https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_cement

Or something like AWS S3 vault lock. You pay up front and specify the duration. And at that point you can’t even delete the data if you want to. You can remove you’re credit card from account billing, and they still keep the data for the specified duration.

I think that people generally overestimate how much money tech companies like this one actually make. Their profits are tiny. A lot of the time, tech companies run on investment money, and can’t actually turn a profit. They wait for the big acquisition or IPO payday. So if you think you’re actually gonna get 100k off them, good luck. Sometimes they’re barely keeping the lights on.

So they want to ban taxpayer funding.

I’m not an American, but how much tax funding goes into regular healthcare, and where the fuck does that money go? Because we hear horror stories over here in Europe that an ambulance callout in the US costs thousands of dollars, giving birth costs thousands of dollars, moderately wealthy people with health insurance have been bankrupted by cancer. In many European countries stuff like that doesn’t really cost you anything. In the UK for example, a visit to your GP is free, as is most medication. In other EU countries a GP is about €65, unless you’re on social welfare, in which case it’s free. And if your GP refers you for a scan or procedure, you generally don’t pay anything. The issue with free healthcare is the waiting time. You can choose to go private to cut the waiting time (in which case you need health insurance, because an MRI + overnight in hospital + procedure + plus drugs might cost €5k). But where a condition is considered an emergency (heart attack, road accident, possible cancer diagnosis) there isn’t a long wait for life-saving treatment. If a car runs you over, an ambulance brings you to the hospital and they treat you - no money change hands. My older sister had terminal cancer, and throughout the entire thing she paid €0 for various operations, scans, drugs and 2 ambulance callouts. She had health insurance, but with cancer, regular healthcare kinda supercedes it. Healthcare gives your more options, but she found that the “best of the best” oncologists and cancer treatment were available for free at the public hospital.

So, a very long run up to my question: WTF healthcare actually gets taxpayer funding in the US, and how are basic things like an ambulance or insulin insanely expensive?

It’s such an odd word. Not like “fuck” or “cunt” or something like that. You are literally not allowed to write it or say it. I’m not even sure people let themselves think it, instead thinking “n word” inside their heads. I can’t think of any other word that is so much like actual god-fearing blasphemy. And yet, you can buy a random rap album and the word will be all over it. It’s even used as a term of endearment between black men who grew up together.

Can anyone think of any other word that is treated almost as if it has magical powers?

It’s just word policing. It’s a bigger thing in America because that country is basically split down the middle into two groups that fucking hate each other. Republicans think Democrats (or “liberals”) or morons who don’t believe in biology (eg: sex) and they want to abolish the police, but yet they are fascists who want to police your thoughts. Democrats think that Republicans (or “nazis”) are morons who don’t believe in biology (eg: evolution) and they want everybody to own 100 automatic weapons and infinite ammo, but don’t believe climate change is real.

Pretty much everything that everybody in America thinks and says it’s polarised by this filter. If you accidentally say something remotely centrist, both sides will call you a fascist and throw you into the bin. People are desperately trying to signal membership of their group, so they latch onto bullshit like “Which word-de-jour do you use to refer to dried crickets?” (Wait for the answer to this question, pitchfork in hand). You hesitated! You are a literal Nazi!

You can see it throughout this thread. People kinda admitting that they’re just words and that they change over time BUT don’t use the wrong one or else.

Unfortunately this bullshit has worked it’s way into other countries, even those that don’t have the same underlying political polarising filter.

Language changes over time. Sometimes it’s a slow gradual adoption of new terms, sometimes it’s a cool new slang, and sometimes it’s word policing. I understand that, historically, a certain type of person would use the word “females” instead of “women”, but I can see a shift happening where there number of people using the word “female” is on the increase. Let’s say you’re having a conversation and specifically want to refer to female people - you can’t actually use the word women, which used to imply “female” but now includes males who transition. So depending on context, and what you need to communicate, the word female can be absolutely critical, whereas the word woman may not suffice.

I run a single headscale node on one of my free Oracle OCI instances, and connect about a dozen devices to it. No fear of adding friends either, since it’s free.