Yeah, agreed. If I needed a filter for allergens I wouldn't trust noname brand too
Air filters. For car, HVAC, etc. Branded or OEM stuff is usually overpriced.
Yeah, apart from what another person said about alternative apps... Events organized by local communities or businesses are often advertised in Facebook only. I know of a few local businesses in my area with Facebook being their only online presence.
Maybe it's because they have to? Keeping in touch with older relatives, following local events, etc
Garmin. Works reasonably well without connection to the phone. Some models supported by Gadgetbridge
Edit: corrected app name
Well, they are saying they bring home $11k, not $17k a month, not sure where you got that number. With $11k of income, spending $5k on mortgage is less appealing. Especially if you consider a risk of layoff.
Yeah... And the second source cited in article, VChK-OGPU "outlet" is an anonymous channel in Telegram, that published information from "an anonymous source". Doesn't sound trustworthy.
That's what I love Lemmy for - a new perspective (and down votes, of course). Thanks for the link, it's an interesting read. I also looked up details on their taxation system and it's not that crazy, especially on business side. If someone wants it, here is the link to the article which compares Nordic countries tax system to US: https://taxfoundation.org/blog/scandinavian-social-programs-taxes-2023/
It seems that my opinion about lack of innovation was caused by me not knowing or hearing about big names of Nordic companies. No Scandinavian Apples or Googles around.
But as much as I enjoyed this conversation, I feel we have ventured way too far from Tim Walz...
I'm not saying you cannot have both. I'm saying that US and Nordic countries are like on opposing poles of economical systems spectrum. And in my opinion the better options are somewhere in the middle.
Yeah, CEO salaries are often outrageous. Wealth taxes should be implemented to curb that, and not just high bracket income taxes.
Nah, Nordic model is not a good choice. It's all fine to drill some oil, collect a lot of taxes and give that money away to people as welfare, while enjoying innovations produced by evil liberal capitalists.
I can't think of anything advanced after Nokia that is built in Scandinavian countries. No cars (Saab is dead, Volvo is sold to Chinese), no microelectronics, no innovative drugs. To be fair, they have IKEA and LEGO, but this is not what makes humanity progress.
I feel there is a lot of options on the left spectrum that is less radical but still beneficial for broad population. Think France or Germany as an example.
The header is misleading. Read the article and the details of that research. To make it work they propose to add 3.75% sales tax on everything except necessities, wealth tax for >$1mil net worth, tax capital gains as ordinary income, and keep existing Medicare paycheck tax same and employers contributions but slightly smaller.
It might be fairer system, and it will be more humane system for lower middle income folks who cannot afford health insurance and don't qualify for Medicaid.
But it's a lot of new taxes. They say that for top 20% earners the net healthcare cost will be higher. And all the lobbying from insurance business... i just don't see this could pass.
Why don't you read the article? The proposed system still has employer payments, but promises reduction of these payments which should give a good boost for businesses.
Not sure if this applicable in Canada, but in US you can take a loan backed by home equity. It's called HELOC and is independent from your mortgage - it will not change interest rates. The rates on HELOC are higher than current mortgage rates, but lower than credit card rates. The available amount depends on how much equity you have in your house.
Oh, sorry, I've assumed that you are in US since you posted an article about FTC.
I don't know if there is a similar service in Europe. I think you could get a virtual card linked to a crypto wallet, but this obviously comes with downsides
There is Privacy.com that gives you virtual cards to use for purchases. Money go from your bank account to them. Destination is visible on payment description still, but it may fool bank's algorithm. Or you can get paid plan from Privacy.com and mask destination completely.
Government: Only criminals use cash and crypto! Privacy advocates: Actually, this is not true... Government: makes cash and crypto illegal what do you say now, punks?
For a less than you pay for a cup of coffee, you can evaporate 10 or even 50 people!
Because we all know that a sergeant and soldiers can't even hit a starship from 10 meters. Yes, Stormtroopers, I'm talking about you. What, this is what community again?
Microsoft is fixing Windows Recall's biggest concerns.
Hey all,
I've been using a commercial VPN for years on my mobile devices and home PCs. Recently I've started to use Tailscale and realized I can easily create a self-hosted VPN on a cheap VPS with unlimited traffic.
But I'm not really sure if that's what I need. BTW, I'm not doing anything dangerous, no torrents, no illegal stuff, no journalism or whistleblowing, not even looking up abortion clinics. I just hate mass surveillance and I don't want to be constantly profiled.
Commercial VPN allows to "hide in a crowd" by sharing IP with thousands of other clients. But there are a few issues:
- Often sites blacklist VPN IPs, so I can't get in or pass captcha
- Performance is not very good
- I have to trust VPN to not keep the logs and not sell data. I used Mullvad and they are considered reliable, but you never know until it's too late
With self-hosted VPN, I'm losing benefit of "hiding in crowd" as my VPN will be used only by me and maybe a couple of other people. My understanding is that my VPS outgoing traffic is from static server IP. So if I login to Facebook once, the address is associated with me. I'll also have to trust VPS provider to not analyze my traffic and sell it. On other hand, I'm still protected from my ISP spying, from exposing my real IP address to web sites, from dangers of public WiFi networks. And I might get better performance for about the same price.
What's your take on VPNs? Tell me if you are using self-hosted VPN and why.
Hi! I'm seeking some advice and sanity check on hopping from Ubuntu to Fedora on my personal PC. I've been using Ubuntu LTS for almost two years now, switched from Windows and never looked back. But I cannot say I know Linux well. I use my PC for browsing, some gaming with Steam (I have AMD GPU), occasional video editing, tinkering with some self-hosted stuff that is on separate hardware.
I don't like the way Ubuntu is moving with snaps. And LTS version falls behind too much. So I decided to move to Fedora.
My plan is simple:
- I will install Fedora on a fresh nvme drive. I want disk encryption, so I'm going to have LUKS over btrfs for /home, and the root will remain unencrypted.
- I will copy all files from old /home to new /home, with the exception of dot-files.
- I plan to make use of flatpaks, so I don't think configuration for my apps is easily transferable. I'll have to install and configure apps from scratch, unless I'll have to use an RPM package.
Does all of this make sense? Is there a way to simplify app re-configuration in my case?
And as I never used Fedora extensively (booting from live image doesn't count), are there any caveats I should be aware of?
Hey,
In the past I used Duolingo to study languages, but now I'm more privacy-conscious and looking for better options. And their recent data breach only solidified that intention.
I recently saw someone posted a comparison table for privacy policies of Duolingo and a number of competing products. Unfortunately I cannot find it now.
Can you give any suggestions? I'm not opposed to paid services, btw
Hey all,
I'm looking for something that can track location of my preschooler who starts new school soon. He's too young to get a smartphone, so I have to rule out app based solutions I guess.
My initial research found virtually nothing. One candidate is GeoZilla, which sells nice devices and their pivacy policy looks okayish regarding location data, but it still relies on their servers of course. Another option would be an iWatch, which again puts trust into 3rd party, and the device is quite expensive for a small kid.
Any privacy-oriented trackers out there that I'm missing. Maybe there are some smartphone alternatives that can have cell connectivity and GPS and apps installed, but with much simpler interface?
Update: Thanks everyone! I got GeoZilla tag for now. The app doesn't require personal information, which is good. However, it's annoyingly reminds to enable location for itself to track "me", which I don't need at all. Garmin came as a strong second, mainly due to my child age. Garmin devices are not for very young kids, I believe. And it costs more than GeoZilla. I still have some time to think if I really want this, though. It's not too late to return GeoZilla tag
What it was and what did you like/hate the most about it?
It's slightly offtopic, but firsthand experience may help first time car buyers to choose.
The investigation was opened in response to work published last year by The Markup
Might be old news for some... TLDR: Some big online tax prep sites have tracker pixels from Meta and Google, which collect things like income, filing status, tax credits, etc.
Highway regulators are determining if 346,000 Escape models from 2020 and 2021 can stay on the road.
Oh, this is not good
I just got a letter from Ford about this.
https://www.ford.com/support/how-tos/recall/recalls-and-faqs/2020-2023-ford-escape-2022-2023-ford-maverick-engine-failure-recall/
Hi everyone,
I've created this community as a replacement for r/whatcarshouldibuy that I was subscribed to on Reddit. I used it a lot and I valued content and advice there a lot. It definitely influenced my recent car purchases and I'd like to have similar community here in Lemmy.
Please be polite and follow Lemm.ee instance rules.