jmp242

joined 2 years ago
[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 year ago (6 children)

What do you mean votes aren't public? I see the up vote / down vote on this comment in fact.

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 11 points 1 year ago

The sales people are cons, but the idea has merit but not to make money. You're probably not going to rent it out for a profit.

Where it has merit is if you do the research and understand specifically that the concept can work for you, and take the timeshare off someone else in the secondary market it can save you a lot of money, but only in specific situations.

There are good and bad systems and locations. You want to optimize on those.

You also have to be someone who will go on week long trips multiple times a year and have a life that let's you either lock the dates in firm 9 months to 13 months out (depending on system) or can go in 30 days or less to what opens up last minute.

And you have to want to go to resort locations like Myrtle Beach, Orlando, Las Vegas, Smoky Mountains, Hawaii, Breckenridge, Branson, Williamsburg or California.

Oh, and you'll want to be ok with 3 star locations without daily maid service.

The upside is you can often stay in 2 bedroom suites with full kitchen and laundry with pools and hot tubs and arcades and mini golf in various amazing locations for about 1,800 dollars a week or less. Sometimes much less. If you're comparing 2 hotel rooms at today's prices that can be very cheap for 7 days. The average say Hampton Inn is close to 200 a night per room, so at the higher end of 1,800 you're still 1k less for the week.

And I've hit sales in the less demanding seasons for as little as $550 for the week. But of course if you're looking at Hawaii in season you might be at the higher end of 4k for a week cash, and technically the sky is the limit. This is where knowledge and planning comes in because you can pay for a week in say Florida for 1,600 every year, but trade that week with one that in Hawaii that goes for 4,000 much of the time. You just have to beat everyone else to the trade which is what the planning is for.

I am not a salesman just a so far happy "owner" going on a lot of trips this way by "sams clubbing" my vacations and paying ahead for some.

If you do want to learn realistic costs and nuts and bolts - tugbbs.com can teach you a lot for free.

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

First I don't see an issue with a "store brand" if it does what you need.

Secondly - who is the name brand for say a power strip or a USB hub or USB C charger or cables? Or do you buy monster audio cables? SD card reader? Microfiber cloth? What about regular bath towels?

Somewhat more controversial - what about things that are inherently disposable like latex gloves or laundry detergent?

I went from all free and clear from Sam's club which took up space and got me like 120 packets for 20 dollars to these detergent sheets which are much smaller and got 300 for 7 dollars. You use the same number of sheets as you would packets. The clothes come out the same.

But yes, try searching for something like an electric lighter for candles on both sites and tell me the "quality non knock off" on Amazon. 90 percent are on temu also for less.

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

And the direct pay model has plenty of audience capture or the well known yellow journalism issues. IDK it seems to me like ABC of the 1980s was more trustworthy than cable news or social media of the 21st century. Lies of omission are better than straight up lies imo - no documentation is better than wrong documentation.

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

I mean, most people don't think ease of changing a light bulb (that they never have to do) is a deal breaker for a car. I haven't had to change a headlight since they went to LEDs. My last car that was 7 years of owning it.

I think we should insist on making things repairable, but should focus on the things that come up frequently.

Because everything is a tradeoff, things like how often it is likely to need repair, how much the car costs, functionality of the car day to day, looks, gas mileage, heck a lot of stuff will come before a once a decade thing that you're either going to pay a shop to do or trade before it's an issue.

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

I mean people also say you'll grow up from being a liberal so lol. I presume it has a lot to do with why you have a particular political position and if you've actually thought it out at all.

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I find it fascinating that you have no preference between the candidates. Do you really think it won't matter which wins?

I hoped so in 2016,but then we saw what happened after that.

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The other thing is, disk space and internet speeds just keep getting cheaper so... Why change just for disk space?

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 29 points 1 year ago (14 children)

When the alternative was to pay more for the exact same things on Amazon, it's logical to pay less. Every app tracks you so idk...

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz -2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

You should worry about audience capture / gifting from the patreon model for journalists. And the government control from public funded.

Idk the answer, but ads did give us more less biased news in broadcast news for a few decades.

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

I think we all have some things that we either don't talk about to maintain relationships. Of course usually thats respected by both sides.

Do they care that you call them out? Do you dislike doing it? If neither happens it can be useful for people to realize they're not necessarily holding a position that "everyone does". It's useful to be taken out of your bubble I think, and to see "regular people" can have different positions, and maybe try and understand why they do. It might change someone's mind.

If course if they or you get worked up by the discussion and no one is getting anything out of it, no one is even 'agree to disagree' and it's just causing everyone stress... Then you need to clearly lay out that you don't like those sorts of comments.

If they ignore you, then you need to decide how much you want the relationship. You could say "I'm serious about these comments. If you don't want to stop then you need to decide how much you want to see or interact with me. Because I am willing to just avoid these discussions, but I will not keep hearing these comments, and will stop coming."

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you buy your phone unlocked, you can get Red Pocket which is extremely cheap for service compared to most post paid plans. You can get ~5gb data and unlimited everything else for 20 a month on AT&T. And then if you go to Europe you can just buy a cheap Sim while there and pop it in.

If you're not picky about the phone, I have gotten sub 300 USD phones for the last 2, first lasted 4 years and I'm about 6 months into the second. Honestly there's not much I feel like I'm missing, except spending way more money.

 
 

Pretty happy with this given my seating location and 24-70 f2.8.

 

One of a series of a rollercoaster in Busch Gardens VA.

 

So, I don't understand how getting federal funds through anything, but especially medicare would make you immune to lawsuits? What a crazy legal opinion to start with - glad to see that made it to the right decision on the court.

However, the later reference to "the spending power" - are they implying Thomas is going to try and declare medicare unconstitutional? I used to think that sort of thing would get people to vote against republicans, but at this point I think many voters would vote for getting kicked out of their own houses and shot if it was team red. IDK.

 

Ok, I can get sort of disagreeing the wildfires are from climate change - that's a couple of logical steps you have to make. But "It's not causing anyone to cough" is plainly ludicrous. It was making me cough when I went outside.

"It doesn't smell bad"? Maybe they have COVID and lost their sense of smell altogether? It certainly smelled bad to me. And if you thought it smelled great - wow. I just don't ever want to be around you if you like those sorts of smells. I can't see it actually working with anyone who's ever been in wildfire smoke before - like you don't need science or education or anything to notice if it makes you cough, or tell something doesn't smell great.

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1184398

For those of you who do not already know, YouTube has issued a cease and desist to the dev team of Invidious, a privacy-focused and ad-blocking front end for YouTube.

Ironically, the YouTube's complaint cites the devs' lack of a privacy policy for the Invidious service.

Luis Rossmann's video gives a good breakdown of the situation. He also mentions that cloning the repo would be a good idea before it gets nuked by github.

 

A pic from my recent trip to Williamsburg and surrounding areas like Yorktown.

 

Techlore gives an interesting short video on why he doesn't recommend SimpleX right now.

I think it's an interesting idea, but solves a different problem than the obvious competition in Signal. Signal is not without fault of course, but it does what it says on the tin, gets you secure messaging with your contacts. It doesn't hide that you're talking to your contacts and relies too much on the OS security it's running on IMO. (doesn't lock itself anymore or use a password to launch)

I haven't tried SimpleX yet, but my reading of it is 2 problems.

  • like Techlore, it's too new. Let's get some experience and audits under our belt.
  • it's worse than the fediverse for non techie people. It reads like manual key exchange, which while secure, is basically unusable for most people.
  • the problem it solves isn't one most people have. Hiding your social network... The people you know and communicate with is only slightly desirable for the average person and near impossible to do in today's world. And if you're not taking on govt level threat models, it's irrelevant. For most people interested in privacy, something like Signal keeps their contents of conversation private, and also keeps the people they are communicating with private from advertising and ISPs.
  • if you do want SimpleX hiding of who you talk to also, there are tools that have been around for quite a while that you could use, with the assumption you and your friends have the tech skills. The needed skills are maybe slightly more than SimpleX... Debatable.

Anyway I will keep watching SimpleX too, but I doubt it'll be something I can get the people I communicate with to switch too. It's been a lot of work to get them to use Signal, and that used to be a drop in replacement for SMS(still annoyed by that going away).

 

 

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/623295

Well, this is an interesting example of a pay for social network that apparently has existed since 1985. 2,700 members is not that big a site in the modern internet. So if you don't want to become a unicorn company or have wide appeal / access, it seems like it does work as a business model?

I'm vaguely intrigued but I don't really want to put down $15 sight unseen for a month to see if the forums are even interesting. Then again, I can't imagine they get bots at that price either. Probably very limited ads if any.

I am always excited by alternate operating plans for social media online - this one is kind of the opposite of Lemmy, but also the opposite of the major players. I guess orthogonal in reality.

BTW / OT: How do you crosspost on Lemmy?

 

Well, this is an interesting example of a pay for social network that apparently has existed since 1985. 2,700 members is not that big a site in the modern internet. So if you don't want to become a unicorn company or have wide appeal / access, it seems like it does work as a business model?

I'm vaguely intrigued but I don't really want to put down $15 sight unseen for a month to see if the forums are even interesting. Then again, I can't imagine they get bots at that price either. Probably very limited ads if any.

I am always excited by alternate operating plans for social media online - this one is kind of the opposite of Lemmy, but also the opposite of the major players. I guess orthogonal in reality.

BTW / OT: How do you crosspost on Lemmy?

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