Is everything ok at home?

Why would any company dropping $10m+ a year choose to do business with Broadcom after all they've done?

Broadcom is making it very clear they are going to milk every last cent they can out of their customers, so customers should take that as the warning sign it is and abandon ship as quickly as feasible.

We famously don't know what we don't know when it comes to the human brain, so any prediction is more a thing of fairy tales than anything actually based in reality.

Features so good they have to force people to use them.

Doesn't it seem as though the past 10+ years of software development has seen just about everything get worse?

They took things they knew from the outset they didn't have a right to, like the oft-discussed Books3 database. They knew it was pirated, had an email chain discussing paying for the books, and decided to use it anyway. It was a wilful disregard of copyright law because it was faster and easier to use piracy for profit.

There are a TON of differences. Probably the biggest is that the machine version can read the entirety of all known creations.

Humans can study some a book in a few days, watch a movie in an hour or two, a web page in a few minutes. Machine learning can pull in thousands in the time it has taken you to read this.

Similarly for output, writing a book takes months to years, staging photos takes time and tools, feature films are hundred million dollar multi-year endeavors.

The human cost is a huge part of the economic difference. The AI industry has made fortunes by sweeping in everything ever created, authorized or not. Companies like Meta now have email trails showing they could have moved for authorized access, but like a thief that it was easier to just grab known-unauthorized materials and profit immediately rather than compensate people for the use.

Combined the two are unacceptable. They could pay but they refuse, they claim the only way to operate is mass infringement on the scale of all humanity, that if they don't get unfettered access to everything humans have ever created, without compensation, so they can maximize profit.

Hardware is increasing in capacity at an insane rate, so of course software efficiency takes a back seat. Under most circumstances, no one notices that it takes slightly longer for unoptimized to run.

Once we plateau ( again ), we'll see a greater push for optimization. These things happen in cycles.

Ah, you misunderstand. I'm not a republican. I'm not MAGA, and I didn't vote for Trump ( point of fact, I have never voted for a major party candidate, ever. Usually I write myself in ).

What I'm doing is correcting false information. Trump was never convicted of rape, and certainly not of child rape. That's a fiction created by his detractors, latched on to and repeated by those of low enough intelligence as to be manipulated into being good little pawns.

You have let your hatred of the man to be used as a tool to manipulate yourself. To put it simply; you played yourself.

Now, here's the funny part; Trump may be the monster you claim he is, but you come off so unhinged that no one would ever believe it coming from you.

Lol, no. Mind you, this is the same state that passed prop 49 decriminizalizing shop lifting under 950, resulting ( shockingly! ) criminals shop lifting up to 950...again and again and again. Take a look at our urban centers to get an idea of how that worked out.

So, a decade later, we voted to recriminalize shoplifting ( something our brilliant gov campaigned *against* mind you ), and the gov has been dragging it's feet on implementation ever since.

So...no. I don't think the state of CA could have figured this out before it got hit with the severe consequences of it's actions. For further proof, look at what our elected officials are doing to gas prices in the state.

Of course we all know that Trump *isn't* a child rapist, but it's a fun talking point. Still, with CA democrats doing shit like this: https://nypost.com/2025/04/29/... you might not want to try thowing that kind of shade.

The democrats should be secretly celebrating this; the ban was always a remarkably stupid virtue signal that was going to come back to bite them. There is no way the state could possibly be ready for the ban in 10 years ( look at their rail project lol ).

The republicans just saved the democrats from themselves. If they're smart they'll bitch, whine and moan but not do anything to try to overturn this.

My Chevy Volt has OnStar. It took a lot of Googling to find out where the module was located (under the dash, just to the left of and above the brake pedal). I removed the larger module, unscrewed the OnStar daughterboard, and put everything back together. Radio, Bluetooth, WiFi and SiriusXM work fine. But it can't call home. Every GM car for years has OnStar. EXCEPT cop cars. My 2012 Chevy Caprice doesn't have OnStar. Can't have the cops being tracked like the rest of us Plebes. My wife's Acadia was too hard to access the module. So I just unplugged the OnStar cellular antenna connection. Everything else works fine.

They increase the cost to customers and cre revenue for the government, but they do not stop trade.

For small, normal tariffs there is no real difference in trade. It just goes to government coffers as a hidden tax.

The current trade war will certainly increase costs, but still the goods will flow. Nothing is stopped, just a bit more pressure on people who are sensitive to costs. Certainly the rich don't care about a few cents or a few dollars. The billionaires especially don't care, they can pay hundreds to have a special sandwich delivered to them fresh at their vacation location, what's a few bucks at Amazon when they are also getting same day delivery?

If stopping trade was the point, there are trade embargos and import bans and government seizure of goods that could be invoked.

When I search for anything, Gemini pops up despite it being useless.

When I tell my phone to play the news or play some music or tell me the weather, Assistant was disabled and now Gemini tries to do it, but badly.

Features I liked on my phone were removed against my will and against my preference, now instead of something useful it just says "I am a large language model and I can't do that useful task".

When I use work tools that use Gmail, Gemini pops up and I can't turn it off.

When I use Google Docs, because that's what work requires, Gemini pops up repeatedly telling me it wants to be useful, it's worse than Clippy ever was.

Probably 10,000 of those "uses" were just me personally telling Gemini it is a useless pile of garbage that if it caught fire it could at least provide warmth and heat as a dumpster fire, it is less valuable than that. It is a waste of bandwidth, unwanted, being aggressively forced on the victims using Google products as their enshitification converts useful tools into monetization.

Lol, sure, keep on believing that. Nevermind my years of experience working in government, assisting at some of the highest levels.

I know what goes on, I've seen it first hand. What I lack is the instinct to defend the malicious incompetence. I think it should be demonized and prosecuted where ever possible.

The question is, why don't you? Too much to lose? See too much of yourself in the fuckups, perhaps?