The kittys are not what they seem.

Someone in corporate was reading articles about enshitification and was not clear on the concept.

But aen't you glad I didn't say "being on the cutting edge"?

Hardware and Software can also be a problem.
You want just the right amount of firmware.

"Thank You, Master."
"Insufficient sample, may I please have another?"

But do you really need an AI to tell you that your crap is too hard or too soft and that you are bleeding from your ass?

No, windows installer for Win 10 or Win 11 is *easier* than, say, an Ubuntu desktop install -Windows doesn't ask the installer about LVM/disk layout. That isn't a hard question, and a sentence saying "if you are unsure, just accept the default choice, it's suitable for most users" could neutralize the issue, but my point is Win 10 and Win 11 installer is really, really simple. If you think it's hard, you haven't tried it lately.

I once worked as a programmer (Mainframe, back in the late 80s/early 90s) so my experiences back then (last century!) probably don't relate to today's job market, but if programmers (in general) think they have an issue the unions can solve, go for it...

BUT, understand that you run the risk of your programmer union becoming like the teacher's union, where every teacher is considered equal, and any sort of merit pay is (literally) prohibited. Teacher's unions (the union most Americans interact with) treat each teacher are interchangeable/entirely equal cogs, with the only distinguishing thing about them to differentiate pay levels are "time on the job" and "level of education". Of course, tenure is a unique monkey wrench in the comparison - teachers unions enforce tenure, private unions don't.

Programmers, in my experience, believe themselves to be like snowflakes, each one unique and different, each one possessing a unique skill set that makes them worth just a bit more than the programmer next to them - a programmer's union would likely struggle to accommodate that belief.

Cory talks about "enshitification", unionizing "programmers" would be embracing "commoditization" of themselves - unions can be great when the worker skill set is easily defined and the workers can easily be replaced, it gives commoditized workers the ability to even the power dynamic between worker and company - programmers, on the other hand, neither regard themselves as "commodities" nor easily replaceable, and they will have to do so to be successful in a union environment I suspect.

My biggest issue with unions is that the workers form a union to address some (presumably) righteous mistreatment, but too soon the "union" thinks it is an equal business partner with the actual owners of the business and try to dictate business practices, etc. The cautionary tale for me is the Stella D'oro Bakery strike in NY years ago. See https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbronx-yes.com%2Fen%2Fetern... for a very worker-friendly version of the story, there's also a worker-friendly movie "No Contract, No Cookies" https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.imdb.com%2Ftitle%2Ftt1...

It is exactly this sort of thing that will keep Linux off most end-users desktop - not because the average desktop user cares about Gnome, but they see the arguments, the forked OS versions and general in-fighting and simply choose to stick with the stable, reliable OS they know.

Yes, "stable, reliable" - the vast majority of computer users (90%+?) manage to do everything they want to do in Windows, they don't care about the the historical issues Linux advocates remember from the last version of Windows they used (Win95? Win8?)...

I note with delight that Ubuntu 25.10 (the leading 'consumer' Linux distribution) has features that require - wait for it - TPM 2.0 to operate!

How delightful...

As a landlord, I can look at the newspaper and see what other landlords charge for similar properties and use that information - legal.

I can use my computer to go online and check out my competitors rents - legal

But somehow, having a program running on my computer that checks what other landlords charge is now illegal in New York? Really?

This is just pandering to renters, trying to look like the politicians are doing something to make rent more affordable...

Rent isn't high because of RealPage, it's high because mortgage rates are high, tax rates are high and inflation. Is high, but yeah, forcing landlords to figure out what to charge for an apartment is going to drive down rent prices in NY state.

What baloney.

Western executives should hang his head in shame, resign, and give back all their fabulous salaries benefits and stock options. They have all FAILED their companies, their industries, and their nations. Their employees have seen this... often THEY were forced to train their foreign replacements as their jobs were "outsourced" to China and these execs ordered their people to train China to make their products and hand over the design documents. The past several decades have seen the West infested by a tsunami of executive incompetence as idiots who loved to golf and fly on executive jets demonstrated levels of foolishness not seen in a thousand years... they've made "fiddling while Rome burns" look good in comparison.

If you as an exec in a Western nation with Western workers and infrastructure politics and economics cannot easily out-perform a top-down managed communist dictatorship in quality, innovation, and price then you are a failure. No pile of sheepskins stamped with "MBA" is a match for a competitive spirit, a passion to learn and innovate, and a firm grasp on how to motivate and mobilize a western workforce in a market-driven free society.

On November 9th of 2016 he publicly claimed the stock markets were plunging in response to Trump's 1st election, and in projecting when the markets would recover said "a first-pass answer is never" - anybody who listened to this guy and panic-sold their stocks missed out on a great bull market as the Dow under Trump went from about 19000 to about 31000. Krugman let his personal animus towards the Bad Orange Man and his opposition to the POLITICAL policies infect his economic analysis/predictions and it probably cost a lot of his supporters a lot of cash, thus exposing a hazard in blindly following a credentialed "expert", particularly one you believe in because his politics align with yours.

This same guy beclowned himself praising Biden for his hands-on economic successes.

He always wants people to call him a "Nobel Prize winning economist", but even here he is being a bit dishonest. In his will, Alfred Nobel established five prizes: [1] physics, [2] chemistry, [3] physiology or medicine, [4] literature, and [5] peace. Note: there is NO Nobel Prize in Economics in that list. In 1968, the Central Bank of Sweden invented a "Prize in Economic Sciences" and handed a pile of money to the Nobel Foundation and asked them to administer the prize along side the Nobel Prizes. This is the award Krugman won - the Central Bank of Sweden's Prize in Economic Sciences. It is NOT a prize the late Alfred Nobel created or funded. If Trump created a prize in "Biglyness" and handed a pile of cash to the Nobel people and convinced them to administer it, there would not suddenly be a "Nobel Prize in Biglyness"

"It's 20% of their solar panel exports, not 20% of their exports."

Yes... that's what we were talking about. Do I need to keep saying solar if I mention panels as well? As for the rest of your comment I can't get through all the hate speech and venom to see if there is a point buried in it somewhere. It almost sounds like you are saying that China losing 5% of their exports to the US somehow hurts the US economy instead of that of China.

"I guess that's why Trump's approval rating is down by 15%, with only 40% approving vs 55% disapproving: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Finte... [economist.com] . Oh, wait..."

That isn't 'down 15%', your source says UP 0.3% but it's also cherrypicked low poll on a POTUS who has consistently under polled, most polls show far more favorable ratings and his ratings have been incredibly solid. Normally a POTUS at this point has a substantial drop relative to when elected but Trump has held steady, well within the margin of error of any poll from his favorability when he won by a landslide.

"Umm... Trump is ALREADY in his SECOND term."

Selectively quoting me doesn't make the part where I explained the reason I said 2nd disappear no matter how much you'd like to pretend it does.

"then it will be just one more in a long list of examples where he has broken the law, pissed on the Constitution"

Right, except that the constitutional law experts who actually make that determination aren't you or me and it's actually your position which pisses on the Constitution and your position which is fascist.

First you don't think 20% of their total exports is a massive blow to their economy? Second, the US is exporting energy to Europe and pushing international policy which is reducing THEIR import of Chinese technology as well. Finally, the democrats had pushed legislation that would have triggered TRILLIONS in purchases of renewables which Trump and the conservatives have dismantled. China definitely was expecting that money.

It's important to remember that China has massive LOCAL shadow debt with massive interest while having virtually no effective ability to tax internally due to massive cuts to appease the population and rampant corruption. They are almost entirely dependent on taxation of international trade to pay their unofficial debts [owed to literally anyone who would pay because there is no tax revenue to pay for all the services they are supposed to provide] and they've triggered a trade war which has decimated their trade revenues.

Despite this sort of propaganda its doubtful if they can survive Trump's term without a soviet style collapse and no matter what people want to push the numbers are clear; Trump IS bringing people together and unifying America as they all shift neutral or MAGA and the far left is abandoned, it's gone from half to less than 18% in less than a year. This won't end when Trump leaves office whether the obstruction and rebellion in his first term wins him a second term in 2028 or not.

This is Chinese propaganda being pushed through a chinese owned website. China is hurting pretty bad because they make the solar panels and especially the wind turbines and Trump canceled the massive export of US money to buy them.

Our disagreement may be partially semantics. You seemed to be using transparency as some kind of blanket term for all information discovery.

Transparency is authorizing disclosure of as much material as possible and acting out in the open, it's voluntary. When a restaurant has an open air kitchen that is visible to patrons, that is transparency. Transparency is putting things on display in a live and uncensored fashion so that people KNOW the reality because it is on display, as if through a transparent window.

When an employee of a restaurant leaks that they have an insect problem that is information but it is a leak of NON-TRANSPARENT information.

Different parts of our government are positioned to challenge each other, we have freedom of information requests, we have whistleblower programs, and we have technical measures that people can use as a means of last resort to disclose things government doesn't want us to know but we don't know if that information is true or represents a complete picture.

Transparency makes it far more likely the restaurant keeps a clean and sanitary kitchen in the first place and reduces the possibility that such a leak is true. The restaurant is taking a risk by making things transparent. You ARE going to see someone scratch their nose or backside now and then. You ARE going to see the three dishes they screwed up before bringing your plate.

"How does media do this though if they can only report on what the government authorizes?"

The claim the government required them to commit to not reported unauthorized material instead of acknowledging the policy was itself false information. The government making media who reports what they don't want stand in the back of the line instead of being first in line when they issue a press release doesn't stop anyone from reporting anything. They just one get first shot as information the government authorizes and since they've cranked transparency to 1000% the probability of there being stories in within the live stream the government is authorizing is way up.