Energy use, presumably.

Of course, are those same users always running their screens super dim? Are they using pen + paper instead of typing whenever they can?

Consuming kilowatts is not intrinsically bad for the environment. If you are worried about the environmental impact of power generation, then advocate for cleaner generators.

That was back when we had manufacturing knowledge. That’s all but gone.

The facetious reply to that is to look at what China has done with its command economy under the direction of its smart degree-engineer Politburo masters (unlike the USSR).

That's not a call for Communism, during WWII the US was essentially under a command economy and manufacturing companies made good profits—some fortunes. Furthermore, the US government was run by very bright people such as Vannevar Bush and Harry Hopkins (they must be rolling in their graves at today's shambles).

The US doesn't have to go to such lengths today but it could partially do so by mandating that certain critical/strategic industries be directed to produce strategic goods and materials.

The real issues are lack of political will and stupid ideological differences.

I just lost a bunch of files on mine due to their Drive software. I was setting up a folder to sync and just clicking the folder in their file explorer when setting it up isn’t enough to actually select it, so the sync went one level higher than it should have. That decided to wipe out the folders on that level instead of trying to sync them back to my computer, for whatever reason.

Also for whatever reason when you use Drive files don’t go into the regular recycle bin. They go into the Drive recycle bin…but only if you have file backups (whatever they call them, where it saves copies of files if they’re changed) enabled. I didn’t, for that folder.

Poof go 15 years of raw photo files.

Name another "standard" profession that makes a median of 240k per year.

Airline pilots make about $230K

To prove your point, I believe the last time I went to an ENT to get my nose cauterized for bloody noses cost my insurance around $500 or so. That's for a 5 minute "procedure" I could easily do at home with the right equipment.

Yeah one of the benefits of the NHS, even with its problems, is that you can just roll up to a doctor/dentist whatever and if its something simple that requires slight medical intervention, or a cheap prescription for instance, there's no drama around insurance billing or bureaucracy. Now, on the other hand, you need to go to the ER, you need actual surgery?

Have you every talked to someone that’s been in sales for a long time when they’re not at work?

Some of them (almost) never turn it off. It’s unfortunate because it makes them seem completely disingenuous.

…isn’t that far better than him just keeping it for himself, which he could have done?

There's a pretty simple solution to the lack of new antibiotics that I've never seen anyone suggest: up the amount of time that any new antibiotics are patented.

Right now there's not much of an incentive to create new antibiotics. It's quite rare that something can't be taken out with the antibiotics we have, and while that's slowly getting worse it means that drug companies probably can't make back their investment by the time the drug goes generic.

So, up it to 25 years or something like that. It's better we have some expensive drugs that work than none at all.

A problem is that any novel antibiotic is put on the restricted use list of reserve antibiotics which massively shrinks the market.

The challenge is balancing access and abuse. Longer patents could mean higher prices and limited global access

You can get them for $2,000 now. One from Asus has been that price several times over the last few months. I got my PNY for 2200 or so.