The internet arguably exists as a mass phenomenon because of porn. They have their shit and unethical parts. But, on the internet tech side, almost all the good (and some of the bad) trends appeared on porn first.

Fear not, because a single person doesn’t constitute a community. And Madthumbs gets talked about every six months or so, when a batch of new users discover them. Everyone then completely forgets about them until the next cycle.

You have way more than I do, with more flexibility. Definitely not tied to Visa and MasterCard. Skrill for example, accepts crypto and debit. PaySafe I think is outside of the Visa network and takes debit for prepaid cards as well.

Steam takes debit in certain regions. And a debit card, from the point of view of what private information is managed, is identical to a credit card. Many debit cards now even allow international use.

Better Nate than lever.

Anything but public transit, eh?

Your country is lying to you. No surprise there, as all governments lie. There are plants specialized in recycling only the caps. For certain regulatory markets, the caps are easier to recycle than the bottles. As with anything, it’s all about what infrastructure is in place, and how well it meshes with already existing manufacturing. You do what is best suited to your local waste management. But be aware that it is by no means global or a universal (chemical or otherwise) limitation. Governments need to regulate both sides to make recycling viable.

Enshittification strategies only work if the product actually produces revenue and it grows along with market share. Unfortunately, even if market use grows, revenue from AI is not there. Even YouTube crossed the break even boundary before the start of ad enshittification and after the Google buyout. LLMs financial projections are starting to show that it will never reach enough revenue to cover costs, much less cover ROI into infrastructure and capacity. The math isn’t mathing and investors are starting to get cold feet. So they either enshittify now or the capital soon will start vanishing.

“I hear what you’re saying, but have you considered losing your convictions and compromising your principles?”

— average politician

It makes me sad that e-ink is so niche that it will never reach a truly cheap price. Last time I checked it seem to have already achieved its mass production potential. It is so hard to manufacture already, and newer developments just find ways to make fancier screens that are even more expensive and complex to make. The process to make them is already as efficient as it can be.

Nuclear was killed by Greenpeace, not only did they take tons of money from shadowy donors to bad mouth nuclear (they turned out to be fossil industry related), they did it via spreading misinformation and plain lies. Everything incorrect the public thinks they know about nuclear power derives from a Greenpeace campaign. The worst part is that coal has killed more animals and people than all of nuclear incidents combined, including the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I didn’t contradict that notion. Apple devices are supported for longer than Android. But, again, it is an attempt to hook new people into a subscription-adjacent model. The pressure and nagging to change to a new phone every two years is still there, and they also kill software support to devices that are still functional.

Apple is in the same business model. They also kill their phones via software. They just captured the used market through various means so they get money off you more consistently. People think that trade in with credit options for a new phone every two years is such a great idea. Do the math, it’s actually a subscription model, you don’t own your iPhone, yet you’ll always pay more than what the hardware is worth.

Thanks for the honest insight. I will not be contrarian to what you said. But I do want to point out that honesty without emotional responsibility is cruelty. It might be a costume party, but it’s not always born out of malice, often it is self preservation. After all dissecting living beings usually kills them.

I appreciate the honesty, however, cynicism and lack of patience can be challenging for others to deal with in communication. However, I believe very thoughtful of you to keep it on the internet. Even if it makes the internet more toxic, at least you keep real life more sensible and that’s very considerate. I can see how it can be challenging, as I struggle with civility and empathy online as well.

Interesting, such a strong insight is actually part of soft skills. You know yourself, what you don’t want to do and stick up to it for your own moral preservation.

You think most people lack soft skills

Here’s an interesting example you just gave me. I don’t think that and never said as much. As I said, my impression, while anecdotal, was developed doing psychological evaluations professionally. Our understanding is that soft skills are not a given, there are actually several dimensions and degrees of different soft skills involved. Some people might be very good conversationalist, but completely emotionally inflexible at work at the same time, for example. Certainly, different social advantages derive into different opportunities to develop different soft skills. This complexity is exactly why I said that soft skills are hard to teach and learn. Also, why some people on the field are calling to rename them something else. The soft adjective is perhaps inaccurate.

Now to the example. It’s extremely frowned upon in a conversation to affirm what others think, when they haven’t explicitly expressed so themselves. Specially when the other person is still a complete stranger. It could be interpreted as hostility or an attempt to misrepresent other people’s positions in order to attack them.

Well, curiosity, openness to new experiences, motivation to both learn and meet new people, tolerance to frustration and failure. Or at least be amicable enough to successfully navigate a learning setting, they are part of soft skills. In my professional experience, these are far from universal traits. Lack of soft skills is definitely not a minority, but it is also a gradient.

Fun fact. In psychology assessment this are being called hard skills: very technical abilities for doing specialized tasks; and soft skills: social and emotional abilities to navigate social contexts, manage conflict and self regulate emotions.

Hard skills are easier to teach, while soft skills are very hard.

As per usual with all the shit the conservatives do, it is cheaper. Electroplating requires a gigantic bath or a massive hermetically sealed room that can fit the entire volume of the statue. Such a thing either doesn’t exist, would be irrational to pay to build or, if it exists, it is really expensive as a service to use it (repurposing a PCB plant, maybe?) Modern public consensus also considers gold anything to be tacky and corny, of very bad taste. Despite the rise of gold prices, the jewelry market is somewhat stagnant. It looks gaudy to have much gold anything around for decoration. So it stands to reason that there’s actually few services that could electroplate gold to copper at such a scale, much less so a statue of the turd in chief.