If you want a great book on the history of financial speculation, Devil Take the Hindmost (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0452281806/) is a strong recommendation.
In most cases yes. If you upgrade your browser, the only thing that changes is the user agent data. The underlying device remains the same and it is this that leaks a lot of fingerprinting attributes (screen, gfx card, fonts, timezone, language, operating system, battery status, audio setup, bluetooth, installed video codecs, TCP data, IP address if static etc.).
So they're whining that the UK has laws with teeth which makes it hard for them to offer AI sex bots without investing in adequate protections for minors?
It may be so, but as somebody else mentioned every site that lets people register an account and share stuff is affected because having legal age verification on site requires you to pay a third party provider and writing paperwork for the gov is too much for your site about pet hamsters.
Well, one thing they do not mention in framing their position is that their compliance concerns are acute because of the services they offer. They feign throughout that their risks are pedestrian.
It is not strawmanning to say that of course they have to be more worried about compliance than a hamster forum (which forum has recently decided not to comply because they [likely correctly] believe that their regulatory risks are minimal).
Renting is not owning (no benefits accrue from asset appreciation). The same calc for ownership is very different. Also would love to know % of population in 1970 that rented versus today. My guess is it's much higher today.
But renting has no property taxes or maintenance costs and should cost a lot less, meaning you can take the money that would have gone to those other things and invest it to earn returns on it.
I pay 600/mo in rent, so 7200 a year. A basic house around me would easily be about 7200 in property tax + average annual maintenance costs + increased utility costs + increased insurance.
So how am I losing out on anything unless you think that a house value (minus loan rate) would appreciate more than I can earn with that money instead invested in the stock market or some other real-estate investment deal like multi-family units.
I guess it depends somewhat on where you live and what interest rates are doing when you buy. Where I live (and true of virtually everywhere else I've lived over the last 20+ years), monthly rent significantly exceeds what the monthly mortgage repayment would be for the property if bought. Rental prices also seem to increase in lock step with or even above house price increases. So as the underlying asset appreciates (benefitting the landlord), rental prices also go up, further compounding the "loss" of not owning. This is before we talk about the possibility of using the gains in your property's value as collateral, something obviously not available to renters (or the advantage of locking in a <3.5% 20+ year loan; or the tax advantages on capital gains from property versus stocks). Also, might be different in the US, but in the UK the tenant normally pays the annual taxes.
>Where I live (and true of virtually everywhere else I've lived over the last 20+ years), monthly rent significantly exceeds what the monthly mortgage repayment would be for the property if bought. Rental prices also seem to increase in lock step with or even above house price increases.
That just seems crazy to me as rental price here is like 1/3 of what a mortgage would be on a decent house I can find.
Also property taxes seem to go up just as fast or faster than rental increases.
I mean my rent increases like 2-3% a year over the last 15 years that I have been renting.
If I look back over my spreadsheets I have spent about 100K on rent in the last 15 years that I have been renting and that includes water and heat.
>If I look back over my spreadsheets I have spent about 100K on rent in the last 15 years that I have been renting and that includes water and heat.
Setups like that just sadly don't exist in my part of the world. But, in your case, totally agree. Keep renting and just smash your savings in to other investments. I'd be doing the same.
> But renting has no property taxes or maintenance costs
More accurately, renting has no separate line items for property taxes or maintenance (or insurance or HOA if applicable). But of course the renter is paying for all of that.
> and should cost a lot less
More, not less. Since the renter is paying for all the costs, plus some profit for the owner.
Is this really true though? UK is building new reactors, France has many. Wind and solar are both massive successes across the continent. The North Sea still has oil and significant new LNG storage capacity has recently been built.
Wind/Solar/etc cannot produce fertilizer - arguably the most important use of fossil fuels.
And the EU's land does not produce enough food to support its population without fossil fuel derived fertilizers (requires lots of nat gas). Hence why the EU still imports $billions of Russian fertilizer despite publicly talking tough about Russia.
The EU leaves fossil fuel extraction to other countries and then imports the result while loudly shouting about their own "morality" and sustainability. It's child-like and pure silly-ness. Until the EU starts fracking they will never have independence over anything.
> Wind/Solar/etc cannot produce fertilizer - arguably the most important use of fossil fuels.
You can create ammonia (and thereby nitrogen-based fertilizers which you are probably referring to) from electricity, water and air alone. However, doing it with gas or oil is often cheaper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44160-023-00362-y
I think your concern on fertiliser imports is overblown. I find the argument that the EU shouldn't champion & invest in renewables while it also continues to use and import fossil fuels a false dichotomy. The same goes for fracking. I also don't accept the argument that pristine independence in one sector (energy) is a base requirement for overall sovereign independence. For sure, some home grown control over energy is a requirement but we live in an interconnected world and whatever the EU may lack in one area it has more than enough ways and means in other areas to assert its power and achieve its policy goals. It's also quite capable of and not afraid to invest on a large scale when/where it's needed.
Agree with the acme.sh recommendation. It's my favourite by far (especially, as you point out, when leveraging with DNS-01 challenges so you can sidestep most of the security risks the article author worries about)
Personally, I thought this "friction" article was excellent and a very helpful way of framing things. Recommend reading it in addition to those two links.
