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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)CH
Posts
47
Comments
1,358
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • I've seen this argument made by right wing economic 'think tanks' like the IEA and I'm not convinced, either by the reasoning or the quality of the data that's supposed to support it. If being able to charge extortionate rent was the only way to make a profit from building houses then house building would have correlated negatively with affordable rents, which AFAIK is the opposite to the historic reality, at least here in the UK. As long as there are people who need a house to live in there will be always be demand for housing; it's just a question of who gets to own the houses. Is it people who are living in them or people who are charging others to live in them? Right now there is a rich minority who are able to buy more and more houses because a poor majority are paying them such high rent and are thus prevented from ever saving enough for a deposit and competing in the property market. That's why inequality is compounding.

  • I think severe rent control would go a long way to solving the problem here in the UK.

    Make it unprofitable to exploit the fundamental need for shelter. It would allow people to build up savings and have more disposable income, so they can compete properly in the market.

    It would lift up the people at the bottom at the same time as curtailing those at the top = less inequality.

    It's not like millionaires can take all the houses with them if decide to leave the country.

  • My advice is to spend more time out of the house! The more I stew in the epicentre of the entropy and problems the more overwhelmed I feel by them and the harder it is to tackle them. Getting out can help to get some perspective and make you appreciate what you do have.

  • There are probably lists you can search online but I find that adding /feed or /rss to the URL of a page I want to see updates from does the trick. There is also at least one Firefox add-on that indicates if a page has an RSS feed.

  • Permanently Deleted

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  • It's not on your list but I've had a Mailfence email for the last couple of years and they've been solid.

    You could also use YUNOhost to host your own on a VPS. I had no experience before setting mine up and it was fine. Unlimited email accounts and aliases out of the box, plus you can host other stuff besides, like a website, file server or even a fediverse instance.

  • If your distro provides everything you need then I would avoid flatpak. Getting apps to speak to each other is a pain, updates use more data, backups and restores take much longer, they don't perform as well and config files are not necessarily where you expect them to be.

    I have Debian Stable on an older laptop and only install apps as flatpaks if they are not available otherwise. I also have a very new laptop with Fedora on it (because it needs a newer kernel) and have had to install more flatpaks just to make things work properly, because they include their dependencies, codecs etc which are missing in Fedora. Appimages seem to do this too and I find them preferable to flatpak because they integrate more predictably with my system. Apps are slower to launch though and have to be manually updated.

    Like you, I'd prefer to just have a package manager and a single source of software and plan to go back to Debian when my newer machine is supported by it.

  • Reducing dependence on crackpot America is good in my book, as long as we're not going to just spend that budget with them anyway.

    But for gods sake get rid of the tax exemption on wealth to pay for it instead of cutting things that people actually need.

  • Thanks for the link - been down a rabbit hole for the last hour or so! Really interesting. I've never really dealt with crypto but direct transactions look awesome. The fact that it uses open protocols is great too.

    Have you released anything on it or are you a listener?

  • I'll do that too but I would like to get actively involved in a music release pipeline that I think could be really positive. I guess I want to give to the listener as directly as possible.

  • I don't think you're wrong. I think the big corporate music streaming platforms are basically a low key scam. They are effectively pointless (beyond free file hosting), unless you are one of the 0.001% of artists that are heavily promoted on them and are an insult to musicians everywhere. More musicians need to reject the proposition of being one of the bottom stones that holds up their pyramid. I would rather my music was unknown on independent sites than unknown on theirs, where it will only add value to an exploitative business model and help to further entrench it.

  • Use KeepassXC with Syncthing for maximum autonomy or Bitwarden for maximum ease. Both are FOSS. That's my recommendation and also seems to be the consensus among those who share your needs.