addicted

> Corruption within private companies is irrelevant, as the main ones to suffer from it are usually shareholders.

And a few millions of people suffering because they're being misled into buying "wellness" solutions.

And a few hundreds of millions of people around the world suffering the effects of local pollution and clean water laws being skirted.

And a few billion folks who are gonna suffer the effects of climate change.

etc...

Other than the 6-7 billion humans who suffer due to private company corruption, it's basically only the shareholders.

"customer" is a much better term IMO. It indicates this is ultimately a transactional relationship where both sides have certain responsibilities. The customer the responsibility to provide the money, and the provider receiving the money has a responsibility to provide the customer with something, products or services, of value that makes their lives better.

"user" is a worse term. It suggests that the "user" is simply utilizing the provider's products/services, and therefore they can't really complain about whatever the provider chooses to do in return, because the "user" can simply stop using.

It's also not a coincidence, IMO, that drug addicts are also called "users" since "user" implies a one way dependent relationship and that's what all the tech companies have been trying to create.

I'm curious what you think VCs, etc. who are investing in all these private companies want to do?

The only difference with public companies is we actually have data about their finances.

The private companies are doing it all under wraps.

This is correct.

This isn't a financial transaction. This is a "relationship" transaction.

Are there other examples of well capitalized technology startups that have significant revenues that have also opted for significant debt financing?

Yeah, your local friendly police officer isn't gonna do that.

They're gonna pay Anduril, Palantir, and a whole host of other business or consulting firms a ton of your money to do that.

The criticism that "it's technically too challenging for the police department therefore its sci-fi" is extremely silly given that the current article literally is about private companies that are building surveillance networks that they will then sell to the police.

Which makes the entire situation a lot worse.

Or a Roomba... One of the first things they want to do is make a plan of the house.

But also, don't builders have to submit plans of homes to the local government when building them for approval?

This wasn't a non issue. You touched the phone in the wrong places and you would drop off an existing call.

Most people solved this by indeed not "holding it wrong" or getting cases (I don't know if the cases worked, but there was a whole industry built around advertising cases that solved this problem).

There are 2 problems to this.

1. I seriously doubt Apple was accidentally displaying more bars on the phone. If it was a "bars" issue then it was almost certainly done deliberately to make the iPhone reception look better than what it was.

2. It wasn't just bars. I had this phone and you would literally drop off calls by holding the phone differently when you hadn't done anything else. There was a genuine problem with the phone that I don't think was ever resolved other than people getting used to holding the phone differently like Steve Jobs told us to.

I lost my iPhone and switched to a hand me down from my parents which was a generation older and the service was significantly better.

Yup, that's what they will do now.

Which is indeed a benefit for their countries.

And is a loss for the US.

The brain drain was real and the US was the beneficiary and that may be ending soon.

Not sure what your point is? Are you happy that the US will be worse off than it was before?

Student enrollment in the US is declining and the big problem for colleges the past few years has been a worry about not having enough students. So it's not clear why US students were struggling to get a college spot.

And if you mean them getting spots in the more prestigious institutions, well, it's not clear whether that will even happen (the few thousand international students admitted to the top universities are not the ones that are likely to decline their acceptance letters), but even if it did, well, those universities are simply not as prestigious anymore.

Attracting the best talent from anywhere in the world is a huge part of what created their prestige, and that's even before we get to how they're losing funding, and professors and researchers to other countries.

Yes, they should.

Which is a completely unrelated effort from the free money you're getting from abroad.

Unless governments institute policies that require them to "tighten their belts" they won't tighten their belts by cutting their own pay. They'll tighten belts by cutting out the least paying students, and scholarships, instead.

If this does push governments to get universities to tighten their belts, then why not have governments make them do that anyways without losing a massive chunk of export earnings, and a form of export earnings which has demonstrated positive effects many times greater than the dollars they bring in.

Any anecdote will suffer from survivorship bias (and also negative anecdotes). The data on the other hand are very clear that people are not doing as well as their parents. Unless you have a theory as to why Americans simply became more lazy, etc. a starting point should sensibly be a systemic explanation.

Also, just speaking about your anecdote, let me add my own. I am also doing fine. Not particularly rich but middle class, good income, and savings for retirement. But I just got hit with compounding dental issues, which despite having the most expensive health insurance from my company that's well known for providing excellent employee benefits, it will end up costing me at least 20k out of pocket, potentially going up to 30-40k due to the need for multiple surgical procedures.

And fortunately we can manage it, but if the same issue had happened to me 5 years ago, I would basically be at the edge of my savings where even a minor unexpected cost would have put me in terrible shape, and 10 years ago I may have had to declare bankruptcy, or more likely, do without either suffering in pain, or pushing off the problem to be handled by even more expensive work a few years down the line, taking on expensive debt, or setting myself up for periodontal disease which leads to a whole host of issues including significantly increased risk of dementia.

Even if one is earning and saving decently, the precariousness of life in the US of A today is incredible.

I think eliminating online sports betting, and requiring it be done within the physical confines of a casino may help mitigate most of the concerns around this.

After all, sports betting was legal in several states such as NJ, Nevada, as long as they were taking place in the casinos in Atlantic City/Las Vegas, and we didn't see any major negative impacts like we do now.