The West's part in this is also part of the article making the content of your comment superfluous. You'd know if you'd have read it.

So what's the point of the comment? Your fear that it might be superior?

It is a selective description.

FDE is not the only thing they sell.

Software Licenses for their products (Gotham/Foundry/AIP) is why countries (and businesses) deal with them.

Not a single link has anything on OPs claim.

Both can be untrue...

For someone who wants to sell the idea of not wasting time on reading, you're trying to waste a lot of time with your comment. You wasted mine for sure so I'll hopefully help somebody else with my short comment:

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- op basically says: don't pay attention to recommendation lists

- they assume you plan on reading all books recommended there or none

- they do not present an realistic alternative to finding books you might like

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Especially the last point is what I missed from your comment because it is actually a good idea to browse through other peoples recommendations to find similarities in taste.

Like in this list, I looked at the SciFi section and didn't find Neal Stephenson. Which, for me, is a sign of good quality together with other books I've already read. There are other books I have not even heard about. I might check them out and it would be a logical thing to do. Nothing wrong about it and chances are good that I might like it. They are certainly better than a wild guess.

There are 32 sci-fi books listed. Let's suppose you have read half of them, and you read 1 book each week. You've now just got your list for the next four months. Congratulations!

But wait, there's another list out there you're going to find tomorrow. And then another list, and another, and another, and they all have this same quality of having some books you've read and like, and nothing by Neal Stephenson. Then, when you're in the book store you see a book called "100 Sci-Fi Books To Read Before You Die", and you note it has these qualities but there are 80 books in there you've not read yet.

If you're busy pulling a sub-list together, you're doing the thing I'm suggesting: you're editing and curating, not just seeing the list in its own right. I'm definitely not suggesting you take wild guesses - note the magazines I read to find my own "next thing", and even that method is problematic.

I am not reading magazines, nor do I have the time to hang around book stores which0 here. don't even have qualified personal or a significant amount of Scifi literature.

So what is there left to do but follow recommendations online realistically?

Looking through the list I've found 2 books which might interest me. I'm done with the list now and won't return. If 1 of them is great, it is already a win.

I wonder whether, in the end, it was simply poor accessibility that made programmers special, and whether it is that what some of them are missing. Being special by "talking" a special language their customers can't comprehend.

Sure, they are still needed for debugging and for sneering at all those juniors and non-programmers who will finally be able to materialise their fantasies, but there is no way back anymore, and like riding horses, you can still do it while owning a car.

No, more competition does obviously NOT solve oligarchies. It is what we see RIGHT NOW. It is OUT THERE NOW. Oligarchs buy up competition and either incorporate their ideas or make them disappear if they threaten their established business models.

Why are you keep repeating this myth?

The only relevant player who might break up oligarchies before they become to powerful is the state they operate in.

> Why are you keep repeating this myth?

Why do you write like someone's crazy uncle on Facebook? The caps are inappropriate here, as is the hysteria and hyperbole.

> Oligarchs buy up competition

You realise that those advocating for free markets are against oligarchy, right? That they say that in most, if not all cases, regulatory capture and monopolies are the causes of lack of competition, right?

The problem is that the outlier might mark a beginning.

Seeing what's possible in this position, I doubt future US presidents will hold back.

It doesn't matter I'd they hold back or not. The perception of political instability is enough.

If, as an investor, I'm asked to throw billions at a multi-year project, political risk is going to be on the PowerPoint.

You may think this current administration is an aberration, but it serves to prove that aberrations can happen. That the levers supposed to prevent this (congress, courts) are creaking. Sure a judge ruled for now, but this is a long way from finished.)

And that's enough to create doubt. Lots of doubt. The impact of this on long-term future infrastructure projects cannot be over-stated.

(Let's leave aside that this project was 6 years in the planning, during his first term, before construction start in 2022... which just makes the current behavior worse, not better.)

Which is exactly why Orsted will now focus on European wind projects instead. American projects will have to be that more profitable/expensive in the future to compensate for the political risk. But I guess this is exactly the desired outcome for big oil, no outside competition.

Is that a bad thing though?

Like say you can develop a 1000 windmill offshore wind project. At "market rate" for performing that activity they lose you money or make you very little, say a percent or two, because offshore is just harder.

But with government partnership and doors opening they make money at a low estimate 3%.

This causes you to forgo the 200 windmills in a field project that would make you a positive 1-3% regardless of which way the political winds blow because why do that when you can deploy 1k of them in some bay and make money hand over fist simply by joining hands (more tightly than the land based small project would) with government?

And as a result nobody can do the 200 windmill project because, between you and all the other people chasing the 100@% projects the cost of engineering, site prep, permitting, other fixed costs for such projects, etc, etc. are based on what the market will bear, and it can bear a lot more when your amortizing things over 5x as many units.

So maybe the things that do get invested in are more sustainable and financially conservative, which would improve public perception of them vs these megacorp-government joint venture type deployments we have now.

Political instability is a bad thing regardless of what is being invested in. It's just as bad for everything, not just windmills or sea windmills or whatever.

nothing is safe if the project can fail because the political winds change. Much less the political tantrums of the guy in charge who doesn't think you bribed him enough.

And when those obvious bribes are simply ignored by congress and the courts, thus validating it, the landscape for large projects of any kind get worse.

There is a historical tide rolling in and out of presidential power. We’re currently in a high-power executive moment that began with the AUMF for Bush 2. The courts and Congress can act to curtail that authority somewhat and hopefully will. But a lot of the EO activity is ultimately just performative unconstitutional action that will be reversed, damaging as that process may be.

the aphorism that comes to mind with that prospect these days is: "populism is like cigarettes, it's not the first one that kills you, it's the last"

Indeed, the post-Trump period will have a choice to make. Either they continue the chosen path and dont regain trust no matter the next president, or congress and court add some serious limitations to the presidential powers so future dems and reps will never go Trump again.

I wonder if both parties see the need for that at this point. There still seems a lot of 'but we are the good guys' in both partys blocking deep reform. If I'm honest, it took 2 world wars to partially whack that attitude out of Europe, and it's slowly coming back.

This is why they'll hunt us down one day

> the stalking aspect helped their sales significantly

while not denying people have done this, I do have problems thinking that it was a significant portion of the sales numbers. exaggerating problems is not necessary and actually reduces the credibility of the people doing the exaggerating

Sure, that's accurate. I actually never said otherwise, nor did I saint Apple. They were basically forced to do it.

Virtually any tracking or surveillance has a knock-on effect that we often overlook in our enthusiasm, but Apple absolutely should have foreseen the abuse that would happen, and certainly profited off of it.