I suppose many of the perpetrators who were there are still alive today. I wonder if they sleep soundly in bed at night.

This thread is actually really depressing.

Wasn’t there an incident where Pelocy was begging for the national guard to be called in? Or maybe one of the cabinet members. And Trump kept declining.

So the only people to do the shooting were the limited number of capital police. I don’t think they’re set up for riot defense and it’s a lot to ask them to individually put their lives on the line by just shooting into the crowd.

I’d love to see all kinds of resistance to this.

If an armed militia shows up on the same street as ICE, but in greater numbers, there’s a pretty good chance these imposters leave.

I hope somebody’s working on building an app for recording everything possible and centralizing that information - license plates, photos, videos.

Perhaps homemade stingray devices that grab IMEI/IMSI numbers from agent’s phones, so that it’s easier to identify and link these agents between locations.

More people following them around to report on location and activities. Report on where they stay so that protests and obnoxious deterrence can be set up so that fewer businesses are willing to service these people.

There are so many more citizens than there are ICE agents. Doesn’t seem like it takes much to overwhelm them and push them out, so long as it’s coordinated.

If the country has another federal election, heck… if the country survives past this at all, I think there’s going to be a major conversation about states rights versus federal rights. What we’re seeing in Minnesota is wild, bordering on something that could spark a localized civil war if people start violently standing up against this. The states should be able to come together and defeat the federal government at any point.

The Constitution grants the federal government the right to exist, and it belongs to the people. Not any one leader. Evidently some of that power needs to be pulled back.

The answer to the question comes from understanding the marketplace.

Microsoft’s vision in the '90s was a computer on every desk and in every home.

In the late '90s and early 2000s, devices like TiVo came on the scene and disrupted the living room. Microsoft started experimenting with Media Center which was a PC that would sit between your cable box and your TV.

Also remember that Microsoft has been in gaming forever. You certainly heard of Microsoft Flight Simulator. Microsoft’s acquisition of various game studios in the '90s cemented their presence in the space.

Anyways, at the time it was theorized that some company would eventually control media flowing into the household through the TV screen and Microsoft absolutely wanted that.

The media center only found limited success, and was kind of a kludgy solution. The first versions of Xbox attempted to overcome some of this by having some media capabilities. The peak of that effort was the first version of Xbox One which actually had an HDMI input and the ability to control your cable box. Had that reached widespread use, Microsoft would have had lots of data about what TV channels everybody was watching and who was watching (remember the first version of Xbox One rolled out with a camera that could recognize who’s watching) and for how long.

Unfortunately for them, that tech was too little too late and streaming services like Netflix were already catching on. Now you can see in later versions of Xbox Microsoft has pulled back and developed game pass which is a steam-like subscription service, and hasn’t really tried to be a TV media player to the same degree anymore.

When a company gets huge, like Microsoft, they can’t really waste time chasing business efforts that might only have revenue potential in the low billions. It just doesn’t move the needle. The problem is that innovating brand new ideas that will eventually become multi-billion dollar businesses is phenomenally challenging. And people who can do that don’t work for companies like Microsoft.

So the entrepreneurs who can potentially dream up multibillion dollar disruptive business ideas go do them on their own and then companies like Microsoft snap them up as soon as they’re able to (if the founders allow it), allowing dominant players to remain dominant without needing to innovate.

In that vein of thinking, nobody needs appliances.

However we are in the home assistant group so I think people are interested in linking things in their house together and controlling them centrally (if “central” does not mean the manufacturer) in an effort to make them smarter.

So do advertisers still have to pay for impressions or clicks if the viewer isn’t logged in?

Something tells me Google’s just going to pocket the difference now.

OP: constructive addition to thread You: nah

eBay is a major pain these days for small sellers that just want to unload some stuff.

I say that because I’ve tried to get a business going on eBay several times over many years and always run into issues directly with eBay (eventually, even if for short periods it’s ok)

A lot of bad actors go there first to run scams, and eBay just blocks sellers left and right if you do anything that even raises an AI bot’s virtual eyebrows.

Try apps like Mercari, Whatnot, Posh/Vinted (for clothing), and Facebook marketplace. I think you’ll find all of these are friendly to one-off sellers and easy to conduct business.

I agree, shitty landlords exist as well and try to scam people into coming. That’s why I’ll never rent out a place again, on either side, if I can avoid it.

This is wild, but I have at least one guess where they might be coming from with this idea.

At one point I had to move out of a house that I owned for a while so I wanted to let it.

People who want to rent can be super flaky and dishonest. Seriously 4 out of 5 or more are like this.

They make appointments then don’t show up and ghost you. Or they call 5 minutes late to say they’ll be there in 3 hours.

Or everything seems good until you do credit checks and find they were evicted from the last place and haven’t made a payment on their credit card for 3 years plus they have a felony conviction from a few years ago for beating up some guy.

Or when checking their income is sufficient, their boss says yeah, they used to work here but not anymore.

Potential renters never tell you this stuff until you already put hours into talking and going out to show the place to them.

I’m just a regular guy with a job (who does pay his bills) so this takes a lot of time, fuck that noise.

Basically charging people $5 will make them not come if they know they won’t qualify, saving everybody the time.

Sales taxes vary based on city, county, and state rates. They can also be waived if you, the buyer, have a reseller permit or are purchasing for a non profit.

It’s not underhanded and is annoying for sellers too because they have to know a lot about sales taxes as well. They could show you the price with local taxes included but then most customers would think their prices are too high comparing to other merchants.

So the price shown on the product in a store or online is only what the merchant is selling it for. The price at the register is what the merchant is selling it for plus the taxes they have to collect (unless you’re excluded for the reasons mentioned above).

The tax is a buyer obligation, not a seller obligation but sellers have to be an intermediary. So buyers should be educated about the tax laws that apply to them (in this system).

The receipt should be clearly marked so you know exactly how much went to the product and how much went to tax. You can itemize and deduct your sales taxes from your federal income taxes if you’re so inclined to track it (and it’s a better result than the standard deduction)

It’s more complex than a VAT system but enables local jurisdictions to levy taxes to pay for various things applicable to their area.

🤷‍♂️

A long time ago.

These days, I keep both audio and vibration turned off. If somebody needs to reach me they will want to message and then wait until I check.

UBI is probably a good idea but it’s coming too slowly for anyone to rely on. Even if UBI is fully implemented, I suspect it will be life sustaining but not a life fulfilling. So humanity still needs to find purpose.

It’s hard to imagine a scenario where someone cannot be trained to do something new. Isn’t that a core feature of humans?

Next, how shall we define value? I argue that humans can always create some kind of value that machines cannot, even if only because a human is involved.

We still value actual art over AI generated art. We value uniqueness and rarity. We value the faults that are inherent from things that are natural and organic.

Tons of the jobs people did a hundred years ago in developed countries are now gone or have been streamlined down to require fewer people. Yet there are more people on earth now than there ever have been before and arguably worldwide hunger is at its lowest point. So somehow we have figured out how to survive despite vast amounts of automation already. It seems unlikely that our new “AI” tools are going to somehow dramatically disrupt this balance.

Ebay can be really really bad too, Google around and start with the ebay executive team that sent a bloody pigs head to a journalist who said some bad things about ebay

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal

Learning how to do small talk will improve your social, economic, and relationship opportunities in countless ways.

Asking people questions about themselves makes them think of you as likable.

Remember the acronym f o r d: Family Occupation Recreation Dreams

Small talk can be learned and getting in some more practice might make it bearable, perhaps even enjoyable.

When you are running out of topics keep the acronym above in mind and ask a question related to one of those topics. Something like this example:

Q: So, have you always lived in (wherever you are)?

However they reply, follow up with it positive and encouraging response such as: “ah you’re a long timer. I thought there weren’t too many of us left!” and then go right into a follow up Q also related to the acronym but now attached to the new information you have such as: is your family from this area too? What brought you here initially? What do you do for work? Hey since you’ve been here so long, what do you think about (insert local drama that’s been in the news).

The goal isn’t to interrogate, but to smoothly and rapidly sort through topics until you find commonalities. Then you can lift off and the conversation will feel very natural and easy.

I heard about this 20 some years ago and have used it at the start and end of business meetings, on first dates, with strangers, and heck sometimes even with my friends if we’re catching up and I want to cover things that are core to them.

Here in Thailand a lot of people have this cert and use it to teach. These jobs are competitive so don’t pay super well. I’d suggest you start on job boards in various places you might want to live to see what they will require.

I was just thinking about ricochet while perusing the thread. Ricochet was new when I was starting in IT and I can still remember connecting a ricochet modem to a company laptop and then pulling up our novell netware file share over our vpn. It was jaw dropping to see it at the time. Amazing how far we’ve come since then.

The state asserts its sovereignty and backs up the claim with the consensus of the people and a lot of guns.

A sovereign citizen makes the same claim but fails to convince or compel others to agree.

They very well might believe in some god-given authority but that’s not how any of this works.

But maybe an SC will uncover a deeply hidden loophole someday and win an argument. The law affords them the opportunity to try.