> Most ‘oh its simple – why don’t they just…’ overlook (or are not aware) of the many, many good reasons why greater minds than yours or mine haven’t already implemented it.
The forums they are referring to have been operating with the "10 bux" model implemented on top of a highly customized version of vBulletin for over 20 years.
I cancelled my years long nytimes subscription a few years ago once someone told me that they had to call in and suffer through customer service retention reps in order to cancel their sub. I just couldn't stand the thought of being bled for cash due to their making it too inconvenient for subscribers to cancel.
I used to tell the newspaper I was moving to Madagascar because they wouldn't have that on their script. Now they'll just push the electronic edition.
One of the big problems is the CSR's only have incentives to retain people now. There is no extra penalty for alienating someone from ever coming back, it's the same as a non-renew.
With the web versions of this, every app that badgers me gets a 1 star review for badgering me by insisting that I review it. Every cancellation, I select "other" and tell them I don't do business with people that hold my subscription hostage until I answer questions.
Personally, I feel there is some fraud (or some other legal term here) going on when I press a "Cancel Subscription" button and it doesn't cancel. A regular confirmation box is fine and understandable, but they can't help but change the default colors and text on those, or word them oddly to make me want to back out. Bu "cancelling" followed up by mandatory questions/answers about why I'm quitting is forcing me to work for them building their data sets without compensation. Maybe I should send them a bill.
They're piloting a tablet program in the Feds. The tablet is free. They even offer free books. Nice, right? What they don't advertise is that the system also charges something like a dollar a minute to 'use'. Wonder what those free books actually come out to costing. So far this is only in the womens prisons. I'm sure they will use it as an excuse to get rid of the actually library that inmates donate all the books sent from home to. Wrote way too much to say soon they might.
For anyone else still confused: CVS is an American retailer that typically issues receipts with additional advertising, bad low-value coupons with paragraphs of exclusions, on the bottom of a receipt. This makes a single-item purchase result in a receipt exceed 2m in length.
The more people that adopt Signal, the better. I've been using it for years due to privacy concerns and usually ask everyone that I regularly communicate with to adopt it. I don't think it indicates any subversive or illegal behavior, but merely a desire to have private communications remain private.
M&A often involve conservative brand strategies, at least in part to promote a veneer of competition and diversity, while the insidious effects of consolidation are left unsaid and off the public radar after the M&A event. Imagine if all those purchases renamed to include Amazon in their name.
Stepping stones would have worked 40 years ago. We are at the precipice now and must take radical action if we are to mitigate the damage that is baked into the current climate model given the carbon ppm levels we're at now.
Bah, humbug. You still have to be nice and compromise, you can't just expect everyone to go along.
Frankly, the science isn't settled, it's such terrible rhetoric. As though science settles things that can't actually be measured until they happen.
(Ah! Did you see that? Your radicalism made me defensive and elicited my extreme response! I'm not a denier, I just find uncompromising rhetoric deeply dysfunctional)
Cool, it doesn't matter, carbon doesn't care about your rhetorical exercises. We're heading towards an extinction event and once this realization reaches critical mass, it's going to get ugly.
If the ship is sinking you don't have to be nice and compromise with those bailing water into the ship. You have to tie them up and throw them below deck so they don't impede the bailing. Then afterwards you have up try them for mutiny.
Climate extremists (not you, but those who take this belief 2-3x further) are a major threat to modern civ. Who else fervently believes that killing off 50% of people on Earth and completely overturning the modern political-economic system is a better alternative than the status quo?
I was experiencing hip pain after too much sitting and not moving enough. Went for some consultations and ended up with a surgeon that wanted to operate because I was told I had a labral tear, amongst other things. I read more about this and it turns out that most people when evaluated with imaging have a variety of indicators that doctors use to suggest that surgical intervention is required to fix. The problem is is that most people don't have any pain associated with the indicators.
Also, the recovery seemed painful and long and from reading around, the outcome seemed dubious, if not net negative. They really put their thumb on the scale in terms of measuring success. Anyways, long story short, I spent about 2 months with a variety of stretches and deep tissue work on the muscles on my legs and hips and the pain completely vanished. I started lifting weights again (squats and deadlifts with plenty of deep tissue work and stretching) and I haven't had hip pain since.
Ha, I had exactly that same experience, with the same injury, no less. The physiologist told me that sure, the surgeon is always going to recommend surgery - but if you’re going to have to do PT, why not do it first and see if it fixes the problem?
PT is the closest I have come to experiencing a miracle cure from modern medicine. Speaking as someone who frequently breaks themselves.
A lot of surgeons only know how to cut so that’s what they will recommend. There is also a lot of money to be made. Better to try physical therapy, therapeutic yoga or similar first and see how that goes.
Anyone else get creeped out and realize just deep and tangled our mindsets are when reading these articles lauding consumer products? The biggest and best companies are all laser focused on producing as much throw away consumer crap as they can while we are hurtling towards catastrophic climate destruction. These write ups lauding the innovative business strategies of convenient, throw-away luxury items feels like anesthetic. The world's on fire and the best and brightest have fatalistic attitudes towards doing anything meaningful and we're just heaping on more tinder.
Stopping climate change is mostly a political problem, not a technical one. An extremely difficult one since it requires collective action from the entire world. Even when it is a technical problem, it's not clear to me that software developers have anything productive to add to the research in this area that isn't already being done (renewable energy R&D, geo-engineering).
PS. The world is not on fire. Most of the 1st world will live through this with some bumps and scratches along the way, because we have sufficient resources to engineer our way out of any problems. It's only "catastrophic" for poor people near the equator. It's not fatalism, it's just being pragmatic about where the incentives are.
Truth, I remember reddit cratering the active user base there ten years ago, but I've found myself going back again over the past few years again, craving the type of community there vs the lowest common denominator and ad filled garbage that is reddit.
The forums they are referring to have been operating with the "10 bux" model implemented on top of a highly customized version of vBulletin for over 20 years.