Of course we know, because we don't see the source tree to the next GTA game posted anywhere, do we?

No, they don't. The competition in China is cut-throat and the exported cars are not any cheaper than the ones in China. That's really all there is to it.

Because important people who finance political campaigns might lose money, and of course that's no longer allowed.

So Sweden is some sort of authoritarian hell hole in your book? That's odd, the socialist Scandinavian countries consistently are in the top of the rankings for having the happiest populations. Shouldn't they be miserable and poor? I'm so confused . . .

As the west gets more polarized, and our corporate executives get ever more focused on short-term profits which improve their bonuses over long-term gains. The prevailing mindset seems to be, "Why would I invest in something which won't show profits for ten years when by that time I'll be looting some other company?"

Actually AI is integral to making robotics pay. It used to take literally months to years to program in all the features to make a robot (for example) paint a vehicle quarter panel without noticeable blemishes, now it's a matter of a couple of hours at the most. UBI (Universal Basic Income) is going to be necessary before long as the lower skilled workers are replaced by robots, because there are a **LOT** more people who aren't smart enough or ambitious enough to do anything more complex than stock store shelves or walk a security patrol than there are people like you and I who can learn a new profession. Once upon a time the farm laborer could go work in the factory when the tractor made him unnecessary, then the factory worker could go work at Walmart when the robot started screwing on lug nuts. When those jobs go away there aren't any new low-skill/low-education job coming down the pike for people to take, because those are being automated out of the box. If you don't want to see people starving in the street then get ready to open your wallet to pay for UBI.

Agree completely, the use of AI in robotics has changed that industry from a bunch of hobby/academic projects into actual factory floor deployments that can pick up and pack 1000 cookies in an hour without making a crumb. (Only nit to pick is that horses were ridden for around a thousand years before saddles were invented, and then another couple thousand until stirrups were added.)

In a different post I pointed out that you need to control access to the end points.

In Cusco, Peru, there used to be a chicken place with the name 'McDonalds', and on the sign was a painting of Donald Duck. They have a different name now, and I always wonder which of the two trademark/copyright owners made them change it.

The US Congress refuses to adequately fund the debris cleanup research, **BUT** they gleefully shovel money at every damn thing the Space Farce (spelling deliberate) wants including anti-sat R&D.

Truthfully I'd be very surprised if we don't already have something on orbit based on the Army's "smart bullet" tech. Far less debris created if you can take out a satellite's comms or power bus, and it could be blamed on "space debris". Something like that would weigh very little and could be attached to pretty much any other satellite.

A group of us system admins were talking and somehow the topic of odd names came up. One woman once had to fix the customer record of a fellow named Long Dong. She said, "I always wondered if he lived up to his name."

I have an adapter so that the cassette player actually plugs into an Alexa Auto box. It's handy. I can also play my old Bill Cosby cassettes without giving the bastard another penny in royalties.

Maintainability, first off. There are very few people out there who can maintain antiquated systems like that, and they charge an arm and a leg.

Reliability. Analog cameras fall over and die every few years, while I have personally worked on IP cameras that were over 20 years old. Older IP systems are generally locked into a limited selection of cameras, most of which have probably been discontinued. Backup solutions, even just for the config, were lacking in older systems, having to figure out what camera is what and what the settings should be after a failure is incredibly time consuming.

Flexibility. Newer systems can be adapted more easily to changes, like a special display of recovered crown jewels or a new emergency exit door.

The big one: Integration. If an alarm is triggered in the access control system a modern integrated video system can automatically pop up the camera, set a bookmark in the recording, start recording at a higher frame rate, and if it's a PTZ (pan/tilt/zoom) can automatically point at a preset location.

Was that in Alaska? Set up security for a hospital there which rotated through IT staff with amazing rapidity. Their corporate owner would only pay Lower 48 wages based on their headquarters location somewhere in the deep south. I saw their entire IT staff quit en masse and move to a new employer twice in the same year.

At some point they got a new switch which wouldn't fit where the old one was so it needed longer patch cords. Rather than buy a new box of 3-6 foot patch cords someone opened the box of 30 foot network cables and used those. There was a giant hair snarl of cables laying on the floor literally knee high between the punch downs and the switch.

We put the camera system in first, and a week later my co-irker got an email from their security head saying, "This system just paid for itself!" with a video clip attached. It was the camera which looked at the front lobby door, which opened and a big COW MOOSE walked into the lobby. She wandered around for a moment, walked back over near the door and when it opened again she left.

One night some gang banger was brought in with a gunshot wound, and shortly afterward his enemies showed up intent on finishing the job. The one poor (unarmed) security guard had to run to every external door in the building with brass keys to lock them. When we finally put the access control system in a few months later one of the first things we did was give them a one-button lockdown. The security head later told our salescritter that the savings on insurance would pay for the whole install in about two years.

Steam offers developers the option to sell their own Steam keys. In theory, that lets developers use all of Steam's infrastructure services without paying - Steam doesn't take a cut of those sales. Essentially the only condition is that they don't offer those keys on better terms than for Steam buyers.

That's basically the exact opposite of abusing your market power. To the degree you can do better than Steam, with help of a third party or not, they let you keep Steam's share accordingly.