Just a quirk of the times. GNU made the most optimal solutions of their time, but in the end we still have some tech debt. I think it was inevitable that this would happen with GNU or for that matter any project, since it's not a centralized project like linux and was never going to be since it's not just one piece of software.
Japan is one of the countries where people smoke literally everywhere. As for marijuana, it's highly illegal, it's one of the remnants of the colonial history there as everything apart from smoking and drinking is considered evil due to how China was devastated with opium.
Maybe 20 years ago, not so much today. There are a few places around town and a few indoor restaurants where public smoking is still permitted, but this is no longer true in most public spaces. Not on train platforms, not indoors in the vast majority of public spaces, it's just not that common and the number of smokers in Japan has significantly diminished over the last several decades.
There are 'smoking boxes' on some train platforms, but I rarely see those in use by more than a few people out of the several hundred who may be waiting. Marijuana is also 'highly' illegal but also not exactly hard to find for people who are 'hip' and it's also not aggressively enforced, much like speeding.
Also, Japan doesn't actually have a 'colonial history' having never been colonized by another nation.
I'm thinking you have just heard about Japan by rough description?
> Also, Japan doesn't actually have a 'colonial history' having never been colonized by another nation.
It was never colonized but I've often heard it talked about in a similar way due to the effects of the Commodore Perry and the post WWII occupation (i.e. see their infamous pornography laws), as well as neighboring affects from China's colonial history.
The infamous 'anti-pornography laws' actually predate Perry by a significant period of time. Those were a Tokugawa era law originally. Post WWII occupation has had very little actual impact on Japanese culture, no matter how impactful the occupiers think they were.
It's the first time I've seen this put forward, I thought the effects of occupation were obvious and undeniable. To me at least there is a clear influence in art/music/cinema, technology, and food. Though over time, it fuses to the point of being its own thing.
Certainly the impacts of American culture from Hollywood and Elvis are impactful, but that effect has reached nearly every corner of the world. One memorable point is Richard Gere finding himself recognized as "Officer Gentleman" in one of the most remote jungle villages in Papua New Guinea that only had one TV set for the whole tribe. However, the Japanese social and legal reformation following the end of the war took as much influence from the greater western world as from the US. Half of the country used primarily German technology imports for developing it's power grid, and this legacy remains today, as there is a division into 60Hz and 50Hz regions of roughly equal size.
Japan adopted a very English form of democracy, uses a similarly English approach to the division of public and private education, and while the Meiji Restoration did away with legal and formal caste divisions, there is still a strong hierarchy of culture which instead of feudalism, uses financial means as a basis for class. Much of the former Samurai class was in unique position to transition into the merchant class at the time of Meiji and thus the system changed but also stayed the same.
The Japanese have been adept at both appearing to be influenced from the outside and remaining unchanged on the inside. There is a concept that is central to Japanese culture and consciousness, which is a duality of existence called Tatemae and Honne. This mistakenly gets conflated with Yin and Yang, but is wholly unrelated. This duality is the 'view from the outside' and the 'internal truth' and is the societal construct which underpins the strong tendency to reduce public conflict and direct contradiction. The Japan that is visible to the outside, between individuals and among nations, is highly influenced by this concept and is why Japan can appear to be influenced and changed, and can at the same time cling to traditions and customs which are rooted firmly and unchanged since the 16th and 17th centuries. It means that the same 'James Dean' lookalike rebellious youth groups in places like Shinjuku and Akihabara can exist, and yet most of them do 'grow up' and go to work in an office as a 'Salaryman' even if they still dress up and hang out on the one day off they get every week.
The influence of foreign food is much in this same vein, Tempura being an excellent exemplar. Originating with Portuguese sailors centuries ago, it has been embraced and taken on such change as to become recognizably Japanese cuisine around the world. Ramen as well, unmistakably Chinese in origin, yet integrated and given a truly Japanese transformation until it is nearly wholly identified with the Japanese menu.
These foreign influences do appear, but only when they are in tune with, and can be adapted to fit the underlying 'core truth' of Japanese culture. The Tatemae may shift and appear to have changed, the Honne remains stable and forms a durable foundation, for individuals and for society as a whole. And so, for the occupiers it may appear as if they have made a significant influence on the whole of Japanese society, and they may perceive themselves as somehow similar in effect to 'colonial influences' while at the same time, having had no more real impact to the formal and traditional activities of society than a new coat of paint or sponsorship label has on the driving characteristics of a race car.
This is exactly what I meant, and Japan is not special in this regard. In nearly all cases, with a few exceptions, external influences are molded and integrated into the underlying culture.
It's the same story with American influence on Filipino culture, which was significant but still integrated, or "in tune" as you say.
Another good example is French influence on Vietnamese culture, which appears more seamless to me than American influence on Japan. It's a few generations older, so it makes sense.
With ghostel, the terminal experience inside emacs has become fantastic. Vterm was acceptable, but still too slow for me. Combine them with packages such as ultra scroll and emacs reader, I'm having.ore fun than ever in emacs
But the issue here is the original charges were literally made up. There was no evidence whatsoever of him having anything related to CSAM on his device. At this point any cop can ask anyone to hand over their phone to search for CSAM.
Blood money isn't red in color. USA has more war crimes in the past 5 decades than almost all other major countries combined. But that doesn't matter when you're profiting. Same goes here.
Ah yes, I'm sure Trovalds and Stallman are harvesting my data through free software, aren't they? This argument is used by boomers who were fed cold war era propoganda that surely everybody is selfish, and you're always at fault.
You're confusing number of people with percentages. There's still a large share of people who'll pay to use software on windows or android provided your software is good enough. This wrong impression comes from the fact that many users are from 3rd world countries who can't afford anything else. Steam made their entire business selling stuff on windows. And not just proprietary software. Many blender and godot addons are paid and nobody complains. Apart from developing software, where linux and osx are far ahead, in terms of industry software such a autodesk, solidworks, rhino, flstudio, etc, windows is THE platform you want to target of you are planning on monetization. And I'm saying this as a exclusive linux user of 3 years. You know who won't pay money? Linux users. Not out of lack of it, but mostly because of principle of FOSS software. And yes, I'd rather use a inferior FOSS alternative than a slightly better proprietary one
Well, if no body can say when it will pop, then can we really say it's a bubble and it's overvalued?
I can tell you it will pop in 10 years and when it pops, it will still be 20x bigger than in 2026. Does that even make any sense?
People said AI bubble will pop soon in 2024 and that it was overvalued. Turns out, many AI stocks 10x, 20x since 2024. Actual usage has gone exponential as well. Anthropic revenue went from $100m ARR at start of 2024 to $80b ARR today.
> Well, if no body can say when it will pop, then can we really say it's a bubble and it's overvalued?
Well, given the literal trillions being spent, the only ways this pays off are:
1. AI replaces a non-trivial fraction of human employees.
2. Someone builds a Culture Mind, and humans become (hopefully) pampered pets of AIs we don't understand. Seems unlikely, but it would arguably count as a payoff even if it made money meaningless.
Or maybe the AIs don't want pets, and you get SkyNet. Which definitely doesn't care about paying off anyone's investments.
When you look at various news articles about investors, yeah, there are definitely a lot of rich people who think that they're going to automate all human labor or just bring about the Singularity. Possibly with them in charge of the rest of us. If you don't make these kinds of wild assumptions, then yeah, this is looking like one of the biggest bubbles ever.
Did you read your own article? It's well less than $3 trillion.
Now let's build the model out more. What is the projected revenue, backlog, improvements in existing big tech businesses such as AI helping Meta's ad business?
1. AI replaces a non-trivial fraction of human employees.
I mean, it's pretty clear that's going to happen. How could it not?
The only question is whether resources are optimally allocated at the moment to prepare for this. That seems unlikely at best. So yes, there is probably a bubble, and if so, then yes, it will pop, and then life will go on, with resources better allocated. Just like when the dot-com bubble popped.
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