i think that one is not a screw up…
i think that one is not a screw up…
Brazilian system is the most simple: It is already the final price (not counting shipping, which might be many options), with EVERY tax included. Period. What i see is what i pay. Even Aliexpress shows numbers with all taxes included in the final total price now.
The Yankee system is honestly both insane and fraudulent, nothing is ever the price that the webpages or stickers show, i always have to guess it’s somewhere between 10% and 20% more. The european system is also more honest, unless they also have other taxes besides VAT that they don’t show.
So, not that much more expensive, i bet west european countries get near or equal that price, it’s electronics in the US that are cheaper than others (including rich countries). and it’s more that we are poor.
There are plenty of games that you can’t buy on Gog or Steam even today (like any emulation ISO from console games), and sharing is caring for others that can not afford it.
R$ 5.460,00 (Brazilian Reais), the first comment is just exaggerating and having a ‘mongrel complex’ take. It is nowhere near the price of a car even today.
(Most) North Americans are the epitome of wasteful consumerism, even more than their economic kin in other global north countries (but sadly not by that much). They succumb like flies to company deals and propaganda that incentivizes throwing away functional stuff and replacing it with new shiny thing XYZ in ever decreasing intervals. Vance Packard’s 1960s book still being to the point. If environmental preservation is a concern to you or other reader, don’t incentivize an unnecessary tech and use your smartphone (that is a necessity) until it breaks beyond repair or usability (and buy an actually strong protection to increase the interval). I still use an iPhone 6S, and it works perfectly well for smartphone tasks (there is even functioning bank apps. security updates still appear once in a while, and bank apps are protected by the banks anyways. if you feel unsafe using banks in an old smartphone, create a 2nd bank as a ‘‘street bank’’ for daily tasks keeping only a low amount of money, and keep the money in a primary bank to be used via internet).
Imagine if we could just flash a functional android ROM on it, that hardware still is great and could last decades (replacing pieces once in a while). Anyway, the mainstream tech industry is definitely an enemy of sustainability, don’t ‘buy’ the green-washing.
Android still has F-droid and FOSS alternatives to mostly everything, while iPhone is walled garden 101.
Console Gaming is a lot less worse than Nintendo, but if you (or someone else) wants to be ‘pure’, they are also not recommended. Consoles are locked-down PCs controlled by the companies, not you, and they abuse their captive consumers by charging multiplayer online, having less promotions (and getting worse with time at that, by eliminating the physical disks), demanding subscriptions with ever more grades and higher prices, tying games to a digital account they can revoke, and not letting the users use the hardware as they see fit in general. PC gaming avoids most or all these issues, with steam excelling in everything (sans the digital license tied to the account, but even that is mitigated because their DRM is weak, and games frequently are found on the high seas if needed), and GoG (and itch.io, etc) respecting completely its customers (offline instalers, completely at your control).
Ubuntu, because it’s the base for my Linux Mint XFCE.
IF between the 2, Ubuntu in Xubuntu or Lubuntu.
The Peertube protocol developers should develop a central hub webpage space for newcomers, allow accounts there to follow all channels in every instance (and to only follow and block specific instances too), and then develop apps for smart tvs. It’s the only realistic FOSS alternative to Youtube i can think of, and i dont know why the first point is still non existent (having already subscribed to several channels in 3 instances using separate accounts).
It is unintentionally correct: Google Play, and its contents, is corporate malware, people should use F-Droid to get safer and free (as in freedom) apps. Neostore is a nice app to access it.
There are people here not from western europe or north america, we felt all of that and beyond with capitalism too. Do you think Asia and Africa, who received aid and support from the soviet union to free themselves from capitalist Europeans will fall for that ? Where did you arrive at ''multiple famines that killed into the hundreds of millions" ? Even the soviet famines of 1930s and chinese great famine ‘only’ killed at maximum intervals of estimation 9 and 50 millions each, and this article over-viewing all atrocities maxes at 150 million, with a low 10-20 million estimation, not hundreds of millions in famines alone.
Are you paraphrasing that ‘Black Book of Communism’ shtick ? It is a propaganda tool not valid in actual academic research, even by liberals that are not fraudsters, because the author twists every single communist countries-adjacent deaths as ‘‘mass killing caused by communism’’, including brilliant takes like total number of abortions (ex: France, that practices 250.000 abortions per year must be enraged with a capitalist regime that killed 5 million people only in the 21st century !) and all WW2 eastern front deaths (so both the nazi germans and allies that invaded USSR and USSR soldiers and civilians killed count as ‘killed by communism’).
Last but not least, the USSR had much higher GDP per capita and living standards than the average third world capitalist country (which is where the demographic majority of capitalist people live), so even if the USSR could not equate Switzerland, they achieved a good quality of life better than the world average.
The most i could find on the web was this lawyers non-named client, who has 8 citizenships (“octa-citizen” has passports from Canada, UK, Ireland, Belize, Grenada, Dominica, St. Kitts, and Cape Verde), after renouncing his original USA one (and he apparently did it to not pay taxes).
Humm…, i don’t think this scheme would work out in practice. The definitions of several concepts are fuzzy, and therefore can be circumvented or challenged or abused by all sides of the equation. What is a ‘similar product’ that is allowed after 30 years (and therefore what is a ‘dissimilar product’ that would be forbidden before), how would a non-profit that just pays high salaries to its managers fare between the marks of 30 and 50 years (and just gives some little money to research or charity). And again, why give artists and creative companies so much more time of IP protection than we give STEM inventors and companies time in patents (this random site claims patents last 15 to 20 years only) ?
50 years is already excessive, dude or dudette. The north american law originally gave 14 years, plus another 14 years if the creators actively sought after and were approved (most did not even ask, and approval was not guaranteed). This is comparable time to patents, which serve the exact same function, but without the absurd time scales (Imagine if Computers were still a private tech of IBM … those sweet mainframes the size of a room). 28 years, or lets put 30 years fixed at once, is more than sufficient time for making profit for the quasi totality of IPs that would make a profit (and creators can invest the money received to gain more, or have 30 years to think of something else). 30 years ago was 1994, think of everything the Star Wars prequels have sold, now remeber the 1st film was from 1999, would star wars prequels ventures really suffer if they started losing the IP from 2029 onwards ?
You must be young (or without memory). YouTube ads started exactly with picture ads (horizontal banners), but that was not sufficient, and ~12 years later there already are 2 unskipable videos at start, middle and finish (and several at the middle if in a long video). Your ad at the pause may start with pictures even, but videos and later longer videos will follow.
Did not know that, then we are f*** either way. Boycott them all, and a pirate’s life for me then.
There is a lot of people still buying official merchandising from bands and anime etc, and subscribing to patreon and similar Mecenazgo channels (translate the spanish wiki article, because weirdly the english one does not have a version of this basic topic), even if they can just pirate the music and buy cheaper knockoffs (or just buy normal waterbottles instead). I think art will still get make through that, and because artistic vocation will still exist. Stuff where material scarcity still exists will continue to get sold of course, since making infinite anime furry porn movies in chat gpt will not feed your belly.
Piracy is already considered illegal and persecuted by authorities, so nothing changes for the public in the first case.
There is already a samsung 8 Tb SSD being sold on amazon. Buying 4 of those will be far cheaper than this monstrosity. And it will be silent, and actually useful as a home server, much faster too.