supertrope

It depends on your definition of scam. Is McAfee a total fraud, not delivering on its core functionality of anti-virus scanning? No. But it's selling something most people don't need and uses information asymmetry, fear, and dark patterns to make money. Microsoft Defender has solved the anti-virus problem. (It doesn't solve the computer security problem but that's out of scope of AV). To play devil's advocate, without bundled bloatware PCs might cost $10 more.

If a software package can't be uninstalled through the normal process and needs a separate uninstaller program, it is similar to malware. Many anti-virus suites and anti-cheat software require this. Take from that what you will.

"Telemetry." "Personalized experiences."

Basically doublespeak.

Operating system makers would rather sell you a subscription to OneDrive, iCloud, or Google Drive.

The makers of Super Mario 64 said 3D graphics greatly increased game development costs.

Mass market GPS navigation devices haven't made learning how to navigate a city like a local obsolete. If you've ever seen a gig economy driver get lost despite having step by step instructions...

I get your point. I assume the intent is to call out companies on marketing good things and trying to bury customer unfriendly things. As a customer you can assume that if a company is not drawing attention to something, it's not good or at least the feature is not there.

Chicago has relatively affordable housing purchase prices as property taxes are very high. The government has taxed away property appreciation. Unfortunately the deferred compensation promises they have made to public sector employees are coming due and further tax hikes are needed.

Kapital describes the problem well. His proposed solutions were awful.

Imagine if current hospitals could object to opening new hospitals. Or grocery stores could object to competitors getting permits.

We don't even need skyscrapers to relieve the housing shortage. Legalizing duplexes, townhome, quadplexes, condos, or three story buildings that contain six units would add a lot of supply.

Realtors are indeed market experts (not product experts). Commission pay incentivizes them to close deals quickly, not to maximize sale price. Yes they can educate first time buyers that they cannot simultaneously get the best location, condition of the house, and price. Good realtors will ask their customer which two (or sometimes one) are their real priority and realistically match them to available listings. If you're moving into an area they can provide some local information although they legally cannot comment on schools or crime. If you've done this before, realtors mainly just serve as gatekeepers to a cartel and literally unlock houses for you to view.

They’re locked into a red queen race. Providers merge to gain scale and negotiation power. Insurers merge to gain scale and negotiation power. The ACA encouraged scaling up to drive down unit costs, but it just resulted in companies scaling up to protect their margins.

The blog post is too simplistic an analysis. It ignores the second order effects of medical care financing reform.

Imagine if car engine oil changes had to go through car insurance. In such an inefficient equilibrium you might remark that only that insurer overhead is only 20% of a $300 oil change. Sellers always capture easy money that flows in from insurance money, credit, or government subsidies.

The fewer layers between a buyer and the seller, the lower the cost. Compare buying a bottle of ibuprofen at $5 for 200 doses compared with going to an urgent care and having a registered nurse hand you five doses at $200. Professional labor often used in medical care is expensive. Legalizing over the counter medication like birth control helps. Ironically a lot of poorly run companies try to shift HR policing of employees onto the healthcare system by requiring doctor’s notes. An insurance company processing claims is expensive.

Fee for service encourages more work ups and surgeries. The US caps physician residencies at a low count. Having the operations and financing as separate and adversarial companies adds a lot of friction. Hospitals charge 10x and the insurance brags they negotiated a 90% discount. No one health insurer has enough market power to push down outpatient, inpatient, or drug pricing. Without strong competition, automation, and price signals, healthcare spending is not going to get under control.

With UniFi access points I found 802.11r to be unnecessary. I lowered transmit power so each room only has one AP providing a -67 dBm signal or stronger. 802.11k is enabled by default and is especially important if you use DFS channels. You can enable 802.11v with the BSS transition setting. I verified with Wireshark that my iPhone requests a 802.11k neighbor report, the current AP responds with a neighbor report containing a single candidate AP, and my iPhone roams to the next AP. Internet phone calls do not drop when walking between rooms. That is the only application that requires seamless roaming.

Soft handover is a hard problem. And yet we still get dropped calls.

If people keep driving over the corner of your lawn, is putting a rock on that corner to deter that behavior a booby trap?

Once you're not using default settings, here be dragons. In theory 802.11r is a standard. In practice enabling 802.11r puts you into the minority of users who do so. There's a lot less quality assurance coverage there.

You're at the mercy of UniFi not having any show stopping bugs (haha), the client device supporting 802.11r or at least tolerating it, and the interaction between UniFi and the client not having any show stopping bugs.

Puritan influence.

"A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies!"

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/steam-drops-macos-mo...

If a device can still hear a farther away AP at say -62 dBm it’s not going to start searching. Searching has a cost in lower speeds and higher latency due time spent tuning to other channels. It’s only done if the current signal weakens. Decrease AP transmit power until each room only has one AP signal at -67dBm or louder. https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/wi-fi-roaming-sup... Intel Wi-Fi cards have a roaming aggressiveness setting.

Qualcomm did a test with extreme levels of traffic. As in 20 simultaneous video chat sessions. https://www.qualcomm.com/content/dam/qcomm-martech/dm-assets...

For contention between nearby Wi-Fi networks the BSS coloring feature is more directly relevant.

Journalists and writers are often given a deadline and a target length. "Give me 500 words of copy by the end of tomorrow." The editor and publisher of a magazine need to get all words and graphics ready by a strict and regular deadline.

This is the real ultimate solution to energy security and climate change. However there are many entrenched interests behind car culture. Auto manufacturers. Auto parts suppliers. Car dealers. The banks that sell car loans. Car insurance companies. Oil companies. The majority of governments and voters are okay with spending trillions on highways, roads, and parking. But ask them to upgrade public transit into something useful instead of an awful quality social welfare service and the anti-tax forces come out in force.

If there is a net benefit for both the vehicle owner and the utility, the utility should pay the owner. A school district bought battery electric school buses with a subsidy from the utility on the purchase price.

If the important data is in a web app and the Windows PC is effectively a thin client, this lowers the ransom value of the local drive. Of course business disruption in the form of downtime, overtime IT labor cannot be mitigated by just putting everything online.

The next step is just to move to security by design operating systems like ChromeOS where the user is not allowed to run any non-approved executables.

If tricking a single employee can cause an entire company to stall out, it's a process issue. Just like how a single employee should not be able to wire out $100,000.

That's the same reason I deleted my Facebook account.

Google and Facebook showed the way. Consumers see FREE service and it sets the market equilibrium. Retail Windows licenses were already a slim minority. Those who would buy Windows 11 LTSC for Home would be an even smaller group.

Microsoft got rid of QA years ago. If it was targeted sabotage they could break dual boot setups every single Patch Tuesday. It's just disrespect for users. Like how Copilot and other shovelware such as Candy Crush keep getting reinstalled every few updates, and privacy settings reset every once in a while. Dual booting is likely not even on their radar.