I hear you, and also value Excel and a few other products, but I hit my perosnal limit with Windows enshittificatoion early last year and changed my daily driver at home to Linux.
I added a couple VMs running windows, linux, and whatever else I need in proxmox w/ xrdp/rdp and remina, and it's really the best of both worlds. I travel a good deal and being able to remotely connect and pick up where I left off while also not dealing with windows nagware has been great.
Access to banking is indeed critical, but when? And for 2FA, which accounts, and when? As bank apps become more invasive and they also fail to offer substantive 2FA (e.g. the forcing of text messaging as a 2FA option falls outside my risk tolerance), I've segmented my devices' access.
The ability to transfer funds is something I'm now fine doing via a dedicated device with a dedicated password manager account, and I'm fine uninstalling banks' apps from my phone and dis-enrolling cell phone numbers.
Given the wanton collection and sale of my data by many entities I hadn't expected (naivety on my part), I've restricted access to critical services by device and or web browser only. It's had the added bonus of making me more purposeful in what I'm doing, albeit at the expense of a convenience. Ultimately, I'm not saying my approach is right for everyone, but for me it's felt great to take stock of historical behavior and act accordingly.
In the US Army an E-4 is a specialist or a corporal. Most E-4s are specialists. The E-4 is the pay grade, and the specialist or corporal designation is the rank. A corporal is a type of lateral promotion from specialist and as a corporal the soldier is then considered a non-commissioned officer.
One thing I think would've been helpful for the article to address are operational and or program leaders that strive to get things done, respect their team's time, and want to be a good steward of resources. These leaders may ask probing "why" questions trying to do what's arguably common sense.
Cutting through red tape can be seen by others as rule breaking, but often it's just asking the questions others haven't and trying to do something in a new, hopefully better way. That means taking a risk that something could go wrong and that's received in different ways by people.
It’s one of the reasons why organizations that are run by lawyers or accountants almost always suck and often perform poorly. They tend to go back to their roots when uncertain and focus on chickenshit.
The exceptions are usually lawyers who discovered that they despise lawyering.
I understand where you're going with performance and feature updates, but what about security updates? Those are often flaws that were present at time of shipping.
If I buy a physical lock that's found to be easily opened with a toothpick once it's in the mass market, I'd expect a recall and it to be fixed. With software, it's even easier to deploy a fix.
There's an expectation that purchased software is usable. A server that's connected to the internet that can be compromised easily is no longer usable. Firms selling software applications have an obligation to provide security updates for the life of the product.
I'd also add creating a Trust is relatively easy and the elderly can continue living their life as they normally do. The Trust will then own the house, assets, etc., with distribution instructions included.
In support of the point above, after having to arrange housing and care for elderly relatives in that stage of life, I found assisted living significantly more expensive vs. paying a care agency to have someone live at home in the United States. You get the added bonus of more accountability of a standard of care and ensuring loved ones are being taken care of. Talking to the assisted living facility, it sounded like most of their residents were using insurance.
>I found assisted living significantly more expensive vs. paying a care agency to have someone live at home in the United States.
It really depends on the level of care necessary.
>Talking to the assisted living facility, it sounded like most of their residents were using insurance.
A lot of them don't really take insurance, but they will encourage the residents to spend all their money and then get on Medicaid/Medicare to have the government pay for everything. There is private nursing home insurance but most people don't have it because it's ungodly expensive, especially when purchased when you're already fairly old.
Great points, and devil is in the details. Insurance in this case was Medicare Advantage. In hindsight, Medicare Supplement Insurance (Medigap) would've been the better way to go for that situation and what I have loved ones using now.
I use librewolf as my daily driver after the Firefox "privacy preserving ad measurement" SNAFU last year [1,2]. The fingerprint resistant and anti-canvas functions were different, but I got used to them and I really appreciate the added features.
With that, having everything turned on can break some sites. If a site wasn't all that important and isn't respecting privacy, I just won't visit it. Otherwise, I'll keep another browser around just in case I absolutely must for business or something else.
When Firefox began opting people in by default to leak data to advertisers, it felt like the beginning of the end to me. After looking into canvas and other fingerprinting capabilities, it's somehow still surprising and alarming to me how far companies go to invade our privacy.
I switched from a Garmin Instinct (several years ago) after having used Garmin GPS devices and watches while in the military to an Apple Watch Ultra now. The quantified scientist channel on youtube had some views that helped me decide (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVhmzxpw5Gg).
Hardware-wise they're largely similar, with some additional edge use cases (depending on who you are ofc) for fitness and outdoors with Garmin.
On the Garmin side for software, one thing I really appreciated on Garmin was the "body battery", or estimate of your energy, as well as health trends, etc. Apple has caught up with many of the features in the last year, and has a little ways to go. Apps like Athlytic do a good job filling the gap, but Apple really is making that gap quite small. Garmin locks your workout data down to its garden somewhat limiting your exports and has it more readily cloud accessible than I'd prefer; I felt the Apple privacy protections were better after reading the TOCs and looking at how the data is stored on each service.
What ultimately made me decide to go with Apple Watch is the above data consideration, the smooth functionality and integration with my iPhone, and the rapid pace of development Apple has had. Also, the cellular, texting (not saying it's the preferred method), Apple pay, etc. are all great to have on the Apple Watch and I can go for a run with only that.
After I paid more attention to my body metrics, I also changed my habits and started focusing on hydration more, when I drank alcohol and how much, and I was able to make good choices that help me feel much better to tackle the next day.
I agree it isn't a bad thing per se, but it should drive higher productivity and not be a net decrease in revenue.
If fewer people from New Jersey come to Manhattan, that's less revenue for restaurants and less sales tax collected. Taking that a step further, if those same workers work from their office in NJ or remotely, that's less income tax collected by the City, too.
Moreover, if you have a person living in Manhattan generating high revenue that is being taxed proportionally, having that person slogging through the bus / subway system an extra 30 - 60 minutes one way vs. taking a car is going to decrease the value they're creating. That means less revenue to tax from that person's business, and less taxes to collect from uber / taxi use. But hey, the City got that $2.90.
It's a complex relationship, and I'm not convinced this is going to be a net revenue generator on any level.
I added a couple VMs running windows, linux, and whatever else I need in proxmox w/ xrdp/rdp and remina, and it's really the best of both worlds. I travel a good deal and being able to remotely connect and pick up where I left off while also not dealing with windows nagware has been great.