America’s extreme form of capitalism isn’t the the only form of capitalism.
With proper regulation and governnent incentives it is possible to make capitalism work to benefit the average Joe, and not just the oligarchs.
Europe for example runs on that capitalist model, and it works pretty well. You get the benefits of capitalism when it runs as it is supposed to, together with the benefits of the welfare state.
My boyfriend has a Kobo, and he has an integration with his library that allows him to borrow ebooks.
I’d have to ask him how it works exactly, but it sounds pretty convenient.
This guy can go suck an egg…
He also added, “Let’s take Bandera back to 1880 properly. No double standards, no hypocrisy. If LPRs are ‘unconstitutional’ and invade our right to ‘public’ privacy, we need to be courageous enough to go all the way. I look forward to the ‘Privacy First’ crowd showing up to support these bans […] just remember to leave your phones at home.”
It’s not that difficult to see the difference between having the option to decide not to bring your phone if you don’t want to be tracked, and not even getting an option to avoid AI-powered CCTV systems all over town.
I wouldn’t be surprised if all in attendance will be rich oil sheiks from Dubai.
In the Netherlands flavoured vapes were banned several years ago, because in practice they were getting used to make vaping appealing to kids. You cannot legally buy them anymore, but there are ways to still get them illegally.
Still… it adds an additional barrier to obtaining them, making it more difficult for kids to get their hands on them.
You can selfhost your cloud storage, for instance using Nextcloud, if you want to maintain complete control
It’s not only “like” stealing, I would just call that stealing.
They’re both very similar.
Both still use Google and Bing for part of their search results (albeit with the search queries somewhat anonymised). And both have been working together on a European search index which they have been slowly rolling out over the past year orso now.
Ecosia differentiates itself from the competition by using part of their profits to plant trees, and by promising that their servers are run on renewable energy.
Personally I use Ecosia over Qwant, because I found the search results for news articles to be a bit better. But ultimately both are very similar.
Ecosia (Germany) does too. They work together with Qwant on that.
Both don’t exclusively use their own indexing, and still depend on Google and Bing for part of their results. But you have to start somewhere
Yep… If I understand correctly, in California fines have to be issued to the driver of the vehicle. But since self-driving vehicles have no driver, there is noone to issue fines to, legally speaking.
Alcohol is legal, and it is not acceptable to be drunk at work.
Weed being legal similarly doesn’t mean it has to be acceptable to be high at work.
Some people like to joke that Germany growing their military strength should be a worrying sign for other European countries.
It’s not accurate to reality though. Germany today is nothing like Germany in 1914 and 1939.
I don’t think laws should be enforced at any cost, but if we can reasonably enforce laws I think there is a duty to do so.
Then there is also a different question of whether we agree with the laws on the books, but that is a different matter imo. Personally I don’t think we should limit access to pornography as strictly as the laws says we should, and I don’t think the ills of social media are solved with a simple age limit.
But that is a separate discussion from the implementation of a (in my eyes) reasonable approach to age verification
The skepticism is very understandable. It is important to scrutinise solutions like this to make sure that they indeed do as they say they do, and to make sure the government doesn’t overreach with their authority.
That said, it should also be possible for laws to be enforced, and there are laws on the books that are supposed to prevent children from accessing things that we as a society have agreed they have no business accessing (alcohol, tabacco, porn, and increasingly commonly social media)
Currently there is no good method to actually enforce those laws on the internet, so there needs to be a solution for that.
I think this form of age verification may be a decent compromise between privacy and the need to enforce these existing laws.
Edit: Typo. I wrote “they” instead of “that”
I don’t see a central authority (i.e. your government) issuing tokens, as much different from the government issuing you a ID card by which you can verify your age to buy alcohol in the supermarket.
As long as that central authority doesn’t get to know what I use the tokens for, it seems like an acceptable solution to me.
That central authority would, from my understanding, be your government. They already have your information, so if they get hacked you are already screwed ;)
From my understanding this age verification app seems to be based on the age verification blueprint they have been working on for a while now, which is supposed to be part of the European “digital wallet”
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-age-verification
From my understanding it works as follows:
This solution does seemingly address my two greatest concern with online age verficiation:
Assuming that this blueprint is followed, it seems like a decent approach at online age verification.
Prices of HDDs have increased in recent months due to the AI bubble
Here in the NL we have a website called Tweakers for comparing hardware prices. They only really list webstores that sell to the Netherlands, but it could help give you a decent indication of normal prices at the moment.
If I sort by price / TB, this refurbished 6TB Seagate SAS-drive for €122 seems to be one of the best deals I can find:
https://www.redshell.nl/seagate-enterprise-capacity-35-hdd-interne-harde-schijf-6-tb-7200-rpm-128-mb-35-sas/
Given that price, €134 for a refurbished 6TB Toshiba seems like a pretty decent deal. Though I would like to add that my experience with Toshibas is that they are quite loud compared to Seagate and Western Digital. So if noise is a concern it might be worth looking for those instead.
Just like how you are able to obtain citizenship in the US without being born in the US, you are also able to obtain citizenship in a coutries with descent-based citizenship without your parents being citizens of that country.
A descent-based system would also have worked in the US. Immigrants who want to become citizens need to apply for citizenship under both systems.
The welfare state isn’t capitalism working as intended. That wasn’t what I was saying, nor am I saying that the welfare state is a result of capitalism. That was ultimately a result of workers fighting for their rights.
What I am saying is that the government not leaning heavily into laisez-faire capitalism, and them interfering in capitalism where needed, is what is making the European capitalist model largely work as capitalism is supposed to work. The government is there to prevent negative externalities and prevent monopolies from forming.
Ultimately the “correct” implementation of capitalism doesn’t exist. Only one which creates the most benefit for the people while reducing its negative outcomes.
It is a tool you can use in places where it makes sense to use it in order to drive innovation and lower costs to consumers.
The government can set regulations in order to guide capitalism to that outcome, and can directly interfere to do things themselves in industries where it deems fit to do so.
Edit: Fixed a typo in my first sentence, making me say the exact opposite of what I was trying to say…