This is retarded.

1. It isn't for profit healthcare that is the problem, it's THIRD PARTY PAY.
2. I don't use third party pay, ever, for healthcare. I've been insured nonstop for over 30 years, and NEVER ONCE has my insurer paid my doctor.
3. Even when I've had emergencies, I still called around, negotiated a fair cash up front rate, paid cash up front, and billed it to my insurer. My cash up front rate was sometimes below any co-pay negotiated with my insurer, lol.

I just recently had some elective surgery that would have cost me about $2000 on my annual deductible, but I was able to cash pay a negotiated rate of $400 including a follow-up "free". I submitted the $400 to my insurer and they reimbursed me.

Third party insurance exists because YOU VOTERS demanded the HMO Act of the 1970s, which tied health care to employment, and then employers outsourced it to third parties.

Health care is remarkably cheap in the US (cash pay, negotiated) and I don't have to wait months to see a doctor when I call and say I am cash pay. They bump me up fast.

Why are you giving them any of that information to begin with? The difference between now and then is that now it's spelled out in the user agrees that you and everyone else clicked through when they signed up. If the company tells you that they're going to pump your ass to anyone who'll pay and you agree to it, I'm not sure how much shame I ought to heap upon the company. If you don't like social media selling your personal information, then stay the hell off social media.

I think the point is that making exploits near impossible for an individual actor to discover means only well funded organizations or nations will be able to afford being in the business. State actors are a lot less likely to make vulnerabilities widespread like mercenary actors. That doesn't save everyone from exploits, but it does make the average user less likely to be the target.

The real question is how much of a performance tradeoff is this or if there's some other catch.

This reads to me like the sort of pithy post that's directed at something that I've apparently missed, but to your comment empathy is an overrated emotion that should be met with skepticism, particularly when it's politicians espousing it. Any number bet atrocities can and have been done because someone feels the plights of the people. The current dictator of this country no doubt claims to represent the feelings of his people. Like any other feeling, empathy is something that can be claimed by anyone. Unless you can read their mind, who are you to call them a liar.

The emotion may be useful, but like any other emotion it's one that can be claimed by charlatans. Empathy without demonstration is as worthless to me as any other claim without proof. Maybe not everyone grew up on a diet or televangelists or the equivalent to develop this kind of skepticism, but I've never met anyone who was empathetic that had to claim as much or even care about what other people thought of them.

I'd even argue that empathy is bad if a person has no way to act on it. If you cannot improve anyone's life what good to you or them is being able to feel their pain? Acting for the benefit of the heard because it ultimately ensures your own survival is still selfish. Empathy is just another useful survival skill, not some ultimate form of morality to be achieved.

Did you find your way over to r/fuckcars or something?

Japan had a massive car culture of their own and the Greater Tokyo Area is regarded as the largest metro area in the world.

Kids don't play outside as much for a variety of reasons. Smaller family sizes make parents more protective, and ubiquitous computers have made inside entertainment plentiful and inexpensive. Urbanization plays a part as well, but it's by no means the only culprit.

I'm skeptical of this claim. If it were true, more companies would be doing it to attract better employees and the more productive companies would naturally replace the less productive ones. Never mind saving a lot of money not having to pay for office space for employees.

I like WFH, but I also know how much I fucked off when everyone had to do WFH. Maybe it's not all that different from the amount of "fucking off" time in the office when all things are considered. There wasn't any drop of work accomplished. The more I've gone on the more I've come to realize that's almost some kind of universal constant.

Anyone more productive at home than in the office should probably just start their own company.

I kinda like it when companies give subtle hints that this might not be the job for me. Microsoft making Teams work is entirely dream work. It's entirely within the realm of fancy and can turn into a nightmare at any moment. You should be thankful for receiving such a clear warning sign.

This is just the FTC shaking down those companies for some money (political donations are fines too) for shaking down their customers.

Forget turtles, it's shakedowns all the way down.

I think the people working on those projects were aware of that. At least in most of the videos I've watched, it was a talking a point. Having more options or an easier time is certainly good. Snorkeling is something that I greatly enjoy and I think if more people had the opportunity to experience the beauty of nature they would be far more willing to help maintain it.

I'm surprised that they dared complain in the first place. Equatorial Guinea is one of those countries that's been under an oppressive dictatorship for so long that popular content creators on YouTube will eventually wind up making a video about the country or something ridiculous that the country's current or former President (for life) got up to. This is one of those rare cases where no one would really protest if the CIA overthrew the government.

Most of what passes for support these days could be handled by an LLM today and definitely will be in the near future. There will still be human support technicians to handle the small number of cases where the machine can't talk grandma through to the correct solution, but the entry-level positions that are usually just reading from a script are going away just like there aren't telephone switchboard operators. I suppose you're still ultimately correct as it still doesn’t matter where the LLMs are located when they're providing the support, but it does make sense to make it attractive to locate them here in the U.S. or even to incentivize companies to invest in the services providing that instead of sending money overseas.

That's a bad idea and all it should take is the realization that most grocery chains have a massive revenue but very thin profit margins. Grocery bills would go up across the board. The tech companies that have a much higher profit margin wouldn't be hit anywhere near as hard. All you're really proposing is increasing the sales tax by something like 10%.

I think corporate income taxes should just be abolished because they're largely pointless. The profit they make either gets reinvested or given out to shareholders. In the first case that involves paying someone to don some labor and that's taxable and in the second case that's taxable income earned by shareholders. Any untaxed profits just end up being taxed somewhere else eventually. Capital gains shouldn't be taxed until realized (i.e., someone sells the stock they had and earned actual income)

That might necessitate adjusting other tax rates, but simplifies things overall. None of this really addresses the problem of digital goods though. They're still a pain to track for tax purposes, and governments always have the problem of collecting sales tax on them when citizens are just a VPN away of appearing to be citizens of some other country where the goods and/or taxes are less expensive. Even if countries block companies that don't have a corporate presence in the country from selling digital goods there, they would still need to stop their own citizens from participating in digital marketplaces outside of the country.

Agreed 100%.

Why would any company spend money to buy something and dismantle it or otherwise render it less valuable than what they paid for it. Do you find yourself in the habit of purchasing new cars to run through a crusher that you believe others regularly do this? Why not spend the money investing in something that can be cultivated and make even more money or later be sold at a profit?

The action you describe is pointless. Even if you believe there's some ulterior motive by which the company secretly profits by destroying an asset, that ignores that the workers who still possess the same skill set and can form or join some new company that produces the same product. All a company can achieve is wasting their own money as they lose business to some competitor that supplies what consumers want.

The audiobook industry can do nothing to stop these kind of podcasts from being made. If there were money to be made there, someone would seek to supply the product to consumers.

I suspect that the customer base for their ear pods is vastly larger than that for their watches. I've wanted an excuse to get a smartwatch for a while now, but no company has ever really sold me on one. However, a pit of earbuds are something that I do want and having a neat feature that would otherwise require a more expensive watch could sway me to pick up a pair of these. Of course price is a bigger factor. The $5 gas station wired ear pods do most of what I want for a hell of a lot less money. Much harder to accidentally lose one as well.

The hardcore Apple fanatics will just buy the new product regardless of what it does or doesn't do regardless. They're not going to stop buying a watch just because the ear pods can measure heart rate as well.