Are you here because you believe in something and actually want to see it happen, or are you here just to stroke your own ego. Ain’t nobody got time for that second part. Get real.

Learning ESPHome has been the most liberating thing. Take back control of your home. Local first. Privacy respecting.

Just check your tea leaves.

Headphones do all this already. No mind control is a nice little benefit too.

Simple solution: Try looking at the pictures of you through a mirror.

The point, in one sentence:

If you are the product, not the paying customer, then not only is there no incentive to cater to your needs, there exists incentive to make the product worse for you if it means the paying customer extracts more from you.

Users of freemium software are basically nothing more than willing cattle. Housed and fed for free only to be slaughtered.

Maybe people just can’t help themselves? I fear we can’t have a fair and free market if people are so easily manipulated.

Uh, it’s a brick shelf made out of books.

I also have the same question. So I upvoted you. Also, where does this fall on the chart?

So the solution to consumers making informed choices is to have the consumer buy everything and test everything personally?

No.

Been here since the redipocalypse, browse All daily… Haven’t seen a single post about sports.

Dividing by a division of 2… Of course it’s going to cancel out. Like subtracting a negative.

Surely you don’t not understand double negatives? Just think of it like that.

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

https://opensource.org/osd/

Paradoxically (or not), restrictions on selling software is a fundamental violation of freedom. When the OSS movement says free, it means freedom as in free to do what you want, not free as in free beer. Of course, that freedom also includes the freedom to give it away.

So in practice, that usually results in exactly what you lament: free software with a business model on top to support its development and pay programmers so they can eat.

The “here” part of the question changes the entire meaning of the question, rendering the stated answer completely off topic (cause, you know, “here” is not the only place you can earn money for food).

Depends on the instance.

There’s power in organizing and voting with your wallet collectively. Reject companies that trample your customer needs and convince others to do the same.

Realistically, probably the same thing as what happens at self-checkout lines with idiotic anti-theft checks:

A beacon above the kiosk turns on, an attendant walks over and, without a word, flashes a badge at the machine to override the system lockout as they roll their eyes: this is only the hundredth time today someone accidentally pressed the wrong button, because what kind of terrorist would voluntarily press “yes”.

The things you mentioned should absolutely happen in the areas that have the population density to make these solutions practical. Let’s also remember that this is not 100% of the planet.

A great point. Learning math doesn’t automatically make you equipped to deal with other things that have math in it. At least no more so than learning a language equips you to do poetry.

Taxes are a whole different system that needs to be learned, on top of learning math. At best you can say that learning math equips you to take a tax course.

Pretty sure most Republicans are just openly fascist now.

In at least some parts of Canada, for example, there are tuition credits which you can claim against income taxes later on.

I am required to have a degree to earn money

Not really true. You are required to have a degree to have a particular job of your choice. It’s up to your government to decide if having that choice is something it wants to encourage, with income tax breaks equivalent to the cost of tuition (the loan principle) or if that is a luxury that is taxed like any other luxury.

The interest on loans is not a tax. It’s the expense of accessing capital immediatly. Again, it’s up to your government to decide if accessing capital immediatly is a necessity eligible for tax breaks, or a luxury that comes out of your after tax income.

Also don’t forget consumption tax which may or may not apply (usually not on loan interest).

Income tax is a tax on everything, basically.