a smart thermostat can be used for good

But, in practice, it won'e be. This is theoretical wheedling nonsense from mentally mutilated lolbertarians who have not developed a theory of mind that isn't parasitic.

The arc of justice always bends toward the elites. The only way to fix the problem is to literally abolish the class system in its entirety, from the national policy level right down to punching people in the mouth when they claim they're superior to someone else.

In the US, Communism is the belief that predation isn't the right and proper order of life.

Unfortunately, we can't really talk about the bourgeoisie problem here. Nor the neoliberal problem.

I tol dem...

Some researcher's speaking aspirationally. There are a lot of dogs not eating the dogfood. Whoever wanted these thin devices done just now on the consumer's dime is having a sad. Automakers, perhaps?

Anyway, this consumer demands a usable off-screen keyboard, easy to get to all 95 ASCII printable characters plus Enter, Tab and Esc. And not having on the order of a watt of microwave power mere millimeters from my BRAINS trying to talk to a BTS a kilometer or more away... this does NOT make sense, not even on Endor where carnivorous Wookies threw Ewoks into the radio link paths for entertainment and snacks. (note: not canon) Also, industry-standard connectors.

Also, which country recently repealed its ban on propaganda targeted at its own people and ruled that "news" publishers can confabulate all they like?

Pathetic Exceptionalism is pathetic. Go cry to mommy or something, but keep it out of here.

Stop worshipping dead people and oligarchs and be a citizen for once in your life. Your Exceptionalism is pathetic (in more than one sense) and self-deluded.

More likely, they've known about it all this time and are using this as a bargaining chip for something else entirely, like, say, having an aircraft carrier not far from the Syrian proxy war. You simply can't trust any of the corporate media to not primarily represent its own interests.

they know what they're doing too well?

There was a time when it wasn't necessary for IT people to play dandy games.

1. Who eliminated our Tom Smitkowskis and to whose profit?
2. Why is imperialism even remotely cool?

Actually, the normalization of aristocratic behavior, piety toward superiors, and flowery bourgeois non-statements are a cultural disease of the English, and in this incarnation hasn't been around for longer than the Magna Carta in any case. Don't ascribe to merit what was quite well documented as being accomplished by mass murder, mass starvation and elite arrogance.

that adult life isn't just the permanent continuation of high school and its power relations?

Well, good. What kind of desperate tool are you that would want to? Do enough and go home, and stop racing one another to the bottom, instead of conspiring with management to get far less than what you should have just because you need to grandstand.

Get over yourself. For real.

Presumably, one would hire in 10 more recently disemployed rejects from other companies at that time, hoping that the tyranny of hunger will have put a bit more hup-to into them.