I remember downloading what I thought was a no-CD crack for some game from Kazaa.
It was an app that locked my screen, opened a window, and systematically deleted every folder in my main C: drive before crashing. Then the screen went black and a message popped up that said “Thank god it’s only a game.”
The exe was an ad for some indie Doomclone FPS game where the levels were your computer’s file structure and the walls of the rooms would be decorated with the images stored in your folders. I shut down my machine after that. I was shaking for the next hour.
If anyone knows the game, I’d love to learn what it was all about.
It was definitely a sad movie and not easy to watch at times. However, it was well written and acted, and considering it was the lead’s debut performance, that’s extra impressive. For me, it was one of those movies that’s enjoyable, yet uncomfortable. I think it was very successful in what it set out to do.
I vaguely remember seeing a news article about something like that. I think it was a game where killing enemies caused files to be deleted from your computer. It was portrayed as some kind of artistic statement about digital possessions or something.
Someone in the forum where it was being discussed sarcastically said they developed a live action version called “playing baseball inside.”
I’ve made a specific email for NSFW 18+ internet websites (there’s one with achievements and I wanted to have recommendations) and this email address, being used at every single site I’ve visited more often, never got leaked.
Meanwhile I log in with Google and 4 hours later the nigerian prince asks me why I have changed my email address.
Sadly no, I haven’t received any spam on my 131 forwarding addresses. I have however, received spam on my new main account after sharing the address with my local hairdresser.
What you need to do is get each individual hair cut by a different hairdresser and then you can see which one is selling your account details or something
We keep 10,000 chickens in a single huge building whose floor is literally layers of their old shit, give them just enough room to stand there and not move around, and leave it there without any environmental controls through the hottest days of the year. What do you mean disease is prevalent?
My point is that if they were serious about protecting the environment, they would promote WFH (for those who can…not everyone can obviously) in addition to EVs. Instead, there seems to be a big push for return to office.
Yeah, I think he was explaining that EVs ARE more efficient, but like everything with industrial capitalism, the idea is that they’re solving for:
“How can we increase efficiency, while keeping inefficient traffic jams and pointless office commutes?”
When, if they actually cared for the environment, reducing office commutes in the first place has proven to work wonders in dropping pollution. There’s just no psychopathic control and exponential corporate real estate profits involved.
An EV is more efficient than an ICE, but industry wants never-ending constantly-exponentially-growing production and purchasing of EVs, so they can enjoy a future of EV-majority traffic jams, instead of gas and diesel traffic jams.
We’ll then get emotional-piano commercials about how they saved the planet by mass producing a product that was mass consumed.
But we could simply not have traffic jams, and everybody knows it. That would make people too happy though, and give them time to think. Like 2020, it would once again be difficult to find people who will put up with corporate nonsense.
Solving problems by putting dents in demand also has a way of making quarterly projections inconvenient. :p
While true I think most people understand that most of our modern economies that sustain billionaire corpos and the stock market are almost purely run by the magic that unstainable growth based gdp. This will always be the case until we work properly on fusion and a Dyson swarm.
We will reach a point when we hit 11 billion people and growth levels off. People will revolt en masse when they realize they can’t retire without the magic rich made richer money generation machine that is the stock markets compounding interest. Turns out you’ll have to save for a retirement by not magically generating more money from just hoarding it.
Until then, keep putting in your 401k and understand that any large change to an American economy to fix commute problems is going to cost way more than Europe due to our land size and heavily suburbian population centers.
Everyone is down for mass transit until they realize they have to pay for it lol.
It’s not bullshit at all. It is a lot better for cars that are being used to not shoot out smoke from combusting refined oil. There will always be cars in use, so it will always be better for them to not shoot out smoke.
It’s not possible for all workers to live inside dense cities and use public transport and work in offices or at home. MANY other jobs are out there and still need doing every day. Everyone who physically maintains all of our critical infrastructure, manufacturing, and food supply industries is pretty much going to commute to work one way or another. Millions of those people don’t live in cities with public transport and/or don’t work where public transport can take them to. EVs are an improvement for all of those necessary use cases, because the vehicles they need could not be shooting out smoke.
I’m not sure what percentage of workers could do their job from home if they were allowed to. It’s probably a small minority, though a quick glance of numbers from COVID would suggest 15-20%. I’ll use 15% for sake of argument but would welcome a more “confident” number if someone has it.
Reducing the number of miles is and important way to reduce impact. Additionally, even those who cannot work from home benefit from reduces congestion and reduces vehicle idling. Although idling has less impact on EVs (though they still have to run HVAC), ICE vehicles are still the majority of vehicles being sold today in most nations and will be in circulation for decades.
Not everyone can WFH, but it needs to be part of the strategy of reducing emissions from transportation. Not pushing WFH (for those who can) is leaving a lot on the table. This is not a replacement for EVs, rather in addition to.
A big motivator for keeping my early-2000’s car with almost 215,000 miles on it is just how CREEPY modern cars are.
Mozilla’s “Privacy Not Included” column really highlighted this. It’s terrible and it’s currently all legal and you can never really trust you’ve circumvented it.
Sucks too, because those “Canoo lifestyle vehicles” or the new VW bus EV look so cool…but they have crap like face-monitoring cameras and app-connectivity in them. What the heck.
This is the truth. People like to tout EVs as the end all, be all, “silver bullet” for the petrochemical industry. Bullshit. Your EV is riddled with oil-based products and asphalt contains a shitload of petrochemicals. EVs are better than gas burning cars in the same way getting stabbed with a knife is better than being shot. If you really want to help the environment by buying a car, buy a used car instead of a new one. Still, nothing really compares to just having a society where the average individual doesn’t need a vehicle. I think if we had a more robust service economy structured around couriers who took care of shopping and delivery, and then had a genuinely decent public transportation system or taxi options, we’d do a lot to reduce emissions. But the car is itself a sign of affluence and personal freedom in America. Always has been; probably always will be. Ownership of one, especially an expensive one, confers a certain status, and that’s a cultural problem, not an environmental or material one.
Ask a man his salary. Do it. How else are you supposed to learn who is getting underpaid? The only way to rectify that problem is to learn about it in the first place.
Ask a woman her age. Do it. How else are you supposed to learn who is getting older? The only way to celebrate that is to learn about it in the first place.
Okay, context, paramedic of 13 years experience. I actually picked up a dude who did almost exactly this. Except he was diabetic with severe neuropathy and had no feeling of hot or cold. And no thermometer in the hot tub that was being directly warmed by a wood fire. You see where this is going. Well it gets worse than that. Dude, still no idea he’s burnt all to fuck, gets out of the hot tub, goes in, and beds down for the night. His caretaker finds him two hours later with his burn juice having soaked all through the sheets and brings him to the local, rural, 4-bed ER hospital, where the ER doc promptly shits a duck. That’s where we come in. We have to haul his ass to a burn center, and I’m telling you, this dude’s legs were fucking wrecked with second degree burns. Never seen anything like it before, and the guy is just chilling, no pain medicine, still a little skeptical that this is really all that bad (it is). Wild. Rural healthcare is something else.
I have peripheral neuropathy due to diabetes in my feet. Damage was done before I even knew I had it and got it under control. Not feeling sounds nice, I have a lovely mix of feeling and excruciating nerve pain. It’s like little lightning bolts in my toes
this is like one of those IQ scale wojaks memes
everything electronic is just a tracking device <----------> electronic components are highly specialized <------------> everything electronic is just a tracking device…
I assume we all know this thread is a meme. IRS sounds the most memetic
If you paid with cash, the person who accepted the cash most probably had eyes. Eyes along with the human brain, are one of the first tracking devices in human civilisation. The information they save on you are not even subject to the GDPR.
For those, like me, who don’t remember the significance of the lights on the Wii remote (the console has been out of production for a decade or something now), the third light blinking means he’s player 3.
Everybody remembers Ripley, but Aliens was a solid gender equality movie… filmed way back in 1986. Remember Vasquez and Ferro? Totally believable, flawed and likeable badasses. I find today’s characters to be way too perfect to be believable. Wonder Woman is a good example. I find her annoying.
Paying a bank hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest is also robbery. what did the bank do? Were rich and did paperwork. Wow so irreplaceable and valuable. Think of all the poor people they swindled to get there! Amazing 😍
What alternative would you propose for providing loans?
My controversial (for Lemmy) take is that loans are good for society. They provide an incentive to not hoard resources, but provide them to those who want to put them into action today for future benefit.
A good loan benefits both parties, ie. An auto loan that allows someone to buy a car to get to a job to earn an income that is above the cost of the loan. Without the loan that person couldn’t get to work and whatever service they were providing to society is lost.
All that said - that doesn’t mean the way loans work today is the best solution, but the same functionality of trading current and future resources needs to exist. You don’t have to call it a loan, and it doesn’t have to be performed by private for profit institutions, but if you want a thriving economy I believe you need this function carried out somehow.
The equivalent function in Communism is (or historically has been) a centrally planned resource allocation which very clearly is a horrible idea because of the incentives towards corruption. If you take a literal interpretation of communism (instead of historical) where “the workers own the means of production” trade unions could fulfill this current to future resource allocation function. I do not know if this would create the same corruption as single central authority, but my gut feels is that it would (based on the US labor union and organized crime affiliation of the past.
In short, the current function for trading current and future resources (ie. loans) is far from ideal, but I have not found an alternate that provides more benefits than deficits. I would love to learn about more alternatives, but just saying ‘loans R bad’ makes it sound like you’re advocating getting rid of them with nothing to handle their underlying function, which is a terrible idea.
I think a lot of folks have a fundamental misunderstanding of how loans work. The banks don’t get to just magically conjure up as much money as that want. It is backed by actual money/assets and federal regulations require a certain ratio between what the bank has loaned and the amount of money they have readily on hand.
I agree that it’s not a perfect system, and I definitely think “businesses” that offer those sketchy payday loan arrangements should be illegal, as they often price gouge the shit out of the interest rates (in fact, I believe many states have outlawed them). But I don’t know of a better solution that isn’t dependent on a utopian-esque idea.
Wow, I thought they’d raised it back up after COVID “ended.” How ridiculous, you’d think that would be one of the first tools they’d use to address inflation outside of just raising interest rates.
You are incorrect. Banks do create money from nothing. And I don’t know if it’s unlimited but I’m not sure why it needs to be unlimited to feel weird and/or unfair.
That is not true. This is typically how bank loans work: You make an account at a bank and deposit, say, $1000. Before 2020, the Fed would require the bank to retain something like 10% of that $1000 (just using 10% in this example, I haven’t looked up what the ratio was pre-2020). So they’d deposit $100 of your cash to keep on hand and could then loan out the other $900 to those seeking a loan.
However, the Fed set that reserve ratio to 0% in 2020, which is idiotic in the long-term and also likely a main contributor several banks collapsed in 2022/2023 as the Fed started raising interest rates (I’m no economic expert by any means, so I could be wrong on the main contributing factor).
I think you’re mixing up regular banks with the federal reserve, who definitely can just print money out of thin air.
From the very source you linked–which isn’t even a good source to begin with since very little of the actual responses there use their cited sources correctly, often quoting shit out of context or misinterpreting the source material:
The “out of nothing” aspect of your question is more complex. In my personal view, and I guess that’s only an opinion, is that because banks are government regulated and insured institutions, forced to back each loan with reserves, and regulated to have capital for each of those loans, they cannot really be said to make this private money out of nothing.
But again, that’s just one user’s response. Not a credible source. So here:
Creating money
Banks also create money. They do this because they must hold on reserve, and not lend out, some portion of their deposits—either in cash or in securities that can be quickly converted to cash. The amount of those reserves depends both on the bank’s assessment of its depositors’ need for cash and on the requirements of bank regulators, typically the central bank—a government institution that is at the center of a country’s monetary and banking system. Banks keep those required reserves on deposit with central banks, such as the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan, and the European Central Bank. Banks create money when they lend the rest of the money depositors give them. This money can be used to purchase goods and services and can find its way back into the banking system as a deposit in another bank, which then can lend a fraction of it. The process of relending can repeat itself a number of times in a phenomenon called the multiplier effect. The size of the multiplier—the amount of money created from an initial deposit—depends on the amount of money banks must keep on reserve.
Banks also lend and recycle excess money within the financial system and create, distribute, and trade securities.
Banks have several ways of making money besides pocketing the difference (or spread) between the interest they pay on deposits and borrowed money and the interest they collect from borrowers or securities they hold. They can earn money from
•income from securities they trade; and
•fees for customer services, such as checking accounts, financial and investment banking, loan servicing, and the origination, distribution, and sale of other financial products, such as insurance and mutual funds.
Banks earn on average between 1 and 2 percent of their assets (loans and securities). This is commonly referred to as a bank’s return on assets.
Which is a more detailed explanation of what I originally said. Yes, they create money. But it’s coming from somewhere and backed by something and not just magically imagined.
In the US, the Fed can just print money, and they have numerous times. But that’s because they’re legally allowed to. Banks don’t have the authority to straight up print new cash without something backing it up (e.g. reserves, assets, securities, transactions, etc.)
How is money created? Some is created by the state, but usually in a financial emergency. For instance, the crash gave rise to quantitative easing – money pumped directly into the economy by the government. The vast majority of money (97%) comes into being when a commercial bank extends a loan.
And I’m just curious. Why in the hell did you think you could tell me I am wrong when you clearly knew nothing about the topic? It’s kind of depressing that this thread is full of this shit. It is a backbone concept in our society, and instead of questioning yourselves, you fuckers are in here correcting people, spreading false information.
I mean I get doubting it. It’s insane. But use a damned search engine and question yourself.
You clearly didn’t read. After 20 seconds this page didn’t load, but doesn’t matter… It’s pretty obvious you don’t care about facts so I can’t imagine you understood or read it yourself
What if the bank decides to keep all $1.000 and loan out $10.000? While money wasn’t printed, phantom money was most definitely conjured out of thin air. And with the magic I don’t see how a bank couldn’t have, say, bought Disney with the phantom dollars
You’re misunderstanding the basics of banking like the other fellow I responded to. I provided a link by the IMF that explains the fundamentals in another reply. I’ll provide another one: investopedia.com/…/fractionalreservebanking.asp
Normal commercial banks cannot just print money, which is exactly what you’re implying with “phantom money.” The money has to come from somewhere and/or be backed by something. So no, a bank can’t just magically turn $1000 into $10,000 without something securing the additional money or the extra money coming from other funds. Only the Fed (or other countries’ central banks/governments) can print money on a whim.
I think the most generous interpretation of what they seem to be trying to explain is the “phantom plans” created from loaning loaned money.
A deposits 1k into bank Bank loans B 1k B loans C 500
There’s only 1k in circulation, 500 in B’s hands and 500 in C’s, but there is technically 1500 in total loans.
I could be off base that this is what they’re talking about, and I don’t necessarily think it’s all that relevant to the conversation, just spitballing.
What alternative would you propose for providing loans?
Making things affordable (or just priced within reason) if they are considered a necessity to live in society.
Yes, there are survival necessities ie. food, water, shelter. But in modern society, we can add Internet, phone, car (depending on where you live) or bus pass etc, and probably tuition for at least a bachelor’s degree.
If you want to buy a boat or some shit, then sure, you should have to take out a loan.
Love your optimism, but “making things affordable” is not a valid plan for managing resources. It provides a goal without a solution.
Are you suggesting price fixing? That has a lot of associated outcomes that typically cause worse situations than doing nothing.
You can introduce a guaranteed buyer at fixed price points which alleviate some of the negative consequences, but add others.
These are not simple problems. The reason these problems exist isn’t solely because “rich and powerful people are evil” as nice as that would be. These problems still exist because they’re complicated and ‘one size fits all’ solutions haven’t been found for them.
Again, love the lofty goal you’re setting, but you pretty blatantly don’t mention an alternative system. Easy to point out a problem, much harder to build a real solution.
The funny thing is, capitalism happened organically. It wasn’t a designed system. So dismantling capitalism without a solid replacement will likely just lead right back to capitalism.
The funny thing is, capitalism happened organically. It wasn’t a designed system. So dismantling capitalism without a solid replacement will likely just lead right back to capitalism.
March of history. When material conditions are right you transition from feudalism to capitalism. When material conditions build up further, you get the transition to socialism and then communism.
I think a better goal may be to make plans affordable. Loans are a valuable tool, if they’re at a decent rate, so restructure them. Interest never compounds. Rates have to be reasonable. Payments always come out of principle, with interest tacked on and paid at the end of the loan’s life. It’s also a reeeeeeally hard task to say just “make things affordable”
I don’t know that the loan concept is what’s broken as much as the idea of the bank itself. To me, the idea of credit unions makes a pretty good alternative to banks. At least every CU I’ve belonged to has been owned by the members, and the profits they made were used to subsidize interest rates for members needing a loan or, in some cases, a portion was paid out as a dividend at the end of the year to members.
Please read on the rent of the land by Smith, and anything by Henry George.
You appear to be advocating for anarchist concepts of free association and contract theory, but I’ve seen no specific citations. Are there any you’d reccomend?
How is money created? Some is created by the state, but usually in a financial emergency. For instance, the crash gave rise to quantitative easing – money pumped directly into the economy by the government. The vast majority of money (97%) comes into being when a commercial bank extends a loan.
I think the answers to the question are generally isaying it isn’t as simple as ‘creatijg money out of nothing’. They may be creating money but that money is backed against assets which they do own.
because banks are government regulated and insured institutions, forced to back each loan with reserves, and regulated to have capital for each of those loans, they cannot really be said to make this private money out of nothing.
The context you left out there said right before that “in my opinion”. In any case though, before it was “backed” by a fraction of the loan. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t new money that did not yet exist. It just means if the bank folded there was something to go toward repaying those whom they owed. But in any case that fraction was reduced to zero in the US under trump. Something I learned in this thread. So really, now that backing doesn’t exist any longer.
How is money created? Some is created by the state, but usually in a financial emergency. For instance, the crash gave rise to quantitative easing – money pumped directly into the economy by the government. The vast majority of money (97%) comes into being when a commercial bank extends a loan.
I agree with you. And yeah it’s bizarre that loans are literally just a privilege that banks get…to create new money out of thin fucking air. I agree–Biggest scam in history.
Simply put, when enough people deposit money into their accounts, banks will simply take the money and lend it to someone else. It is not “their” money, but crunch enough numbers and do enough predictions and you might make it out.
That’s why “run on the bank” is such a feared things - if everyone starts withdrawing cash or sending it to a different bank, the bank can’t really do that because they don’t have the money.
Don’t you worry, they would change their opinion on a dime of someone tried to prosecute Biden. We already know they don’t give a fuck about precedent.
As if they wouldn’t do that anyway if they didn’t have the court locked down already. Please quit acting like we can appease Republicans into acting reasonable.
Motorcycle emissions standards are incredibly lax by today's standards when compared to cars. That Prius just might be releasing less toxic substances than your motorcycle - while being able to cart around more people and stuff.
This is very true, even newer bikes that have more modern emissions are still generally exempt from the same standards as any car.
That being said if you have a high traffic commute it would still be faster for you to use a bike as well as better for everyone else in traffic so pros and cons.
Fortnine has a video that touches on the emissions/trying to be green and riding a motorcycle. The fact is most bikes not made within the last 10 years (and some that are) are carbureted and have little if any emissions control. Sure that Yamaha vstar250 might get 80mpg but that has more to do with having a smaller engine than a lawnmower than it does any modern engineering.
E-motorcycles really are best of both worlds. Small, mobile, and more energy efficient. Plus high torque means it feels powerful. They were available on market several years ago - I remember seeing a Wired piece on one.
They’re very cool but the problem is aero. To build an ev-bike that’s fast enough to be a motorcycle you run into a lot of drag. Ebikes that still go pretty fast but still technically are a bicycle fit this gap nicely.
Another issue is price though. To do my current commute via electric motorcycle id probably need to buy the HD Live Wire Del Mar, which if I remember correctly is about 17k. Do you know what else was 17k? My electric Fiat 500e which is what I generally use to do my commute. On the other end of the scale is pricing for ebikes which isn’t that bad and does start around the 500-800 but can easily get into the tens of thousands of dollars for some very high end options.
While I see there’s a lot of people here that disagree with me on motorcycles being just fine for commuting, it’s important to recognize that not every task needs a car. Motorcycles are not the cleanest way to get around but they do overall have less impact. Sure you can off-road in a Cadillac Escalade, but how much will that tear the trail up compared to my 450lb klr650? You might be able to fit 6 months groceries in the back but you also need to park in the back to find a spot. Sure you can haul 8 people but how often is it just 1?
That Prius, just by being manufactured, had an incredibly toxic environmental impact that it would take a motorcycle hundreds of thousands of miles to equal. Lithium battery manufacture is hell on the environment.
Oil processing is definitely bad for the environment, but think for a moment about the scales. Just in raw materials, ignoring the massive impact of battery manufacture alone, the average motorcycle weighs less than 600 pounds. The Prius weighs about six times that. That means six times the amount of shipping, forming, refining, finishing, et cetera…
The Prius still has an internal combustion engine that burns gasoline, and requires a significant amount of rare-earth minerals for the construction of its catalytic converter. Most motorcycles now have catalytic converters, but they are smaller and thus the environment suffers less damage per vehicle.
I agree that a Prius will burn cleaner while running than probably any motorcycle – but the total amount of damage done just by being built has to be a whole lot more than almost any motorcycle and it can’t be close.
memes
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.