I'm saying our tenuous attempts towards reestablishing the most basic of anti-trust was dead regardless of who won the election[1].
I think this decision would have been the same regardless of who won. As for the next few years... Harris was clearly signalling that her FTC would be a return to rubber stamping mergers and acting only against the most egregious corporate actions, and even then only when the penalties wouldn't be substantial. I doubt very much that her appointment to FTC Chair would be much different than the current Andrew Ferguson.
Nothing I've written endorses Trump or his actions. But we have to be a little bit more realistic about the interests that Harris was aiming to represent.
We can say that Harris would have been better than Trump in the aggregate, while also prioritizing the interests of Business over those of Consumers. Both these things can be true.
The writing was on the wall when Kamala Harris wouldn't commit to keeping Lina Khan at the FTC. We had some soft Anti-Trust action for the first time in decades, and the Trusts responded. If we get the chance to try again, we should be more clear eyed about what we are up against.
I've de-Googled my life as best I can, but I know how little it actually matters. Now that Google is clearly on the path of closing up Android, I hope the Linux phone effort gets reinvigorated.
Windows users have no negotiating power. Windows will continued to be monetized in user-hostile ways. Call it enshittification, call it the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, call it what ever you want. It won't reach a breaking point. It'll just get worse and worse, steadily and slowly.
I'm trapped because I'm a C#/WPF developer. But, the day after I retire will see a reformat and installation of Debian.
Unlocked. It was a 2023 model I bought in 2024. There are some screaming good deals if you don't mind buying one model older at the right time. I cannot stress enough how much I don't care about OS updates as long as my apps continue to work (not many, mostly from F-Droid).
I recently bought my wife a Pixel 8 ($500) and myself a Moto G Stylus ($175). The Pixel has a better camera, but that seems to be about it.
Something I like about my Moto is that it has a sdcard slot. That means I can sync up my entire music library (~600GB). That means I only need a small phone service plan ($15/mo). It also means I get to listen to all the Wilco I want while riding my bike down by the river where there's shoddy reception. There's also a headphone jack, which still comes in handy.
My lament is that as phones get more expensive, they seem to get less useful/interesting.
This is truly the Century of American Hubris. From financial deregulation to spreading democracy in the middle east to carbon fiber submarines, we seem determined to ignore complexity, refuse to acknowledge our biases, and throw out every Lesson-Learned from the last 150 years.
We're going to gut the Federal systems like a Tea Party fever dream. And the re-learning of what we truly need is going to be very painful.
>>"A technology that cuts down on boring tasks is fine; one that threatens your sense of identity is not."
The shareholder class sees no distinction between the two. This is a good reminder not to make your labor your identity and that technology implemented in the workplace is not for the benefit of the worker, but for the benefit of the owners. It doesn't matter if I toil with 1990's technology or 2020's technology, I call it quits at 5pm regardless.
In my personal life I get to choose (for the most part) the amount of technology that I interface with. The only computer in my car controls the spark plugs and fuel injectors. My bicycle shifts with friction. My stove/range only has valves and igniters. My TV is a monitor hooked up to a small PC. I'm not against technology, but I am ruthless in determining the exact amount that makes me happy.
I've been using Post-Its along the bottom of my monitor for 25 years. Works fairly well as they are always right there in front of your face, and if one loses it's stick, well, you know that's the one to focus on or move it to long-term.
This of course only works at a desk. I've never done work on a laptop so my system is very YMMV.
I have a 38" curved wide screen with 1600 vertical pixels. It represents the peak of all the monitors I have bought over the last 25 years.
Me in the year 2000 with a 1024x768 17" CRT would be flabbergasted at the amount of wasted/underutilized space that exists today.
Vertical space is precious, and it's why I paid more to have those 1600 pixels. And then Microsoft decides to not only enlarge the taskbar, but to not provide an option to turn it back to normal. I have to resort to hacks to wrangle MS Windows (primarily a Desktop OS the last time I looked) back down to size and reclaim my vertical space.
My neighborhood and for miles around me is lower to middle-middle class. All people that wouldn't be able to afford to 1) move and leave their equity behind 2) afford the rents in the denser part of town.
At some point one has to consider costs, scale and political expediency.
WFH and H-WFH would be broadly popular among the electorate and could probably take off with just some changes to the tax code.
Presuming everyone does want to live in a dense area (I do not), building housing and infrastructure is expensive and at the end of the day it has to be profitable to build. We don't really have the framework to zone municipalities at the Federal level. So now you are talking about leaving it to the individual states... and I think you can see where that goes.
Given all that, yes, fewer miles driven in aggregate is a good and easy win for the environment. Less gasoline consumed, fewer tires and brake pads consumed, less work clothes bought, less meals purchased at lunch, etc.
Perhaps tires can be made less toxic, but over all, we need to prioritize driving less.
WFH means I put barely 3000 miles per year on my car. It's absurd we are not aggressively promoting WFH or hybrid WFH at the national level. It's the easiest win for the environment and it's right there for the taking.
I agree completely that wealth plays a critical role, if not the most critical role, in all of this. Especially at the higher end with Balaji and all the other would be tech John Galts.
I have just observed that the threshold is low enough that many middle-class engineers achieve it (I've always lived in low cost of living areas where engineers get to live pretty comfortable lives relative to their surroundings. But that's just my one data point). Their folly tends to be more banal, like ordering Ivermectin from Mexican pharmacies or endlessly talking about nuclear power in a near utopian fashion. Admittedly, pretty harmless stuff compared to the article.
>"described a speech in which he “told a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become ‘the Microsoft of nations’: outdated and obsolescent.”
“The speech won roars from the audience at Y Combinator, a leading start-up incubator,”
I think this article is the most on-topic there could be.
The users here that want Tech News and Tech News only are doing themselves, and the community a disservice.
I don't disagree. My two examples were people who not only did not collaborate, but actively resented the knowledge offered from experts different fields.
I do think that past successful collaboration can lead to a bias though. As a programmer I've solved problems for a variety of disparate industries and fields. I know just enough to know I'm vastly ignorant of those fields save for a little part that I helped solve problems for. But I've seen colleagues go the opposite route.
I call it "Engineer Brain" after watching a talented relative descend into madness trying learn virology during the pandemic. It was further crystalized after the Titan submersible incident and reading about the terminal hubris of Stockton Rush.
We spend our lives specializing into ever smaller subdomains of already small domains. A lifetime of bending your brain in one direction, being well compensated, being told you are smart... it leads to tremendous gaffs once you step out of your little specialized world.
It's important to maintain a deep humbleness and acknowledge the gaps in your knowledge. Don't disregard experts in other fields because they are saying things that conflict with your biases. Learn to identify your biases and think about how they may limit you from gaining understanding. It's much more fun to go through life with the attitude of not knowing everything and listening to people who know what they know.
To a certain extent, yes. I'm mostly daydreaming about if you magically remade my little Volvo with modern materials and one of those low-displacement turbo engines they put in cars today. It would be 500 pounds lighter with 3 times as much horsepower.
But... that car would be a dud today. It's too simple and lacks features (like power seats).