To maybe add some framing, 37% of Americans don’t have enough cash to cover a $400 unexpected expense. Obviously $400 > $65 but I think it puts some perspective on how tight cash flow is for a good chunk of the population.
You don't need to buy the membership with cash. Credit card, pay off $3-5 a week with your food savings, you'll barely pay any interest.
Also not having $400 would have to be the number after buying food with your paycheck, right? If you get the membership as part of your first food purchase, including that nice bag of rice, you'll be okay.
You’re not mathematically wrong, but you assume that everyone has a rational disciplined approach to their finances, and a reasonably stable income behind that.
And for buying in bulk (which is basically what Costco offers) to work, you need a larger amount of available cash up front, and a home with sufficient safe space for storage.
And of course you need some sort of transport to bring your bulk purchases home from the Costco, often built on cheap land away from dense housing.
> you assume that everyone has a rational disciplined approach to their finances, and a reasonably stable income behind that.
I'm not assuming that. If you get a paycheck at all you can impulse buy a $65 thing.
> And for buying in bulk (which is basically what Costco offers) to work, you need a larger amount of available cash up front, and a home with sufficient safe space for storage.
The bag of rice is cheap and compact, along with many other options. Your upfront need can be covered by your normal spend.
Yes it does need a mild amount of safety.
> transport
For sure, but I was responding about the $65 issue.
> > you assume that everyone has a rational disciplined approach to their finances, and a reasonably stable income behind that.
> I'm not assuming that. If you get a paycheck at all you can impulse buy a $65 thing.
Not to buy the membership, but to gain meaningful benefit from it afterwards by buying in bulk in the long term, despite the greater upfront cost, motivation, planning, etc. that that requires.
There was a Minnesota company called Healthsense (was acquired by GreatCall which was then acquired by BestBuy, not sure if the company/tech exists anymore) that had a similar approach on a broader scale. Their system used a bunch of mundane smart home sensors in the usual configuration (e.g. contact sensors on doors, motion sensors, etc) but also for tracking patterns and habits, like the refrigerator door, toilet seat, bed, etc. The idea being that an abrupt shift in behavior would trigger a notice for a loved one or nurse to check in. I always thought this was a cool idea and it's a shame it didn't take off a bit more.
The question of "intrusion" was always interesting to me because old folks often face going from nothing to assisted living or nursing home which is often quite intrusive, where somewhat ironically adding a bunch of sensors to your home allows you a bit more privacy.
Kind of a tangent, but I like your type of system as an alternative to the emergency pendants. It always struck me as strange to expect old folks at risk of fall to remember to charge and wear a pendant at all times.
A couple of pretty good reasons (except the one about lexicons IMHO), but I don’t think it’s reasonable to believe the maker of a 15th standard was “right” about not using the previous 14s. As far as I understand, all the use cases described in OP’s article can be fulfilled with ActivityPub.
I’d love to see an article showing use cases in both AtProto and ActivityPub and showing why AtProto is the superior choice.
(To me, the hype for AT protocol vs. ActivityPub feels like the hype for DevEnv vs. Nix – I’m slightly upset that the latter isn’t taking off because the former decides to do its own thing and not contribute to the base projects. I’d love to be convinced wrong!)
Wide C2S and ActivityPods support would address most of what led to the creation of AT. Lacking that, they made AT.
The rest is revealed in the developer community. AT and AP followed similar timelines for the first year or so, then diverged.
The main thing I heard from AP devs is that it's hard even before dealing with Mastodon quirks for any meaningful connection to the AP network. AP's early developer energy looks like AT's now, except AT's has been sustained for years and is only growing.
AP hasn't even managed a second conference, and that's where all the big AT stuff started at its first one. For example: Streamplace was new and awkward to use last year. This year, it was the official streaming platform with three simultaneous streams and had integration with the official ticketing system. I can't even list all the AT platforms people used to coordinate, trade info, etc during the conference. None of them had to deal with a clunky API since it's all JSON in a standard format on your PDS through a standard interface.
It’s a little different because it’s easy for these IPTV pirates to whip up slick branding. Something more like if a guy in a nice looking uniform for a DVD company you hadn’t heard of offered to sell you movies. Especially for folks who aren’t very internet savvy, it can be easy to miss the subtle tells that an offering isn’t legit (even more so when the service works just fine)
I found rpg.actor while looking to see if anybody had done character sheets on ATProto. I really like the work they’ve put into it but they use a static “self” key to make it 1 character per identity/account. That makes a ton of sense for the character-heavy kind of play (like 5e) that it looks like they’re aiming for. I mostly play Cairn and similar games though where characters are a bit more transient. Although they do support DCC which kind of straddles those two worlds
Part of the argument of prediction markets is that it incentivizes good forecasting. Theoretically if you wanted to concoct a novel political polling technique or rent some compute for a new hyper local weather model, you could recoup your costs via the prediction market.
I think in practice the volume of sharp money in the prediction markets is a small fraction and the majority would be better served with the limits you’re proposing
https://www.federalreserve.gov/consumerscommunities/sheddata...
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