Isn't this what driving a car has become as well? Google Maps says "take the 3rd exit", and the dumb human takes the 3rd exit.

And science fiction in particular: it is meant to be a reflection on reality.

Why do incomplete paths light up the corresponding number? I don't understand this UI choice.

I submitted this gripe (before I saw your comment) to the "report an issue" widget on the puzzle site. I wonder if this puzzle will get ongoing development.

I have a few ideas for feature requests, but I'm not going to bother submitting them if it appears there's no interest.

I'm the creator, got your request and made myself an issue to remember. Thanks for playing, and I'd love to hear what else you have in mind.

Very fair point I will fix shortly.

> my money is on food being a major contributing factor

That's not how science works either.

American big tech companies pay very few taxes, compared to European standards. This is part of what makes it difficult to compete with them.

Everyone in Europe is saying that the CCP is illegally subsidizing EVs and solar panels to conquer the European market, and that we need to protect from them by imposing tariffs: but if you think about it, this isn't too different from what America is doing with tech.

> American big tech companies pay very few taxes, compared to European standards. This is part of what makes it very difficult to compete with them.

American big tech companies have to pay their workers a lot more than European tech companies.

Microsoft has to pay local taxes on sales in those countries. They are not paying American tax rates on European sales.

Even their American corporate tax rates, if raised to European levels, would still have ample room for profit.

Your argument is not supported by the data.

> but if you think about it, this isn't too different from what America is doing with tech.

It’s nothing like economic dumping. America is not pumping money into Microsoft to dump Microsoft Office into European markets.

Those European companies could come to the US, open an office here, and be under the exact same rules as Microsoft.

The situation is not alike at all.

I don't think American big tech pays their workers that much more once you factor in tax and social security contributions of the employer, actual hours worked (vs. vacation and sick days taken) etc. etc.

Nobody was talking about sales tax.

The collusion of US big tech with Ireland to pay very little taxes is well documented. You mention many unrelated facts that are mostly irrelevant to the discussion.

Further, America has definitely been pumping money into Microsoft, for instance with hefty defense and public administration contracts. It is incredibly naive to believe that the US allowed the Microsoft monopoly to corner the office market without the opportunity of establishing a digital hegemony being a significant factor.

The situation is, in fact, quite alike to chinese state-sponsored companies. The main difference being the tone of media coverage about it in the western world.

> Further, America has definitely been pumping money into Microsoft, for instance with hefty defense and public administration contracts. It is incredibly naive to believe that the US allowed the Microsoft monopoly to corner the office market without the opportunity of establishing a digital hegemony being a significant factor.

That's not a subsidy. That's a customer paying for a product. Apart from that, the USA has Anti-Trust laws, and Microsoft has been at the receiving end of these in the past.

Sure, but if the customer is tax-funded and pays a lot more than the product is worth, that's just a hidden subsidy.

And yes Anti-Trust laws and enforcement exist in theory, and occasionally get applied, leading to small fines. Which is in line with what I wrote. Anti-Trust action has been severely lacking, and I assume that was by design.

Depends on your definition of overpaying. Governments are generally not the best at keeping costs down, for various reasons. To a certain degree it's simply organizational inefficiency.

OK so lower corporate taxes then. Easy. If that enables European tech companies to grow and prosper then this will actually increase net tax revenue even if the rates are lower.

> American big tech companies pay very few taxes, compared to European standards.

Can you evidence this?

A dozen is the number of banks that whitelist Grapheneos keys via hardware attestation.

Curve in Europe (which can be linked to any card) and Paypal.

Curve has been requiring Google Services for months now it seems. Tried to get the thing working on my GrapheneOS the app won't start without them.

Curve works on GrapheneOS but requires sandboxed Google Play. There are European banking apps with support for tap-to-pay without Google Play. If you're not in Germany, the only way to do without sandboxed Google Play is getting an account at one of those banks. We don't have a specific list of those banks on hand.

Ah ok fair, if your GrapheneOS isn't running the sandboxed google play services, not even in a separate profile, then I don't know if it works.

I have failed to get Curve running after installing GrapheneOS on a new device.

It requires sandboxed Google Play. If you want to avoid that, you need an account at one of the European banks with tap-to-pay not using Google Pay and an app which can run without Google Play. We don't have a specific list but there are a bunch throughout Europe.

It might actually be the other way round: Fortran adopted the convention that i,j,k are integer variables because that was the standard in maths.

Warning: sneaky paywall that appears only after scrolling.

Much better security. Sandboxing and app isolation actually works on Android.