Today's content is largely controlled by a few big tech platforms, with creators and users increasingly powerless. AI will only increase the Valley's influence. We are heading towards fascism, with unelected tech bosses becoming the real autocrats. I place almost zero probability on the US stopping this power grab. Chances it will happen in the EU are ever son slightly better but still slim.

The protypical arrogant ./-er which totally ignores that human-generated production code has one bug per 80-120 lines (exact figure depends on the sample being considered).

Economists call your line of thinking vulgar Keynesianism.

That is a fair point. But airlines--well, actually Delta and United for the most part--make also money with premium cabin travel. This is not just a blip, but part of a longer-running trend. Along with continueing consolidation in the industry, there is money to be made beyond selling miles to financial institutions. Of course, non-premium carriers like Spirit are still fucked.

The commentary is a bit overblown. Wouldn't be the much more direct evidence a list of conferences which moved abroad? But yeah, longer-term, some tech people gravitate away from the US. But too little is being done, maybe academics as well as well-networked people do not really commit all the way to exploiting this opportunity. E.g., a relative is a professor in Japan. Well, here university just refused to increase the foreign-student allotment (despite high interest from South Asia, South-East Sia and such). My brother is a professor in the UK. They say they don't have the funds to hire new staff. And in my home country Germany, some modest attempts are being made. But probably not even close to enough. E.g., it is usually insufficient to just have the funds for one new top scholar: The want to work with their peers, they want a good job for their spouse etc

By now, that cassette from the 80's/90's has degraded sooo much that you are much better off with a NM vinyl most likely.

LOL. Who still has a HiFi tape deck supporting standards higher than Dolby B, let alone portable devices like Walkman that do? Besides, your claim of pretty good is laughable compared to a typical AAC of today. Tape has other issues besides noise such as AZIMUTH problems or temporal volume/highs loss on a single channel.. Dolby does not take care of those.

There is Bandcamp for both downloads and streaming. Artists get a larger share of revenues than with Spotify or Apple, and Downloads are DRM-free. Make mixes using open-source tools like Mixxx and play with your PC or phone. Get a Raspi or an ESP32 device to hook up to your stereo system. If you really want to, there are still dedicated MP3 players out there as well (e.g., from Fiio). Cassette is just a retarded, analog format and has no place (except for nostalgia) in today's world.

These are a bunch of totally unsubstantiated claims. Algorithmic trading improves market efficiency during normal times would be the majority opinion in finance. If algorithmic trading is criticized, the angle is usually that it may work to amplify market dislocations on days with high stress/volatility. But your claim of "waste of time and energy" is unheard of among experts and professionals.

Well, if 2025 isn't the year of the Linux desktop!

Correct. Investors with appetite for highly speculative assets are the main BTC buyers and sellers. Keep in mind how much BTC is now held by ETF's, closed-end funds, banks hedging the levered access they facilitate etc. BTC is, in aggregate, just a few percent of a highly speculative portfolio. So the correlation we are seeing, for instance, between the NASDAQ and BTC, is likely driven by a causation that runs in the other direction: If your biggest plays such as NASDAQ stocks are not doing well, you manage your overall risk exposure by reducing some of your most risky plays such as BTC.

Your view is a bit naive. Google/Alphabet with its Maps app never had to take responsibility for "death by GPS" which is a thing. Tech is getting better, more human, more trustworthy. But who is taking OpenAI to court for making users committ suicide? Sure, if you take my comment literally, there will be someone sueing. But they get out of it 99% of the time. And guess what, the "ChatGPT can make mistakes" disclaimer is usually enough to get the job done.

This is the industry's biggest lie. They say you book "direct." You book, say, "Marriott" which is giving you a seamless customer experience. Fact is, you are entering a contract with the hotel owner, NOT Marriott or Hyatt or Hilton. The recent insolvency of Sonder (a brand affiliated with Marriott) showed the scale of it. Sonder very suddenly declared bankruptcy. People were thrown out of hotels mid-stay. People arrived only to see a note on the door: "Sorry, we have shut down and cannot honor your reservation" (even if fully pre-paid). Marriott just says the responsibility is with the hotel's owner and recommends you do a chargeback on your credit card.

Samsung has bad UI customizations for my taste (One UI). Yeah, you can switch the launcher and not agree to Samsung terms and disable most of their apps. But it is still not perfect. As custom ROMs supports on tablets is a bit spotty/fiddly, no easy solution there. Still does not drive me in the hands of apple. My Samsung S9 might have been a bit more expensive than an iPad and slightly less good, but at least on Android, I get many of my favorite apps off F-droid.

Perhaps before de minimis was removed, but things have started to change.