I have no clue what all it does or doesn't do. I suspect my time on Lemmy has gotten marginally better, but to what degree, I'm not sure. Good call out though

As someone who would love more production in America, I largely agree but might add a caveat to this. China makes a bunch of cheap crap, and at the same time that is exactly what our society demands. "I want something that does X at the cheapest possible price" is what the average US citizen wants. Roughly 77% live paycheck to paycheck, so them wanting the cheapest price makes sense. They can't afford quality and China is happy to lower the quality for them.

On the flip side China makes iPhones. People who buy those phones demand top quality, and China delivers there too. China is capable of quality, but most people don't actually want quality. This sounds counter intuitive to me at first, but at the same time, we elected Trump twice so I think I'm just out of touch with a large group of our country.

If you want the cheapest possible option, which is what the majority demand, China will do that. American made goods are expensive and that isn't what the majority want or can afford. This is not me saying, "nobody wants quality." I want quality. I want American made. I will pay the higher price. I just also understand that most people in America don't actually want that.

This was news to me and super helpful! In the Voyager app, go to Settings > Filters & Blocks. There will be a section called "Blocked Instances" and a button that says "Add Instance". Click the button, and there is a search suggestion box, so you just type "hil" and the first result is "hilariouschaos.com" and you can just click that result and you're done!

No, you can't go back to Constantinople

These are people who come from wealthy families and spent their whole lives paying tutors to help them cram just enough to get their degree. They had family friends working at big companies who hired them based on who they know not qualifications. They go to expensive bars and clubs together and all that matters is who you know and how wealthy and well known your family is.

That is who the trump family is, and it describes a large portion of these financial institutions. I'm citing Gary Stevenson as my source for this.

Around 77% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/survey-reveals-majority-of-americans-still-living-paycheck-to-paycheck-302257819.html#%3A%7E%3Atext=SAN+ANTONIO%2C+Sept.%2Cin+a+competitive+hiring+market.%22. They don't have the spare money to throw in the market. Even if they had the money, they don't have the expertise to invest wisely. They cannot afford to throw money away on pump and dump stocks. 77% of Americans are screwed.

The working class and middle class will continue to work and provide value to investors, because they have to. No work means no food, no home, so people will continue to work and investors will still have that value coming from the working and middle class. Their lives will suck, but that's not a rich person problem. Ideally, for the rich, the working class and middle class will sell off their assets at fire sale prices so that they can survive and the rich will get valuable assets on steep discounts. Homes that foreclose will be bought up and renters will be put in them and the return for investors will be incredible.

Recessions are when rich people get much wealthier in a short period of time. This is deliberate and the rich will be using their money to "invest" while the working and middle class produce more value for investors at their jobs and sell their assets to the investors.

There is no such thing as a recession being bad for the wealthy. The only thing bad for the wealthy is taxes and regulations. Even if their net worth drops, it only drops on paper temporarily and as long as they don't sell while the value is down it's like it never happened. If it ever gets really bad that's when companies are then deemed "too big to fail" and the government bails them out.

It's intentional and they're all excited about the recession.

First, thank you for the thoughtful and detailed comment. It was really well thought out and really hit on some excellent points. This is the feedback I was hoping for. I'm a software developer by profession, not someone who writes legislation, so the whole proposition is basically spitballing until something usable comes out.

You make some really good points and I agree with them for the most part. I'm going to sit and think on this some and get back to you after I've had some time to digest it more.

When you understand that crashing the economy makes him and wealthy investors richer, it makes sense what he's doing. The sane washing is because the people telling you it makes sense are owned by people who stand to make a lot of money. If people lose their homes, that building doesn't just disappear. It gets bought by investors for cheap who then rent it out. Collapsing economies is how wealthy collect more assets and passive income. A great explanation here by Gary Stevenson: https://youtu.be/XCnImxVWbvc

Thanks, I'll give Samba a try as that seems to be a free option for me to dabble with. If it seems to work well, maybe I'll explore this further. Samba seems like a good starting point though. I appreciate all the help with this! I may ask for more guidance later depending on how things go

Here's a link to the form they want you to fill out: https://d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/s3fs-public/media/files/DNC_ProposalForm.pdf

Tailscale does sound pretty cool, and could be an option. It sounds super easy to setup which I like. I have Comcast as my service provider, so I'd have to see what they offer DNS and Static IP addresses.

I have not looked at what all my fileshare options are but doing a bit of digging it sounds like maybe I should look at Samba and see if that would work. They don't mention mobile device support, but it is free open source software, which I love. I wonder if having a Samba service just for local network file sharing is a security issue. I would assume it is not, but I could be wrong. I'm willing to bet I'd need to be cautious with the configuration of Samba.

Oh no need to sell me on Linux, I'm a fan of Linux Mint and Ubuntu, but my current laptop is an Apple M2 Pro, so if I can keep using that as my daily driver, I think I will. I'm most interested in more of a file sharing server type of service perhaps. Some way I could decouple from Google Drive for file storage is probably a good entry spot I'd think. I have an Ubuntu laptop with a dead battery I've not turned on in years I could repurpose as a server I'd think. It started it's life as an MSI "gaming" Windows laptop, so it should have enough horsepower to be a file server if I knew what software to use and how to safely configure it and what software to use on my other devices to safely access it.

I'm interested in this a bit. I worry about setting up some sort of server that is going to be facing the Internet though. Is there a good guide or starting place for something like this? If I just want an easy or approachable solution with some limitations as a trade off for easy and safe setup? I feel like I've heard of Plex servers before, but no clue if that's the best way to go or not. Where would one start to learn more?

Using the Fediverse feels like a small step in the right direction. Big changes are built on lots of small steps. I would say move in the direction of using the Fediverse more, the old alternatives less, and think of more small steps in the right direction you can do. I don't think just using the Fediverse is enough, but it is an important step to take. Keep going.

I was about to agree with you and then add that people like me who more lurk and upvote may count as inactive because we don't comment or post much. I just noticed that the chart only shows up to November of last year. I suspect several new people such as myself have finally found Lemmy given all that is going on and we'll see that in the charts in a couple months.