The US is uniquely fucked. What the rest of the west shows though is that the housing crisis exists even without the idiocy that is American suburbanism. The consistent factor across the board is housing-as-profit.
johnnyjayjay
joined 1 year ago
It's speculative investments, housing as assets instead of, well, housing. In almost every major city in the west there is an astonishing number of empty apartments. In my hometown of Berlin there is essentially one large corporation that owns most of the city as investment. Also, new housing is constantly being built - but not for (average) people to live in it.
You may also recall that the whole thing came crashing down in 2008? Or have we just forgotten what happened there and the effects it has to this day.
You have to be a complete moron (and pretty ignorant) to believe housing prices are so high because "there is simply not enough supply". Have you lot slept through the last decades? Do you know anything that's happening?
The Wizard Book is a classic that basically "builds" programming as a concept.
(it is very technical though. So not sure it's something you're looking for)
While I disagree with the person you're responding to because I find it honestly a little bit disgusting to equate the population of Germany with big German corporations (no, BMW is not "the Germans"), it is true that Germany has historically had a blind spot for capitalist Nazi collaboration (and so has the US, by the way!).
Cory Doctorow wrote a great piece about this topic a few weeks ago. Really recommend reading it if what you've always heard is how well Germany does with its history.
Yeah. I really like the idea of the ACL, but I wouldn't use it for anything serious right now because it hasn't undergone proper legal review and its enforceability itself is rather questionable. The author said he was going to work on getting that done this year, we'll see what happens.
To clarify, I also don't think the problem I've mentioned can be fixed with licenses alone and I still support FOSS in general. The fact that there's organisations like the SFC and FSF is a bonus, of course.
It definitely stops anyone who is at least a little bit serious about what they're doing.
Depends on what I'm making and which ecosystem it will be a part of. For libraries, I use the MIT license most of the time, although I'm probably going to switch to Apache 2.0 for future stuff. It's a bit more robust and has a helpful licensing framework.
When I make applications (and if possible), I tend to use (A)GPLv3. GPL sometimes doesn't work though (for example, for my primary language, Clojure). I like the MPL 2.0 as a weak copyleft alternative.
However, recently, I've been reconsidering the whole open source/free software ideology, especially the focus on granting unconditional freedoms. I think the view that engineers shouldn't care what is done with their work is outdated and irresponsible, and it applies to software devs as well. So I'm keeping an eye on the development of alternative source models such as ethical source or licenses like the Anti-Capitalist License.
Pricing is still relevant, at least in Europe (from my experience). I've done a lot of low-budget traveling with small groups of students in France this year, and AirBnB was (unfortunately) consistently and significantly less expensive than hotels.
Also, many hotels don't give you access to a kitchen, which really sucks if you don't want to spend money eating out every day.
The new one is definitely too expensive for me. I have a phone that I'm not really happy with, but I'm keeping it for as long as possible. After that, I'm probably going to look for a used fairphone. I don't see myself going with another completely unrepairable device.