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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: July 13th, 2025

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  • This article is framed from a capitalist CEO, and while it touches on reality, feels incredibly lost in it’s point.

    Cassandra Cummings, CEO of New Jersey-based electronics design company Thomas Instrumentation. …

    Both the cellular and internet infrastructure has to operate to be backwards compatible in order to support the older, slower devices. Networks often have to throttle back their speeds in order to accommodate the slowest device

    I’d Boohoo, if they actually were thinking about rebuilding the network stack to consider something like MultiPathTCP and reframed the devices to actually use all the networks they were on rather than a single one… But no they want you to by a single provider and depend on that plan… For the economy.

    Further Telecoms choose not to upgrade towers (to save costs). In 2023, AT&T/Verizon spent $10B less on network upgrades than projected. Because they were being profit-driven underinvestment.

    She does go on to say:

    To ease the transition to new technologies, she says there should be designs that are repairable or modular rather than the constant purge and replace cycles. “So perhaps future devices can have a partial upgrade in say ethernet communications rather than forcing someone to purchase an entirely new computer or device,” Cummings said. “I’m not a fan of the throw-away culture we have these days. It may help the economy to spend more and force upgrades, but does it really help people who are already struggling to pay bills?” she said.

    So slightly redeeming.

    The article also makes note of repairing:

    He adds that when people hold onto their phones or laptops for five or six years, the repair and refurbishment market becomes an active part of the economy. But right now, in both European, American, and global markets, too much of that happens in the shadows.

    But this attempt to point out that productivity is lost on old devices:

    The price to the organization is then paid in lack of productivity, inability to multitask and innovate, and needless, additional hours of work that stack up. Workplace research conducted by Diversified last year found that 24% of employees work late or overtime due to aging technology issues, while 88% of employees report that inadequate workplace technology stifles innovation. Kornweiss says he doesn’t expect there’s been any improvement in those numbers over the past year.

    There’s a disconnect between the numbers and behavior. Many workers report that aging devices stifle productivity, but like a favorite pair of shoes or an old sweater, they don’t want to give them up to learn the intricacies of a new device (which they’ll learn and then have to replace with another). Familiarity can trump productivity for many workers. But the result of that IT clinginess is felt in the bottom line.

    Fails to point out the waste of resources and it’s impact on climate, health, and the economy; loss of privacy and it’s impact on democracy, health, and yes the economy; and also how often new things don’t actually help productivity…

    Some how the “Upgrade to help the economy” falls flat when you consider Windows 11 and it’s non-upgrade upgrade. Or MS Office which is still producing Word/Excel/PowerPoint/etc decades later with the same shortcuts. Your ‘productivity lag’ is your boss refusing to train you not your laptop

    I mean if upgrade = economy, why does Apple sit on $165B in cash? They should spend it — not you!

    Profit-driven innovation that wants to sell us the same iPhone with a new camera, is not helping the economy. We need real innovation that disrupts big tech as much as it disrupts everything.

    Oh and that ‘business equipment investment’ from the fed was about factory robots and large capital investments, not phones.




  • Thank you for actually answering the question with a source, rather then hearsay or conjecture without sources.

    To answer from a quote:

    Examining trends over a longer timeframe, violent crimes are below levels seen in the first half of 2019, the year prior to the onset of the COVID pandemic and racial justice protests of 2020. There were 14% fewer homicides in the study cities in the first half of 2025 than in the first half of 2019. Similarly, reported aggravated assault (-5%), gun assaults (-4%), sexual assault (-28%), domestic violence (-8%), robbery (-30%), and carjacking (-3%) were lower in 2025












  • As a journalist in Afghanistan, Abdul says he helped promote American values like democracy and freedom. That work, he said, resulted in him being tortured by the Taliban after the US withdrew from the country in 2021.

    Now he’s in California applying for political asylum, amid the looming threat of deportation.

    “We trusted those values,” he said. “We came here for safety, and we don’t have it, unfortunately.”

    But when Abdul walked into a San Diego court to plead his case, he wasn’t alone.

    Ten veterans showed up for his hearing – unarmed, but dressed in hats and shirts to signify their military credentials as a “show of force”, said Shawn VanDiver, a US Navy vet who founded ‘Battle Buddies’ to support Afghan refugees facing deportation.

    “Masked agents of the federal government are snatching up our friends, people who took life in our name and have done nothing wrong,” he said.

    Approximately 200,000 Afghans relocated to the US after Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, as the US left the country in chaos after two decades fighting the war on terror.

    Many say they quickly felt embraced by Americans, who recognised the sacrifices they had made to help the US military and fight for human rights.

    But since the Trump administration has terminated many of the programmes which protected them from deportation, Afghans now fear they will be deported and returned to their home country, which is now controlled by the Taliban.

    I think this is the program https://afghanevac.org/battle-buddies