Fair, but in the business world of people who buy that type of software, being the official authors of WordPress does give them cachet. The Automatic.CSS name was absolutely picked to piggyback off it.

Not just possibly, but absolutely valid. This is exactly the kind of thing trademarks exist to prevent. They aren't claiming the word "automatic", they're claiming that naming a framework that's meant to work with their product (WordPress) a name that differs from their own by only 1 letter, particularly such a non-obvious difference (many people won't notice the existence of an extra 't') is meant to cause confusion an think it's an official part of their offerings. Because it is. If the other company doesn't change the name they will be destroyed in court. And frankly they'll deserve it. Whoever chose that name was either a total idiot with no concept of the law, or a scammer who meant to prey on Autmattic's good name.

I totally understand where you’re coming from. The algorithms default to feeding users people crap, and if you haven’t been watching the same stuff on YouTube for a long time it won’t match you to the good, nonsensational stuff. And that’s a shame.

You are correct about the fascist project, but do you understand that if your alternative is a party (the dems) who have been vocally opposed to the free speech amendment, play with definitions in a weird way a la 1984 (they look stupid when asked to define what a woman is) and doubled down on cancel culture as a way to stifle political speech. So while I agree that Trump and his cronies are fascist, the other side only looks marginally better, and I wouldn't trust them at all. Yes, I would vote democrat, but they're pretty horrible too. I would easily vote a moderate left or moderate right party over either of these alternatives, and I suspect most people would.

At this point most of the money being thrown at AI is for scientific and discovery purposes. Because nobody really knows what AI will turn out to be capable of.They have plans for what they want it to do, but that’s all early stage stuff. In 25 years AI will probably be used for stuff few people imagined. What the AI companies have managed to do is get big investors to throw hundreds of billions of dollars at huge private research institutes instead of being fractured into dozens of small programs where everybody spends half of their working hours writing papers and grant applications. Some of these institutes will never make enough money to survive their insane capital expenditures. But the R&D they’re doing now is laying the groundwork for future generations. It’s similar to the US government throwing billions of dollars a year at the space program and people later finding earthbound uses for the science dreamed up to support NASA missions.

There absolutely is misinformation on YouTube. But it’s easy to avoid if you have common sense. The problem is that most people are fucking idiots who will believe anything.

It depends. The guy who does the Chinese business analysis quotes his sources and lists them, with links when possible, in his video descriptions. I like videos by a j-vlogger who’s been in Japan for over a decade and in his serious videos he actually goes out and interviews people so I know he isn’t just talking out of his ass. And when someone with lots of followers lies in a video they’re usually called out by other YouTubers and YouTube will put those videos right into my feed. So while YouTube doesn’t have the gatekeepers that The PBS News Hour or 60 Minutes does, it’s still got some quality control in place if you know how to look for it.

I'm 47 and I love YouTube. It has serious intellectual content by people who succeed based on brains instead of looks. I get insightful coverage of stuff going on all over the world by experts who can analyze what's going on and what it means. No TV news channel is going to analyze two years of news reports and think tank papers to tell me what's really going on with Chinese business and political trends. There's a guy on YouTube who does that two or three times a week. Last week I found an Indian university's channel that serves up master's level video courses. Why would I waste my time on network sitcoms or streaming prestige dramas when I can educate myself every day?

My more plausible but still less nefarious guess is that Trump wants things to brag about, and with Isaacman running it, NASA has a chance of actually doing something worth boasting about. Though not in 3 years.

I don't know. When Isaacman was first nominated, pretty much everyone in the space enthusiast community was like, "oh, that's interesting..." and were genuinely surprised and hopeful because he's generally regarded as a space exploration idealist. Then when Trump revoked the nomination the assumption was that Trump didn't like him because he actually was an idealist and wasn't just a sycophant. I'm not sure why Trump has changed course again, and I do agree there's probably a deal or a mutual understanding that's been agreed to, but Isaacman is still one of the better choices to actually get NASA exploring again.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who noticed that over time Amazon's search feature has enshitified. If that's the correct verb. It used to be fairly good. These days, nah, unless I'm looking for a book or other product from Amazon directly, as a search for the marketplace it's crap.

And since it used to be better, something must be responsible for that. Greed, most likely.

Not 99% but definitely some of the most useful ones. And yes, stack traces are one of the things that only Linux users send you without an explicit request.

And the advantage of debugging a (this specific exception) error in (this specific file) on (that specific line) over a "hey, the game crashed when I jumped out of the car" bug report cannot be overstated.

As a Canadian who was working in the US at the time, I can say that this period (2001 to ~2004) was just "weird". In particular, the pivot from a focus on Afghanistan to a sudden focus on Iraq. The invasion of Afghanistan made sense simply because Al Qaeda was known to be operating out of there and was being supported by the Taliban. There was broad international support for this.

The sudden push to invade Iraq came out of left field and didn't make any sense to me. Almost all of the 9/11 hijackers were actually Saudi Arabian. The Iraqi regime, while certainly evil, was contained and the no-fly zones over the north and south of the country were keeping the minority groups safe. And the presentation that the US did at the UN to provide evidence that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction" was unconvincing. I had previously respected Colin Powell, but after that presentation I really lost respect for him. So there was no UN support. The US went ahead with the invasion, but lost a lot of credibility in the process.

Yes, there was oil involved, and Cheney had ties to the oil industry. That's certainly part of it. But I've never been 100% satisfied that this was the only reason for the invasion. I heard a more nuanced theory, that the US was dealing with terrorist organizations who could cross borders with impunity, and trying to fight them from country to country would be almost impossible, so they needed a way to convince the countries of the middle east not to let these organizations operate in their countries. The solution: a show of strength in Iraq... "this is what we could do to you if you give us a reason."

I still think the 2nd Iraq war was a terrible decision because it was the beginning of the end of the rules-based world order, which is something the US created for its own benefit, and benefited the most from, even if it was costly to support. And Cheney was an undeniable hawk when it came to Iraq. He wanted the invasion, and was looking for any excuse. His legacy will always be overshadowed by that reality.

Note quite. Manufacturing is becoming ever more highly automated, yes, and farms are too. But as someone who works in automation, this actually makes it easier to employ really low IQ people to do the job. We push really hard to remove all decision-making from the entry-level positions because the decision-making capacity of many people graduating from high school is exceptionally poor. Not to say there aren't a few bright lights in the bunch, but we look for those and try to move them up into area leader positions rather quickly. That's why manufacturing is so important... it allows people who make really bad day-to-day decision to do something valuable enough to earn $20 or more an hour instead of just collecting welfare.

What we're talking about here, though, is skilled trades, like plumbers. By definition these are people who need to be able to make good day-to-day decisions. The thing is, while there are some skilled trades needed in manufacturing, mostly in maintenance and service, what really drives demand for skilled trades is growth. Building new factories. Re-tooling existing lines for new products. And this includes engineers too. That's why steady and sustainable growth is important. Feast and famine sucks.

I think you're correct that only some plumbers are doing exceptionally well (the ones who own their own business). But I can assure you they're all busy. Have you tried hiring a skilled trade to fix something around your house recently? Good luck. Many will just ghost you. Also, your comment "we don't build cities anymore" is absurd. In fact the US has seen a massive increase in construction spending in the last few years. This is fueled mostly by the end of globalization, which was already starting to happen before COVID, but was amplified by the pandemic. In fact this surge in re-industrialization was expected to continue to grow, but a certain president's tariffs have caused a lot of trepidation in new capital spending, and everyone is holding their breath waiting to see what actually happens. But long term, China is in a decline driven by demographics which simply cannot be reversed, and Europe is close behind. Even if they started having more kids now, you still can't turn that around for 18 years. And even if you don't like the US, it's still the safest place to park your money worldwide these days, so construction of the new US industrial plant is going to continue no matter who's in office.