In theory open source can help you escape subscription hell but Gimp and LibreOffice do not have feature parity with Photoshop and MS Office and have significantly inferior UX. Maybe for word processing, LibreOffice or an older version of Office is fine, but that is not true at all for spreadsheets. So much the case that I would rather use Python Dataframes + Juypter notebooks than LibreOffice Calc.

This is also the case for Indesign vs Scribus, Illustrator vs Inkscape, Autocad vs Freecad. Audacity is fairly powerful but again horrible UX. That list goes on I am sure.

Found this out when I wanted a decent journaling app for Android. All the most popular ones have subscription tiers that amount to hundreds of dollar over just a few years… for a fucking journal app? what the hell!

When you have commodity money, the value of the money is derived from the value of the commodity. You don’t get to assign arbitrarily higher values to the money because the market determines the value. But yes, all speculative assets typically have a higher extrinsic value compared with their intrinsic value but I don’t believe that has anything to do with it being a medium of exchange or not. That is just supply and demand.

Gold is a commodity and you can create a currency that is backed by a commodity so you aren’t actually trading the commodity itself.

That is not true, for the vast majority of the history of money it was based on a commodity that was valuable in its own sense. It is only in the last century that we have begun experimenting with currencies that are not pegged to the value of a commodity.

Cryptocurrencies derived their value from being a network of users (metcalfe’s law) so they are more like a commodity money. Thing about something like Meta, which has a valuation in the trillions despite its physical assets not be worth nearly that and its functionality as a website being easily replicated on an alternative platform. The users are what is valuable.

Hmmm anyone remember when Andrew Yang was running for president and said that data was the new oil and that people should own the content they put on social media?

Cybersecurity is definitely in demand in Canada but we are also going through a housing affordability crisis and generally our tech salaries are lower in compared with the US. You would almost certainly be taking a step back in standard of living unless you swing a remote work situation from a US employer.

I recently left a WFH only company. The environment was toxic and there was definitely some insecurity on the part of management regarding worker productivity. There was a much larger emphasis on constantly showing to management what you were working on and proving you were using your work day productively.

It was a culture shift I didn’t adapt well to and left.

Absolutely, companies are not going to just decide to implement NFTs in a way that gives more control to users unless it means more money for them. Does change the fact that the technology has that potential, even if it remain unutilized.

Except it’s not ownership, it is digital rights management. Right now DRM is handled by private corporations, not the state, and it generally is anti-consumer. NFTs could be used for DRM in a more pro consumer way.

Yeah crypto critics often gloss over the fact that the war on drugs is an example of repressive government policy and that darknet markets where a lifeline for folks using drugs. As an example, psychedelic have genuine therapeutic uses and on the street level, many “research chemicals” with horrible safety profiles are sold as things like LSD or MDMA.

With a darknet market you get access to a community that can help vet sellers through forums, comments and rating that help keep users safe.

Moreover what this shows is crypto can help organizations or people under repressive governments. Another example was a group in Nigeria who was protesting against the police group SARS. The Nigerian government froze their bank accounts but the group was still able to fundraise using BTC.

Why does every criticism of crypto always hinge on attacking the character of the industry is some ad hominem way. Oh the tech is no good because it’s “tech bros” running these companies.

Layer 2 networks like Arbitrum resolve the issue of high transaction fees and still be able to transact in ETH. I get there is hurdles compared with the simplicity of PayPal, but at least some of us prefer decentralized payment options where possible.

More likely they are expecting this to blow over and people to return to reddit. This isn’t the first-time people have called for a mass exodus and they are expecting it to go like it has before.