All those "little things" lead to death by a thousand paper cuts. I agree, money doesn't solve everything, but it makes the majority of life a lot easier. Yeah, you could die a million ways every day, but it doesn't change that until we get rid of money and systems based on it, having more (to a point) will always bake things better/easier.

Not hating on Chinese goods, people just want things to be affordable and not complete shit. We're not going to get it from pseudo-domestic brands because "Geld über alles" is the "American way!â"

I mean, tons of things are "gamified" without being full on video games. Manufacturing consent is a sort of game for companies. They dangle various carrots to get us to pull their carts every hour of every day. It's the cornerstone of sales/marketing/advertising.

Ergonomics is subjective. Different people grip their mouse differently. I use a claw grip, so having so much mouse body is less important. Some fully palm the mouse, and so they need the body of the mouse. Others like the sideways ergo mice, or trackballs (conventional or thumb type).

I don't move my mouse using only my arm and wrist. I primarily use all of my fingers, keeping my arm stationary and my wrist making only minute movement left/right. As such I have much finer control over its movement. If I switch to trying to do it with just one finger, the movement becomes jittery and imprecise. Having buttons at the end of all 4 fingers would likely lead to a lot more mis-clicks, and would remove my pinky as a gripping finger.

That's not to say your idea might not work for some, or in specific scenarios, but I can't see it working for myself or anyone else who mouses in a similar fashion. The location of the movement sensor is largely immaterial, it will work more or less the same no matter where it is located.

And companies like Google already have a decade plus head start. They've had access to our e-mails, etc. (assuming use of g-mail) for a long time, and somewhat recently decided they should have access to our text messages as well. I have no doubt that they could have their AI pick people out of a sea of people based on the learned patterns of communication. Reddit having ai loosed on it is a similar trove. I'm sure people's alt accounts in various places will quickly be noted in the background (if they haven't already) as being the same person.

It won't need all that sport of information. It'll be able to recognize patterns in the usage of the words themselves.

Show me an AI that doesn't use existing works to generate its content. If it were fed only on things in the public domain, then no, it wouldn't infringe because there would be no copyright. If it uses the works of people still living and/or covered by copyright, then it absolutely infringes. Shouldn't be hard to suss that one out.

I've been doing this for ages. Buy a phone with enough storage and store my music all on it. Solves connectivity, price, availability, and audio quality issues all in one.

More like "explores (another) stablegrift" amirite?

"The more educated people read a lot as they grew up and throughout their studies, and it is a habit they have maintained. Those who struggled thru high school barely read then, and don't read now."

I was an avid reader in my teens, and per the WAIS-R was of a "significantly above average" (but nowhere near MENSA level) IQ, for whatever that may be worth. I also struggled in many aspects of school (mostly social, etc. I was one of the early ones getting the diagnosis of ADD and later ADHD) while being that avid reader. As soon as I became an adult, that stopped. The last book I read was probably 7 or 8 years ago. I either don't have or don't make the time.

"The children who grew up with phones and tablets in hand, they DEMAND that their parents buy them real physical books."

Upshot here is that while you've seen this first hand, it sounds like you're treating an outlier as more than that. I'm an outlier to the former assertion, and the children you speak of are on outlier to the latter.

"For example, book sales were higher in 2025 than they were in 2019, and only a bit below their high point in the pandemic. Independent bookstores are booming, not busting; at least 422 new indie shops opened in the United States last year alone. Even Barnes & Noble is cool again."

My roommate is a person who is constantly on TikTok and such. All they do is watch and reshare short form. They buy lots of books, but they don't read. They don't have the ability to because it cannot hold their attention. They buy the books because they appreciate the craft, especially the cover design, and as a matter of preservation given the current climate and revisionist censorship that has been going on. I feel like the person in this article hasn't been very thorough in investigating everything.

only Capitalism could muster. Always looking for a way to make a claim and profit from something they have no right to.

large cities create undue stress on the water systems...

...people can learn to put their damn phones down for a while. Understand that it's not good to constantly be attached to devices consuming metric tons of short form, stop chasing the constant dopa hit. If you're going to watch a movie or something, then actually watch it.

Appears as a lowercase o with a tilde over it to me. Why can't they just use a regular uppercase X and be done with it?