My biggest complaint is how Linus is still saying he’s not sorry about what he did, at least it doesn’t seem genuine, instead he is still apologizing that he didn’t realize what the community wanted.
He shouldn’t care what the community wants. He should always strive for accurate data, ethical partnerships, and correcting mistakes when they still make it through because they always will.
Linus is doubling down on his opinions, hiding mistakes, doing the bare minimum to fix them, and needs public outcry and the heavy hand of the other executives in LTT to see any course change.
Fucked up hard = published numerous videos with inaccuracies and errors due to tight timelines and QA that was not rigorous enough. Also they fucked up communication and sold a prototype at auction. These are mistakes and journalistic ethical issues.
From what I can tell, they have owned up to most of that.
The more serious accusations come from Madison Reeves who not only claims she suffered from being worked like a dog, but also severe sexual harassment and other awful behaviors. LTT put out a statement that they had hired an external investigator and would take corrective action based on the findings.
Now, LTT is for sure in the wrong here, but what have they done wrong since? It seems they are taking the criticism seriously, despite Linus’ initial understandable but unacceptable emotional reaction. Curious to hear!
edit: not sure why my summary of events is garnering a negative reaction 😅
Perhaps I’m biased, but “hired an external investigator and would take corrective action based on the findings” translates to “distract folk until the spotlight is off us, so we can then sweep the problem under the rug and go back to business as normal.”
No, dude. An outside investigator may very well hand their findings right back to LTT management, who promptly bury the findings and make a generic statement of “We’ve received the findings, have taken them to heart, and will be making internal changes accordingly.”
I’ve lived through it. A prior employer brought in a third party to assess the business practices and policies. Six months later, their investigation was complete, and the results passed back to upper management. Warm and fuzzy statements were made, promising changes. None were made. Fast forward a year or so, and the C level that was the driving force behind the third party investigation left the company.
If you do something wrong, like publish wrong info, and then are OK with that wrong info being published… CONGRATULATIONS!! You just did something unethical.
Ethics does not require you to “do ethics”. It requires you to do respectable work. You do not get to decide to avoid ethics.
Totally agree. See my comment where I mentioned numerous mistakes and ethical issues. They will be publishing new standards and guidelines and channels to report inaccuracies apparently to address this.
The problem with inaccuracies on a channel like this is they are basically purchase influencers. One of their wrong graph shown some GPU was 3 times faster than other while it was around 15% faster only in reality. They kept selling the trust me bro attitude on every media and it turned out you cannot really trust them. With big power comes big responsibility.
Video inacurracy i am fine with if they are on the right course to fix that. Auctioning off prototype that are not theirs and knowingly use a wrong spec for the review for me is not. First one no matter what intention it is thief, second one is just disingenuous. It’s fine if Linus admits he is wrong on it, but he double down.
Madison’s situation is the way bigger concern in my eyes. The issue is, they shouldn’t have to hire an outside investigator, or they should’ve done so years ago. They were being told the issues directly for months and refused to do a thing about it until the spotlight was on them. You don’t get to grope someone and say “I didn’t know it was bad 🥺” a year later. You don’t get to work your staff like dogs despite numerous private and public complaints only to say “wow, we had no idea” once it starts to affect your image. If this “external investigation” doesn’t start with completely gutting the management and HR structure, and handing out appropriate punishments to employees who have received complaints, then it’s clear that they don’t care about their company culture as much as their brand image.
Agreed. The shit she endured is egregious. I think I approach from the perspective of the new CEO. Whatever he’s done so far seems to be correct, and it should result in swift and sweeping changes. LTT very clearly has a culture problem that appears largely top-down. I’m not in the habit of feeling bad for CEOs, but what a shitshow he inherited…
I thought the video was a step back, not tripping down. They took actual action and they layed out a plan how they’ll improve. What would you have preferred?
In one of their videos one of the employees said they do better and more accurate GPU tests than other YouTubers called Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed. Then of course those mentioned YouTubers started to hit back and show how often LTT is wrong and makes wrong assumptions, because they don’t do proper due diligence. Since they have to release several videos per week. Gamers Nexus also exposed that LTT auctioned off a prototype GPU cooler from a small startup. But they had no permission to sell the unit. It was only for reviewing. The startup even asked to get the unit back several times. Linus, the owner of LTT, then released a non-apology. Afterwards a former employee came out and told why she left the company and it turns out the work environment is very toxic at LTT. She also reminded everyone that pettiness by Linus caused his fans to harass a small YouTuber called MindChop. Who eventually committed suicide. He fell into a depression because of the harassment and later his mom also committed suicide. She couldn’t bear the loss of her son.
There is no actual proof for the suicide of the son and the mom, would love to see actual proof if you have it but i wouldn’t really use this as an argument. I admit his behaviour was too much but pointing the blame for the suicide of a child is also too extreme
found this twitter post about it: twitter.com/reddit_lies/…/1691895748286177765Just realized that Twitter account is quite stupid but I still can’t find any evidence for it being true or not
Edit: I don’t know if I want to believe if MindChop truly did what the reddit post is talking about, but I feel like Linus wasn’t at fault for his community bullying the Owner.
THAT whole thing SHOULD NOT be included in this round of criticism. NO ONE is responsible for everything their fans do. That was a messed up situation that LTT only happened to be involved in. Most of their angst and trouble came from a terrible YT media group (not LMG) pulling their small channel around.
Indeed, the lack of professionalism and lack of respect in the work place are fully legit concerns. Though piling on someone’s tragedy just to hurt LMG is a frankly shameful act.
I don’t fault those curious about the event, but it is almost wholly and completely unrelated, AND not a fault of LMG per se. At least the severity of the outcome they had nothing to do with.
Love that they clarified that after being called out, as if that somehow makes it more acceptable. “See? It was to charity guys, you think making money for charity is a bad thing?” While still missing the mark completely and refusing to send said prototype back.
It’s still a bad mistake, absolutely. If the cooler hadn’t been sent out already, I’d call it malice. I don’t think they’re claiming themselves blameless, just admitting that while they’re dumb, they’re not greedy.
You don’t get to claim a tax credit on someone else’s charitable donations. In this situation, the buyer gets a proof of donation that they get to claim on their taxes. It wouldn’t be LMG deducting it.
I mean…they were reviewing it in-house. They had already “taken” it. The question is whether they give it back after - and it’s a very common routine for manufacturers to just not care, in which case a charity auction would be normal.
It sounds like it was just a unique case where they slipped the directions, and forgot the company had asked them to return the prototype after. It was a dumb mistake, yes, but a lot of people are acting like it was super scummy and intentional which I don’t get.
It seems like the other circumstances around poor work environment and low review quality are a lot more important.
Do people still not understand how donations/charities work? If they sold it for $100 and donated $100. Yes, they technically get a tax deduction. But it doesn’t change how much profit they made. If they had tossed it in the trash they’d still have the same amount of profit. They just aren’t paying tax on the $100 they sold it for because that money is being donated.
And then offered to pay for the BOM of the device acting as though that completely makes up for the mistake, ignoring the potential harm to Billets intellectual property.
Then their apology is all butt hurt that they THOUGHT they’d offered to pay for it, but only sent the email internally, not realizing their mistake until called out again. Then whining that no one is giving them the benefit of the doubt when they’ve demonstrated lack of judgement throughout the whole ordeal.
Forgetting to put the actual recipient in the TO filed is such a weird mistake too. You got all the CCs, but ignored the TO?
I get that shit happens, but its not like it was a complex email they drafted several times and wanted to make sure it wasent sent by mistake. Its whole contents was “oops, our bad. Can you send us an invoice and well get this sorted out.” Why did they not hit “reply all” like a sane person for something that mundane?
Its just so weird, and honestly is either made up, or points to odd workflows and more sloppy processes, even over on the buisness side.
Twenty-five (25) videos a week. Five a day, four if they work weekends which they likely do. Plus the WAN show and other social media. Their velocity is far too high for accuracy to be a priority. As their own employees said in their video, they wish they had more time. And as Linus himself said, their velocity is so high that the instant they publish a video it has to be forgotten because they have to turn to the next one.
They have like a hundred employees, which makes it a lot easier to figure out. Though some of those employees aren’t directly involved in creating videos, such as doing accounting or creating the many kinds of custom merch that they sell.
They have a bunch of employees doing specialized roles. Not just the usual roles like editing or writing, but they also what they call a “lab” that does stuff like identify findings about tech. But even with so many employees and all the specialization, they’re still clearly rushing. Eg, if they make a massive error, rather than fix it and do a reshoot, they’ll release it with the error, which is a terrible approach.
That’s exactly what happened in their biggest controversy with an expensive water block cooler. They used a completely wrong graphics card despite knowing that it was completely wrong and with an incompatible motherboard, then spent most of the video bad mouthing how it didn’t fit the motherboard or card instead of recognizing that they needed to just identify a compatible board, find the right card, and redo the shoot.
Linus Tech Tips, a large YouTube tech channel, has faced backlash after GamersNexus posted a video detailing their increasingly flawed videos focusing on quantity over quality. LTT releases videos multiple times a week, but these videos almost always have errors that are later corrected or are not noticed by LTT. This results in lower quality videos that can sometimes be misleading (especially product review videos). These criticisms had been expressed by many viewers of LTT prior the GamersNexus video. GamersNexus is also a popular tech channel and amplified these criticisms with the release of their video.
Other criticisms of LTT are that their packed release schedule overworks their employees and their corporate culture is hostile towards stressed employees. These criticisms were merely speculation until a former LTT employee posted on X (formerly Twitter) a detailed account of why they decided to leave the company. Their allegations detailed overworking, harassment, and their declining mental health due to their job at LTT.
GamersNexus does probably more research than a video deserves though. I’ve always found the accuracy levels of the LTT videos acceptable; I think GN might be sort of spuriously demanding rigor here.
Harassment is no good and must be stopped, though.
Some of GN’s criticisms do come off as nit-picky, but remember: This is a response to someone at LMG saying they do a better job than GN or Hardware Unboxed. OFC Steve’s obsession with detail would come out on full display when it was insulted like that.
LMG (Linus Media Group) was making careless mistakes and publishing a lot of inaccurate data, sometimes going as far to not recommend or label a product as “bad” after misusing it. This was likely due to an unnecessarily rushed pace of video releases that came from prioritizing sponsor revenue over accuracy, which many feel is a pretty massive ethics breach for a news outlet that is marketing itself as a home for highly objective, data driven content (LTT Labs).
Gamers Nexus called out this behavior in a 40 minute video which kicked off all the drama, and Linus posted a kneejerk response on the LTT forum where he largely defended his behavior and conclusions and badmouthed Gamers Nexus for going public with these criticisms instead of sharing them privately.
A few days later, LTT put out a video that was almost entirely LTT leaders other than Linus admitting how bad everything was, sharing some details on their processes, and committing to being more transparent & taking a week off uploading videos to rework things. But the video also included some tone deaf moments, like a plug for merch and Linus talking for a bit where he sort of apologized but didn’t really talk for long enough to acknowledge all of his fuck ups. He did say “I’m sorry” at one point which was pretty meme worthy.
The video was also monetized when it went up and the description had links to their merch store in it, which people called out as slimy and LTT subsequently removed.
Different people have different conclusions – some think it was a total non-apology, but I personally am satisfied. To me all their issues were the result of bad processes/automation run amok, so their commitment to reworking their processes and being more transparent about them with the community is exactly what I wanted to see.
But that’s just me – I think there are many valid conclusions that can be drawn from this.
Edit: There was also a reddit post on Reddit made by a former employee, Madison, that made allegations of sexual harassment. If true, these would be extremely damning, and to my knowledge LMG has not spoken on them yet. I also am just learning about this, so I don’t know whether these statements have been corroborated by anyone.
Just check their comment history for like 30 seconds. Everyone makes a joke that misses the mark every now and then, but the shittiest people usually constantly spew their nonsense.
If you just browse through your home feed, sure. But actively going out of your way to see someone’s comment or post history because you don’t agree with what they said is childish and frankly a bit concerning. It really shows your character.
Wow, hmm… This is such a good comment to shitpost under but I’m not sure what angle to take. The fact you seem to be upset people publicly can get on a public website in public and look at the public posts the user posted in a public forum in public is a good one. But also the whole “just because they said a bunch of shit about hating the Jews doesn’t mean you should look at their post history you creep!” is a good one too. Now though, Im just wondering what you have to hide? So… I guess let’s take a look at your post history 🤷
Edit: Ohhhh… I found it everyone. He/she/they/zem doesn’t want people to know they don’t like LGBT people that much.
That’s not all you’ll find now is it? Apparently you don’t have the greatest view in LGBT people? I’m a shitposter, but not a prick. So I genuinely would like to know your controversial opinions on LGBT and give you the space to say your opinions and defend them. Like why is Pride Month “unwarranted”?
I do it all the time. I mainly do it to make sure I’m not arguing against a literal child. There’s many reasons why one might look at a person’s post history.
In the context of the meme shared by OP, we’re talking about things that go a bit beyond the scope of stuff we don’t disagree with. Like things that right wing extremists would say
Definitely do. Sometimes it’s the only way to know whether someone just had one bad take, or if they’re genuinely awful and not worth your time to reply to
It’s a good brand. I have their laser printer and it’s great. No annoying registration, 3rd party toner cartridges are allowed. Super fast compared to inkjet. Overall a great experience compared to my HP printer which won’t let me scan unless I register on the HP app.
For a second I thought you meant never showed up as in your pihole can’t print to it. I was mildly surprised when my pihole automatically recognized and configured my brother printer on my network. But now that you mention it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it black holed in my query log either!
I need to get a pihole… It might not fix my Linux printing situation though. I’m able to print but a big document with a lot of pages will just randomly cancel half through for no reason.
I have installed no drivers and can print from Linux / windows and my iPhone.
It sits on my network, it accepts prints, it gets turned off when I’m done.
I’ve never seen it try to do anything outside my network, I’ve never seen it do much of anything on my network. It just sits listening waiting to print.
We had a 5P back in the Win98 days, and it was exactly what you'd expect a printer to be. The refills were pricey, but they'd last a long time (we printed a lot then). And you could get a bit more life out of an empty drum if you shook the hell out it.
I do wonder about compatibility with Win10/11 at this point. I know some other old devices I still have around are all but impossible to get to work.
I remember seeing them abused in my university computer lab. People would print 50 page documents, see they screwed something up, trash the whole thing, and then print again.
Keyboards, monitors, mice, computers, and network switches would come and go but those tanks would just keep rolling. Plus we could program rude messages on the screens via the web interface, which was fun.
I bet the Audi model (pricing) is relying of folks leasing vs buying the cars. I can see how they could cram this on a car someone will only have a couple years vs a purchase.
Personally I’d spend the 800 for VAGcom and make a business unlocking cars features.
Because they are no bullshit brand. You get what you pay for. Open the box, put it somewhere, connect to WIFI and forget about it. The moment you need it, it will happily spring to life without complaints and then go back to sleep.
It’s hardly believable how problem-free these printers are. They have a bunch of models, but you always get what you pay for. Laser is this much, a bit more expensive is LAN model, a bit more LAN+WIFI, then higher up scanner added, etc. They also work without drivers on Linux. Company also allows recycled and third party toners. In my case they are even faster to receive data and print than any other printer I’ve had. They even don’t send statistics back home, even though they are network connected.
The service charge is not a tip or gratuity, and is an added fee controlled by the restaurant that helps subsidize the staff wages so that management doesn't have to while still seeming to have reasonable prices on the menu. Also, management takes a cut as it subsidizes their wages too.
Edit: I get why this upsets some people, but the downvote button is not a disagree button. I merely restated the restaurant's explanation in plain language. I'm not agreeing with it...
That’s my point. This restaurant is try to bait and switch their customers by giving a misleading food price and adding a service charge. It is like a cell phone company adding garbage fees.
As for my initial comment - if you add a percentage for service, that ends my obligation to tip.
Ah! I see. You were talking exclusively about not coming back into US restaurant, not restaurant in general anywhere in the world. It was not clear for me.
And we also charge you for eating in as well, that’s another $10.
Some areas actually have different pricing for eating in vs taking out, as it’s treated differently by the tax laws. Some areas also tax differently based on if it’s cold or hot/cooked food, so a toasted sandwich costs a bit more than an untoasted one. Very small differences, though.
Yeah, my post was a bit of hyperbole, but I’ve been to a fancy restaurant a while ago, where they did make you pay for cutlery and also for the table separately.
By tradition, the service charge is supposed to be paid to the staff. Therefore, it’s not customary to tip when you’re assessed a service charge, although many restaurants choose to ask for a tip anyway.
If you work in a restaurant that charges a service charge but pockets it… you’re being robbed.
Unfortunately, this isn’t true anymore. At least in PA.
34 Pa. Code 231.114. Service charges.
§ 231.114 b
The notice required by subsection (a) must state that the administrative charge is for administration of the banquet, special function or package deal and does not include a tip to be distributed to the employees who provided service to the guests.
If this restaurant was passing the entire service charge to its waitstaff, it would be advantageous to call it a gratuity and exempt it from sales and income tax. The IRS does not tax tips/gratuities as income.
By charging (state) sales tax on the service fee, they also have to declare it as revenue, which increases their income and thus their income tax. They have to pay a portion of that service fee in income tax, so they aren’t going to be passing the full amount to their waitstaff. The restaurant will be keeping the bulk of that service fee.
It doesn’t make sense to any sane person. But basically:
The restaurant feels that costs have increased and in order to remain profitable they must raise prices. Instead of raising prices on the menu, take the canoli as an example, from $11 to $13, they decided to add it after the calculation.
This means the customer may go out with an idea of what they would like to spend (maybe it’s a special treat for them) orders based on the menu, figures tip and tax… Expects to be out for $100… But surprise! You owe a fucking service charge.
Now-- I’m not into this particular restaurant’s finances. Let’s be generous and assume they need to charge more to break even. This is the shady (and should be illegal) way to do this. They should instead raise prices and be honest with the customer what they feel they need to charge.
The problem is, this is still decietful. If this is an issue then the correct move would be to make every item on the menu 18% more expensive as a base. Because now, they still get to say “oh well our prices are still low come eat here and get “X item” for “Y price” but that’s not true anymore because of the service charge. It’s just a way to keep menu items lower in price but increase the price at the end.
They probably pay $1/hr over minimum tipped wages. About $0.75 of that $17.22 fee goes to paying that increased wage, and the rest is pocketed.
If they wanted to subsidize worker wages, they would include a mandatory gratuity rather than a service fee. Gratuities are passed directly to workers.
Except you’re wrong. It is a tip because the tip is the service charge. The tip specifically is “we pay them less than minimum wage and your tip covered the rest of their service cost”. A tip AND a service charge, especially a service charge not levied because there were X+ people at the table, is double dipping on the tip. Both fees are for the same thing. Either increase prices or increase the tip(or pay your workers fairly and don’t expect me to subsidized the rest with these secret fees). Make them upfront and honest. This isn’t. This is a perfect invitation to say “you already charged me for the service, so no tip is needed, because that’s what it is for”.
The tip specifically is "we pay them less than minimum wage
Not everywhere. Some areas don’t allow wages that are lower than minimum wage for tipped jobs. The area I live in in California is around $17-18/hr minimum wage regardless of if the job is tipped or not.
Except you’re wrong. Service charges are not considered tips under FLSA rules within the US. Many states and local jurisdictions have special rules for tipped wages, how they’re taxed and those taxes are collected, and service charges are not included in that definition.
Nice reading comprehension. The TIP is a service charge. You got that backwards buddy. So a service charge and a tip is service charge x2. Or you’re admitting that a tip is only for “above and beyond thanks”, in which case it’s not mandatory and this is again a scam.
A tip is money paid directly to the worker providing the service. The restaurant can’t keep any part of it. They are not taxed on it, either as sales tax or income tax. That money is only counted as income to the worker.
This service fee was subject to sales tax. It will also be subject to income tax by the restaurant. The restaurant gets to keep as much of it as they want.
“Mandatory gratuities” are tips that the restaurant obligates the customer pay to the waitstaff. Where these are charged, you are not allowed to stiff the waitstaff. The restaurant cannot keep any part of that gratuity.
Tips/gratuities and service fees are not the same thing at all.
I’m not talking the law, I’m talking what the tip actually is in practice. It’s the service charge. You’re paying for the server to serve you. The tip isn’t for the food. It for the server serving. Just because you’ve been conned and guilted into accepting this as normal doesn’t make it right. And just because it’s taxed doesn’t mean it’s still not extra income to the resturaunt. Would it be ok if I mugged you but paid taxes on the money and gave it a cutesy name?
A “service fee” is for the restaurant existing. Service fees do not go directly to the staff. The restaurant keeps most of that service fee.
I mentioned taxes not to suggest that the practice is legitimate, but to demonstrate that the money is income to the restaurant. Tips are not income to the restaurant. Tips are income only to the staff.
I acknowledge that there is no significant distinction to the customer between a tip and a service fee, but there is a highly relevant distinction between the two for the restaurant and the server. The service fee this restaurant is charging is money stolen from its staff.
This restaurant could support its workers by adding a mandatory gratuity to the bill, in which case I would agree that no tips should be paid. But a service charge is not a tip. A service charge is not a gratuity. A service charge is not paid to the servers. A service charge is kept by the restaurant.
Service Charges: A compulsory charge for service, for example, 15 percent of the bill, is not considered a tip under the FLSA. Sums distributed to employees from service charges are not tips, but may be used to satisfy the employer’s minimum wage and overtime pay obligations under the FLSA.
A place implementing a service charge cannot classify it as a tip, even if it’s 100% passed onto the employee… a mandatory charge is not a tip, even if the restaurant encourages you to treat it that way. Certain states and jurisdictions tax tips differently than regular wages, and service charges are wages, not tips.
If they charged a mandatory gratuity, I would agree with you. An 18% mandatory gratuity is an 18% tip to the waitstaff; you are not expected to pay an additional tip on top of that.
A tip is money directly to the waitstaff. The restaurant can’t touch it. The restaurant is not charged sales tax nor income tax on money collected as tips. When they collect a gratuity, it goes directly to the staff.
This “service fee” was taxed. It did not go directly to the waitstaff; it was recorded as sales revenue, and thus income to the restaurant. The restaurant is being taxed on it before any of it gets to the staff. They would only do that if they are keeping a part of it, which they could not do if it was considered a “tip” or “gratuity”.
Charging a “service fee” is a legal way for the restaurant to steal tips from employees, while making you think they are paying it to their staff.
Most likely, they pay minimum tipped wage plus $1/hr. They are making $3.13/hr plus tips instead of $2.13/hr plus tips. That extra $1 is the higher “base wage” they are talking about.
About $0.75 of that $17.22 service fee goes toward increasing the “base wage”, with the rest counted as income to the restaurant.
This is not the perfect opportunity to say “you already charged me for the service”. This is the perfect opportunity to name and shame this scumbag restaurant for its shitty business practices, and never eat their again.
I used to work in the waste sector - been to a lot of dumps. Let me tell ya, public sector dumps were literal dumpster fires compared to their private counter parts. Inefficient. Years behind in technology. Weighted down by nepotism and typical government employees.
It was such a relief when I knew I was assigned to a private sector dump where things just fucking worked because people just let it work.
I haven’t been back to Reddit in months, and maybe Reddit’s gotten worse since then, but Lemmy’s far worse than Reddit was when I left it. I stay here because I like the idea of the Fediverse, but this community is absolute garbage.
It isn’t about being better trash, it’s about who controls the dump. I want to be able to view all trash in the way I choose. Not certain piles of trash that I’m forced view in a way that I can’t choose on my own.
I’m gonna say some stuff that most of the people here probably know on some level, but considering this thread, I think it needs to be explicitly said.
Very few of the people who post comments on the internet are highly educated in whatever field they’re making a claim in. Getting challenged by people who know next to nothing and receive all the upvotes anyway is an exhausting experience, so many well-educated people keep their debates private. If they are here, you probably aren’t enough of an expert to recognize them. The simple, easy to understand takes are what get upvoted, and in-depth, nuanced ideas are almost always ignored or ridiculed. Most forums are full of people who know just enough to feel confident in making calls for radical action without any knowledge of how that action could be implemented or would play out.
Look through this comment section. Lots of vague, single-sentence arguments about being “capitalist,” “communist,” or “socialist,” along with “leftist,” “liberal,” or “conservative,” but I don’t see a single one acknowledging that each of those words can individually encompass vast groups of conflicting ideas and have wildly different meanings in different parts of the world; a serious problem considering at least a few of the people posting in this thread aren’t in the US. Very little discussion of substantive ideas like “people should be given a universal basic income of $15 a day,” or “food stamps should be granted without application to anyone under a certain income threshold,” or “social media servers should receive public funding and be administrated by an elected body.” It’s almost never more specific than “universal healthcare,” or “abolish the police,” Those might be the right direction, but when was the last time you saw people discussing things like whether experimental treatments should be covered, or the number and type of professions that should replace the current myriad of roles police are expected to fill? I seriously doubt if you randomly selected two self-described communists (or whatever ideology) on Lemmy and had them start making decisions together, that they would agree with each other on exactly how society should be run even half the time.
I’m not saying these conversations shouldn’t happen, vague as they are. I certainly don’t have the energy to write out long arguments 99% of the time. We all have to make our own way to finding deeper knowledge, and building a knowledge base of buzzwords can be a useful stepping stone. But far too often people stop once they feel they have a sufficient understanding of the buzzwords and then start talking like they know the answers. it’s important to temper the depth of your convictions based on where you’re having the discussion, where you’re getting your knowledge. Are you watching youtube videos and reading unsourced comments, or are you reading research papers from institutions with a history of making accurate claims? Are you reading news articles from ad-supported papers, and if you are, are you checking whether those articles are making sources available for readers check on? Should I have bothered writing several paragraphs under a meme of a glowing red bird, and am I really qualified to tell people to be more careful with their discussions?
Why not? Compared to other social media it’s way better equipped for reasoned debate, with an easy-to-read layout designed for mountains of text and ease of linking sources. Maybe c/memes isn’t the right place but considering how serious the rest of this thread is I’m pretty sure my spiel was worth it.
Maybe the people in my social circle are just a lower caliber than yours, but I can’t remember the last time I got asked to source an opinion irl. Most of my friends already agree with me. Hell, offline, most people aren’t willing to discuss politics at all. Even saying you have opinions on politics is basically a faux pas…
It’s not a place for nuanced debate because I have no idea who I’m talking to.
I’d rather devote my time to having those nuanced conversations in real life (which I do) than trying to convince an American online through a meme community that gun bans would reduce school shootings for example.
If you actually have a group of peers that consistently challenge each other and have scholarly debate, congrats. You’re in a very small minority. You personally not having a use for arguing online doesn’t mean it’s useless. I know plenty of Americans who have been convinced that gun control is important by things they’ve seen online.
Very few people in this thread are kidding around. It’s worth pointing out that most of the things they are saying are extremely shallow.
Why should you only have discussions with people you know?
If you only have these discussions with people you know, more than likely, they are in your ideological bubble. You are just creating your own echo chamber. We may be randos on the internet, but we could be next to you on the subway or your cubicle. Most of us here probably like to debate somewhat.
just berate my ideological opponents because they genuinely are losers
Im astonished at how closed-minded and brainwashed you seem. Maybe actually think about why you would fight for a opinion that is not based on “well reasoned and researched arguments”… It really seems like youre arguing for another person’s opinion rather than having your own.
I appreciated your wall of text! Lemmy, and social media in general, are pretty terrible places for nuanced discussion. The system is biased towards short and vauge posts. As you said though, they can be a good stepping stone.
There’s been more than one time that I’ve seen people arguing in a thread and decided I’d look up the topic to see who is right. In the end it doesn’t really matter what people in the thread were saying. It got me interested in the topic and I searched out more reputable sources of information and hopefully I learned a bit!
That being said, there are also threads where people post insane takes. You really need to have a litmus test for whether or not a post should even been considered.
Lots of vague, single-sentence arguments about being “capitalist,” “communist,” or “socialist,” along with “leftist,” “liberal,” or “conservative,” but I don’t see a single one acknowledging that each of those words can individually encompass vast groups of conflicting ideas and have wildly different meanings in different parts of the world; a serious problem considering at least a few of the people posting in this thread aren’t in the US.
Actually refered to exactly that with my vague one-liner :D
There are a lot of clichés that may not make a lot of sense at face value. I’ve found some actually go a lot deeper than you expect, or may actually apply on multiple levels. Common wisdom often hits harder than I initially realized as I’ve gotten older…
Edit: and as you comment shows, I’ve also been guilty of straight-up misinterpreting the meanings as well. Literally just the other day i realized that Lifesavers™ candy are supposed to be little life preservers, as one would have on a boat. For whatever reason, i thought they were just making some grandiose claim as brands often like to do… Sometimes our first impressions become our impressions until correction which may not take place for a long time
It’s a reference to a very pretty cake. Imagine a wedding cake on display at the wedding, before the bride and groom cut into it. They want to keep the cake pristine so it can stay on display. But that means they can’t eat it, because eating it would destroy the art. They also want to eat it, because it’s cake. They want to have their cake (to display) and eat it too.
I don’t understand why society demonizes that (the multiple people thing, not the lack of communication). If that’s what’s best for my partner, who am I to stop them? What does exclusivity even get me besides limiting my jealousy?
If someone needs multiple partners in their life to feel fulfilled, then wonderful, but they just have to make sure that everyone involved is fine with that before they get into the situation.
Polyamory is very cool for people who are wired for it. A whole lot of people aren’t, and that’s okay. And some people could be wired for it, but they have a whole lot of self-work to do before they’ll practice it well.
It works for me because I know that I never again want to presume any semblance of control or authority over any partner’s absolute right to seek out joy and fulfillment by forming however many ethical and consensual relationships they wish, of whatever style they wish, with whomever they wish, for as long as they wish, and I insist upon the same right for myself.
Jealousy is just not an emotion I experience. Envy, yes…envy being wanting what someone else has. When I see a partner of mine having a particular dynamic with another partner that I want to have with them, I feel envy. But not jealousy, which is not wanting someone else to have something of yours. That is, I don’t feel anxiety about their other partner “stealing them away from me.” Anything lacking between me and a partner has nothing to do with anyone else not in our relationship; if I feel something is missing between us or want things to be a certain way, it is incumbent upon me to speak up, and vice versa. Outside of our relationship, I cheer my partners on in their other connections because love is fucking amazing, man!
In most cultures betraying contracts is usually considered bad, and relationships are basically intimate and emotional contracts. Trust is important even in business contracts, but in interpersonal ones its ESSENTIAL. If you entered into a polyamorous relationship, cool, thats the contract all parties agreed to, but if it wasnt specifically polyamorous its defaults to monogamous, and if you breach that trust, you’re probably not getting it back, and without trust ever having a healthy relationship again is probably gone
Normally, an image would have already been posted of the cover art for Bear by Marian Engel, and though it doesn't apply here, there's always someone looking out for our needs
You’d often get the error when there was paper in the printer though. Turns out the cause is the slightly different size between US letter page size and A4 page size. Technically the printer’s correct to complain (for the same reason it’d be correct to complain about an A4 sized print while full of A5), but virtually nobody gives a shit about that difference and so the “PC Load Letter” message just translated to “You have to push that stupid button before I’ll do anything because pedantry.”
Additionally, don’t copy and paste anything until you understand it. If you don’t understand what code golf is being spewed, don’t take the top answer. If you don’t understand any answer, you probably don’t understand the underlying systems well enough and need to re-evaluate what your asking for.
The only difference between a novice and a professional is that a professional checks what they are copying to understand it first before allowing it into their codebase.
Novices copy code to avoid having to understand it. Professionals copy code to avoid reinventing the wheel.
ChatGPT is making me better because I’ve learned not to fucking trust it and double check everything it spits out to ensure its actually doing what’s asked of it.
I use it to help me lay out pseudo code and check it against what I come up with. It has made the way I structure things (and comment on things) way better.
Didn’t want to put too many details in the question for privacy sake. Knew a guy with your name in college, was curious if you were the same. Have a great day!
It should be illegal for Utilities to become for-profit. They should either be government run or non-profit, but only in the business to provide a needed service and NOT to make money.
For clarity: By ‘Utilities’, I mean items for which local residents have little or no choice in the provider (power/electric lines, water/sewer lines, hospitals) AND which either are or are nearly essential for modern living (it’d be hard to get a job without it, OR social services might take your kids if you don’t provide the item).
In this day and age, the ISP should also be on the list of things classified as “utilities” - it’s getting harder and harder to do anything useful without the internet. It’s become an essential service.
The governments treatment of ISPs has made other industries reconsider how they do business. Utilities as we know them will be going away soon. How long before USPS is sold?
There will be riots in the streets before the postal service is privatized. Who will go for that?
Democrats don’t want it. Country Republican voters would be outraged in minutes if their service was cut off or the price spiked. Those voters will notice fast. And they’ll take note faster than city people. LOL, their mailperson may be the one government official they know personally, and count on.
We’re talking about a gigantic federal agency, gigantic. The USPS is simply too important to be fucked with. Anymore than we have already…
Country Republican voters would be outraged in minutes if their service was cut off or the price spiked.
What you’re missing here is that it takes a little while for things to go to shit. What you do as a smart conservative (bit of an oxymoron, I admit) is implement this towards the end of your term so that the effect will come when the democrat is in power in the next term.
normally I’d completely agree with you… but… DeJoy has been hatefucking the USPS for 4 years and we can’t seem to get rid of him - conservatives or libs. so…
I dunno what the fuck to do, I just know nothing so far has worked.
Yes, its crazy how a pair of Presidents that seem to viscerally hate public services can’t seem to get rid of a guy who is dismantling one of our largest.
The only public sector service Biden seems to like, other than Amtrak (which is getting is own privatization push regardless), are cops. Motherfucker loves throwing more money at the police.
“In order to stop the Democrats from trying to steal another election by mail in ballots we will be shutting down the USPS and replacing it with a bigger more better delivery service. Why try to kick out the crooked left when we can’t start fresh with the best deliver-ers of packages and mail in the business. Only the finest of delivery men and women that believe in true American values.”
-Trump probably
I agree with what you’re saying but I also feel you are underestimating how gullible the base is AND how determined the GOP is to pass things once in power. They prefer the slow boil method.
Much as I don’t like ISPs, and I’ve worked for a few, in the field and on the phones, I shudder to think of our government running one. Yes, they should absolutely be classed as utilities. But I don’t want the government involved in actual operations. That’s a nightmare in 12 different ways.
It’s a weird business space. Despite being a monopoly in most American markets, they keep expanding service, for no extra cost. I have no idea why they’re doing this.
I live on the edge of town in a redneck suburb. No reason to improve service out here, they’re the only real game in town. Yet I keep getting faster and faster speeds for no extra cost.
Anyone know what’s driving improvements without competition? Or is there competition I’m not seeing?
Honestly, as an Aussie who has the NBN, it actually works surprisingly well, despite its rocky start and I can guarantee it’s better than the previous setup we had, which was either Telstra/Optus cable for way too much money or you’d be stuck with cheap slow ~800kbps ADSL - and that’s if you could even get wired internet. N In fact, despite the massive fuckup that was the initial rollout (things tend get fucked up when the government repeatedly changes hands mid-planning and implementation stages) it’s actually doing quite well.
NBN sells its service through the ISPs at a set cost, the ISPs then compete for profit and add-ons - the speed plans are (up/down) Basic, (12/0.8). Basic II, (25/4), Standard(50/17), Fast(100/17), Superfast(250/22), ultrafast(700/40), so you’re still buying it through an ISP, but you can expect a consistent pricing (though I swear the larger ISPs are always overpriced)
Speed plans are also dictated by what kind of connection the NBN offers in your neighbourhood - my neighbourhood recently upgraded, and supports all of them, but before I was limited to Fast speeds - super and ultra weren’t available, as a matter of fact, we’re still on Fast, even though there are higher options now, dad sees no reason to pay more.
It’s a bit different for America - lots more people, and plenty of areas where gigabit is available, unlike Australia which had one of the worst internet speeds on earth. Already having good speeds makes it harder for a government to justify spending the money on something like the NBN
But the one thing the NBN and the buyout of all the original landlines and cable networks, as well as the construction of the NBN fiber networks did, is open up the market for hundreds of smaller ISPs, we now have so much choice for ISPs that the two selling points people look for when choosing are price and customer service, not speed as that’s practically guaranteed. People flip between them for better deals all the time.
However some places only have access to fixed wireless and they often get their own, honestly pretty inconsistent and abysmal download speeds 2-11, 2-23, 2-75 - note that upload speeds aren’t often advertised and the base speed is pretty shit - but before NBN they were stuck with mobile data or nothing, so it’s still potentially an upgrade - provided you’re not in an area where 2mbps is common.
I think a better way to go about it is what Australia used to do. There was a government run service for most things, phones: Telstra, banking: Commonwealth bank, etc. Unfortunately they get sold off for peanuts/privatised, and what do you know, service suffered, but profits for the board and investors jumped.
This leaves the ability for private companies to operate in the space if they can compete on price or on service/features.
Private companies hate that though, it means they can’t boil the frog/capture the industry as easily.
I fully agree with you, but the problem is that inevitably conservative governments will find a way to privatize these sorts of state-owned corporations. Our provincial governments here in Canada have been doing this for decades now - always resulting in worse outcomes for consumers
I’m starting to think the best model going forward would be collectively-owned non-profits (roughly like credit unions) but I’m not optimistic that most people would buy into this idea - certainly not enough to enable it’s use for services that constitute utilities. I know in the US a lot of attempts at municipal broadband have been curtailed by the big corps and their owned politicians, and those attempts had a local government behind them. The uphill battle that concerned citizens would face seems almost insurmountable if this were attempted in any way that would challenge a big corp’s profits.
Basically, everything is garbage and the world is getting objectively worse.
I think that we should set up some sort of honey pot trap, here. Anyone who seriously proposes privatizing one of the utilities is permanently barred from working in the industry ever again.
Wildly impractical, I know. I just want the people who are always making the world shittier so they can have a little more profit to suffer.
In NW Florida we had a semi-private, semi-government firm running our power. Seemed fair. We could vote on directors, they made a profit to keep the infrastructure running, prices were fair.
Now that our government sold us out to a private company, prices spiked and reliability dropped. I should note; We were told prices would jump to work on infrastructure. OK, I dunno, might be fair. Read on.
So, this is all anecdotal, take it as you will. People complained about prices jumping 40%. I didn’t see it for some time, my bill was about the same. Now I’m seeing the price hike. Don’t know what changed. My bill went from $120 tops to $240. For reference, I live in a small Habitat for Humanity house. They build for energy efficiency above all else.
Since the private entity took over, I’m seeing more power blips. Nothing to really bitch about, but we never had “blips” during afternoon storms. What happened to the infrastructure improvements? Again, anecdotal, but it sure seems worse.
And one more anecdote… I’m 53. Grew up in Tulsa. Power never cut out when I was a kid, not for a second. OTOH, when a storm took us down, it was hours or days to recover, not minutes. And I may be misremembering, YMMV.
Mostly with ya OP. I think utilities should be able to make a modest profit. Encourages them to do well, expand. They make a little money, do a good job, nobody’s bitching. Modest being the key word here.
In The Netherlands, the power grid has been turned into a different company than the power supply company. Same for gas and internet. The infrastructure companies are tightly regulated, to the point that they might as well be gpvernment branches. The providers however, are free to offer whatever.
The result is healthy competition where possible, without any company gaining a monopoly position over the utilities of individuals.
The drawback is that they figired out that the best way to make money, is of the backs of lazy people. People who don’t want to switch providers, cause that means effort. Hence, not actively looking for a better offer every few years is quite costly.
Let me introduce you to tolerance in measuring instruments and measuring errors.
Edit: Apparently I’m pro evil companies because I just pointed out that scales (and more importantly non-professional scales) have relatively high error tolerances (+ the measurament method error). Thus the measuring of this pasta and the possible interpretations of it have to take into account that.
Last year this claim went around for the Loblaws No Name brand in Canada so I went shopping with my kitchen scale, preparing to be outraged. Everything was a solid 10% over the advertised weight.
That does not apply in today’s world where shrinkflation and consumer fraud run rampant.
It us solely the company’s responsibility to ensure each package is labeled with the correct weight, not the consumer to tolerate excuses like “measuing errors” whether they’re valid or not. Companies have too much power to just not know or be able to accurately weigh or label their product, ergo if there’s a problem, they chose to have it in there. And if you dispute that, I will simply block you and move on.
You think tolerances and measuring errors don’t exist just because shrinkflation and fraud are things that exist?
I hate capitalism and corporate bullshit, too, but I don’t need to get outraged at the shit that’s barely an inconvenience like missing 8 grams of spaghetti in a 410 gram package that was mass produced. That shit would happen even if the companies weren’t asshats.
All that speech does not change that the weighing scales he is using is cheap af and thus the measuring error is high enough. Even if the guys at the company had the best measuring system in the world without error and they packed 410g of pasta, the guy measuring at home with that scale would probably mesure a vaule not equal to the nominal one.
Maybe the scales have measuring errors because they defend evil corporations. “Please scales stop defending evil corporations!!”. Dude i hate scales they are so much pro system…
All that speech doesn’t change the fact that your standards don’t matter, ours do, and if our scales don’t match what that package says, you have to put more product in to make it do so or you are defrauding us. Period.
Now come back when you’re ready to meet our standards.
your standards don’t matter, ours do, and if our scales don’t match what that package says, you have to put more product in to make it do so or you are defrauding us. Period.
I’m not sure if I’m missing a joke here, but are you asking for some alternative-metrology here?!
Weight is a well-defined standard, and a properly calibrated scale > your kitchen scale.
You sound like an angry oldman not wanting to accept reality.
So you want companies to put excess product because you don’t know how to measure correctly (or don’t have good equipment). Well ask them. For the price of 410g, too? No? And maybe a paycheck supplement too.
I want a lot of things too.
The point is that it isn’t false advertising if you don’t know how to measure well. Is not a standar or whatever you think it is. It’s reality.
Outside the kindergarten where everything seems so simple and easy to understand. In real life you don’t have ideal things. You don’t have an ideal measuring place.
Sources of error when measuring:
The material cut tolerance.
Your house not being perfectly smooth leveled.
(for electronic scales) RF noise.
(for electronic scales) Tolerance on electronic components.
The scale subjection points not perfectly pressed.
(for electronic scales) discretization error.
Components degradation.
Humidity.
Gas denisty near the scale.
Gravity fluctuations in the region of measurement.
Surface of the sample not resting completly in the scale plate. Etc.
And you are ranting about evil and “our” standards or whatever for a 2% error in the measurement? I would expect a 5% error given all that. That scale must be an exceptional good one.
It’s not standards it’s reality. Why do you think measuring labs are so expensive? Evil companies?
Try measuring your height more than once and see if results change. Hey if they change, you work for the evil companies, and you probably live in our “standards zone”.
Our/Yours standards was pure comedy. It’s getting better and better.
You aren’t shit. They scales do meet standards that are tested periodically to ensure they aren’t false advertising. Do you really think these corporations don’t have audits?
Calm down, touch grass, try to get in touch with reality and stay off the tankie portions of the internet that feed these delusions.
It us solely the company’s responsibility to ensure each package is labeled with the correct weight, not the consumer to tolerate excuses like “measuing errors” whether they’re valid or not
The measuring error is on OP’s end, not the manufacturer.
lemmy.world
Top