221–230 of 497 posts
This is an indescribably devastating loss for a project that, whatever its imperfections, can fairly lay claim to the most intellectually consistent and sincere adherence to FOSS, privacy, and decentralization of any major social media project. Eugene has proven a spectacular and indispensable developer, and I don't know that Mastodon has the ability to move on without him. I want to praise Eugen but the uncomfortabl…
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Generally charitable foundations figure that you can withdraw 3% per year from your savings and never run out. Remember you have to account for not only good years, but also really bad years, so even though you can average 10% over the long term in the stock market there will be decades that you are negative. There are also bond investments that are safer, but have worse return. And inflation is always eating into yo…
>You can make more than that working at McDonald's near me, and nobody would claim that is a living wage. Hey, good for you. But 30k per year is a very good salary in European countries such as Spain, where the median salary is just a bit over half that.
I would count moving to a significantly poorer country that you have no connections to in order to get your cost of living down a "frugal" way to stretch out your retirement fund.
This is an indescribably devastating loss for a project that, whatever its imperfections, can fairly lay claim to the most intellectually consistent and sincere adherence to FOSS, privacy, and decentralization of any major social media project. Eugene has proven a spectacular and indispensable developer, and I don't know that Mastodon has the ability to move on without him. I want to praise Eugen but the uncomfortabl…
> I steer clear of showing vulnerability online, but there was a particularly bad interaction with a user last summer that made me realise that I need to take a step back and find a healthier relationship with the project, ultimately serving as the impetus to begin this restructuring process. Many of these microblogging sites seem to be populated by people with extreme views. One of the pleasant things about old Inte…
Even networks like HN and Reddit are filled with outrage and groupthink these days. I think the kind of person that spends all their time on social media gets stuck in a weird epistemic bubble which consists of ragebait posts and opinions that fish for community approval (likes, retweets, upvotes, etc.) Sitting in that soup for too long probably warps your sense of what's actually happening in the world around you. T…
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Sadly, I suspect he's reasonably successful at being popular amongst the people he wants to be popular with. Taylor Swift is super popular in the demographic she plays to, while being unpopular with, say, techno or metal fans. Musk is super popular in the outspoken nazi demographic. (And has fallen way way out of popularity with huge parts of demographics that he used to be popular in, like electric car people, home…
> Musk is super popular in the outspoken nazi demographic. It's sad seeing such poor misinformed takes like this on hacker news. I guess Marc Andreessen and the President/Co-Founder of Stripe, among many others, are nazis now. It's well known that among the group that I would call "pro-America technologists" that he's highly appreciated and many want to figure out how to replicate him. > and spaceflight fans. As a sp…
> As a spaceflight fan who was a fan of Musk all the way back in ~2012, I'm still a fan of him today
Elon is a rare human being.
He is pretty much what his haters think of him (a political/social troll/child).
And he is also what his worshipers think (a generationally incredible technical and business visionary).
Most people, whether ordinary or extraordinary themselves, have trouble with dissonance. Elon is dissonance. They see a joke or a god.
A small segment sees both sides clearly. I find it a painful experience. Overlapping extremes of inspiration and damage. But reality isn't all bubblegum and glitter go pops.
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Damn, where is Mastodon getting €1M from? Also where do you get from that you can't retire with €1M. It seems very feasible as long as you keep a frugal lifestyle.
Generally charitable foundations figure that you can withdraw 3% per year from your savings and never run out. Remember you have to account for not only good years, but also really bad years, so even though you can average 10% over the long term in the stock market there will be decades that you are negative. There are also bond investments that are safer, but have worse return. And inflation is always eating into yo…
(I'm going to assume that we actually withdraw slightly more than 3% to cover taxes, so that we are getting $30k/year after taxes).
I'm in the Puget Sound area of Washington with a paid off house and until a few months ago a paid off car. My new car is financed for a few months while I wait for some CDs to mature which I will use to pay it off. In the following I'm going to treat it as paid off.
The expenses that arise every month (e.g. food/groceries, some insurance premiums, utilities, prescriptions and OTC health stuff) plus the expenses that are yearly or half-yearly (e.g. some insurance premiums, property taxes) converted to monthly comes to a little under $2000/month.
A new Mac every 5 years, an iPad every 5 years, an iPhone every 4, an Apple Watch every 4, and a new car every 10 works out to be equivalent to around $350/month.
That leaves $1800/year out of our $30k/year, which can cover the occasional need to repair or replace a major appliance.
I do have fairly low property taxes thanks to a pretty good senior discount that Washington provides, but Washington is also a high property tax state. If we pick a low property tax state there are a few were someone without a discount would be paying about $800/month more than I'm paying for a comparable house. In one of those states that would leave us $1000/year for the occasional appliance repair or replacement.
You may need to make sure your house is suitable for this. Mine has a well and septic system which can be expensive to fix if they break. That could require drawing down the principle. We'd probably want to pick a house on municipal water and sewage. Also pick one in a milder climate so that we aren't relying on some expensive high capacity heating and/or cooling system. That should keep heating/cooling repairs down.
We also should take another look at that 3% a year withdrawal. We don't need to never run out. We just need to not run out before we die.
We can bump our monthly withdraw up to $3000 and keep that up for around 60 years. With that we've got $7k/year for our maintenance/repairs/replacements.
Another thing we should probably look at is whether we've already done enough work or whatever else is required to qualify for our country's old age benefits someday. If we will be able to start collecting those when we are 65 for example, and we are getting our $1 million at 30, we can withdraw more now than if we have to have the $1 million get us all the way to death.
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yes, but they typically hire a singular CEO to drive a cohesive vision and strategy with the check that they can fire the CEO at anytime.
Yes, and Mastodon has an executive director (as I already mentioned), which is basically the nonprofit equivalent of a CEO.
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Even networks like HN and Reddit are filled with outrage and groupthink these days. I think the kind of person that spends all their time on social media gets stuck in a weird epistemic bubble which consists of ragebait posts and opinions that fish for community approval (likes, retweets, upvotes, etc.) Sitting in that soup for too long probably warps your sense of what's actually happening in the world around you. T…
YouTube is an incredible story. It used to be memed as the worst comment community of all time. But then whatever they did to it made it the mildest thing on Earth, and it has really improved that site. As you point out, that works only because no one really goes there for the comments. Except perhaps for the famous slag one: > Great video clip. I had a job once at the US Steel Pipe Works, Geneva Plant, Utah... > The…
10 years leading. I would have fatigued. Mastodon needs to push for more activity and users though. I kind of know what it is, but I am not really using it. We could need, say, some replacement of Twitter-owned-by-billionaires.
No it absolutely does not.
The only people Mastodon needs are people who respect the culture, everyone else can fuck off to Bluesky.