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?
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.
The 13 Rules of a Roman Emperor: How to Stop Giving a Shit and Live a Fucking Good Life
Why bother with a book? What you’ve described was the structure of a dozen “documentaries” created for Netflix last year.
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?
The fact that teaching media/marketing literacy reduces its effectiveness is not new.
The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology. - Marshall McLuhan 1964
It isn’t just vaping that would be effected by teaching kids to be more aware of marketing. I work in marketing on the marketing automation or marketing ops side of things in higher ed. If teenagers were more aware of the techniques we use to influence them to borrow tens or even hundreads of thousand of $$$ to enroll in a 4 year degree, fewer would… and that would probably be a good thing.
Bacon doesn’t need marketing. A marketing campaign using facts to change consumer behavior is just marketing. Not really the same as and effort to educate kids to recognize marketing.
I work in marketing so I recognize it in all its forms. I am very concerned about the amount of influcing my kids are exposed to through “safe”, “ad free” channels like YouTube Kids.
I also consider myself well informed about environmental issues. I consciously eat less meat for both environmental and health reasons, but bacon doesn’t need marketing. I want bacon because I REALLY enjoy bacon.
The free market solution would allow communities to negotiate contracts that DID hold the provider liable and allow competitors to emerge that would focus on different aspects like reliability, renewable production or integration with other grids.
If you aren’t aware of the story of Central and Southwest Corporation (a Texas power company) and thr “midnight connection”, it’s the type of story that I’m sure is nearing the top of Netflix’s documentary todo list.
On May 4, 1976, a power company based in Texas sent electricity from a substation in Vernon, Texas, to Altus, Okla. By doing so, they were breaking a deal among power companies in Texas to keep electricity within state borders.
If what Texas has with ERCOT is neither free market nor a public utility, what is it?
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
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.