People can and do service their own transmissions, in particular doing a fluid and filter change is generally a pretty easy job. There are also modifications and upgrades to transmissions. You can buy "built" transmissions which include heavy duty parts which can handle larger power, torque, and/or shock loads than stock ones. There are "kits" of aftermarket parts which either address wear over time or even correct design deficiencies like either lazy or excessive engagement of clutches.

What's the measurement? If it's "GDP" then sure, the economy is booming. But GDP is itself meaningless to sustainability, which is the most important thing to measure in anything you hope to keep doing. If you want to keep having an economy, for example, you have to keep having consumers who have money so they can participate in it...

Hardware, yes. But what will you do with it? It's only really good for a few types of task. Where it's GPU-based, as all the Nvidia stuff is, you could use it for lots of different types of tasks. But Services? Energy needs to get a lot cheaper for that to be feasible, because providing services on this hardware is predicated upon using a lot of energy.

A bubble is "a good or fortunate situation that is isolated from reality or unlikely to last". What's good about it, profit for those who are profiting. Why's it isolated from reality, all three of those reasons. Why's it unlikely to last, reality is inexorable, no amount of ignoring it will cause it to change.

One bubble, at least three reasons why it's bubbling. Probably we could identify a bunch more, like nerd fantasy. One of the consequences of techbros being in a position to decide what society does with itself is that they will send us on tech-related wild goose chases.

The goal of making ourselves obsolete is typically self-defeating when we can't even agree to let humans have free time when they don't need to be working.

Been watching the news lately? "Never" is a long time.

C4C destroyed mostly old shitpiles with poor efficiency, so it was effective in reducing hydrocarbon emissions.

I suspect a lot of these machines will go to the third world and get refurb'd into PCs there, so people will benefit anyway. In fact, a significant percentage of them will probably get Windows 11 installed on them using the bypasses...

Microsoft put the same telemetry they put into 10 into 7 and 8 via updates. Some of those were "updates" that included nothing but telemetry, sometimes they bundled the telemetry with actual updates so if you wanted one you had to have the other. There are scripts and other tools to remove those updates, but if you are not using those and you have been doing updates, they all spy on you.

The evolution of Google, already long ago, was s/don't//.

Great folk stand on the shoulders of others, not on the metaphorical crutches of others.

Excellent thought; could happen anytime, even tomorrow. Something people often, annoyingly, forget, like in this bit from The Fifth Element:

Certainly, someone was.

The $100k visa fee is *annual* -- up from $215/year.

Trump signs proclamation that adds $100K annual fee to H-1B visas for high-skilled workers

They're labeled, "Good," "Fast," and "Cheap" and whichever one you (re)pick is the ironic one.

Not to worry, all those people apparently died of drug overdoses last year: Trump Claims 300 Million People Died of Drug Overdoses Last Year. -- out of a U.S. population of 340 million, btw. For the record, "there were only 62.4 million deaths globally in 2024" from *all* causes.

Google: trump 300 million died drugs

Noting that individuals eventually die off while the collective lives on. I know Marie Antoinette didn't actually say this, but "Let them eat cake" didn't turn out so well for the actual few with cake when the hungry masses showed up. Caring about everyone includes you and yours...