... you know the government is doing very stupid things. Stock exchanges are for-profit companies, which as a general rule would welcome more investment vehicles to drive up their own business. When they tell you to stop deregulating because it puts their long-term business at risk, you know the governmental body is headed by clowns.

For sure, there are! You can't publicly complain about the government in China, and as much as Trump is thin-skinned, his reactions to criticisms aren't to the level of the CCP. Their economic and political model is also so top-heavy, if the president is a mad king, the impacts will be much worse, much faster, than a mad king in the White House. There's a lot of risk there.

As for showing every sign of going to be worse... I don't know. I think that's where western propaganda is working extremely well, people have this perception that the CCP is evil. The CCP is dictatorial, but historically has brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. I'm sure there's corruption in the ranks, but we have that too (if you can straight up say 100% of US politicians aren't corrupt... you're either very good at lying or deluded). However, when I look at the results, their government has been a net positive for China. Yes they have horrible treatment of some ethnic groups, yes they're controlling in a way no western country is, but if you take an utilitarian perspective, they've done well for their people, generally speaking.

Will a Chinese hegemony be worse for the world? Maybe. I can see them adopting a harder stance than the US on many things. On the flip side, the US has undermined foreign governments and started wars for self-serving purposes, multiple times. The propaganda keeps painting China as a belligerent entity, but I'm not sure they're that much worse.

Arguably the US is still great. It's the world's prime military power by a wide margin, and has the most economic power still.

What's shocking is that instead of working to maintain that soft power, the current government is actively undermining it. Science is just one more example where we could easily be first, but chose (via the administration) not to. Education as a whole is no longer valued, and there's so much misinformation that it seems most people have just stopped believing in facts. All of these parts of society that are crumbling will lead to change. We may still be great, #1 in "power in the world", but we're at the apex of the curve. In the next 5, 10, 20 years, we'll start falling off unless something drastic is done to change the trajectory.

I'll say there's nothing wrong with not being "the best". Maybe we focus on happiness for citizens, safety, quality of life. You don't need to be the most powerful economy to give a good life to people. The problem is the government doesn't seem to care about "the people" anymore, unless you consider corporations people. And in the meantime, we're being fed a stream of propaganda Mao would be proud of, creating this image about the other rising economy that's so negative people are unwilling to accept anything positive about it.

I know this is Slashdot, we don't RTFA, and at this point most people don't read the fucking summary either... but here's what the summary says:

You want to drive track and accelerate fast? Yeah go ahead. That will require you choosing that setting. Otherwise safety rules apply. This is a great idea, it improves public safety AND doesn't punish anyone.

His last act will be to make Valve a non-profit, governed by a BoD with the express purpose to promote gaming of all kind? /s

Yeah I agree with you. Steam works well, but most importantly they've engaged in no extraordinary act of greed so far. I like them well enough to buy licenses, once in a while. It doesn't mean it's not a monopoly, and it doesn't mean this model won't bite you in the butt in 25 years, because if you don't have a hard copy of the game you can run offline, you don't truly own the game.

I'll be honest.. I don't need the presenter / host to be human. If the overall show is as good with AI, then the human host had no value. If the news can be presented and understood as effectively, the human presenter has no value.

The value is in the writing, the content, the information, the journalistic integrity. For that, I want a human, because AI is not trustworthy. It's a bit like live action vs. 2D animated vs. 3D CGI movies. All three can work to convey a story, and the movie will be good if the story is good (and the actors / animation do a credible job).

I don't understand it, but then I don't understand NFTs, or crypto, or any of those fads that make people pay money for 0s and 1s sitting on someone else's computer. As for skins, I'm all for it if that means companies can make great F2P games with no pay-to-win element.

I can believe it. I like the initial idea of BTC, the concept makes sense, it has some elegance and a libertarian slant that appeals to a subset of the population.

However, I think of it as mental masturbation. Cool concept, but not useful in the real world, and trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. The thing is few of the cryptobros today care about the tech or the concept, it's about making a quick buck. And you better believe there are millions of people that will eat any lie they get told, in the hope of making a quick buck.

If we're going to be pedantic.. the standard expression is "plus ça change plus c'est pareil". Plus c'est la même chose is overly long, and sounds weird ;)

"Comes out pretty even"? No. Like 100% more than most comparable countries.

The lie that everyone bought into is that privatized business are more efficient. They're more efficient at sucking in society's money and giving that to the owners. For anything that we as a people need (basic infrastructure like roads, water, electricity, and yes, healthcare), you're 100% right that they're leeches. They creates layers and layers of profit-making greed machines.

Take the worst part of crypto (the lack of regulation / abundance of scams), the worst part of fiat money (the fact that a central entity controls it), but put on lipstick masquerading it as related to crypto (the blockchain and "true ownership"), and tada!

For you crypto fans this is tongue-in-cheek. That's what this whole thing sounds like to me, I'm sure there's a "good" reason for stablecoin behavior...

Bad management is a problem for a team, I think we can all agree on that. What few people know, or want to admit, is that no management is also a problem. You think upper management (which in my head is VP-type, people that manage teams of 100+) has time for everyone working under them? No man. You have some HR issue, questions, you need cooperation from another team that's reluctant to help? Sorry, you're on your own.

To be fair, managers of 2-3 people are not required, that's just a crazy ratio, but "middle managers" often have 10 or sometimes 30 reports. Just having weekly 1:1s with your team can eat a large chunk of your time. It's not productive work, but it's the necessary lubricant in the corporate machine.

None. There are no good options for ERP, because they're all super complex software that can then be customized, and the majority of "consultants" suck balls. You choose the "best" system to start with, and typically stick with it. Migrating from one to another is... well, let's just say that unless costs go up 25%+ annually, multiple years in a row, you wouldn't think about it. I'd have to think Birmingham was pushed to the limits, or they have decision-makers that don't understand the impact of the decisions.

It's especially funny when a government uses someone else's computer for intelligence (i.e. spying) purposes. Sovereignty of data and IT stack should be primordial for those use cases.

The problem with SAP is that it's old. It's so old, and so core to company processes, that you can't change it quickly because it's too much change management for users. Any upgrade means training for hundreds of random finance folks, AP/AR clerks, etc. If the UI was to change dramatically, it could slow down an entire business.

I worked at SAP when I was younger. I, too, railed against the UI (amongst dozens of other things). After a couple decades in the corporate world, where most of my colleagues are users of SAP, I now believe that it may be shit, but changing it is a bigger issue for customers than leaving it as-is.