No matter what useless idea you come up with, tech bros have already pitched it.

Phones are captured into DDOS botnets? Thinking back to my old rotary phone and wondering, “Is this really progress?”

In some glorious future, will millions of people not be able to poop indoors because some botnet has infected everyone’s ToiletOS ™ and the lids refuse to open?

There is no downside to lying these days. Yet the public seems surprised that all they see is lying.

I follow EV battery tech a little. You’re not wrong that there is a lot of “oh its just around the bend” in battery development and tech development in general. I blame marketing for 80% of that.

But battery technology is changing drastically. The giant cell phone market is pushing battery tech relentlessly. Add in EV and grid storage demand growth and the potential for some companies to land on top of a money printing machine is definitely there.

We’re in a golden age of battery research. Exciting for our future, but it will be a while before we consumers will have clear best options.

I do wonder how much better things could be though.

What are you talking about? Oligarchs are living their best lives right now. Trump is in office and there is nothing that is not up for sale. If you have big money right now, the US is your oyster. Bend the knee, kiss the ring and grease the palm. You’ll walk away with your own fiefdom. Pay a bit more and he’ll rent an office in the White House.

Politicians are more than capable of solving our problems. They’re paid not to.

Tech/Wall St constantly needs something to hype in order to bring in “investor” money. The “new technology-> product development -> product -> IPO” pipeline is now “straight to pump-and-dump” (for example, see Crypto currency).

The excitement of the previous hype train (self-driving cars) is no longer bringing in starry-eyed “investors” willing to quickly part ways with OPM. “AI” made a big splash and Tech/Wall St is going to milk it for all they can lest they fall into the same bad economy as that one company that didn’t jam the letters “AI” into their investor summary.

Tech has laid off a lot of employees, which means they are aware there is nothing else exciting in the near horizon. They also know they have to flog “AI” like crazy before people figure out there’s no “there” there.

That “investors” scattered like frightened birds at the mere mention of a cheaper version means that they also know this is a bubble. Everyone wants the quick money. More importantly they don’t want to be the suckers left holding the bag.

It’s like people have never heard of wireless networking. Sheesh.

/s

Privatize the gains, socialize the losses.

Expanding on to your comment:

99% of the time on the internet, when someone says “in the wuuurld” they mean

“In my very limited experience, in my tiny portion of the world, that I may have never left.”

Unless a person has vast experience and has had deep conversations with thousands of people, we as humans just don’t have the ability to appreciate just how radically different life experiences are for people we share the same block with.

Cariad emphasized that the data involved was not sensitive personal information like passwords or payment details, and no vehicles or services were impacted. Only certain vehicle data from online-connected cars were affected.

The company said “no[t] sensitive personal information” was involved. Nothing to see here. Move along. /s

What they actually said was, “None of our personal information was exposed, so we’re not concerned.”

Ball says that the blame for all of this can’t be pinned to a single thing, like capitalism, mismanagement, Covid-19, or even interest rates. It also involves development costs, how studios are staffed, consumers’ spending habits, and game pricing. “This storm is so brutal,” he says, “because it is all of these things at once, and none have really alleviated since the layoffs began.”

Huh. Baldur’s Gate 3 blew the doors off. They had the same Capitalism, Covid-19 and interest rates. They had the same development costs, consumer spending habits and reasonable game pricing. They had good management and no layoffs. All this success selling to a gaming segment that makes up a tiny sliver of the overall market. Maybe some of those game developer leaders should ask Sven how he did it. Or, you know, listen to him because he already told everyone how they did it. Or not.

Apple’s (and by extension every VR platform) big mistake is the lack of a Killer App for VR.

If they didn’t have a compelling use case, them researching and building any VR device is a waste of time, money and effort. Walking out on-stage and saying, “Now you can see dinosaurs in VR” just isn’t a compelling use case, even if they weren’t expensive.

To me, a decent intermediate step would have been, “Have and unlimited number of huge screens for less than the cost of one big, high-quality monitor.” would have been compelling if it were made small and light enough. Finding a way to continue using the current keyboard and mouse would have made it much more affordable and approachable.

Very few people have a truly diverse software experience base. Many humans without a large, diverse experience base have trouble imagining there are problems outside their own experience.
There are millions of different problems that need software solutions. People with limited experience have opinions as to the “best” software.
People with large, diverse experience bases tend to be a bit more circumspect and can understand there is no single best answer. The “best” software for a given task depends on many things, including the problem, the schedule, the availability of resources, etc.

When used by marketers, “up to” should be understood by customers as, “we guarantee you’ll never get more than”.

How much hubris/ignorance this guy has to believe his algorithm is accurate enough to detect “10%” of employees were deadbeats? What precision! If it found 50% deadbeats, that would mean the algorithm might be working.
The worst companies have only 10% deadbeats? Any company with only 10% deadbeats means their management team is doing a great job hiring/managing. Any company that only 50% deadbeat managers would be outstanding.

“We need to collect every bit of information about you so we can target you with only ads you’d be interested in.”

Ah, good times. /s

My theory is: free publicity. Just like the fashion industry comes up with ridiculous clothes that no one would ever wear, attention whores will constantly do outrageous things so that people will talk about them. The number of electrons spilled over this stupid mouse port placement over the years is uncountable. But the repeated conversations keep Apple in the public consciousness as a fashionista.

We’re raised by parents that must be obeyed for our own safety. Some people eventually learn to accept their parents are imperfect people and not gods. Many people do not. They look to kings and gods to protect and provide for them.

Those that have power negotiate with kings and gods. People without power attempt to use the only techniques they know to negotiate with their kings and gods: begging and/or pledging loyalty and service in exchange for scraps.

Of course this is but one of many reasons many people worship power.

I just tell them I don’t have a phone. Even if I’m still holding it in my hand. Most don’t want to engage. They likely figure they’re not payed enough for that.