My point is that every company is a tech company.

It’s easy to think of tech as being companies that primarily produce electronics or operate information services, but that’s not the case. Every company uses (and often creates) technology in various forms that benefit from standards and interoperation.

Connected devices benefit from standardized Wi-Fi. Cars benefit from standardized fuel- both in ICE (octane ratings, pumps) and electric (charging connectors, protocols). It even applies to companies that make simple molded plastic, because the molds can be created/used at many factories, including short-term contract manufacturing.

It’s very much the Oracle model.

A long time ago, Oracle DB could handle workloads much, much larger than any of their competitors. If you needed Oracle, none of the others were even a possibility. There are even tales that it was a point of pride for some execs.

Then Oracle decided to put the screws to their customers. Since they had no competition, and their customers had deep pockets (otherwise they wouldn’t have had such large databases), they could gouge all they wanted. They even got new customers, because they had no competition.

Fast forward and there are now a number of meaningful competitors. But it’s not easy to switch to a different DB software, and there are a ton of experienced Oracle devs/DBAs out there. There are very few new projects built using Oracle, but the existing ones will live forever (think COBOL) and keep sucking down licensing fees.

VMware thinks they are similarly entrenched, and in some cases they’re right. But it’s not the simple hypervisor that everyone is talking about. That can easily be replaced by a dozen alternatives at the next refresh. Instead it’s the extended stack, the APIs and whatnot, that will require significant development work to switch to a new system.

He’s dead? I didn’t even know he was sick…

(/s for anyone not familiar with his work)

For many, maybe even most Americans, NYC might as well be a fictional place. It’s featured heavily in countless movies, TV shows, books, etc. It’s more common than Westeros, Middle Earth, or Hogwarts. And people are expected to understand these settings, at least as much as NYC.

And that’s all before you consider places like Batman’s Gotham that is very clearly NYC.

I almost included that exact clip, but felt like it was too off topic. Glad that I’m not alone on thinking that

I remember seeing an analysis that said the reason nothing sticks to Trump is that there’s just so many negative stories that none of them really gain traction. There’s nothing simple like “But her emails!!!” To get anyone riled up.

All of the consumer lines are pretty bad these days. Acer has a reputation for being unreliable (backed by some data from SquareTrade ~10 years ago). HP is just as bad, in mostly the same ways, but has avoided the reputation.

Reliable laptops are the enterprise lines - Dell Latitude/Precision, HP Elite Book, and Lenovo Thinkpad. But they are significantly more expensive when buying new.

They each have their own protection detail. Each will quickly move to protect the one they are responsible for, which will mean separating them (probably by a lot of distance).

Someone under SS protection can choose to waive it. There are some former presidents who deemed it unnecessary later in life.

No idea about the rest of your hypothetical

Often there are contracts. Sometimes for a very long time, often multi-year. There are sometimes escape clauses (like a morality clause for a spokesperson), but these aren’t easy to invoke.

I suspect many of them are up for annual review/renewal, when they can be terminated without penalty. It might also just be an attempt to get better terms.

FWIW, here is the US, the ground wire is often completely exposed. As in, no colored jacket, just the bare copper throughout the entire run. Attached to ground at the breaker box, and attached to any grounding ports or metal boxes throughout the building.

Shrinkflation is smaller quantities and/or higher prices. This is actually tracked in a variety of places.

Changing to a cheaper recipe/supplier is very hard to put metrics on, and isn’t tracked anywhere that I know of

Uber’s insurance is pretty bad. Many get the additional coverage from their regular insurer anyway because of this. That coverage also (usually) applies to this situation as well.

How close are these surrounding towns? What’s the population, particularly for the demographics you would appeal to?

Often, it’s not worthwhile to bring your favorite culture to your home. Just go to the culture where it already exists. Often, these quiet, boring places are populated by people that WANT to live in a place that’s quiet and boring. It doesn’t make much sense for anyone to move there if they don’t.

Timing and pacing are inherently different when there’s a laugh track. You can’t just silence the laughter or cut the time range. In some cases, you have to rework the joke.

The audience usually attends for free (“for free tickets to the _____ show, call…”), but there’s still a lot of overhead. Not only do you need ushers, security, and so on, you need to be filming on a sound stage with a place for the audience.

On the flip side, laugh tracks are easily added in post.

Remember: No actual doctors are involved in executions. It is exactly that scenario that is forbidden by the Hippocratic oath.

When the state is making any claims about medical concerns, it is NOT coming from a doctor.

Just when trying to guess someone’s age (we’ll assume completely family-friendly and above board), think back to high school. How old did you and your peers look? Now go take a look at high schoolers today. They probably seem a lot younger than you did. The longer it’s been (i.e. the older you are), the younger they look. Which means, “when I see it” depends entirely on the age of the viewer.

This isn’t even just about perception and memory- modern style is based on/influenced heavily by youth. It’s also continuing to move in the direction. This is why actors in their 30s - with carefully managed hair, skin, makeup, and wardrobe - have been able to convincingly portray high schoolers. This means that it’s not just you - teens really are looking younger each year. But they’re still the same age.

This creates a significant legal issue - AI generated images have no age, nor is there consent.

The difference in appearance between age 16 and 18 is minimal, but the legal difference is immense. This is based entirely on a concept that cannot apply.

How do you define what’s depicting a fictional child? Especially without including real adults? I’ve met people who believe that preferring a shaved pubic area is pedophilia. This is even though the vast majority of adult women do so. On the flip side, teenagers from the 70s and 80s would be mistaken for 40+ today.

Even the extremes aren’t clear. Adult star “Little Lupe”, who was 18+ in every single appearance, lacked most secondary sex characteristics. Experts testified in court that she could not possibly be an adult. Except she was, and there’s full documentation to prove it. Would AI trained exclusively on her work be producing CSAM?

To add to this, imagine the reverse. Can you imagine if they passed up better opportunities, just so that it could happen on a specific date on the calendar?

Sounds absurd, right?