This doesn't require single family housing on giant lots. Just well built buildings with proper insulation and sound proofing. I used to think apartments were just noisy until my partner and I moved into our current place. I live on the top floor of a 2 building, 6 unit complex of loft apartments cascading down the side of a hill. The buildings had to be built to withstand the extremely strong winds from the bay, and as such they're solid as fuck.

Despite our downstairs being tile floor our neighbors have told us they haven't heard any noise from us at all. My partner and I started being less concerned about noise and began playing somewhat loud music frequently and yell to each other across the unit. Despite this our downstairs neighbors still haven't heard a peep from us. For a while I genuinely thought our neighbors were just trying to be nice as everyone in our complex is super friendly and gets along well.

One day our neighbor in the adjacent building was woodworking in his garage. Normally the noise wouldn't bother me, but I was focused on something so I shut the window facing the courtyard which made me realize just how soundproof this giant concrete building is, both between units and to the outside world. I couldn't hear our neighbors saw unless I opened the curtains and tried to hear it, otherwise it might as well have been very faint background noise. I really wish buildings like this were the norm for apartments because they provide all the privacy of a single family home with all the benefits of apartment buildings.

I've had ProtonVPN for 3 years now and I have 0 complaints.

It's the only VPN I've ever used that doesn't have less bandwidth on VPN than off. I regularly saturate my gigabit connection for hours at a time with 0 issues or throttling, and tunnel my torrent client's traffic through it 24/7. It also allows me to watch 4k content on mobile data without throttling and circumvent my phone provider's restrictions on hotspot/tethering that they want me to pay $30/month to remove.

Best $5/month I've ever spent.

Myself and one other person have been upholding a torrent of the movie Holes since last June. My ratio is over 30, and I can only imagine how large theirs is since they were the only seeder when I downloaded the movie. I've cleared out some older torrents since then, but I'll be damned if Holes ever comes off my home server at this point.

Edit: The torrent for those who asked

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:d1a56cca797ae722d5562412766a1f1f74638f7d&dn=www.Torrenting.com%20%20%20-%20%20%20%20Holes.2003.1080p.BluRay.x265&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.vanitycore.co%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fopentracker.xyz%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.swateam.org.uk%3A2710%2Fannounce&tr=wss%3A%2F%2Fltrackr.iamhansen.xyz%3A443%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftorrent.nwps.ws%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.tfile.me%3A80%2Fannounce.php&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexplodie.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fretracker.telecom.by%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ft.nyaatracker.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fopen.acgtracker.com%3A1096%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.torrentyorg.pl%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=https%3A%2F%2Fopentracker.xyz%3A443%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.kamigami.org%3A2710%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker1.itzmx.com%3A8080%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.internetwarriors.net%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.iamhansen.xyz%3A2000%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.justseed.it%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fthetracker.org%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fretracker.mgts.by%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fretracker.lanta-net.ru%3A2710%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desync.com%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker1.itzmx.com%3A8080%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fipv4.tracker.harry.lu%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fdenis.stalker.upeer.me%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=wss%3A%2F%2Ftracker.btorrent.xyz%3A443%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.tfile.co%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fpeersteers.org%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.port443.xyz%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.internetwarriors.net%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.to%3A2710%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fzephir.monocul.us%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.vanitycore.co%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fpackages.crunchbangplusplus.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fopen.trackerlist.xyz%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fpubt.in%3A2710%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.si%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker2.itzmx.com%3A6961%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.ds.is%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker2.itzmx.com%3A6961%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fopen.acgnxtracker.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.city9x.com%3A2710%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker4.itzmx.com%3A2710%2Fannounce&tr=wss%3A%2F%2Ftracker.fastcast.nz%3A443%2Fannounce&tr=wss%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openwebtorrent.com%3A443%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.tfile.me%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.toss.li%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=https%3A%2F%2Ftracker.fastdownload.xyz%3A443%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ffxtt.ru%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fexplodie.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.port443.xyz%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=https%3A%2F%2F1337.abcvg.info%3A443%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker3.itzmx.com%3A6961%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.bittor.pw%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fbt.xxx-tracker.com%3A2710%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fpublic.popcorn-tracker.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Feddie4.nl%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.torrent.eu.org%3A451%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fp4p.arenabg.com%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.tiny-vps.com%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.stealth.si%3A80%2Fannounce

You pretty much nailed the entire reason for most of my friends and myself (mid to late 20s). We can all afford kids, but it's just not something anyone desires except for one or two people in our group of 14.

Most of us don't even dislike kids, but the thought of having our own is undesirable.

We also have impeccable uptime as you'd expect.

I really hate the phrase "bots" because it gives the appearance that they're all useless and malicious. I guarantee you they lumped in the following extremely valid uses of "bots":

• Automated personal scripts that many programmers use, these are technically bots. Hell, I use a "bot" to auto-clip digital Safeway coupons
• Moderation bots on sites like Lemmy/Reddit
• Archive efforts

Are AI chatbots bots? If they use a loose enough definition all this means is humans utilize fuck tons of automation over the Internet, both programmers and not.

I work at AWS (won't after this Friday since I got a remote job), and while I'm pretty low on the totem pole, internally it is very clear what is going on. Leadership is slowly phasing out non-proximate workers. Why? No one knows really, but our best guess is unofficial layoffs and upholding commercial real estate.

It started with RTO 3 days a week for everyone except remote employees in May. Then in September basically all remote employees were forced to relocate to their team hub. This was as much of a shit show as you think. You were given 30 days to decide and 60 days to move. What people did was "decide" on the last day to move, and then drag their feet for the next 60. Then quit without notice as soon as they had another job lined up. Don't get me wrong the market is rough, but 90 days is enough to find a job if you have halfway decent connections and AWS on your resume. By now my team already lost half of our devs (3/6).

More recently, in waves, they're forcing people to relocate to team hubs. Even teams who were historically spread out across the US. I'm from the west coast but my team is in Colorado and the second I caught wind of this I grinded my ass off and got another job. When I told my manager he was very understanding but frustrated at the situation. My two teammates were even more frustrated, and one of them is on the west coast too. My team could be one person soon.

Didn't mean for this to turn into a rant, but Amazon is nuking teams left and right like this and it will catch up to them. As a whole things are breaking more often in AWS systems than usual, and our service is starting to show cracks. Our reliability is down hard because we had a collective 35 years of knowledge leave our org. Almost all of whom were the team expert.

The only universally correct date format is ISO.

This is basically a map of how many Mexican immigrants each state has. I agree the English bias is not great because not speaking English doesn't make you dumb.

So glad to live in California where that type of shit is explicitly illegal. Open source software would be so fucked with how much software is produced here.

They determined that the average customer stayed in a given McDonald's after ordering for x minutes, so they made the coffee so hot it couldn't be consumed within x minutes in an attempt to get people not to utilize their free refills on coffee. The coffee was so hot it was dangerous. All to save a customer from getting 2 more cents worth of coffee.

Employers just don't like when supply and demand is not in their favor. I had this argument with an uncle of mine who complained that the company he worked at paid well ($20/hr) but no one would work for them.

I suggested the crazy idea that they try raising wages to meet the market, but apparently people are just lazy. So I asked him why tf would someone work in a machine shop doing back breaking, absolutely filthy work for $20/hr, with benefits that don't even kick in for the first month of employment, when they could work at the local Amazon Warehouse as a picker for $25/hr with full benefits immediately even if they are part time. Not to mention how much less taxing the picker job would be on their body.

So he then went on to complain that people are greedy and demanding too much money 🤦‍♂️