The other sort of network, ironically.

That's the essence of it, I suppose. Cheap walls of text.

Edit: although another quote comes to mind- "Quantity has a quality of its own."

I remember a company that sold or used bitcoin mining rigs as swimming pool heaters.

There was one that tried to sell them as free heating for the elderly.

It's useful because if an issue is difficult, both levels can disavow responsibility.

in german there is a word for this

Zuständigkeitspingpong

competence table tennis

Sry to be pedantic (it is german after all) but,

"responsibility table tennis" would be a better fit.

Competence in english translates to the skill side of the word

> in german there is a word for this

I am not surprised.

> competence table tennis

Magnificent!

That helps with dogfooding the VM experience, I suppose.

The other systems see less wear and tear as well ... Brakes don't get as hot, transmissions don't have clutches shedding material, and so on.

Always worth studying 1980s USSR.

Its really interesting to me to read books from the 80s set in the 2000s.

The Soviet Union was there chugging along, a monolithic and unstoppable foil to Murica! Everyone things nothing ever changes until it does. I expect that to be largely the same here if it's going to happen?

That said, I doubt we get a civil war, a more effective coup maybe? Or Collapse? But a civil war seems unlikely to me. We kind of already have lived through a revolution in the last couple years but people don't really see it.

It's a bit like Asimov's laws of robotics. "Do no harm", but how to evaluate that?

Not that he got it all right or anything like that but it’s amazing how much of the current macro discussion around AI capabilities is covered in the Foundation series which was published over many years, 1942 to 1993.

Seems like a thing you should be able to do at the post office.

What does post office have to do with identity verification?

In the USA they already take passport photos. Being able to receive mail addressed to a name is the closest thing to a national ID the USA has. They're already depended on for identity verification quite a lot.

You can receive mail to any name at your address.

I didn't say it was a good national ID system, I said it's the closest thing the US has to one.

It seems conditions are such that the TV selling business is worthless (i.e. unprofitable) without collecting the data, and the TV data collection business can't work without selling TVs.

Or just sell the tv for a higher price rather than using it as a loss leader?

I guess there's a niche for people willing to pay extra, but probably not enough to support the volume they need.

Edit: and that niche is business, of course