> No reason why actual antibiotics requires long and careful testing to make sure they are reasonably safe. We can do away with all that now!

Some of the more modern antibiotics can melt your liver or cause you to rip your tendons.

You definitely want these things to be thoroughly tested.

Nixon started the cancer moon shot 50 years ago and during that time we have learned that cancer is not 40 diseases. It's 400.

All my Rokus are now infested with ads but the Roku stick is even worse since it seems to take an absurd amount of time for it to just connect to the wifi.

(my real Rokus are all hard wired)

I'm sure they all get subjected to the same annual corporate ethics training courses. Some policies apply company wide even in megacorps that employ 300,000 people.

Now imagine saying this about, say, Japan.

I've noted the comments here about how this is old news: that's true. But it will be novel to some people who didn't live through it, and even for those who did, it's a necessary reminder. Japan is ruthless, unscrupulous, and unethical: they will do anything. They're not the only ones, of course, but they're arguably the most dangerous because of their size, wealth, and longevity. They're the enemy of open standards. They're the enemy of open source. They're the enemy of open protocols. They're the enemy of America. They're the enemy of The West. They're the enemy of security. They're the enemy of privacy. They've always been the enemy and they always will be, because it's in their DNA: it's impossible for them to change.

So any time -- ANY TIME -- there's some statement or initiative or announcement that they're going to support freedom/democracy/etc., any of the things I listed -- the first things that should come to mind are these wise words of Ash: "It's a trick -- get an axe."

If you have to go back 26 years to find something to complain about, you really don't have a basis to complain.

The most important difference in all your examples is things like tooling and equipment are either strictly necessary to complete the job, or produce so much value in terms of productivity that they are worth the cost. Also, most tooling and equipment lasts longer than an AI token so the cost tends to get spread our over several jobs...

Using AI coding agents has not proven to increase quality or productivity in any meaningful way - increased volume of code does not mean productivity unless you're a middle manager. It's known that it is not strictly needed for the software engineer to do their job. You are not improving the engineer's workflow by mandating AI use, you're just making it more expensive.
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Well, I bought Triggerheart Exclica on Xbox Live Arcade back in 2006 on an Xbox 360.

I can go download that game, right now, on my Series X, because, gasp, it's the same account.

So if I were to buy GTA VI for Series X in a few months, and type the download code into the 'redeem code' box, it ties that code to my account. See?

Yup. I remember buying Dawn of War in like 2008, and in the case was a disc with the Steam installer, and a piece of paper with a Steam code.

>>When I use MacOS, I feel obeyed and empowered

I'm dipping my toes into MacOS, do me a favour, please, tell me how to remove that stupid "Chess" program that the OS seems to think is a "core system program"
Hell, I can't even move it to a folder labeled "stupid useless built-in MacOS programs" because MacOS won't let me move it...

It's conspiring because those loopholes exist on the behest of the manufacturers to begin with. They didn't 'react' to the legislation, they helped in crafting it.

It's not even a 'take' - it's literally what happened. It's reality.
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> Meanwhile, that CAFE standards put in place by Bush and Obama mandated ever larger trucks and SUV

It absolutely did not.

The regulations had an exception for trucks and work vehicles. The auto industry then conspired to sell more trucks as high end personal vehicles in order to keep building vehicles without having to meet the regulatory requirements.

The lack of a small vehicle segment is entirely, 100% on the shoulders of auto manufacturers who desperately do not want to build them.
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You seem to have misunderstood.

The claim here is the battery cells are themselves 3D printed, not that they are stuffing already made cells into a 3D printed object. The batteries would not have to "fit in" the 3D print, they would be the 3D print.

So it's actually dumber than you thought.
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> So I already use a tool like this. It's called Voicy. I use it because I've been writing so many long prompts that I developed relatively severe tendonitis in my left arm.

Have you ever used a computer before LLMs became a thing?

If yes, how did you manage to not hurt yourself before your life was nothing but writing prompts?

(Maybe the solution is to stop writing prompts and go back to doing what you did before, is what I'm suggesting)
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> And what happens is that in the next budget cycle, they say, "Hey, there's all this money over here. We don't need to fund that anymore. And now there's a shortfall again.

I do not know how to parse this sentence.

This isn't intended or designed for ongoing funding. This doesn't factor into the state budget. It's a completely separate fund specifically to shore up health care and education systems that have been neglected due to recent/chronic underfunding. None of this impacts their normal operating budgets year over year,

The best analogy I can think of is a bond. When the government wants to raise money for a project or investment in the future, they will often issue and sell bonds to raise that money. Bonds mature and pay back with some interest, and are not recurring or factored into the normal budgeting. This is functionally the same thing, except instead of borrowing via bonds and paying back with interest it's just a straight up tax on billionaires.

> Absent actual, careful reduction of wasteful spending

I'm willing to bet that there's far less "wasteful spending" than you think there is, and it's just a matter of you not understanding what is being paid for and why. See also: DOGE "savings" and how we're suffering the consequences of cutting "wasteful" spending on programs that were actually really important but not in obvious ways.
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