"companies don't care about end users in the current market conditions."
Because the end users keep rushing to use the megacorps' latest AI models, weaving them into their work and life. So the megacorps keep locking in contracts to build more compute.
If you use LLMs, you're responsible for this, there's no way to pass the buck. "I only use it as a companion for learning about history" - it's still your fault. "I only use it to help guide my solitions, not for vibecoding" - it's still your fault.
If you want an industry to act in a certain way you legislate for it, not wag fingers at consumers buying things. "If you want cheaper consumer devices we all need to individually stop using AI" is not useful or realistic.
The fact that you mention light-controlled roundabouts highlights that they do not, actually, "work perfectly fine".
Roundabouts are a practical example of the tyranny of the majority; minor traffic flows suffer against major. The centre of Salisbury is a perfect example, constantly gridlocked at two roundabouts except at odd hours on a Sunday.
Adding traffic lights to 'fix' this problem then leads to tailbacks on the major routes and congestion on the roundabout, such that the timing sequence for the minor routes are subsequently reduced, returning to the original problem.
Roundabouts, in the plurality, are used as a lazy 'solution' to at-grade traffic crossing, which the road designers themselves presumably don't have to suffer. They also cause pollution from brake dust from slowing and exhaust fumes from accelerating.
> The fact that you mention light-controlled roundabouts highlights that they do not, actually, "work perfectly fine".
I don't think anyone is claiming that roundabouts work in every and all situations: design handbooks often say they're good 'up to X vehicles per hour/day'.[1] But that does not mean they do not work, or not useful, for <X.
Intersections are an engineering problem, and there is a hardly ever an engineering solution that works everywhere and always. There is usually a spectrum of solutions for the various situations that are faced.
Well we have very different experiences driving to, through, and around Salisbury. There's traffic, and it can get bad, but it isn't as bad as you say.
The council and national highways are working on it, but the problem is not one of roundabouts - its one of increases in traffic and lack of capability to make the roads bigger and/or build a bypass. Unless we're willing to knock down a load of housing and cultural sites we're stuck with something around or slightly more than the road capacity we have.
MAD is not military doctrine and never has been. It's a philosophical concept that arose in the mid 1960s and gained column-inches in the press because it had a cool and ironic name. Even McNamara rejected it.
USA, China and Russia all plan to fight and win wars, not go out in a blaze with the other guy. And that includes 'nuclear warfighting' which involves the ability to command and control nuclear exchanges and come out the other side victorious.
I would argue that despite not being military doctrine, it has been effective. Nuclear deterence is demonstrably real. It is a form of Nash equilibrium.
I am not sure there is any limited nuclear exchange that is not so risky as to be worthless unless you just want to die.
Space based nuclear weapons do not improve your survivability. Space based nuclear missile interception might - if you could pretty much ensure you could take out the majority of your opponents missiles (star wars).
The problem there is it destabilises the Nash equilibrium of MAD and makes it more likely someone will initiate a first strike before your defensive capability is complete...
"as it highlights how humans have essentially two reactions to change"
I'd wager that the most common reaction to change is actually "wearily accept it as there is no realistic option".
Most change is deleterious to those affected; it requires them to change how they live or work, or pay more, just to maintain the status quo. This sort of change is usually imposed by large organisations against which the individual is helpless.
When people are faced with that sort of change it's little wonder they complain about it, but eventually they have to submit to it or face a degredation in their life or work.
Then those who imposed the change roll their eyes and say "ugh, people are so afraid of change," being insulated from and benefitting from it.
The next time you receive a ToS update from your $FAVORITEVENDOR that negatively affects how you do something, or a new tax filing requirement from $GOV that takes up more of your personal time, do come on here and post about how you embraced the change.
" If someone is hosting their own blog and use ads to help offset that..."
It used to be that hosting your own blog was a hobby, not a cost-neutral or revenue-positive venture. Like any hobby, you did it for your own enjoyment and if other people enjoyed it, too, then that was a benefit and maybe you'd made the Word a little better.
So if you're not willing to pay a few pence per day to cover the cost of your hobby out of your own pocket, then the answer is "stop blogging" rather than "I shall inflict ads on those who dare to view my output".
> So if you're not willing to pay a few pence per day to cover the cost of your hobby out of your own pocket, then the answer is "stop blogging" rather than "I shall inflict ads on those who dare to view my output".
lol This is a wild sentiment to not only have, but to share with others.
Just in shock someone actually believe this. That you're so entitled to other people's stuff that unless they give it to you for free they shouldn't be doing it.
> It used to be that hosting your own blog was a hobby, not a cost-neutral or revenue-positive venture.
Are you saying that a single data point contains the same amount of information as a dataset of hundreds if not thousands of entries from across the economy?
Completely wrong. CPI is based on the prices of all things people buy. Comparing inflation in one sector to inflation in the whole economy is a very useful signal.
> I don't get that mentality. Millions of units, shares many parts with other models, OK margin. This is no reason to kill a product.
At 2% of sales, the opportunity cost is the reason to kill the product. Keep in mind this still needs design, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution resources.
> At 2% of sales, the opportunity cost is the reason to kill the product. Keep in mind this still needs design, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution resources.
All this is true for many other products, specifically cars. Ford makes the Bronco Sport anyway, and they make money on it.
I get it, Apple has much better margins than Ford. And maybe a iPhone 18 Mini would reduce total margin for them. But if they move a couple of million units, it absolutely would make money.
> Ford makes the Bronco Sport anyway, and they make money on it.
The current Bronco Sport generation was introduced in 2021 with minor changes in the ensuing model years. Ford USA sold 134k Bronco Sport in 2025, of 783k SUVs (17.2%) and 2.1M total USA vehicles (6.4%). the Ford E-series truck with 3.2% Ford Truck sales or 2.0% total vehicle sales may be a better comparison. It also is a design introducted in 2021.
phones are more likely mostly new designs in each model year, but we can wait for the teardowns to see.
Of course, they never even brought it to the US. It has no chance there, there's barely a market for lowslung station wagons, and close to no market for EV wagons. Always was a niche in the US, while it was always the primary family vehicle in Europe.
And yes, VW is fighting for survival. The things they are killing are the low volume models specific to the Chinese market (because absolutely nobody in China is buying any VWs) and a lot of the variants and overlaps they've accumulated over the years. They'll continue making less than 100k iD.7s, and will be happy to do so (it's modestly profitable).
Society doesn't do anything of the sort. This is just diffuse irrational thinking. People invest their wealth where it will make the most profit for them and if a marginal dollar investment into the regular iPhone brings more profit than one into the iPhone Mini, then the owners and shareholders will ask the CEO why their money is flowing into suboptimal productions. People put their money investing in Apple in the hopes of a good return on that investment. If you want them to produce something that doesn't give them a good return, you'd have to pay to compensate, ie the price would rise but people wouldn't be ready to pay that. Otherwise you're asking people to subsidize for your enjoyment some luxury product as if it was charity. Willingly foregoing profit for the sake of someone else is subsidy or charity.
6/230 seems closer to 3%. And while the number is relatively low, it seems to be a niche where they might lose customers to other platforms. It must have been unprofitable/very expensive to maintain that they killed it.
OTOH, it's Apple, so users would rather buy a bigger iPhone and complain than switching brands (see other comments here), in which case Apple loses nothing.
That's a very valid and hard question. You do immediately frame it in a non neutral way, which is unhelpful.
There are good reasons to still have a significant amount of personal freedom in spending earned money: we have an economic system that works faster with it. Citizens can vote with their wallets on matters where collective spending is not necessary, thereby steering development of technology (and society) in a certain direction in a crowdsourced way. Personal spending power is also used as a reward for doing things (although technically this does not have to be in terms of money in a hypothetical future society).
The crowdsourced part is important. Technically a government could buy all the stuff for its citizens, but that is very inefficient for certain things as the knowledge of what is needed is local to the citizens. Additionally in the way we currently structure our governments there is too little room for experimentation: A government that would regularly try multiple different approaches to serve the same market simultaneously would be hammered by its citizens in a democracy for "wasting money", even though that is exactly what a healthy free market would do (bankruptcies and failed projects are a feature of free markets).
Coming back to the question what the percentage should be: it is partially a question of which markets should be publicly funded and which shouldn't. Clearly things like defense, the fire department and the justice system should never be privately funded. I believe health care shouldn't either, btw. The point here is that we have reasonable grounds on which to make the decision, namely what amount of free market capitalism can be allowed in a market without detrimental effects to society (what are essential services and whatnot) or rather which way of funding produces the most desirable results for society.
Determining which market needs what amount of resources is much harder (technically you could spend 99% of GDP on defense), but also part of it. How much investment do these publicly funded markets need? Is that even the right question? There is clearly some minimum to facilitate bare functioning, but what is a reasonable amount/service level? I would say this is a matter of experts making decisions based on a democratic mandate.
The other angle would be to think about what amount of personal spending money is beneficial to society: above what amount do people start spending it mostly on things they don't need and that don't make their lives or technology better? This is tricky, because it is highly intertwined with what services are provided publicly and because it's hard to come up with solid reasoning if there is an upper limit to what more spending does for (technological) progress. There is probably some value in stimulating the caviar and yacht markets, but I'd guess not that much.
All in all, it is tricky. Given all the above it may actually be a lot better if the tax rate was 80% for low earners and 95% for high earners. It may also be better if it was 20% and 35%. I don't think the latter is true, but I can't say with certainty that the former is either.
That's true of any feature you don't use. And while it's nothing new for people to get upset about work being put into features they don't care about, I've never seen anything like this level of vitriol. In particular I never saw anyone say they won't use a piece of software at all if it contains a particular optional feature, until LLMs came along.
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