Seems they got really tired of people bringing burner phones when visiting the USA.

And then they cheer at the truck protest, that blocks the roads and is being disruptive.

Then you have linked in where recruiters tell about how they rejected people because they didn’t get the right enery at the first “Hello”.

They’re free to go live in the wilderness, with no roads, no fire department, no water or electricity, no services whatever, and find out how much they’re actually benefiting from our collective.

That’s the neat part. They do try, repeatedly, and it always fails. A classic one is Grafton. It’s also known as A Libertarian Walks into a Bear because their little paradise got overrun by aggressive bears. Lack of public services will do that.

Yes. They’re busy buying everything already. They just need a financial crisis to get the rest for pennies on the dollar. After that it’s time for neo-feudalism.

and I owned nothing

Companies love that, until everybody is completely in debt and they learn you can’t seize property from people that don’t own anything.

“Hacked” is a bit much. It’s probably like the cameras on insecam.org, cameras plugged into that internet with no password or still on factory default like admin, 0000, 12345 and the like. That’s the security level of hanging a “keep out” sign on your bedroom door.

Yes. It’s like big telecom. When people install panels at home, power companies start inventing additional fees. If communities start looking for local grids, companies start lobbying to outlaw this.

It might make players demand lower prices if some cheap AI slop is used in the game. That’s the thing publishers want to avoid. They want to sell cheap slop for full price and pocket the difference. That’s what it’s about in the end.

Like is often said, for many it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.

That reminds me how McDonald’s and other gaat food chains are struggling. People figure it’s too expensive for what you get after prices going up and quality going down for years. They forgot that people buy if the price and quality are good. Same with AI. It’s all fun if it’s free or dirt cheap, but people don’t buy expensive slop.

Japan has a habit of doing this. The birth rate cratered, productivity is not that great and economic growth is famously low. Most workers do a form of performance theater, an actual “we pretend to work”.

Indeed. There is a plastic lining in the can so the content doesn’t affect the metal. You can dissolve the metal. What’s left is this:

Tuned for optimal exploitation.

It all turned to shit.

Movie scientists creates AI on their home PC.

Reality calls for billions in datacenters, gigawatts in power and a few 10,000 people.

Many things the characters do that professionals in real life would say they don’t do because bad things happen. But with doing things professional, the plot can’t happen and there is no tension.

Yes, with a short golden age roughly between WWII and the seventies, and going downhill for most people since then.

For example: https://thor-tuning.com/eu/thor-pro/

It does involve some hardware to make it loud.

The system worked like that for a few millennia. We’re just looking at not even a century that’s the exception and assume it’s the new norm. No, it’s just reverting to the old state now that the period of cheap and easy resources is gone.