I think I get your point better now, CGI has improved and is now being used for everything because it’s “good enough” but this has lead to a reduction in quality because no one bothers to do anything properly any more?

Lol, early 2000s diesels can get 60+mph

Some have, some haven’t. I feel like physical explosions often work better for instance.

Pfft Ubuntu has existed for years.

The thing about, say, a washing machine is there’s not a ton else that has a hefty spider/shaft/tub combo like that. The forces involved in spinning a few kilos of clothes isn’t trivial. I’ve been harbouring thoughts of open source appliances for a while.

What I kind of feel might be viable are modular, generic controller boards for dryers/washing machines/dish washers.

Once you’ve supplied everyone with it, figure out how to keep a buffer stock and move onto the next product. By the time you’ve sold every viable customer a washing machine, vacuum cleaner, fridge, freezer, mixer, cooker, dryer (whatever) they’d be fine, new stock still needs to be sold eventually so keep a trickle coming. Replacement parts etc.

Biggest issue is it’s going to be expensive - will people pay?

I’m aware, sometimes they also provide funding for FOSS projects. Funding seems to be the option FFmpeg would prefer based on the title (though I’ve not explicitly seen a quote that says this).

If it’s a specialty codebase written entirely in assembly, as this seems to be, sometimes it just makes sense to pay someone else to do it rather than spending 3x as long getting someone in house to do because the expertise isn’t there. Or just put a bounty on it, another common way to provide funding in FOSS.

If Google said, look we know we send a lot of bug reports, here’s 50MM a year, go hire a team of dedicated developers to deal with our nonsense, we don’t have the expertise in house to train them on this codebase. I doubt anyone would be complaining.

Nothing wrong with fixing bugs even if they are obscure if you have the time and resources.

In what way am I giving anyone an out? Are we both talking about the Indian Creek/Surfside thing? If we are the whole shit storm is over the fact the billionaires don’t want to pay have a link..

I like shitting on billionaires as much as the next person, but presumably they didn’t design any of this themselves. Most likely story is they just don’t want to pay their fair share as usual.

Because we’re smart as fuck by comparison. Like have you ever seen even a fully grown deer playing Minecraft? A 5 year old can human can play Minecraft. Don’t see no horses doing potential differential equations, heck even a pretty immature human can be taught integration. You should see fish trying to assemble iPhones, they absolutely shite at it.

There’s a Welsh lady Alex Jones too. She’s much nicer.

Are you a mechanic?

Wrong again, all EU models have the 59th bulb, it’s due to minimum light requirements in the post 2018 regs update. They did use US overstock for a while (cause why not) but all the old tooling was sent over so both Dresden and Prague could build them in spec.

The vroom vroom noises are good too.

Interestingly I’ve a relative who used to be a car salesman and still gets invited to dealer events occasionally - he was telling me about an electric he got to test a year or so back, it had a simulated gear shift/gear knob setup. He said people were loving it.

Never have I witnessed power over big pharma like when they start to run ads claiming the NHS in the UK are not paying enough so people are dying (I’m paraphrasing here, but honestly it’s not a million miles off).

It sounded pretty childish/desperate and the ads dried up quick.

I agree it wasn’t singlehanded, but he does seem to have opened the floodgates somewhat. I’m not super pro capitalist either fwiw. I’m down with a system that is functionally successful. With appropriate controls capitalism does seem to be a functional and successful system. However the controls are not being used, they’re not being updated to reflect modernity and benefitting workers is not incentivised.

Tearing everything down isn’t necessarily the solution to that. First off we need a system that works and then we need a pathway to that system. We also need it to be implemented and in a way that doesn’t result in millions worse off or suffering worse than they are.

I’m all up for AI replacing makework jobs (or just getting rid of them). What do we do with the people who are out of work? UBI is probably a start, but who or what in any major country is pushing for this and is in a position to implement it?

As an example raising the employers national insurance contribution in the UK brings out cries of “oh this is unfair on companies” for companies that are making billions in profit, giving money away will have some people in fits (people this would directly benefit).

Quality of life focused improvements would be nice. I don’t think I’ve any solutions, maybe salary sacrifice socialism - government competition for some things where they can offer efficiencies or benefits. Government offer me a package, I can pay xyz extra out of my wages and there’s a government run hello fresh or mobile network or broadband supplier or mortgage scheme or house repair scheme. I’m free to source my own or to use the government one. It sets a baseline and ot can run on very fine margins. It’s probably full of flaws but it’s the best I’ve got.

In terms of successful economic systems I feel they’ve gotten there by evolution rather than revolution - but I’ll also happily admit I’m no economist.

On the other points I think we’re there or thereabouts on the same page. There’s a great behind the bastards series on Jack Welch Part 1 and part 2

It was pretty revelatory for me as to why everything feels like it’s going down the pan. I’m not a “the past was better” type in general - but in this specific instance I definitely am. Feels like the social contract isn’t being held up by both sides. The reason the US got so good at stuff was investment in people, now it’s mostly a quick grift and memories are short. People are genuinely convinced this is the way it’s always been - I was the same until I listened to those episodes.

Hard to see a way back, CEOs are judged on stock price and will get turfed if they try and do the things they need to be doing to make this better (not defending CEOs here - pointing out there’s no incentive for change).

I could rant and it’s getting late, but what’s the real tangible feasible pathway we start working towards?

Well, see, I thought I’d read the article and I got as far as the graph expecting to see a drop-off - what it actually shows is fewer people think things are on the wrong track than in January. As a whole they think it’s getting better.

Centuries?