ChatGPT absolutely has a path towards profitability.

I’ve seen the exact opposite happen a couple of times: “How the fuck did you not realise you were spending 70 grand in a month?!”

Although to be fair these days that gig is over. Unless you have path towards profitability it’s very hard to unlock investment beyond seed.

Violator, by Depeche Mode.

I have never had my little mind so fully blown as when I listened to that the first time.

Endless US debt is fine, provided there keeps being interest in the US dollar as a reserve currency. The US national debt is simply the difference between money printed and money collected. As long as the US dollar “disappears” into the global economy (which it does), inflation is kept under check.

The few times I’ve used AliExpress I’ve had expectations met in terms of product quality, exceeded in terms of customer support and disappointed in terms of promised delivery speed.

I don’t get the sense most people are any different.

I’ve literally given you a way to feel more confident, all you have to take it. But no, you’d rather live in ignorance it seems.

lol. I AM the source. DM me with your LinkedIn handle, I’ll connect with you to validate my identity and you can tell anybody else watching that the story is legit. I don’t want to spill too many details in public as I don’t want to involve my old company in it.

And in terms of “state controlled VPN” services, it’s not that the Chinese state runs honeypot VPNs for companies (though they most definitely do for their own citizens), but that to have a license to operate a cloud service in China, you have to enforce CSL and that means they get private companies, western too, to do their bidding. If you encrypt data, you’ll get a stern call (as we did).

Of course China uses encryption. So an obtuse, direct reading of that statement allows you, correctly, to say the commenter is wrong.

But what the commenter probably meant was “China bans the use of encryption that prevents the Chinese state from reading what is being exchanged” and that is confidently right. I’ve operated teams in China where we had a secret category 1 incident when it was discovered a couple of our devs had set up a VPN between a Chinese and a western service that didn’t go through the official Chinese-state controlled VPN services.

They absolutely do not want data they cannot read.

The difference is that there is SOME accountability in the West and we can, to an extent, influence who leads us, especially in Europe.

So if flagrant misuse does appear, there’s a much higher risk of it being discovered and of heads rolling in the west.

Think of the number of exposed scandals in the West and compare that to China.

And I’m not throwing shit China’s way and thinking the West infallible. I’ve been to China plenty and worked with awesome Chinese people plenty. There’s a lot to love in China.

But let’s not get lost in whataboutisms. Where would you rather raise your children?!

We know that decoupling growth and fossil fuel is possible. The US and EU has had declining fossil emissions since the 2000s yet still achieved growth, also if you include outsourced emission.

It can be done.

Whether it’s done in time, or without large scale impact, is another question. But it’s possible.

100% Micro. Unless you’re only - and mean ONLY - living in the terminal, why would you want all your desktop and terminal shortcuts different from one another?!

Azure don’t give a shit what it runs. Windows is on its own these days; if they succeed, good for them, but honestly I think the days of Microsoft just pretending to give a shit about Linux are long gone; it’s an important OS to them too.

I’ve worked for Microsoft for 12 years, still have lots of friends there so I get some of the vibe from that.

You can vote and march. Those are the only small actions that will make a huge impact.

Declutter.

I am a “two moving box guy”, priding myself on being able to fit my whole life into two moving boxes.

Then I had kids and married a fantastic women. Then you start acquiring all the things you need for a “grown up life” and you suddenly end up with weird shit like “a metal hole punch” because you needed it that one time.

And over the years you end up with a garage full of shit that might just be useful one day.

Some years ago my wife and I made an active effort to get rid of shit we didn’t have a purpose for today. If you live in a good neighbourhood chances are your neighbour will be happy to lend you a jig saw, or a metal hole punch, or disco lights or whatever you need.

Now, whenever we book an Airbnb it hits just like a jackhammer how much crap other people own that they clearly don’t need. Endless amount of water bottles etc.

Yes I get your point. Some software can run without a large income stream, on a volunteer basis.

You’re using that fact to say that Firefox also can. And if you care to look at my profile you’ll see I’ve argued time and time again that Mozilla is an overblown organisation and should be slimmed down to a couple of hundred, working solely on the browser.

I doubt, however, that you can build a modern, up-to-date browser on a volunteer basis.

How many full-time people do you think it takes?

What do you want? A Mozilla with no income? Because then there is no libre browser.

Be careful what you wish for. Firefox needs income and without audience for Firefox, Firefox is no more and then LibreWolf is no more.

I’ve already paid for a lifetime license of Plex. Is it worth considering a switch?

No not all hexbear users are farmed trolls. I think most are doing China and Russia’s bidding out of misunderstandings about the world and what really happens inside those two countries.

I think some hexbear users are farmed trolls and/bots.