It does come at a price: they have to pay corporation tax.
You mean the one that every corp has to pay, regardless of monopoly status? Or something else?
Readit Newsbichiliad commented on Electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation npr.org/2025/08/16/nx-s1-... · Posted by u/geox
bichiliad commented on Electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation npr.org/2025/08/16/nx-s1-... · Posted by u/geox
If a private company builds infrastructure with their profits, should it be owned by the customers "who paid for it"?
They are given a de facto monopoly. It’s weird that a private company is building and owning public utilities, but if they’re going to be granted a monopoly, then it’s not unreasonable for that privilege to come at a price.
bichiliad commented on Amtrak NextGen Acela Debuts on August 28 media.amtrak.com/2025/08/... · Posted by u/reimbar
Indeed. My understanding was that for most of the country it's de facto the opposite: Amtrak yields to freight.
For as much as Biden purported to be a pro-passenger train President, you'd think he would have done something about that.
The problem is that the freight companies run these incredibly long trains now, which no longer fit into the siding (a bit of track that splits off from and then reconnects to the main track to allow one train to pass the other). So even if a freight train wanted to, it couldn’t let another train pass unless the freight companies invested in longer sidings or shorter trains.
bichiliad commented on Fastmail breaks UI in production twitter.com/licyeus/statu... · Posted by u/blux
They don’t. But as a Fastmail customer, I am _really_ tiring of how much they iterate on their UI/UX without notice and seemingly decreasingly solid testing. They push stuff to prod that doesn’t hit beta (at least the public beta environment) regularly. I just stopped using the beta environment because they only test “big” stuff there, it seems.
But for the past year they’ve been nitpicking their GUIs and UX and it’s maddening. They take away or move intuitive and accessible features with no replacement, or end up making you do more clicking/tapping to get there.
I have sent feedback to support many times. Sometimes they revert changes within a week, and sometimes it’s just the canned “we strive to always enhance our customer experience” copy.
Either way, it’s disruptive and unwelcome. Their 2021 era UI was perfect. When they started announcing partnerships with other companies I think they also ended up with more users that are consumers and that creates tension with prosumers and professionals.
Fastmail used to be a haven for people who cared about email and privacy, and many of us chose them based on our own professional experiences running email infrastructure. But now it’s quickly “consumerizing” and their designers clearly have the “to enhance is to remove” mentality.
And as a reseller — don’t get me started on their new billing system and model, which is less reliable than what came before, less flexible, and was launched with no real supporting documentation.
/rant.
The service is still fantastic though in terms of speed, infrastructure, etc. I trust their technology a lot. Their UX/UI people need a time out. Whoever replaced their “Moonpig” billing system with Paddle did the users a disservice.
I’ve been a Fastmail user for years, but I don’t know that I’ve had the same experience. I think I’ve noticed a few UI polishes, but nothing that broke my workflow. What sorts of things have you ran into specifically?
bichiliad commented on Fastmail breaks UI in production twitter.com/licyeus/statu... · Posted by u/blux
I disgree. Other people were saying it's broken too. Reasonable company behavior here would be 1 tweet "we'll look into it", and then either "we reproduced and are working on a fix" or "looks good to us please contact support so we can investigate your particular issue". But there's no reason to initially make users jump through hoops.
That response is probably standard support procedure. I think it’s pretty reasonable behavior. Could it be better? Sure. Is the person handling Twitter interactions doing their job? Also sure.
bichiliad commented on Fastmail breaks UI in production twitter.com/licyeus/statu... · Posted by u/blux
I am a fastmail user and I think fastmail deserves this. I don't know who asked them to change the UI.
Why do they deserve punishment for iterating on their product?
bichiliad commented on Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year helsinkitimes.fi/finland/... · Posted by u/DaveZale
Cyclists switch between pedestrian and car rules at will. I see them blow stop signs and lights constantly.
I’d argue that neither set of rules is made for them, so it’s not surprising that they take the most convenient of the two. Plus, it’s not out of the question to have laws in which red lights act like stop signs and stop signs act like yield signs specifically for cyclists[1]. It’s also likely less dangerous if that’s the case[2].
[1]: https://www.bicyclecolorado.org/colorado-safety-stop-becomes...
[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/may/21/women-cyclists-mo...
Given that Modesto is a Democratic Party stronghold since the 1990s, wouldn't defunding the Democrats be less destructive? If the government and their police are corrupt, are they going to stop terrorizing the community if there are no police at all? That's an absurdly ignorant position. Has CHAZ and Mexico taught us nothing?
The original comment talks about replacing it with something else. Forfeiture is something across law enforcement bodies, not something that one party does. Plus, I’m not exactly seeing police departments get staffing turned over every time a political party changes. I don’t know where you’re making that connection.
Alon Levy being brought up on this topic always tweaks my “but somebody is wrong in the internet.” I’ve been on several of the projects he talks about. He’s right about the macro numbers and the general vibe, but often wrong when he starts talking about he details.
The main issues are, in general: 1) increased regulation, which includes internal self-regulation. Lots of rules that are preventing potential minor problems, but have a lot of overhead to follow. 2) large projects are treated like a Christmas Tree. Everybody expects their vaguely adjacent hobby horse to be addressed by the project… so scope keeps growing. There is ALWAYS something you can point to that has a good cost/benefit; and always addressing these ensures that the project never actually finishes. 3) lack of decision making. There is a general analysis paralysis and fear of making the wrong call. It’s often cheaper to just move ahead and risk rework. By not moving ahead, change orders are being incurred anyway.
As much as a hate saying it, the best thing for any large project in these orgs is being run by a semi-dictator who has enough political capital internal to the org, and who strongly objects to anything outside of scope.
I was really sad that we lost Andy Byford. As far as benevolent transit dictators go, I can’t imagine doing much better.
bichiliad commented on Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA ostechnix.com/linux-reach... · Posted by u/marcodiego