greedo

Bollocks. We complain because jobs are being occupied by the oldsters, and now you want them to stay in their jobs even longer?

If the couple you're pillorying is so wealthy, then most of their Social Security is being taxed, and they're paying higher Medicare premiums as well. And their house? As they get older and require nursing care, they'll end up liquidating it (or Medicaid will take it).

The average retiree receives around $25k per year in SS benefits. That's not a ton of money. In most studies, retirees receive less in benefits than if they had been able to invest their Social Security contributions. But that's fine, SS really has two main goals: a forced savings towards retirement, and as a social safety net for those who would otherwise be impoverished in old age.

The first is possible; the second, hasn't happened in my lifetime.

"institutions" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. This often means bloated bureaucracy. I'm not against big government in any way or form, but inefficient, bloated bureaucracy with a bunch of mandarins doing the real governing since all the office holders get rotated out after their term limits hit, doesn't seem like a good solution.

No such thing as bad publicity? I would bet that McDonalds saw an uptick in sales after the release of SSM.

Services is really just Google's baksheesh plus corrosive game mechanics. Without the hardware, there is no Services. Hence Apple will always be dependent on maintaining a large lead with their devices.

There's no reason for Apple to migrate; none at all. The idea that they need to do so is just ridiculous, regardless of what Harmony OS may do. iOS/macOS does exactly what they need.

Will things change? Perhaps if/when quantum computing becomes a bigger item.

Apple does own datacenters. They have eight, not to many colocation facilities.

Apple has no desire to go into the enterprise space.

Why on earth would they migrate away from the Mach kernel and OSX/iOS?

"More generally, we're seeing a transition in their financials away from hardware dependence."

Nonsense. They make 72% of their revenue from hardware, and without those hardware sales, the Services category would be nil.

There's been nothing but rumors about that. I don't think it's getting canned.

Pure racism.

PLAN already sails routinely to Africa, with port calls in Pakistan along the way.

I once got in a huge argument about the superiority of vector graphics displays around 2010. The idea that LCD could match what Tempest had was silly to me, but the kid I was arguing with had never seen a Tempest cabinet and just assumed old meant bad...

This is compounded by many managers not understanding the details of what their direct reports actually do. I've had so many supervisors in my career who just have no concept of what I really do in IT, though it's pretty obvious to me and my coworkers. So when it comes to review time, I'm always having to walk them through what I actually do.

Contrast this to when I am tasked with creating a report that they need. They're amazed. Absolutely amazed that I can write something coherent. I can only assume that with the Peter Principle, they're all surrounded by idiots who write emails and reports like Epstein.

Sandyhook showed that we don't care about kids...

I get that. Crop farming is so different than raising animals.

LOL. If you're a row cropper, you're running a big combine. Several grain trucks. Lots of expensive gear. Gear breaks down, that's why you buy something reliable, that has techs in your area who can fix things quickly, with a parts network that stocks stuff from decades back.

Farmers are self-sufficient in incredible ways, but maintaining a multi-million dollar combine is pushing it. They can do oil changes, filter changes, replace consumables on implements, and do basic trouble shooting, but there are limits.

And yes, time does matter. That's why farmers tend to help each other out a lot. Field catch fire because you didn't clean off your combine the previous day? It's going to be your neighbor coming out and helping firebreak your field so you lose 5 acres instead of 500. Can't afford to have your own sprayer for fertilizer, etc? You hit up the co-op.

And farmers have crop insurance. Doesn't make them whole, but the idea that they're going to be eating dirt if they harvest a day late is silly.

JD techs are all over the Midwest. No one is coming from out of state to work on your combine.

The economics of farming (at least in the US) are brutal. Scaling up is really the only way to make a living long term. Some of this is due to equipment cost (look up how much a combine costs), and some is due to competition. It's not unusual for a farmer to be land rich and cash poor.

If you want to see a couple of guys learning how to farm from scratch, visit https://www.youtube.com/@spencerhilbert. Spencer and his brother made a bit of money off games and Youtube and have been starting out on corn, hay, as well as raising beef. It gives a pretty good insight into how pervasive tech is in farming, and how despite that, how much of farming still relies on hard, physical work.

Hence the part about "...the Germans down."

Easy to maintain, great engine, just a bit rough to use on a larger field.

Exactly. A 4020 is fun! It may not have as much torque and ground pressure may not be as good as a quad belt tractor, but for a lil farm where you just want to grow hay or screw around?

The short answer is yes... As you mentioned, the physical side is generally standardized to some degree, but everyone I know tends to just use branded gear that's known to fit. Now if you like to resurrect old gear, then you become a shade tree mechanic pretty quick. I don't think that any farmer will survive more than a few seasons without being pretty smart at just getting stuff to work...

Yeah, I hate when I go to connect something and have to dig around for a hydraulic adapter. If I was smart, I'd just spend the winter making sure everything was matching, but I'm cheap and there's always something else that seems more urgent.

You should know that there are alternatives to green machines; Case, Massey Ferguson, Fendt etc.

Exactly! The old image of a guy on a Deere 4020 pulling an eight row implement is just unsustainable in today's agricultural system. Whether that system is sustainable is a different question.

And how many acres are you farming on it? Today's world of agriculture is much higher tech-based (for many good reasons, primarily yield) than back in the horse and buggy days of farming.

Keeping the FRG from getting nukes wasn't part of NATO strategy. The succinct reason for NATO was to keep the Soviets from marching to the Atlantic. The more pragmatic was expressed as "Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down."

Brahmos isn't an A2A missile...