There's economic / capitalist pressure to reduce cost / increase revenue and optimize for short-term profits; that's on the corporate side, anyway.
But applying the military hardware stuff to software is IMO a bit of a leap; I get the similarities, but where demand for software hasn't slowed down at all, demand for military hardware and ammunition just wasn't there.
The alternative would have been to keep all the factories alive, maintained, staff employed (or training staff ready to onboard rapidly hired staff when capacity had to go up), supplied stockpiled (and rotated), etc. And who would be willing to pay for that?
In times of peace the voter wouldn't want the government to spend billions on the military if it wasn't necessary... except for the US which still spends billions a year on the military even in peacetime. But not on their production facilities it seems.
A shame, my first mechanical keyboard was a Filco Majestouch tenkeyless with cherry blue switches, I've used it as a daily driver since 2011 (I just checked when I bought it) and only replaced it a few months ago because some of the keys didn't register properly.
I still have it, I should open it up and clean it again, probably just a dirty contact or something. Solid piece of gear.
currently using a NuPhy Field75 because it looks and sounds cool, lol. The linear magnetic switches are a neat feature but in practice I don't use any features that it theoretically supports.
I have a Leopold with MX brown keys. Bought in 2012. Last year the left ctrl (or maybe left alt? can't remember) started to sometimes not work. I took the back cover off and the soldering job was horrid everywhere. And on that key the solder was mostly non-existent. I touched it up and a few others. All good now.
And as always, too much of anything isn't good for you either. A sugary soda on occasion won't do much harm, but some have several a day or it's the only thing they will drink.
I think that in this case, read Orwell, but don't only read Orwell or base your entire viewpoint on his writing. Read many, read diversely, read from authors you don't like, read unknown authors, read poorly written books, and read random smaller "old web" style blog posts, like from https://bearblog.dev/discover/ or blog rolls or whatever.
I can't agree. Or, part of me wants to, but I know that the Powers That Be will push AI generated propaganda music pretend to be grassroots / "someone just like you", and / but pay to have it promoted.
Avoid streaming services if you want to listen to political music. Go for live music and connect with humans, or at the very least just be among them and listen to them live. They may still be government plants but the chances are much lower.
And with AI ingesting said floods of information, there's less incentive to read as well.
Case in point, I've let AI help me write some documentation; I'd probably end up writing just as much in the end so I don't think there was much waste, but in the back of my head there's two voices now.
The one says "nobody will actually read this. I wouldn't, but I think it should be written down just in case".
But the other says "an AI will ingest all of this and give everything equal consideration, unlike most humans"
So yes, it is getting noisier, but as long as there's enough oversight and aggressive editing / cutting, it's probably manageable and hopefully helpful for our AI overlords.
Reading non-fiction maybe, but reading fiction is about escaping and immersing yourself in another world for a few hours, like gaming, and I doubt people will ever stop doing either.
Not so much a trade war as basic economic forces, and it's been going on for much longer than that. When infrastructure improves, companies and customers can look further to get their stuff done. If it's cheaper to do your industrial or manufacturing work abroad and have it transported to your country, that just happens.
The powers that be try to slow this down by banning imports outright (you can't for example import American chicken into Europe because of food safety laws), or high import taxes (Chinese EVs have a 50% import tax in Europe and the US to protect the local car manufacturers. Which is fair because the Chinese EV manufacturers are state-sponsored so their prices are unfair. Then again, western companies get billions in investor money to push the prices down).
This comment is very exaggerated, I can think of a few more "morally corrupt" things to do.
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