What America "prefers" doesn't matter so much as what America "got" last year, which is Iron Curtain, not free markets.

What I would suggest, and what it sounds like they're doing, is to use EU data centers.

You seem to conflate or confuse the "effort" of the individual doing his job with the "effort" of the government ordering him to do so. You seem to believe they don't have any less-useful endeavors to allocate man-hours from, and that training more sysadmins is not possible or desired.

I was always told that running random code that you don't know what it does is a bad idea. What I'm hearing with these AI models is that "what you don't know" has become "what you can't know". Normal code would require a thorough audit to integrate. The AI stuff is unauditable.

It sounds like Cisco is trying to alleviate these unknowns. It sounds insufficient. Am I missing anything?

That's fine when you're interacting with informational websites where it doesn't really matter if the site works as intended. I've found that half the storefronts and interactive sites don't. For something like an insurance enrollment, I would not expect it to function without disabling Ublock or Noscript.

It was about getting a government contract, to which could have been added stipulations about data collection, but they weren't.

After a few decades of that, the tech companies get to thinking the government is their bitch, and then we get into the situation we have now.

I do think people subconsciously recognize this. They want to get the bitches that fold, out of government. They saw Trump as "not anyone's bitch" (incorrect, btw) and that was a big plus. Hillary and Kamala were perceived as - if I may use the word - bitches.

It sounds like those smarter minds have already given you the solution. Didn't you see when Melania walked down the red carpet with that teaching robot last week? Obviously a missive from the future. No further discussion needed.

30, 40 years ago "Get computers in the schools" was a valid project. The computers sat in a lab, and the kids would interact with them a couple times a week in a structured (instructed) setting. The late push for tablets and laptops seems more about "hand the kids something to occupy them" combined with the cargo-cult duplication of what worked in the past.

It sounds like they're using Server 2003 as their target for compatibility. That means they are squarely in "legacy computing" territory, and everyone developing ReactOS knows it.

If they wanted to work on something current they would have moved already. Likely they already have, and only circle back to ReactOS once a year, when their "institutional knowledge" of what's now a niche historical project is needed. Because no one else works on it.

Then it just weighs down your computer.

You don't know whether there's anything to investigate. The purpose of not-investigating is to keep it that way. Wilful ignorance.

That said, the government does "know" plenty of things, which they refuse to act upon. Some of it's a matter of prioritization. Fighting white-collar crime is what the FBI deprioritized last year. They don't have the capacity to investigate it. The need is very much growing, and these government programs are no less in need of policing than private contracts.

I've heard what's going on now compared to the free-for-all during all the covid cash giveaways. Everyone from street-level scammers to big business to churches scrambling to get a cut.

All the detectives who work these cases were just fired from the FBI, by the way.

They're gatekeeping because I let them. I don't really look anywhere else for games. Maybe I should start looking at alternatives more, but I haven't in the last 20 years except when exclusives forced me to get some launcher then dump it due to network effect. Plenty of other people let them gatekeep for them as well.

GoG is a spot I intend to browse more going forward, due to the anti-DRM orientation, being that DRM is my biggest problem with Steam. (I understand not all DRM on Steam is from Valve.) Other than the DRM I've been very satisfied with what I buy in Steam. And even the DRM mostly has worked over those 20 years.

On one hand, I hate the idea of rent-seeking, gatekeeping storefronts taking 30% of every developer's revenue.

On the other hand, Valve seems to use that power to do things that benefit the consumer, sometimes. Look at all they've done to promote Linux as a gaming platform.

Or maybe that's just incidental, and they only look good compared to the actual Satan worshippers running the rest of these companies.

Few of these people care if Apple lied to them. They love being whispered sweet lies, year in and year out.

They also happen to love hearing "I won $10". They can do both.