One example from 1985 onwards that i can think of is NSF funding of supercomputer centers. 40 years ago, SIMD / vector processors with boatloads of memory were not ubiquitous, nor were shared memory multicore / multiprocessors, a situation which differs with the reality today.

This NSF funding established the 5 supercomputing centers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation_Ne...

and then further downstream effects include popular access to creations from the supercomputer centers, such as Mosaic from NCSA, and an expansion of ideas outside the compuserve / aol paradigms.

I think similar situations apply for other engineering disciplines, mechanical and chemical and physics and so on. Probably true for the arts in various forms: people don't have personal pipe organs to learn Bach on, for a crazy example, but universities do.

For various industries, learning requires physical equipment too expensive for individuals, historically and still.

i thought the order of magnitude is often hipster phrasing, even on HN at times, but, when actually intended, it's like saying floor(log_base10( whatever )), so the ten times thing would have to be "roughly ten times" for example, to be comparable.

Also, in some contexts the base isn't presumed to be 10, of course, though around here in loose jargon that's usually what folks are saying.

i suppose it is similar to "exponentially" being used when it doesn't mean exponentially.

[edit, found the real version https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si_vis_pacem%2C_para_bellum ]

adapted from a statement found in Roman author Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus's tract De Re Militari (fourth or fifth century AD), in which the actual phrasing is Igitur qui desiderat pacem, præparet bellum ("Therefore let him who desires peace prepare for war").

Are Amish and Mennonites religiously protected luddites?

That might work: you'd have bought the car, from the point of view of VW and your DMV, so the DMV sends you the title, not Visa.

where is this?

you don't have or keep the title until the bank sees you paid off the loan, in every instance i've seen.

i dream of phone calls costing the entity placing the call some significant-at-scale price, perhaps a dime, and bulk rate physical junkmail needing full postage.

Musk made a company that jumpstarted some wealth and invested in other things which exploded.

Toto Wolff is a gazillionaire because he too made some pretty incredibly timed investments.

point is, extreme wealth results from some combination of work, timing luck, strategy, and sociopathy, but they're not all required to span the space of wealthy people.