Bob

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

The oil companies reconglomerated, in part, because we stopped enforcing anti-trust nearly as much as originally intended when we started using the stupid-ass Chicago school of thought from the 1970s onwards. It's only in the last ten years or so that's it's become legally reasonable to say "hey actually the Chicago school of though kinda sucks." Standard Oil in particular is a bad anti-trust example because Rockefeller was such a personality cult that everyone around him was completely wrapped around his finger. In any case, you can still punish companies for price fixing if you've force them to be legally separate, which you can't do if it's all one legal organization.

The telecom industry is another example where anti-trust break-ups didn't lead to more competition, for somewhat similar reasons. They were broken up by geographic regions and each region made gentlemen's agreements not to expand into each other's territory. When we stopped enforcing anti-trust as much, they bought each other out.

In general, however, breaking up monopolies is effective, so long as doing so actually creates competition in the marketplace. This is most effective in markets with low barriers to entry or ones where there's already a large number of smaller companies that are simply too small for meaningful competition with mega-corp. It's least effective in markets with extremely high barriers to entry or ones where it's easy to collude and get away with it. In any case, it's still worth it to break up monopolistic companies because it still reduces their power, even if it does so more effectively in some markets than others. Among other benefits, it makes it easier for new competitors to establish themselves in the market, since their competitors have a harder time utilizing unfair practices the smaller they are.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago (4 children)

I mean, just break up the massive corporations. Capitalism requires seller competition in the marketplace in order to provide an incentive to drive down prices. If there are too few players, they can easily make unspoken agreements to fuck over consumers.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I very much wouldn't. I'm not interested in the kinds of things a young trophy wife is going to offer. I think being a rich megastar would be bad for my dating game, because it would attract all the wrong people.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The way statistical sampling works, 1000 people in a population of 300,000,000 is actually good enough for most things. You can play around with numbers here to convince yourself, but at 95% confidence 1000 people will give an answer to within 3% of the true answer for the 300,000,000 population.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Suddenly trying to convince all my friends and family I'm from France.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Lol, I'm sorry you're getting downvoted for speculating about improving weights and measures in a thread about wanting better weights and measures.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I kinda thought the title made it clear I was an American.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

DST is good actually. Fite me.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

A million percent AI.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Lemmy has lots of "both sides" bullshit, to the point where people are now making fun of that argument before it even presents itself.

 

First off, yes, I'm getting rid of my account, but I decided to have a look around on the official app and

  1. It's hot garbage
  2. I'm subscribed to a bunch of subs I've never even interacted with before in my life. What gives? Did they just sign me up for shit without asking? They sent me emails after promising they wouldn't, they've lied about a lot of stuff, but every time I'm surprised they're such dicks for some reason.

Has anyone else experienced this?

 

Hey everyone,

Missouri Agrees is running a fundraising campaign so they can put Freedom Voting Up for referendum.

You can donate through any of the campaigns here and your impact will be TRIPLED. +1 from the individual campaign and +1 from an anonymous donor. They're aiming for 1.2 million by July 1st, so every dollar counts. It's an all or nothing fundraiser, so if we fall short everyone gets their money back.

Don't know what Freedom Voting is? It's also called Approval Voting and you can read more about it here. The short answer is it gives you the freedom to vote for everyone you like instead of having to just choose one. That's it. Instead of "pick one" it's "pick any number." It fixes a huge number of problems while also being ridiculously simple.

If anyone has any questions of course I'm open to chatting.

 

Okay, it took a good amount of learning, but I've figured out how to get most of what I want with a custom keyboard build.

Here's my goals:

  1. Ergonomic
  2. Quiet
  3. Dvorak
  4. But a normal person can still use it
  5. Cheapish because I'm a cheap bastard

With those in mind, here's what I've finally settled on:

Board:
YMDK - Split 75% 84 Acrylic Kit

Keycaps:
YMDK - 9009 Retro 143 - Blank

Switches:
Haimu x Geon HG Red Silent Linear Switches A.K.A Haimu Heartbeat

See photos at the bottom of the post.

My plan is to take the switches to a fab-lab with a laser engraver and engrave the labels on the side of each keycap. Since the DSA profile is the same for every button, and I'll have extras, I'll have more than a few chances to get my laser settings correct.

By labeling the keycaps myself I can put the QWERTY label on the front side and the Dvorak label on the left or right side. By using this split design, I can combine the two halves to give people a totally regular looking keyboard that functions just as they expect.

Total cost including machine time: $182

What do you think? Do you think there's room for improvement?

 

Hello hello

I'm planning out a keyboard for the future, I've figured out the features I want, but I'm having a hard time understanding how to get them. The learning curve is steep, it seems.

Are there any websites that have a good filter for their databases? I'm trying to find quiet, low-travel switches. My plan is to put them on a Keychron V10 QMK Alice Keyboard.

For the keys themselves I'm going to try and find a set that's blank on top, but with the markings on the side. I've seen them in real life, I just haven't gone looking for them in real life. Then, I'll add stickers on top for an alternate layout. That way, I'll always have a visual reminder of which key does what, so long as I remember which mode my keyboard is in.

So far I haven't found a website that lets you filter by travel distance, which is annoying, because I can't put in the kind of work needed to look at every listing to find out the travel distance.

Thanks!

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