There would need to be major structural changes in how investment works in Europe IMO. With markets so fractured, you just can’t muster the kind of capital you can in the US, so companies that get successful in Europe often end up bailing to the US to get traded for the greater availability of investment capital.

I’d love to see the EU really put up serious competition to American tech services, but I just can’t see it happening without that getting addressed first.

“Dang.” adds two new email aliases.

Stop eating avocado toast!

Wait, not like that.

Eh, it depends. Faster bike traffic shouldn’t really be in such close proximity to pedestrians. On a lot of city streets, a fast bike is way closer to the speed of a car than to a pedestrian. City centers, especially non arterials, I’d say they should be in the street if there’s no path. I’m not particularly fast at just under 30kph and it’s rare for traffic to be much faster downtown here, especially non arterials I’m often passing them. I think that’s generally too fast to safely ride on a sidewalk, but a safe speed there would make cycling not very practical for me.

Which I can assure, unfortunately, no cycle paths is often the case in my part of eastern/central Europe

Not directly but cost:fun ratio definitely comes into play which often favors indies. A $5 game will get a lot more leeway than a $60 one.

Yeah, I was particularly irked by that 16 limit I encountered the other day.

And I stand corrected, then, and color me impressed. I’ll look into doing this for those passwords I need to remember, like masters.

How many characters are we talking, though? I’ve had passwords as limiting as 16 characters for some services (unfortunately)… that seems small to me for generating real randomness with passphrases.

That said, fair enough, but as someone who has administered a network before, I would never, ever want my users relying on their brain… the security from a pass manager is practically going to be way better than the standard practices of an average user without one. IMO.

But hey, color me impressed, honestly.

You don’t need to cite another country as having a better structure to point out the one you currently live in is broken.

I didn’t say you do. I agreed, I just see this as a very international problem among western democracies that all embraced neoliberal politics and economies.

Lastly, nothing about the tone is suggesting this is specific to the US.

“You people think that the source of the problem is the solution.” does seem to be applying only to Americans, and the OP came back and did make an argument that this is a uniquely American problem.

Most modern countries rewrite their constitutions but the US is stuck with theirs because they worship it.

Most modern countries organized themselves as constitutional democracies a lot more recently, though… it makes sense there’s less sense of tradition around it. UK and Netherlands are big exceptions, but most of Europe have constitutions that either go back to the mid 19th century or even the 1990’s for the eastern bloc…

Maybe the US Americans can write something new that is even incrementally better and it would be a positive.

The US has amendend its Constitution lots of times, though. It’s really only the last 30-40 years deadlock has become such a norm, and we’re seeing globally this problem is happening… I’d contend it has way more to do with all of those countries embracing neoliberalism and that ideology starting to die rather than government structure. And UK/US were the first in on that mess, so it makes sense they seem to be the ones floundering the most right now.

I dunno, I’m also an American that moved and started a family in Europe years ago, and while living here hasn’t improved my estimation of the US that much, I have definitely been disillusioned of the popular internet opinion that things are much better here. We have very similar structural problems and no political will to fix it.

? I mean, I’m replying?

I’m willing to hear the argument, I just haven’t heard one yet aside from what I summarized above, which seems to me very weak. I think it’s worth talking about because this line that keeps getting repeated by a small but vocal minority led me to believe that this guy was something like a JK Rowling that’s pumping lots of money into groups that tangibly harm people, or is out there changing minds towards a very negative ideology or something… but he literally only took up the gauntlet regarding anti trust, which is pretty not-fascist. He isn’t pushing anyone to the right with that.

I could ask the same… why participate if you aren’t willing to consider maybe you were too hasty in judgment?

Agree with the sentiment, but let’s stop dipping into culture projects until we start slashing funding for a global imperialism project, eh?

I will once again point out tipping isn’t unique to the US. In my part of central Europe, tipping at restaurants with service is absolutely expected. Also for things like delivery, cabs, barbers, etc. You can often even tip delivery drivers right in the app.

I’ll also point out these same people will talk about how America has such huge portions for the price. So, when in Rome do as the Romans do, and tip while realizing that’s part of why the portions are cheap for the dollar. Or at least stop kvetching about Americans not abiding by local customs if you aren’t willing to do the same.

(Yes, paying a better wage would be better. No, you not tipping is not actual making change to that effect, you’re just excusing yourself. Legislation is the only thing that will fix that. Systemic problems need systemic solutions).

You know what is really funny About US Americans and their near religious reverence of their political institutions? You people think that the source of the problem is the solution. The constitution won’t save you. The constitution of the US describes a state that is incapable of operating and leaves open this sort of tyranny. Due the the broken structure of your government you’ve been unable to pass meaningful legislation for decades.

I think this is absolutely true, but as someone living in central Europe, I’m really curious what country you’d cite as having a significantly better structure? Parliamentary systems have their own problems, as we’re seeing play out in Europe now. China certainly has issues with their government.

I agree with the sentiment, but not with the tone that suggests this is particularly unique to the US.

Again, you’ll need to explain to me that if his real goal here is “align[ing] with fascist talking points”, why is the only actual issue he jumped in on anti trust? Where was he regarding the election moves? Where was he regarding the ICE policies?

A decent anti trust pick isn’t aligned at all with fascism, yet it’s that issue that he spoke up on. Why only that when there have been countless issues that are aligned with fascism he could have commented on?

This screams the kind of now typical online left purity testing way more than fascism, to me.

Sure, but he was also perfectly willing to encourage him towards what he could frame as being a win for Trump, too.

I’m in no way saying Mamdani isn’t principled. I’m saying he also has an eye for strategy over performative politics. There was, probably is, a small left cadre that was really giving him shit for meeting with Trump at all for fear of “legitimizing” or “normalizing” him… this strikes me as very, very similar to the dynamic around Yang.

Again, there has been ample opportunity for this guy to go to bat for fascism. Why only anti trust?

So in 2024 he is praising the republican party about anti-trust, which even you admit he is wrong about.

If I divested from everyone I thought was incorrect about something, I wouldn’t be able to do business with literally anyone. And I explained why I think he said this, which implied it’s quite possible he doesn’t even think this is true.

How is this any different than what Mamdani did?

Again, if he was out here stumping for fascist positions I’d have a little more pause. But the issue he picked up here, of all the political issues in the recent years, was anti-trust. Sorry, this doesn’t scream crypto fascist to me. Certainly not enough for me to worry about.

I also didn’t say I’m surprised. I’m arguing that I think it’s wrong and the vast majority of even those on the left aren’t going to care about this.

What composition though? I’ve got well over 100 that are 20+ characters including special characters. I can’t believe this is possible without use of words or something easily guessed.

I do have a few passwords I keep to myself, and even with my method of taking the first letter from a key phrase or set of song lyrics and switching most to leet speak, I still don’t think I could possibly remember more than a dozen reliably.

It’s always nice when people let you know to block them for juvenile and petty behavior that would make a redditor blush before they actually manage you get to you.

You can’t remove the context this statement was made in though, which was about the appointment. And let’s be real here: he is not wrong about corporate capture of the Democrats at all. Yes, saying the Republicans are any better is ridiculous, but this strikes me far more like stroking the ego of a guy that likes having his ego stroked and made a rare decent pick for anti trust. This is no different than what Mamdani did visiting the White House… do we cancel him too for appeasing fascists? Or can we acknowledge choosing to try and engage with and manipulate a guy that’s shown to be easily manipulated is probably a strategic choice more than ideological?

And the thing he’s praising here is anti trust. Sure, I think it’s wrong to say Republicans are better on this issue, but literally the thing he’s praising is very much antithetical to fascism. How can we really say he’s supporting fascism then? Where are his posts supporting his ICE policies? Where are the comments supporting overturning a democratic election? He makes one comment supporting anti trust efforts and suddenly he must be a crypto fascist because it came from Trump? Not buying it, man.

I really think trying to portray Yang as something like the My Pillow Guy, which is the level of discourse a lot of this has had around it, is really, really disingenuous and I think only serves to make people take these accusations less seriously even when they’re levelled against people who truly are fascist sympathizers at the very least.

The big difference, of course, being that you’re paying a not insignificant amount of money explicitly for privacy, not a “free” service like Google. While Enshittification can happen everywhere, they’ve got a pretty direct incentive not to just start selling data and that sort of thing compared to the incentive Google had. The bigger concern is the security risk of all your eggs in one basket, but that’s a convenience vs security tradeoff we make all the time. Each user needs to assess for themselves that tradeoff. But just the encryption at rest alone along with seemingly not reading your emails already puts an average Proton use way ahead of an average Google one, and moving them to a complete suite is a lot more likely than to 6 different services. That’s a hard sell for an average user.

Also, I think the framing of open support of fascists is frankly ridiculous, personally. The way people were talking about it I was afraid we were talking full maga here, but the guy literally just praised a single appointment in anti trust… and she did have some actual bona fides that made her surprisingly (for this administration) qualified for that job, she has actually worked blocking mergers. This wasn’t a Robert Kennedy appointment, this appointment could have been under any admin in the last few decades and nobody would blink, if anything might also have been praised for the pick. Broken clocks, guys, broken clocks, they’re right sometimes.

Everyone can make their own choice here, but praising a rare decent pick from a shitty politician doesn’t nearly reach a divestment bar for me and I think probably all except the most militant.