How does having my house near the street on my lot restrict public usage of the street?
The sidewalk. And the street right of way extends beyond just the physical street in most places.
Readit Newscannonedhamster commented on Things that are illegal to build in most American cities now twitter.com/CascadianSolo... · Posted by u/oftenwrong
cannonedhamster commented on How Trolls Overran the Public Square project-syndicate.org/com... · Posted by u/hhs
The problem is the two concepts are symbiotic.
You start out a conspiracy with trolling and people doing it for the lulz and the reactions, and eventually you end up drawing in the unstable and mentally ill as true believers.
Which can lead to unpleasant outcomes, like pizzagate or Qanon.
Once the trolls realized that they could convince enough people to join or believe them to impact the real world it was over for internet freedom. The people that have held power for generations don't like losing that power. It's a shame that we'll lose most of the good parts of the internet along with it too, and all we'll be left with is a platform for entertainment of the most clicks. The internet can't route around broken culture.
> The plan would also require service providers to offer a “basic” broadband plan at an “affordable price.”
This really connects to socialism. China used to have "Price Bureau" (物价局). It sounds like Sanders is calling for one in the U.S.
Also, if "affordable price" policy is needed for internet, why not needed for more basic stuff like food and medicine?
Maybe food is too expensive for the poor because there is no Price Examination Department (物价检查所) to check price in grocery stores?
Food in the US is regularly subsidized, especially meat. It's how we compete unfairly with the rest of the world. ISPs already receive massive subsidies to have laid fiber they decided not to lay. They kept the money though. The US pays more for healthcare and receives poorer results on average than anywhere else in the world. Pretty sure you're unfamiliar with the differences between socialism and communism. The US is a heavily socialist state with massive corporate welfare plans. Instead of spending our money on taking care of our people we take care of the wealthy.
Distances in the US can be so much bigger than in other countries, leading to rural areas being much more rural than in pretty much any other developed country. This makes servicing some rural communities very expensive. Not only for ISPs but for pretty much any infrastructure. Living in a rural area is a decision, that's fine for people to make, but I'm not sure we all need to be subsidizing it. Yes, cities have become very expensive, but it would be much cheaper as a society to solve that problem by getting rid of NIMBY regulation and make it easier and cheaper to build denser than to keep maintaining small, remote settlements with very little economic value
Cities have some of the most expensive internet rates. The US has some of the most expensive internet in the entire world. Your distance argument only makes sense if you take away the billions given to ISPs to lay black fiber. Cities would be super cheap internet. That's not what happened. ISPs charge exorbitant fees for a service they barely keep up to date. Remote settlements are often what allows those cities to exist and who are you to tell people where and how they should live?
> Take a page from the Donuts book: create multiple price tiers for popular domains, up to 100x the base rate.
> Raise rates for long-time owners of common words. They weren’t using that premium space anyway.
This is forbidden by the .org registry agreement, 2.10(c): https://www.icann.org/sites/default/files/tlds/org/org-agmt-...
And amazingly won't matter under the new owners who get to write their own rules. That's why everyone is upset. There was a vote that allowed .org to set whatever prices they wanted right before the sale.
This sounds like the "Utility Death Spiral" and also happened in Germany, Hawaii, and Nevada.
Best article on it IMO (2014): https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/this-is-what-th...
tldr:
Renewables require additional grid maintenance costs (storage + two-way distribution) while simultaneously prompting more consumers to buy less conventional energy from utilities. Historically, utilities made money from selling electricity. Now they have fewer customers and higher costs. They have to charge higher prices to the fewer customers. Then more people want to choose renewables. This keeps going until the utilities bankrupt.
The solution is to change the business model for utilities, which are regulated monopolies. So it's a policy question. Absent strong leadership, the utilities tend to claw back against renewables instead of innovating (saga of Nevada)...
fun fact: this is named after ants, where some species will literally march around in circles to starvation if the pheromone scent trails get tangled up.
This is exactly right. There's utility in being an as needed source of power as well as storage point. There's so many different types of storage options as well. There's batteries, liquid potential energy storage, potentially flywheel but this hasn't worked out too well, there's adding wind capacity.
As a business model they get to charge for storage maintenance and generation when needed. Storage is a consistent amount of money with extra coming in from power generation as needed.
> But, you know, there are several (already known, developed) methods of handling this (big batteries, utilities being able to turn off your solar like they can currently remotely control my thermostat).
That was the point of the article: the solar CANNOT be switched off, it's dumb. That's what's causing the problem, all the dumb solar.
Interesting because I've got a box to just shut off my power. If I don't pay my bill the company can shut off my power. Seems to me that the power company should be looking at ways to handle the free power generation the public is providing and being the storage utility, otherwise the homeowners can just start storing it themselves and cut the power company out of the picture entirely.
cannonedhamster commented on Shibboleths that get you past the initial script stage twitter.com/patio11/statu... · Posted by u/signor_bosco
Always assume competence is, I think, a good strategy. People are more willing to help if you flatter their ego. And most importantly, sometimes, people really are competent.
I spent three months with my corporate IT on a problem I'd diagnosed in 10 minutes, because in a previous life I was corporate IT and had experience doing exactly what they were doing. After explaining what and why I thought the issue was what I thought it was they told me I couldn't be right and I let them dig at it. After multiple calls to Microsoft, who was equally confused, they finally got to an advanced tech. They called me and told me proudly they'd discovered the issue. It was exactly what I'd said three months earlier. This is not the last time issues like this have come up with my corporate IT. I always assume incomptence unless shown otherwise. I'll be polite but I don't think it's always the right solution.
cannonedhamster commented on 100 Years – The Movie You Will Never See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100... · Posted by u/calvin
So a film that won't be playable in 100 years due to bit rot, unplayable formatting, or long forgotten DRM. Nevermind if the company will even exist in 5 years much less 100.
cannonedhamster commented on The Great American Eye Exam Scam theatlantic.com/ideas/arc... · Posted by u/_bpgl
Health and food should be accessible to all and shouldn’t be subject to profiteering.
Labour should be compensated fairly but it should be subsidized from demand side by boosting purchasing power rather than supply side subsidies. This is of course more true for food/Ag than healthcare...but I feel it can be applicable to healthcare industry too.
Demand side subsidies have never lowered prices in the US as far as I'm aware. The latest Trump tax breaks, the Kansas tax breaks, and pretty much every time you goose demand side they pocket the money as profit and keep charging the same. Why should they decrease their profits if the government gives them free money?