e.g. he had Colbert fired (and who knows what else) by threatening to block the Paramount/Skydance merger

Tim Apple and the other tech CEO constantly groveling at Trump’s feet indicates that he might be able to do that.

Just like threatening TV networks about having their licenses revoked of blocking mergers unless they fire the people making fun of him on TV (of course with slightly mixed success)

Large corporations like Microslop, Google, Meta etc. were frequently behave like headless chickens

Current reality? Of course its more on the (social)media level. Significant proportions of the society in many countries seem to be living in alternate realities.

Real life echo chambers reinforce that as well if you only interact with people with similar lifestyles and worldviews.

> That may well be true for some extroverted people, yes

I would certainly see that’s the case for the overwhelming majority people (certainly not for everyone, though)

That was always the case historically. Outside of family people mainly interacted and formed social the mainly with the people they worked with. There is nothing modern about that if anything we have more opportunities to met new people outside of your close these days.

One thing is less stability, people tend to form less life long bonds when they change jobs ever few years instead of working with the same people for 20-30 years

> people paid to be there aren’t your friends

Well children are forced to attend school, does that make you can’t make any friends there? Its not that different..

Isn’t Steam mostly webviews though ?

> Java

Well.. It’s not that massively different from running Qt apps in Gnome, though?

> ABI compatibility

I’m sure it matters for Swing to an large extent. Of course it the problem of the people developing the UI framework rather than the end app

So you don’t have an argument because everything you are saying is based on some absurdly speculative nonsensical premise?

> costs for space tech keep going down

How do you measure the cost of something which does not and has not ever existed. These data centers are a hypothetical concept nothing else.

For instance the first Crusade was organized as a military relief expedition by the Byzantine emperor and the pope to save the empire from Turkish invasion and liberate the recently conquered Anatolia. Jerusalem was mostly an aspirational and symbolic goal.

Most people who joined did it because of sense of duty and various degrees of religion fanaticism. There was little prospect of profit and while the expedition was enormously more successful than anyone could have anticipated the overwhelming majority of initial participants were dead by the time they reached Jerusalem. Even those that survived to the end didn’t necessarily profit that much.

Islamic countries OTOH handle banned or strictly restricted its use. Coincidentally most progress there ceased and they were stuck in the 1500s for the next 400 years or so..