I would have to counter that argument that using a FOSS project without contributing for a for profit activity isn't great but the people who are behind project always knew that was a possibility, depending on what license they chose.

However just being a user, especially as a corporate entity, means more exposure from the project. Even if you don't publish the fact you use it, you end up with employees who know that might recommend it to others, move on use it elsewhere, contribute themselves, provide useful bug reports and test data etc..

This does none of those things, this is purely parasitic it borrows all the ideas and robs the original project of mind share. Now you *could* argue this is true of FOSS clones, of commercial applications... and I think it would apply to FOSS that isn't also free-as-in-beer case; though I struggle to come up with an example of FOSS that is both clone-ware and inst FAIB.

Going back to the invasion of Georgia the US government had, overtly (I don't think the IC state department people every really pivoted), to a mostly adversarial relationship with the Russian state.

In the 20 years hence Russia has at various times sought to rehabilitate its image on the world stage thru negotiations like New-Start. The our government would have been able to leverage such events if convincing evidence existed. They did not, under Obama of all people they did not. Additionally Russia had no interests served by further antagonizing the US government thru most of that period, far better for them if we stayed out of their conflicts with the former Soviet bloc.

Conclusion - Russia was not then, though certainly could be now and with reason to be, responsible. However let's be real about that too. Why would Russia risk intelligence assets targeting research scientists. They are being rapidly depleted by our providing Ukraine with mostly end-stage cold war era weapons systems. Even if they (Russia) have more advanced weapons (hyper sonic missiles) at a battle field ready stage, they have no capacity to produce them in battlefield altering quantities. Try to delay us from developing tech we'd be unlike to field for a decade makes little sense, they'd be better served trying to compromise the production teams at our defense contractors and arranging some industrial accidents to shut down production than trying to target the research side of the house.

On the hand China.. who is very much considering a future war and has the resources to fight it; is looking at a situation where they could face next-gen weapons by the time they decide to pull the trigger. They have every reason to want to make sure they fighting the us with 21st century weapons while we are forced to rely on late 20th century relics, in the same way Russia is forced to rely on midcentury relics to fight Ukraine and our late 20th century stocks.

Russia for a foreign policy and security standpoint is a distraction! US policy makers need to internalize they are has beens who don't for the most part matter. They have firecrackers that make it impossible to ignore them entirely but by and large everything fling their direction is stuff we'd be better served to hang onto for an eventual Pacific conflict. Obviously with the exception of those arms with an expiration date.

I use one of the large banks named in this article.

Last weekend I had a question about a service, it's something I already use, I just needed one piece of information about it.

Their web "help" was just stone stupid - asked a formulaic question, then offered the same set of options as found at the top of the page for the service in questions. I got curious and poked around, it was literally nothing but a "no matter what question give one of half a dozen links" and then ask if the user was satisfied.

I tried Google. It's utterly broken now, so no joy there. I will admit the bank provides the service in question, beyond that it's a different flavor of dumb.

Perplexity has largely replaced Google for me, but no joy on this one. It offered a lot of well stated, but utterly irrelevant advice, given my question.

I finally called a friend who uses the same bank and same service, they walked me through it.

The sad thing here? This is a HUGE bank, they could afford to do this job right, and 98% of it WOULD work with bots. I guess they laid off the people who can, ya know, actually DO stuff, and we get this late 20th century IVR style "service" despite their massive spend on AI.

Corporate America's race to replace humans with AI is going to backlash. Why engage with gamey agents, when you can deploy your own, and wait for the desired result?

This process is going to repeat, like the Europeans arriving in the Americas, until all the humans are gone, and there's nothing left but bots that do an increasingly good job of acting like us. There will be little reservations, see the Fediverse for an example, where actual humans congregate. There will not be corporate friendly global flat spaces like Facebook and Twitter, there will be neighborhoods.

Much like the natives of the 16th century, we are going to lose people along the way. There are those whose brains are so warped by the internet already that they will simply remain entangled in the increasing unreality. There's even an Amazon series about this - The Feed is pretty well done, and it chronicles what happens to society as it (The Feed) takes over.

The same thing will happen economically, a return to local dealing, but it's going to partial and MUCH more painful.

What you should be asking is who believes this is a pay once? Now it doesn't work like that. You'll be asked to pay again even if they have to disguise it as something new

Watch.

I watched the live coverage, I was watching and reading a number of different sources for information, and I've never been so disappointed in space travel coverage in my life. The live coverage was one animation after the other the same old, whatever. The commentators were good at commenting, but they had very little offer. Experts came on to talk about how great it was. Technical details even at a superficially technical level, nope. We used to get a lot better than this in the early Apollo and the Gemini launches. There. You'd get some talk about some of the details. You'd hear a lot more than oh. This is so very hard. I was totally and completely underwhelmed by NASA's coverage and by the official so-called outlets. Boring

The biggest problem with education in the US is the educators. There is no getting past that. Record spending per pupil, lots and lots of restorative this restorative that bias opportunities toward demographics that the left claims were historically disadvantage. The one consistent outcome is poorer outcomes no matter what color or economic stratum a kid belongs too.

Modern classroom theory and pedagogical theory are obviously broken. This is the only possible valid conclusion anyone rationally looking at what is happening could reach. However we have these unions which ensure that nobody does anything but fail upward in the public education sector. Basically the only real skill required to succeed (career) as educator is the ability to repeat the party line, and not molest the children (the latter being increasingly seen as optional in the eyes of union leaders as well).

They are desperate. They had multiple massively valuable IPs, including their own, and they ran them into the ground by putting out woke slop. To compensate, they are trying everything except making good movies.

You missed. My theology is in no way a prosperity theology. I believe in Christ crucified. You just hate Conservativism, the philosophy of limited government, individual liberty, and constitutional law, among other distinctives. Your other mistakes aren't important in this discussion, if at all.

BTW, none are so selfish as those who expect others also to pay for their largesse.

Actually, I recognize government, to in the US, as recently becoming downstream of culture. This is a fundamental problem, but mostly due to the culture making a concerted effort (for at least 70 years) to reshape government. You're all pretty observant. You see it also.

Always insightful.

"if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public"

And they expose their true selves. Culture should not, I propose, be charged with 'delivering economic growth and security'.

Make that 'economic opportunity', and I'm in.

Security being economic security, in this context, also should not be the role of culture, which is more often named the State. And the State delivers nothing it does not first take from the People.

Give the People the library to pursue their own self interests. Watch as economic growth ensues. You want economic security? Get the State out of the way.

there is no deep state and elections have consequences..

Yeah sure.

but you're not dealing with where those orders come from or setting the stage when you pose that question.

There is underlying assumption that if the order is received there is a point to it, that it could win war. If that person knew the enemy missiles were already in flight, would not be intercepted, and nobody they know personally or care about will see the sun come up tomorrow would they still turn the key and kill millions more people - just to get even..?

It really is a very different question. Now imagine you are not the guy in the bunker, you are POTUS. You know it is over. They entire lower 48 is going to be glass starting in about 8 secs over within the hour. Do you really give the order to return fire, or do think maybe just maybe you want to look toward the kingdom of heaven even if you have never held strong belief and hedge your bets and reject 'useless' killing? Because it really isnt about MAD at that point, it is back to Pascal's Wager.