I love my 2021 xps. Thin, light, powerful, and good Linux support. It’s starting to show its age but I use the hell out of it.

The only reason next laptop won’t be an XPS is because the owners went full maga. If the decision was hardware based, I’d probably go xps again.

Oof trackball

I thought ahead, and started making my daughter listen to Bauhaus at six months.

My 2yo daughter saw one in a parking lot and said “that one’s magic.”

If Lyft and Uber are doing this then I genuinely applaud them. That’s astounding ingenuity in screwing over their customers. True innovators.

I use Windows 11 for work and honestly don’t know why so many folks complain about it. I like working in it better than 10.

The forced Microsoft login is absolutely a valid privacy concern - I get that. The copilot integration is annoying and not helpful but can be turned off. The general UI and compatibility is pretty good. I’d just go ahead and upgrade to 11.

I had my first kid a little over 2 years ago, and my interest in twiddling with my OS plummeted. I use Linux, and it’s great for what I do, but I don’t do any sound stuff. I bet you could do it but that there’d be a lot of twiddling with your OS.

I’ve worked with co-ops both on the retail grocery side and ag aggregator side, and the traditional supply chain is similar. The ag co-ops serve as a middleman, and the retail grocery will usually deal with a distributor.

The grocery co-op had way more direct accounts (hundreds) than a traditional grocery, but that was mostly for smaller company specialty goods. The vast majority of the product moving off the shelves was bought from one of two big distributors.

Similar here. We used to be great at avoiding the corporate stores until we had a kid. Convenience and selection wins when you’re overstressed and sleep deprived.

I think we’ve done great at rolling back to local-only shopping this year. No Amazon, no target. Costco still gets out visits, but overall we’re being much more thoughtful about who gets our money and we’re spending significantly less also.

They don’t get to record it as revenue, but they do get to sit on the cash, earning interest etc on it. Companies loooove gift cards. It’s free money.

For a company health perspective, it’s better to use it so they’re at least put the cost-of-goods. Best option would be to sell the gift cards to someone who was going to shop there anyways.

You might see short term savings on some things during the economic turbulence, but overall it will make things more expensive in the short and long term.

For things that Canada is a net exporter of, like Canola, you might see a sudden oversupply when exports stop, and then cheaper products. In the long term, farms will adjust or go out of business. The expenses that come along with that wind up on the consumer eventually.

For manufactured items, if a business is shifting to solely domestic markets, they lose a lot of economies of scale which again increases costs.

Overall, free trade is a mixed bag. It ultimately saves consumers money, but leads to larger multinational businesses and reduced national autonomy.

Unwinding free trade gives up the reduced costs and costs a lot of money in retooling and reestablishing supply chains etc.

I’ve read that the main reason Google funds Mozilla is to prevent a monopoly situation. I bet they’ll stay committed.

Mozilla really does need to diversify their funding though.

I’m interested in hardware that can better run local models. Right now the best bet is a GPU, but I’d be interested in a laptop with dedicated chips for AI that would work with pytorch. I’m a novice but I know it takes forever on my current laptop.

Not interested in running copilot better though.

What property investors are buying with cash? The extreme leveraging is one of the main things that makes real estate investing attractive.

I think folks might be confused about the term “cash offer” when buying/selling houses. This generally doesn’t mean that someone is literally buying the property without debt involved, but that they can make the purchase without involving the mortgage process. Usually with a line of credit or similar funding.

I actually genuinely don’t know what you meant. I said something and it seemed like you just said a bunch of other things that were kinda related but also not. It’s not “White Knighting” when someone tells you that something you said is fucked up. It’s just someones telling you you’re saying fucked up things.

Yeah I know all of these things. I’m also a person who exists in this economy. I’m just saying that not being able to afford living alone is a bad choice of things to highlight.

I don’t assume women are prostitutes though. That’s just fucked up.

Yes, the rent is too damn high, but living in an apartment alone has been a luxury for young people as long as I can remember. I sure as hell couldn’t afford it when I was in my twenties. I lived in a pantry for a couple years and didn’t complain. This is a weird measuring stick.

Water rights are the opposite of late stage capitalism. It’s silly to enforce when we’re talking about a residential rain barrel, but when we’re talking on much larger scales is critical. When creeks are drying up because landowners are building catchment ponds, water rights start to look pretty good.

Sure, Amazon doesn’t want hundreds of extra lawsuits, but the staff also don’t want to waste their money on legal fees for a suit that’s a guaranteed loss. Case law is very well-established.

What’s with the assumption that it’s the law that is keeping Amazon from mass-firing staff who won’t come in?

The approach they’re taking is just a smart business decision. It allows them to spread the disruptions out so they’re more manageable, to keep employees who’s skills justify flexibility in the WFH rules, and prevents the PR impact of a mass termination.

The laws are pretty different for contract workers vs W2 employees. W2 employees can have contracts, but it’s really rare outside of unions. Conditions of employment can in most cases be changed at the employers discretion.

I feel a little bit like I’m defending Amazon here, but I’m really trying to highlight that our worker protections are crap in the US. Unions are really the way to go if employees want security. Tech industry has way too few unions.

This is true for contract workers, but I believe we’re talking about W2 employees, who rarely have a contract if they’re not part of a union.