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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • Tesla could have pursued an affordable model, but instead Elon pushed the robotaxi, and Elon said there was no need for an affordable Tesla model. If we assume that he actually expects to release the robotaxi at some point, and that he actually thinks it’s important for anything other than trying to pump up stock, then it certainly looks like his plans are more focused on fleet sales than trying to sell to consumers. Making cars less affordable across the board (and slashing any funding for public transportation) only helps that business model.




  • It will block youtube ads if the video is embedded in another website. When I want to find a youtube video on my tv I just search it on DuckDucGo, since watching it there blocks ads and seems to bypass any restrictions they’ve placed on watching videos outside of youtube.

    I need to set up a cheap computer and just run the TV as a monitor so I can have all the features I want, including a real browser with ublock. But in the meantime, this fixes the one issue I have with DNS level blocking.


  • I wanna say they specifically called out property destruction as being against the rules. And overpaying as well iirc, so you can’t offer someone millions for a sandwich that you then eat.

    Plus, if we’re being pedantic, burning the money isn’t spending it, which is what he is supposed to do.

    The movie also has the advantage of having a contract that presumably covers any other loopholes the audience thinks of, but which they don’t explicitly address in the script. Once you take it out of a movie and start treating it like a challenge to be solved, you can no longer hide behind some unseen fine print.


  • It’s taking the premise of Brewster’s Millions, which required that he not only spend the money, but that he has to have nothing left at the end, including assets. So, buying a house doesn’t work because you still own the house.

    Obviously there are still plenty of ways to drop millions on stuff without having anything to show for it. Hell, it’s probably easier now than ever before. Just become a whale for a mobile game and you’re there.




  • Steam isn’t a monopoly, I can get my games elsewhere (epic, gog, humble store, origin etc). But Steam is dominating the market because it does it better. It offers value and features that others don’t, and it generally hasn’t abused its dominant market position to squeeze the consumer or crush their competitors. The closest thing to enshittification we’ve seen from Steam was them allowing third party DRM and launchers, which isn’t something they wanted, it’s them backing down from a stand-off.

    I want competition, but there’s good competition and bad competition. Good competition is what we see from Steam and gog, where they stand out by being good at what they do and giving customers what they want.

    For an example of bad competition, just look at streaming sites. We went from everything being on Netflix to everything being divided among dozens of shitty platforms, each of which costs more, and the prices keep going up, especially if you don’t want ads. Nothing was improved for the consumer when Netflix lost its defacto monopoly. Which isn’t to say that Netflix is great, only that the competition for marketshare has only made things worse for the consumer.

    I think it’s easy to look at all the bullshit EA and Ubisoft and the like pull now, and imagine that same pattern from streaming playing out in gaming.



  • Makeitstop@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlJust sayin
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    10 months ago

    Creating massive penalties equal to the whole cost of a house for anyone that sells after less than 6-8 years would have devastating unintended consequences. It might make flipping impractical, but it would also hurt a lot of people who find themselves in a position where they need to sell, and would increase the risks associated with buying a house for lower income buyers.

    It would help if you targeted the profit from the sale instead of the whole price. Flipping is about buying low, minimizing the cost of improvements, and then selling for a massively inflated amount. Without that profit it’s not worth it. For a normal person, being able to make money on the deal is nice, but at least recouping your costs can keep you economically stable and allow you to move on with your life.

    I also think that you would want to combine this with some plan for helping low income buyers with the restoration of neglected properties that would normally be snatched up by flippers.

    I also think the arbitrary age restriction on owning a rental property needs an exemption for inherited properties if nothing else. A 20ish year old who inherits a home or rental property when their parent(s) die is not abusing a loophole, and immediately hitting them with additional legal problems and forcing them to sell a house that has a tenant already in there is just unnecessary chaos for everyone involved.

    I’m also curious how large apartment complexes fit into this plan. Are they also banned? Do you just need an owner to occupy a (potentially much nicer) apartment in the building? If you can still operate a huge apartment complex, I would expect the market to shift heavily towards those. If you can’t well, that raises it’s own issues around urban housing and population density.