BlameThePeacock
@BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
- Comment on How/why does Microsoft teams exist? 1 day ago:
I don’t see your argument against teams.
It sounds like:
“It’s all together in one place, how dare they.”
At this point I don’t even bother using the desktop version of outlook, the web app is easier for emails and my calendar is in teams.
You act like cloud services are bad, they aren’t. If they were terrible, people would be switching away from them. They’re adding value beyond their cost and everyone knows it.
Could Microsoft be better at some things? Sure.
But they’re already far better than the alternative, which is a janky ass system of 30 different products from 30 different vendors.
- Comment on How/why does Microsoft teams exist? 1 day ago:
Total number of businesses maybe, but they account for something like two thirds of all employees.
You can’t really say it’s much of a business IT stack if it’s just a single freelancer using a Mac.
They wouldn’t be setting up teams in the first place.
- Comment on How/why does Microsoft teams exist? 1 day ago:
“lots of businesses operate on macOS”
No, they definitely do not. If you go into any business in Canada or the US with more than 200 employees, they are running windows on the computers sitting in front of every office drone they have.
Very specific industries or business may, especially those who are stuck on Adobe’s software, but “lots” is extremely far from the truth.
- Comment on How/why does Microsoft teams exist? 1 day ago:
There’s no mass exodus towards Linux in the business user space.
It’s still 99.9% Microsoft Windows.
- Comment on How/why does Microsoft teams exist? 1 day ago:
Lync, not Lynx.
And technically Lync got birthed from the corpse of Office Communicator, not MSN messenger.
- Comment on How/why does Microsoft teams exist? 1 day ago:
I quite literally teach and consult on Teams, and have for 8 years now. I worked with Lync, Skype for Business, and Communicator before that.
People complain about it all the time, and yet… I’ve never had any significant issues with it.
Other than M365 outages, which impact everyone, I’ve never seen it crash. I’ve never had issues not loading. I’ve never had sound or sharing issues that couldn’t be resolved by clicking the dropdown and selecting the correct option.
It can be a bit slow, especially loading file related stuff, but it’s not any worse than a network drive.
Placeholder avatars in different parts of the App? Teams doesn’t even support task assignment, tasks are handled in MS Planner which is an entirely different product that just happens to be visible inside Teams if you want.
Touch? Mac? Airpods? What the fuck are you doing? You aren’t doing real business tasks if you’re using an iPad.
Maybe the people with problems are the ones running 10 year old hardware with a barely supported operating system?
- Comment on I just went to the doctor's office and my copay is up $5 compared to last year 1 week ago:
America is funny.
And by that I mean you’re the joke.
- Comment on Without getting into current politics can someone describe to me what an authoritarian regime looks like? 2 weeks ago:
A single person, or small group, control everything.
Dissention is not allowed. Those people are removed via various methods from threats, to the jailing, and potentially all the way up to accidentally falling out a window or off a balcony.
- Comment on Where are the marketing volunteers? 2 weeks ago:
I mean, half the people who work for charities are technically doing some sort of Marketing.
- Comment on Easily available 940 nm transparent films? 2 weeks ago:
Most IR pass through filters are for 890-900nm not 940.
I ran into this issue myself for a slightly different use case.
The thing I found worked surprisingly well was a scrap piece of car window tint. I literally just walked into a local shop and asked for a small piece of scrap.
- Comment on What is the champagne of champagne? 2 weeks ago:
Prosecco
- Comment on Is there a science educator who shows in a video how they hand wash dishes? 3 weeks ago:
I hate having anything inside the sink when it’s not actively being washed. Anything dirty that doesn’t directly go in the dishwasher sits on the counter to the right of the sink until such time as it can be washed.
My in-laws house is terrible for this, both sinks full of dirty dishes all the time. You have to remove them all before you can start the washing process, it’s absolutely stupid. You can’t even wash your hands in the sink properly because of it.
- Comment on Is there a science educator who shows in a video how they hand wash dishes? 3 weeks ago:
Do you only have a single sink? Most homes here come with double sinks (left and right)
I put hot soapy water in the left, and then pull things out and wash, then rinse in the right.
The soaking makes it significantly easier to scrub/wash grime and grease off.
- Comment on Is there a science educator who shows in a video how they hand wash dishes? 3 weeks ago:
See them? Zero
The most common problem I have with other people’s dishes (often relatives) is that they are greasy after it’s been washed because they use the same water for the entire set of dishes and especially if their dish washing order sucks.
When hand washing I always do it in a particular order:
Re-usable Water Bottles, Pot lids which are not visibly dirty, Glasses/Cups, Utensils.
If the water is now greasy, I will drain and re-fill at this point.
Then Plates and bowls, Baking pans that are not greasy, Pots, Frying Pans, then Baking pans that are greasy.
- Comment on Is "depress" ever used in this context? 3 weeks ago:
Tongue depressor is a common example of this use case.
- Comment on Is there a self-help way to deal with fear of germs/"contamination"? 3 weeks ago:
Is there a specific location where you’re worried? Kitchen? Bathroom? Public transport? Work/school?
- Comment on If libertarian socialists are on the left and anarcho-capitalists are on the right what ideology is in the middle? 4 weeks ago:
The administration of a basic income sitting outside of the government?
The government already has a list of every citizen registered via birth or immigration, and provides identification for people. They’re always going to need to do that. There’s really no reason to replicate that level of information outside of the government.
Most people would just go online and register where you’d like your money to be sent (Direct deposit, Mailed cheque)
However, you would still need a few call centers to handle issues, and If someone needs in-person support, the government already has common government service offices like DMVs and service centers that can provide in person service if required, saving significant money on needing dedicated service locations just for this one service.
Tl;dr Economies of Scale matter, and it doesn’t make any sense to replicate the parts that the government already does and has to continue doing.
- Comment on If libertarian socialists are on the left and anarcho-capitalists are on the right what ideology is in the middle? 4 weeks ago:
It depends on what you mean by social welfare programs.
A basic income system requires very little administration, and what parts of it are required wouldn’t make sense to have it sitting outside the government.
I’d rather see a basic income than need non-profit food banks needing to exist. Grocery stores already exist, are reasonably competitive, and are enormously more efficient if people have the money available to use them.
For things like helping people with disabilities, where economies of scale are mostly irrelevant, ngos and non-profits can make more sense because they can specialize according to the need.
- Comment on If libertarian socialists are on the left and anarcho-capitalists are on the right what ideology is in the middle? 4 weeks ago:
Because you can’t really have parts of both.
Either you have wealth redistribution, or you don’t. A lower amount is still wealth redistribution.
You can have a government, or you don’t. A smaller government is still a government.
So if someone wants some wealth redistribution, and some government. They are just arguing how much of a Libertarian Socialist they are, not how much of a anarcho-capitalist they are.
I personally am a Social Democrat. Capitalism is good most of the time, just make sure you’re holding the reigns tight so it goes in the right direction. Skip capitalism altogether for specific industries where it just doesn’t do very well and have the government run those ones directly.
I’m neither a libertarian socialist, nor an anarcho-capitalist. Not even close to either of them, because again, it isn’t a spectrum.
- Comment on Where does the revenue gathered from taxes go and what is national debt? 4 weeks ago:
Agreed, mostly.
I don’t really care about a balanced budget. I’m fine with running deficits forever, as long as they keep the debt to gdp ratio at a reasonable value.
As you mentioned though, I care a LOT about what they spend it on. If they’re dumping it into systems that don’t provide stimulus to the economy that is sustainable long term, that’s bad.
Even bombs can be important by stimulating local wages, resource production, manufacturing, etc. however I’d like to see more investment in productivity improvements in my country (Canada) because we’re falling behind. I’d like to see more government investment in education, transportation, renewables, and supporting tech. Less investment in oil and gas.
- Comment on If libertarian socialists are on the left and anarcho-capitalists are on the right what ideology is in the middle? 4 weeks ago:
There’s no such thing as the middle. It’s not a spectrum.
Sometimes things are actually just distinct beliefs.
You can’t be in between Christianity and Hindu for example. They aren’t attached to each other, they are distinct.
- Comment on Where does the revenue gathered from taxes go and what is national debt? 4 weeks ago:
You’re mostly correct, but I would like to add a piece that not everyone understands.
The government issuing debt can be good for the government because of inflation and economic stimulus.
When the government sells debt, it sells $ in the future for a different (usually lower) price today. It doesn’t actually pay interest, the effective interest is determined by how much the market is willing to pay for it.
Lets say the government sells a billion dollars worth of bonds, which will pay out in 20 years, they sell it today for three quarters of a billion dollars. Sounds like a bad deal, right? The government is clearly losing a quarter of a billion dollars.
Except, the government doesn’t have to pay it back with money from today, it pays it back with taxes it will earn 20 years from now. If in those 20 years, inflation is say… 3% on average. Lets just ignore compounding to make it simpler, and say the costs of everything goes up by 60% over those 20 years. Assuming the tax rate stays the same (and ignoring compounding effects) they’d be collecting 60% more actual dollars than they would today. Paying back a billion dollars from taxes at that point is now easier than it would have been to try to raise 750 million from taxes today.
The government just “made” money by borrowing money. Really, it comes from inflation eating away at wealth, which is why the government printing debt like this usually causes inflation. All things inflating equally is a wealth tax.
Side note: The current inflation issues we’re seeing are not happening equally; wages are not going up as fast as inflation on common necessities like housing and groceries. That’s a different problem, not caused by government debt printing.
Then there’s the economic effects of spending the money now. More economic activity today usually means more taxes collected overall throughout the years that whatever they spent the money on benefits people. A new bridge or road, better air traffic systems to allow more flights, safer oceans to protect shipping, etc.
- Comment on How much money should one person realistically make or have? 4 weeks ago:
No they aren’t. Musk is only around 700-800B as of the end of 2025.
- Comment on How much money should one person realistically make or have? 4 weeks ago:
Because the guy you want wool clothes from wants beef instead of the lentils you chose to grow, and the person who wants your lentils only has chickens, and the guy who wants chickens has cabbage, and the guy who wants cabbage builds houses, and the guy who wants a house has pork.
Money exists to make transactions easier. Barter sucks as a primary trade mechanism unless everyone already makes almost all of what they need themselves and the barter is just on the side to spice things up a bit.
- Comment on How much money should one person realistically make or have? 4 weeks ago:
Can you explain in a rational way how getting rid of money helps?
- Comment on How much money should one person realistically make or have? 4 weeks ago:
The people control the government, even in America, if idiots don’t wanna vote or can’t pay attention long enough to understand reality then they have exactly the laws they deserve.
Glad I don’t live in such a shithole.
- Comment on How much money should one person realistically make or have? 4 weeks ago:
You don’t need to prevent rich people to remove money from elections. There are laws that other countries have passed that effectively nuter their influence on that.
- Comment on How much money should one person realistically make or have? 4 weeks ago:
Economics is about studying how it works, not forming opinions on how it should work.
If you want to discuss changing economic systems entirely, then discuss that, not ways to break the current one.
Our current economic system would not function with the changes proposed. All sorts of problems occur if you try to tax wealth when it’s created. Companies would receive no investment because anyone with money would have already hit the threshold and wouldn’t benefit from investing it. Not to mention that founders would be forced to walk away fairly early in the business even if they succeeded without investment.
Capitalism is inherently exploitative. You can’t have a profit as a company if you pay workers the same amount that you earn. If you pay workers out the entirety of the value and cut out the shareholders, you’ve just created socialism.
In my opinion, guided capitalism is the best system. Which means adding taxes and regulations to prevent the worst problems.
Like the fact that we already tax wealth somewhat when it’s sold off, and my proposal adjust inheritance taxes to 100% over a certain dollar value (10-20 million for example)
- Comment on How much money should one person realistically make or have? 4 weeks ago:
So as the company you founded gets bigger, you’re forced to just give more and more of it away to the government until you don’t control it anymore?
I would much prefer to see a higher estate tax, 100% of all amounts over 10-20 million.
If you know you can’t keep it you’re far more likely to do something useful with it while you’re alive.
- Comment on How much money should one person realistically make or have? 4 weeks ago:
SpaceX has advanced what humanity can do in space by a significant amount. It achieved something no government was even considering attempting until they proved it possible.
Google has added some massive value to the world, making information more accessible and advancing hundreds of other services and companies. From Gmail to Waymo it too has advanced humanity significantly.