Same. I put in a big order figuring if I have a three week turn around, better buy three weeks of stuff. Two days later I see the poor delivery guy unloading all my stuff.

Now I am an inadvertent horder.

With everyone remote HR has sadly discovered a sudden love of policing slack.

I saw another engineer get hit for talking about triggering a job since "using triggering improperly downplays the trauma of survivors".

Not sure what that means other than it is time to set the LinkedIn status to looking.

"I saw another engineer get hit for talking about triggering a job since "using triggering improperly downplays the trauma of survivors". "

This is nuts. Where is this? Silicon Valley?

Meh, I don't think it's something you should look to change jobs based on. People get weird when they're stressed, and the whole world's pretty stressed right now.

Same. It has long been a dinner topic, since my wife has wanted to invest the cash and I have been pushing to actually save more cash.

Now suddenly the statement showing our savings and CDs is my spouse's favorite part of our portfolio.

Index funds that should probanly recover given a sufficient tine don't cover emergency expenses tomorrow!

My expectation has long been for Stripe to bring in more and higher fees. They offer a lot of top shelf free tooling that either brings their models into your code or moves the bookkeeping up to their system entirely, ex subscriptions.

Smart companies have their own bookkeeping system in house and thus can potentially negotiate better terms with Stripe, assuming they are big enough Stripe cares to retain them. Plenty of other places are looking at massive costs to move off Stripe and I am sure someone at Stripe is aware of that.

The first hit is always free.

You're right about everything, but I disagree with your characterization of 'the first hit is always free'.

The lock-in features you describe are Stripe doing development work for your business.

With an addictive substance, the addiction gains control orthogonally to the 'benefit' it provides. When Stripe writes your recurring billing and bookkeeping system, they're straight up doing your work for you. Thats the desired effect– not a side-effect!

I moved back to DVD.com, 9.99 for one disc at a time and you can get Blurays (with 7.1 sound, something no one seems to stream) of the stuff Netflix can't stream because it went to Disney+, Hulu, etc. They also still have a reasonably priced 3 disc program if you trend more toward TV binge watching than movies.

Plus add in MakeMKV and Plex and there is a nice little ecosystem. Not as convenient as the golden age of Netflix, but now that everyone wants their own streaming service, I'd rather just cycle through a couple discs a week than do the whole lets get Disney+ for the Mandalorian, okay bingd watched that now lets get Netflix for Witcher, oh now Season 2 of the Mandalorian is out, back to Disney, oh look HBO has a new thing, etc.

Before anyone says anything:

DVD.com is owned by Netflix. And honestly, if you're hooked on the availability of content and don't want to ditch the Netflix pipeline completely, switching to DVD.com probably makes sense. The revenue shift from Netflix to DVD.com will have the same net impact on spending decisions.

Yeah, they even have a bundle deal to have DVDs and some level of streaming. It is interesting because at one point Netflix was trying to sell of the disc shipping business because physical media was dead and the whole service felt neglected.

Now that mailing you a disc is the only way they can get you certain content, the service is back closer to the level it was when they were killing Blockbuster.

I don’t think that everyone “wants” their own subscription service, it’s that it’s become the only sustainable business model to meet the demands of operating.

I think that’s a pretty appropriate use case for the word “want.”