These internet connected devices which allow for third-party app downloads are being used to crawl and index for AI training data, collect online shopping prices and more.

Not linking it here, there is a SDK which allows app developers to monetize the internet bandwidth of connected devices. The SDK runs on smart TV and other internet devices.

This is why Google has a captcha based block on web searches since there is a large effort to use other AI LLMs to get data to train another LLM.

A google for "web scraping" gives more info.

So, we are going to see "AI might not be so bad" news story plants for at least a year now, right?

Show hard statistics on the number of jobs created by AI, where, what country, what region of the country, job titles, pay rates above McDonalds + $3.

Otherwise, it is "lots of new jobs created" without any backing data.

We have the data already, there are US state level registries required to track each new person hired, pay rate, etc. all for the state government to get the Title IV money.

There is also Social Security taxes paid by social security number, paid to the federal government every 3 months which allows for large number of yea over year tracking of total wages for most, if not all the population.

Add in the teacher retirement system payments, also based on wages, plus a few city/state pension payments, and you cover nearly 90% of the population month over month.

The infrastructure is there, it is just that the upper 2% need 'estimated number' so that they can push whatever agenda they want.

Disagree. Hard to see the article as unbiased since the Washington Post is owned by one of the largest sells of AI services in the world.

Another "AI might not be all the bad" article to ignore as Microsoft style FUD.

Amazon / Jeff Bezons owns Washington Post

Seeing the left democracies promote military and military technology is odd given the same West Europe governments have been shaming the USA for 60 years for USA-paid military protection they received.

Shaming the USA by West Europe is not working.

"learning to avoid semi-lawless dictatorships" is the real reason.

No one would invest in a factory or other business if the risk that it will be burned down, looted or destroyed is high.

It the cost of doing business in a country involves paying millions for military force protection, why would you do business there?

Manufacturing "a cause for action" has been around for a while. The 1% to 2% in leadership roles public, private, nonprofit, think tank, or more using available tools keep in the top 2%.

  Federal Grand Jury Charges Southern Poverty Law Center for Wire Fraud, False Statements, and Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering
Tuesday, April 21, 2026

Between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly funneled more than $3 million in donated funds to individuals who were associated with various violent extremist groups

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr...

Governments around the world have a big interest in preventing or limiting people's activities
when those people should be "doing the GDP patriotic duty" (/s) of meeting, dating, spending money to impress, marrying, having lots of babies and consume/consume/consume.

Strangely, it may have been a synchronized test to see if critical infrastructure or military operations were affected.

The Geriatric Party of America (GPA) needs you and everyone!

The GPA is for everyone, Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives and Moderates!

It has a simple proven party platform:
- Stability - Nothing should be changed
- Decay is good - Stagnation and slow decay won't affect us old people!
- Keep it simple - Let's keep the same old 40 year old talking points and 'debate statements'
- Families, children - Naw, they distract from the discussion on how to preserver the status quo, slow decay and stagnation

See https://ballotpedia.org/Ages_o... and sort by age /s here, though blocking legal changes so that business as usual continues for industries which profit by splitting families apart

The auto manufactures need to lower vehicle purchase costs, lower vehicle complexity, reduce the number of parts, source parts locally or from friendly countries, and overall reduce risk.

The demographic trap of consumer goods companies, cars/trucks include, relying on ever richer elderly buyers has run its course.

The largest generation of wealthy late working life and early retirement persons, boomers, have nearly all exited that high consumption phase of late working years.

Gen X and the oldest millennials do not have any near the wealth or desire for status chasing consumer goods purchasing.

We've seen it with Harley Davidson's boomers in their 40s rise during 2000-2015 which has now faded.

Other industries relying on older wealthy customers have a shrinking customer base.

The problem manifests itself in that politicians cannot vote for any policy which does not preserve or increase the money transfer payment (taxes) from workers to retired persons and any policy which does not keep or increase medical funding for old-age care.

Essentially, starving government services, wages and opportunity for building a family from younger workers.

Wikipedia - Dependency Ratio - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"A high dependency ratio can cause serious problems for a country if a large proportion of a government's expenditure is on health, social security & education, which are most used by the youngest and the oldest in a population. The fewer people of working age, the fewer the people who can support schools, retirement pensions, disability pensions and other assistances to the youngest and oldest members of a population, often considered the most vulnerable members of society. The ratio of old (usually retired) to young working people is called old age dependency ratio (OADR) or just dependency ratio"

Helping here would be a minimal or nearly no reporting on quantum computing until a lab run computer or better cloud hosted computer can have 1 month of uptime running real workloads.

President Eisenhower (?) once asked for a one handed economist so that they would never use the phrase "on the other hand".

The main problem is inertia, too many late career economists, government statistic collectors, report publishers, financial analysts, UN, World Bank, think tanks and more have a vested interest in not changing things, how statistics are collected, what statistics are collected and published until after they have left the labor force.

Once they start collecting more up to date data, instead of 50+ year old phone surveys of businesses, they will find out that the job market, employment, available jobs, quality of the available jobs and more are quite different than the last 50 years of data.

Notice how labor force participation only focuses on prime working age men and excludes the millions of women who are not in the labor force, have never birthed a child, or have no under 16 children of their own at home?

Just in the age range 55 to 65, there are 2 million women not working who do not have an under 16 year old child of their own at home. What are they doing?

Why are they not counted by out of work, not in the labor force statistics?

Where are all the hand-wringing articles, like there are about men, asking why these women chose to not work?

The long statistic here is that both political parties, entrenched academic and think tanks, NGO career holders, and lots more need the well-worn political arguments to exists, with there narrow range of approved viewpoints and approved data slants to keep going so that political careers, campaign funds, academic careers, and more can keep going for another 20 years.

If the statistics come in where a large percentage of jobs are minimum wage + 2 dollars per hour and are essentially poverty level, a lot more of the economy will change.

How many more decades of shaming questions does it take? - "Why are men not working?", "Why are they lazy men?", "There are X million unfilled jobs and less men not working, why aren't men ashamed to be out of work?"

An answer like, 50% of open jobs are poverty level or leave less than $200 a month in above poverty level wages to spend is needed.

> Erik Brynjolfsson. Working with researchers at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab

A "news" article, supposedly unbiased, quoting an expert who works with the people whose job it is to research, get paid for, and promote AI technology.

A major newspaper should know better than to quote a person who profits from AI about whether or not AI is good for regular people's job prospects.

And take into consideration that the Washington Post is owned by something which sells AI based cloud services.

The "/block" by default should apply for these types more personal data collection