On the one hand, if you plug in a power adapter that doesn't provide enough power to most anything, the powered device will malfunction.
On the other hand, it's often the case with high-powered devices that power adapters that won't provide enough power simply won't fit in the receptacles of devices that need more power.
(On the OTHER other hand, it's very rare [0] that a power adapter will ship with a cable that isn't rated for the load that the adapter is rated for.)
[0] Well, unless you're buying drop-shipped trash from Amazon... but in that case, the whole damn assembly is probably a serious fire and/or electrocution hazard.
The camera - the only reason I would buy an iPhone is for the better camera.
Sure, the Pixel 8a camera is not bad for the price but it's still noticeably worse. The kind of difference you notice when someone with an iPhone shares photos with you.
Apps and the whole phone experience are a sh*tshow on both sides and I hate both with a passion. I'm still waiting for a decent linux experience on a phone - possibly with stupid banking apps support.
Nice tool and it's great to see BlueSky allows you to backdate posts!
My main problem with BlueSky is that I get barely any interactions compared to my old Twitter (which also wasn't stellar).
It's becoming a tool to listen to a few good devs (which I periodically check on), while trying to ignore all the pr0n, but not a social network I can use.
The only missing bit around COVID was that the cost of the economic policies which were implemented by governments caused an inevitable interest rate increase.
Sure, we can argue that the response to COVID was planned in a certain way on purpose and that powerful hands could have used another excuse to get to where we are now (just press more the pedal on government spending, illegal immigration, wars, green policies) - but that's what happened.
As long as it's a low level language and developers are active in maintaining the project, it's fine. It will be fast enough and stop making anything frontend related atrociously slow.
The reason a good part of the community would have preferred a rust port over a go one is stability.
I'm tired of software that crashes or misbehaves; having a good type system and good memory helps reducing the chance of that happening.
The perfect example of this is bun.
- Nice to have TypeScript running by default
- Nice to have a lot of new APIs
but the segfaults are HORRIBLE. I still have to switch back to tsx (most reliable way to run TypeScript files without hassle nowadays, don't touch node-ts) every once and then because I get.
I've never had that with deno and deno got a fraction of the development (and never really established itself, plus the go-like http import were terrible - I woulnd't recommend deno overall, bun still wins)
Software written in Go is not as bad as software written in Zig, but I still got enough problems with go dependencies that I try to avoid them if possible. I dropped software by Ory and Sentry because of this.
Of course it's possible to write nice software in any language: I've never seen Redis segfaults, for example. Docker has been good to.
But not every project can have the amount of resources needed to get there. With software written in Rust the chance I'll get something working are higher.
Centralizing production goals, decision making, and expenditure at the Federal government is what made the industrial response to WW2 successful. Centralizing tax revenue to fund retirements for the elderly (Social Security) resulted in the poverty rate of seniors being brought far lower. Centralizing zoning control at the state of California is _finally_ starting to make localities take responsibility for building more housing. These were/are centralizing efforts with the intent of helping the masses over the wealthy few.
What doesn't work is centralizing power with the intent of concentrating wealth and security by taking wealth, labor, and security from working people, AKA extractive institutions.
That's true whether it's the donor-class funded political establishment or regimes like the current US kleptocracy doing it.
Problem is, once you centralize, that remains in place for a long time, but the original intent, even if it was genuine, rarely outlives the people who implemented it for long.
Generally speaking, every point of centralization is also a point where a lot of power can be acquired with relatively little resources. So regardless of intent, it attracts people who are into power, and over time, they take over. The original intent often remains symbolically and in the rhetoric used, but when you look beyond that into the actual policies, they are increasingly divorced from what is actually claimed.
> Generally speaking, every point of centralization is also a point where a lot of power can be acquired with relatively little resources
This is why (1) shared principles and (2) credible democracy is important, to allow evolution of the centralized power (i.e. government) towards the shared principles, and why its corporate-bribed facsimile or oligarchic authoritarianism don't work.
Credibility of democracy breaks down as you scale upward (which you have to do if you want to centralize). Any representative democracy in which the representative doesn't know all the people they represent is already suspect, but when you get to the point where a single guy supposedly represents hundreds of thousands or even millions, it's kinda obvious that there's no meaningful representation involved. The only way to avoid that is to grow the parliament instead to the point where it ceases to function as a deliberative assembly (and then what's the point of it?).
Or you can have a bunch of smaller assemblies that actually are representative, and then a larger one to which assemblies delegate their own to cooperate. But that's exactly political decentralization - a multi-level federation.
I think it can work for a short period of time if you have enlightened leaders or if the political machine wants to please you; they always alternate pleasing some people and upsetting others so that they can keep control.
Over a long period of time the interest of the powerful will always win. There is a reason if no government (whether left or right) can fix the situation and inequality between the top 0.01% and the rest keeps increasing.
The only solution to maximise wellbeing for individuals is to reduce the amount of control the powerful can exert on the rest of society.
I don't think someone with more capital should be able to make the decisions
That's what we're getting with "democracy" because ultimately swaying the opinion of a lot of people (in this technological time) requires money. No wonder the powerful elite or their puppets end up making decision for the majority.
No, what I advocate for is for decentralisation of power, I don't want any central entity making choices for me.
Someone with capital should be able to offer to buy me out but they shouldn't be able to tax me or decide what happens to me or my property.
I heard rumblings about some sort of system where power is shared equally across three branches of government with checks and balances to ensure one branch doesn't go rogue and just do whatever they want.
Forget what they called it, united something or other.
Well, the people who designed that system were very skeptical of political parties in general, and thought they could be avoided. Turns out that this isn't true, and once you have parties, they can in fact capture all three branches of government, and then those "checks and balances" kinda stop working.
In fact, that's not too far away from our current trajectory. Algorithmically enforced sovereign oversight is part of the patchwork state and Yarvinism specifically.
To anyone who didn't click the link, the answer is "private companies will build roads. And they won't charge tolls! They will pay for the roads by building roads in front of businesses, and then extorting the business for money or else they wall off business access from the road".
I guess if the business doesn't like that they can just build their own road on top of the first one, wall off the sides, and charge the first road owner if they want to have a road near their business.
Whether this scenario is better for literally anybody compared to what currently exists, is an exercise left to the reader.
> Not extracted from you under the threat of violence and incarceration.
No one is forcing anyone to pay taxes unless they wish to continue to be a part of the society collecting the taxes. If you don't like that deal, leave and find somewhere better; you may be interested in Seasteading [0]
If you are referring to being a US citizen and paying US taxes, you are free to renounce your citizenship, hand in your passport if you have one and never to have to deal with this "threat of violence and incarceration" from a state you seem to feel threatened by.
Why stay if participating in it poses such a hazard to your health? One great thing about the freedoms in the US, is the freedom for you to leave. Notice how we don't have passport control on exits? No one in the US is forcing you to be here.
Politicians in the states have more influence and can still do something and effect change.
In Europe we're way past that, they are just bureaucrats spinning wheels, extracting value and doing minor changes (some good, some bad), gradually boiling us alive until they extracted any value from society and we collapse.
In Europe legislative bodies are responsible for moving things along. The executive takes care of filling in the gaps, taking care of current affairs and international diplomacy. This is by design.
I like gradual change. I see things here in France changing (for the better mostly) here and there but yes no dramatic shifts. The US model seems irresponsible by comparison.
What are you talking about, what value did Merkel extract for example?
I think Europe has done more good for the world than bad in the last few decades. On the other hand we're still feeling the effects of US involvement in the middle east.
As for politicians in the states having influence... congress is supposed to make the laws that the president executes. The joke is that the US is now operating in complete opposition of that. The president rules by decree, congress members have no real influence and would get decimated in a re-election campaign if they act out of favor of the president. I'd say politicans in the US have less influence do effect change, not more. In fact non-politicians like Musk/Thiel have more influence than politicians, that's more the case than it has been in many decades.
Pretty useless standard if the specs can vary so much
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