China is doing that by blackmailing countries with rare earth.

Answers will be found. Especially as some of finest brains across 2 continents + Japan are very interested in doing it. In the past, China could flood market at right time to make alternatives unviable. But that trick has worn off.

In this context, 92% or even 80% efficiency of permanent magnets is no big deal. It'll not be the answer to every use case but will satisfy many and limit demand.

Yes, Singapore will never have a boondoggle like California or UK HSR. But the two are not comparable precisely because of all the problems that come with democracy. You just can't see them building a "bat tunnel" for $200m.

India is just a poorer version of UK/USA. China is a bigger version of Singapore. Not just that some things are worse. You can file a lawsuit and keep things on hold for 20 years. The "bulldozing" that happens is mostly local, low level stuff like some mafia or criminal thug getting punished outside of the court system often because that is exactly what the voters demand.

Coming to main topic, much of West doesn't have fiscal runway. But your point about getting old before getting rich is valid. But it is not all bad news.

IMHO one of main challenges for a democracy like India is, planning just about anything that involves land, capital takes just as long as in, say, US or UK due to lots of consensus building, "activism" delays, lawsuits etc. And by the time the thing is built - be it airports, roads, sewage pipes or water treatment etc., the population is far far higher. And it turns out inadequate almost like back to square 1.

Now THAT problem will reduce or go away. You take 20 years to debate a new garbage disposal facility and overcome NIMBY brigades? no issues! The population stays same when you stop arguing and get it done.

I do share some of the concerns, though I don't have kids of school going age.

Regex, SQL, Basic linux command line tools, awk. More as job demands.

Great points..

Curious to understand how AI will continue to grow if this is the trend. Assuming most valuable data is behind such firewalls. And whatever is public has been harvested, trained on top of whatever has been acquired illegally (this is a grey area).

Will it become a closed ecosystem without outside input?!

I bought a tablet from this brand few years back. Screen edges were non responsive to touch within months.

I'm guessing that's the situation for several others though there could be other use cases that's Excel only.

Instead of pressing Microsoft, it would probably make sense to force such vendors (SAP, Oracle etc) to release their office add-ons for Libre office.

That'll kill two very profitable birds with one stone.