Almost every purchase for oneself is an investment, not in the Financial Investment sense of putting money expecting to get more money out but in the broader sense that we buy things because they provide some kind of value to us, which can be a utility value, tge satisfaction of an actual physical need, the pleasure one derive from using it or even just the pleasure of owning it

People don’t just buy things with no reason at all at any level, though often people buy things for the emotional reason that it gives them a jolt of pleasure to buy that thing (not exactly the smartest thing to do IMHO, but quite possibly one of the core pillars holding up present day Consumer Society).

So in that broader sense even the peace of mind you refer to as a justification for buying a new car has an actual value which can be expressed into a rough money range or, even better, the more personal “how long do I have to work to pay for the peace of mind of a new car instead of buying a 2 year old car”.

Further once you look at it that way, you start identifying which objective/need/feeling you’re trying to satisfy and figuring out other ways of satisfying it for less - for example if a car is expensive enough you can literally pay to have many possible used cars you are considering checked by a mechanic before you buy, have car histories checked, and buy an extended warranty, to get that piece mind you wish and still save up a lot of money (or, in another “currency”, a lot of days of work to earn that money).

In that broader sense, IMHO, new cars are generally a bad “investment” versus cars with a year or two because you’re paying a huge premium for a piece of mind you might get for much cheaper or might not even need because your fears are just be the product of being widely misinformed about the probability of problems in cars relative (I can tell you from a broader Engineering sense, the rates of problem in physical products in general tend to peak first when they’re new, then go down, then start going up again when they’re aged, which for something like a car would be 5+ year at least, though beware that I only know this rule as a general thing and don’t have car-specific knowledge on it beyond some vaguely remembered stuff I read over a decade ago) and of imagining the worst possible scenario in your mind about what problems a 2 year old used car can give you when the reality is that scenario in your mind is incredibly unlikely and you can buy stupidly cheap insurance to cover it.

It deceives people whose idea of how things work in large companies hasn’t changed since the days when it was the manager of your bank branch who decided if you you should get a loan or not.

Nowadays, for certain in middle and large size companies, all the administrative main business pathways are heavilly if not totally automated and it’s customer support that ends up eating the most manpower (which is why there has been so much of a push for automated phone and chat support systems, of late using AI).

Those $25 bucks for “account closure” pays at worst for a few minutes of somebody’s seeking the account from user information on a computer, cross checking that the user information matches and then clicking a button that says “Close accout” and then “Ok” on the confirmation box and the remaining 99% or so left after paying for that cost are pure profit.

As somebody who works in designing software systems, including for large companies, lets just say that the amount of human time that goes into a customer account closure is negligible because main business operations such as openning and closing customer accounts are the ones that get automated the soonest and the furthest.

The stuff that uses “lots” (in relative terms) of manpower is supporting customers with really unusual problems involving third parties and even then spending 2.5 h man/hours (assuming the administrative person get paid $10/per hour) is pretty uncommon.

You’ve been lied to, repeatadly, for at least 3 decades.

If analyzed in purelly financial terms, buying a brand new car is almost invariably one of the worst investments there is compared to other options (if you really need a car, aim for a car which is 1 or 2 years), and if you couple that with taking a punt on a Musk product on the user side (not even the shareholders’ side but quite literally the side of the people the shareholders, most noteably Musk, want to extract money from, so pretty much the suckers’ side) AND, maybe worse, doing it as an early adopter, pretty much adds up to a guaranteed lubless shafting.

Investing in a “I’m a sucker” tattoo for one’s forehead probably has a better return.

As a Portuguese (that has also lived in a few other countries in Europe) I would say that it’s more that there is a range of emotions that men can express without that being frowned upon were certain things are still frowned upon if you show them openly (mainly around sadness) though for example openly showing tenderness for your partner or children is expected and even approved (unlike certain other cultures were men are expect to be distant).

Mind you, in some cultures the limits on expression of emotions or selectivity about which emotions you are expected to express is pretty high for both men and women (for example, the Dutch in general tend to refrain from expressing much emotion to strangers) and in some cases there is even such a strong expectation that you react in certain ways that it leads to people in general faking expressions of emotion (the English upper and upper middle classes are pretty big on showing the “appropriate” reaction independently of feeling it).

I would say (from contact with Americans and consuming some American media as well as having lived in England) that the expectations on what emotions people should be expressing are quite different and in England they’re even very much defined by people’s social class (for example, the “English Gentleman” is entirely a façade - all about what you show, not at all about what you think - and occupies the same place in terms of male behaviour expectations for traditional old-money upper class English men as the bossy slightly-angry assertive go-gotter seems to occupy in the US).

So far I generally have seen a tendency for frowning upon grown up men expressing sadness for themselves (though in some countries, not for expressing sadness in empathy with others and their pain, especially if they’re close family) and have also noticed equivalent expectations on the expression of emotion by women (for example, it seems to me that middle and upper class English women have a massive weight of social expectations on them in terms of what they’re expect to show to others - including the emotions they express - in lots of situations, and a lot of it is about reacting with the “appropriate” emotion in some situations even if they don’t feel it)

I’ve learned to free my emotions a lot more by studying Acting (by, for a few years, doing short acting courses as an adult whilst living in London): it turns out modern acting techniques - the stuff that roughly falls under the Method Acting umbrella - are all about feeling truthfully as if you were indeed that character you’re playing living that specific situation, so essentially I had a pretty much judgment free (in terms of other people judging you) license to let myself go and fully feel and show it (as that “person” which was the character in that situation).

Curiously it also unlocked my empathy (which turns out to be so high I’ll literally yawn from seeing animals yawn) though I’m not sure if my blocking of most of my Empathy until then was due to social expectations on how men are supposed to behave or a childhood self-defense mechanism due to one of my parents being VERY intense and emotionally selfish (it makes sense I would block it merely not to constaly be overwhelmed by somebody else’s rollercoaster of emotions).

All this even though I’m Portuguese and thus grew up in a culture were people are very expressive (compared to what I saw living in both Northern European and Anglo-Saxon countries, so think something like Italians), and all that expressiveness is backed by actual emotion (people really are enthusiastic or angry or saddened by what the other person telling you their story went through), though I would say that the range of emotions men are socially expected to express is limited to mainly positive emotional states or anger-related emotions.

Anyways, just my 2c as I think it’s an unusual point of view and maybe food for thought.

PS: One of the things I learned in Acting is that not only does your body follow your mind but also your mind follows your body (really: if you have any ability for introspection try walking with a confident walk and see how it makes you feel. Then try a downtrodden walk or a fearful walk) which kind dovetails with the whole idea that if you’re not expected to show certain kinds of emotional states you end up not feeling such emotions in day to day (except when you’re overwhelmed by it and it hits you like a ton of bricks).

“Perceived value”

Without that element, there would be no explanation for Marketing other than pure Brand Awareness promotion working (and McDonalds is definitely beyond needing more Brand Awareness, at least in the Developed World)

Even then, it doesn’t explain a lot of how Marketing does its work (namelly the stuff they took from Psychology and use to do things like create associations between brand and specific feelings on people’s subconscious - you know, the way cars are “freedom” and perfumes are “sex”).

And don’t get me started on other techniques that prey of human cognitive weaknesses (for example, FOMO would not work with the fabled Homo Economicus that underpins so much of Free Market Theory)

Anyways, a ton of present day enshittification (and that includes this kind of price inflation) relies on people having a well entrenched positive perception of a brand after years of having a relationship with it (i.e. chosing it as customers) and there being quite a lot of momentum behind it. It also relies a lot on using a “slow boiling” effect to keep people from spotting the full picture of the changes.

At least in some EU countries EULAs aren’t even valid in any way form or shape because they’re considered an unilateral attempt to force new contract terms after a sale, which is an implicit contract.

Absolutely, put a contract in front of people and say “sign here” before they pay and it’s valid (although even then, some terms are never valid since certain things can’t legally be signed away in a contract), try and force new contractual terms after a sale has been closed and it’s not at all valid.

I literally have two machines running on always on VPNs, one my personal PC and another a home server were a torrent service is running, and have no such problems.

I think maybe the mistake you made was spending most of the time with it OFF and then turning it ON once in a while, whilst mine just goes ON as soon as I boot my machine and stays on.

Granted, I’m not using it for getting around geo-locked websites, I’m using it for having a bit more privacy and for safety when sailing the high seas so once in a while I have the opposite problem (that I’m blocked from accessing sites in my own country because the connections appear to be coming from a different country).

Well, at least Israel made the sure the Hospital was a Terrorist Base, it’s just that they did it after they took over rather than before.

Ju$tice

• Don’t break the Law for the company or the boss.
• Keep the company shit in company devices and your shit in your devices. That means company computer and phone for their stuff and your own for yours. If there’s ever any Lawsuit or Criminal investigation on the company they won’t take your stuff as evidence if you don’t at all use it for company work and won’t intrude in your privacy if the company stuff isn’t used for your own stuff.
• Even if it’s totally legal, if something that your are being ordered to do against your better advice might come back to bite you (i.e. you might get blamed for the negative outcome you predict will come from it), get that order in writing.

Even your direct lead can’t be assumed to be your friend (no matter how nice: niceness is easily and commonly faked) until you’ve gone through some proper shit together and he or she has shown themselves to be somebody that will take the hit rater than “blame their underlings” - trusts is earned, not due.

The kind of company were Management and HR go around trying to convince employees they’re like family and other similar things are simply trying to act like abusive cults.

Sound more like “abusive cult” than “family” to me.

There are two things that the aftermath of Luigi’s action has made poignantly clear to pretty much everybody:

• That the vast majority of people no matter their party affiliation and political leanings is feeling the pain and hates the abuses that carry on being committed by a minority of people in our system with total impunity … until Luigi.
• That the Ju$tice System, the Police and most of the Press, unlike what they claim work for that minority of people, not for the rest of us.

It’s amazing just how certain parts of the system that are supposed to work for everybody (such as in this case the Police, and in other cases large parts of the Press with their “poor CEO” articles) are pretty much shouting loud and clear for all to hear that “we’re not working for you, we work for the ones that abuse you”.

Most people just discovered now with this killing of a hated CEO that what they individually felt about certain things was also felt by almost everybody, and then these bought-and-paid-for minions who for decades have been putting a lot of effort in passing themselves as “working for the community” just repeatedly and overtly signal to everybody else their true minion-of-the-rich nature.

Mind you, as a Leftie who has been skeptical of whose those elements of the current system for decades, I’m happy they’re basically outing themselves and they should keep on doing it so that everybody sees them for what they really are and who they really serve,

There are wankers everywhere and it doesn’t take that many wankers as a proportion of the population to screw things up for everybody else.

By that definition all “Industrial Associations” would not be capitalist.

Personally I would be wary of telling people they should trust the words of the spokespersons of most of them.

There are more than one way in which the elites and near-elites organise to advance their interests and IMHO The Guardian is very much The Voice Of The English Upper Middle Class.

The Guardian absolutely is capitalist (neoliberal, even). Just go check back on their campaign against Corbyn (a leftwinger who won the Labour Party leadership from the New Labpour neoliberals some years ago) which included such memorable pieces of slander like calling a Jewish Holocaust Survivor an anti-semite because of him in a conference about Palestine comparing some of the actions of the government of Israel with those of the Nazis, this done in order to slander Corbyn by association since he was in the same panel in that conference.

Also you can merely go back a few months to see how The Guardian supported Israel well into their Genocide (though they seem to have stop doing it quite as eagerly in the last few months).

Last but not least they very openly support in British elections the Liberal Democrats (who are neoliberals) and the New Labour faction of the Labour Party (also neoliberals) and very often have pro-privatisation articles on UK subjects and are never for bringing things back into public ownership even when privatisation has failed miserable to give better services or lower prices.

I lived in Britain for over a decade and read The Guardian for most of it, so maybe The Guardian’s political slant is clearer for those familiar with British Politics.

I do agree on The Intercept and Democracy Now! though.

Can’t really speak for the others with any knowledge.

Well, I haven’t really made any large wire transfers to accounts outside the EU from that bank in over a decade so can’t really confirm or deny.

I do know that in past experience with banks in general, the people checking the validity of suspicious transations (and large transfers to accounts outside the EU tend to fall into that classification given the prevalence of online scams from countries were the Law is a bit of a joke) will actually call you, or at least they did in the UK some years ago (pre-Brexit) which was the last time I had experience with something like that.

(At one point I also worked in a company that made Fraud Detection software).

Maybe they switched to SMS to save money, I don’t know.

Ah, I see.

Your point is that the use of a secondary channel for a One Time Pass is still an insecure method versus the use of a time-based one time password (for example as generated in a mobile phone app or, even more secure, a dedicated device). Well, I did point out all the way back in my first post that SMS over GSM is insecure and SMS over GSM seems to be the secondary channel that all banks out there chose for their 2FA implementation.

So yeah, I agree with that.

Still, as I pointed out, challenge-response with smartchip signature is even safer (way harder to derive the key and the process can actually require the user to input elements that get added to the input challenge, such as the amount being paid on a transfer, so that the smartchip signs the whole thing and it all gets validated on the other side, which you can’t do with TOTP). Also as I said, from my experience with my bank in The Netherlands, a bank using that system doesn’t require 2FA, so clearly there is a bit more to the Revised Payment Systems Directive than a blanked requirement for dynamic linking.