Basically the same point I raised in an earlier discussion of this... What to call this? A leveraged buyout of the imagination?

However it makes about as much sense as most merger shenanigans and I would approve if at least one of the side effects was that eBay disappeared.

But I want to find a recursive joke somewhere around here... Something about eBay auctions/sales of merger/acquisitions/divestitures?

Same thing happens with humans.

It's worth figuring out what your threat model is. There probably are ways that some government agencies can get into iPhones or decrypt these messages, and they probably are collecting all the encrypted data in case quantum computers can decrypt it later.

But are they going to waste any of that on you? Unless you are a high value target for them, and unless they intend to avoid any judicial process where their capabilities might become public, they probably aren't going to use their best tools to help the local cops break into your phone.

Basically the ACK, but I'm also concerned with the kinetic threats from the control of robots by ASI. You must have seen some of the recent videos of the Chinese humanoid robots dancing? Also the bipedal robot that set the new record for the half-marathon?

Okay, I think your FP is sort of funny and deserves the mod you were going for, but I was looking for the other joke of the revised Subject.

Not laughing, but I think we are living in the biggest house of cards ever. So much awful software and we are so dependent on it. If anyone did have an ASI that was capable of finding every bug, then that person could pwn the world faster than any human-mediated responses.

Pretty sure it hasn't happened yet, but if the ASI was sufficiently "super", then how would I (or you) know?

I like the joke, but it would be funnier to try to fix the dead tree snail mail system with such craziness as an alias database for mapping convenient email addresses.

Another crazy innovation would be to default to no bulk-class mail, but with a new opt-in option to accept it ONLY if the recipient gets a cut of the postage paid.

But I just read another book on why that trick would never work, so...

I like your joke and my Subject is the one I was looking for in the discussion. Just more "tools for fools" to help the richer get more obscenely rich.

I'll add the horse race joke, since I'm pretty sure it also applies here, even though I'm basically too contemptuous of all gambling to spend time digging out the details for the polymarkets. However I'm pretty sure this is one of the scams where the house takes profits off the top. Therefore there are two cases for the gamblers. They might believe the game is honest and they therefore know they are going to lose if they play long enough. Or they believe the game is crooked and they think they can cheat better than the other suckers, which is still a sucker's bet if they stick at it long enough to lose against a better cheater. This path to losing includes getting old and slow or missing new techniques of cheating.

Classic joke: Gambling is a special tax on people who are bad at math.

Citation? Sorry, I don't remember the book, but it was about training primates to gamble. They love it, but if I remember correctly it was the younger adult males that would make the biggest bets.

In Europe, Ford is not a prestige badge. They are competing with the likes of Renault, VW, Nissan, and Honda. And now of course the Chinese brands like MG, BYD, Jaecoo, Sonoda, Cherry, Omoda, and others.

They just aren't offering much for the European market. We aren't keen on light trucks, and most of their EVs are shitty fossil conversions. That just leaves the dwindling fossil market for them.

Could also be a warranty issue. Some poor designs rely on firmware to enforce limits and prevent damage.

It's bizarrely common with EV cars already. Some have fake engine noises, and some even have a whole fake clutch and gear shifting system. The silence and instant, uninterrupted torque are the best things about EVs.

Electric motors have instant torque without the spinning mass and gyroscopic effects.

Hopefully as well as the simulation mode, they work on creating entirely new ways to control the bike that take advantage of it being electric.

Europe has ARM, Linux was created here, and there is plenty of domestic enterprise grade hardware in things like telecomms.

China has been transitioning away, and shows it is possible. They have domestic CPUs, RAM, storage, motherboards... Europe can catch up.

Mod parent funnier. But the story had room for more than one Funny comment, so as usual I'm disappointed...

Also rather funny was the book Chaos Monkeys about the internals of the process. Interesting self-contradictions as he flips back and forth between abusing personal information he gathers online, trying to reassure readers that the personal information is used "safely", and the financial shenanigans driving the whole mess forward. There are times when you can try to evade accusations of self-contradictions by saying you've learned stuff and changed your mind, but it's much harder for an author who is writing a book. The state of the book at the time of publication is basically a frozen thing and the contradictions should have been resolved.