The catarrhine who invented a perpetual motion machine, by dreaming at night and devouring its own dreams through the day.
Without capitalism the increase in cost would be smaller for sure, but depending on the item it would be still meaningful. For example, the dining table from the article still needs a hydraulic system to go up and down, that isn’t exactly cheap.
Instead I feel like the biggest harm of capitalism is shoving the tech even where it doesn’t make sense to have it, and then telling people they need it. You don’t need a smart toilet when a simple button does the trick.
I think that both things are at play here - what you said about regulatory failure, and rejection of the tech. And they’re interconnected.
A more complex system (with more parts and/or more complex parts) will have more points of failure, and failures will be harder to fix. And while a lot of this additional complexity is caused by that greed that you’re talking about, some is intrinsic - for example if you want lights that turn on/off from a cell phone, you need some sensor in the lightbulb, that wouldn’t exist otherwise, and that sensor can and will break.
Man, hiro did absolutely no maintenance on the site after buying it from moot, did he?
Not like moot was any better, he let the site be infested with those pieces of shit from stormfront, and even created a whole new cancer-infested board for them.
I can’t help but sympathise with the author’s pain. While coffee isn’t subjected to this sort of annoying market here, plenty other things are.
Like wine. I got my favs but I can’t be arsed to listen to crap about which grapes, origins etc. are “objectively better”. Tomorrow I’ll be probably drinking some beer instead - because I don’t care about being “that sort of person who drinks wine”, I just want to enjoy my drink dammit.
Or computer pieces. I built my computer with pieces that are good for someone who plays games. I’m even willing to put fancy stuff like a LED strip. But I don’t care about “gamer” stuff, I don’t care about “as a gamer REEEEEE”, and I’m fucking tired of computer pieces being marketed as if they dictated who you are.
In this context “politics” clearly conveys “things directly related to governments, such as wars, elections, or socio-economical ideologies”. It is only a subset of the definition of politics that you’re probably using, something like “things direct or indirectly related to human groups and their conflicts of interest”.
We got a whole Lemmy to talk about Israel vs. Hamas, late stage capitalism, elections etc. We could - and should - have at least one community to chill and talk about other stuff, and without that rule we won’t have it. For example without that rule 99.99999% of the content as of late 2024 would be about Trump, as if Americans didn’t have multiple communities to talk about it already.
As a wise man once said, “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t after you.” Oh wait, that was Kurt Cobain, not a wise man.
Jokes aside, don’t assume that a piece of info about someone else is fine to share, because it is for you. OP likely has their reasons and that’s to be respected. (NB: this is coming from someone who doesn’t mind even sharing their city online.)
I get that you’re trying to get more info to help OP out better, but I think that it’s better to drop this “where are you from?” talk. Privacy-wise it’s rather problematic, you know? [Sorry for the uncalled advice.]
The focus of what Torvalds said is the concept of tech singularity. TL;DR “nice fiction, it doesn’t make sense in a reality of finite resources”. I’ll move past that since most of the discussion is around cryptocurrencies.
Now, copypasting what he says about cryptocurrencies:
For the record, I also don’t believe in crypto currencies (except as a great vehicle for scams - they have certainly worked very well for the “spread the word to find the next sucker holding the bag” model of Ponzi schemes). Nor do I believe in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, or the Easter bunny.
For those who understood this excerpt as “Tarvalds thinks that cryptocurrencies dant ezizt lol lmao”: do everyone a favour and go back to Reddit with your blatant lack of reading comprehension. When he says that he doesn’t believe in them, he’s saying that he does not see them as a viable alternative to traditional currency. (He does not say why, at least not in that message.)
And for those eager to babble “ackshyually ponzi schemes work different lol lmao”: you’re bloody missing the point. He’s highlighting that a large part of the value associated with cryptocurrencies is speculation, not its actual usage. Even cryptocurrency enthusiasts acknowledge this.
I apologise to the others - who don’t fit either category of trashy people I mentioned above - for the tone. Read the comments in this very thread and you’ll likely notice why of the tone.
Props for the dev. In fact because of these news I went to check their games out and find a good free one, Viridi; you build a succulents pot. Basically small version of my succulents/cactuses garden.