White House aides can even transport a globe without smashing it to bits. Good luck flying a rocket around the Earth and then around the Moon.

There is always negotiation around capital expenditures and head count at the places I've worked. It is tough to make the argument purely on long term savings alone, because it is so disruptive.
On the other hand, engineering managed to get Macbooks added to the list of approved systems even though they are more expensive to purchase and more complex to manage (difficult to image and tie into the corporate services). So it is possible to do things even when they are financially and logistically a less desirable option.

Easiest for engineering is to say we deploy Linux in the cloud, so might as well put Linux on our laptops. That works sometimes as an argument. Getting web based email and calendar makes the Linux path a little easier. But cyber security and employee monitoring is harder on Linux so IT doesn't like it.

Transform the micro plastics in my brain into slow release caffeine.

Hire up 5-10% more IT and technical writing staff to support and train your regular and engineering staff. You don't need ActiveDirectory, Exchange, and Windows for 90% of your team. Cost for support and licensing is a tiny fraction of Microsoft, etc. and you have more flexibility on when upgrades are forced on you with free or cheap support on a version fork going out to 5 years or more. There are handful of enterprise components that are not easily found in open source. Sometimes you can do without them, or only a certain group within the org needs them. Othertimes you can get contractors to build what you need and a small support staff to maintain it. Especially if you can leverage it as an enhancement to an existing open source project.

I don't think I want to live below a data center. With regular coolant leaks and loud ventilation fans and diesel generators turning on at peak energy times.

Build the data centers in Mexico where property prices and labor are lower.

I have no ethical problems with people covering, defacing, or destroying cameras that are pointing into public spaces. I'm sure there are legal issues with doing that, but there are lots of unjust laws on history that shouldn't be obeyed.

I wonder if rigging up a laser pointer on your own private property into the lens of a flock camera continuously is legal. Enough to prevent it from taking clear pictures. And it isn't interfering with an ongoing investigation because they are not actually police controlled or owned, just a private company claiming to offer some incidental monitoring of public spaces.

Maybe the police should police the "few bad apples" before kicking in doors and shooting innocent people in their own apartment. Despite all this tech, flock, gps, body cams, etc. Seems like it doesn't really help them improve the quality of their work. Almost like to protect and to serve (the public) was never the point.

Sorry! The comment landed in the wrong thread.

Motives matter. You're arguing that the means justifies the ends, which is perhaps a worst version of the original phrase.

Dogs obey humans relatively easily through training, in some ways more reliable at following commands than an AI chatbot. Dogs are able to read secondary cues from humans. Their facial expressions, body posture, voice stress, etc. so dogs have long been integrated in human groups for hunting and war.

Goddamn apocalypse creators. We were warned for many decades.

They won't use a proprietary non-linux OS because it takes too much work to write and test one when open source offers free labor.

I've written small RTOS and embedded kernels, both by hand and with AI tools. (Such as a factory diags environment used for a few of the early Kindles).

It is easy to get a proof of concept up. But even my own employer isn't comfortable with the schedule risks of my in-house proposals. (Safety OS for an ADAS)

For a TV, without enough of an Android compatibility layer, it is hard to get third parties to build for your platform. And those apps act as ad platforms that bring in revenue.

Android TV kind of is a terrible experience. I did a lot of work on it for HDMI support for the SHIELD TV. But I generally preferred the way LG's webOS works. It's a much simpler UI and slick experience. And very light on resources.

The US is playing a completely different game than China. There is really no way to "win" whatever imaginary zero sum game that our politicians and populace thinks we should be playing.

The US is central to world finance, it is difficult to broadly boycott us. But the current adminststion is working hard to end that. With the bottom 50% of nations getting their loans from China, and the top 50% happy to accept Euro in transactions.