"As soon as all the minimum wage workers have to "walk" to work the economy is done."

Gaia forbid that the modes of locomotion that won the battle of production in World War II - walking and trolleys - come back into vogue.

Oh yeah: electric railroads between Minneapolis and the Pacific Northwest too.

"We don't know if there would be a better world if resources were invested differently, we live with what we have."

Yeah, without World War I driving the need for long-range heavy vehicles independent of infrastructure today we would probably be where we looked to be going in 1910: electric automobiles for in-town use, interurban trolley/trains for regional travel, and gasoline (later diesel) vehicles for rural/farm/construction.

Here come the listings of the extreme edge cases, generally involving towing massive trailers across country, and horrifying use cases/failure modes that no current EV owner experiences, to discourage people from evening considering an EV.

That's a really interesting question; I can't think of answer that doesn't include its own counterargument. Personally I would say NFT was a separate scam that used some technology from the cryptocurrency fraud world, just as the growth of the telephone network allowed the creation of scams that used the telephone but were not based on it.

Interesting to learn that our technology overlords can't recognize that what is currently being touted as "AI" is simply the next big fraud/grift/pyramid scheme, following right on the heels of "crypto". Good for the early investors in the company that got bought out I guess.

Conversely, if they were a monopoly, why would they have to pay money?

To me the line here between "competitive" and "anti-competitive" seems difficult to judge when there are third parties involved making their own commercial choices.

Would it be a better world if Google couldn't pay Mozilla (or Opera, or whoever)? I'm not sure it would be, because without that revenue stream possibly only Google/Microsoft (and maybe Apple) browsers would be left.

Happy to help, you can find a short summary and links with more detail here

The idea of crowdsourced rating systems was great, and it worked for the first few years of that they were generally available. Then the 10% of the world's population that are grifters and just plain enjoyers of destruction joined forces with the organized pumpers and scammers[1]. As of 2023 one has to assume that every crowdsourced rating system is being gamed by from 2 to n parties for multiple purposes. If you are very careful you can glean a little insight from a carefully chosen few, but generally they are all

[1] and of course one has to consider the actions of even self-styled reputable firms. I have read several articles showing that upwards of 60% of the "local locksmith" businesses found via a Google Maps search are either (a) national locksmith chains with no local presence using phony addresses and phone numbers that redirect to a remote call center (b) just flat out house-theft-by-cleanout scams.

" Not because I think it's a good idea but because I want to hear the screaming of Apple fanbois"

Which right there confirms the suspicion that supposedly 'neutral' standards processes and regulations are being used to punished disfavored firms. E.g. the use of the GSM standards process (in many ways a good thing) to break Motorola's near monopoly on cellular technology and drive them out of the EU.

The various EU environmental agencies have done some good works, but this is not one of them. Apple has sold at least 3 billion Lightning devices and it has proven a vastly superior connector to any other alternatives the EU has pushed - I defy you to tell me if a connector on one of your global devices is mini-USB or micro-USB without googling an illustration, and of course you will always pull the wrong one out of your tangled drawer of various types. We won't even mention the hideous MicroAB Superspeed connector which was being touted as the "next standard" - until Apple released the Lightning and everyone realized what a disaster the EU-driven USB standards process was becoming.

Is USB-C better than Lightning? Potentially, but is it actually better in everyday use? Not certain. And was there justification for forcing Apple to drop the Lightning? I have yet to see any convincing non-circular analysis.

I'm no lawyer but there are plenty of cases in the record of private entities attempting to sue reporters for publishing information leaked to a reporter, and unless there are serious aggravating circumstances the courts generally reject such lawsuits. Although under the corrupt Roberts/Federalist Society court who knows what the future will bring.

The fascinating one to me is Google Labs and Google Research, where they hired hundreds of top-level computer people and research PhDs from all over the world, gave them free rein to investigate and create, and got basically nothing out of what is probably hundreds of millions of dollars invested.

Google bought Applied Semantics in 2003 and Doubleclick in 2007, and then 20 more PII-stealing, I mean online advertising, firms from 2007-2015. Anyone who knew what Doubleclick was and what they did knew what was coming back then - and it has.

"Are you buying advertising? Because if not, you're not the customer."

Corporate entities and organizations that are paying for corporate Google Suite are legally customers in the traditional sense, not just product. I'm sure Google's standard contract for GSuite is thick with disclaimers about the support service level being 0.000001% coverage and response time within 43,800 hours, but nonetheless they are actual customers.

The reporting of leaked information is generally, in the United States, protected under the 1st Amendment for the person who reports on it. Theft of proprietary information, whether or not the with intention of giving it to a reporter, is generally not protected and can result in civil suits, civil prosecution, and/or criminal prosecution of the person who takes it. Theft of physical property, such as CDs or game cartridges, is a crime in any jurisdiction regardless of whether or not the taker has good intentions or leaks information deriving therefrom to a news outlet.