Energy Star is
Perfect example; many/most electronics sold in the US are certified through UL for safety, which is private and works just fine. And the world didn't end.
Seriously, there are a lot of things to complain about - but pick things that make sense. I'd much rather my tax money go towards useful things.
Oh, and ~20 ms to major internet sites.
Going to point this out, in relation to the part of your comment relating to the standard starlink service:
This is from a rural area but - Personal experience that starlink gets ~200mbps, and the "mini" antennas are
Ignore Musk. There are hundreds of full videos of it (12.5+), it's full self driving at this point, regardless of a third party verification. Saying it doesn't exist is dishonest. Saying you wouldn't trust it (yet or otherwise) is fair - but - for all of Musk's faults, being cautious for something like that shouldn't be one of them.
Meh, regardless of how people feel about Musk or anyone "controversial" in general, the way I look at it is:
Most people in life that are major figures (historical or current) have varying levels of negative character attributes or negative things they do in their lives. Name any major historical figures and you'll find that regardless of the positives they had, they all had negative things (many times extremely negative things) that they did or were associated with them as well.
The bad things don't erase the good things (and likewise), you just take the good things and don't use/ignore the "bad" things. If it's a trade-off (example, giving money to someone who will use that to do bad things), then evaluate if you're morally OK with that and proceed accordingly.
My 2c.
Not sure what you're going on about... Don't get me wrong, I personally think the cybertrucks are ugly and don't understand why someone would get them, but, they are selling faster than they can make them and are quite popular.
SpaceX has an insane track record, is making money hands over fist and Starlink is providing massive amounts of funding and is a game changer overall. I highly doubt Elon would give up control by going public.
Lots of reasons to hate on the man personally, but, don't be lazy and lie, especially about the companies themselves.
Full self driving (not autopilot!) is already there, working great and has very little issues (/far/ safer than humans). Not sure what you're going on about...
California has had recent rolling brownouts due to demand as well. Only mentioning it since regardless of the situation in Texas, California seems like it has similar issues...
I've gotten leaky propane canisters several times from the "swap a propane" major companies. No way would I swap a battery - you're relying on some random person to do their job where a complete test would be too time consuming, and it's likely their inspection won't catch a bunch of edge cases for damage/issues anyway. After the last issue, it was a big enough obvious problem that I'll never do that again. I went out and got my own tank which was cheaper after a few fills and I'm happier since.
Plus, from an environmental perspective for the battery swapping to work you have to move them from the swapping point, to the company that actually sorts/tests/etc them and back to the swapping point. Super wasteful. Plus, too many scammers/sadists in the world that will ruin it for everyone else.
Improve technology to charge faster with little damage to the battery, and make them cheap enough that they are a similar price point/lifetime as a standard car battery. Enjoy more limited (but growing) use of the technology before that point.
It costs money to keep those parts in stock/available. This will just raise prices for everyone. Many pieces of consumer electronics are 'disposable' and their price point and quality reflect that - not everyone has money to buy the $300 microwave when a $60 one is available.
Requiring to keep repair documentation and other items available may be fine, since it costs little extra money for the companies. Keeping actual replacement parts available costs money, which makes the products cost more.
The proper way to fix this is to educate consumers, so the ones that can afford it can buy products that are supported for longer. If I buy a $60 microwave I'm rolling the dice that it would be cheaper to just buy 3 of them instead of buying the more expensive model that will have parts available in a few years.
The thing that most people who are major proponents of working at home tend to forget is, if you can do your job from home, there is (for nearly all positions) no reason "on paper" that your job can't be done from another country by someone that makes a 10th of your salary.
In the end all for-profit companies will look towards lowering costs, and since many view criticizing offshore resources skill level from a "general" perspective as prejudice, it creates an issue for most defenses against moving positions overseas if you're working entirely remotely. To think "someone" from offshore locations like India
Be careful what you wish for - working remotely all the time is a double edged sword. Good luck in the unemployment line.
In nearly all cases this is caused by people living beyond their means - either because of location or other factors. There may be external factors as to "why" they choose to do this:
Family lives in an expensive area and they feel they need to stay close
change in job status and not willing to "downsize" expenses
past poor decisions (credit card debt anyone?)
unlucky events (medical, car issues, etc.)
Some type of addiction issue (alcohol, drugs, etc.)
However, in general most people tend to take the "path of least resistance", even if that path is causing quality of life issues - because change (moving, canceling the $200 cable subscription, not eating out as much) is scary and it's hard. Again, not everyone fits into this category, but, nearly all do - it's common sense.
People feel entitled to a quality of life of what they feel is "right" for them. If their decisions are only impacting themselves and their family, then it doesn't matter as much. If it impacts others (such as having to help someone with taxpayer dollars, charity, etc.), then it's up to those supporting that family (charity, government, etc.) to decide what a "fair" quality of life is.
Most people don't want others starving in the streets, but, at the same time - does that mean we should be paying for free internet and TV? That's up to society to decide what type of world we want to live in, and what is feasible.
As a side note, although I mentioned it in the earlier post, while I picked breast cancer because the numbers were more easily available... There are many other issues that can be detected and treated if done early that have a far, far bigger impact.
Considering the earlier link pointing out 41% of people related to preventative, etc care:
An example being 659,000 people die of heart disease every year according to the CDC. ( https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm )
Each year, about 795,000 people in the United States have strokes, and of these incidents, 137,000 of the people die ( https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/stroke/conditioninfo/risk )
This year, an estimated 151,030 adults in the United States will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer. These numbers include 106,180 new cases of colon cancer (54,040 men and 52,140 women) and 44,850 new cases of rectal cancer (26,650 men and 18,200 women). https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/colorectal-cancer/statistics
For other causes, I had a hard time finding the actual number of lives preventative screenings save, but, a large amount of information did point to them being preventable. It's irresponsible to assume that a significant percentage of people wouldn't be saved if they had screenings, and the earlier CDC link clearly said 41% of people didn't have those that year.
To do this properly, I'd need more data to be able to tell how many people in what age groups were missing screenings, what the overall rate of success of preventative screenings at saving lives are, etc..
But it's pretty clear that based on this data it's skewing the number - at least enough to be seriously considered and looked into. Again, if you have a link saying it has, and it was ruled out (and details as to why), feel free to post.
Honest question: How would you determine if something is "obvious" from the statistics? I can't find anything that goes into that level of detail, or addresses it at all. So, the question becomes, is it even
I think it is personally reasonable to come up with a hypothesis (note: just a hypothesis at this point!) of if a large percentage of people are pushing off preventative care, then it seems likely a large number of those people will likely not have issues that will become terminal, treated in time to save their life.
So let's look into it a bit further:
41% of all adults didn't goto the ER or preventative care (see: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6936a4.htm )
For just mammograms which is a small number of overall terminal issues that could be found by preventative screenings (and obviously don't make up the whole number by itself) :
Preventative care "all but stopped" for mammograms during the start of the pandemic in 2020 (28k / month in 2019 people had them see: https://www.breastcancer.org/research-news/mammogram-rates-rebounding-after-pandemic)
If you have a mammogram there is a 0.5% chance you will get called back indicating you have cancer (see: https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/publications/health-matters/mammograms-facts-on-false-positives)
Similar issues look like they exist for other types of cancer (prostate, etc.), I didn't want to spend the hours to put links supporting those other issues in this post, but, I did look at a few and the numbers are easily available via google.
Again, this is just for breast cancer, which doesn't include any numbers from other preventative screenings (pap smear, prostate, lung cancer, heart issues, etc.), and breast cancer isn't even near the largest - it was just easier to get data for this post. Further, the CDC link specifically indicated a percentage of those people put off going to the ER as well, which seems even worse.
At a minimum based on the above, the deaths are being skewed by it - that much is obvious. Can you find any studies or articles indicating that lack of preventative care couldn't be responsible for the excess death numbers, that goes into any type of detail and has sources - or just for curiosity's sake, any studies that even imply they control for that and how? I can't, so I'm genuinely curious if they are available..
Covid is a horrible disease that has cost millions of lives. Many people aren't getting vaccines (or taking basic measures to prevent the spread) for various reasons which is costing even more lives every day. But, when the information being provided to the public is inaccurate (e.g. misinformation) it causes much more harm than good.
The truth and approaching things in an analytical and scientific way is important. People are treating this more like some weird type of religious / political war, and it's costing lives.
I am not a "Covid denier" or conspiracy theorist. I believe in vaccines and the scientific method. I just think it is important to accurately present facts, or the morons will pick out obvious errors or omissions and harp on those to justify dumb things that will cost lives.
There are many, many articles (and studies) showing preventative care was way down during 2020 as an example, with recovery somewhat in 2021, But it is still an issue. See: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6936a4.htm as an example.
Here is another link showing hospitals and longterm care facilities get money from Covid diagnoses, making it less likely they wouldn't test nearly everyone (there are many others) note that there are many other sources as well:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fact-check-medicare-hospitals-paid-more-covid-19-patients-coronavirus/3000638001/
The coronavirus relief legislation created a 20% premium, or add-on, for COVID-19 Medicare patients.
To be clear, I am not suggesting this is specifically a money grab.. but as a matter of policy it would just make sense to test as many people as you can. Would you want the liability of having typhoid Mary spreading covid to the rest of your icu patients? How do you recover massive costs from covid as a long term care facility or hospital? Will the facilities insurance cover them if they don't test?
Not everyone who disagrees with one part of what you agree with is your enemy.
Brain off-line, please wait.
