festus

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festus,
  • Tabletop Gold (Pathfinder 2 play through)
  • Not Another D&D Podcast (D&D play through)
  • The Ezra Klein Show (NYTimes opinion columnist, has super interesting guests and experts)
festus,

So… why exactly does the government even have the power to control what varieties farmers grow? I’d understand if the potatoes were diseased or something, but banning farmers from growing something simply because it’s hard to harvest? That seems completely absurd and (knowing no more about this than this story) suggests to me that maybe those government departments have too much regulatory power.

festus,

To summarize for people who don’t want to click in, different gamers are willing to pay different amounts for the same game. If you keep the price high then you earn a lot per customer but on a small customer base. Set the price low and you earn a little per customer but on more customers.

Price discrimination is basically finding ways to charge each customer the most they’ll pay - that way you earn a lot for the customers willing to pay the inflated amount while not losing the customers looking to save money.

There are a variety of ways businesses do this - sales are one way. Grocery stores often use coupons, as higher income consumers often won’t bother to deal with clipping coupons. Sometimes the exact same manufacturer will make both a brand name product and then the generic brand with a small tweak. For business to business sales, some companies do pricing per customer based literally on the most they’ll pay.

festus,

Total speculation on my part - the Liberals are terrified of the polling numbers and the NDP have been a little more aggressive with their criticisms of the Liberals that the Liberals are worried the NDP will drop their support and we’ll have a spring election. By dragging their feet on these NDP priorities they’re trying to keep the NDP from withdrawing support.

festus,

I think people are upset because the temporary foreign worker program is often used not for specialized skilled labour (like the manufacturer is claiming) but instead for low-skill, low-wage jobs to just reduce labour costs.

I think there’s a simple way to fix the program and make it work for its original intention - set high minimum wages for temporary foreign workers (TFW) above the median Canadian income (ideally you could set this by industry and skill level, but then it’s less simple). So now your local Wendy’s isn’t choosing between hiring locally at $20/hr vs. a TFW at $15/hr, but rather hiring locally at $20/hr or a TFW at $25/hr (numbers made up). If there’s an actual shortage they’ll still have access to workers, but they’ll be incentivized to hire locally first.

This works especially well for hiring skilled and specialized workers you can’t find in Canada - like the manufacturer is claiming. Because they’re so skilled and specialized they’ll likely already be receiving a good wage, which means that the minimum wage threshold is already being met. A rule like this would essentially keep the program available for its legitimate cases while eliminating the abuses where it’s used to save a quick buck.

festus,

Commenting here to add that there’s actually two versions of the TFW program, one for high wages and one for low wages. I guess I’m arguing for eliminating the low wage stream as I take issue with the idea there’s a labour shortage - it’s more a question of what price you want to pay.

festus,

They said they tested using the version of Windows preinstalled by HP, as (presumably) HP would have fine-tuned it for the machine.

festus,

Both i3 and sway are very lightweight so you do get good performance, but it’s the easy tiling / no-nonsense looks that appeal to me.

festus,

I’d hold off then as I would expect you to need to iron out wrinkles with regards to collaborating with others in the MS universe.

festus,

If the cars are running all day long it might make sense to need another human to pick up later shifts. Still though, that ratio is way too high to be economical.

festus,

Back in the spring they announced that they were planning on basically changing all zoning to allow for duplexes and quadplexes in all existing single family lots - now they’ve finally introduced the actual legislation that’ll do it.

festus,

Keep in mind these averages are across all age groups - I’m assuming that (like me) you’re relatively young and still early in your working career where pay is generally lower.

festus,

I believe that’s only true if the countries have a reciprocal tax treaty. In practice I think the US has one with most countries, but I’m sure there are exceptions where both the US and that country would expect you to pay their full taxes.

festus,

Because it’s the law and is their actual legal responsibility? Take it up with lawmakers if you think that’s ridiculous, but generally most western societies have (rightly imho) decided that disabled people should have the ability to get around and that businesses need to accommodate that. Since the airlines won’t let passengers take their own wheelchairs on board, then they need to assist those passengers in getting to their wheelchairs.

festus,

Is anyone else having trouble reading the link (and can someone send me the original URL?). I just get stuck in an infinite captcha loop where I verify I’m not a robot, the page refreshes, and then it asks me again.

festus,

Thanks and I do indeed use Cloudflare DNS. Glad to know that it’s not some bad IP reputation thing.

festus,

It probably also made the moose feel safer.

festus,

I actually like 11 compared to 10 (so far as I like Windows in the first place - I only use it on my work-provided computer, Linux everywhere else). People rightly complain about the advertising and tracking for why they won’t upgrade but doesn’t 10 have that too?

festus,

It’s about reducing harm. Are all crops grown the way I would like? No. But farm animals also have to be fed these same crops, so when you eat meat you not only contributed to the animal cruelty and substantial amounts of the crop-harms you identified, while a vegetarian or vegan only contributed to a lesser amount of the crop-harms.

It’s not practical to live without causing any harm somewhere, but that’s not an excuse to pretend that all lifestyles are equally harmful.

festus,

Maybe in some narrow cases but I’d take issue with your use of ‘mostly’. Here’s an article about a study that looked at the environmental damage of different diets and a vegan diet is significantly, significantly better for the environment - and that’s not even considering animal welfare.

festus,

I think you should take baby-steps and focus first on just getting something running for you to use. Maybe first experiment with configuring an application you’d like in a virtual machine before you spend money on hardware too.

festus,

How is NVIDIA for Wayland? I heard that previously it was an absolute nightmare, but I have Sway setup on my laptop and I’m wondering if it’s time to switch my desktop too.

festus,

To be honest you probably won’t save money as you’ll be more likely to upgrade regularly. I bought my Framework 13-inch last year and already bought a gorgeous new matte screen for it, and I’d been eyeing upgrading the mainboard with the new AMD one now. In the past with laptops I’d hold onto them for years until they couldn’t perform, and now I’m considering upgrading my device a second time within only a year?

I really do love my Framework, but the easier upgradability makes upgrading more likely, which means more expenses - unless you can restrain from upgrading more often than you would on a laptop. Since budget seems to be a concern for you this may be worth keeping in mind. On the other hand though, I’d be concerned about how long a $500 laptop will last you anyway (the ones I used for years were more like $1200).

One final thing - some parts can’t necessarily be carried over when upgrading to a new generation. For example, to upgrade to the AMD mainboard I’ll also have to buy new RAM as the generation upgraded to a newer variant. If I want to use my old mainboard as a home server, I’ll also have to purchase replacement parts for what it loses in the upgrade (new hard drive, new expansion ports, cheap case). It’s great if you had an existing need for a home server, not so much if you didn’t. Since I hate throwing out electronics I’ll end up buying more to keep it operational, even though in practice I won’t use it very much.

TL;dr - Framework makes upgrading and reuse cheaper and easier, which if you’re like me makes you spend more money and upgrade more frequently.

festus,

I do think the author used a bit of hyperbole at the end there with that statement, but I can see three ways it could negatively affect pensions outside of Alberta.

  1. My understanding is that the law specifying how much a province gets if they withdraw is a bit vague. Alberta used the most possible optimistic interpretation to lay claim to over half the fund and would probably fail, but it’s not entirely impossible that they get more than they deserve (and thus shortchanges everyone else).
  2. Many of the CPP’s investments are meant to be held for long, long periods of time (like a skyscraper in Australia that earns money through charging businesses rent). If they’re forced to sell some of that in a short time period to hand Alberta a wad of cash, they might have to compromise and accept low-bids than they’d otherwise get if they could wait years to find the right buyer.
  3. This is more minor and theoretical, but many great investment opportunities only show up once you’re big enough that you can start buying private companies wholesale (this is how Warren Buffet makes most of his money). A smaller CPP will naturally have less of these investment opportunities and be forced to invest more in easily-accessible investment opportunities. Worth noting that any Alberta fund would also suffer from this same issue to a greater extent, and may be part of why existing Alberta public pension plans have under-performed relative to CPP.
festus,

Fortran was actually a pretty solid language, and I actually regularly use programs that still have pieces written in Fortran.

What do you think of framework and their methods? (frame.work)

We are not sustainableAnd neither is any other device maker. This industry is full of “feel good” messaging, but generates 50 million metric tons of e-waste each year. We believe the best way to reduce environmental impact is to create products that last longer, meaning fewer new ones need to be made. Instead of operating on...

festus,

It’s true. My previous laptop was getting up there in age but it still had probably a year or two left of casual use after I replaced the battery. Thankfully my father found a use for it with one of his projects. Now I’m eyeing Framework’s new Ryzen mainboards and thinking of upgrading despite just buying this laptop last year. Yeah I can use my old mainboard as a home server, but I’ve been doing just fine without one.

If I do decide to upgrade, I don’t know how I’ll justify my subsequent upgrade until things stop working.

festus,

My experience with Linux on my Framework has been pretty good but admittedly not perfect. If you want an idea you can check out the Arch Wiki’s Framework page. Personally I think the repairability and upgradability of Framework outweighs the marginal increased Linux support you get with System76 (assuming they have no issues), but Linux isn’t as big a priority for Framework as it is for System76.

festus,

You aren’t aging so it’s preserving the integrity of your organs. But it’s not a time machine pill and everyone can buy and use it if they want, so it’s not a Groundhog Day situation.

festus,

Ahh I see what you mean. The pill is able to both allow you to continue to learn new information and develop normally while preventing negative age related effects like dementia from forming. Of course in reality there would likely be some contradiction there, but I’ll just wave my hands and say the pill has magic fairy dust (harvested from happy fairies who are happy to share it so there’s no ethical considerations there).

festus,

No more effect than taking one - otherwise some people might opt to make it a once a week thing and then the question is less interesting.

festus,

Relax, and I’d be taking it too. Clearly people have enjoyed the question.

I am somewhat interested though in how often people would keep up with taking it, as I’d imagine people might skip it every so often (oh it’s just a day).

festus,

No. I guess the idea with the question is more around how often you’d take the pill. People can extend their lifetimes already by exercising and eating healthy, but how often do they keep that habit every day. If the pill only worked for one day at a time, how often do you think you’d skip taking it because you’d only age one day and you had a really busy day?

festus,

I have a Wireguard network setup for my devices that routes through my somewhat distant server. I find when I have both it and Tailscale open, Tailscale tries routing through Wireguard even though both devices might be on the same LAN. Unfortunately I don’t believe Tailscale has a way to forbid it from routing over other VPNs or networks.

festus,

Probably a good pricing decision. To avoid hitting the 300/month usage I kept DDG as default and only used Kagi for more complex searches. If I upgrade to this I could then keep Kagi as default.

festus,

Similar to what other people mentioned, I find it good at filtering out the obvious SEO spam. Otherwise the top 3 results of a search aren’t really different.

festus,

If the values fall low enough relative to transaction fees then there won’t be any transactions at all for creators to collect royalties. Also values can drop to literally $0 if it isn’t even worth a buyer or sellers time to deal with the NFT (i.e. seller can’t find buyer at any price or doesn’t bother trying).

festus,

I was actually on this panel! A few things:

  1. BC already has a few community health centers already (always pilot programs that succeeded but were never expanded).
  2. They are actually non-profits - the idea is that they can focus on hiring experts for their specific area. So for an area with lots of physical labourers the center might offer physiotherapy, while an area with drug addiction might specialize in that support.
  3. They’re super desirable to work at for family physicians. Right now in BC to be a family doctor you essentially also have to run your own business, handle payroll, handle billing MSP, etc. Vacations are a pain to take - what if a patient needs to see you? With these centers the doctors can focus more on patient care and less on administration.

One recommendation in the report which I pushed for but only got as one sentence is to allow family doctors to supervise nurses as physician assistants and let them handle more basic care. Basically in the same way that a dentist has dental hygienists to handle cleaning or an engineering firm uses junior engineers under supervision, a doctor could use nurses to investigate symptoms and handle basic care, and then bring up items with the doctor. I know that’s initially concerning from a patient perspective (“I won’t see my doctor directly as much”) but right now a huge proportion of people in BC can’t get a doctor at all, and this seems like a more immediate way to expand care versus some of the other recommendations that will have more marginal improvements (like better document keeping methods).

festus,

I should clarify I’m not in medicine. The panel was formed by a random sample of British Columbians and then we talked with different experts, but we ourselves aren’t experts or meant to be experts.

festus,

I see you met my boss.

Not actually the case, but I am frustrated with them right now for not understanding the value of preventative work and R&D (I’m a Data Scientist).

festus,

Yeah I think I agree. Honestly, owning a Framework 12 main board I was kind of shocked at how good the graphics were for this guy (it’s just Intel integrated which suuucks, though to be fair I’ve barely tried gaming on my Framework). I’m wondering if he’s just playing a video to show more proof-of-concept (not super dishonest, as Framework is going to soon release a Ryzen mainboard that is expected to have pretty reasonable graphics built in)

festus,

I don’t think the Liberals want to do electoral reform unless it’s ranked ballot choice (where of course everyone’s #2 choice is the centrist Liberal candidate …) - they want to be able to govern with majorities which they’d never get under a proportional representation system.

This is unfortunately one of the frustrating things about getting electoral reform - only the winners can change the rules that made them winners, so they don’t want to change them!

festus,

I’ve read that Facebook has actually been trying to reduce their reliance on news in all their products, so the answer is actually a possible “yes”, they would do a global news block.

festus,

I’ve had an elective sinus surgery, a second (emergency) sinus surgery, an overnight hospital stay, a blood transfusion, an ambulance ride, different scans, a cast, crutches, a bunch of specialist follow-ups, physiotherapy, family doctor appoitments, and some drug prescriptions. Wow that sounds like a lot but it was just two separate incidents (I’ll let you guess).

I did have to buy the crutches at $24, and while I’m still waiting for the ambulance bill I’ll only be charged $40. Drug prescriptions aren’t free for everyone, but my province has a program where they cover a portion depending on your income (free if you’re low income or hit a drug-expense maximum for that year) which I benefited from when I was unemployed. Physiotherapy also isn’t free, but I’m getting that covered through my workplace benefits. Other than those minor costs there’s been nothing, which is crazy for me. I’m so thankful I’m not being buried under a mountain of debt, especially as one of the incidents happened when I was unemployed.

festus,

Not to mention how annoying it was to even buy games - if a popular game was released you might have wait for the store to open to buy it before it went out of stock, and if it was more niche you might have to mail an order form in and wait for them to ship it to you.

Are you able to read in your dreams?

I ask because it’s considered common knowledge that you can’t but I regularly have dreams where I continue books I’m reading irl (they usually devolve into naritive nonsense over time and then sometimes to blank pages, but the actual text is definitely deciferable), text messages, computer screens, and road signs, in both...

festus,

Barely. I typically can’t remember more than a few words and the text is different once I go back. Dreams where I need to read something are among my most frustrating.

festus,

In my terrible diet I eat the chocolate bar and then cut out something like breakfast…

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