From what I’ve been told, the smell of BO disappears after a while. Instead, they smell like a farm animal. But they have to skip bathing long enough for that change to occur, and it gets undone whenever they bathe.

As for people saying they smell fine, as obnoxious as we are, very few people are willing to tell someone they smell like shit. Most of us will even directly lie to them to avoid the difficult conversation.

This isn’t the first time a company has used this approach. Apple users will always pay (be charged) more. I suspect the same is true for mobile users vs desktop.

But with AI being applied, there will be a TON of variables, just like your car insurance. You probably won’t even be able to identify most of them. For instance, which ISP are you using? What time of the day are you shopping?

What else does your browser fingerprint say about you? What about when they link it to Facebook, even without your knowledge or consent? Will gay people (or women, or Mexicans, or any other group) pay more?

The issue here isn’t about charity for the less fortunate. Many of the people begging make a decent living (from begging), and moreso than those working shitty service jobs. I don’t want to give money to someone that dresses homeless and puts on an act. I would happily give money to anyone that genuinely doesn’t know where they will sleep next week, or where their next meal is coming from.

The problem is that I’m not in a position to evaluate that. As such, I would rather give money to food banks and the like, since they are in a better position for that.

Searching through the trash means they genuinely need the money, and are willing to work for it. That’s worth something.

ARM wasn’t a sudden shift. 15 years ago it was clearly not going to be going away, simply due to energy efficiency needs. Intel responded with the Atom line, which was widely panned. Once it failed, Intel seemingly decided to skip that entire market.

Imagine choosing Trump over your own wife, even if you hate her.

It’s cringe pretending to be humor.

Elections are a cornerstone of autocracies. All of the most brutal dictators have elections, and they get 90% of the vote.

Free and fair elections, OTOH, are nowhere to be seen. And that’s a critical difference - they won’t be cancelled, so there won’t be the obvious line in the sand. Voter suppression and disenfranchisement, which is already happening, will continue and accelerate. But most of it will have a heavy coat of marketing, to convince people that those groups don’t really deserve to vote.

The big caveat is that the BIOS must allow it, and most released versions do not.