I tend to think that around 2015, we hit a turning point where increasing numbers of automotive manufacturers started to cram in junk that few are really asking for. The engineering may not have been optimal, as the auto industry is very broad, and there's always some shuffling around as to who's making a decent reliable and low cost of ownership vehicle at the time. Some makers produce a dud after making something decent, others have learnt from their mistakes and iron out a few bugs that have tarnished their reputation, etc.

One thing for certain that will be blocking a lot of DIY mechanics is computerisation of everything, and coding it to a vehicle. This forces people to buy into the manufacturers subscription based service software to be able to replace many, once simple components, and it has only become more prevalent post 2015.

The thylacine is an interesting one, but I remember some time ago reading an explanation why it's going to be extremely difficult. The animal became extinct only about 100 years ago, and there are constant rumors that wild animals may still exist. It was extant only on the island of Tasmania, and about a third of that island is essentially untraversed and untouched forest. It could well exist, but since no one has made a positive sighting, extremely unlikely.

Now for the tricky part. The thylacine is a marsupial mammal, and while there are heaps of marsupials in Australia, very few of them are carnivorous, like the thylacine. The closest living relative to the thylacine is the tasmanian devil. Marsupials have that trait that the young are born very early, and must live in its mother's pouch for quite some time as it continues development, all the time getting nourished with milk. While there's enough genetic material to achieve clones, maybe sufficient quantities to have some prospects of reintroducing genetically varied population, expecting to see any reach adulthood is going to be a huge problem, purely because marsupials are so reliant on their mothers.

Thing is, I think there's a strong apparatus in place, in numerous countries, essentially to hoodwink a lot of people to vote against even their own self interest, let alone the public good. It just comes across as many people hear some motherhood statement they like and that basically rusts them on to some party and don't investigate further.

Good democracies rely on the public auditing their politicians, bureaucracies and government. This is becoming increasingly difficult, and fewer people are actually interested in being involved in this capacity. Not much can be done if the public largely ignores when politicians are engaged in malfeasance; they still vote for them most of the time.

Communist countries always reasoned that their state apparatus was there for the people, hence that's the mental gymnastics they went through to make the claim that they too are democracies. However, I think it's only slightly worse than just giving people a popular vote and ultimately having a political class who ultimately decide whatever they want anyway.

This is why lobbying seems to ultimately be the most effective method of getting what the most moneyed people want. The public invariably is shut out of the debate altogether.

Seeing that Spain isn't an isolated case, this is being prepared and presented in numerous jurisdictions, I suspect that the current state of affairs, where people can completely sideline mainstream media for propaganda, younger generations don't watch broadcast TV anymore, so I think the way it's heading is not something that governments are wanting to countenance. The problem is that it's a useful tool to undermine democratically elected "wrong" governments, but becomes a problem when the "correct" governments become extremely unpopular and they want to cover up their scandals.

The problem is countries like China and Russia have basically gone down the path that information must be censored, and it's appearing to me, that they have the ability to abuse the free flow of information to some extent. The collective west's value of freedom of speech, appears to be something which the governments don't fervently believe in, as it's constantly under attack, or only something which is nominally uttered, not legally guaranteed (I'm not referring the USA, most other nations in the west don't have a guaranteed right to free speech even though they like to insinuate they do).

Last thing is, traditional media, is becoming moribund, and a lot of money has been invested in those forms. It's no surprise that most of it is dying out, but yet, they're still important institutions, which hold some sort of gravitas particularly by politicians, and invariably a lot of taxpayer money goes to keep them afloat. I think a part of this is to try to introduce barriers to new sources of "information" to protect legacy media in a way. Journalists invariably despise having to admit a mistake, and go to extreme lengths to weasel out of ever admitting they were wrong on anything. Seems to be odd that only now, false information is becoming a problem, yet never seemed to ever require legacy media to place as much effort in a correction, as they did in the initial lie. After all in some jurisdictions it's a tactic to push some sort of lie with the full knowledge that far more people will see it, than the fine print correction.

I've always been told that a performance Improvement Plan is anything but, it's just a process to follow to begin getting rid of someone, particularly in countries with more regulated labour law. A PIP is basically a signal to get out before one is pushed out.

I can't say why companies would elect to do it this way, but it may help with morale in a company if this gets followed instead of drawn out retrenchments. I think there's a lot of psychology at play in corporations, as companies rely on having loyal lackeys who don't question or balk at directions which may raise an eyebrow or two. It may be to also white-wash what invariably is just a case of a manager not liking someone they have to manage. I've seen it when basically someone asserts themselves and the manager takes that as a challenge to his or her authority, and therefore can't have it.

DOA...

I'm a firm believer of the saying that nations get the government they deserve. Unfortunately it's up to the general public to audit and hold their elected officials to account; no one else can, nor will do it for them.

Democracy isn't a process which aims to arrive at the right outcome but rather the popular outcome. There's a lot of nuance in all of this, and unfortunately a lot of propaganda and brainwashing to make out that a nominal democracy is something which is flawless and sacrosanct. I think there are aims to move away from the populism aspect of it (I can't understand how a democracy can function without populism), and start to install a more elitist focused authority, my suspicion is that the phrase "democratic institutions" that the US is now so eager to promote is probably an outcome of populations voting wrong.

The main problem I see today is increasing tribalism though, democracy functions best when everyone submits to the democratic process and moves forward with the outcome. Today, we see far more oppositions and bureaucracies intent on subverting a democratic outcome with constant attempts to obviate the democratic process.

To put it bluntly, that isn't a requirement of democracy. There is no burden of proof, just a requirement to have sufficient majority in parliament to pass the laws. It remains up to the people to vote accordingly for their representative, at an election.

In the case of Australia, which has no bill of rights, statute practically dominates, so the only matter is whether the Albanese government feels courageous enough to push this matter through, as the only recourse the public have, if they desperately don't want it, is to vote for someone who campaigns on repealing it. Sucks if the parliament deems the matter non-controversial or bi-partisan as that means that the public are mostly shut out of the discourse.

I think it's worth pointing out that there are huge bodies of laws that deal without any factual basis, usually just a suspicion, ultimately giving governments the power to arrest people on a suspicion, or spy on them on a suspicion, or ultimately regulate populations on the suspicion that maybe someone is up to no good.

I thoroughly recommend newpipe. Not available on store for obvious reasons, and it needs updating every now and then because something breaks, but gives all of that functionality.

So a comment I read about AI that I liked is probably true, Super Intelligent AI is 10 years away from being 10 years away (20 years being 7300 days).

The question gets raised; when journalists are that oblivious to technical detail, should the article be trusted at all? This is just Michael Crichton's Gell-Mann amnesia effect all over.

It's pretty clear that in much of the developed world, a sort of stagnation for the middle and lower classes has kind of set in and while migration seems to be a very touchy topic and politically difficult, it doesn't really appear like as if any developed country has a political system prepared to say outright that they're not going to be bringing in migrants. That is to say, migration brings along a sudden demand for infrastructure and jobs.

Getting people to work less may be an attempt to try to make more room for more workers, but also at the same time, try to alleviate something which appears to be a growing problem in more and more people living in a rat-race, having less time to actually consume. It doesn't help that today it has never been cheaper and easier to entertain one's self with the only requirement being an internet connection.

Maybe they realised that with 3D printers, users could print out their type and revert to a printing press and sidestep the production of the microdots...

Full auto for the most part is just a way to blast through a lot of dollars worth of ammo, very quickly. The amount of effort being thrown at this makes me wonder, whether it's something whose intent is to maintain the value of registered machine guns, or more nefarious to try to regulate and control more broadly, people's ability to make stuff.

I say this in the context of communication apps, where all the regulations around the world regarding moderation and monitoring, because oh why don't you think of the children is definitely starting to look like a tertiary reason, rather, the whole point is to force in backdoors, and ensure that these applications are monitorable.

I similarly wonder if there's a push to get to learn what people actually do with their 3D printers, and whether there's some sort of attempt to try to provide feedback to gain some insight. At the very least, it may be lucrative information.