This is so true, so true.

And it's not even US specific. In the wake of the Ukraine war, German parliament voted to give itself 100 billion of additional taxpayer money (i.e. debt) to spend on defense. Recently a report came out of all the money spent so far, 90% did not go towards the intended purpose.

Why any of the jokers in charge of our governments are still not in jail baffles me more and more every year. Oh yes, it's because they make the rules, sorry, my bad.

That's what campaign donations get you, if they are large enough.

This is why congress occasionally bullies the big tech companies. We all think they might want to have some regulation or to punish them. Oh sweetie... they're saying "nice company you have there... would be a shame if something happened to it..."

The best time to leave github was when the evil empire bought it. The second best time is now.

Seriously. Anyone who thought MS wouldn't fuck it up in the same way they fuck up everything they touch can't be helped. It's Microsoft for crying out loud.

That's plausible.

I still hate it though. My first version of Office was 4.3, which included Word 6.0 and was ostensibly for Windows 3.1. I'd previously used Clarisworks on Macintoshes in school and before that I used a ghetto cheap program that called itself a word processor but was more of a glorified text editor in MS-DOS that worked well with an Epson dot matrix printer's formatting, so for me Word was great. I felt like the bumpers from Clarisworks had been removed, I had a lot more control over what I could do to a document.

Ribbon feels like they decided that power users didn't matter, and also corresponds with the end of the free Wordpad light-duty word processor and long after Microsoft Works was killed off.

They seem to have forgotten why some of their most popular applications became most popular in their respective categories, and that wasn't just leveraging their OS marketshare OEM install dominance. It was a combination of reasonably good UI design that had a degree of intuitiveness along with fairly easy access to more advanced features, with an added dash of the ability to use data from one application in another without major headaches. Arguably MS Office in the days before Ribbon and Metro UIs exemplify this.

Unfortunately they chose to change the UI for change's sake, ie, because users wouldn't recognize that they now had a shiny new version of the product if they didn't flagrantly change the UI, and they chose UI designs that frankly sucked. They also seem to have harmed that interoperability by trying to push too much of it when it doesn't fully work right.

Obviously there have been software companies that had products that for the professionals constantly using them were better, like WordPerfect to Word, but those didn't generally work well for both the power user and the casual user. Originally Microsoft had managed to bridge that gap. But Ribbon and Metro interfaces have harmed the power user, it's now harder to do things than it should be, and power users have incentive to look for software that gives them the features without the bloat.

I doubt that Microsoft is going to understand this in this revamp. They're going to try to cram some UI change solely for the purpose of making it different than the prior version, and even if it's now "native" it's still going to suck. And they're going to try to force any remaining users on prior versions of Windows off of those and onto Windows 11.

A year? I've regularly written that much in a month, and sometimes in a week. And, counter-intuitively, its during those sprints when I'm pumping out thousands of lines per day that I write the code that turns out to be the highest quality, requiring the fewest number of bugfixes later. I think it's because that very high productivity level can only happen when you're really in the zone, with the whole system held in your head. And when you have that full context, you make fewer mistakes, because mistakes mostly derive from not understanding the other pieces your code is interacting with.

Of course, that kind of focus is exhausting, and you can't do it long term.

By focusing on the structure, not the details. The LLM and the compiler and the formatter will get the low-level details right. Your job is to make sure the structure is correct and maintainable, and that the test suites cover all the bases, and then to scan the code for anomalies that make your antennas twitch, then dig into those and start asking questions -- not of product managers and developers, usually, but of the LLM!

But, yeah, it is challenging -- and also strangely addictive. I haven't worked more than 8 hours per day for years, but I find myself working 10+ hours per day on a regular basis, and then pulling out the laptop in bed at 11 PM to check on the last thing I told the AI to do, mostly because it's exhilarating to be able to get so much done, at such high quality, so quickly.

> No it's not. Multifunction devices existed long before enshitification. The two concepts are not remotely related.

Enshitification predates the internet. It is a concept as old as human invention itself. We just don't see it int he historical record, for the most part, because shitty devices generally don't become popular enough for examples to survive the scrap heap. However, if you dig into some antique catalogs (catalogs that are antiques, not modern catalogs listing antique items...) you'll see lots of dubious devices being advertised.

  > Your phone's main purpose is to make phone calls.

A phone's main purpose is to make phone calls. This is a categorical error on your part; a modern smartphone is, despite the unfortunate etymology, not a phone. It is a portable internet terminal more than anything that just happens, perhaps merely by virtue of its history and nothing more, to be able to make live voice chats.

> given this is an optional extra that costs money it is clear that someone deemed it a benefit

Yes. that someone being the manufacturer, who can add $20 worth of parts and sell it to dipshits like you for an extra $500 because apparently you're a toddler easily distracted by bright colors and movements. You're like the living embodiment of that Simpsons gag Nuts and Gum. And of course, apropos to this story, the manufacturers see extra benefit in that they get another way to harvest your behavioral data and shove advertisements in your face. You're being sold a solution to a problem you don't have in exchange for your privacy and attention. You are paying extra to become the product. You are both a figurative and literal tool.

> Man if only there was an internet connected screen in the kitchen from which to pull up my recipe...

It's amazing to me that you can have the solution literally in your hand and still sarcastically complain that there is no solution to the non-problem you have already solved. Just... fucking amazing. Is carrying a tablet from one room to another such a heavy burden that it justifies building another, shittier tablet into a random appliance? Even if you absolutely needed a tablet in every room of the house, could you entertain the idea of just.. buying them separately?

A true luddite would argue if you even need an internet connected device when printed books dedicated to recipes are a thing, and they'd at least have a solid point to make in that at books don't need batteries and continue to work even when the internet doesn't... and they don't actively spy on you either.

> False equivalence. A leatherman directly trades off primary function against additional functionality.

And a tablet built into a fridge door trades primary function (portability) for... actually not even additional functionality because a tablet in a fridge door does literally nothing to make the fridge better at its job, and attaching a fridge to a tablet does not make the tablet better at its job either.
=Smidge=

That's a valid point, though right now while they're facing competition from startups the dealerships do provide them with a moat that they want to preserve. If/when the startup threat is gone, the automakers will go back to hating the dealerships.

I think people forget how everyone laughed at Tesla because everyone knew that starting a new car company in the United States was impossible. Now we also have Lucid and Rivian. Maybe someday Aptera will manage to get off the ground. This is a novel situation for American carmakers.

They had to say it that way, because the more accurate statement is that the dealership law unfairly advantages existing automakers. It's not about the dealerships being good or bad, it's about the fact that setting up a dealership network takes a lot of time and money and requiring it is a good way to keep new competition out.

The correct term is "regulatory capture". Private businesses use the power of the state to protect, subsidize or otherwise benefit them and harm competitors and potential competitors. It's extremely common and the more pervasive the regulation is, the more common it is. Red tape and government procedures benefit entrenched players who have built the institutional structures and knowledge to deal with them.

This isn't to say that all regulation is bad... but a lot of it is. There was never any consumer benefit to banning direct sales. All regulations should be thoroughly scrutinized for their effects on the market, direct and indirect.

I thought exactly the opposite. I think Rocky is far too "human". I didn't mind it, though, because a lot of the humor would be lost if Rocky was properly alien.

I think that's necessary. Providing explanations of depth comparable to the book would require a 10-hour movie. Squeezing the story down to feature length requires cutting a lot of exposition. In many books there's a lot of description that can be replaced with visuals, but it's pretty hard to do that with a lot of the science.

I'm sure you'd have said the same about Y2K. It's a good thing that some people have more foresight.

s'okay. Biology is the only scientific discipline where division and multiplication are the same thing.

Don't care. If your shit shows me ads, it's not getting into my kitchen. Note to self: Don't buy appliances from Samsung anymore.

Yes, I am vocal in how much I hate ads. I believe the CEOs of advertising companies should get one hit with a stick for every time their ad bothered someone even in the slightest.