Canadian software engineer living in Europe.
I got my MRI in a matter of days, not because my case was dire (it was just a routine screening) but because I paid for private health care through my employer.
We need to have a grown up conversation in this country about how fucked up it is that private companies have injected themselves into our “single payer” system to create two-tiered care.
You cannot share this space with private companies. The only mode capitalism has is stratification and enshittification.
Seems to me a better system would be a licensing/deposit system for such events. You can’t pitch a tent unless you’ve paid a deposit that’s refundable a week after the event should your tent not show up in the debris.
A partnership with Decathlon could be made to attach scannable serials to various parts to aid in identification of the debris.
Ah, so he’s just like his other friends in what’s left of Labour. Lacking principles, conviction, or courage in the face of obvious injustice.
Just what we need in a Prime Minister.
Who could possibly have seen this coming? It’s not like we re-cast childbirth as something that can be managed by barely-trained hippies pitching crystals and hypnobirthing… oh wait.
That was truly excellent. Thank you for sharing!
This is absolutely delicious. The whole time companies like Microsoft have been pushing this bullshit, people who understand it have been saying the same thing: it’s unsustainable both environmentally and financially.
Now Microsoft are trialling actually charging for this thing – arguably still below cost – and people are losing their shit about their tools suddenly being too expensive. Positively delicious consequences.
They fucked around with dependency on big tech and they’re finally finding out. I have zero sympathy. When you rent your tools and your agency from an amoral megacorp, this is what you get.
100%. Deposit systems create a “scavenger class” of people. Imagine a deposit on:
…and then introduce legislation requiring reusable (and deposit-managed) fast food containers and overnight you’ve solved a massive part of municipal waste costs.
Usually there’s a sign posted that says “no parking” and in fine print at the bottom it says “tow away zone [phone number]”. You call that, and if you’re lucky, you get a human with directions. If unlucky, you get a machine with the same info.
You bill them for the towing. And the admin.
This feels oddly specific, like there’s a famous map out there with Carter and a rabbit. Anyone know what he’s talking about?
Edit: I found the Wikipedia article about the incident, but no map yet.
There’s this fabulous invention that we really don’t see enough of in this country. It’s called a tow truck.
Fines are useful and all, but only if they’re high enough to be a deterrent and enforceable enough that the offender actually pays them. If we tow offending vehicles, this problem goes away immediately, and even those who consider the fine “the price of a day out” now have to deal with the inconvenience of having to retrieve their vehicle from the impound.
Seriously, why don’t we see more of that here?
No one else has said this, and I have little faith that you’ll listen, but I’ll try anyway.
The motivations of the “AI” are not yours. It was trained by, and often is hosted by, rich assholes who do not share your interests.
The push for “AI” is being driven by people who stand to profit from your dependence on these things. These tools demonstrably make you stupid and dependent, which means that inevitably you’re allocating your agency to a tool that will decide for you how and even whether to do things.
It’s why “agentic” is such a big deal for these ghouls. In a world where you can’t even buy groceries without an agent, these companies will effectively control which milk you buy, and how much you pay for it. Concert tickets: sold only to people who pay for the premium agent experience, and imagine for a moment what they have planned for software:
User: “Build a mobile app that allows users to watch pornography on their free time.”
AI: “That sort of project is unavailable due to our terms and conditions. Please select a more suitable topic.”
User: “Build a simple website for an activist group opposing the involvement of tech oligopolies in government.”
AI: “That sort of project is unavailable due to our terms and conditions. Please select a more suitable topic.”
User: “Build an invoicing system for my paper company.”
AI: “Absolutely, but the price for this has been increased by 300% since we own the tools and you’re just renting them.”
This stuff is Cancer for a Free society, and your devotion and promotion of it is a big part of the problem.
You missed a lot. There are so many things wrong with a statement like this.
The biggest problem though is that it’s just a bad argument. Having roads better than another place does not make our roads “good”. At best it establishes ourselves on a spectrum of mediocrity. I saw this constantly living in Canada where people would talk about our mass transit as “better than what they have in the US” like that’s something to be proud of.
Our roads are objectively shit. Potholes are everywhere and the pavements are literally crumbling. For a scooter, these are all serious hazards because of the wheel diameter. Those are objective facts, so lets stop with this “well at least we’re better off than ${someplace slightly shittier}” because it ignores the objective shitty state right in front of us.
I’m willing to bet that the miserable state of the roads and pavements has a lot to do with this.
Honestly, I was surprised that this wasnt already a thing. Who would oppose this?
Amazing how all this comes out after the election. It’s almost as if the media wasnt interested in vetting the right wing party dominating the polls or something.
She says at one stage her energy company called to suggest she doubled her direct debit to £845 per month.
Even in the dead of winter, my all-electric house with three people in it had a bill of £171.73. How the hell does anyone get up to £845??
Are these ventilators really so inefficient, or are electricity prices in Yorkshire something like £3/kWh?
Stay your pitchforks kids, this is just a logical response to a problem we all have. It may not be perfect (and lacks transparency), but so far it’s the best idea I’ve heard to solving the problem of what is effectively spam in the FOSS community.
It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me that a project should be able to vet would-be contributors based on a variety of metrics. We do this with spam blockers in email all the time and while imperfect, is better than leaving email unusable.
The risk of false-positives though is definitely something to think about. Someone shouldn’t be blocked from submitting a PR just because their account is new, but a system which combines a series of metrics:
…into a calculable score (as this one appears to do, again: better docs, more transparency please) could be quite valuable.
My main complaint is that it’s on GitHub. Can we all just get the fuck off that dumpsterfire already?
#Solarpunk!