monomial

I can agree with you that the Project 2025 philosophy is misguided but I can also assure you that it has little to do with my distrust of the US government. I think the biggest factor is the trend toward valuing "safety" above all else and at any cost to our citizens. This has been going on for decades and a quest like this is also an authoritarian one. I agree with your general thesis though that it is not thought through and ultimately destroys our mutual trust.

> many of the people on HN worked for firms that built the technology required to use internet based subscription models

And I hope we all start calling these people out more for what they've done. I've worked in tech a long time but I would never contribute to something like this.

Yeah you're right. I always use a model like GLM served straight from z.ai if I'm asking about anything that could be construed as nefarious. I'm a US citizen and don't trust my own government. The CCP doesn't give a shit about me as anything other than some data point.

Normal profit is not enough any more. It must be 1000x return, infinite growth, monopolize an entire industry style profit.

> I have enough electronics hobbyist magazines from the past several decades to keep me thumbing through PDFs for years

This sounds great. What magazines do you recommend?

I find that piracy is the only sane option any more

How so? I have 1 bank account with a local credit union and I have never logged into any of the online stuff. What do you take issue with, specifically?

1 (not long running)

I don't really understand this trope and I grew up in a tiny town. Why not start a band or make movies with your friends? Build model airplanes, explore some creeks or forests. Not to say I didn't smoke and drink as well but why should that be more likely to be one's outlet in a small town with few commercial consumer experiences?

Modern cars are such enshittified garbage. I was in a modern Toyota recently and every time you start it, the screen shows a "Guest mode activated" that you need to explicitly dismiss. The only way to disable this is to install some stupid Toyota app which I would never install. Then you dismiss the popup and the home screen is "Experience Drive Connect" which is some stupid Toyota subscription which I would never subscribe to. What a piece of garbage. I'd probably just disconnect the whole screen entirely.

> Then petition your government to enact laws around this.

Do you really expect your government to do anything useful here?

Yeah GLM-5 has been pretty impressive when it works but the z.ai plan is unbearably slow most of the time to the point where it's effectively unusable.