Yeah, when CentOS got eaten, moved to AlmaLinux. No complaints. It works. I also use Slackware. Nice and boring. Compared to macOS on my MacStudio… exceedingly boring and stable.
I had the same experience with a pair of Nike Zoomfly Air. Bought in 2020, and they'd fallen apart by 2024 with extremely light use thanks to COVID and WfH. It was quite disappointing given the cost, and they had been quite comfortable shoes. Lately, I wear Brooks.
The US government is only the longest continuous democracy only if one believes that the US is still a democracy. I've read some decent arguments that the US stopped being a democracy with the McKinley administration, and others that the US ceased to be a functional democracy during the Second World War. In both cases, the claim was that the USA became an imperial oligarchy.
It is questionable whether any democracy truly exists at this point as I've seen no nation where the will of the people is typically manifested in the actions of the state.
> I've seen no nation where the will of the people is typically manifested in the actions of the state.
To be fair, I've seen no nation where the people make their will known. Does a democracy depend on actual action or only theoretical possibility? It seems from my observance that most people consider democratic nations to be democratic not because they practice as such but because it is believed that the people have the opportunity to exercise democracy if they ever choose to.
This is quite illustrative. Warnings of a nuclear apocalypse were extremely widespread, known, and feared. The consequences were, indeed, so well known that the world was saved from the worst possible outcomes in the past by regular enlisted men and women who realized that not all instrument readings should be trusted due to the potential cost of acting on such readings alone. Given the Turkey Illusion, we would be wrong to trust the status quo in either the nuclear scenario or the AI scenario.
This isn't a new question: quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
In general, the way things work in the USA is that megacorporations write the regulatory frameworks for their own industries. These regulations are typically burdensome enough to be shouldered by the megacorporations while crushing the smaller players in the given market(s). The AI companies are now advocating for this very arrangement. They will likely get they want, and with that they will gain legal shielding for bad behavior just like Dupont, Monsanto, and so many others.
I am old enough to remember the world before the web rather clearly. There are tradeoffs, but on balance, I do believe the world is better now than it was.
There has been a massive disintermediation of information, it's cheaper and easier to start and run a business, it's cheaper and easier to do accounting and taxes, it's cheaper and easier to find the exact products for which one is searching, and communication is cheaper and easier.
In general, more people have more ability, greater abundance, and a higher quality of life. Are there downsides, absolutely. There are tradeoffs for every advancement. Housing is unaffordable for many, but it is also no longer laden with lead, asbestos, or radium. For the internet, while it has been used to create addictive usage patterns, surveillance, and radicalization, it has also fostered the creation of communities, life saving interventions, cost reductions that have meaningful impacts on daily human lives, and far better optimized supply chains.
> There has been a massive disintermediation of information,
How do you figure? Information is gatekept differently, but editorialized harder than ever before.
I also question whether "better optimized supply chains" is in fact a benefit. Optimizing a supply chain has meant just-in-time inventory etc; I'd argue an optimized supply chain is a fragile supply chain.
Is the implication here that it’s cheaper to build a house with lead, asbestos, and radium? I cannot see how those have any causal link to home prices, which seem to be much more heavily influenced by broader socioeconomic factors (area desirability, gentrification, housing supply, etc.)
It isn't so much that lead, asbestos, and radium were cheaper, but more that the risk assessment from lenders and insurers made it nearly impossible to use any known hazardous material in any way whatever within a residential building.
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