But I don't know what you do with people who can't get past the 12-year-old level of thinking of "if you make me pay taxes that's slavery and if you take away Elon musk's hundreds of billions of dollars then my shitty little income and retirement savings are next.."

Automation is so cheap now that even Chinese labor can't compete. But the government has been forcing businesses to hold off on automation in order to prevent the inevitable economic and social turmoil from laying off that many people. Although it is absolutely hilarious that "communist" China has to worry about keeping full employment...

There are signs that it's changing because their ruling class has consolidated enough power they can afford to start blowing off the public. But I don't think they're quite ready to do it 100%.

Clippy: "It looks like you're trying to deshittify Windows. Can I help?"

It shouldn't take 10 seconds for my right click menu to show up unless I hold down the shift key. And yeah there is a registry hack I can do but on my work PC it's a huge pain in the ass to have it put it in every freaking time I get an update because of course every time Windows 11 updates they clear the key...

I swear Windows 11 is the most user hostile piece of software I have ever used in my life and I have programmed on IBM mainframes...

It would run on any modern browser that runs javascript because it's just a JavaScript script that monitors everything you're doing. It's also nothing new browser fingerprinting has been around for ages and is used by basically any website of any size to try and catch bots.

I'm actually a little surprised they didn't already have a fingerprinting product.

The article talked about the cost of customer confidence lost too. In other words even if they came back online the 6-week pause would have caused them to lose a bunch of customers. And they don't have the capital to get them back through advertising campaigns and discounts and such.

It's actually terrifying how many businesses run at the absolute edge of margins and are perpetually on the verge of collapse. Like how any given city is 3 days away from chaos...

We focus on the tech companies that are making so much money that they literally cannot spend it fast enough. And that also like to keep a ton of cash around for stock BuyBacks. But it really doesn't take much for most companies to start cutting staff and even shutting all the way down.

This is both how and why increasing interest rates "fights" inflation. Businesses lose access to credit because it costs more to loan so any little problem in their business immediately becomes a major disaster because of credit crunch and they go under putting a whole bunch of people out of work. Those out of work people spend less reducing demand which slows inflation. If the business doesn't collapse outright it's at least going to do layoffs and pay cuts which achieves the same goal.

For the 20 or 30 employees there...

Modern factories don't need a lot of people. China and India have them because labor it horribly cheap there. With access to slaves in many places.

Trump's own commerce Secretary admitted that even in the factories come back the jobs won't

Some of us still cynically hang onto our Cold War experiences. Once we started realizing that border agents can search your phone if you travel within 100 miles of a border, we got a little paranoid about what the government would find in our profiles and on our devices.
With my text messages, there are quite a few conversations that end with "hang on, let's talk voice" or "let's meet up later". I'm not the only person that is distrustful of the power that the federal government has. And of course, anyone with a half a brain distrusts what private corporations are going to do with your data once they get their claws on it.

How are we supposed to sell ad space in children's loot box games if the government takes away all of our users?

It's hard for me to post less, since I never post at all. Unless you call /. social media, which is a lot closer than calling it a tech discussion site.

I'm sorry to hear that. It's a common story, unfortunately. People complain that Gen Z "don't want to work", but it's more accurate to say that they don't have opportunities to work, and when they do get a McJob they have zero loyalty because it's not like working hard there will allow them to progress some sort of career.

There are a few places trying catapults and planes, but they can't carry a lot of weight.

The Soviet Buran spaceplane is probably the model to follow. Unlike NASA's Space Shuttle, it didn't have its own main engines. It only has orbital manoeuvring thrusters, and possible some jet engines for use in the atmosphere when returning to Earth. Instead the whole thing was lifted by a rocket and boosters.

Well, now we can recover the boosters, so you can see where this is going. The rocket was needed for steering, but the boosters can do that now, so maybe it could just be a disposable frame that straps a bunch of boosters to the spaceplane.

Half my salary at my old job was paid in stock. I assure you, both the federal and state government consider it income. I pay taxes on the cost basis, same rate as any ordinary income on a W-2. The I pay taxes again when I have realized gains.

I'm wondering where the free services come rolling in from all this socialism. Everytime there's a petition to do something about rent, there are a bunch of ads put up to say "No on proposition __". It is almost like the landlords run our cities instead of socialists

Bingo. Seriously, how much of a worm does a person need to be to want a master?