advertising's comments

We entered that zombie phase our 5th year in business. Now we are in our 9th year and have ticked along slowly slowly decling a bit each year. Down to two employees and probably have one year left to go. All investors except for our single biggest have said we should shut down largely so I can personally move on. Our biggest has been happy to see us stay alive being that there’s still a chance for success they believe.

It’s largely been depressing coasting as a zombie. Making enough money to pay the bills but not enough to save or do anything for the future, but have been afraid to start something again for fear of going down this same route again.

Scroll to bottom to see it’s a piece pushing for ethanol flex-fuel

We used a few to power kiosk touch screens and other commercial display applications using network broadcast video.

Made a seven screen display each with their own pi that sync’d individual videos running on each to create some video art pieces.

Also made a bullet time rig with 15 pi’s and each with their own webcam. There was a guy who did this already with lots of documentation but using his own pi-interface hardware he created. We did it without the pi controllers.

dammit

This is exactly where you’re wrong. The government is full of corruption. They buy large pieces of land and change zoning laws to allow for a big Home Depot style place or an oversized hotel on their land and then they sell it. They shut down any competing construction projects or block use permits.

They obscure any data about public services. Contamination in the water table for example. People who ask too many questions are threatened.

People don’t vote these types in. They are in place through power and connections.

Your view is over simplified and not fully informed by reality of the reality politics.

My parents have lived in a gem of a town outside of the US for 20 years. About 15 years ago it started to pop up in top 10 lists and the last 10 years has exploded with tourism.

What used to be an extremely affordable, beautiful, and pleasant place to live and mix with the local culture is now gone.

It went from a beautiful town to Disney Land. A gigantic party city. Insane hour long lines of cars to get into the town on weekends. Real estate blew up and gigantic hotels are being built, all the homes in the center are owned by rich people from other countries as speculative investments. Tons of new bars and restaurants have opened but few of them by locals. Rich business owners from other places come in droves looking for more growth to extract money. Most people demand USD for rent or real estate deals and not local currency now, many businesses use foreign payment services for credit cards and the money never flows into the town.

Crime has greatly increased with all the money floating around. Home burglaries, car jackings and street muggings are common everyday of the week anytime of the day.

There have been some improvements from the tourism and a few hundred local families (out of the 100,000 locals that live there) have done well selling the homes their families have owned for generations. Now they can’t afford to live in the center and have to live in the outskirts.

Gone are the local restaurants, pushed out by high rents or because the owners sold the buildings, replaced by generic tourist traps pushing cheap alcohol and over priced food.

The local water supply has been drained, utilities cannot keep up with waste and demand, corruption for permits and zoning changes is rampant.

Literally thousands of homes in generic housing developments are being built in the surrounding countryside. Cheap build profit extracting developments solely to make money as the water table continues to drain lower and lower.

The only thing that has some what saved the city is lack of an airport being close by. Closest is 1.5 hours drive. But another rich entrepreneur is looking to bring a new runway in that is long enough for private jets.

That’s when it will officially be over.

An influx of money benefits everyone, but it’s also at the expense of the city. Is that worth it? I think what bothers me the most is seeing thousands of people crowd the central square and take the same photo of the church over and over and over and over. It’s within everyone’s right, rich or poor to be in that square. No one owns a city, except when the money starts coming in, and then money owns it.

Oh man q3osp dm17 all day. You just really took me back. I really miss rocket arena and the first LAN parties I went to. Right as broadband had really started to be available. Still have not found anything close to q3. Maybe it’s just my nostalgia.

They still do the glass bottle returns in Mexico.

What about the idea of everyone having their own cup and water bottle that they take everywhere. If you want the drink to go and forget your cup, buy a new one at a high price or have it there.

Have bought only retro super future for this very reason

Got off fb 5 years ago. Now on instagram is my problem.

Bill's stat on how many gas powered cars would need to be taken off the road (exchanged for electric) to equal the emissions of a single coal plant blew my mind.

https://mobile.twitter.com/billgates/status/1052914693042450...

Retro Super Future is a great brand for sunglasses and optical. Stores in the states and Europe, made in Italy.

This is something that has really irked me the past couple years. I feel safer entering other countries than I do coming back to the U.S.

It feels like you’re entering a prison camp going through immigration. Everyone is screened by security before getting on a plane yet passport control officers are wearing swat team bullet proof vests and open-carry guns while checking your passport.

The pursuit of happiness is the most unhappy pursuit of all

I worked at a call center for a random online for profit uni as one of my first jobs.

Quickly saw we were calling random leads generated by click bait ads like “become a swat expert” or enter to win type stuff.

We would call people who had no idea they had signed up to get called and push them to “further their education and future”.

First priority was to check to see that they could get a loan. Then aggressively get them to sign up for school.

I had access to the online courses and they were absolute trash.

Complete racket based on federal funding.

You should be able to decide if you want to be listed on yelp or not.

I learned this one with typing in high school. Being the only person who could type proficiently, I was barraged by friends to type out their papers for them. After awhile I just charged people to do it. The next school I went to I made sure not to tell anyone.

When I can’t decide I tell myself I will leave it to a coin flip and commit to that outcome. As soon as I see what side the coin landed on I know exactly what I wanted. This usually works anyway.

Makes me think of every 1st tier support interaction I’ve ever had where a person can’t answer a single question and just refers you to online resources you’ve already read and couldn’t find the answer to.