This is wrong, and the response to it was misguided.

The problem never was the manufacturing process, as manufacturers, especially in Australia, are well aware of occupational hazard.

The problem was people cutting engineer stone dry and without respiratory protection. You can’t really dry cut anything that vaporises or aerosolises without creating some kind of hazard. There was one 26 year old guy here in Australia who’d been cutting engineered stone on site, dry, with no or insufficient respiratory protection, and was expected to check out before turning 30.

The response, banning the products is misguided, because natural stones present approximately the exact same risks. Namely, you can aerosolise any stone and deliberately hoof the particles and expect good outcomes.

The correct response was to ensure the people working with the product follow the correct safety protocols.

But this being Australia, next time something like this happens, Anika Wells will just ban us from talking about it, if the toxic Labor-Greens federal government get their way.

A high trust society. Everything else is downstream of that.

Obviously my feelings about things I know little about, games I have no skin in, are important.

If you say anything to the contrary the group-think will downvote you.

Shut up bigot.

/s

Only a few years earlier none of that existed. Then it did, proved highly successful, then government, which knows not what it is doing, nor can it, comes along and gets involved in something it had no interest in, and contributed little to nothing to.

Obviously not all (tech) companies will prove to be successful.

Although, if we define success as “was acquired, investors / founders came out financial better off” then both absorbed and successful can be true while consolidation never was a concern.

Say government intervenes and prevents this merger, what’s the most likely outcome?

Company won’t exist in 6 minutes.

In all likelihood this company was spun up with the intention it would be purchased by a ”competitor.”

Why not?

The CEOs of these companies are largely just talking heads and generally interchangeable / hot-swappable with anyone willing to give it a shot.

The importance of CEOs is largely overstated.

What’s that now? Surely you’re joking.

But that’s not the problem anyway.

If all the US AI players agree to self-regulate, that doesn’t help anyone. It only hurts the US / West.

The point is to get the government onboard so it can advocate for a global agreement.

They 3D print a few components and assemble the drones on site.

All the other problems will exist.

A couple of drones can take this bit of plant out. Then you’re left wondering perhaps it would have been better to assemble the drones somewhere safer and ship them to where they’re needed.

And since this thing ships with all the parts, how do they imagine we’re fooled in to thinking it solves the obsolescence issue? Now you can assemble obsolete drones at the frontlines. What an improvement!

I suppose the next step then is to fit chemical rockets to give the attacking drones a chance to finish the last mine at a much higher speed.

Sooner or later, the West needs to wake up and realise that empathy for the offenders over empathy for the victims, hasn’t worked.

And that includes meth and heroin dealers.

Marijuana, meh, stupid drug anyway. But I know too many people who used weed long term and now have chronic psychosis, so yeah that ain’t great.