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supertrope commented on SSL certificate requirements are becoming obnoxious   chrislockard.net/posts/ss... · Posted by u/unl0ckd
stblack · a day ago
Nobody has yet mentioned how certificates induce and support churn.

In 2025 it's not possible to create an app and release it into the world and have it work for years or decades, as was once the case.

If your "developer certificate" for app stores and ad-hoc distribution is valid for a year, then every year you must pay a "developer program fee" to remain a participant. You need to renew that cert, and you need to recompile a new version within a year. Which means you must maintain a development environment and tools on an ongoing basis for an app that may be feature- and operationally-complete.

All this is completely unnecessary except when it comes to reinforcing hegemony of app-store monopolists.

supertrope · a day ago
A $100 fee makes it costly to burn and churn new accounts. So it's a spam filter.

Forcing developers to stay engages pushes out feature complete software but also pushes out unmaintained software.

An app store is an inherently higher cost distribution method. The operating systems are gratis so development is cross subsidized from app store royalties. They have an incentive to host more paid apps, especially micro-transaction apps that trick kids into spending thousands of dollars off mom's credit card. Of course they've banned or are going to ban alternative channels so you can't choose to self-distribute.

supertrope commented on SSL certificate requirements are becoming obnoxious   chrislockard.net/posts/ss... · Posted by u/unl0ckd
Jeslijar · a day ago
Why is a month's expiration better than a year or two years?

Why wouldn't you go with a week or a day? isn't that better than a whole month?

Why isn't it instead just a minute? or a few seconds? Wouldn't that be better?

Why not have certificates dynamically generated constantly and have it so every single request is serviced by a new one and then destroyed after the session is over?

Maybe the problem isn't that certificates expire too soon, maybe the problem is that humans are lazy. Perhaps it's time to go with another method entirely.

supertrope · a day ago
As the limit approaches zero you re-invent Kerberos.
supertrope commented on Electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation   npr.org/2025/08/16/nx-s1-... · Posted by u/geox
dehrmann · 10 days ago
It's not just the generation; it's also the maintenance. If you own your own rooftop panels and a few go out, it's relatively expensive to bring someone out to replace them...if a mechanically and electrically equivalent replacement exists in 5 years. At utility scale, you're always replacing panels, so you have dedicated staff doing it.
supertrope · 10 days ago
Climbing roofs is in the top 10 deadliest jobs in America. It’s cheaper to drive out into a field and work on ground level equipment than to climb a height.
supertrope commented on Electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation   npr.org/2025/08/16/nx-s1-... · Posted by u/geox
thelastgallon · 10 days ago
Centralized generation is the riskiest for any economy. The targets to bomb (or local drones) are very well known and super easy to disrupt the entire economy. Solar on every roof is the most resilient and cheapest form of energy.

Centralization leads to economies of lobbying scale, well connected super rich can oil the machinery to suit their purpose, maximize wealth extraction from everyone, resulting in monopolies/oligopolies, laws to remove competition, laws to maximize profit (with pretenses of protecting people).

Warren Buffett does not own utilities out of the goodness of his heart, they are such spigots of money with zero competition.

supertrope · 10 days ago
Return on equity for utilities is relatively low due to capital intensity. They make a lot of money in absolute terms because 5% of a huge revenue figure is billions.
supertrope commented on Electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation   npr.org/2025/08/16/nx-s1-... · Posted by u/geox
thehappypm · 10 days ago
ah, Quebec. So much energy but nobody can buy it!

Ontario can’t..

New England wants it but keeps hitting NIMBYism..

NY wants it but needs new infrastructure

supertrope · 10 days ago
New England desperately needs more power lines and natural gas pipelines. Electric prices have doubled in NE due to rising natural gas prices and power plants being mostly NG. The existing pipelines are fully booked so extra has to come via ship (compressed natural gas). They bid on the global market against other rich buyers like Germany who were scrambling after the war began.
supertrope commented on Electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation   npr.org/2025/08/16/nx-s1-... · Posted by u/geox
AnthonyMouse · 10 days ago
The problem is this is set up as a dichotomy. Either you have privately owned infrastructure (and then a private monopoly), or make the utility company a government entity which then becomes an unaccountable bureaucracy captured by public sector unions etc.

Whereas the better thing to do is have the government own the physical plant (utility poles and conduits etc.) and then hire private contractors -- large numbers of small entities, not small numbers of large entities -- to do all the actual work of operating and maintaining it.

Make each contracted role simple and fungible so that none of them are too big to fail and they're all in competition with each other.

You don't want a public monopoly. You don't want a private monopoly. But who says those are the only options?

supertrope · 10 days ago
To add an anecdote my city has a publicly owned electric utility. Most of the surrounding metropolitan area is served by an investor owned utility. My city has noticeably fewer outages than nearby areas. Although that might be because this city has buried utilities and was built later but this trend of fewer outages includes the main drag that was built in the 1800s. The private utility has raised bills much faster than the public utility. Both utilities face the same underlying cost push factors of labor costs, materials, and rising wholesale prices. The private utility announced a record quadrupling of quarterly earnings to 1.2B (year over year).

The public utility employs linemen. They don’t contract out operations.

supertrope commented on Electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation   npr.org/2025/08/16/nx-s1-... · Posted by u/geox
antithesizer · 10 days ago
good thing we all got con'd into buying electric stovetops a few years ago :)
supertrope · 10 days ago
The furnace or heat pump is a much larger energy consumer than the stove. Complaining about gas stove bans is just a distraction from the much larger prize of heating fuel demand. People can see and feel their stove. They don't think about their furnace much except when they get their natural gas bill or it stops working. Gas utilities are afraid of a death spiral of people switching to all electric appliances, infrastructure costs being spread over a smaller customer base, which incentivizes more people to switch.
supertrope commented on Electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation   npr.org/2025/08/16/nx-s1-... · Posted by u/geox
SoftTalker · 10 days ago
They could also move to a place where they don't need 24x7 air conditioning running 10 months a year.
supertrope · 10 days ago
Like San Francisco which is so affordable.
supertrope commented on Electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation   npr.org/2025/08/16/nx-s1-... · Posted by u/geox
lotsofpulp · 10 days ago
You can go to healthcare.gov and pick the same plans, many millions of people do it and price shop every year.

You can tell your employer you don’t want to pay for the employer subsidized plan, but then you lose access to the employer subsidy and ability to pay premiums with pre tax income.

supertrope · 10 days ago
Paying 25K a year in health insurance premiums instead of 2.5K is not a realistic choice for most people. That employer subsidy is a massive difference.
supertrope commented on Electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation   npr.org/2025/08/16/nx-s1-... · Posted by u/geox
koolba · 10 days ago
And that’s exactly what the ACA did to health insurance too with its “profit percentage caps”. Your insurer can only make more money if the price of healthcare goes up. And if they are predominantly passing the cost on to you, they pretty much want that to happen.
supertrope · 10 days ago
They got around that rule by buying out pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), hospitals, doctor's offices, and pharmacies. While the health insurance side of UnitedHealthCare is capped at 20% or 15% overhead, they can realize their earnings by marking up the price of drugs through their pharmacy subsidiary OptumRx. They steer customers toward OptumRx by structuring their health insurance to favor that pharmacy.

CVS bought Aetna [health insurance]. CVS also owns CVS Caremark a PBM. If your employer picked Aetna as your health insurance you must fill your meds at a CVS.

u/supertrope

KarmaCake day2338August 31, 2016
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