Robots are coming no matter what. There's no accelerating it anymore than it can be. The ruling class, the Epstein class is tired of being dependent on employees and they don't give a rats buttered behind what it costs. The only thing stopping them from automating everything is they haven't quite worked out how to do it yet. Cost is not a factor anymore. They don't want you. They don't want you as a consumer and they especially don't want you as an employee.

The Old Kings had a Divine right. The Epstein class wants that back.

Ai and robots are coming no matter what because the ruling class doesn't like being dependent on us filthy filthy consumers and employees.

They will spend any amount of money to eliminate you from the economy. And we gave them all the money because of sentiments like yours.

I get that you are trolling because it's fun but the thing is they are coming for you and all of us. The sooner you come to terms with that the better.

Assuming you're not ancient Boomer trash. In which case you get to die leaving everybody else to deal with the mess you made. I'm not exactly happy with older Gen x either. They gave us war in Iran along with the help of the boomers...

I have known several people that got upset when minimum wage went up because it made it feel like they were earning less money...

People are dumb. Really dumb.

That's why they call it operation Epstein Fury. Also if we can finagle a second 9/11 out of this then I think we can get Trump a third term

30 years ago was 1926?

Municipalities will just pass laws or constitutional amendments to get around the robot problem. If they have to they will sneak it past voters during a special election or a midterm with a bunch of scary propaganda. If all else really fails and they can't ram it through with the current legislative framework they will just change the laws and/or pack the courts.

America is a borderline lawless country where might makes right and money is all that matters. We are one bad election away from just straight up Soviet style government. We let the top have too much money. The last election Elon Musk didn't like the way it was going and he just casually dropped a quarter billion dollars on his preferred candidate. You just can't deal with that.

If you pay attention to where they put these it's always in poor neighborhoods. You never see them in the rich neighborhoods because if they put them there well to do people have the time to lobby and get them removed or made illegal.

But rich people also don't like paying taxes. But they do like having services. So they find ways, like speeding cameras, to make sure that poor people pay through the nose so they don't have to.

It's the same way for the suburbs. Seriously Google it. The suburbs are completely unsustainable without the high population density inner City even though the inner cities are typically full of poor people. Middle class and well to do people leave the inner cities to poverty but they extract money from them. Because of the much higher population density they can get away with that.

It's going to be fun in a few years because we're gradually collapsing the entire economy and the suburbs are going to go with it. They cannot without subsidies afford their roads and police and fire departments and schools and whatnot. Even with the higher incomes they just don't have the population density for it.

And it's going to get real as the tax base collapses and we can't afford police anymore. You are already seeing some of the smaller towns and cities having to shut down their police and sheriffs because they're just isn't enough money and the smaller towns full of poor rural folk don't get to pick the pockets of the inner city the same way.

My solar panels were made in Singapore. Besides China the top producers are Vietnam, Malaysia, and India. They are also made in a host of other countries including Canada. China makes over 80% of the world's supply, though.

A lot of people are using raspis as workstations, with any heavy lifting being done elsewhere. They are perfectly adequate for most normal daily tasks, silent, and use very little power. There's a lot to like about them, they're just overpriced for what little you're getting. If you didn't have to pay extra for basic features like an M.2 slot maybe they would be worth it. After you pay for a case, power supply (and they are picky as fuck about that) and so on, you're not saving any money compared to buying a MiniPC with better support and a richer set of available software. Raspi only has good vendor support compared to other poorly supported SBCs, all the heavy lifting is done by the community which often has to work around the pi foundation's failures.

In California, it's illegal to do this. We call it a speed trap, even though that already means something — cop hiding in some shitty spot where the speed limit suddenly and unexpectedly drops or whatever. I got busted with one of these in Jackson City, TX, a trivial little carbuncle on the asshole of a slightly shortcut route to Austin if you're heading East on the I-10, with a stop sign completely enveloped in a fucking tree that probably produces 50% of that shithole's revenue.

*ahem*

Anyhoo this CO scheme wouldn't be legal here in CA. And we'd also make a city cut a tree back if they wanted to keep writing speeding tickets based on a sign inside of the fucker.

To be fair, this is why we founded the nation of Israel in the British partition of Palestine.

But what I think is really going on is dodgy attorneys have been putting fake citations in their briefings for centuries and we are hearing about it because they're using AI to generate the fake citations instead of just making them up on the spot like they used to. I suspect judges and defense attorneys are scrutinizing citations more too because they've seen the stories about AI.

But I do think it would be naive to believe that given how skeezy attorneys can be that they haven't been feeling their portfilings with bullshit long before AI slop was a thing

Amazon provides services to the military.

That is a question which fundamentally has not been answered yet. The legislators and courts will collectively have the final say.

Er, I didn't write that right. Edit fail. This part:

Too much work. The point is that the devices are very expensive compared to much simpler devices.

The point is that the devices are very expensive compared to more complex devices. A phone has a LOT more hardware. It comes with a LOT more support. It comes with a LOT more software. It's shipped in a nice box with accessories, at least a sim tool if it's got a slot. Raspi has none of that. It's made with excess SoCs, whatever they can get cheap. Every single part of it is cheapass. And you can get a phone with as much RAM, much more CPU, and both cellular and wifi for around twice as much as the top end Pi. It's got a screen, it's got a bunch of storage, it's got a battery, and lots of such phones are not sold in huge volumes. So why is this grossly simpler device so expensive? Answer, people will pay for it.

The cost of development of a raspi is not much different from say an Arduino Mega. It's got a more expensive SoC which does a lot more, but that's still not a very expensive part. It makes the PCB more expensive, but not dramatically so. The community does most of the hard work of supporting it.