litchralee

@litchralee@sh.itjust.works

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anyone have long range 802.11ah / HaLow experience?⁩ ⁨⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  For a link of 5.5 km and with clear LoS, I would reach for 802.11 WiFi, since the range of 802.11ah HaLow wouldn’t necessarily be needed. For reference, many WISPs use Ubiquiti 5 GHz point-to-point APs for their backhaul links for much further distances.

  The question would be what your RF link conditions look like, whether 5 GHz is clear in your environment, and what sort of worst-case bandwidth you can accept. With a clear Fresnel zone, you could probably be pushing something like 50 Mbps symmetrical, if properly aimed and configured.

  Ubiquiti’s website has a neat tool for roughly calculating terrain and RF losses.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨WG tunnel oddity - either download or upload slow based on MTU (speedtest), TCP download always slow (iperf3) - no such issues with Tailscale⁩ ⁨⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t have an answer for your woes, but MTU issues are notoriously difficult to investigate and mitigate, as Cloudflare found out: blog.cloudflare.com/increasing-ipv6-mtu/

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Did it really used to be common for guys to go to a bar every night like in Cheers or The Simpsons?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d say the qualities of the average American park leaves much to be desired, when compared to NYC Central Park, San Diego’s Balboa Park, or SF’s Presidio.

  In suburban areas, the municipal park tends to be a monoculture of grass plus maybe a playground, a parking lot, and if lucky, a usable bathroom. Regional parks are often nicer, with amenities like pickleball courts or a BMX park, though asking for benches (not rocks or concrete verges, but actually bench seats) and shade might be a stretch.

  My point is that the USA has fewer parks and public squares than it ought to. I don’t mean just a place to go jogging or to push a stroller along, but a proper third space where people actively spend time and create value at. Where street vendors congregate because that’s also where people congregate. A place that people – voluntarily, not by necessity – would like to be. A destination in its own right, where even tourists will drop by and take in the air, the sights, and the social interactions.

  Meanwhile, some parts of the USA actively sabotage their parks, replacing normal park furniture with versions that are actively hostile to homeless people, while alienating anyone that just wants an armrest as they sit down. Other municipalities spend their Parks & Rec funds on the bare minimum of parks, lots that are impractically tiny. Why? Because a public park can be used to exclude registered sex offenders from a neighborhood, leading to the ludicrous situation where whole cities are an exclusion zone. Regardless of one’s position on how to punish sex offenses, the denial of housing and basic existence is, at best, counterproductive.

  So I reiterate: the USA might have a good quantity of parks, but not exactly good quality of parks. People will socialize online unless they are given actual options to socialize elsewhere. And IRL options would build value locally, whereas online communities only accrue to the benefit of the platforms (eg Facebook, WhatsApp) they run on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Did it really used to be common for guys to go to a bar every night like in Cheers or The Simpsons?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Even with NA (low/non-alcoholic) beverages, it’d be nice to have third places that don’t come with an obligation to spend money.

  To be clear, I’m not asking for places that ban spending money, but there are third places like parks (eg NYC Central Park) that are destinations in their own right, but one can also spend money there, such as buying stuff and having a picnic on the grass, or bringing board games and meeting up with friends. Or strolling the grounds astride rental e-bikes. Or free yoga.

  Where there’s an open space, people make use of it. But we don’t really have much of that in the USA, that isn’t tied up as a parking lot, an open-space preserve (where people shouldn’t tred upon to protect wildlife), or are beyond reasonable distances (eg BLM land in the middle of Nevada).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Its a solar powered phone / webserver! Made from a pixel 6a, solar panel, and hopes/dreams.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re using SLAAC for auto IP assignment, then the resulting EUI-64-based address would be essentially static, based on the premise that your MAC address and local subnet prefix don’t change. Privacy extensions night get in the way, as well as Android’s randomized MAC feature, but those are adjustable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is Louis Rossmann a fascist like futo?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  At the very minimum, give the readers a chance to understand the context of the question: hachyderm.io/@dalias/115418530488528338

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some good things to purchase to add a new distraction to my life?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It very much depends, I think. Ham radio was really helpful to me during 2020 because it was a social activity that was compatible with distancing requirements, and is a great way to talk with people afar. As in, other continents but also local folks as well.

  Fishing, watercraft, and woodworking all have different prerequisites, like a nearby body of water or the space for equipment. They also require some logistical planning, like fishing licenses, how to identify and prep fish, and where to source wood. These things are often easier to learn if you know someone who already partakes in the activity.

  But for civil advocacy, that one has no tangible result that you can put in the living room, earns no awards or points, and puts you directly in the public spotlight, ugly as it may be. And yet, despite all that, it has the potential to impact the greatest number of people in the most accessible way. Paraphrasing a Greek proverb, to commit to this endeavor knowing full well that it will never serve to yourself a benefit, that is a sign of a great and virtuous citizen

  All the activities I’ve listed are activities that hone personal development, and can be passed on to another generation, just in case you wanted even more engrossment.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some good things to purchase to add a new distraction to my life?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  !homelab@lemmy.ml can easily become very involved.

  But for other activities, fishing, watercraft (motorized or not), woodworking, ham radio, and civic advocacy (ie public transport, housing, anti-corruption). All of these can easily be a lifetime’s worth.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How much more progressive are European views as compared to progressives in America?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  One thing which isn’t immediately apparent, even to Americans themselves, is that the large American political parties are less equivalent to individual political parties elsewhere, and are closer to “uneasy coalitions”, like those found in Europe involving multiple parties trying (and maybe failing) to form a government. That makes it harder to draw broad conclusions like “USA Democrats would be right-of-center” because progressives and “DINOs” (Democrats in name only) within the party would be left-wing or right-wing, respectively. Logically, the same applies to the Republican party, although ranging from RINOs (Republicans in name only) and “moderate Republicans”, to the far-right factions of the party, like neo-Nazis and MAGA.

  With that said, what you’re describing sounds similar to social democracy. Not to be confused with democratic socialism, which is generally further along to the left than social democracy, with the goal to reform the state away from private ownership of the means of production and away from capitalism. When Bernie Sanders of Vermont says “I am a socialist”, his positions align well to European social democracy, even though he originally described himself as “democratic socialist”.

  But I must reiterate that the precise definition of political ideology is less important than community-building, since that’s how ideology becomes reality.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨End-to-End Encrypted Chat that YOU Control: Hosting XMPP (Jabber) with Prosody⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Concrete example of threat modeling: if someone found out I was using Signal, for any reason at all, would that cause problems for me?

  If yes, then Signal is not a good option. If no, then Signal may be appropriate. Why? Because in their documentation, they explicitly state that while messages are confidential, the fact that you’re using Signal cannot be hidden, and so they don’t make that guarantee.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨End-to-End Encrypted Chat that YOU Control: Hosting XMPP (Jabber) with Prosody⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Tbf, can’t the other party mess it up with signal too?

  Yes, but this is where threat modeling comes into play. Grossly simplified, developing a threat model means to assess what sort of attackers you reasonably expect to make an attempt on you. For some people, their greatest concern is their conservative parents finding out that they’re on birth control. For others, they might be a journalist trying to maintain confidentiality of an informant from a rogue sheriff’s department in rural America. Yet others face the risk of a nation-state’s intelligence service trying to find their location while in exile.

  For each of these users, they have different potential attackers. And Signal is well suited for the first two, and only alright against the third. After all, if the CIA or Mossad is following someone around IRL, there are other ways to crack their communications.

  What Signal specifically offers is confidentiality in transit, meaning that all ISPs, WiFi networks, CDNs, VPNs, script skiddies with Wireshark, and network admins in the path of a Signal convo cannot see the contents of those messages.

  Can the messages be captured at the endpoints? Yes! Someone could be standing right behind you, taking photos of your screen. Can the size or metadata of each message reveal the type of message (eg text, photo, video)? Yes, but that’s akin to feeling the shape of an envelope. Only through additional context can the contents be known (eg a parcel in the shape of a guitar case).

  Signal also benefits from the network effect, because someone trying to get away from an abusive SO has plausible deniability if they download Signal on their phone (“all my friends are on Signal” or “the doctor said it’s more secure than email”). Or a whistleblower can send a message to a journalist that included their Signal username in a printed newspaper. The best place to hide a tree is in a forest. We protect us.

  My main issue for signal is (mostly iPhone users) download it “just for protests” (ffs) and then delete it, but don’t relinquish their acct, so when I text them using signal it dies in limbo as they either deleted the app or never check it and don’t allow notifs

  Alas, this is an issue with all messaging apps, if people delete the app without closing their account. I’m not sure if there’s anything Signal can do about this, but the base guarantees still hold: either the message is securely delivered to their app, or it never gets seen. But the confidentiality should always be maintained.

  I’m glossing over a lot of cryptographic guarantees, but for one-to-one or small-group private messaging, Signal is the best mainstream app at the moment. For secure group messaging, like organizing hundreds of people for a protest, that is still up for grabs, because even if an app was 100% secure, any one of those persons can leak the message to an attacker. More participants means more potential for leaks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨End-to-End Encrypted Chat that YOU Control: Hosting XMPP (Jabber) with Prosody⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  When I see E2EE and XMPP mentioned, I think of this blog post by Soatok, outlining some very odd cryptographic choices in XMPP + OMEMO: soatok.blog/2024/08/04/against-xmppomemo/

  It would very much like to see a richer playing field than just Signal for private messaging, but it’s a tough nut to crack. For exactly which aspect that turns me away from XMPP for E2EE, I think this nails it down:

  you only need check whether OMEMO is on by default (it isn’t), or whether OMEMO can be turned off even if your client supports it (it can).

  When the competition is Signal, these sorts of details matter a lot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does free healthcare access increase or decrease the need for medical personnel overall?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  When doing comparisons of the nature posed by the title, it is all-important to establish the baseline criteria. That is, what does the landscape look like just prior to implementing the titular policy?

  If starting from the position of the present-day USA, then it is almost certain that free-at-time-of-service universal health care would cause the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to rewrite their projections for medical personnel jobs, in very much an upward trajectory. After all, middle- and upper-class people that already had decent won’t somehow need more healthcare just because it’s free, but people who have never seen a doctor in their adult life would suddenly have access to a physician. More total patients means more medical staff needed, both short-term and long-term. The latter is because the barrier to annual checkups is all but eliminated, which should also yield better outcomes through early detection of problems and development of working rapports with one’s physician.

  If, however, the baseline situation is a functional but private-payer healthcare system in a place with a low Gini coefficient – meaning income is not concentrated in a few people – then it’s more likely that healthcare is accessible to most people. Thus, the jump in patients caused by free healthcare may be minimal or even non-existent. It may, however, be that different segments of this population would benefit by access to a higher standard of quality care under a universal healthcare system, if removing private-payer results in dismantling of legacies caused by racism, colonialism, or whatever else.

  After all, that’s one of the tenants of a universal healthcare system: people get the treatment they need, with no regard for who they are or what wealth they have (or not).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Share single service via WireGuard⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Let me make sure I understand everything correctly. You have an OpenWRT router which terminates a Wireguard tunnel, which your phone will connect to from somewhere on the Internet. When the Wireguard tunnel lands within the router in the new subnet 192.168.2 0/24, you have iptable rules that will:

  • Reject all packets on the INPUT chain (from subnet to OpenWRT)
  • Reject all packets on the OUTPUT chain (from OpenWRT to subnet)
  • Route packets from phone to service on TCP port 8080, on the FORWARD chain
  • Allow established connections, on the FORWARD chain
  • Reject all other packets on the FORWARD chain

  So far, this seems alright. But where does the service run? Is it on your LAN subnet or the isolated 192.168.2.0/24 subnet? The diagram you included suggests that the service runs on an existing machine on your LAN, so that would imply that the router must also do address translation from the isolated subnet to your LAN subnet.

  That’s doable, but ideally the service would be homed onto the isolated subnet. But perhaps I misunderstood part of the configuration.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How does streaming compare to "analog"?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a bit short on time, but I think “streaming” needs to be broken down into categories of scale. Streaming video from your home Plex server (shout-out to !homelab@lemmy.ml) is a lot different than Netflix’s video delivery system.

  The latter intentionally stores the same content in multiple geographies, then with caches at local data centers, and sometimes even caches within your ISP’s network. All of this to distribute the load of millions of users, who can just as easily be in Florida as they might be in Oregon.

  Whereas a home server has just one copy of the content, and since it might not always be streaming a video to you, can save power by spinning down drives or other optimizations. It is simply not possible to describe “streaming” when such radically different delivery mechanisms can all plausible be considered as streaming.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some franchises with characters that personify countries?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Does a webcomic count as a franchise? satwcomic.com

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is a federated alternative to Wikipedia?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  No, I want a decentralized go-to place that I can check many points of view over a subject, just like the Fediverse works today.

  I disagree with the premise that multiple POVs on every topic will yield better understandings or discussion. It is the same flaw that Ground News or other services have, which purport to curate POVs from different news media outlets, with the implicit assumption that all the outlets have something useful to offer. This assumption is absolutely balderdash.

  The Fediverse is no more – or less – immune from disinformation and other ails, but has better user- and instance-level protections: bans and defederation are effective, because if they weren’t, people here wouldn’t log back on. For Mastodon and Lemmy and other forms of social media, the decentralization has clear and obvious benefits.

  A decentralized knowledge-store does not.

  There is nothing to fear.

  There is everything to fear when knowledge is spread out into small libraries across the land. The historical analog is book-burning incidents that dotted human history, whether to suppress paganism, Mayan culture, or the spread of communism. The modern-day analogy is when Vine went defunct and the content was almost wholly lost to the world. The Fediverse example is when an instance unexpectedly disappears, stranding all its users.

  But focusing on a knowledge-store, technology has given us the ability to copy data at rates that outpace all of history’s ecclesiastical scribes put together. We can – and do – preserve the largest datasets (see !datahoarder@lemmy.ml) because it is a matter of resilience. Yet that endeavor has become more difficult precisely because of technology. The Internet Archive faces this issue, because they cannot save what they don’t even know exist.

  The Fediverse inhabits a very special Goldilocks zone right now, not unlike Wikipedia, where the availability of interest, capabilities, and materiel allow for the existence of this internet experiment. But fragile it is, and instances are no further than the risk of a DMCA notice, a UK age restriction law, a frivolous but expensive SLAPP suit, or just plain ol running out of money.

  If I had spare time and energy and were presented with the option to either: 1) set up a decentralized knowledge store of nebulous benefit, or 2) support the online compendium which I’ve personally used for over two decades now and has helped untold numbers of students and researchers with starting the research into a new-to-them topic, and could do so by using my servers to seed the all-Wikipedia torrents… well, I think the choice is clear.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is a federated alternative to Wikipedia?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  As a website or service, sure. But the Wikipedia has been available to download for offline use since basically its inception. This is how users in places with poor internet connections can still benefit from the Wikipedia. Certainly, the idea of distributing Wikipedia on disc is a bit odd.

  But whether it be smuggling books across the Iron Curtain, downloading swaths of paywalled scientific papers from an MIT computer, or accessing information about abortion, the pursuit of knowledge is a chiefly human trait and one not easily suppressed. But if all those, the Wikipedia has the best track record for being openly available and free (as in speech, and as in beer).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is a federated alternative to Wikipedia?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think we need to start with what Wikipedia is meant to be, before even considering whether it would be aided through federation. By their own words:

  Wikipedia’s purpose is to benefit readers by acting as a widely accessible and free encyclopedia; a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge.

  Encyclopedias are designed to introduce readers to a topic, not to be the final point of reference. Wikipedia, like other encyclopedias, is a tertiary source and provides overviews of a topic.

  Content is governed by three principal core content policies – neutral point of view, verifiability, and no original research.

  That describes the content intended to go into the Wikipedia, but we need to also mention the distinction between the Wikipedia itself, the MediaWiki software package which powers Wikipedia, and the Wikimedia Foundation.

  With MediaWiki, which is FOSS (GPLv2), anyone can set up their own encyclopedia-style volume of articles to host on the web. And that’s exactly what many fandom websites or technical documentation websites do, because that level of detail would not be accepted into the general-knowledge Wikipedia. And you can hardly blame the Wikipedia for wanting to avoid scope-creep.

  Likewise, if someone disagrees with how a topic is discussed in a Wikipedia article, they can go in and make the change, provided that they follow the same rules and procedures as everyone else. Yes there are moderators, but even moderators can be moderated. In a way, Wikipedia is a collective effort that somehow democratized editorship and it’s shocking that it hasn’t devolved into major terf wars.

  And that’s where the Wikipedia Foundation comes in. They are both the charitable foundation that keeps the Wikipedia servers running, as well as administering the collection, much like how a museum protects cultural treasures. Dissatisfaction with the limited role that the Foundation plays can be solved by forking the Wikipedia; they don’t assert a monopoly on the collective knowledge, and indeed the entire thing can be downloaded for offline use or to host a mirror under separate administration.

  With all that said, Wikipedia as a concept hews very closely to the print version of an encyclopedia. It is functionally a really big book, painstakingly edited by untold numbers of people. The fact that it’s not just a bunch of random blog posts is its stength. Wikipedia is not social media; it is distributed editorship.

  But supposing you do want a distributed knowledge base, where there might exist multiple versions of an article, please explain why the World Wide Web doesn’t already accomplish that. If the WWW is too general-purpose for your liking, then perhaps something like the DICT protocol is more palatable?

  Despite ostensibly dealing with dictionaries, DICT has been used to offer the CIA World Factbook and the Jargon File, which are more like subject-matter specific encyclopedias. As a standardized protocol – even CURL can fetch DICT entries – the Fediverse doesn’t need another protocol to do the same thing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Current limiting⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I like it!

  I once endeavored to do something similar, but it would have been for opening the blinds in the morning and closing them after sunrise.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Current limiting⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  But could this comparison not be done with some hysteresis?

  It can, but analog design is also not my forte.

  The part count is not important as long as the parts aren’t terribly expensive, since this is exclusively for my personal use

  In that case, the original suggestion of using an ADC and an op-amp would be the most flexible for software. You would, however, need to do some research on wiring an op-amp to amplify the sense voltage to something your microcontroller’s ADC is capable of resolving.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Current limiting⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Out of curiosity, what is this project?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Current limiting⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah, I entirely missed the sense pin when skimming the datasheet.

  That said, using a shunt for an inductive load like a motor may have to contend with the corresponding spikes caused when switching the motor. This just means the thing doing the sensing needs to tolerate the spikes. Or mitigate them, with either a snubber or a flyback diode (is this actually doable with an H bridge?).

  As for the op-amp and ADC, if we already accept the additional of the op-amp part, it is also feasible to use a comparator with a reference voltage set for the max safe current. The digital output of the comparator can then be fed directly to the microcontroller, providing fast reaction without the sampling time of an ADC. But this would be so quick that the spikes from earlier could get picked up, unless mitigated.

  Still, these solutions are adding to the part count. If that’s a concern, then I’d look for a motor driver with this functionality built in.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Current limiting⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  In that case, I would suggest looking at a different motor driver. The driver you’ve specified doesn’t seem to have any provisions to detect a motor stall, which is something that other drivers can potentially do. Ideally, the driver would detect the back EMF from the stall and inform the microcontroller, which would then decide to stop movement.

  An external current sensor might work, but that’s adding to the part count and might not be as capable as built-in functionality within the motor driver. Plus, fancier motor drivers have some neat features that you could take advantage of as well. I think it would be more prudent to consider a different driver before adding additional parts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Current limiting⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think there’s a good way to adapt this circuit to provide current limiting on the 18v rail. Supposing that it was possible, what behavior do you want to happen when reaching the current limit? Should the motor reduce its output torque when at the limit? Should the 18v rail completely shut down? Should the microcontroller be notified of the current limit so that software can deal with it? Would a simple fuse be sufficient?

  All of these are possible options, but with various tradeoffs. But depending on your application, I would think the easiest design is to build sufficient capacity on the 18v rail so that the motor and 5v converter inherently never draw more current than can be provided.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is streetwear a joke?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think you’ll have to provide some examples – ideally as photos – of streetwear fashion. Without any prior research, I only know the term to mean “comfy clothes” that would fall below the typical bar for “casual” dress code

  A quick web search shows examples ranging from perfectly reasonable outfits consisting of normally-proportioned shorts, jackets, pants, and shoes. To some outlandish outfits that are prominently displaying designer brands.

  And perhaps that’s the crux of the matter: what shows up on the fashion runway or “haute couture” magazines is never descriptive but prescriptive: a designer brand has a vested interest in getting the masses to believe that something is fashion so that they can move product.

  Taken to the logical extreme, there is an idea that designer clothes is intentionally outlandish, precisely so that said clothes would never be worn by “normies” in day-to-day activities, and thus can always (and persistently) be projected as high-end.

  Commercialized fashion is not a democratic experiment to see what most people want to wear. It is to move product every season. “Designer streetwear” is a poor approximation for what normal people wear when they just want to grab a sandwich from the bodega and then return to watch another episode from Season 2 of The Rehearsal. Maybe this should be called “real streetwear” to distinguish it from so-called designer goods.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would you ever give up your right to leave a bad review about a company?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Whoops, you’re right. I misread the first sentence as though OP’s brother was hired by the company. In that case, yes, this act would appear to void any clause that would restrict writing a review, whether good or bad.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would you ever give up your right to leave a bad review about a company?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Sadly, this act only covers “form contracts” for the sale of services or products, and doesn’t look like it would extend to contracts of employment. That is, a consumer cannot be bound by a clause that prohibits writing reviews. And if a consumer of the company’s products is also an employee, then this act doesn’t prohibit a “no reviews” clause in the employment contract.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Looking to get a new phone with FOSS on it. What should I look into?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  A phone with battle scars!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Been looking into getting an "Indexed Universal Life" insurance policy. Are these trust worthy?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The other comments correctly explain why an index fund is probably better suited, and will preserve more value by having lower fees. But I will propound on why “universal life insurance” (whether indexed or not) might not be a good fit for you.

  To explain, I have to start with what the point of life insurance even is. At its core, life insurance is supposed to provide some benefit to replace your life. That is, if when you die, you would no longer be generating income to support your family or to honor your debts. Without the benefit of life insurance, the consequences might include destitution for anyone that depends on you, as well as possibly a forced sale of the family home if the mortgage goes into default. In a nutshell, if correctly set up, life insurance should approximate the value of your life, the same way that car insurance should make you whole if something happens to the car.

  (I recognize that this sounds extremely morbid, to put a price on your life. But with the current socio-economic system, this is a necessary exercise)

  A reasonable approximation for how much life insurance to buy is to consider how much monthly income would it take so that your family could continue as-is financially in the event that you disappeared from their lives. If the amount will cover everything from inflation, to future college funds, plus retirement savings that you would have made, then that’s probably the upper-limit for the correct amount of benefit to purchase.

  If you have no debts, and have no family to support, there’s little point in buying life insurance. Indeed, it’s not terribly profitable for insurance companies to offer just life insurance, which is why they market other types which are partially life insurance, and partially an investment. Every form of life insurance – except fixed term life policies – have this mix.

  So the question is, do you need life insurance? If no, then a dedicated investment vehicle – like an index fund – would make more sense. And if yes, then fixed term life insurance makes more sense because it’s cheap and doesn’t muddle your investment portfolio.

  I’m of the opinion that mixing one’s insurance objectives with one’s investment objectives is a recipe for disaster, with the extremely narrow situation where the quirks of USA tax law means that wealthy, savvy people that plan ahead could save some tax dollars. Maybe.