Hmm, that could be an attempt at bonding over a common enemy? Kind of like talk bad about the boss behind his back, so that you bond woth your peers? Generally not for everyone, but could see how people get fixated on it if it works for them. Or maybe they are just caught up in the negative media and it has a big effect on their overall mood. Do the happier countries you mentioned have less reliance on media? Again, negative generates views, thats why the news is usually mostly bad.

I think this is a classic case of “The complainers are way more vocal than the life enjoyers”, combined with modern technology being set up to promote controversial content. When someone’s enjoying this life and being chill, they also don’t usually care about spreading thier message. The complainers are either memetic or often political and seem to enjoy a much greater platform. Also more controversial content generates more negative engagement, and most social media promotes content that has high engagement, because it benefits them to have users engage and stay on the site longer.

UK kettles use the standard 240V mains and it’s excellent. Under 2 minutes to boil 3 US Pints with a 3000 Watt kettle.

Wouldn’t you be benefiting from your friends? It’s ok for a little bit, but if they live there permanently then they will pay off your mortgage and have nothing to show for it themselves. That sort of thing might build resentment long term. Though in the short term you both benefit.

But as I’m sure you’re aware, any money issues may sour the relationship. Even just having a formal contract with exchange of money could change the dynamic drastically.

My understanding with phones is that you phone your own provider, who then looks up the provider of the number you’re calling based on country code, provider or area code prefixes. Providers will “peer” with each other to route calls over the most cost efficient path. So the other sides provider is responsible for getting it to the right destination phone within thier own customer network. Theres no authentication from the sending party on a protocol level, this is why scammers can spoof as any phone number.

I believe that IP routing does something similar, the IP data is handed over to possibly multiple providers until it reaches its destination provider. The blocks of ip addresses are published as linked to an Autonomous System and each autonomous system has an owner/provider. The source is not authenticated at a protocol level which is why we need client and server certificates.

In DNS you go to the root TLD servers and ask what IP the .com resolver is. The .com resolver has a list of mappings of authoritative name servers to domains. So example.com may have an authoritative NS of 1.2.3.4 who you can go to and ask what IP test.example.com is hosted on. The authoritative name server is the source of truth for that domain and other servers cache it to prevent overloading and increase speed. You may check with the authoritative NS if you want, but it may be slower to respond than your local NS. Again DNS is not authenticated at the protocol level so we need server certificates to prove that the device behind the IP serving you is allowed to serve you test.example.com.

You’re probably right about being worse off overall, just so much unnecessary complexity. We do have council tax here, but that depends on how big a house you live in and how expensive the area is to maintain for the council. And its a fixed rate per household, owed monthly while you’re at the same address. But I know the councils get most of thier funding from the state budget and other income streams like selling land. Theres also national insurance too which I guess is like social security. https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance

I have no idea ehich one is better, or costs more, but the UK does seem to offer more in return. Admittedly I only see the bad news stories about the US so have no idea what its like “on the ground”. I’ve been to Florida, New York and Vermont, so I see how states are very different places with different needs, understandible why theres not a lot of state unity on issues.

The UK also has much higher income taxes. Comparing US and UK income taxes:

• in the US, for someone earning 578,126+ USD (£457,000) it’s 37%
• in the UK, for earnings over £50,000 (~65,000 USD) its 40% , equivalent US earners only pay 22%
  • and when over £125,000 (~157,000 USD) this increases to 45% in the UK

US income tax is ferarally controlled. I don’t have exact numbers but increases in income tax for the highest earners should be able to fund a public healthcare system, at least for the lowest earners in the US.

https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/united-states/individual/taxes-on-personal-income https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates

Edit: There are also state income taxes, which vary for some reason, I’m sure theres also county and city based taxes as well, processing them must be a nightmare. Is the US just 52 countries in a trench coat?

In the UK you can invest £20,000 (25,000 USD) per year into a fully tax free ISA savings account. You can spend it on anything you chose at any time, and you will never need to spend any of it on healthcare against your will. https://www.gov.uk/individual-savings-accounts/how-isas-work

Dental care is free in the UK for under 18s, people who are pregnant or given birth in the last 12 months, or people on low income. https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/dentists/who-is-entitled-to-free-nhs-dental-treatment-in-england/

Also if you were to unfortunately become disabled and are unable to work, you will be supported fully for the rest of your life. These benefits are not based on previous taxes paid like in the US. https://www.gov.uk/financial-help-disabled https://www.gov.uk/pip/how-much-youll-get

This is wild, in the UK, if you were in an accident and needed years of surgeries, it will always be free. The cost of parking to visit the hospital will be the most expensive thing anyone ever gets billed for, and that will be around 10 dollars a day. We do pay income tax, but lower income earners pay less or none. Theres also sales taxes, and things like sugar, alcohol and nicotine are taxed quite highly as they can contribute to health problems. But it’s all well worth it to never worry about medical costs. https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates https://www.gov.uk/government/news/sugar-tax-revenue-helps-tackle-childhood-obesity https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-shopping/alcohol-tobacco

Rip

That would be fine, but a lot of these features are added in an update, with complicated setups or mods to turn them off. Start bar local app search now gets sent to bing search by default, thats almost never what people want. Most people wont know how to disable it or care. But I guess thats fine as long as Microsoft gets to increase its bing usage stats and collect more user data.

To be clear, my problem is with these features getting pushed as default enabled.

AI assistants usually need to upload the data to process it. So it’s potential enshitification via adding data upload/harvesting features to a trusted offline text editor. Usually companies have ways to generate revenue streams based on the data from these “free and useful features”. Adverts based on what text files you open might be the long term end goal.