I shoot with Canon (R5, R6ii) and Sony (A7r3) mirrorless bodies and I have a Samsung S25+ that I regularly forget has any value as a camera at all. I've made efforts to add smartphones to the work that I do, but even with contemporary flagship devices and a willingness to shoot in LOG format for use in big-boy editing software, it's a lot more work to deal with output from a phone than to use a proper camera. Low-light performance is poor at best and shutter lag is a real thing on phones even when they're just being used for photos. The phone is fine for anything I don't care about, but since I do want output of a certain quality, I'd far rather have a big-boy sensor and a fast aperture lens for my projects.

With regard to people shooting professional cinema projects on smartphones, do please go watch behind the scenes footage. Overwhelmingly, you'll see that they're still using tens of thousands of dollars worth of lighting and production assistance to make that workable. Put a couple 36" beauty dishes with 500W continuous sources just out of frame and I think you'll see that even at 30 year old Kodak DC290 will take amazing pictures.

With regard to fixed-lens pocket cameras, the appeal is most often in something that's pocket friendly and dedicated purpose, even if that purpose is just "I know I'm going to be shooting a lot, so I'd rather drain the battery of this thing rather than kill my phone's battery while I'm walking around." You can get to roughly the same place with a smaller Sony full frame body (e.g. A7C R) or a Pansonic/OM Digital MFT camera and a pancake lens, but by the time you buy in to either platform, you've probably spent hundreds or thousands of dollars anyway. It's all well and good to say that you don't need such a thing, but pocket cameras definitely have better sensors that anything in the action-cam class of product that probably represent the cheapest dedicated portable cameras available otherwise.

Fuji's GFX line have larger-than-full-frame sensors that sometimes get called Medium Format. Given the limitations of Fuji's lens ecosystem, you're almost definitely a professional portrait or nature photographer if you're buying one, and since the only competition they have in that space are Leica and Hasselblad bodies that ALSO cost north of US$8000, this isn't a huge deal. Fuji is actually a bargain in comparison.

But lenses and cameras have seen prices raised across the board. None of the pricing is out of line from Tariff policy, but it does mean that I'm not buying any new gear until someone sane gets back in charge of trade policy in the USA.

I watch dogs (primarily overnight--most for 3-7 days but some 1 day and some >7d) via Rover. I make around $1500/month (pre-1099) and after their ~20% cut (of which most people give back to me in tips).

I WFH so the largely passive income is nice. I wouldn't have found as many people w/o a platform to do the heavy lifting for me in finding new dogs.

I am not advocating that we need to have these sorts of things in the market, but it does make for nice extra cash. YMMV.

Not 50 yet, although at one time I had a FOUR digit UID, but that login was tied to a university email I no longer have.

My next door neighbor for some period of time was a dancer. I got to know her and people she worked with and I've had a revolving door of current and former dancers in my life. Some of them have been fuckups, but mostly I've come to know these women as just normal folks who have a slightly more miserable job than most other service workers.

I don't know if anyone remembers this, but having a Facebook account was a requirement for Tinder users for the first several years of operation.

Most of my real life friends are strippers. Even when they're honestly just trying to meet somebody, their accounts get banned constantly just from doing normal Tinder stuff. Even for the most blessed with attractiveness, Tinder is a goddamn hole of suck.

A zillion years ago, I had a contract position at Disney. But I was a temp worker, so they didn't give me a desk. Or a phone. Or a PC to use. Or any official way to check my e-mail. But somehow they DID give me Forest Admin credentials for their ENTIRE Active Directory.

I was there for six months and when the full time replacement admin finally showed up, they had armed guards escort me out. My replacement let me know after the fact that someone done fucked up setting up my user account. I could've fucked the entire company, so I the order was given that I be treated as hostile until I left the premises. Why they didn't just, I don't know, select and delete the group memberships my account wasn't supposed have, I do not know.

Last year some IT worker at Disney got in a lot of legal trouble by using his still-active credentials to make tiny changes to the printed menus used on Disney Cruise ships. He apparently thought investigations into how that happened would eventually lead to getting his job back, but honestly ruining a print run or three of menus is probably about the most malicious thing I would've guessed WOULDN'T get LEOs to your door. It's just nice to know Disney's IT hasn't gotten any better since I worked there.

OpenSSH is the best known OpenBSD project, but they also makes pf (used in pfSense, OPNSense, etc.), OpenBGP, OpenNTPD, OpenSMTPD, OpenIKED, LibreSSL, etc.

Came for this comment.

It might be a factor. However, the population is growing, and while the demographics are shifting a bit, they are still a lot of kids, reaching drinking age.

However there are milestones that us older folks had while growing up, that no longer seem as important to the younger generation.

Watching a PG13, R Movie, Getting a drivers license, drinking, smoking, Having Sex, Getting Married, Going to College, Getting an Apartment, getting a house... All these are in decline with the younger generation. Some because of increased difficulty with finance, due to increased cost of living rising higher than salaries, and also prevalence of online culture and access to direct media, so people are finding Cliques that are not necessarily tied to doing particular things, and accessing stuff they are more interested in.

They are plusses and minuses to this trend, but I wouldn't spend too much time complaining about it, younger folks will be doing their own thing that is different than the way older people did for generations.

No, but normally as production increases a lot of the carbon offset is mostly better managed at scale.

For example, a Diesel train may burn 4 gallons of fuel per mile. however being that it carrying so much payload that they rate it 500 miles per gallon per ton.
While an Electric Car that says has 100 eMPG will not be as carbon low in energy expenditure if needed to pull so much weight.

That number seems like the cost to make the material, from start, not in sets of hundreds of thousands of drives.

Well Tech companies had been less than strategic around their hiring and firing practices for the past decade or two.

They try to hire as many people as possible, give them some work to keep them busy. Just so these employees will not be working for their competitors who are trying to hire them for the same reason and give them busy work. Then when money gets tight, they dump them, not realizing that that busy work they were one actually became something profitable for the organization.

They leave, some start new businesses or others get hired by a smaller unknown firm with the skills they learned at that company is useful, and allowed to make the next big thing, that undoubtedly hurts the original company.

AI is a useful tool. However it is being over used, often in cases were standard logic based software can do the job just as well, for a fraction of the computing resources.

Not necessarily. As stated in the summary, people on UBI were more willing to change jobs, or continue further education.

While this might lead to higher education prices, but not necessarily additional inflation overall. I expect those who changed jobs, may had chosen careers that may pay less where they have a more fulfilling career without the worry about meeting basic needs. Other options would they may have chosen higher risk and possibly higher reword type of work as well.

Speaking from my own personal experience as an American. There were many opportunities that I have personally rejected, because my family conditions means I need a steady reliable employment, which is often rather dull, and not pay as much as other opportunities. The more exciting jobs available, would often have a smaller salary, as my experience wouldn't transfer over as well. Or work for a company that may have massive layoffs.

What would most likely happen with UBI as a side effect would be lower salaries in general, with perhaps less expectations as a balance. Causing spending demand to mostly stabilize and remain constant.

Lucky for us (at least for this topic) we live in the 21st century. Where Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries, are cheap, have good energy density, and are very safe.
 

The flaw is worse then just trying to evaluate merit.
Every person has strengths and weaknesses that are unique. If you have a worker in the warehouse who may be under performing, he may be under-performing because the worker isn't challenged enough, where promoted to say management he may be much more effective. However, if you do that, the warehouse workers who are busting their balls to get promoted would be pissed, and unmotivated by such an action.