It still does make sense considering that russia is literally invading Ukraine (at least once a decade…) and continue to probe NATO nations. Because, in that regard, it is less a “military base on foreign soil” and more just a NATO base on NATO soil. And, in theory, it is a good idea to let the country dumb enough to spend most of their GDP on a massive standing military to foot the bill.

But considering that the US is just as likely to be on russia’s side in WW3…

That ship sailed closer to decades ago than not.

Spend some time with ER workers (and pay for their damned drinks) and you will learn just how toned down The Pitt actually was.

There are layers to this.

Yes, there is zero chance any of these investments are going to turn a profit.

But research and technology is fundamentally built around developing capabilities for long term power (soft or hard). That is WHY governments invest so much into university groups and research divisions at companies to develop features of interest. You are never going to make back the money that funded hundreds of PhD students to develop a slightly more durable polymer compound. But you will benefit because you now have hundreds of new graduates aligned with fields of interest AND a slightly better grip on your military grade sybian.

And, regardless of what people want to believe, AI genuinely does have some great uses (primarily pattern matching and human interfaces). And… those have very big implications both in terms of military capability and soft power where the entire world is dependent on one nation’s companies for basic functionality.

Of course, the problem is that the “AI craze” isn’t really being driven by state governments at this point. It is being driven by the tech companies themselves and the politicians who profit off of them. Hence why we are so focused on insanely expensive search engine replacements and “AI powered toaster ovens” rather than developing the core technologies and capabilities that will make this more power efficient and more feasible for edge computing.

And… when one of (if not ) the super powers is actively divesting itself of all soft power at an alarming rate… yeah.

That is a distinction without difference. It doesn’t matter what mechanism is used to collect those metrics. The fact is they are there

And, at a glance: Forgejo/Codeberg definitely has stars and watches and fork tracking as well

Which is all fundamentally the supply and demand aspects of consumerism. It is the idea that people can identify what there is a high demand for and work to provide a supply. Which is not at all a bad thing and extends far beyond capitalism.

But it goes back to the previous poster’s comments about how they don’t like that netflix analyzes everything they do and greenlights projects based on that. That extends FAR beyond netflix and well into even open source projects.

Open source/selfhost projects 100% keep track of how many people star a repo, what MRs are submitted, and even usage/install data. And many of them are specifically designed to fulfill a role that industry standard tools aren’t (or are too expensive for) and… guess where the data on that comes from?

The reality is that you cannot escape consumerism in the modern world. You can pretend you are but… you aren’t. What you CAN do is focus on supporting tools and media that you want/approve of and making your own life better as a result.

And a big chunk of that involves actually thinking through consequences.

I mean… depending on how new an item is and what “tier” the restaurant is? They are 100% watching for stuff like that and probably making a note that you got up after eating only a quarter of your burger. Because if the burger were good, you would want to finish it. Is it too sloppy? Did you feel the need to wash your hands mid bite? Did it make you nauseous?

Same with taking out your phone. Does it look like you are telling a friend what a great burger you had? Or are you feeling bloated and trying to digest a bit before you eat more?

This level of market analysis is not at all new. Streaming services just have a much easier time automating it but… give it time until startups are selling cameras to monitor the dining area and automate analytics based on who ordered what and did what.

I mean… that IS how restaurants work. If people don’t order the fish of the day then they buy fewer and fewer fishes until it is no longer a thing. Even the speed people eat DOES matter since restaraunts tend to be designed around each customer spending a certain amount of time dining. Too short and they will never order a dessert. Too long and they are costing you money while they nurse that coffee.

And similar happens with even buying blu-rays. If nobody bought Master and Commander in 4k then you can be sure that experiment would be over. Instead? That thing sold like toiler paper during COVID and we’ll likely see more “prestige” releases with a huge dose of FOMO.

As for up fronts versus long tails? Guess what is motivating all those revivals “nobody asked for”?

Don’t get me wrong. I vastly prefer to rip blu rays to my NAS and watch via plex. But the idea that you are somehow no longer part of the marketing cycle is just… wrong.

Being drafted is different than doing chores or working in care roles. Everyone capable should be responsible for the defense of those who are not in times of war regardless of sex.

And working in factories, taking care of kids, and just existing are very much part of the war effort. And their lives are very much at risk during a war. Just ask Ukraine.

It is one of those knock-ons from (especially) WW1 and 2 where draft dodging and “conscientious objectors” were such a risk as more and more people came back from the front with grotesque wounds and mental trauma. A culture of “only cowards don’t go to war” was built up VERY rapidly… and caused immense issues as young men were unable to fight due to physical ailments or mental trauma so bad that even the 1910s/40s cared.

Except also Rosie the Riveter and all that.

It all ties into the “myth” of “civilian targets” during a full scale war. EVERYONE can agree that blowing up a hospital is evil. What about a factory that makes shoes? What about one that makes boots? Shells? Similarly, EVERYONE can agree that blowing up a residential area is how you go to hell. Now about about a residential area on a military base? Now what about the barracks on a base? Are you only allowed to attack the enemy once they step foot off base?

And going back to that hospital… what about a power plant? Because a LOT of lives are lost when hospitals have extended outages. But those plants ALSO literally power the war effort.

Which is the reality of things. When you just have a massive global north military destroying a country in the name of “counter-terrorism”? Yes, the reality is that a lot of the terrorist/guerilla cells are going to fundamentally be in residential areas and next to hospitals both for optics and convenience. But there is a LOT of “oh… there were some hamas soldiers in that children’s ward, sure” evil.

But when an entire country is mobilized for war? The distinction between civilian and military becomes INCREDIBLY murky. Which… we can very much see in Ukraine and russia.

Because, yes, you need people on the front line. You also need people on the backlines for logistics and support. And… you need people just living their lives so that there is something worth fighting for. Rotating troops back for leave is immensely important for morale and… if they return to a skeleton crew raising children in abandoned dormitories? They can never recharge from The War and that leave stops mattering. Which leads to rapid desertion and even worse mental trauma.

And… The Enemy is very aware of that.

Sexist is debatable but… yeah

But everyone worshiping the rich? Yeah, that is Switzerland in a nutshell. A decade or so ago I spent a week in Switzerland on holiday and… even the state funded museums kinda felt like “And then so and so developed a really cool technology that saved countless lives. AND THEN THEY GOT RICH!!! FRANCA FRANCA BILS Y’ALL!!! And here is what they bought with it and the house they lived in and how much paper it takes to print out their monthly statement and… Oh, the tech? Whatever, nobody cares about that”

There is also the emprical evidence that women make less over the course of their careers. An extra year or two of work experience can help to offset that.

Obviously not everyone falls into those gender norm buckets. But… they are “gender norms” for a reason. And while I don’t know how our trans friends impact that (or if Switzerland acknowledges their existence…), it isn’t the worst way to break things down to having roughly half the population on the frontlines and the other half keeping the country running.

But this is the kind of thing that brings out the MRA tendencies in everyone as a kneejerk reaction.

Which is why people who actually look at trends tend to compare it more to the Dot-com bubble.

The short version? A few early internet adopting sites (like Amazon…) set up online retail presences. People were ecstatic because you could now do most of the monthly shopping online and even re-buy pants that you know will fit and so forth.

Seeing money, EVERYBODY made an online retailer or service website and EVERYONE wanted to invest in that.

Then the market was oversaturated and companies with no right to exist went bankrupt and it was a bloodbath.

Except… not really. Because while the massively overinflated stock market did indeed “downturn” and a LOT of those scam companies went away, the actual fundamental premise of online first companies was a very sound one. I mean… just look at “Cyber Monday” and so forth.

And “AI” will almost definitely go the same route. Because, yeah, LLMs are HORRIBLE for accounting and finance. But they are actually really good for replacing the early career folk who translate earnings into reports. And ML in general is excellent at detecting patterns which can mean potentially billions of dollars in investing. But, like all things, it is about verification and caution. You actually need a human to read that earnings report before you send it to the investors. And you only give your “AI” a small portion of your portfolio. Same as with any team.

What you are describing is something different… that is “close enough” to Moore’s Law for all but the most pedantic.

The (I forget the proper economics term so) base price of RAM/Storage does indeed go down as new processes and economies of scale are developed. But the cost of a “laptop hard drive” remains pretty steady in the sense that a couple hundred MB was enough back in the day but you REALLY want at least 500 gigs now. The price per byte does indeed drop rapidly but the price per “drive” is far more stable (not fully stable due to inflation and how many people are buying them, but within spitting distance).

Its why a good rule of thumb was to always just spend roughly the same on storage during an upgrade and that would result in faster technologies and larger capacity drives and so forth.

That isn’t what is happening with RAM in 2025. A much better comparison is GPUs because… it is the same problem. It is ridiculously high demand from businesses (often startups pouring dump trucks of VC money into their only hope… well, VC money or drug money in the case of miners but they matter a lot less these days) driving this. A quick search didn’t yield an easy graph and I can’t be bothered to go dig through Gamers Nexus’s twelve videos on it, but the price of an “entry level” GPU has drastically changed in the past decade.

But just for two-ish data points?

• The GTX 980 and 970 had an MSRP (probably) of 550 and 330 USD, respectively, back in 2014
• While there is some other bullshit involved, the RTX 5080 and 5070 have MSRPs of 1000 USD and 550 USD in 2025
• Adjusting for inflation, the 980 and 970 would still only be about 753 and 451 USD in 2025 dollars
• And let’s not forget that basically no cards were sold at MSRP back in early 2025…

The last point being what is, by all accounts, going to be the new normal. Barring outside impacts like… RAM going through the roof. Vendors will sell the cards for the ACTUAL MSRP rather than the inflated demand prices. And they will still be considerably more expensive as a result.

All of which is to say… my current card is definitely good enough but having a hard time deciding if I do one “final” upgrade for the decade. But I am an AMD boi so those are at least “reasonable” in terms of price per performance.

1. Prices rarely, if ever, go down in a meaningful degree. Stuff like this is partially necessity and partially a REALLY good excuse to see what the price ceiling actually is… and then turn that into the floor moving forward. Just look at gas prices
2. The “AI Bubble” is likely to be on the same level as the Dotcom Bubble and the like. It is going to be brutal and a LOT of people are going to lose their jobs… and then much of the same tech will still dominate just with more realistic expectations. And that will still need large amounts of memory
3. If the “AI Bubble” really is as bad as people seem to want it to be: A LOT of the vendors who make the parts you are buying RAM to use are going to be gutted. And then RAM production will drop drastically. Which will decrease supply and…

SS lightning bolts and skulls are ridiculously prevalent in the US (actually most “Western”) military.

At best? It is the allegorical nazi bar. The US Military (also, again, most “Western” militaries too) had no problem allowing nazis to take root and that inherently drives out everyone else until they are all jacking it to a facebook post about mein kampf.

The sad reality?All that “A diverse military is a strong military” is just about how much they are dependent on people of color whether it is a poor kid from the inner city trying to get a new start or someone putting in a tour for citizenship. And as that melanin dries up because people are realizing “maybe it isn’t worth killing people who look like me to get a better life… Also all the sexual assault”, that just leaves the “my daddy’s daddy’s daddy was a marine and I am too” crackers.

At which point… you kinda have to stop looking the other way on the “nazi corner” and just embrace it because nobody else is coming in.

I mean, let’s be honest here: This was going to happen regardless of whether we elected a rapist nazi to POTUS.

If you start caring about nazi hate symbols then you need to get rid of a LOT of the active military… and apparently democrats in Maine.

And newer planes all have windows where the tint is controlled by the crew (so as to minimize conflict between passengers) which… I still like to look out while stretching my legs near the bathroom but pretty sure staring out a ridiculously tinted window at some clouds isn’t what people think of when they hear “window seat”.

Like… I kinda agree that “window seat” doesn’t actually mean you have a window these days. I would argue that they should be renamed but “wall seat” is going to just make people realize why aisle seats are the best choice… and I like my aisle seat so piss off.

Its actually a very common problem. Gun nuts all think they are John McClane and need to keep one in the chamber at all times. They remove the magazine but never properly run the action and yeah. Its especially a problem with glocks because disassembly actually involves squeezing the trigger.

Responsible gun owners are only slightly more common than good guys with a gun.

Awww, who’s a good boy.

I would also like a fanny pack form factor (great for spare batteries too) but it’s “just” a snapdragon. The actual chip is likely nothing compared to the displays and battery

It definitely doesn’t look glasses friendly but that is also a solved problem these days. Many of the online glasses companies directly sell them and they just push on rather than needing to buy the lenses and print a mount and then remove the old lenses and blah. My ex and I both wear glasses and we never had a problem swapping out on the facebook quest or whatever.

It is both. Standalone device but also designed to communicate with a PC via a USB dongle. So lower resource games “just work” and you take advantage of your PC (or Steam Machine…) for the heftier stuff. Which is as close to the “norm” as it gets in VR these days (although the facebooks connect over WLAN)