> 80% of America's greatest ally

Who?

Sorry if this seems obvious, but I grew up in the UK which liked to think it was "America's greatest ally", and I don't think this number is of the UK?

Can't say their name on this platform - the censorship is real.

Yes? Remember, the government decided alcohol and tobacco could advertise the way they do because it helps them make money.

But you’re still making the choice - are you that persuadable by an ad? What about the government anti-smoking ads? No effect there? Hilarious how nobody can take responsibility for their actions: always the government and business’s fault.

It seems like much of the disparity between the West and China isn't about China having some better manufacturing technology. They do, but it's not the real issue. Really it's all about financial imbalances - people get paid less and the rent is lower. In the West we have a huge rent-extraction sector which produces nothing and makes it much harder to afford to start any activity.

It's not entirely true that the sector produces nothing, but if you think about it, the whole US economy in the last 3 decades has been nothing but rent extraction.

Defense contractors charge maintenance fees both domestic and abroad. For abroad, the maintenance contract is a requirement of getting the deal passed through congress and is frequently more expensive than the gear itself.

SaaS charge monthly instead of one upfront fee for a well tested product that used to be the norm

Video games similarly have been transitioning to day 1 paid DLCs and monthly fees

Even the movie industry is a subscription now (streaming providers aside). There's not one movie, there's the MCU pumping out 3 movies a year for the last 20. How many movies from last year have a number in their name?

Then there's of course, the actual rents. And insurance. And taxes. Something has to give, but I fear it will be the humans.

That's kind of the point of a consumer society; the people's wealth is increasingly consumed until there is no more left.

"Consumer society" refers to a society that consumes more than it produces, it doesn't mean how the wealth is distributed within the society.

And Poe's law refers to a talking raven that has been known to say "nevermore"

Are there any real examples of apps built on the fly better and faster?

Many requests on ChatGPT used to be able handled by some app before.

I paste a screenshot and ChatGPT automatically knows to extract the text for me. Needed an expensive/inconsistent app before.

Technically, any case where LLM casually writes and runs a nontrivial piece of code to fulfill your random request would qualify.

One of the qualifiers was "better"

I think the single AI app will be thoroughly enshittified. You ask for a hotel and the assistant operator is normally getting 20% of your payment as a kickback, so it shows you the highest price it thinks you'll pay, but 40% if it's a certain chain so it only shows that chain. Everything will be like this.

In France copyright law says they have to

i'm not french.

I wouldn't publicize that you have Podman containers connecting to 1337x.cc. You have flagged yourself as probably an advanced pirate, the kind that's worth pursuing for damages.

Isn't that just where you can find a whole lot of Linux ISOs?

Probably not a single one. It's curated, unlike Pirate Bay.

Advertising works on everyone. The more you think it doesn't, the more it does.

Fair. Either way, I don't want to see it.

Amazon's recommendation system did this. It would sometimes show random products to make people think the system wasn't as good as it was and to generate funny social media posts featuring Amazon. That's the origin of "people who bought this also bought [unrelated product]" screenshots.