Wayyyyyy more than that is wasted.

There’s always the exceptions, but they’re rare, and getting more rare.

The vast majority of works are owned by a few major corporations, even smaller, more indie games often get published through a major studio, which then retains a good amount of the profit. Almost all media, TV and movies, is owned by one of a handful of companies. Music is largely the same.

It goes the same way for so many other things too. It’s not just games and media.

There are always going to be exceptions but on the whole, it’s vastly more likely/common that the people profiting from something is a large, faceless organization, which only answers to their shareholders.

Yeah, why the fuck not?

Obviously, something made in a specialized vehicle manufacturing plant will be better/more durable/whatever, but given the option between downloading a car vs spending a year’s salary to buy one… I’d rather download one.

Unless my wages get better (which they are not) or cars get cheaper (which they won’t), I’ll continue to have this opinion.

There’s a nontrivial number of cars that cost more than a house did in the 80’s and 90’s. So it’s entirely possible for someone to spend the same dollar value on their home, when purchasing it in the 90’s, as they do 25 years later, buying a house in the 2020’s.

Stupid.

The only damage that exists from piracy is to the copyright holders profits…

Since the copyright holder is usually a corporation that is owned by shareholders, the majority of which are richer than all of us combined, ask me if I give a shit and I will show you my field of shits to give, and you will see that it is barren.

Eat the rich. Or Luigi them… I don’t care.

None of these answers are wrong.

Pretty sure we had CRTs in highschool, back when I was a teen many years ago that were Kia brand… IIRC.

Crazy, right?

Oh damn.

Manufacturing of any kind always causes an environmental impact. This is the way of things.

The one thing we can’t get that would mitigate the environmental costs of making stuff, is if stuff was built to last…

Honda built a rocket

Me: of course they did.

They launched the rocket

Me: naturally.

They landed the rocket.

Me: on the first try?

That quote is funny because the statement is clearly indicating that they are pro-choice.

In business though, workers are not often given a choice. You either work from the office, work x days in office and y days from home (hybrid), or only work from home.

90% of the employers that I am aware of, give one of these, maybe two (usually in office and hybrid) as options; usually only one option (in office). A few wfh companies I’ve worked for do all wfh, which is great for me, but anyone who wants to work from an office, can’t.

By giving workers a real choice, you open the company up to a much larger pool of people who are willing/able to do the job. If they’re local to an office and want to be in office, cool, set it up. If they’re not but they prefer wfh, cool, set it up.

In my experience nearly zero employers provide flexible work options. It’s usually one of the three, and if you’re lucky, two of the three. It is exceedingly rare to be given all three choices.

It also makes employees wealthier… Think of all the money you flush down the drain making your car move from home to the office and back again… Just that alone is easily thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars per year, depending on your vehicle and type of fuel, efficiency, etc.

Everyone wins except the real estate owners and their stakeholders, which, as you astutely pointed out, are the business owners. Rent is a way for them to essentially launder money into their own pockets. They legitimately pay their office rent, and a chunk of that comes back to them in dividends from the land owning company.

It’s a club, and you ain’t in it.

I both agree and disagree with the conclusions in the title…

I agree that for many people, they’re happier, and likely more productive, working from home.

I would also agree that for many different people, working from an office makes them happier/more productive.

It entirely depends on the job, who you are, and the work culture. Some places are toxic and working from home to get away from it is helpful for job satisfaction. I’ve known people who simply focus better when they’re at the office since they have a lot of distractions at home. I know for me, the opposite is true. at home, I’m in control and can limit exposure to distractions, and I can be more productive, more comfortable and overall less unhappy with my job.

IMO, this discussion is less about what companies want, whether work from home or hybrid, or in office … The main conclusion that we should be driving home is that different people need different environments to do their best work, and be happiest with their particular job. To put it simply: workers need to be able to choose.

Until we’re at the stage where employers care less about how, and where you do the work, and they care more about the work getting done… We’re going to keep going back and forth on this.

I like to work from home. That’s me.

I know people who prefer to work from an office. There’s plenty of people who feel they work best from the office.

There’s plenty of people that need to mix between home and office work.

Bluntly: as long as you can do the work from where you’re working, and how you’re working, the rest should be flexible. We’re (presumably) adults and professionals. If we’re given work and we’re being paid to do the work, then we will do the work. We don’t need to be constantly supervised by middle management like toddlers.

Good point.

… Compared to what?

If you compare to MacOS, then yeah, maybe.

I disagree.

1. You already have a government space agency. Maybe give them more funding so they don’t have to rely on space-x to get their stuff into orbit?

2. There’s a national telecom network already in place. It at least has the potential to be faster and more reliable, if it isn’t already… At least compared to low earth orbit satellite coverage.

There’s no good reason to continue providing Elon or his companies with any government handouts. Pull that funding and give it to… I dunno, students who have more debt than homeowners with a mortgage… NASA… Literally anything that helps people?

Neither of those keys exist.

Probably because I keep uninstalling the software.

Heh, it’s a small business and bossman isn’t exactly anti-AI.

I think GDPR and related laws, really tempered what Microsoft did to the whole of the European region. They didn’t want to deal with it, so they made as much as they could, opt-in. As opposed to the north american policies of either opt-out, or forced-on.

IDK. I don’t work at Microsoft, I’m just guessing. 🙃

For those curious, if you can get a European Windows product key, you can install the “N” version of Windows. Be warned, it only works with certain product keys…

The standard Windows installer should give the option of “Windows 10” or “Windows 10 N” (or similar). The N version is basically bloatware free out of the box…

The regular version has a bunch of promos pre-installed, like candy crush, and other things that most people couldn’t give a shit about…

Recently I’ve been playing a “fun” game with my work laptop where I’ll remove copilot, and a few days later it will appear again. Weeee. In that case, it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a policy in place to enable copilot on my works systems… I’m sure someone who works here, probably higher up the food chain than me, wants it enabled, and the ham fisted policy maker can’t create a policy just for those who want it, so everyone gets it because the bosses son Shane decided that he wants to see how much of his work can get done by AI so he can do even less while on the clock.

I take it, you use arch?