IIRC our postal service in the Netherlands had something like this: you could digitally compose a letter or even a postcard, and have it sent to someone in physical form. The service was wildly unpopular... I think a service that has the receiver pay for such mail would be even less popular.

Snail mail is more or less as good as it's going to get, the problem is that it's expensive to keep it that way. Especially if they have to earn on one letter what they used to earn on 10.

Steerable beams of concentrated sunlight... wouldn't that make a terrific weapon as well?

For Tesla's FSD, it kinda makes sense. Tesla saves a lot of money by putting the required sensor package and processor in every car instead of doing it to order, but they may not want to make everyone pay for it if they are not using it. Conversely, consumers might not all want to pay for the substantial cost in software development. And they may change their mind later. So: your can can already do it but you only pay the (hefty) fee if you want the service.

But what BWM and VW are doing is scummy. There are few or no extra costs associated with offering the full available HP to everyone, or the heated seats. There is no significant R&D cost to spread over those who actually want the service vs. charging everyone for it. It's an extra revenue stream for them by holding parts of your own vehicle to ransom.

My wife got a call from a guy claiming he was with Social Security, and asked for her date of birth and SS number to verify her identity. She replied "You called me so it's YOU who has to show proof of identity". After some back & forth with the guy, she hung up exasperated. And, as it turns out, the guy was legit.

There are still many organisations who do not understand this basic fact: if you call someone's private number, chances are good that you get the person you're after on the phone. But if someone calls you, that could be anybody... even with caller ID (which can be spoofed). Some organisations turn it around and will call you with: "Am I speaking with mister xxx, last 4 digits of SS number 9999?". Still not to be trusted, info like SS number, date of birth or client number are all too easy to get hold of.

How is it that companies even have access to their employees' pension funds? Why isn't the fund a separately managed entity that the company (more accurately: the employee) pays into?

You would think that at a certain level of power consumption, it ought to be cheaper to produce your own power. If it isn't, then the market is screwy, or the power companies are extremely efficient.

In the end, the middle class pays for everything. Because that's where the money is.

Not vibes, it is exactly like "1984" where people get arrested for what they let slip in front of a Telescreen.
I am fortunate to have been raised in the 70s and 80s, when mass surveillance like this was only a nightmare brought on by works like "1984". There was no surveillance from the parents even; "Do you know where your children are?" was a question my parents rarely answered in the affirmative. Home for supper, home before dark, or a phone call if you're staying at a friend for dinner or a sleepover.

I was struck by the remark of one student, commenting on the now national ban on mobile phones in the classroom (some schools have the students deposit them in a bin at the classroom entrance, others require them to keep them in a locker for the duration of the school day). She said it was annoying, but also oddly liberating, knowing that not every little gaffe is going to end up on Tiktok to be made fun of. As if "a weight had been lifted". Modern kids might be used to the surveillance state, but it seems they find it as oppressive as we do.

No. I do not like having all manner of restrictions and inconveniences imposed on my legal enjoyment of the product, in an attempt to stop piracy (it doesn't). As I paying customer I expect, as I should, the same unencumbered experience that users of pirated copies enjoy. And I certainly do not want to be forced to lock down my own hardware or compromise it with some rootkit (like the infamous one from Sony) in order to enjoy content.

Like so many others, you mistake the motive of people who pirate content. For some, saving money is part of it. But in a lot of cases it is a matter of convenience. Look at what AllOfMP3 did to music: people were happy to pay just to get their music in the format they wanted, at the bitrate they wanted, with easy downloads. And now that music is easily available on legit sites and through streaming, few people still bother with piracy. In the EU, music piracy dropped by 75% in just 7 years. Simply because the experience with legit sources is now better than pirated content.

As Valve's Jason Holtman said: "Pirates are just underserved customers". It was not greed that drove Game of Thrones to become the most pirated TV show in history, it was simply the fact that HBO was not widely available outside the USA when season 1 aired. People were begging HBO to somehow make the show available to them. And here in the Netherlands, this used to be the rule: if something was not available legally and under reasonable terms, pirating it was condoned. That is a rule that serves the public's interest, as copyright was intended to. Publication (making the works available) was and should be a condition for receiving that temporary monopoly.

As for the movie industry: they were expected to release their works into the public domain, after enjoying a monopoly of reasonable duration. They haven't done that. Instead they have lobbied to increase the duration of copyright time and time again, and lobbied to have these terms foisted upon the rest of the world by treaty (that's why that Dutch rule on piracy got nixed). So they broke the deal, and I do not feel bad about not holding up my end of it. Fuck em.

Being flagged as a dangerous criminal by facial recognition might well count as reasonable suspicion. It depends on the accuracy of the software, measures to mitigate false positives (such as showing the officers a photo of the wanted person so they can do another check), and how to deal with false stops after the fact.

It's more like "Your purchased game is no longer yours to play, because we said so". Meh. If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing. And in the old days, DRM might prevent you from playing a legitimate copy because of some hardware issue, the game's copy protection might make you jump through al manner of hoops before it would even start, maybe you lost the required dongle, or whatever. Good reasons to pirate, because it would give you a far better experience. Games have gotten a lot better, but this move sounds like a step in the wrong direction, even if it is more about online cheating than piracy.

Same shit with DVDs and Blu-rays. No format shifting, ads that can't be skipped, random HDCP errors that force me to keep power cycling all devices in my media chain until it somehow starts working again. Here too, the pirated product is better. It's not that I don't want to pay for stuff, I'd love to pay in order to have companies make more enjoyable content. But as a paying customer I don't want to be treated worse than the pirates!

And it's becoming a matter of principle as well. Morally I used to feel compelled to pay, perhaps buying a Blu-ray and only then getting a pirated file (or ripping the disc when possible). But these days? Game companies still have my sympathy, but movie companies have perverted the social contract of Copyright so far beyond its original intent, that I do not feel a single shred of obligation anymore to keep my end of it.

Ì did not "go there", I described what I think will happen if we do nothing and just let the current system evolve naturally. Plenty of ideas for other systems, from a full blown planned economy, to the current system with a UBI, different ways to levy taxes to pay for that, and so on. And like you, I am pessimistic about it happening. But not because people cannot fathom another system, or even that people wouldn't be able to agree on a system. The problem is that one way or the other, the "haves" are going to have to give something up, and not just the super rich, but the upper middle class as well. That makes it very unlikely to happen.

Not sure why this is marked "troll"... it's a fair question. The main ways we have to distribute wealth is through labour, and return on venture capital. If labour is no longer a viable method because a large majority of people won't be wanted for work anymore, and we keep the system as is, then you end up with a massive welfare system that is inevitably going to collapse, while people living off return on investments will continue to do well until economic collapse follows, with no middle class to prop it up.

I've worked with consultants in a large international corporation, and almost all of them appeared to have been brought in for the second reason: to provide justification for decisions already made. But the real reason was almost always something else (though similar): they needed to sell their decision to upper management. A manager might have come up with a project beneficial to the business, but needed sign-off and sponsorship from those higher up in the chain. So he'd get a consultant to pitch the project to upper management; putting problems, solutions, impact and risks in terms that they'd understand.

And most of those consultants were good, very good... Though it does say something about your company if your middle management needs help in communicating with upper management, and if upper management is incapable of understanding the needs and want of the departments they are managing, without a specially crafted shiny slide deck.

As for the few consultants who were brought in to research and advise, some of what they produced was really valuable. If you get a good firm, you get a consultant who will activate their network in the consulting firm and/or academia, so it's never just 1 expert you're relying on.