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American pharmaceutical ads are weird. I guess I’m just not free enough to understand them?

Ubuntu. It Debian without the driver issues.

That was me, but I also had Facebook between Digg and Reddit.

I am a little, but compared to carbon emissions it’s not a big issue.

It’s a localised problem, so affected areas can solve it without needing the entire planet to agree. And we already have both political and technical solutions available to us. The only reason we haven’t implemented the fixes, is because big agriculture lobbies government successfully and it costs them no votes. But if the average voter has to stop showering because of water shortages, you can bet politicians will “solve” the water crisis in short order.

Water for drinking isn’t the issue - that’s about 0.01% of all water usage. The issue is irrigation for food crops, which is >50% of water use in many places.

You don’t actually need to be aware of it. Because you said you were aware of it, when you clicked Accept on the EULA, and on page 62 of the EULA it said they have the right to disable your printer remotely at any time and for any reason.

The reduced operating emissions take 10+ years to outweigh the enormous construction emissions of nuclear. (Compared to gas.)

I have a twitter and an instagram - with about 5 posts on each. Ditched Facebook about 4 years ago when I realised it’s just all toxic boomers on there now. Ditched reddit when they killed 3rd party apps. So Lemmy, and a LinkedIn I only really check for work.

Ironically, I work for a small company and I handle all the social media. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Yeah, publicly owned power isn’t all up-sides. In my state the government owns the power company, and for a long time we’ve had the most expensive power in the Country. That only changed when the invasion of Ukraine caused gas prices to skyrocket (because my state extracts huge amounts of gas, and the government gets it at a fixed price).

Sounds like your government doesn’t want you getting energy independence. Australia was like that 10+ years ago, but now it’s super easy. There are only 2 forms (one for the inverter, one for the panels) and the installer fills it all out for you. Systems <5kW per phase don’t even need prior approval, the installer just submits paperwork after the job is done. The only time it costs you, is if you need your old meter upgraded to a smart meter.

Are you kidding?? Good solar panels are 60-70c/watt, a high end European inverter is $2k, install takes half a day for 2 tradies.

Even with zero incentives or rebatesds, how can a 5kW system cost more than $7k?

$3500 for panels $2000 inverter $800 labour

Is rooftop Solar that expensive in the US? In Australia, I can get a 5kW system fully installed for US$3500.

I went straight from Mozilla Navigator to Firefox 1.0.

Tabs were such a crazy new thing back then. You would show tabbed browsing to someone (rather than opening new windows) and they thought you were a wizard. IE5 didn’t have tabs, so nerds moved to Mozilla/Firefox. Then IE6 came out but still didn’t have tabs. By the time IE7 came out, I’d had tabbed browsing for 5+ years.

Anyone who wants a free-market completely devoid of government intervention has clearly never studied economics.

The most important book regarding capitalism is “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith. It’s the first book any education on economics will ask you to read. It in, Smith states that the role of government should be 3 main points: defence, law and order, and public services. So the person regarded as the father of capitalism would consider NASA, firefighters and sewerage to all be government responsibilities.

The Wealth of Nations was written at a time when government intervention was the cause of monopolies, not a solution to it.

As the free market was embraced in different countries, economists saw it operating and built on Smiths work. Pigou wrote about “externalities” (such as pollution) where the person benefiting is not paying all the costs of production, and that this required government intervention to correct the imbalance this causes in the free market.

It’s because everyone here has only ever lived under capitalism, and they see all its issues and think socialism/communism would solve them.

I used to work with two former USSR expats - one Polish, one Russian. (I was 30 years younger than them.) We were a small crew and would work away from home for weeks at a time, so we’d spend a lot of our down time talking. They did sometimes reminisce about the things they liked from the old country, but they were very clear that their live was so much better once they left.

People on Lemmy have this romantic idea of communism. That you’ll work 15 hours per week doing something the like, like selling old books or gardening, and the state will provide everything you need. But in reality, under communism you will be assigned a job, assigned a house, and you’ll be happy about it. And if you complain, the state will take things away from you, because the state controls everything - your job, your house, your savings - they’re all government controlled. You can’t have freedom under communism. Don’t like your job - too bad, you’ll do it until you retire. You can’t take a gap year to find yourself (unless you count the compulsory military service), you can’t move to another city because you prefer the vibe there, you can’t start a business because you had a good idea.

Communism only sounds good if you’ve never lived it, and never really spoken to someone who has.

(Being Lemmy, I fully expect someone to respond saving that the USSR wasn’t real communism, and that they could design a communist system better than Marx or Lenin.)