For my team, I’m looking for a Senior Software Engineer based in the UK, Sweden, Spain, or Germany to work on https://github.com/grafana/mimir
What I'm looking for:
- Technical expertise: You have strong experience with at least one programming language (Go, Python, C++, Rust), Cloud-Native applications (Kubernetes, Kafka protocol), DevOps practices, and writing maintainable code. Familiarity with observability tools is a plus.
- Customer focus: You’re energized by working with large companies that depend on your work for critical operations and are ready to be on-call.
- Pragmatism: You thrive in a remote team, communicate effectively, and excel at solving complex challenges, delivering MVPs, and iterating based on feedback.
You mention C++, Rust experience being desirable, but does Grafana actually build any products where such experience would be continuously useful? My understanding was that Grafana was mostly a golang shop?
You can resolve this by putting the cursor in the center of the display where you want the dock to appear then move the cursor to the bottom of the display at an average speed.
Works everytime for me but this is also the reason why the dock moves to the wrong display!
Finally. Germany combines some of the worst aspects of the US (credit ranking, complicated abortion process, private healthcare if you want decent treatments) with the worst aspects of Europe (low digitalization, high taxation, recursive federalism: within the country and within the EU).
A country like the Netherlands has its own issues (mainly housing) but doesn't have the myriad of pain points you can find in Germany like Schufa, anti-customer contract rules, or public healthcare inaccessible despite paying more than 400€/month for it as a single individual.
I find it quite disturbing that high taxation is seen as a negative aspect of Europe. I lived in Italy, France and Germany, and I enjoyed public healthcare and education of very high standard at very affordable prices, and free in the limit that one cannot afford to pay for them.
As a relative of a person with a chronic disease I can tell you that on the one hand if we are not bankrupt it is because of public healthcare, and on the other I'm proud of contributing through my taxes so that anybody in need can have the same treatment irrespective of their economic situation.
Maybe nitpicking here, but healthcare is not financed with your taxes in Germany - it's financed by statutory health insurance (SHI) and private health insurance (PHI). The State "simply" sets the framework/legislation/etc. so that it doesn't get wild (like probably it is in the USA). [0]
In Italy it's the state/regions that take your taxes and pay the health system.
Yes, that's my problem with high taxation, as someone who got burnt by it by virtue of living and paying taxes in the UK.
I don't mind paying my fair share of tax if it means I get good value out of it, but the state of our healthcare here means that in practice the public healthcare system is no longer fit for purpose, so we are being forced to pay for a system that doesn't work and end up having to go private (and thus pay again) when we do need timely healthcare.
I am generally in favor of fair, progressive taxation to ensure everyone has a good social safety net, but the taxation should be fair (it's no longer the case in the UK, since tax brackets haven't been adjusted for inflation) and the services paid for by those taxes should provide good value.
The danger with services funded by taxes as opposed to a private enterprise operating in a free market is that private enterprises are bound by competitive pressure - if they are delivering terrible service and stuffing their pockets with the money, you are free not to do business with them and a potential competitor (that stuffs their pockets a little less) can come along and get your business instead.
With tax-funded services, this pressure doesn't exist, so there's no incentive for politicians (and everyone else in the value chain) to deliver good service, since people generally can't opt out of taxes. This means that even if a service is currently good, there's no guarantee it will remain so since the pressure for it to remain isn't there. Thus, when you see high taxation, it's reasonable to be worried whether the service provided by those taxes is any good and whether it will remain so in the future.
The UK tax system (like many others) is not as fair or progressive as it is presented to be.
1. NI means that the real standard rate on earned income is substantially higher than the "income tax" rate. it is also not fair that unearned income is exempt from it.
2. Lots of purchase taxes, which are disproportionately paid by people with moderate incomes. People on low incomes spend a higher proportion in necessities which are (rightly) subject to lower levels. The more money you have (beyond a certain point) the less you spend on things subject to these taxes.
3. Too many loopholes.
> so we are being forced to pay for a system that doesn't work and end up having to go private (and thus pay again) when we do need timely healthcare.
Some of the NHS is good. NHS dentists can be very hard to find and waiting lists are long. Waiting times can be long too. Reform is prevented by the fear of a US type system and I think many people think that is the only alternative (and seem not to realise how things operate in most other developed countries).
> seem not to realise how things operate in most other developed countries
Genuine question, what do other countries do differently? The way I see it (and described in my original comment) is that the underlying factors behind the decline of government services (no accountability, no incentive to use tax money efficiently) are common across many countries.
Some countries may get away with it for now because they're still "early", but if there is no pressure to do well it's just a matter of time before they too suffer the same fate?
I'd argue that the decline in quality of services as been a phenomenon across many western countries and to significant degree been caused by a economic idiology and a deliberate campaign with a goal of privatisation of many public goods, started in the 1980s.
Essentially funding to services are being reduced to pay for tax reductions, until at some point the quality declines significantly, which is taken as the argument that private enterprise would deliver a much better service at lower cost. Services/infrastructure are then sold and a low price and after a short while costs for services go up, but because they are now private enterprises raising prices it is "the market".
The reason why the UK is worse I believe it's due to the political system which results in essentially 2 dominant parties with very little differences.
Singapore has an individual fund system if I understand it correctly, and that provides extremely good value for money.
One big difference is that these systems are less centralised and therefore less bureaucratic, less prone to political tinkering, and they reduce the problems of lack of accountability and incentives for efficiency.
Agreed, although this can be addressed by appropriate regulation. However, the ultimate issue is that the government should do its job well, and whether it's the task of adequately regulating a market vs providing the service itself, the problem that there's no pressure it to do it well still remains.
The key point to add is that (at least) 2 points must be true for this positive side of market to show:
1) There should be "forces" counterbalancing the move toward monopolies
2) It should be okay for the service to fail/die and/or it should degrade gracefully.
For example book publishing is a wonderful field that can gain from free market dynamics while prison management is a terrible field for free market dynamics.
While a dying publishing enterprise might print less books at a lower quality with deceptive marketing (and that is sorta okay) a dying prison management enterprise will squeeze every ounce of dignity/health/safety out of its wards.
Market dynamics for the economy are analogous to natural selection for evolution: both can produce wonderful things but they will require many more to die horribly.
This is not a statement against markets but I am calling for this tradeoff to be considered along with many other.
The same factor that makes private prisons problematic also makes taxation problematic - in both cases you've got a captive market that can't opt out thus no pressure to provide a good, efficient service. In a hypothetical world where inmates could choose whether to remain in prison and which one to be in, private prisons would be competing for service quality. Actually we've got that, they're just called "hotels".
I wonder if the solution there would be to force politicians and everyone involved to exclusively use government-provided services - so as a condition of going into politics, you can't use private healthcare, your kids can't go to private schools, and you need to spend a day every year in a random prison and so on. Then it would mean the decision-makers got at least some incentive to make sure these services are functional and fit for purpose.
> The same factor that makes private prisons problematic also makes taxation problematic - in both cases you've got a captive market that can't opt out thus no pressure to provide a good, efficient service.
What you should have are companies that offer their best prices/services to the government out of fear that they'll be passed over and those highly valuable contracts will be awarded to their competitors who do better. Governments are incentivized to select the best companies to award those contracts to because they risk being voted out if people are unhappy with the level of service they're getting for their tax dollars.
Prisoners can't kick politicians out of office when they're unhappy about the state of the prisons so that's a huge issue with prisons in general, but private prisons have another issue which is profit. Whatever it costs to keep dangerous people locked up, private prisons need all of that money plus they must extract a bunch of extra money from the public just to stuff their pockets with. If private prisons want to keep prices low to the public but also want to keep filling their pockets with money they need to provide substandard care to the people they are responsible for. A non-private prison needs only what it costs to do the job and nothing more.
> What you should have are companies that offer their best prices/services to the government out of fear that they'll be passed over and those highly valuable contracts will be awarded to their competitors who do better.
This requires a functional quality control system. It seems like it's cheaper to undermine/bribe (or just let decay whatever there is) the quality control system than to actually do better.
> because they risk being voted out if people are unhappy with the level of service
Votes only work if people are properly represented and have good alternatives to vote for, which doesn't seem to be the case in most countries despite them being considered democracies. Keep in mind that the leader of the DPRK is also "elected".
Somehow in the USA these theoretical competitors that lower the profit margin and provide better service seem not to materialize. We end up with whole industries all of whose participants are funneling money to the executives and investors at the expense of customers and society. It’s such a broad issue that half of inflation is attributed to this corporate greed which is not being mitigated by the invisible hand of capitalist competition.
Without proper regulation and enforcement capitalism devolves to monopolies and oligopolies and eliminate competition and subdue market forces.
private enterprise is not "bound by competitive pressure". Companies only compete by virtue of the government forcing them to. Are you arguing that humans, inventors of civilization, are too stupid to figure out how to cooperate?
I disagree that companies only compete thanks to regulation. Companies competing is the default - regulation sometimes (either as an unintended oversight or malicious intent thanks to lobbying/corruption) prevents it though.
There are many valid scenarios where competition is lacking, but generally speaking the reason it’s lacking is due to regulation/law making it impossible.
Telecoms for example is impossible because the incumbents have exclusive control of the physical infrastructure (poles/ducts under the street) or spectrum auctions where the price makes it impossible for a new entrant to enter.
Tech network effects are maintained by copyright law being abused to prevent adversarial interoperability.
Merging and forming cartels is still technically a choice. A company could decide not to do that and compete. It may require a near-infinite amount of money, but it's still technically possible.
In the absence of any regulation, if a company's objective is to maximise profits, and it acts as a rational actor solely focused on achieving that objective, joining cartels, and creating barriers for entry is the end state of the market for nearly all starting conditions.
Unless you want to get into the nitty gritty of economic policy analysis and measuring market externalities, value of public goods is pretty subjective. A healthy person might not see much value in public healthcare and a single adult with no kids might not care about education. Just because you don’t value something in the same way doesn’t mean it’s not highly valued by the people who voted on and implemented the policies.
My neighbors suck less when they're warm, full, and healthy. How do the anti tax folks get past that hurdle? I'm trying to live my most evil life here but I'm stuck on very selfishly wanting cool neighbors.
That is not the case for Germany. We have - even with all its shortcomings - a decent education system that's largely free and accessible for everyone, a decent healthcare system, a decent public transport system on local, regional and federal system, and a very decent social security network that covers unemployment, pension and elderly care.
The US in contrast has neither: parents have to pay five digits worth of money just for the birth of a child, pay through their nose for insurance, public schools are horribly underfunded, universities require six digits worth of debt, there's no high-speed rail worth the name, if you're unemployed you better have some savings, you have to take care about your 401k, and the best way if you need elderly care is to off yourself with a gun.
The only thing where the US actually is in front of Germany is allowing you to get a gun to off yourself. Here in Germany, it's almost impossible to own a gun, so people love to off themselves by jumping in front of a train, creating a huge mess for everyone else.
INOVA in Northern Virginia charges $3000 for an uncomplicated vaginal birth. They have a code which rolls up many services into that code. There are additional in-hospital expenses such as the newborn hearing test which aggregate to about $400. If you have insurance your maximum cost out of pocket for the calendar year is between 5 and 15 thousand dollars (insurance covers everything above it). If you can't pay it all at once there are charities and payment plans you can discuss with the provider. If you don't have insurance you can possibly negotiate the bill down sometimes drastically or if necessary declare Chapter 7 or 13 bankruptcy if you really can't pay the bills. Bankruptcy sounds scarier than it really is. Chapter 7 bankruptcy lasts about 3 months and Chapter 13 bankruptcy lasts about 5 years during which you pay everything above your normal average household expenses to a special account for the creditors. Medical debt is unsecured debt and can be defaulted on and purged by the court following bankruptcy proceedings. Bankruptcy is much more problematic in Europe for the individual. Americans can keep their assets in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Health insurance in America costs between $500-$1000 a month for an entire family.
I'm sure this was meant as a "oh, it's not so bad in the U. S." type post. But I read it, and am reminded of what a suck-ass system the U. S. has. Sure, almost everything said is true. But let's reiterate:
1. One might pay up to $15K out-of-pocket for childbirth.
2. If you can't pay it, you have to go out-of-band to seek a non-standard procedure of taking care of the debt. The system is not otherwise built to handle a situation that's probably pretty common given the expenses involved.
3. If all else fails, file for bankruptcy.
All just to have a child.
What you've described is not "not so bad", but rather the plot of a bad movie from the 70s about how corporations have taken over the country and we all live in this dystopian hell where you have to give all of your assets to the corporation to be allowed to have a child. Only it's not a bad movie from the 70s, it's the U. S. healthcare system.
And I don't know what kind of low-end plan one gets for $1000/month for a whole family, but I'd bet real money that the deductible would make my eyes water.
Anyway, comparing earning 175k USD to 162.37k EUR:
Germany, married with 2 children, Stay At Home Mom Scenario, Tax Category 3, Berlin Region:
Solidarity + Salary Tax is EUR 40.428,00
Pension Insurance: 8.314,20 €
Unemployment Insurance: 1.162,20 €
Care Insurance: 900,45 €
Total: 50.805 € = $54,706 before health insurance
Virginia, USA, same scenario as above, incl. 2 child tax credit of $4000, four state exemptions: FICA + Federal + State Tax - Child Care Credit: $44,162-$4,000 = $40,162 before health insurance
Germany costs $14,544 a year more for a family with two kids before health insurance. To be fair though, the differences are lesser for most Germans, as almost no common jobs pay over 120k EUR gross.
> INOVA in Northern Virginia charges $3000 for an uncomplicated vaginal birth. They have a code which rolls up many services into that code. There are additional in-hospital expenses such as the newborn hearing test which aggregate to about $400.
Free of charge in Germany
> If you have insurance your maximum cost out of pocket for the calendar year is between 5 and 15 thousand dollars (insurance covers everything above it).
In Germany, insurance covers everything over 0€. It depends on the insurance whether you have to pay extra for individual treatments (treatment methods without, or with disputed scientific evidence) or not. Rarely more than 100€. If expenses for illnesses exceed a certain amount in a year (about 3000€), it can be deducted from taxes.
> Health insurance in America costs between $500-$1000 a month for an entire family.
In Germany, it depends on your income how much the insurance costs for the entire family. 500-1000€ is also possible in Germany. But without all the extra expenses, negotiations with doctors, clinic, insurer, and bankruptcies...
> In Germany, insurance covers everything over 0€. [...] If expenses for illnesses exceed a certain amount in a year (about 3000€), it can be deducted from taxes
But how can you have anything to deduct if insurance covers everything over $0?
You can go to a private doctor even if you are not in a „private insurance“ and pay him by yourself (Selbstzahler). He can prescribe meds which are not covered by the public insurance. So you have to pay them by yourself. That’s just one example.
Yes, Germany has not the same level of health care. Most of the time it’s better than the US. According to studies and data. All sources are not from Germany:
„Germany would have tied Switzerland had we averaged our rankings of the nations instead of using head-to-head matchups in a bracket system (Switzerland eliminated Germany in the first round). It’s an example of how close the voting was.“
I don't care what the internet says. I know from my own experience it is 6 months, at least for some categories. Some sources say 30 days. A joke! I could call the office of my average XYZ doctor now and ask. And it will be 6 months, for sure.
"Most of the time it’s better than the US. "
The US has a lower live expectancy. Whatever the reasons may be. While this is concerning and not good, as long as you have a good insurance, Germany can not match the standard of US health care. Trust me on that one. With dentists it may be a different thing.
Yes, if you are poor or unemployed, your access to health care is likely much better than in the USA. But otherwise, not so much.
Not sure where you live. I (and the people I know, some of them 65+) never had to wait for 6 months - even for surgeries. And I can speak about a decently wide range of categories.
You also mention "at least for some categories", then you mention that "you could call the average XYZ doctor", as it that was applying to all categories. You seem to be generalising out of emotions, to be honest.
If Access to Health Care in the US is so great, why is infant mortality worse than in Cuba and they score dead last in every Health or Life Expectancy Metric among the G7?
None of these are primarily medical outcomes. Life expectancy, for example, is skewed by an anomalously high rate of fatal injuries when people are young, which has nothing to do with healthcare quality. For better or worse, trauma medicine in the US is arguably the best in the world because serious injuries are so prevalent.
There is also the practical matter that the US is a continent-sized country and regional effects matter. Some US States have life expectancy on par with the best European countries despite the anomalously high fatal injury rates among young people.
Nothing in that article actually addresses the point. The average life expectancy where I live is currently 83+, despite notably higher fatal injury rates.
In terms of actual medical outcomes -- survival rates for cancer, cardiovascular events, trauma medicine, etc -- the UK is quite a bit worse than the US. The only countries that stand out as consistently competing on medical outcomes are France and Switzerland.
It's a little more subtle than this, and of course subtlety is doesn't play well these days, but the US stats vary greatly across geography and ethnic lines. Cuba isn't a great comparison, beyond the shock of "they're worse than a bunch of commies!"
What insurance-speak calls max out of pocket is not what a normal person thinks max out of pocket means.
If you have a year of high medical bills you can easily pay much more out of your real pocket than your so-called "max out of pocket" in the insurance paperwork.
That is because the insurance company only credits what they feel like it towards their accounting of max out of pocket, not what you actually paid.
I don't have an insurance bill handy here to quote numbers but in their monthly or quarterly statements you can find what you have to pay and what they credit against your tally of yearly out of pocket. The latter is often less than the former.
> Health insurance in America costs between $500-$1000 a month for an entire family.
You're off by a lot. About $3500/mo here in CA for my family. Employers usually pay a good portion of that (but it varies) but if you go unemployed on COBRA, it's all out of pocket.
1) I doubt that you pay as much. I pay less than half of that and have a comfortable salary. Did you include the "Arbeitgeberanteil" (which is not part of what you are paying)?
2) You can't easily extrapolate that number to a whole family. Kids are usually insured for free if the higher-earning parent is not privately insured.
No, this is on par with what my friends in Germany pay for their family. The difference is Germans have nearly no deductible and there is little worry about in-network vs out-of-network treatments.
For eg: if you work for a Swiss or US employer and make more than 69k(?), say 100k, as a freelancer, and have a family, you have to pay around 14%(upper limit somewhere around 1000) of the income as health insurance contribution.
I think it is costly. It is difficult to digest for me that the health insurance costs more than housing.
6,000 dollar deductible per person with total 15,000 dollar out of pocket maximum for the family. My current health plan is better because my company found a partner that aggregates many smaller companies to get better rates from insurers. Before this I was uninsured and would call many different providers to negotiate the best cash price for various procedures such as wrist MRI with contrast. I got cash quotes ranging from $850 to $3500 and got exactly what I needed from a local provider for $850. I called up several providers in Canada and they offered similar cash prices (on the low end) so it wasn't worth the 8 hour drive each way.
> INOVA in Northern Virginia charges $3000 for an uncomplicated vaginal birth.
In Germany all of that is being covered by the government insurance scheme. The only thing you have to pay is stuff like a private room for postnatal recovery time [1]. Oh and you get a very long time paid post birth to recover and bond with your child. No such nonsense as giving birth and having to work the next day like it's common in the US.
> If you have insurance your maximum cost out of pocket for the calendar year is between 5 and 15 thousand dollars (insurance covers everything above it).
We don't have that at all, insurance covers everything, you never even see a bill or have to deal with stuff like "in network". The only thing is a 5-10€ co-pay per prescription (utter nonsense if you ask me, it was introduced as a "cost control" measure to prevent people from... diverting medication? idk, it's ridiculous but small enough that it's harmless).
> Bankruptcy is much more problematic in Europe for the individual. Americans can keep their assets in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy.
Agreed on that one. It's also a huge contributing factor into why Americans have it easier to start up side hustles.
> Health insurance in America costs between $500-$1000 a month for an entire family.
Assuming I were the sole earner and my wife would be a SAHM with an arbitrary number of children, I'd (at a gross wage of 52k/y) pay 340€ a month to health insurance and my employer another 340€, so in total (including a per-insurance surcharge of, in my case, .5%) my healthcare costs are capped at about 700€ - for all of us.
On top of that we'd get, like all parents in Germany, "Kindergeld" of 250€/month per childpaid by the government to assist in child rearing.
Pretty awesome if you ask me. I honestly don't know how y'all survive.
> In Germany all of that is being covered by the government insurance scheme.
Ok, but you agree, don't you, that $3000 is quite different from "parents have to pay five digits worth of money just for the birth of a child"? That is off by an order of magnitude.
> No such nonsense as giving birth and having to work the next day like it's common in the US.
I think you should stop consuming so much media from Russia Today :) Or maybe re-consider the trustworthiness of wherever you read that.
The fact is that, at the federal level, Americans may take 12 weeks (unpaid) time off work after giving birth under the FMLA, and it is prohibited to retaliate against an employee for taking that time.
Additionally, the majority of Americans live in states which mandate paid time off after giving birth, (usually 8 to 12 weeks) plus additional unpaid time. California, to use the most populous state as an example, mandates 8 weeks of paid time, plus 28 weeks unpaid. New York, on the opposite side of the country, goes even farther by mandating 12 weeks paid time.
Part of the reason you may be confused is that this is not always explicitly named as "maternity time". It is often called as "disability leave", and nearly all disability statutes include recovery from pregnancy as a disability.
Unless you are maybe trying to argue that Europeans are legally prohibited to work the day after giving birth, you are way off base here.
"a decent education system that's largely free and accessible for everyone"
I give your Universities a 2-3 (On a scale 1 Top, 5 fail). High schools are getting worse and worse due to the immigrants. So you would want to send your kid to a school without many immigrants, mainly due to language barriers.
"a decent healthcare system"
Again, I give you a 2-3. More and more people are sucking services, fewer people pay in. Hey, alone 1 Million Ukrainians are insured, while less than 25% have a job. How long do you wait to see a specialist? >6 months!
"a decent public transport system on local, regional and federal system"
Again grade 2-3. You have a functioning public transport system. But ask Switzerland what they think about it. Or look at China if you want to learn something about bullet trains.
"and a very decent social security network that covers unemployment, pension and elderly care."
Is on the brink of collapse. Pensions are great. For state employees. The rest gets retirement benefits. They are compared to the EU very low.
I don't have health insurance by the way. Germany has to take care of so many immigrants. Nothing left for me. And try to compete with them to find an apartment. The government pays for them. And the government is never late with payments, hence landlords prefer this.
This literally sounds like regurgitated shit from far-right politicians rather than thought-out analysis based on real statistics. In fact I would go so far as to suspect astroturfing.
2.
a) Currently don't find a better article. Biggest problem compared to China. Germany has the same tracks for bullet trains, local trains and freight trains. Often the bullet trains run a 120 or 160 km/h
https://www.businessinsider.de/tech/warum-es-ultraschnelle-z...
No but you pointed out or you wanted to point out it's not decent, yet you gave a score of 2-3 on a scale 1-5 where 1 is top. That makes it exactly decent/good, which is what the person said.
> Switzerland does everything better than Germany with far less taxes.
They have the advantage that the country is so small. Us Germans however have to deal with the fact that we have the 5th largest country of Europe of which a lot of is settled and has to be supported by the entire population.
And in any case, Swiss taxes aren't that much lower than Germany's either - average tax load in the country is ~29% [1], Germany is at 33.9% [2]. Switzerland's total load may be even higher because the German figure includes social security payments, Statista for Switzerland is only taxes.
You know Switzerland is all hilly or mountainy right? Building infrastructure is inherently much harder and more expensive and yet Switzerland does a much better job of it. Switzerland is also actually more diverse with it having 3 distinct languages. The federalization via cantons is smart and works well.
I'm certain your two sources are not measuring the same thing. Swiss taxes are much lower. Median income in Germany is 43k which results in a tax rate of 34% in bawu. Median income in Switzerland is 78k, that in Zürich gives a tax rate of roughly 12% (!!!).
Of course in Switzerland all health insurance is private so you end up having to pay more but this does not increase with more income!
Anyways the idea that the tax burden is the same is completely laughable.
The US actually has a good pension system relative to other developed countries. Retirement plans like 401k, IRA, etc are in addition to the pension system, they don't replace it, and are frequently superior to their European counterparts both in scope and flexibility.
There is plenty to complain about but pensions and retirement is one area that the US does comparatively well.
My initial reaction is - then why is the US leading in so many areas, if based on your chracterization it's such a laggard? I'd argue it has the best in all categories, it's just not close to even distributed. "Decent" is completely inadequate for education, healthcare and transportation. These are far too important for " good enough, usually" solutions.
Agreed. Additionally taxation in our modern Fiat currencies is a farce, since the central banks can literally take as much buying power as they want from you. Taxation is literally just an illusion to make you feel like you are directly paying for government services.The real taxation is inflation.
There is no capital gains tax - Germany has less progressive taxation than the United States! VAT in general is a regressive tax, that many EU countries inordinately rely on. A US-citizen has to pay taxes no matter where they reside, but the wealthier citizens of EU countries can easily evade taxes by domiciling themselves in various tax havens around the EU. Germany does a very poor job collecting taxes from the highest earners.
> I find it quite disturbing that high taxation is seen as a negative aspect of Europe.
High tax rates and, in fact, ANY taxes area a negative. However, that negative is (hopefully) offset by the positives that the things those taxes go to pay for provide.
> that high taxation is seen as a negative aspect of Europe. I lived in Italy, France and Germany, and I enjoyed public healthcare and education of very high standard at very affordable prices, and free in the limit that one cannot afford to pay for them.
...coupled with an utterly illogical (and factually incorrect[1]) non-argument.
You can have these things without high taxation, if the system that implements them is efficient. It's not.
" I'm proud of contributing through my taxes so that anybody in need can have the same treatment irrespective of their economic situation."
It is a big world my friend. And if millions come to use these services but don't pay in, the services get thinner and thinner. 1 Million Ukrainians came to German. Less than 25% have a job. The rest is financed by the taxpayer. Money, Rent, Health insurance...
Edit:
It reminds me of a Third Reich joke. An old woman goes into a map shop and looks at a globe.
She asks the sales person: What is this big blue land on the globe?
As a German who pays a lot in taxes each year, I’m more than happy for those taxes to support our Ukrainian friends who are refugees during this terrible situation
The one I have seen are all young women and kids. They will cause not even a fraction of the health care costs a 70 or 80 year old German generates. I can't find this stat but basically it's exponential, one generates more health care costs in the last ten years of its life than during its entire previous life, on average.
Adding a source to this claim as it is very valid [0]. I cannot find a good overview of the overall demographics of the ukranian refugees other than it is mostly women and children due to the borders being closed to outgoing men. Employment rates will rise as people integrate.
The integration of Ukrainian war refugees into the German labor market is sluggish by European standards. This is the result of a recent analysis by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. While just 18% have found a job in Germany, the figure is two thirds or more in countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Denmark. The reasons for this are bureaucracy and the wrong incentives.
> They will cause not even a fraction of the health care costs a 70 or 80 year old German generates. I can't find this stat but basically it's exponential, one generates more health care costs in the last ten years of its life than during its entire previous life, on average.
I really don't wanna get into this populist debate, which is really annoying lately as it seems to be our biggest issue in the world, but ... the 70-80 years old people (probably) worked in the country, they contributed to their own country, and should be treated with some respect or decency and not just as a cost.
They enjoyed the golden years after WW2 where the economy was booming, decent pension starting at reasonable age, nobody cared about the environment, people lived like there's no tomorrow.
Now the coming generations can deal with the fallout.
It's a bit unfair what you said and probably you know it - next generations can blame so many things on us today... it's just like history or life works.
Yes I do, and I'm aware the vast majority of them were blissfully unaware, but then again I've talked to enough of them to also hsve learned that many of them simply don't want any of that to be true today. Some form of denial I guess. Like simply claiming the greenhouse effect isn't real, or protesting new wind turbine or high voltage power lines, because they would see them from their big houses with big gardens they were able to easily afford a few decades ago. Or protesting the new city district on a farmer's land because they like to ride their electric bikes along the fields - never mind even families with double income struggle to afford decent apartments nowadays, let alone a dedicated house.
Seriously, we have frequent protests against a new city district here, and you exclusively see college students who know jack shit about life and old folks around there.
That's an overly negative and hyperbolic view. Nothing is entirely wrong here, but you're painting every single point in the most negative way possible.
You can certainly argue about how good the healthcare system is in the end, but it isn't categorically inaccessible. And if you pay 400 EUR/month you're earning enough money and can choose the private health system if you prefer that.
The credit ranking also works in very different ways than in the US, so I wouldn't compare them directly. I'm not sure what you mean by anti-consumer contract rules.
If you pay ~400 EUR for the public healthcare you make 70k or more.
The cost for public healthcare is scaled by income, and is limited around 400 EUR. It's a bit higher now, but I would suspect that the OP is not necessarily talking about the most current values here and is hitting the older limit and therefore earning more than the "Beitragsbemessungsgrenze".
The limit is ~900 € per month, not ~400 €. People frequently forget the employer matching, which at the end comes from your pocket, since it's mandatory.
Also Freelancers and self-employed need to pay full contribution of 900 €, not "just" a half.
No the employers contribution doesn't come out of your pocket. The employers contribution comes out of the employers pocket and is the cost of doing business. That's like arguing the rent for the office space or even the warehouse or servers come out of your salary. Your salary is essentially a function of supply and demand and not a function of cost. I mean, if external costs would influence salary we'd see remote workers earn more than on site ones, because employers save on office rent. In reality it's more likely to be that remote workers have a lower salary.
Frog the company perspective, your cost is what they have to pay to get you. That's where the supply & demand gets decided. Everything that reduces your net compensation from that amount comes effectively from your pocket.
Company "contributions" are just a government conspiracy to gaslight you into thinking you pay less taxes & contributions than you actually pay.
If you're paying 400 EUR for public healthcare, shouldn't you receive good healthcare for that? Why is private healthcare even in the discussion? Why does the public option suck?
Even if you get in, it's scummy. Once you get to a certain age, the payments are crazy. Not to mention people "selling it", like a colleague of mine got scammed into going private, he had some eye issues a couple of years before, and when the issue came back, the insurance refused to pay because it was an existing condition, making his treatment unaffordable and having to literally quit, leave the country for a while and come back just to get back to public.
Hello from Germany. No lies detected. Don’t forget about a working culture where process always ranks above results, and leaders commonly lack confidence to make pragmatic decisions.
Well, this working culture makes result slow and expensive, and as a result, in many cases uncompetitive, but it does a good job of avoiding fuckups and while slow and expensive, things usually get done predictably, on time and on budget. Which probably makes it better than American reckless "fake it till you make it" approach in most of the complex projects.
I am familiar with this response but I can’t take it seriously. The country is looking at something like -0.4% growth this year. “On time and on budget” really? Like the Berlin airport? Like the digitalization budget that hasn’t been spent? There is no spirit of pragmatism here. Only a fear of not following the rules.
No, it absolutely does not. It might have in the past, when industry was booming in Germany and setup costs were huge and mistakes were very, very expensive.
However, they've pretty much lost the race when it comes to software and digitalization, where setup cost is pretty much non-existent, mistakes are inexpensive (fail early, fail fast), and ROI are generally multiples of 100%.
I had an experience with a German client in a software project. It freaked the hell out of me with slowness of decisionmaking, long contract every point of which as it turned out, was material, in a nutshell it was a 50/50 coding vs lawyer job and took 5x the time same thing would take with an American client. It also made me next to no profit.
But, unlike a lot of things we write for Americans, that one turned out to be actually workable, usable in their (rather large) product, and runs happily to this day almost 5 years later. I count it as a success and attribute it mainly to this boring, overly conservative and procedure-ridden work process.
But yes, i agree, that for software projects, virtues of this approach are more limited than in "hard" engineering, and probably do not outweigh downsides in many cases.
I think scope, budget and time is a triangle. You have to choose 2 of it, and 1 is always lost. There's almost never a on-budget, on-time and on-scope project.
> Europe (low digitalization, high taxation, recursive federalism: within the country and within the EU).
A decent chunk of those are exclusive to Germany, or at least far from the norm in the EU or Europe in general. For instance digitalisation varies wildly between countries, but Germany is definitely one of the most embarrassingly behind countries. Taxation also varies (e.g. Bulgaria and Estonia have flat income taxes). Federalism isn't a thing in most European countries too.
I'm a bit surprised you would consider the credit system the same as the US. It doesn't have the bonkers bit of the US system where you have to take great care to be in a small amount of debt even if you don't need to be, in order to "prove" your creditworthiness so that you can be in a lot of debt later.
Being in debt to build credit is mostly a fairy tale told by the companies - just having an open line of credit is all you need to provide account age. You don’t need to use it or carry a balance (you may need to use it periodically to keep it open but that can be charge/pay off immediately).
It's starting to creep into public services. You couldn't even get easy access to Covid stimulus funds without a credit card. Debit cards were rejected despite providing the same level of ID verification.
At what point did you need to use a credit card to receive your economic stimulus payment? I simply confirmed my most recent tax year information when I claimed mine.
> Germans are typically complaining from a high level.
Do Germans share the British tendency to think everything is better in the rest of the world?
As an immigrant (as a child, admittedly) and someone who has lived and worked elsewhere and, more importantly, does not completely share this aspect of the culture, I find British pessimism and self-flagellation really, really annoying.
Germans unfortunately like to complain a lot. Many things are better elsewhere, is claimed. Except for many other countries nearby. And the weirdos from UK leaving EU. And the weirdos from US with Trump.
And we have it so bad, so bad. Sometimes I hate my fellow Germans.
Yes, especially for Finnish men in the countryside that's a sterotype with quite some truth behind it.
Edit: And that results in a dangerous combination: First waiting too long and then getting the answser "no free appointments". And if you insist the next one is in 3 or 6 months. Many Finns do not insist.
400€ for medical, dental, and optical combined you mean. And less for students. And you conveniently leave out their 4 week minimum vacation time/year. (my sis and her BIL just moved from there, and help people move there).
Digitalization is really behind yes, and homeownership is even more expensive than the US. But rent is almost half the US and groceries are cheaper. And instead of subsidizing full sized pickup trucks and EVs, you get Audis, VWs, etc for cheaper.
Now compare median income of Germany vs US. Economic opportunity is fading away in Germany. Also, pretty much all cars - especially Audis, VWs, etc are (20-30%) more expensive in Germany vs US.
True, but in the Netherlands it’s the government itself which sells all of your data, literally everything from your house, it’s price, location, blueprints, satellite images, what you paid for it, previous owners, your car, and even your government ID number if you are registered as a company, just to many a couple.
And yes, you obviously have to pay to get your own data.
> or public healthcare inaccessible despite paying more than 400€/month for it as a single individual.
This is super close to my early 2010's ACA experiences. Even when a poor earner could scrape up enough to buy a plan, the deductible made it unusable.
Policy pricing was exorbitant for $12k/yr earners but dropped enough for 22k/yr that a few plans were buyable. The challenge was coming up with another $somethingthousand to cover the deductible.
There was a sharp drop-off in plan pricing at 32k/yr and some mid-grade plans were in reach. IIRC deductibles were lower on those plans and they may have been usable (or nearly so).
What struck then. Of the news orgs cheering/damning the ACA, zero of them ever covered how pricing dropped as income rose. I assume that's because pricing was only ever disclosed to folks who completed the lengthy signup process - and news folks found it too daunting to experiment with.
There are no real deductibles in German public healthcare, though some areas are excluded almost entirely like glasses and certain dental work. The cost is also scaled to income, the 400 EUR (which is only 50% of the cost, the other 50% pays the employer) here are what you pay when you earn ~70k EUR per year and are essentially the maximum for public health care. So it is much cheaper if you earn less money.
One of the main current criticisms of the system is that it can be very difficult to get appointments with specialists compared to people with private health insurance.
I used the values from the original post, which is only the employee part and not the employer part. I also assumed that they're not using current but slightly older values here. I also didn't include the PPV, if you include that and count the employer part you end up at 1000 EUR.
Healthcare is kinda shit in The Netherlands. Long waiting lists even for simple things. Never actually prescribing medication but instead over prescribing paracetamol. Only being able to get a set amount for appointments regardless of actual need.
Sure if you’re in a car crash and urgently need care they will help you without going bankrupt but anything less urgent good luck getting an appointment this week / month / year
Does The Netherlands not have Urgent Care facilities like the US? I feel like those for of facilities could handle the issues of a lack of access for simple or menial things. I had to get a cyst lanced a few weeks ago and I just walked into an Urgent Care by my house and was in and out in about an hour with no appointment. I think it was about $180 since I didn't have insurance.
I am dutch and have lived in quite a few countries in the eu and se asia: I would prefer to never have to deal with NL healthcare services again compared to other countries. And I have been (unfortunately) been in hospitals, a lot. Since the 90s NL is striving to become little USA policy wise and this is still getting worse. It’s a shit show.
A mess of private insurances, partial payment by the government of private insurance based on income, and then full (or almost full) government payment based on veteran status, income, and age. It's more complicated than this of course.
Is Netherlands healthcare better? From what I've heard from people having lived in both countries, German healthcare is more accessible. E.g. in Netherlands you can't see a specialist doctor unless you convinced your GP you absolutely have to - which can be hard at times.
I'm 58 and not exactly in the best of health. I've had to rely on healthcare in NL quite a few times over the last 20 years or so and all of those were serious cases. I have nothing to complain about, but that's n=1. To increment that n a bit: I know lots of people here and almost all of them have had some health issues over the years and the vast majority of those have been dealt with in a serious and reasonably effective manner.
Where NL is utterly ineffective is when it comes to vague symptoms. Until it is perfectly clear what is wrong you're going to be seriously frustrated because the diagnostic machinery isn't really all that effective, when in other countries they'd spend a fortune to find out what's wrong with you in NL unless it's 100% clear you're going to have a hard time getting the care that you need.
I blame Calvijn, NL seems to have a misplaced sense of reduced expression of emotion resulting in an expectation to tough things out rather than to deal with them and for some reason doctors seem to see complaints without a direct relatable cause as an attack of hysterics rather than as something to investigate. If you come from a different background you're going to find this a very difficult thing to deal with.
> the diagnostic machinery isn't really all that effective, when in other countries they'd spend a fortune to find out what's wrong with you in NL unless it's 100% clear you're going to have a hard time getting the care that you need.
Ironically the US seems to be best, or at least the "least bad" at this (if you can afford it); it's the only positive thing I can see about US healthcare.
>when in other countries they'd spend a fortune to find out what's wrong with you in NL unless it's 100% clear you're going to have a hard time getting the care that you need.
Sweden here, I hear the same things. I have had good experiences with health care here as my problems have been "normal" and straight forward.
But what other countries? Really, name one.
Same with computers.
You want to fix a straight forward problem or a vague one?
Given that everyone uses IBAN, and it works great, I strongly disagree.
>private healthcare if you want decent treatments
Your mileage may vary, but I was very impressed with the speed and ease of acquiring healthcare under a public plan. The lack of paperwork for seeing a new doctor is astonishing. The lack of copays, SOBs, and all that is like a breath of fresh air, and is worth copying in the US. Heck I once saw a doctor for something and simply gave my card, and saw the doctor in the next hour, and she decided I needed an ultrasound...and did the ultrasound in 5 minutes herself. In the US, this would have been a multi-week ordeal with multiple rounds of paperwork and visits to different offices.
My wife also had a C-section at a Berlin hospital and the care was competent and 100% covered by our public insurance. In the US couples requiring a C-section can expect $20k+ of debt.
Low digitalization isn't just payment - it's also needing to fill in paper forms, or making in-person visits to government and business offices.
I've been living in Germany for about a decade, and it is still behind in many of these items from when I left the US, and having a friend that recently moved from Germany to NL, he was blown away at how convenient and just not-hostile so many day to day interactions with governments and businesses were.
Like - big picture, I'm very happy in Germany, but certain things are still very archaic and sometimes needlessly so.
My impression coming from France, which I never thought of as particularly progressive on the technological front, is that Germany is full of odd, idiosyncratic archaisms.
> public healthcare inaccessible despite paying more than 400€/month for it as a single individual.
That's a pretty new thing though (been getting worse for the last 10 yrs). And the person responsible for the legislature that caused this change is the current health minister.
Also... 400€? It's a percentage of your salary. And you're omitting that the employer pays the same amount, so you're effectively paying 800€ at the very least.
> Also... 400€? It's a percentage of your salary. And you're omitting that the employer pays the same amount, so you're effectively paying 800€ at the very least.
Ah, that's nicer than here. In my EU country you just don't get healthcare if it's not paid. Funnily enough you can't just go and pay it either, it has to come through something like a job.
He revamped pretty much evey monetary incentive a few years ago, which directly caused the "gold rush" privatization of hospitals etc, making a lot of treatments uneconomical. There has been a lot of coverage about it over the years - both by official channels and independent YouTubers and journalists, I'm not going to do it justice by summarizing it in a comment here.
A somewhat recent German video (2yrs old) is "Pflege katastrophe - exposed". But ARTE , DW and ZDF all have reported on it at this point
The controversy about diabetis patients getting amputations over simple treatments is a pretty well known symptom of this revamp, as operations get a very high payout
It's a collective payment system whereby everyone receives the same treatment, but high earners subsidize low earners, students and pensioners. Whether that is a good idea or not is of course a matter of debate, but it doesn't make sense to compare the benefits with the cost because they are not linked.
If you are a really high earner you can opt out and pay a private risk-based premium instead.
The original commenter was complaining that he was paying €400 per month and not getting adequate service for what he is paying. Somebody else mentions that he's actually paying €800 per month (and not getting adequate service). That makes it even worse, and I'm surprised if somebody can not understand that.
From that amount I can tell they're at or near the maximum amount you can pay (a software dev salary will usually get you there). It currently tops out at 421,76 Euro and doesn't increase any further from there.
Many people at that income bracket opt for private insurance, because it will be cheaper and provide you better care.
Cheaper, when you are young and single. Get a family and pay for every member. Get older and see your rates increasing. Also the rates won't drop if you're a pensioner.
You need to know your future, as it's more or less a decision for life.
Sweden is highly digitalized, we pay on our phones, pay taxes on our phones, do government stuff on phone or webbrowser. No stores do cash anymore (also a negative)
Sweden is a low tax land compared to Germany. In the past, it was known for high taxes, but one could argue that this progress came together with the tax reduction in the last decades.
That's utter bullshit.
Your quality of care in the hospital is exactly the same as with public health insurance.
Also sometimes private insurance is even worse when it comes to addiction and psychological treatments
You're treated the same in big hospitals but when I was in Berlin, private vs public meant I could get an appointment at a dermatologist tomorrow instead of in two months.
This is not true. Private insurance means better care in hospitals in Germany. Better access to appointments, choice of head/experienced doctors, even can mean better rooms.
You know, I'm a med student, so I have a bit more experience :)
The Head/Experienced Doctor is still letting the Learning Doctor doing everything and pops in only for the visit.
Also the "standard" Patients get also checked by a Oberarzt regularly.
The difference is miniscule.
The Rooms are sometimes nicer I agree, but the care you get is still 100% the same. The Hospital also doesn't get extra money for the treatment besides the Fee for the "Chefarzt" and the nicer room.
Otherwise they'll only get the same DRG payout as for a "public patient"
No, it means you may potentially have all of those but there is no guarantee. Neither is there a guarantee that a publicly insured person wouldn't receive the same treatment.
E.g. if there aren't any free "better/worse" rooms what are they supposed to do? Many of these are nowadays covered by employers as a benefit or for cheap (~5€) out of pocket if you want.
Private insurance matters most for specialists that don't (aren't allowed to) have (or want) a public insurance license.
I just opened Doctolib and did a test with a dermatologist. The difference between private insurance was 23.5.2024 and public insurance 5.6.2024. That makes 13 days and not "3 months bare minimum".
Also if your primary doctor determines that you need an urgent appointment, they can give you a priority code, which gives you a quick appointment, since those visits are paid on top of the regular budget for the specialist
> private healthcare if you want decent treatments
> public healthcare inaccessible
What do you mean? I am not sure what you mean by decent treatments.
> Schufa
There is some change happening there, especially now that the EU Justice Court ruled against credit scoring institutions (they break GDPR, etc.). Very slowly, as usual, but it might happen. (Also the current governement is planning changes.)
This is not a thing on HN because this is not a thing in real life. Over the sixteen-year period between 2005 and 2020, nearly three-quarters of the 138,230 tonnes of natural uranium imported into France came from four countries:
Kazakhstan: 27,748 tonnes (i.e. 20.1%);
Australia: 25,804 (18.7%);
Niger: 24,787 (17.9%);
Uzbekistan: 22,197 (16.1%).
Only Niger is in Africa, and France has 10 years stored in case of geopolitical conflicts.
Reddit has constantly provided better results to my questions over the past year.
Also, most subreddits accepts posting detailed "Am I doing this wrong?" questions instead of only perfectly asked ones that have never been asked before. I find it a better balance than SO removing a question I spent 30 minutes formatting because someone asked a tangentially related question 5 years ago.
Well-written and touching post. To switch off this API used by so many long-time users on the same day "For You" appears as the default option on Twitter triggers me. The "For You" timeline is only for Elon: it will drive engagement, extremism, and all the things social networks have been accused of driving for years now in order to make more $.
Some folks here have been comparing the crypto/Web3 and ActivityPub craze recently but I see a massive difference. A billionaire has spent the last 3 months shitting on what I thought was my social backyard. Crypto and NFTs did not impact how I use my bank accounts, Elon ruined in a quarter a very special place I had crafted over a decade.
Mastodon is not great right now, the UX needs to vastly improve, but all for-profit social networks have always disappointed in the long run. Looking back, few technologies have kept the same degree of greatness over the past 15 years: emails, torrents, RSS feeds... only tools no corporation fully controls. I hope ActivityPub can join that list fairly soon.
I admit I don't use Twitter or Mastodon very much, but Mastodon's UX seems pretty decent these days. At least 50% of the time when I click on a Twitter link something breaks. Either the page doesn't load or a video won't play or whatever. And that's to say nothing of the "SIGN UP FOR TWITTER" bullshit that pops up whenever you click on anything.
I was just thinking about how every page I visit on mastodon is in a strong dark mode theme.
About a week ago I was in Twitters web settings checking stuff like connected apps, just to see if there are some, and switched the theme to light, the default blue-white, which probably 90+% of the users see.
I then noticed that Twitter looks nicer when not in dark mode (I have this same issue with IDEs, but yet I always stay with dark themes), that it looks friendlier.
Does Mastodon have a way to set my own preferences across all the different servers by specifying it in one location, or is this something the owner of the server decides? because if 90+% of those light themed Twitter users are confronted with default black themed mastodon feeds, it might give them a bad association towards this dark web thing the news talk about, or some depressive mood.
I wonder if it would help if Mastodon instances had a light theme by default.
The "For You" timeline is a new name for the "Home" timeline that's been around forever. And now it's easier to get to the chronological feed ("Following"), the first actual UX improvement to the site since the acquisition.
You can‘t default to the “following” tab anymore (every time you open the app it shows “for you” by default), which likely puts it in the “for Elon” camp. Or maybe there’s an even-more-buried setting to default to “following” than tapping the old (were they?) “stars”? But definitely not good UX when users have to tap “following” every time they want to only see, ya know, who they’re actually following (aka what they’re explicitly interested in).
It doesn't work that way for me (Mac/Chrome). Whatever tab I choose stays active, and persists through opening and closing tabs. Only goes back to "For You" when logging out and back in.
Yeah, the "For You is only for Elon" thing isn't a smart take. Makes me think he hasn't been around Twitter very long. From my perch down here in southeast Asia, Twitter is better than it's ever been at this point. A lot snappier and faster for users outside of North America.
Maybe because it doesn't seem to be loading every tweet and mention from people I'm following. Quite a lot of threads are broken (at least for me) because a lot of tweets aren't being loaded anymore. The amount of posts on my timeline has been decimated, but if I go to the individuals I follow, I can see that they have tweeted, I just don't see them in my timeline.
It does seem to have gotten substantially _worse_, though. In 15 years of using Twitter, up to late last year, I had blocked maybe three 'real' users (that is actual established accounts with followers, not FirstNameBunchOfNumbers). I mostly used it via Tweetbot, but if I went to the website, the algorithmic timeline was... not that useful, but basically inoffensive.
Then between the takeover and giving up entirely at the end of November, I was hitting block every time I looked at the website. For instance, I'd never had to trouble to block Elon Musk before, but he was suddenly constantly popping up.
I'm pretty sure that some settings got fairly dramatically tweaked.
Twitter was really pretty solid for what it was, had lots of great accounts and even with the stock UI was pretty operable for me. Even advertising on Twitter was pretty fun. You could reach
people all over the world at reasonable cost and get feedback on your product and messaging.
Most recently I used Twitter pretty much exclusively for following the war in Ukraine, and it’s been a big loss for me—Telegram is a good source for primary content, Twitter was great as a human-driven social redux. I followed a person in Mariupol, some people in Russia and Belarus, lots of people in Ukraine and Europe. It was a great for keeping up with such a terrible thing.
Unfortunately it takes a lot, and I mean a lot, to overcome network effects when something like Twitter is involved. The only way it goes under is if they are losing revenue and they actually go bankrupt at some point.
Elon has already been muzzled quite a bit and I haven't seen much out of him recently, so I imagine as long as that keeps being the case going forward we're going to see Twitter do just fine.
To be clear, I meant "RIP Twitter" for me personally. I wouldn't bet on Twitter failing. I think he'll make it work one way another.
> The only way it goes under is if they are losing revenue and they actually go bankrupt at some point.
That said,
> According to press reports, Twitter requires more than a billion dollars a year just to maintain its debt service and anything that endangers loan repayment or workforce security could endanger the business.
"much out of him" is a relative qualifier. At the least his tweets haven't been making news unlike the week where he was taking polls whether he should step down and unban journalists.
I find it hilarious when people say stuff like this. Every day, Twitter shambles ever closer to the distant, cobweb-laden corridors in which you can find Myspace, LiveJournal, or DeviantArt. Yeah, they're still out there, technically operating, but with not even a fraction of the social/cultural relevance they once held.
At this point the signal to noise ratio on Mastodon is amazingly good. Who would have thought that just displaying the timeline would be so refreshing.
yep, I have to say, it (Mastodon - mostly infosec.exchange) has been ..nice.. and /tilts head .. effective in communicating what I wanted to communicate with people who I wanted reach. And I think for social media that is the bar you want to reach. Nice and works. refreshingly surprised after being scarred by years of facebook and twitter- I assumed that was a good as social media was going to get. Apparently not.
Dealbreaker for Mastodon (that I've seen multiple people mention) is that instance admins can view personal DMs. Yes, employees from major social media companies can view your private messages, but it's more likely there's an audit trail in those cases while Mastodon instances have minimal oversight.
Right now I’d be more worried about Elon Musk giving activists access to Twitter DMs than either of the admins for the Mastodon instances I’m on. What good is an audit trail when the auditor is part of the problem?
You were able to switch to "latest tweets" before as well. The control was top right next to "home" label, the icon looked like stars.
The only thing that truly changed is "latest tweets" got renamed to "following" and it now takes up more vertical space (53 pixels to be exact) completely unnecessarily for something you're quite unlikely to click on on a regular basis.
Change for the sake of change. Doesn't actually have an impact on anything.
Not that I want to defend Elon’s twitter, but a sliding menu is far better than a button you need to click on to see the options of what it does. It far easier to see tweets just from the people you follow with just a glance & swipe
There's no sliding to be done on a desktop, and I'm pretty sure there's enough space to put "for you" and "following" next to "home" above it, where the icon used to be. Or better yet get rid of "home" above it completely as I fucking know when I'm on a homepage, plus there's three(!) additional ways of getting back to the top when you scroll down the timeline ("home" in the sidebar, Twitter logo in the sidebar, "see new tweets" popup), and there's your space for "for you"/"following". Still horrible, but at least as horrible as it was up until now instead of being twice as horrible.
That vertical placement on a desktop is by far the biggest part of my complaint. It's half a two-line-long text-only tweet less on your screen at all times (spacing and controls below the tweet included), accurate to the pixel. It annoys me enough that I used inspect element to measure it. The implementation on a phone is way less horrible.
you've been able to switch for a while but it wasn't obvious, i kinda stumbled upon it one day.
i find the new tabs at the top of the screen take up too much space and they scroll down when i go through my timeline. (i browse on my laptop via firefox, no idea what the mobile experience is like)
The "for you" was already the default option, if anything they made easier to switch to the "following" that before was kinda hidden on top and hard to find.
p.s.: i dislike musk since it was cool to like him.
What's wrong with Mastodon's UX? It's basically Twitter from ten years ago. The whole federated thing is a bit confusing but you can just use the default mastodon.social instance and not think about it.
Indeed. I got to that point of signup and playing with Mastodon and stopped. What, am I supposed to go hunting for some random server that'll allow me to join? Nah. I'll take my chances with getting kicked off or banned from Twitter, thanks. If I'm sent away from Twitter, I'll just stop consuming that content entirely. Probably a waste of time anyway.
This notion of affiliating with specific servers with specific cultures is I think one of the first things that's going to go out the window as Mastodon/ActivityPub succeeds. It's not that hard to provision single-user instances, and the fabled moderation overhead issues are, as I understand from talking to operators, mostly a thing that follows from having lots of people in an instance following lots of other instances --- much less a big deal if you're personally choosing every follow on your own instance.
Think Blogger, not Twitter or Facebook.
In the meantime, there's lots of smaller servers that are taking signups. I ended up on infosec.exchange; it's been fine (thanks, infosec.exchange people!). I'll be on my own address sometime in the next month or so.
Mastodon was not made for p2p, which having a huge amoung of single-user instances basically is.
The problem with Mastodon is that it ties your main account (and yes, most people just want a single account to represent their online persona) to a single instance which might have a very silly name and a very strong and unique culture (i.e. local timeline).
The solution to this is not to self-host, because the infrastructure was not made for it. The solution would be to completely rethink the Mastodon experience, but that will never be done
I'm not sure I even follow this argument. I can stand up a single host in an hour or two. Six months from now, there will probably be 30 competing providers who can do it at the push of a button. Respectfully: why is it relevant to me what Mastodon was "made for"? I just want to follow people and post stuff. That works just fine even if literally everyone has to run their own server.
ActivityPub is like RSS and Google Reader rolled up in Twitter's UX. That's what I'm psyched for, and the part of it that I think will catch on.
It's not a dumb question! I know that there is some notion of portability from one instance to another but I haven't the slightest clue how it works under the hood. I'm just sort of counting on this working. :)
I greatly appreciate federation being available even if I never have to use it. If a future social network comes along with some kind of new innovation,and it supports ActivityPub, I'll be able to use the new network while still communicating with my old contacts.
It's an excellent choice of name! (Signed, a kiwi)
Pleroma seems interesting too, though some drama in the community there turned me off a bit. I might keep an eye on Takahe too, I hadn't come across that one. Cheers!
Awww, I know they were accepting new accounts a few weeks ago because I made an account! But it looks like they closed again. That's a shame!
If anyone reading this just wants a simple Twitter replacement, I recommend masto.ai, another large and general-purpose instance which is accepting signups. But, yes, this is very much The Problem.
Elk (https://elk.zone) seems pretty good to me, though I'm not particularly fussy about UX in this particular case (I only check social media a couple of times a week). But there's quite a range of clients to choose between.
A billionaire attacking somebody else as "Pedo Guy" was peak hominem plus outrageous power imbalance, and the post you're replying to doesn't hold a candle to that. Plus Musk really is "a prick" "Space Karen" "King Shithead" "shitty person" "arrogant bastard" "billionaire bozo" "a clown". Truth is the best defense against libel.
Thing is, that level of invective just makes me think he's got politically motivated brainworms. In terms of performance and features, Twitter is better than it's ever been.
Elon just killed a sizeable chunk of their business without a word of explanation, let alone at least heads up. He’s pissed, rightfully so - it’s “livelihood motivated”.
It's not an ad hom if he's not claiming Musk is a shitty person therefore he's wrong about X. He's saying Musk is a shitty person and he's wrong. He's just using Musk's chosen pronouns.
Anyone comparing ActivityPub to the web3 craze has no idea what they are taking about and probably knows nothing about both of these things. They have nothing in common.
> A billionaire has spent the last 3 months shitting on what I thought was my social backyard.
I think Elon Musk is a horrible person, but... this one is on you, right? You thought that a company's service was your social backyard? That's on you.
There hasn't been any damage. No one has been hurt. Calm down and stop being overly dramatic. Twitter is not a real place, it's just a social network. Anyone who doesn't like it is free to use other communication tools, or even build their own.
And I'm not defending Elon Musk here. I don't care about him one way or another. This isn't an issue that rational, educated people should get agitated about.
> There hasn't been any damage. No one has been hurt. Calm down and stop being overly dramatic.
We are literally talking about a posting from the CEO of a company that has been essentially shutdown by this change. Other companies have also been placed in this predicament. People will probably lose jobs, at least, and these companies may go bankrupt.
This is so utterly wrong it hurts. The internet is real life the same way that evening news is real life. It’s a self-referential funhouse mirror that’s useful exactly for understanding what people who post on the internet think, and “people who post on the internet” is a tiny, profoundly idiosyncratic group. Conflating their opinions with “real life” is a powerful solvent for rationality, empathy, and mental health.
I'm defending the right to own property, which is something really fundamental to the way we organize our society.
... and when you say "the people that were hurt"... If you leave your wallet on the street, it might be stolen and you might be hurt. I'm not blaming the victim; someone stealing your wallet is wrong even though you left it on the street. It's not your fault, I'm not blaming you, I blame the thief for the theft. On the other hand there's something that you could've done that would've avoided it - don't leave your wallet on the street.
Nah, you are defending something that is based on the right to own property (and do whatever you like with it), but may nevertheless be shitty behavior. Just because something is legal and the legal basis is important (in your opinion), doesn't necessarily mean it is ok behavior.
E.g., being rude isn't forbidden, the freedom of speech is important, so is the right to express your personality. But lecturing the affected person about these rights may not be the best reaction when they have been insulted by someone.
I think the main point to discuss is not the rights, but whether the owner of a company should act more responsible, even if he is within his rights. And that's also the point of the OP.
I feel for this guy. He worked on a product for 16 years. A lot goes into that and it becomes part of your identity. Then right at a time close to the loss of his mother it gets shutdown, with no warning. I'd be devastated.
That said Elon is not doing this to anyone. He is not attacking anyone. He simply made a business decision. This happens all the time. Companies let suppliers go for financial reasons, they let staff go for similar reasons. People invest their lives into helping these businesses only to find they were let go for a few dollars. It sucks and it's can be super painful. Businesses mostly exist to make money and people should avoid investing their identity and loyalty into businesses as they probably won't reciprocate.
Just business doesn't usually lead to massive losses in an advertising revenue at an advertising business to the point Twitter is giving away ads. I'm not sure what it is but it's not just business. https://mashable.com/article/twitter-free-ads-to-advertisers...
It's just that we need to see business as business. You make relationships with people and put your trust and faith in people not in businesses. They're entities that can be bought and sold and exist purely to make a profit. They have their place and offer huge value to society but they are not people.
Why? Turds like Musk don’t need defense from anything other than their own ego.
Taking a poorly run site that had such a great influence in society and somehow running it even worse so that it loses its influence and revenue capability is breathtaking. It’s a lesson on how the modern hands off approach to corporate governance puts society at risk and is a lesson for limiting the rights of property owners.
You seem to be suffering from Reductive Personality Disorder.
Just because Musk has the power to do things like this doesn't absolve him from the absolute shittiness of his behaviour. He doesn't get a free ride because he's the owner, quite the opposite. People who wield power should act responsibly with it. Musk hasn't heard of the concept because he's so self absorbed and insecure he has no room for any sort of basic human empathy.
I’m not a Twitter user at all, but the people who have engaged with Twitter over the past few years are the ones who have provided Twitter with its value ($44 billion according to Musk). It’s not because of Elon or the previous shareholders, it’s because of the users.
In return for this value, the users got a social ”backyard”.
We like to say that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but it’s also true that the free lunch is an exchange.
How does this example supposed to work? When you deposit money you get an asset (an IOU from the bank), while the bank gets money + liability (they are short the IOU).
Your property after the deposit is the IOU, not the money (you gave the money away in exchange for the IOU!).
There is contract + law that governs how the IOU can be redeemed for money (up to a limit the federal government guarantees some kinds of IOUs via FDIC/etc).
Once the bank has your money (for which they gave you the IOU), they in fact can use the money at their own discretion (it is their money!) subject to some legal limitations. Those limitations are not about how banks use other people’s money (because normal banks aren’t custodial), they are limitations based on risk and collaterization of IOUs (the bank’s liabilities).
These limitations are not expression of your property rights, they are in fact limitations on bank’s property rights (their freedom to deploy capital) since historically banks were not very responsible and blew up (in which case they failed to cover their liabilities, so IOUs were redeemed for less than their face value).
Edit: as an aside, this
money => money + IOU + IOU short
Is exactly how most of “money” in circulation is produced. People take the IOU and spend it like money, banks take the money and lend it collaterized by houses/factories/etc. So you get people spending more than total cash in circulation (because they spend IOUs), while banks accumulate large IOU short position (again, collaterized through stuff like houses, factories, etc).
Nothing bad about this, this is in fact working as intended.
Really? So if you go on a rampage of profanities and spew never ending hate and be as ugly and rude as possible that's praiseworthy?
> "For You" appears as the default option
No, it had been the default for several years now and every time you disabled it, it would mysteriously re-enable itself after a while.
> The "For You" timeline is only for Elon
No, he even complained about this feature, shadow-banning, censoring, and basically brain washing the masses among other things, before he bought Twitter.
> Mastodon is not great right now
No, because it will never be great. We discussed de-federation when I was at Twitter in the early days. It was clear an archipelago of decentralized servers can never generate momentum to drive enough revenue to get the wheel of acceleration spinning fast enough.
It was true then and it is true now, no matter how many hipster wanna be crypto bros who work on m7n tell you otherwise.
Pretty clear where your values are here. Personally I quite like a system that's explicitly not being designed to drive revenue, and would like to interact with other people that also want to be in a place with a higher value then the dollar bill. Im perfectly happy to let people with your values stay on twitter away from me.
> On macOS does this replace Homebrew and MacPorts?
I use Homebrew for casks and the few CLI tools I need for all my projects (e.g. the Github CLI tool) and I use Nix for CLI tools I need to work on a specific repository using specific versions (e.g. node).
Seconding this! When I'm on a Mac, I use Homebrew only for casks (automatically downloading .apps and DMGs for macOS GUI), and Nix for project-specific development environments. I do also like to use Nix for globally available packages, though, especially via Nix-Darwin.
Tangentially related: has someone found something less energy intensive than taking a bath while bringing the same degree of warmth?
I've been looking at heated blankets but they're all made of polyester which is not comfortable due to the moisture being trapped under the blanket. Heated seats in some cars are the closest sense of comfort I've found but that technology doesn't seem to exist for regular seats.
I have an electric blanket. The way it works is that you put it underneath the sheet, on top of the mattress. Moisture getting trapped under it isn't really a concern, because i lie on top of it. From the sheet up, the bed works in the normal way.
I turn it on for 30 - 60 minutes or so before getting into bed, to warm the bed up, and turn it off once i get in. I have tried leaving it on all night on the lowest setting, when it is very cold, but i wake up dehydrated.
Maybe just one or two hot water bottles? [1] We use them in Winter to warm our feet in bed. But they are very versatile and can also be used to alleviate any kind of tension.
I also use one while I code: I put it inside of a small (baby-)sleeping bag wrapped around my feet. Sounds weird, but it's so comfortable!
We use this trick on winter backcountry camping trips to good effect. After dinner, melt snow to a boil and fill up all our water bottles and bring them in the sleeping bag. Every little bit helps!
Another trick is to put lots of dry rice grains into a sock, tie the sock and warm it up in a microwave. Just be careful, as the rice heats up Really fast in the microwave.
A heated mattress cover has been a game changer for me. You can use your existing comfy blankets and it only takes a very small amount of heat to really make a difference. It definitely pays for itself in being able to reduce temperature set point at night.
Heated blankets never really did the trick for me either. Electric foot-warmers do. They're cheap, don't consume too much energy, and will get your feet nice and toasty in no time.
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