#tanstaafl — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #tanstaafl, aggregated by home.social.
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"Gospodin... you used an odd word earlier..."
"Oh, "tanstaafl." Means "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." And isn't," I added, pointing to a FREE LUNCH sign across room, "or these drinks would cost half as much. Was reminding her that anything free costs twice as much in long run or turns out worthless."
"An interesting philosophy."
-- Robert #Heinlein , "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", 1966 #TANSTAAFL -
"Gospodin... you used an odd word earlier..."
"Oh, "tanstaafl." Means "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." And isn't," I added, pointing to a FREE LUNCH sign across room, "or these drinks would cost half as much. Was reminding her that anything free costs twice as much in long run or turns out worthless."
"An interesting philosophy."
-- Robert #Heinlein , "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", 1966 #TANSTAAFL -
"Gospodin... you used an odd word earlier..."
"Oh, "tanstaafl." Means "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." And isn't," I added, pointing to a FREE LUNCH sign across room, "or these drinks would cost half as much. Was reminding her that anything free costs twice as much in long run or turns out worthless."
"An interesting philosophy."
-- Robert #Heinlein , "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", 1966 #TANSTAAFL -
"Gospodin... you used an odd word earlier..."
"Oh, "tanstaafl." Means "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." And isn't," I added, pointing to a FREE LUNCH sign across room, "or these drinks would cost half as much. Was reminding her that anything free costs twice as much in long run or turns out worthless."
"An interesting philosophy."
-- Robert #Heinlein , "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", 1966 #TANSTAAFL -
"Gospodin... you used an odd word earlier..."
"Oh, "tanstaafl." Means "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." And isn't," I added, pointing to a FREE LUNCH sign across room, "or these drinks would cost half as much. Was reminding her that anything free costs twice as much in long run or turns out worthless."
"An interesting philosophy."
-- Robert #Heinlein , "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", 1966 #TANSTAAFL -
Tanstaafl – Pay-to-inbox email on Bitcoin Lightning
#HackerNews #Tanstaafl #PayToInbox #Bitcoin #Lightning #Email #Crypto
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There's a great post on #LinkedIn verification and #privacy concerns circulating on Mastodon. Real concerns (article is linked in (haha!) in what I wrote).
I chose to look at it through the cumulative AI lens as well.
https://knowprose.com/2026/02/the-infrastructure-cost-of-being-verified/
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"They're giving away free copies of the Turner Diaries! That means they're not making any money so it's okay to sign up for it!" Remember that when it's 'free', who the product is. They'll find a way to monetize. #TANSTAAFL
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@ascentale @bikenite A trunk bag and a couple of inexpensive tail lights come to mind immediately. Proving again, “There ain’t no such thing as a free (or cheap) lunch”. #bikenite #tanstaafl
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Using what you have before consuming what you do not. In this case water for growing plants. A fascinating look not only at how but why and what it impacts.
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Using what you have before consuming what you do not. In this case water for growing plants. A fascinating look not only at how but why and what it impacts.
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Using what you have before consuming what you do not. In this case water for growing plants. A fascinating look not only at how but why and what it impacts.
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Using what you have before consuming what you do not. In this case water for growing plants. A fascinating look not only at how but why and what it impacts.
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Using what you have before consuming what you do not. In this case water for growing plants. A fascinating look not only at how but why and what it impacts.
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😰 Popular Linux orgs Freedesktop and Alpine Linux are scrambling for new web hosting
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@charlotteclymer But, how will they learn that "There's no such thing as a Free Lunch?" #TANSTAAFL (of course I'm kidding…)and we all know that the lunch isn't "free," but how many kids actually buy their own lunch anyway? It's really a no-brainer, which should fit this Congress quite well.
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" . . . Microsoft is betting on an effort to generate power from atomic fusion — the collision of atoms that powers the sun — a breakthrough that has eluded scientists for the past century. Physicists predict it will elude Microsoft, too."
#fusion #coldfusion #cleanenergy #TANSTAAFL #AI #AiResearch #Microsoft #usearchivelinks #please
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Yey YouTube ads!
What @Vivaldi don't say in their release blog post of version 6.7 today: if you use the updated Vivaldi Feed Reader to watch subscribed youtube channel videos, you don't get to see any ads. Not sure how long this will work until Google shuts shuts this circumvention down, but right now if you're sick and tired of youtube ads, just use Vivaldi's feed reader (it's a great browser/mail program for everything else anyway)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E00sqFtAirI
Note that if you do that, you may want to consider other ways to support the folks who produce the videos, (which is generally the case with adblocking. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Make sure that people who create things you enjoy get something in return).
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CW: Long thread/8
Kritzer makes it clear that growing up under the thumb of a #TANSTAAFL-worshipping, self-regarding, wealthy autocrat who worships selfishness as the necessary precondition for market clearing would be a goddamned nightmare.
8/
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@scully @Topslakr @MonaApp Yeah, Mona is also just a ‘reader’ unless you pay the piper, but it is a solid performer; I had 0 qualms paying the developer once the TestFlight beta expired #TANSTAAFL
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@feb @chris Hm, glaube nicht, dass sich das ausschließt. Das Schöne am Fediverse ist, dass jede:r tun kann, was er/sie möchte und wozu er/sie in der Lage ist. Aber: Die allermeisten können das nicht für sich selbst machen - und für sie ist das Dazustoßen auch nur ab einer bestimmten Größe interressant und relevant. D.h. bei denen, die das für andere machen (allen voran Eugen Rochko) muss es einen Weg geben, wie man diesen großen Aufwand bezahlt bekommt. #TANSTAAFL
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@davey_cakes maybe, but if you understand the #TANSTAAFL principle ..?
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I just noticed the kid forgot his lunch pail when he went to school.
Fortunately, in California schools we have a strict "Don't Say #TANSTAAFL" policy.
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@babelcarp Here's the thing: PAYMENTS COST MONEY.
That is, there is a cost to implementing, instituting, operating, and maintaining a payment system. And it is startlingly high.
You're better off paying the bulk rate. You are already paying that bulk rate through the existing advertising-based media system, and it is more than sufficient to cover the entire publishing industry's present income, probably several times over.
There's a similar issue in sales. The cost of sales, that is, the expense of supporting a salesperson and operation is often 50% of all revenues. I'd become aware of this through New Relic, which pioneered a very low-touch sales track (effectively: free for a minimal implementation, and automated zero-touch upsell subscription basis for most small/medium businesses, with enterprise sales having a formal sales operation). NR still ultimately reported fairly industry-standard cost-of-sales numbers after going public.
With micropayments, there's the processor's cut, again tends to run high: Google Play's standard cut is 30% (15% on the first $1m in revenues), Apple Store tends to run similarly.
With subscriptions or bundled payments ... the individual accounting falls away, and billings are simply periodic and tranched by service level (with usage-based billing for large accounts, though often at highly-discounted rates).
To mangle a tired old phrase: There's no such thing as a free lunch-payment system.
