See here's the thing, I don't consider taxation theft so we can disagree there. That argument holds absolutely zero sway over me, i consider it absolutely ridiculous and just memes, you gotta try better, to me thats a joke argument I made in my early 20's.

Who is willing to provide an option for those without a 404 Media account?

A big issue in this bubble is how incestuous the deals are.

Example: Company A pledges to invest 1 billion dollars into Company B. Company B pledges to buy 1 billion dollars worth of compute time from Company A. Company A has increased their revenue by 1 Billion, and Company B has increased their market value by several Billion (1 Billion invested x whatever percentage of shares they gave). On paper, everybody is raking in $$, but in reality... no value is created. Add in another layer of Company A using their increased revenue to buy more datacenter equipment from Company C, who agrees to invest that revenue into Company B to use to buy more compute time from Company B... and it gets ugly.

It is all a house of cards.

Valid point. The other issue is that for those of us with really long names, there's never enough space for it to fit.

They are just practicing on butterflies. You are next!
#QANON

So we have had multiple decades of Court packing so you're headed by the heritage foundation, a right-wing think tank that made that their primary goal.

If you look into Amazon for example and wonder how they got so big you will find that they were just going around buying up all there competitors using investment capital. Most tech companies that's how they got big they just bought up competitors.

Facebook is in a unique situation. Nobody under the age of 18 wants to be on the same social media platform has their parents so every few years a new social media platform develops as a separate platform for the kids.

Every time that happens Facebook just buys that platform.

Tick tock was a problem because they couldn't just buy the platform since it was owned by the Chinese government. So they just pressured the government here to shut it all down and give them control.

Refusing to enforce antitrust law makes your life noticeably worse even if you don't use the services involved.

The problem is it's government regulation and its bureaucrats that enforce the law there.

We have been taught our whole lives that there is nothing worse than the bureaucrat. It doesn't help that as an American most of your interactions with the government are negative. Means testing for assistance programs is brutal and difficult so if you fall on hard times and need help fuck you. Most of us did never do need help still have to go to the DMV sometimes and wait in line frustratingly or we get pulled over by cops and that's our interaction with the government.

It is very easy to translate those frustrated emotions with a sabotaged government into a desired cut regulations that control corporate abuses that hurt you.

And that is way too complicated a concept for probably 80% of the population to understand...

Honestly, if you could configure the controller without Steam, I'd actually say the controller was worth $300. Being tied to Steam definitely is a drag.

In my case, I needed a controller for my girlfriend, and for us to play the same games she needed a Steam controller for its flexibility too. So I spent the $300 so I could play games with her. So that's definitely worth it.

Then when my OG controller died, I stayed on the train and got another for $300.

Hey you know lets agree to agree since I do think people are driven by more than money which is exactly why I advocate for much, much, much higher taxes of folks like Bezos, this idea that they will just take their money and not do anything isn't really true.

"Most of us are well over 50..."

I think your perception of the demographic is skewed.

Median refers to everybody.

Was about to say something like this. Though I was going to phrase it as "Nuke CoPilot and all AI 'features', and just leave a virtual radioactive crater in my system".

Individual monarchs are cool, but I'd really like tracking for the swarm. Witnessing the monarch migration is something people should experience.

There have been long standing tariffs of near 100% on foreign trucks in the U.S. This means domestic producers can produce a mediocre truck, then mark it up to a 100%+ profit and still be competitive. This means domestic producers focus on shitty, expensive trucks, and won't produce modestly priced sedans because they can just sell trucks instead into a protected market.

OK, that was pretty funny. +1.

It DID crash the economy, but then the federal government stepped in, implemented the "too big to fail" doctrine, and blunted the damage into a recession instead of a depression. In that process, though, they exposed their weakness: the government will step in to rescue companies on which the US economy most relies.

This is particularly relevant when, amidst a widely acknowledged AI investment bubble, Google CEO Sundar Pichai says in the same breath that AI investment is at least partially irrational and regarding a bursting bubble "I think no company is going to be immune." That's not a warning... that's a threat and a dogwhistle to the government effectively saying, "If you allow this bubble to burst, everyone will suffer".

This is that "moral hazard" about which economists and political scientists warned during the mortgage crisis. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard) They know that they won't bear the harm of the risks they've taken.