In the context of what I said, who is “they” and what “don’t” they?

Or perhaps sentiment is that the institutions empowered to stop him are unwilling to do so because they are captured by capital… and that we all need to put people into power who won’t betray the people and who are willing to do something with that power to help everyone else… and perhaps work to restructure things so that the system works in favor of the working class instead of incrementally submitting to the will of capital until we are all wage slaves begging for table scraps from gold leafed shit stains like Musk and Bezos.

Others have been sold the lie that it is flawed and inferior.

I’ve spoken briefly with some semi-progressive family about it and they immediately dismissed it as able to be “gamed” and therefore a worse system. I didn’t get time to really dig into it with them. I was just confused and shocked.

I fucking wish the US wasn’t entrenched in this abysmal two-party system.

I have somewhat similar concerns. I’m not as worried about sanitized Linux as I am about new mandates entrenching Microsoft, Apple, and Google as the only valid options. Even it it is an enormous pain in the ass for everyone, including those big three, it would infinitely preferably for them to more widespread adoption of alternatives.

Just propose solutions/mandates that are fundamentally incompatible with GPL and FOSS ideals, or deeply contentious within open source communities and you can do irreparable damage to the growth of Linux and any space that needs to adapt to those new mandates. Linux moving into education? Pretend it is needed to protect the children. Linux moving into government? Pretend it’s needed to protect security or efficiency. Linux moving into the workplace? Pretend it’s needed to protect AI or liability or synergy or whatever the fuck gets CEO dicks hard these days. BAM - Linux gets hit with massive internal strife and splitting of vital communities and resources. I know it was already absurdly contentious before, but seeing what happened when storing a users age hit systemd really worried me.

I think it’s already been kind of ongoing by co-opting or even creating “open source initiatives” from the business world who ultimately just jump in when things look mature and rapidly implement profit extraction and enshittification.

Any times of USPS crisis are basically just manufactured by people in government who want to privatize or eliminate it for personal gain. The PAEA and Trump’s bullshit come to mind.

I get and respect that people have different places where they draw lines. But to me, it doesn’t seem like they are abandoning the concept of DRM free in any real way. The majority of these have small bits of extra content, often cosmetic, like twitch drops that need the software to be online to redeem/verify.

For the few games on that list that are actually unplayable or crippled in some way, I am disappointed. For additional free or giveaway content from the developer that is part of the original package distributed through GOG, I’m much more understanding of GOG if the developer failed to accommodate offline verification/unlocking of that content.

Can you please elaborate on and define what DRM is “allowed” on GOG? From my most recent understanding, you can still play offline and don’t need to use the GOG launcher or some other launcher that requires an Internet connection.

We are not far from general AI

You mean AGI? Yeah, no. I don’t believe you.

With their proposed ideas, I’d mostly agree.

However, with the increasingly shittier Republicans they have compromised further and further into utter shit. They’ve tacked toward shitty, pretty hard in some cases, to try to lure some shitty votes their way… alienating those who want less shit. They’ve opted to take money from extremely shitty people because they have a lot of money but those people desire there to be more shit. The Democrats abandoned their less shitty ground repeatedly even when they managed to find some real leverage, unleashing torrents of shit for no apparent reason (unless they actually want more shit).

So yes, their campaign websites have a lot less shit on them than the Republicans, but in practice the party as a whole has either pushed for things to be much shittier or compromised their alleged ideals unnecessarily resulting in things being much shittier.

There are certainly diamonds in the shit. I don’t think it’s all of them, but current leadership is definitely way more shitty than they look. What concerns me is that every time we get rid of some small contingency of Democrats that are obviously bathing in shit and willing to open the floodgates for the Republicans, we always seem to find just enough of the remaining Democrats wiling to dive in and replace them. It gives the impression that, for a significant subset of them, their campaign slogans and alleged ideals are performative.

after having the US and Israel bomb civil infrastructure, as well as committing other war crimes

That was the point of my first paragraph. Israel not participating in the CCM was just a bonus. I was aware there were international agreements not use to cluster munitions and I looked into it because I was curious.

Who would have thought that ignoring international law, treaties, and conventions would encourage your enemies to do the same? It’s almost as if limiting yourself to limit those who would do the same to you makes sense. Pesky laws.

It’s also noteworthy that neither country, to my knowledge, agreed not to use cluster munitions.

I think they’re beyond hypocrisy.

They are at war with truth, reality, and civility. These things are only important if they are currently working in their favor. Acting in bad faith seems to be their default. All that matters is that they get their way. The ends always justify the means unless it looks like something might hinder their ability to get their way in the future… and they are usually confident that they’ll find a workaround later and do that thing anyway.

Is there even a word for such brazen, naked duplicity?

Maybe they’ll manhandle a few rich fucks that happen to be brown and Congress will suddenly care.

My microwave has an option to turn off all the beeps, and it’s a landlord special so I imagine others can do the same. Check your model and see if it has that option.

For mine, I literally need to hold down I think the number 3 for 5 seconds. It’s in no way obvious.

Where I live, everything that isn’t bagged at checkout needs to be stickered or they assume you stole it. If I buy something that doesn’t fit in a bag, it also needs to be stickered.

I try really hard to remember to put my bags in front of the door immediately after unbaggging everything. Then I usually grab the bags and bring them with me the next time I leave. The problem occurs if I ever need to temporarily use the bags for something else… then I get to add to my hoarde.

You are not alone. I feel like the world is quickly giving in to LLMs and I’m one of the very rare holdouts. My nephews, my coworkers, my bosses… all of them use a mix of ChatGPT, Gemini, and/or Claude regularly. Hell, even my therapist tells me his wife uses ChatGPT for everything. I remember being worried when kids would immediately answer questions with some obnoxious response akin to “just Google it”. I wondered if abandoning the need to remember anything would impact development. Now they instantly go to a chatbot.

I’ve tried it a few times with difficult problems and always found hallucinations. If I’m looking for something that doesn’t exist, the LLM has always made up a convincing answer. It’s frightening how so many people trust it blindly.

I work in US Public Education and the adoption of AI in this space scares the living fuck out of me. I understand the argument: “Kids are using it, or are going to use it. We need to get out in front of it.” That’s fine. Find a provider that “promises” not to use student data. Protect PII. Great.

But some district admins are enthusiastically using it. I literally mentioned in conversation that I needed to check when something was due for the state and they immediately asked Gemini and assumed the answer was correct. Another one 100% uses it for letters summarizing student performance and freaks out when ChapGPT is down. I can only imagine how horrific it must be in the private sector where the goal is efficiency and profit over everything.

This shit needs to pop, and fast.

Golden.

Essentially, the employees most excited and inspired by “visionary” corporate jargon may be the least equipped to make effective, practical business decisions for their companies.

“This creates a concerning cycle,” Littrell said. “Employees who are more likely to fall for corporate bullshit may help elevate the types of dysfunctional leaders who are more likely to use it, creating a sort of negative feedback loop. Rather than a ‘rising tide lifting all boats,’ a higher level of corporate BS in an organization acts more like a clogged toilet of inefficiency.”

And yet, they did it, very quickly, and will do so again when the market shifts again.

These aren’t typical conditions. There is a world of difference between “Yo, here is a truckload of money. Give me all your RAM for the next two years!” (AI right now) and “We need to align our capacity to the current needs of the market in order to not flood the market with product we can’t sell.” (normal conditions).

Look at the memory market before this AI shitshow. It’s cyclical as the fabs try to match demand without flooding the market. It typically takes several quarters to ramp capacity up and down, causing shortages and then oversaturating the market because they can’t do it fast enough. Returning to that kind of production is also likely to be more difficult than it would otherwise be to adjust while already in it. There are so many unknowns in this wild situation. How much DRAM should they commit to making?

Anyway, I’m not even a business person so what the fuck do I know. I’m getting tired of this conversation. It would be great to be optimistic, but that’s not something I’m capable of right now. Best of luck. I hope it pops and prices plummet.

Please indicate the point at which we no longer agree.

• The price of consumer hardware, like RAM and SSDs, is high right now.

• Supply for consumer hardware is low right now.

• The reason that the price of consumer hardware is high right now is because supply is low.

• The reason this supply is low is because manufacturing capacity that used to be committed to consumer variants of this hardware has been converted to manufacturing datacenter variants of this hardware.

• The reason for the manufacturing shift is that, because of the AI bubble, demand for datacenter hardware is high.

• It takes time and money to convert manufacturing capacity between consumer hardware to datacenter hardware.

• This conversion also includes changing investment, R&D, and employment priorities. Companies like Micron (one of the three major/noteworthy memory suppliers in the world) have cut/gutted their B2C divisions to focus their resources entirely on the more profitable datacenter B2B efforts.

• Datacenter variants of this hardware are substantially different than consumer variants and are not interchangeable.

• Higher prices, slimmer margins, and lower sales have caused some consumer electronics businesses to cut back, focus on narrower market segments, pivot to other markets, or exit the market entirely.

If we agree on all of the above, I’m not sure why you are confused.

If the bubble pops today, it very well may cause demand for datacenter hardware to crater, assuming they don’t get creative and find a way to pivot hard toward other SaaS somehow. Since the parts are not at all compatible with consumer electronics, this would not provide an instant increase in consumer hardware supply nor would it crater consumer hardware demand.

If the crash is bad enough, some of the businesses that pivoted to B2B/datacenter hardware may fail or have to be bailed out by their governments. Even if they all survived, fewer consumer product businesses exist in the market to sell to consumers and they have fewer product lines in development. Companies like Micron, who abandoned their established brands and/or relationships with resellers or partners that would use their parts in consumer products, will need to rebuild those things. Manufacturing would need to be converted, updated to the latest consumer hardware needs, taking more time and money.

It would take quite a while to rebuild consumer hardware supply. Without that supply, demand will not be met and prices will be high.