The lesser evil.

It sucks, but it's better than the alternative.

Not voting only leads to the shittier candidate winning by default and the slightly better candidate ignoring you since you're not a voter. The loser's faction will move to the middle since that's where the people who actually vote seem to be. The winner's faction will push further toward their side, since they can afford to. Democracy takes a long time, but look what the conservatives have accomplished by sticking together and voting, year after year, for policies that the bulk of the public doesn't want. Very slowly, then all at once. Or ponder what would have happened if Hillary had won. At worst, the liberals would control the Supreme Court 5-4.

I haven't seen much in this vein, but there's a lot of profit to be made by owning the "creators" AND the algorithm. I'm sure setting up a shell company to reap the profits is a trivial exercise. If Spotify can pay themselves, why bother with paying artists. Use the few remaining "real" bands to feed the AI (I prefer feed to train, since it's shit that comes out...) but once they've reached enough content, it's pretty self-contained. If a human band happens to break through, it just becomes a new source of food for the AIs and the profit of the corpos.

s/failed to prevent/enabled/

Wait, you mean I can't use Gmail, or Outlook, or Spark, or Edison, or Google Pay, or WhatsApp, or Threema, or Box, or Dropbox or whatever on my iPhone? Just because Apple's built in apps are (often) better, doesn't mean you're forced to use them. Did you forget a sarcasm tag?

worked pretty well for apache...

War. War never changes.
The Romans waged war to gather slaves and wealth. Spain built an empire from its lust for gold and territory. Hitler shaped a battered Germany into an economic superpower.
But war never changes.

One does not simply "build up" in an earthquake zone.

He sounds like Steve Jobs.

Pah! Feanor did this way back in the Years of the Trees.
No elves, not as bright as a Silmaril. Lame.

Do you work for Dell?

label everything

like Portland, OR? Probably more square footage of bookstore per capita than anywhere in the US.
Even with Powell's, Borders and Barnes & Noble to browse, more often than not I bought from Amazon, 'cuz, new or used, they were cheaper, even with shipping.

Oh, what sad times are these, when passing ruffians can mod down a post at will. There is a pestilence on this land, nothing is sacred!

And 'we the people' through our elected representatives willingly invest our tax money