u/Synaps4

Corporate control over modern life is driven by control of the search for needs. Basically, marketing embedded in our communications is how people become captured by consumption.

Let me unpack that for a second.

Why do people buy what they buy? Because its what they know about, and because its what they think they need.

• Information drives people's behavior.

People fill needs they are told about, using products they are told about. It is through search and information (AKA google SEO + traditional advertising + influencer/social media advertising) that people find and decide what to buy...and to define their needs in the first place.

If we can build and join a fundamentally non-corporate information infrastructure in which advertising has no place...and if that information is convenient enough that people use it...we can make a non-corporate world. People won't buy things they don't need if they don't see advertisements for it. If they search for knowledge online and see real information and not SEO spam. If they can find small suppliers in their local area they won't go to big box stores. The other advantage of big box stores (aggregating many things into one trip) has already been eroded by shipping and delivery.

• The building blocks for such a world exist already.

They just aren't good enough or convenient enough. Some are downright hard to use. We have private web searching options like SearXNG. We have non-corporate social media like Mastodon. We have ways to discuss and review products without advertising, like iFixit. We have models of group self moderation like Wikipedia.

What hasn't been done is to put things together in a way that it's easy for an untrained person to use them. Much like piracy, the way advertising captures the lives of those around us is a service problem. Simply put, people are busy, and they will use what's most available. If they need a software engineering degree to escape the advertising bubble, then only software engineers will do it.

• What's the goal?

Rather than having people meet their needs by buying what corporations put in front of them, they could meet their needs by buying (still capitalism, be patient!) what actually works best according to review scores that are aggressively scrubbed of corporate influence. By building a non-advertising ecosystem for sharing information about needs and how to meet them (food/shelter/transportation/entertainment) we could build an anticonsumption world. It wouldnt need us to take on any of the big things like abandoning capitalism or reforming class systems or addressing systemic inequality, though those would be valuable.

• TLDR: We should build an open source product discussion and review site that is so easy to use that it replaces marketing as the way people learn about what they need and how they should meet that need.

I'm convinced it could be done. With what we have today. If people chose to put the time into it.

Endgame so assume we don't care about money very much.

Which stations should i build and which npc stations should i look to get benefits from?

Im playing a mod that expands the endgame center regions from a dozen sectors to hundreds. So i have options.

Some stations i think players cant build. rift research stations and turret factory supply stations, i think. Might be desirable to build where some of those exist? Which? Rift research seems useful to have in your home.

Some stations are better when you own them. However i can only think of turret factories and maybe fighter factories so you can reroll their blueprints. All the other ones i can think.

Some stations it doesnt matter if you own them or the NPC faction does Shipyards and repair docks and equipment traders and research stations are all pretty important in a home system but they are only just a bit cheaper if you own them and this is endgame so were making a hundred million an hour or more.

Does having gates in your system improve npc traffic to your stations?

Alternatively maybe the best is to just build in a wormhole system for quick travel?

In summary: which stations does the player need to build, which stations is it good for the npc ally to have already built, for an endgame player faction capital system?

Next year will be my 10 year FIRE anniversary. I did it totally by accident. Didnt even coast fire on purpose, just thought it was a bridge to my next job.

Got a college degree because it was an interesting field. I got headhunted into a company that paid well, set up the employee stock purchase program and forgot about it as the stock went to the moon. Lived below my means but that was easy with a high salary and little free time. Fell for a girl while in high school who turned out to be a frugal adult. Then fell into coast fire for a decade.

She made intentional sacrifices to save and brought as much to the table as I did. But I didn't struggle like that. The only thing I did was:

• not be a slacker in school or work,

• setup automatic investments

• stay below my means after leaving my job

• plan a low expenses lifestyle in the future

I cant take any credit for FIRE. About the only thing I did really intentionally was live cheaply when I didnt have money to spend. Lots of people do as much or more effort and end up still struggling. I wish I could show people how to do what I did, but the honest truth is I was lucky, and that's it. I hope you all get lucky, too.

At least the sound portion of my chipset drivers are gone on each reboot and I have to run the package again to install them. Then it works fine until the next reboot.

I know this isn't much to go on, can you suggest what kind of diagnostics I might use to narrow it down? I'm fairly technical.

This is an Asus Nitro 5 laptop AN515-58 N22C1

The chipset driver version is the intel 10.1.36.7 w11x64_A

I'm not sure if these are related but both started in the last week or two. I was ignoring the "from Empty room" chat requests but when I try to hit "ignore" on them I get an "Unable to leave the room" error. I now have six identical such empty room chat requests that cannot be ignored or removed from the list.

Then 2 days ago, some of the comments replying to me across reddit have become permanent residents in my unread list. 6 replies across 5 subreddits are permanently unread no matter how many times I read them, while other replies fall off the unread list when viewed, as expected.

Edit: just discovered the comment replies become marked as read and fall off when I visit the comment directly, but they just don't show as read when viewed in the unread messages list like they should.

I have done a few searches but haven't seen anyone else reporting similar issues. What can I do to get to the bottom of these bugs?

The issue persists across new and old reddits, and across both my android web browser and three desktop firefox installations. I have not tested chrome yet.

Seems like it should. I want to build a software program that tries to launch the executable for each game outside of steam to see which games actually dont require steam to launch.

My years old $30 toy drone just broke (bought new batteries which were reverse wired, RIP).

I just want to fly something small and cheap for as long as possible before battery runs out. That means no frill, no camera, few antennas, visual flight only. Just rotors, battery and a radio.

I see some reviews of cheap drones (such as the DRONEEYE 4DV2) with up to 20-30 mins of flight under $50 but these all include a camera etc. I would rather save the weight and fly longer. Do i have any better options?

I know enough about investing to know that to do it properly, you need to consider your return in the context of the risk you took to make it. Riskier investments might return more but they might also bankrupt you and being blind to that leads to chasing returns and ultimately inevitable bankruptcy.

Now, a proper investing firm will have trained people with math degrees and decent computers doing risk management for them.

How is an average person at home supposed to calculate their risk? Is there any comprehensive way to model risk that can be done in a spreadsheet using basic algebra? Because that's probably what the average investor can do.

I've started reading about things like Value At Risk (VAR) modeling, etc, but what else is there? Is there something simpler? VAR can be used for complex derivatives risk analysis.

What if I'm just looking at index funds? Is there a dead simple way to check your risk for those?

Or are home investors just ducks lined up to be shot by institutional investors when the risk gets remotely complicated?

It's also very fun to say.

I'm a fan of his other books in the series having collected the full 10 book series. However he hasnt written a mainline book in this series for 25 years. Does the latest one measure up to what came before? Did he comment on why hes writing 5 more books after a 25 year hiatus? The ending of the last book in 2000 was pretty solidly wrapped up, I thought. What made him stop and what brought him back to it?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Booklet_of_General_Plans%2C_Aircraft_Carrier%2C_CVE90.pdf

Carriers got big because aircraft became big and heavy and needed a longer runway and a catapult to get into the air. Part of that weight was the need to carry and care for 2-4 human pilots, although ever increasing bomb loads probably didn't help either.

Assuming mid-size long range UAVs can be made small enough, how would you design a modern escort carrier to be cheap, carry lots of craft, and deploy them for the roles escort carriers used to do (lots of anti-air and air-to-ground missions) escorting invasion fleets, convoys, ASW roles, and ground support to free up fleet elements to fight naval battles.

Would you still use a top mounted flight deck if you can launch/recover without a human onboard (vastly higher G-limits for both allow shorter more violent catapult launches and net recoveries)?

Where would you fit the inevitable missile defense and radar systems on a modern escort carrier? Would it be larger or smaller than the CVEs of old?

Are they significantly different systems?

I would probably hire a local EV converter to do the work.

Here's one highlander PHEV conversion page http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/683.html

I'd like something that can do 15-20 miles before it needs the engine.

I guess this is what happens as you get old? You have such a collection of fun stuff that new things come out and you want to play them but then you look at what you already have and you're still busy.

I'm still playing 2 MMOs, one from 2001, and one from 2012, a shooter from 2013, RTS games from 1995 and 2000, and a racing game from 2018.

Anybody else feel like new games are nice but you've got thousands of hours to go on what you already have? Then you start returning to games you finished 10 years ago. Its like your backlog eventually becomes circular and you don't need to buy anything.

I have two upcoming projects that require a thermal modeling step. One is a thermoacoustic heat engine and the other is a passive solar building.

Searching around i see maybe a dozen or more thermal modeling systems availabke, both open and closed source. Of course i would prefer open source, so I'm asking here.

Can anyone recommend any of the simulations based on capability and simplicity for a new user?

Does a system that can do both HVAC and thermoacoustic oscillation even exist?