That was a nice term report by a precocious 5th grader or, more likely, an AI generated article.

“live and work and build and pay in that world in an ongoing basis”

There, that’s more what they’re envisioning.

I really do boycott Exxon - at least when it’s branded. In 35 years - since the Valdez spill - I’ve bought 1 gallon of gasoline from Exxon, and that was because I needed that much to get to another station without running out of fuel. It’s a trivial exclusion, though, as their drilling and refinery operations are so large that it’s likely I’m purchasing from them, or BP, (or Chevron). I don’t know of a major supplier who isn’t tainted by some part of the process. And I’m not rich enough to have the luxury of selection most of the time.

Exactly; I view them as the worst of the lot. But, like gasoline for my car and biometrics on my driver’s license and passport, I end up holding my nose because I know that - effectively - there is no clean, convenient way to circumvent them. And paypal - I use it for business transactions when I have to. Not because I like them, but because - for a business my size - there is no other way to take a payment remotely that doesn’t carry ridiculous fees and minimums.

Maybe PayPal in-house balances for payments where it’s accepted? That’s a pretty small network (by comparison) and, really, if PayPal is your least-evil option you may as well either suck off the other corporations or suffer the inconvenience of cash.

The look on her face is clearly one of disappointment. It’s funny because it encapsulates the ~~children fyrefest ~~ Willy Wonka Experience but I never doubted she was just trapped in the machine.

I can tell if China is worried about current Russia or a future US under Trump.

An iPhone and Chipotle. That dude is set.

They’d better not be playing all my free games before I get to them.

There’s quite a lot of interest - and action- inside the industry surrounding conversions. I’m on the structural side and have probably seen 3-4 articles in trade rags over the past quarter about strategies and opportunities in conversions. IT may not be feasible everywhere it for every budding, but the industry (including suppliers and designers) are interested enough that it’s part of the discussion on a regular basis.

Surge pricing to level demand is a potentially valid strategy when you’re trying to even optimize your off-peak manpower or have limited production capacity. Surge pricing to increase profits is going to be detrimental to their business.

I’ve edited my post for accuracy, it was genuinely an honest mis-remembering of the attack; thank you for the clarification.

Picking a fight with a superpower is generally a poor idea. Killing military members - even in Jordan - might be considered a bit beyond mere commerce.

Edit: I did misremember the attackers in Jordan and thought that was part of the Houthi organization. The Houthi’s are attacking US warship(s) in the area, but haven’t directly killed an US service members that we know of/yet. The Jordan attack was (now that I’ve checked again) by one of the groups operating under the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

My only defense here is that all of these attacks on US and UK vessels (merchant and military) are in retribution for the US support of Israel. And, yes, there are a lot of groups backed by Iran and Iraq who are using the Israel-Hamas/Israel destruction of Gaza as an excuse to lash out at Western powers who (generally) provide support to Israel. My apologies for the error.

Can we add a down vote bot for bot posts?

Funny - I’m going to be in Boston in three weeks. Unfortunately I think all my time is booked from the time my plane touches down to the time I head back to BOS.

Fascinating interview around the technology. As someone who is generally skeptical of wild “zero carbon” claims, this was interesting enough that I would definitely go out of my way to see the process in person, just to learn more about it.

Huh, I guess I’ve just adapted with the enshitification arc. It aways seems pretty clear when the publications are not specialized that the “reviews” are really just generated or copy/paste lists of devices with affiliate links - and are essentially just paid advertising (though paid by vendors and not manufacturers in this case). I will agree that it’s infuriating to have to sift through the ever-growing AI generated content to find something which has novel information.

T-mos general coverage outside of city centers and interstates is trash (they’re all pretty bad, but Tmo is very binary). I’d get it over xfinity, but it’s not even offered in my major university town due to coverage limitations. And it’s not like there aren’t big pipes nearby - the university consumes more than 100TB of data traffic a day; their Netflix traffic alone was so large just 3 years ago that they were on the edge of getting a co-located Netflix rack on campus.

And, ime, a lot of corporations are serving content through third party (or at least non-native) servers, which means that any blocker which touches any of those servers breaks content completely. I’ve experienced major Travel, banking, and retail sites which simply don’t work unless most blacklisted sites are allowed. That means either turning blocking off for that main site entirely, or spending an hour testing every one of their 30 off-site connections to see which ones break. I don’t have that kind of bullshit time, and the rest of my family don’t have the patience or skill to do that troubleshooting. PiHole turned out to be multiple hours a week of frustration so I gave up - I already have a full time job and full slate of hobbies. In-browser blockers are, at least, easier to toggle on and off.

Just to be clear, generally stock buy backs are not to increase revenue or dividends, but to increase the stock price by creating a false scarcity. Potential dividend increases from corporate stock ownership are a shell game as the corporation received the dividend and it is simply added to the cash on hand and book value.

Nearly all growth in stocks is capital based. Every corporation wants to increase revenue and profits because that forms the basis for valuation. Yes, there are young companies who are “forward looking” and trading on factors based on revenue and not net income, but most of the market is based on a net income multiplier (which varies by industry).

As much pressure as the boomers (and soon GenXers) will place on revenue, it will never be enough to support the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. Rather, they will be selling capital to fund their retirements. This will lead to long term stagnation of stock prices (in the best scenario) or a collapse of market value as retirees try to sell their stock for the next 9 month round-the-world cruise. This is a negative feedback loop, too, as the more people sell, the lower the value of their stock, requiring they sell even more shares to get to a fixed value in cash. I think of this as just one more Fuck You (added to the collapse of public health and public retirement subsidies) the boomers will be handing Millennials and GenZ. Actually, I thought you might catch a break with housing, as the value of housing as they all move into retirement homes would drop with the glut of units coming to market. Alas, corporations have found they can buy those units and rent them back at exorbitant rates, so they’ll be tag teaming the boomers in fucking over the youth of today.