Some of my discs are hitting a decade and I am about to create a new set of backups. The market is smaller but the portable blu ray drives are becoming the default now.

So far I’ve just kept extra discs on hand plus a backup portable drive. Hopefully blu ray discs will manage to stick around as long as writable dvds.

For example, 40% of corn in the US goes towards <10% of of gas via ethanol. Even without subsidies, refiners would likely use some ethanol because it's a cheap octane booster. Insurers weren't regulating healthcare prices before the ACA and now face a profit limit tied to payouts -- which creates another perverse incentive. Doctors are incentivized to specialize instead of entering family medicine. They're also incentivized to run more tests defensively because they charge more and it reduces liability for malpractice.

Even in areas that are more builder-friendly, there is still incentive to build denser housing (which is more efficient) that maximizes return per sq ft. So you get studios, 1 bedroom, and 2 bedroom homes. And larger homes (built outside of onerous zoning areas) that more amenable to raising families end up creating unsustainable costs for local municipalities through sprawl.

Some of these areas can be addressed by a free market but maintaining a healthy market that minimizes perverse incentives requires significant tweaking (i.e. regulations)

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[1] -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43988252

A simple example is minimum requirements for parking. Almost every home and business is paying more for additional space that cars take up. This means less people in catchment areas for different types of transit.

A great example of this in action happens each year for the Austin City Limits Festival [1]. A few routes have substantially more busses during those two weekends to deal with a couple hundred thousand extra passengers.

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[1] -- https://support.aclfestival.com/hc/en-us/articles/4405461498...

I ended up extracting 802.1x certificates with this[2] or a similar tool and interfacing directly with the ONT using OPNSense [3]. I was so angry I filed an FTC complaint because I had to do this bypass to do my job (the latency was so bad).

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[1] -- Linking to Reddit due to DSLReports going Down. https://www.reddit.com/r/ATTFiber/comments/1dwwh61/comment/l...

[2] -- https://github.com/0x888e/certs

[3] -- https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=t6vvukft2ahga...

I'll include a quote from the (9-0!) April 10th Supreme Court ruling[1] concerning the removal of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the United States to El Salvador.

> The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.

Without a chance to demonstrate that someone is in the US legally (i.e., Due Process), the defense of this action can be that it's necessary to prevent the rendition of US citizens to El Salvador or elsewhere. That might sound crazy, but we already have an example of a US citizen being held in custody per an ICE request, despite having proof of being born in the US[2]. If both practices continue, we'll ultimately see the intersection at some point.

--- [1] -- https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a949_lkhn.pdf

[2] -- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-u-s-citizen-was-held...

Increased money supply isn’t the only cause of inflation (e.g., stagflation). Uncertainty about how to price goods—especially for goods in the middle of supply chains—could cause supply disruptions. It’s a self-inflicted version of the Covid supply disruptions.

If the EU decided WhatsApp should be spun off from Meta (for any number of legitimate reasons) to continue operating there, we wouldn’t claim that the EU banned the app.

The US does plenty of sketchy shit, but it has nothing on the surveillance state imposed by the CCP, nor is it empowered to suppress information in the same manner.

The CCP’s censorship is so heavy handed that others have tried to weaponize it, as discussed recently here:

Tokyo University Used "Tiananmen Square" Keyword to Block Chinese Admissions [2].

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[1] - https://hms.harvard.edu/news/whats-stake-us-supreme-court-ca...

[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42355586

The fundamental issue is ByteDance ownership. Forced divestiture due to legitimate concern for potential abuses is perfectly acceptable whether by a financial or national security rationale.

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1 - https://www.axios.com/2024/04/27/biden-tiktok-sale-grindr