Are computer purchases not consensual? Nobody is forcing you to buy overpriced RAM if you don't want to, so the rape analogy doesn't work.

I'm an Apple fan; I'm typing this on a 2018 Mac Mini that I spent roughly $2K on -- but it's 2026 and that Mac is still running just great. That works out to an amortized cost of about 68 cents per day -- which is to say, negligible compared to my other expenses.

Trying to save money by buying cheap computer hardware is like trying to save money by buying single-ply toilet paper -- you can do it, sure, but why make your life noticeably worse when the amount of money you'll save is trivial?

I'm going to make a radical suggestion: how about we leave it all in the ground, and continue to enjoy living in a viable biosphere instead?

Those three statements are policy choices, not objective facts. Capitalists like to present them as inevitable, but of course they are not; they are only presented as such because it's in capitalists' interest for people to see them that way.

Additional context: at the time of their release, both the Neo Geo and the 3DO were considered to be unaffordable, except by the very rich.

I don't think it's monopoly issues holding anyone back, so much as the fact that setting up a viable fab for RAM or storage takes billions of dollars and a number of years, and everyone is expecting the AI bubble to burst before then anyway.

e.g. why invest $$$ to build a new manufacturing facility, when by the time it comes online be competing with auctioned-off near-new equipment from all the belly-up data centers that didn't make it?

The real problem with C is that it doesn't have any built-in support for strings. Everyone is forced to fake it with char-arrays, which aren't quite the same thing and require very careful handling. The problem with that is, everyone has their off days, and so everyone who does string-handling in C eventually ends up shipping string-related bugs that introduce security problems.

Rather than guillotining anyone, the solution ought to be regulating the growth-rate of data centers so that they don't eat the economy. There's no reason to allow them to grow "as fast as possible" when it's not even clear how useful they'll be long-term. Unregulated capitalism leads to violent boom/bust cycles which cause economic pain.

Every computer manufacturer would love to have margins like Apples', and would raise their prices in a heartbeat to get them, if they could. You can call that corporate greed if you want, but it's also standard capitalism.

The more pertinent question to ask is: why is Apple able to command a premium, without losing sales, while other computer manufacturers cannot do the same?

The standard Slashdot answer will be "because Mac purchasers are idiots", but I don't think that is the reason. I think it's because Apple is able to sufficiently differentiate its products from those of its competition, such that customers don't make their purchasing decisions based on a dollars-per-megabyte analysis. If Macs were sold with Windows and featured a consumer-gaming video card (like most every other PC in the world), it would be different, but Apple is the only (legal) source for a MacOS-running computer, and its one of the few providers of a unified-memory architecture for local AI execution. Until it gets some direct competitors, that gives it the ability to name its price.

Peak capitalism should at least succeed commercially. This looks more like a bad idea that will sell maybe a dozen units and then be forgotten. So it remains faithful to the spirit of Commodore's business model at least :)

Exactly. I have a pi-hole and it's great for helping block ads in Android apps, but it misses a lot, especially in web pages.

Reminds me of the old APK HOSTS FILE ENGINE spam we all used to love seeing on Slashdot. Everyone (rightfully) gave him shit for it, but Pi-hole is exactly the same thing. Blocking based solely on domain names hasn't been sufficient for 15+ years and as great as pi-hole is, that hasn't changed.

FWIW I use Firefox (Beta) on Android exclusively and can count the number of crashes I've seen in the last year on one hand. I use a half-dozen addons, including uBO, but I do keep a modest open tab count (usually fewer than 12) and rely more on bookmarks.

The only real issue I see with mobile Firefox is possibly battery and memory use but it's improved drastically in the last 5-6 years, so if you're looking at comparisons online make sure to check the dates (AI summaries love to use ancient data). Some of these resources no doubt go to support uBO, and that's a worthwhile tradeoff.

Incredibly well-said.

I would just add that, you do need to sweat the small stuff.

I've seen a number of people claim that a problem with "the left" is that they get upset about every single "little" thing Trump does and that they should just ignore the "small stuff" and only worry about the big problems. Demolish the White House for a ballroom? Insignificant. Put his name on everything? Small potatoes. Pardon thousands of convicted criminals, including some millionaire and billionaire donors? Doesn't matter. Accept a $500M bribe in the form of a luxury airplane? Who cares.

The problem is that grift, corruption, autocrats, and authoritarians always start small. They push the limits of norms and convention, then the edges of the law, then "small laws" that don't meet the criteria for "high crimes". A broken constitution and subverted free society is built on the bones of the "small stuff". If you wait to fight back until the big critically dangerous stuff is happening, you've waited too late and have already lost the farm.

Slippery slope may be a logical fallacy but it's modus operandi of people like Putin, Trump, and yes, Hitler.

Trying, but all I can picture is a brown man wearing a tan suit, and some people getting really upset by this for some inexplicable reason.

Even if US oil companies could extract and refine sufficient domestic oil for everything (something open to debate due to the mismatch in the type of oil and refining capabilities) why would they? If Exxon or Chevron can sell a barrel of oil for $150 to someone in Europe or sell it in the US for $80, which one do you think they'll choose? Hint: They aren't going to cut their profits by 50% in an act of selfless patriotism.

Making your energy production and distribution infrastructure privately run has pros and cons. One of the cons is they will chase profits over everything else.