Money

They’re still racist BTW

When the Dutch discovered vast natural gas deposits in Groningen in 1959, they started extracting and exporting the gas as fast as possible. The high exports increased demand for the Dutch currency, the guilder, which caused its value to skyrocket relative to other currencies. And that in turn made other, non-gas Dutch exports too expensive to compete on international markets. This ultimately decimated the manufacturing sector and raised unemployment in the country. Paradoxically, the huge windfall ended up hurting the economy.

https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2024/07/26/g-s1-13534/ozempic-biggest-side-effect-denmark-pharmastate

If we recall our history books properly, the same thing happened to the Spanish economy after they sacked, raped, and pillaged their way through the New World.

Trust google at your peril

It really is that simple: No one trusts Google. It has exhibited such poor understanding of what people want, need and will pay for that at this point, people are wary of investing in even its more popular products.

Source: Stadia died because no one trusts Google | TechCrunch

The wake-up call was when google killed google reader, but it was ignored by a lot of people cos it was a free service.

Then there was G Suite (Legacy Free). They got a lot of people to rely on google services and then proceeded to straight up betray them. People still didn’t care cos it was also “free service”.

But now with Stadia people will care cos the cost of this cancellation won’t be paid by google— they already wrote off the money. The cost will be borne by developers who trusted google with their games.

I’m somewhat safe as I do pay for some google services but I am looking for alternatives now. Microsoft is not a particularly viable option.

Seriously Google, what the fuck

They are altering the agreement, pray they don’t alter it further.

Source: Google to free G Suite users: Pay up or lose your account | Ars Technica

Darth Vader: I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further

A few years ago I needed to add another domain to my Gsuite account, which led me to start paying for services there. Over time we started using it for more things but we remained leery of purchasing things from Google through Gsuite accounts or free Gmail accounts.

At some point we migrated our Google Voice number from our gmail account to the Gsuite account, and it remained there. When this migration was done Google moved everything through: contacts, text messages, call history, voicemails. Everything happened without issues or difficulties; all you had to do was unlink your carrier number from one account, migrate the GV number from Gmail to Gsuite, and re-link your carrier number.

But starting a couple of years ago Google disabled the ability to migrate from Gsuite to Gmail. Not without losing everything. We’ve been looking to migrate off Google’s infrastructure for email/calendar and everything else and it’s a non-started as long as they hold my main phone number hostage. And now Google is forcing people and companies who made the mistake of choosing Google for their services to pay up or lose everything:

oh fuck

I’ve been using this for my family since Google first introduced it as a way for Families to use vanity domains together. I have over a decade (almost 2?) of purchases tied to this account and the cost to migrate to their enterprise offering for my family is bonkers.

I don’t know what I’m going to do here as I can’t migrate my purchases out of this account and into a normal gmail account. uuuuuuuugh.

While self-hosting files and email and photos is doable, self-hosting your own mobile phone number is still complicated, and on top of that the available services still cannot compete with the simplicity of GV even as Google leaves the service to wither for years at a time. We’ve been looking at using services like https://jmp.chat/ but again, they are non-trivial:

  1. You must port your number from GV to their service.
  2. You lose everything: Contacts, text messages, call history, voicemails.
  3. You have to figure out what XMPP client to use on your devices depending on operating system, as most XMPP clients don’t support them all.
  4. You have to learn the quirks of texting people who aren’t in your contacts already.
  5. Jmp.chat itself is still marketed as Beta, and some features are still in alpha, like group messaging.

Google should offer the option to convert a Gworkspace (nee Gsuite) account to a free Gmail account, or to migrate the data from a Gworkspace account to a Gmail account. They can do it, they just choose not to because nobody can force them to do the right thing.

The current state of things is absolute bullshit.

War is about Money. Simple as that.

The little-publicized helicopter scandal was one of many investigated by John Sopko, who, as the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, has served as the Cassandra of the Afghan war. Since Congress created his office in 2012 he has been diligently relating details of the colossal waste associated with the war in handsome full-color annual reports, but with little effect. ‘It was a disaster ready to happen, and it happened,’ he told me a few years into the job. ‘We wasted a lot of money. It wasn’t that people were stupid, and it wasn’t that people didn’t care; it’s just the system almost guarantees failure.’

Source: How the US military got rich from Afghanistan – The Spectator World

Next up, the price of heroin will go up internationally until the Taliban gets all its ducks in a row. Then the world will be flooded with opium and its price will crash. The entire time other drugs will take its place, including fentanyl.

That’s just on the drug front. There’s also arms sales to training camps that are yet to be established.

Venture Capital is a plague

Allowing masses of underpaid workers to be exploited in order to provide widespread convenience was always a depraved bargain, built on a rickety ethical and economic foundation.

Source: Instacart Is a Parasite and a Sham | The New Republic

This industry is ripe for some entity to come out with a co-op model where drivers are not only the employees making the delivery, but also owner shareholders in the company. No one will get rich quickly but they’d earn substantially more than poverty wages.

The “uber but for x” economic model is reliant on destroying everything around it so VC can get rich. Hopefully we won’t need 50 years to gig economy doesn’t work, just like trickle-down economics.

Sitting in the dark watching the screen, somewhere

Will young people — trained during the pandemic to expect instant access to new movies like “Hamilton” and “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” — get into the habit of going to the movies like their parents and grandparents did? Generation Z forms a crucial audience: About 33 percent of moviegoers in the United States and Canada last year were under the age of 24, according to the Motion Picture Association.

Source: Hollywood’s Obituary, the Sequel. Now Streaming. – The New York Times

Millenials and Zoomers have a little problem though… we haven’t got any money to spend. Even if there is an economic boom we will not benefit from it unless there is systemic change at all levels of government, business and society.

The cost of a single movie at the theatre will get us an entire month of streaming. The math isn’t hard.

Cognitive Dissonance 30 minutes out of downtown

The suburbs run on federal subsidies. Without them, America’s suburbs would have to become more financially productive. They would need to get greater returns per foot on public infrastructure investment. That would mean repealing repressive zoning regulations, allowing the market to respond to supply and demand signals for housing. It would also mean allowing the “little downtowns” Kurtz fears to form where demand for them exists. Isn’t that what is supposed to happen with self-government and local control?

Source: It’s Time to Abolish Single-Family Zoning | The American Conservative

To have a conservative person say this is quite strange. Few suburbs in all of the US actively try to compete with the cities they’re attached to, mostly because they only want to attract wealthier millennials who can afford the down payment on a house by way of the parents paying for it.

I’d like to not stress about money kthx

I started working at SysadminJerb about… six months ago or so. I’m looking to pickup a second job hosting at a finer restaurant since I’d like to be able to talk to more people on a regular basis; Working by yourself in a datacenter is not conducive to long conversations in person.

So why is it that I’m having a hell of a time budgeting my money? I’m realizing I’m spending more than I really want to and right now I’m not sure… why. This isn’t a problem I had to face when I was working in a restaurant full time, so now I’m just spinning my wheels trying to figure out why this is happening, and more importantly, how.

I think I’ve got the why figured out: Since I have loads more free time than I ever did before, I now have that much more time available to spend the money I’m making even when I don’t mean to be spending that money.

The how it’s a bit harder but I think that, over the past few months, the average amount of money I spend in small transactions has gone up along with the amount of transactions that I do during a pay period, which follows the fact I have more time to be out and about than I did before.

So now I’m on the search for a budgeting tool that will help me with this. I’ve tried using Mint before but… at this point in time they haven’t added any new features in a while and I’ve had a devil of a time connecting it to my auto-pay accounts, so it let’s me track only some things instead of everything. I’ll try it again since it’s free but if it doesn’t work out I’ll just let it go and never look back.

I’m also looking at other tools like You Need a Budget and Financial Gym. Right now I’m thinking those are nice but… they’re paid and I would prefer to not add more pressure to my wallet.

So as a first step I’ll try Mint, then if that doesn’t work look around for a spreadsheet I can use on google sheets, then if that doesn’t work I’ll try YNAB and the rest. I don’t have a need to track everything but it would be nice to have a better overview than the stuff my bank has for me.

Right, this all reminds me: I can actually use these tools because my income is more or less stable now compared to what it was before: I can count on a solid 40 hour work-week month after month, and before I had to actively fight for working hours. So that’s a big change.

I probably just need to cut a few services here and there that I have not been using to their full potential, or ramp them up so I do use their full potential.

Going to be habit changing, to say the least…

Where there’s a will, there’s a way

The Life of a Completely Blind Iranian Programmer

Source: How I got through Docker’s censorship – Parham Doustdar’s Blog

The most interesting part is being blocked by both the country government and the companies based in other countries. You not only have to develop ways to make packet traffic flow from outside the country into your own, but also to make funds available to you locally.

Not an easy feat.

Being Poor Is Too Expensive

Some think that being poor is simple. You don’t have enough money to buy a lot of stuff, so you’re forced to buy less stuff. But that’s not really how it works. When you’re broke, you can’t do all the little things that will improve your budget over the long run. It actually costs more to be poor.

Source: Being Poor Is Too Expensive

It’s been a long, long time for me to dig out of the hole I was in. While it was never that deep, you’re always uncomfortably aware how much you can fall in a really short amount of time.

Raising the minimum wage won’t solve this, no matter how much politicians assure everyone it is the magic silver bullet needed.

Oh Big Blue

IBM is so screwed

Even if you don’t know anything at all about IBM, or Cringely, or anything in tech, you should at least pay attention to this:

Pay day for the owners. Regular staff are always screwed.

No matter the industry, no matter the sector.

Wallowing in it, in a bad way

My work has taken me on visits to a lot of classes. The thing that I have noticed is that a poor person will have zero idea what to do with a 401K should they get one. A rich person will have no idea how to cash a check if they don’t have a bank account. It’s a completely different skillset with disparate goals and values and norms. It is definitely a different culture.

For example: You need to score some illicit drugs. How do you do that? Rich answer: Ask your assistant. Middle-class answer: Ask your teenager. Poor answer: Walk outside.

Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or, poverty thoughts.

I’ve been there. I can consider myself fortunate that I’ve been able to let go of most vices, most wants, and am able to go for long stretches of time without actual employment.

But a big part of that is thanks to the middle-class trappings of my lower-class life. I live in a house with a full kitchen, laundry room, all utilities; all for a ridiculously low price. Were I renting an apartment by myself, I’d be working two jobs just to be able to pay rent, nevermind having the time to cook at home and go to the movies every so often.

I am fortunate to know how people of all social walks have lived, having been exposed to all of them at least briefly throughout my life. I know how to deal with rich people without having them try to own me. I know how to interact with middle class people in a fair manner. I know how to hustle with the poor like one of them — I know I’m poor but I try to afford myself the luxury of not feeling poor. Feeling poor saps your body of energy, robs your mind of steel and your spirit of joy.

But I can attest to the knowledge that it is hard to look at the stars while your back is bent toward the ground.

Hospitals giveth, Hospitals taketh.

According to Alan A., the nurse generally handles three or four patients at a time. That would mean Sloan-Kettering is billing more than $1,200 an hour for that nurse. When I asked Paul Nelson, Sloan-Kettering’s director of financial planning, about the $414-per-hour charge, he explained that 15% of these charges is meant to cover overhead and indirect expenses, 20% is meant to be profit that will cover discounts for Medicare or Medicaid patients, and 65% covers direct expenses. That would still leave the nurse’s time being valued at about $800 an hour (65% of $1,200), again assuming that just three patients were billed for the same hour at $414 each. Pressed on that, Nelson conceded that the profit is higher and is meant to cover other hospital costs like research and capital equipment.

I don’t know any nurses who get paid US$800 an hour. Hell, I don’t know any nurses who get paid even US$50 an hour. An acquaintance works 12 hour shifts at a nursing home and at the end of the day gets paid about US$10 an hour by her own reckoning. She gets yelled at, bit on, pissed on. Her employer constantly threatens her with unemployment to obtain free labor. She doesn’t have any satisfaction about her job or herself at the end of the day.

I’ve gotten paid the same amount per hour washing dishes and I’ve gotten the satisfaction of hearing people say “these are the cleanest dishes I’ve ever seen at a restaurant.”

In Mexico we’ve got some price controls implemented so the most egregious overcharging doesn’t happen… but then again, most people would prefer spending more money than they can than to go to a state hospital managed by the IMSS, where mothers give birth on the bathroom floor and you can spend 12 hours sitting in the waiting room before a general practice doctor will even bother to tell you to go home.

I’m now wondering how long until the IMSS is dismembered and the pieces sold. Millions will instantly be unable to afford any kind of emergency healthcare and most types of outpatient care; the same thing that’s happened in the US will happen in Mexico. It will happen by design too.

You can go to the hospital, but you can never leave it behind. The sticker shock at the bills will prevent any kind of health recovery, not matter how many drugs they pump into you.

Then again, it’s by design. A hospital without consumers makes no profit.

Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us | TIME.com.

En el fin de semana

El viernes pasado tuvimos al Naza Space Circus aquí en Tijuana. Harta diversión, durante la cual conocí a una muchacha especial que logro que me pusiera de un humor creativo. Lo cual es extremadamente raro, ya que no tengo ni un gramo de creatividad en mis huesos. Pero lo logro, para nuestro disfrute compartido.

Llegue al Hipódromo a las 20:00 exactas y de ahí no llegue a casa hasta las 08:00 del Sábado. Eso seria la primera vez que no he llegado a casa antes de las 3am; chingao, seria la primera vez que no llego a casa pa’ empezar. Ahora veo la parte de mi que ha clamado ser liberada: el Animal Fiestero. No la pienso soltar, resulta muy caro ser uno, especialmente con la economía a punto de ir vertical sobre nuestros traseros.

Una buena noche…

El Sábado lo pase con el niño. Le envidio su cabello, es todo una estrella. Lastima que no tiene todo lo que se merece, incluyendo una buena educación. Aunque duele decirle que no cuando lo veo tan pocas horas a la semana, se tiene que hacer. Quiero que sea un ser humano decente.

Después el Domingo ZeroSoul hizo funcionar un poco de magia con x2x, con seis monitores en tres computadoras siendo controlados con un solo mouse y teclado. Es de lo mas chido que he visto en un rato. Se compara al Synergy, pero hecho a través de SSH.

Así que mas que nada escribo esto para recordarlo en el futuro dado que es probable que lo olvide en el futuro cercano.

Over the weekend

Last Friday we had Naza Space Circus here in Tijuana. Loads of fun, during which I met a special girl who managed to get me into a creative mood. Which itself is extremely strange, as I haven’t got an ounce of creativity in my bones. But manage she did, much to our shared enjoyment.

Got to the Hipodromo at 20:00 sharp, then didn’t get home until 08:00 Saturday morning. That would be the first time I haven’t gotten home before 3am; hell, that would make it the first time I haven’t gotten home at all. Now I see the part in me which had been clamoring to be released: the Party Animal. I won’t get released, it’s too expensive to be one, what with the economy about to go vertical on our asses.

Such fun…

Saturday spent it with the kid. I envy his hair, he’s such a star. Too bad he’s not getting everything he deserves, including a good education. Even though it hurts to say no to him when I see him so few hours every week, it’s got to be done. I want him to be a great human being.

Then on Sunday ZeroSoul got a bit of x2x goodness going, with six monitors on three computers controlled with a single mouse and keyboard. It’s some of the niftiest stuff I’ve seen in a while. It’s comparable to Synergy, but done over SSH.

So mostly I’m writing this up to actually remember it in the future, as I’m apt to forget all this in the near future.

slotMusic

I was going to put here a full translation of my rant about slotMusic, that new misbegotten product shit out by SanDisk and the Big Labels, but it’d would be a bit redundant given the reactions throughout the blogosphere; so I’ll just list out the more salient points:

  • Big Labels refuse to accept the way people listen to music. Myself I prefer bits to atoms.
  • Here in Mexico the initiative will be an utter failure, because of costs to the user. I give an example in my original post, about a calafiero looking into slotMusic and telling the format to fuck off.
  • I’m done carrying music in binders, with the risk of getting robbed when I take it out to switch the damn little MicroSD cards on my device.
  • Big Labels are the internet’s laughingstock and are just zombified shells of their former selves.
  • We need a lossless alternative to the mp3 format, like FLAC.
  • Putting this out during the end of an economic era, during which the common consumer barely manages to have enough money to eat, takes cojones.
  • If the MicroSD cards are cheap enough, it might be cheaper to buy an album, delete the music and then use the card on your cellphone or digital camera.

All in all, an inferior product, compared to what is already out there.

slotMusic

Es una chingadera. Y no soy el único que piensa lo mismo al respecto. Gente mas conectada e inteligente que yo ya lo dice.

Las disqueras se rehúsan a aceptar la forma en que la gente escucha su música ahora; a la par que los viejos medios se apresuran a ignorar este hecho. A estas alturas me inclino mas a tener mi música en bits que en átomos.

Cierto que en Estados Unidos lleva las de perder debido al gusto que la gente ya le agarro el gusto a tener su música en su PMP. Aquí en México la cosa parecería no ser tan clara, pero existe una razón mucho mas simple para que esta iniciativa simplemente nunca despegue.

La razón que doy? Costo.

Pondré un caso que acabo de idear… un calafiero (entiéndase un chófer de una calafia, transporte amado y odiado de esta ciudad que es Tijuana).

Un sistema de sonido, por mas barato que sea, toca CDs. Con un poco mas de dinero se puede conseguir un sistema que toque archivos mp3, ya sea desde un dispositivo USB o desde un disco. Puedo comprar un CD original y sacarle un respaldo para traerlo en la calafia. En los puestos de piratería de todos lados venden discos retacados de archivos mp3 de cierta calidad, pero a un costo muy conveniente. Por una cantidad relativamente baja de dinero puedo tener harta música para escuchar a lo largo del día — relativa por que por lo regular lo mas caro de un sistema de sonido es el amplificador y el ecualizador, no el estéreo, donde uno controla la música.

Para yo poder hacer uso de esta madre, slotMusic, tendría que comprar un estéreo nuevo que soporte el sistema y que costará mas de lo normal por ser algo nuevo. De ahí tendría que ver donde conseguir las tarjetas de música, y pagarlas. Cuidar no perderles también, con eso de que están bien chiquitas.

Los argumentos que un calafiero real diría llevarían mas chingaderas, pinches, madres, y puteros, pa’ terminar con un sonoro hazme el chingado favor cuando vean lo que les costaría hacer el cambio.

No pues así no conviene. Mejor seguir comprando CDs con archivos mp3, mas música por menos dinero. Todo esto sin tomar en cuenta la inseguridad, por que en una de esas lo asaltan a uno y se llevan el estéreo con los discos originales que encuentren. Para eso mejor comprar un aipo, llevarlo a un cibercafé pa’ que lo llenen de música y después usar el line-in del estéreo para escuchar la música.

Yo en lo personal tampoco estoy dispuesto a dejar atrás la conveniencia de cargar gigas y gigas de música en mi iPod a cambio de comprar un aparato nuevo que nomas puede con un álbum a la vez, cargando el resto en una carpeta en mi mochila, como las carpetas de CDs que taxistas y camioneros suelen cargar. Quiero mas música? A sacar la carpetita de tarjetas microSD y cambiarla en el aparato.

Rogando que ninguna de las tarjetitas se me pierdan. O peor aun, que algun amante de lo ajeno me vea.

No hago mencion de que la música no tendrá DRM, ni que este nuevo formato cuenta con el respaldo de las cuatro disqueras grandes y el apoyo de gigantes del comercio como Best Buy y Wal-Mart. Las disqueras son el hazmerreir de todos mientras dan patadas de ahogado demandando a sus clientes. Best Buy y Wal-Mart son — con justa razón — denigrados en sitios como The Consumerist. No hago uso del argumento que a estas alturas ya hay que ir pensando en un sustituto lossless para el mp3, como un archivo FLAC, que ofrezca mayor calidad.

Lanzar esto y pretender que la gente le invierta dinero durante el fin de una era económica, durante la cual el consumidor común y corriente con trabajos y le alcanza el dinero para comer, toma muchos cojones.

Las tarjetitas parece que serán de 1GB cada una, así que si las dan abajo de 10 USD ya es ganancia. Borras la música y usas la tarjeta en tu celular/cámara fotográfica. Lastima que no sera muy entretenido ver que tan bajo llegaran con tal de empujarnos su inferior producto.

Of snobbish shops

Even though I wrote this a few days ago, I got pissed off again when I was translating this.

Two weeks ago I decided to get a new battery for my third-get iPod since the battery gave out a long time ago. This would be the second time I change it and judging by this situation, the last before I buy a more recent model of iPod.

The first time I changed it was after I found this place called D’Newton. This store prides itself in being the only authorized distributor of Apple products in the whole northwest of the country. This was as long as you could actually get to it, given they moved from Zona Río to Plaza Mundo Divertido and didn’t update the store’s website. The only way you could find out about their new location was by a simple sheet of paper taped to the door of their old location. When I went to their new location they had the right battery in existence so I bought it there and then. Changed the battery without too much problem and that was that for a long while.

This time around I went to the store and they didn’t have the battery in existence… but it could be ordered. I paid the required amount and was told they would have the battery next week. That next week I was told they still didn’t have it… but they would have it next week.

On Friday I called them up and was told all their providers had the wrong type of battery in stock and would have to wait at least another week. I was also told they had gotten a third-gen iPod for repairs and could sell me that iPod’s battery at a reduced cost and reimburse me the difference in cash.

So I went to the store… and was unpleasantly surprised when told they did have the new battery in stock but I would have to leave my iPod in for the night. I explained to the guy in charge I was told an iPod had been turned in for repairs and I was offered its battery at a reduced price.

This guy once again told me I would have to leave my iPod for the night because the technician had ‘lots of work” and it wouldn’t be ready right then. This is where I got annoyed… changing an iPod’s battery doesn’t take longer than 10 minutes and doesn’t require any parts to be soldered. And I’m not taking into account that they would have charged me for having the technician change the battery.

By now I’m showing my annoyance. I asked if they had the battery available so I could take it home with me. The clerk went to the technician and came back with the battery. He gave it to me along with my reimbursement and went home.

I get home, take my iPod apart… and turns out the damn battery isn’t the correct one. It’s too wide and won’t fit in the designated space inside the iPod.

The old battery is narrower and even leaves some empty space.

Here you can see how both batteries compare to each other, with the ‘new’ battery on top of the current battery.

The old battery on top of the new battery

Truth be told, I’m extremely disappointed with the level of service this store has given me. I’ll go later in the week to see what can be done about this; hopefully this mistake will be corrected without too many issues.

If anyone from Apple reads this, please take care who gets the privilege of being an “Authorized Distributor.” People who try to screw you at every turn, stores that close on Sundays — the only free day for many — and companies who believe themselves a government agency (or AT&T, Verizon) by giving you the runaround don’t really deserve the title.

I’ve gotten better service out in a street stall. Those guys will even tell you where they are on a determined day to keep you as a customer. You don’t want to walk the streets following the guy? At the nearest tianguis surely there is a stall that can help you get what you want.

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