I dislike the fact even more then the idea.

Called a bank recently.

They: "please say in a word the subject your call is about so we can immediately connect you to the right department "

Me: “LOAN”

They: you said “limits on your cards”, 1 for yes 2 for no

I tried 3 times, gave up. They won, I guess.

If you really live in a 500 yo house, the walls are probably like 1 meter thick full stone/brick and the windows are tiny. They stay cold in summer, it’s like living in a cave.

The much more common 60-100 yo houses on the other hand…

Passive cooling and designing buildings to not overheat during summer in the first place is the way. And phoenix or Las Vegas shouldn’t be much more than a gas station, they’re unlivable hellholes without permanently pumping enormous amounts of energy in.

Not just you. I hate AC. Awful being in hotel rooms where it’s AC all the way and you can’t even really open a window in the room. I get sore throat and usually they’re really noisy too, so I can’t sleep without earplugs. I very much prefer opening a window and airing thoroughly in the evening and then during the night leaving window on kip. Travelling many days or weeks in AC vehicles really makes me sick.

Been using searx a bit recently and it often is the 1 thing I’m looking for as the top result.

After some decades they just become so incredibly gross no one without a hazmat suit would try cleaning it again, so they’re replaced.

That’s already the case. Facebook etc have been walled gardens (or prisons if you prefer) for decade and a half now.

Sure, it’s called Boarding School.

So… just making sure I am understanding this properly: centralized service monopoly by one government backed provider…? Doesn’t that got quite a communist ring to it?

I don’t think you’re very sincere, but I’ll try to explain how this is not communism and how this works in many countries.

People still have to pay for using the service. Depending on how often they ride, how far they go, etc. A fair, yet subsidised price. What the government does is create a “scenario”, a map if you like, with dots and lines and wishes and logical connections on which likely many people travel often. They identify which cities, which services, etc they want connected, and basically write out a TENDER to which many PRIVATE COMPANIES can participate. Sometimes, it’s a 1 take it or leave it big package deal. Sometimes, it’s split into a “main network” which will be run by a state controlled company, and local and regional networks, for which tenders are created and for which different companies can participate. They usually “win” a tender for quite many years at once, because it costs a lot of effort and money to get services started. It is quite far away from communism. But is does force a private company to not only exploit the few very most profitable connections, and ignoring all the others. Which is exactly what Uber is aiming for: only the profitable lines, 0 others. In a point of view from a society as a whole standpoint: it is still valuable to have more people use the bus instead of their own car, for many reasons, even on lines that are not profitable but require subsidies, for example also because it is still a lot more economical. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper for 20% of people using the bus, than to build yet even more highways and lanes and force people to buy their own vehicles. On top of that, it is the governments’ job to deliver basic services to all people. That is what we pay taxes for. What good is a hospital, a library, a school, if the people who very much need it, for example people too impaired to drive a vehicle and too poor to pay uber, can’t reach these services? Busses make sense, subsidised busses often make sense (not always, some places overdo it running empty busses too often), Uber is for sure not in it for providing a service to society, they are in it for destroying the service system for all and only taking the profit from some and fuck other people.

they will try to crack down on it either way, might as well go out with a fight. The more popular it is to use adblocking and the less niche weirdo psycho, the less “normal” it is for whatever shit they wanna do, however far they want to go to literally force bullshit into your brain wether you want it or not.

Do you want cookies? Do you want to share your details with 1049 trusted data partners?

They click this thing once. 1 time only for years of “not being bothered by it” (that they notice actively).

I agree it’s total shit but it is from a regular user point of view, easier to use the “i agree” button on most of that stuff once, than to try to avoid it. Constantly on the same few websites anyhow.

Still doesn’t explain the no ad-block for me though, it’s a whole lot easier on the mind to browse ad-free, it is well worth the tiny effort of using ff and activating ublock…

Uber will only cherry pick profitable routes for profitable customers, stealing them from public transport which will become more expensive as a result. Public transport is a public service available to everyone for a fair price. Uber is not public transport. Uber starting busservice somehow signals they want to move into that space, but they will never be servicing the poorest towns. Parts of PT being privatised by uber probably is bad news for bus passengers on less popular routes.

I still see one party racing with arms and one party trying to survive.

Not sure if arms race is the right way to put it when 1 side is deploying nukes and the other is only deploying shields. Money ruined the internet, ads is just one way how it did that.

rustbelting makes voters transition from democrat to republican. you could argue that they actually benefit from declining industry, so of course they’re going for it

You don’t have a tax for owning “abandoned” housing (inhabited by noone)? There should be.

google controls the portals through which many people search. Defaults will always be google when people are using android and or chrome. Yahoo, infoseek or altavista never had anywhere near a grip on people like google does today. It takes effort to change now, while in the olden days you just had to change your 1 start page on the browser, things are a lot more embedded and thus customers locked in. Thinking it will switch over to a better alternative like it did back then, purely because it is a lot better, is a bit naive I think, unfortunately.

chatGPT and in apps integrated AI search is stealing it.

yeah the resume is the silly part, it’s a remnant from the past. Somehow for flipping burgers they are by doing this checking wether you can neatly summarize you’re academic history and your skillset, it’s completely pointless. And for high skilled or specific jobs, you’re better off asking some in the workfield questions anyhow, instead of the “why don’t you decide what you want to tell us”-resume.

that computers are sophisticated enough to drive cars

they aren’t