It's just the governments trying to shut a loophole. They don't want to lose power over people's pockets.

Indeed. One of the reasons I was attracted to the tech community when I was a teenager was how open minded and freedom oriented people were. It inspired me to learn and grow my computer skills and become a developer. I recall that in the 2000s, even the demosceners became extremely activist for woke ideology, and pretty soon the entire tech world was full of it.

It's very sad how the world has become a cesspool of fanatism and totalitarianism, and rationality is out the door. Soon I think we will get this song in the west:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

And the singer will be called a racist, right-wing extremist transphobe who hates women.

Indeed. Dead with covid (e.g. being shot, and tested positive with covid upon death), or from is different things, but same stats.... I think people who believe this want to believe. It's all about the "life lie" and the "narrative subscription". We are as free as we want to be.

It's a similar problem to the growing numbers of tabs we use in our web browsers - it's a cluttered work environment. Open Source FriendOS collects apps in one place and tries to group together push notifications - the goal is a streamlined work flow with less clutter, less noise. Free account here - https://friendsky.cloud/ - site for info here - https://friendos.com/ - Source Code here - https://github.com/friendupclo...

We need something like DirectX for cloud - a layer that handles all the complex bits. This is what is being built in Friend OS (currently v1.2.7). Friend OS is a "Meta OS" - an operating system like abstraction layer for cloud apps. It gives libraries, modules and drivers to cloud resources. This means that you can build serverless applications, where Friend OS takes care of user accounts, security, storage, the works. Makes your app easy to migrate between infrastructure providers. I believe these kinds of platforms (like Friend OS) are the future.

You can check out the website for Friend OS here: https://friendos.com/. A free Friend cloud service: https://friendsky.cloud/. Github: https://github.com/friendupclo....

Is it apathy, or is the west just simply not equipped to stay in the forefront of these types of technology developments? It seems lately that the west is outcompeted in many areas, especially around AI. Perhaps the west needs new Big Tech companies that thinks fresh ideas? Or perhaps more government regulation? Or what?
I often think that the west is experiencing more than "monetary recession". It seems across the board - infrastructure wise, energy wise, etc. Is it synchronous with the west being weighed down by monolithic monopolies? E.g. with the same large companies picking up the government contracts.