue management and tried very hard to minimize your wait time. If you needed help adjusting margins or creating footnotes, just call their support and they'll fix you up.

Can you imagine Google answering a phone call or a chat line to explain how to arrange bookmarks in Chrome? Ok, Chrome doesn't cost money, so maybe that's fair. How about Microsoft helping to move the taskbar back to the bottom of the screen? How about Samsung explaining how to set DoNotDisturb? Facebook walking you through how to recover from somebody taking over your account?

Ah, the bad old good old days...

> Facebook ... might be the only social media some of our immediate family have

It's funny how prevalent this meme is. But I'm not expected to have an AOL account just because it's the only social media grandpa has. Or MySpace just for Aunt Lolita's sake. No, they are both supposed to get Facebook accounts because that's what cousin Ralph has. And I'm supposed to move for the same reason. Well, if Ralph wants me to know what he ate for dinner, he can find me at my local bbs.

Are we still talking about Rust or have we moved on to general grumbling about life?

Or working for Azure, apparently, or Cloudflare, or Amazon, or ...

This doesn't change the argument about scarcity in general, but it isn't true that the few jobs that are out there are only in crypto.

Or, the commander thinks that in an age of drones and cruise missles, bayonet charges don't make sense even if the bayonet is now attached to a machine gun.

If Figma had sold to, say... Autodesk for $15B would that be an anti-trust issue for you? What if they sold to Google?

I'm pretty wary of monopoly abuse. But I'm also very wary of entitled people (including myself sometimes) demanding that somebody else has the responsibility to create great stuff for free to make their life better. It's beyond my ability to create an amazing electric vehicle so somebody else should be required to do it and give it to me for free or else it is an anti-trust violation. Somebody else should make something as good or better than SolidWorks or Fusion or XD for free or else AutoDesk/Adobe/MS/Alphabet/... are harmful monopolists.

I don't like Adobe or AutoDesk or MS or Meta or many others companies. I disagree with many of their behaviors for various reasons. I think some of what they do is or should be illegal. But I think misguided consumption is more often the root problem. And it is a mistake to punish those who take advantage of misguided consumption in a way that encourages more misguided consumption and entitlement.

Perhaps you misunderstand that Figma was motivated to create value. A large part of the motivation for many startups is an exit plan wherein they get bought out by established competitors.

If you prevent such purchases, you eliminate a major factor in creating the value to begin with.

Please don't pretend any kind of consistency with any form of the English language.

The USA uses metric all over the place. Everybody knows how big 2L is. Syringes are all marked in mL or cc. Socket wrenches come with 1/2, 9/16, 5/8 etc. but also 9, 10, 11. Athletes no longer run 100-yard dash. The "400" is 400m. Cars have 1.8L engines. People wear size 30 footwear, but also size 7.

Yes, the USA uses inches and pounds and gallons. They also use m, g, and L. And picas and fingers and miles and decibles and watts and joules. Mostly they don't know or care. If they do know and care, they are usually capable of using whichever unit gets the job done.

What part of opening a spreadsheet made you jump into a terminal?

Ah, shucks. Let's not argue. You're both right. Can we embrace great points on both sides without strong diageement?

There are plenty of good ones, but you probably fail to recognize the best ones. In fact, the very question suggests that you have a limited world view. You will reject what I say because it doesn't fit into your narrow view. That's not meant as an attack, just an observation of human nature.

For example, one "remote desktop" that has become popular lately is called Wireguard. You connect, open the spreadsheet stored on the office network drive and print it to either the printer in the office on to the printer sitting next to you.

Many people would say that is sooo much better than RDP. That is not Windows thinking. That is Unix thinking--you know, Mac/Linux. (And BSD and most everybody else in the world)

So, to say it differently, Mac/Linux people often solve problems a different way, so they use different tools. Why don't laser printers come with whiteout toner?

I am ok with candidates asking questions.

And I am ok with managers filtering out people who ask questions.

From both perspectives, mission accomplished.

Sometimes it's hard to distinguish trolls from legitimate seekers of knowledge. I'd rather feed a troll than starve a student,

1. Carbon does not aim to replace C. It targets C++ devs. 2. Carbon is still just an idea. Well, more than an idea, but less than ready. 3. Carbon is meant for people who cannot move to something like Rust. They don't intend to compete in enviroments that have modern options.

Ok, landlord removes toilet while raising rent. Scummy landlord? Maybe. But I still question the tenant more. Why keep renting?

Because living in tent doesn't get you a toilet and loses a lot.

So build your own house! Or pay someone to build you a house. Or join forces with 10 others and build a hostel with decent toilets, or a tent campground with a bathhouse. Move to a different building with higher rent.

Or just sit in your dump apartment, keep paying rent, and complain about the toilet. Yeah, that's the best choice.

What's that? It's a 3-bath that still has 2 working toilets and a great kitchen? It's not a total dump? It's kind of a dump but close to awesome schools? Look, is it worth the rent or not? Stay and pay, or leave. What's that? It costs money and trouble for a moving van? Sigh. It sure does.

Please let's explore this a little. How do you feel about a person that builds a house with their own hands and then rents it out for the next 50 years?

I personally am ok with that.

What if they rent it out to the same tenant for 50 years? I am ok with that but start to question the wisdom of the tenant. What if rent keeps going up even beyond a reasonable mortgage payment? It doesn't make me question the landlord more. It makes me question the tenant more.

Now if you add a wrinkle like the landlord passes a law that no more houses can be built, then my prejudice switches. Or if it is more subtle like you can't build with the same kind of materials, or reuse a concept like footings.

I oppose that kind of rent-seeking. But it's not the rent-seeking to which I object. It's the moating.

Of course, it's hard to build a new house even without moating. I see too often people who just pay rent because it's inconvenient to look for alternative housing. And building their own seems way too hard. Their own creation would never have the bells and whistles of what they are renting.

Wells Fargo is a perfect example. You get cheated and abused and swindled, but you don't leave. Microsoft was an example for a very long time. Intel has been an example. Amazon is in a big way.

"There's no other option," people cry. But of course there is. Regarding Autodesk, FreeCAD is an option. "Not even close!" some claim. MicroStation? "No way." Solidworks? "Well..."

Build your own, rent from somebody else, go homeless, or stay where you are and pay your rent. And if somebody makes it illegal to do anything but the last, revolt. But don't claim there's no other way if you just mean you want to be entitled.

* Edited for typos *

I understood Winnie the Pooh to be the harbinger.

Edit:

Winnie 1926, later purchased by Disney

Willie 1928

This is a fair question from somebody who has never seen it in action. The answer, from my experience, is no. Regarding the religious or church status matter, absolutely no. The church isn't pushing these things and even cautions about them.

Socially? A person might feel obligated to help a friend, same as any other culture. Then again, if you're just as cash strapped, ... It's really a personal decision. Just like buying Girl Scout cookies. Or the open guitar case next to the street performer. Plenty of people refuse to respond to invites to an MLM "party." Some people avoid yard sales. But it shouldn't affect friendships.

I sympathize a lot with the moms you characterize as "wanting to make an easy buck." How do you put in 8 hours a day as an accountant or hair stylist or fire fighter or HR rep between morning snack, potty training, reading time, nap time, outside play time, music time, etc.?

Maybe you try to get paid for raising your own kids by daycaring other kids at the same time. Is that also an easy buck?

Not everybody has a k8s genius spouse pulling down 6 figures. Any buck that can be gained in two or three hour increments a week is a lifeline.