I would say that any kind of substantial level of investment in a jurisdiction is a reasonable indicator of an expectation of a return on investment, and thus confidence in the economic growth of at least some industries in that jurisdiction. I'm not sure why people are trying to hand wave away that kind of an indicator, unless the fact of it creates some problem for some narrative they have bought into, creating a level of cognitive dissonance necessitating peculiar denials.

I have to agree. Now, I really wish they'd make an actual brand name for themselves and label the products that way, but half the time those "SEGBDGEDC" brand items for things like screwdrivers, drills, etc actually work plenty good enough for home DIY type stuff. I wouldn't use them if I was using a tool every day for work but for around the house its fine.

To some degree "VEVOR" has started doing that though. A lot of the "cheap but ok" stuff has been started to be branded VEVOR pretty frequently.

I have been telling friends about this sort of thing for a long time. The usual reply is "meh", or in a rare case when they listen properly "meh, how will this affect me/what can I do ?". The problem is that most people do not read T&Cs before clicking "I have read and understand them and I agree."; this is because the wording of the T&Cs is deliberately such that it sucks the will to live from most people; the interesting bits 'hidden' 2/3 of the way down usually below long paragraphs on something boring like web site copyright and it not being liable for stuff.

The so called agreements are anything but; there should be regulation on how they are written so that they are fair to both consumer/client and the provider. But that will not happen.

Sort of, but many of them have language that makes it ever more the same thing as a surcharge. Particularly in gun shops/shows, its VERY common to see "All listed prices include a 3% cash discount. This discount cannot be earned via credit card.".

What's crazy is when that put that verbiage on AUCTIONS. The auction price that I bid myself somehow is supposed to include a "3% cash discount".

Sort of. The "rewards" are also there to make people spend using the credit card and carry a balance. They know if people think they're "making money" while charging purchases that they're more likely to rack up that total. They know they'll make more via the interest charges in the long run. Sure some particularly responsible card users may be able to game it for some rewards, but they'll be so much in the minority that it won't matter.

Debit cards don't carry that potential, so you won't find any debit cards offering rewards anywhere close to what the credit cards offer.

Still trying to extort money from IBM after all this time. Nothing like a business model made up entirely of rent seeking.

How do you, an ordinary person, call the EMS if your mobile 'phone does not work because the cell tower has run our of electricity ?

What will the cost of not doing this be to: customers, emergency services, ... ?

Frankly, the quality of build, the stability of the operating system, and just the plain reliability and features even in the supporting tools exceed Windows. Take the Preview App. The work I can do on PDFs; signatures, annotations, OCR, right out of the box, and built so that the versions on my iPhone and iPad fully integrate, cannot be easily replicated on Windows. Apple just really has an eye for workflow, and making sure the base system and tools fit well into that.

It's not perfect, to be sure, I wouldn't want to use Pages as my full time word processor, and Apple, like Microsoft and Google, suffer designed interoperation friction, which does suck. But all in all, I'm just more efficient on a Mac, and in subtle ways I never knew were even problems until I picked a MacBook up the first time. Honestly going to Windows right now is just horrible for me, particular Windows 11, which just feels like constant chaos and out of control busy-ness.

Cultures influence each other. Being in South Carolina (where individuals of both the black and the bubba variety are very common), I've seen plenty cases of a 4x4 pickup with a lift kit . . . and those tiny sidewall tires on giant rims.

At this point it'd be a flip of the coin to figure out which of the two is driving it.

With the way memory prices have gone with this latest generation, I want the next gen of CPU's to have a memory interface that can support mulitple different types of memory.

EG, the boat doesn't have memory slots - it has a connector that allows you to connect memory slots of whatever type you want (DDR6, DDR5, DDR4, etc).

These damned memory sticks have gotten too expensive to replace every time I upgrade my CPU.

I wouldn't mind seeing GPU's with socketed VRAM either. Given how much of the price is tied to that it would be good to be able to reuse those components.

Yeah that's the winning move. I already use a pair of those (one on a Rasperry Pi that I use for Streaming and one on my actual gaming PC).

The benefit of this mostly being a PC is that you aren't locked to just using the "official" hardware.

You might want to train your algorithm a bit. Mark obvious AI channels as "Not Interested in this content". Make sure you're subscribing to non-AI channels that you like

Obviously in my subscription feed I get 0% AI, but even in my homepage/recommended I get no more than 5% or so AI recommendations.