So are Europeans just more honest and ethical than Americans? Or do all gas stations have better theft prevention systems? In the US, there is often 1 cashier managing 12 pumps AND ringing up vice sales (cigarettes, lottery tickets, junk food). In some states there a pumps with no human on site at all.
What's to stop someone from driving off after filling up in the EU?
https://www.clever.com/ is used to handle single sign on and providing a dashboard for hundreds of other education apps/services. It can be used to build a solution with FAR more functionality than what Google offers, but it's $$$ to do that and requires someone with some technical skill and UX experience to do well.
They prefer a more polished UI? I know there are several mobile apps that improve on the default browser experience of visiting https://lemmy.world/, but you have to admit that the initial UX of Lemmy leaves room for improvement. This is the same reason many open-source projects gave up on IRC. The die-hard FOSS advocates raised the "but Slack isn't an open standard" argument only to be shouted down by a larger part of the community with "IRC's UX sucks and is a barrier to new contributors".
https://kbin.social/ has a lot of issues (like calling communities magazines and general performance/stability), but the UI/UX is so much better than Lemmy.
I don't own a timeshare. Feel pretty good about that decision.
The numbers they were showing us seemed to make sense. If we spent an average of X on vacations for Y years compared to the cost of the timeshare and fees, the timeshare was cheaper AND we could trade our week in a ski area for timeshares anywhere in the world. How could we not buy into this? Might have signed, but when they told us we couldn't take any of the information with us and had to decide NOW, I knew something wasn't right. Had to say no for almost an hour, but but we were eventually allowed to leave the "no obligation presentation" required for our "free" weekend.
When I did more research, I found dozens of people trying to unload their purchases for far less than the company was selling weeks to new members.
I'll NEVER own anything using that kind of sales strategy.
I think the best way to deal with the issue includes education, digital skills, and parental oversight of Internet use including the use of personal filters or blocking tools if desired.
As a someone who works in technology and is a parent to 2 kids < 10, I'm already aware of what a niave statement that is.
I keep my kids' iPad locked down and have a router with some basic parental control features, but as the number devices in our lives that are able to browse the web increases along with the number of wireless networks my kids can connect to, trying to police this myself is futile.
And I'm not even concerned about them occasionally seeing "normal" porn. As a former Reddit user, I've seen some things I wish I hadn't. Things I'm not able to fully process as an adult.
I can handle the conversation about...
"you know how people drive in Fast and Furious isn't how people drive in real life? That's what porn sex is like compared to the sex you are going to have."
I cannot explain some of the darker corners of Reddit.
If you applied Geist's logic to alcohol, it would be up to parents to keep kids from going to liquor stores. Sure I can stop my kids from drinking the alcohol I have in my own home, but I rely on laws to make it very difficult for them to do something as a community we've agreed they aren't mature enough to make good decisions about.
Why can't we apply the same policies on to internet services?
Enjoyed the begining of the game, but the cancer story line was way to depressing. Not fun at all. If I could give it 0 stars I would. Would not recommend.
I used eBay for years buying everything from computers to expensive bikes. I even helped a friend who bought a car from eBay.
Now? Full of knock offs and scams. My last transactions were garbage designed to last long enough for a product photo shoot. Using any of these products for their intended purpose is a real safety risk and returns require a back and forth with automated systems designed to try to make you give up before you get any $$ back.
I haven't used eBay in ~8 and likely never will again. The thing about critical mass and network effect is it has as much (if not more) of an impact during a service's decline.
we don’t have the kind of political system YET...
Roughly 50 American voting jurisdictions — from small cities to states — have now moved to a ranked choice voting system, according to tracking by the advocacy group FairVote, and it's shaping up to be one of the political subplots of 2024.
Advocates say ranked choice voting could help take some of the toxicity out of American politics while giving voters access to a broader swath of ideas.
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/13/1214199019/ranked-choice-voting-explainer
This YouTube video show some screenplay from Mouse, an upcoming noir based FPS game. The game will take full advantage of the public's right to reuse1920s era cartoons, particularly Steam Boat Willy, in new and innovative ways.
Princess Bride
I always thought a sequel where the roles are reversed and Fred Savage is reading to an ailing Peter Faulk would have been a great way to start a sequel.
actual, verifiable digital ownership... using a distributed database technology that is designed to require a massive amount of computing resources to update.
I think where some of us who work in spaces using databases to verify something in critical business processes get stuck in accepting that blockchain has value is that our jobs have always been to verify "ownership" as quickly and efficiently as possible. We typically do this by defining a canonical source of truth and our success is judged on how many milliseconds transactions take and the datacener or cloud costs.
Saying that everything about blockchain is "dumb" isn't a very nuanced analysis... but it's a understandable reaction to hearing the hype that blockchain is going to change everything for years.
I've never seen anyone argue that the massively distributed nature or the public read access of blockchain technologies aren't interesting. It's the tradeoff that has to be made in speed and costs that make it hard for many of us to see any value in the approach for most applications.