Omron doesn't offer an $80 PLC with gpio that runs python and can directly integrate with your ERP and other software like REST / SQL that anyone could teach themselves if they know python. If it takes two months to create a fully developed local, customized visual build out and assembly accounting software stack that also interfaces with torque sensors and serialization like this one, why is that any kind of a loss? How is integrating a pi with other systems any less valuable of a skill that isn't applicable across other sides of the business, compared to the very narrow task of integrating slow moving PLC hardware that has clunky ass proprietary software most of the time?
I don't know if you've worked in industry, but companies actually won't invest in their local employee to get trained on 'industry standard' automation hardware. They contract that out. So you have no one on site who knows how anything works, half the time. The choices are often "pay s ton and have all the traditional investment of time in a contractor setting up PLC hardware and finding external software integrators to do all the other actual useful stuff you want, or just don't do the project because all of that is expensive and resource intensive."
There is no way a Pi with GPIO should be anywhere near any industrial equipment.
I have worked in the industry and it has been a mix of in-house and hired cabinet chimps.
If you have the time and money to work out how to interface a Pi to GPIO and write a software front end, you have the time and money to buy a PLC and integrate that with a COTS HMI front end.
> There is no way a Pi with GPIO should be anywhere near any industrial equipment
That's a pretty strong unqualified statement. I disagree. There are lots of ways in which a little Unix SBC can find a role in industry, lots of that is non critical but very useful, such as impromptu data logging and visualization. I agree that a Pi is far from ideal but but the time you have an industrial computer with the same specs as a Pi you're looking at a massive increase in cost and that may mean that the whole thing gets canned. Something is better than nothing. The 'interface' to a Pi is usually a solved problem in that you can just attach a bunch of pre-cooked stuff to it. And some of the industrial Pi models are surprisingly well hardened. There are literally 10's of thousands of Pi's chugging away happily in various guises in all kinds of machinery. I have worked 'in industry' as well and I don't have any holy houses. It either works, or it doesn't and then it gets replaced.
And so on. These range from 'just pretty packaging' to 'opto isolated IO + stable built in supplies'. Once you have stable power, isolated IO and good storage (all three are known causes for problems when you take stuff into harsh environments, and the Pi is pretty critical when it comes to dealing with these) you are still lightyears ahead of where you'd be with anything the competition fields with respect to available interfaces, development environments, display options etc etc.
Compared to your average Siemens, Omron, Allan Bradley, ABB or whatever floats your boat's toolchain the Pi rocks, you have access to pretty much all of Linux. The biggest problem with Pi's is availability (but even there: all manufacturers have had their issues on that front too).
Anyway, long story short: let people do what they think is right, if they get it to work reliably and affordably then so much the better. Industrial automation hardware has always been ridiculously expensive and underpowered for what it offered, some disruption certainly won't harm them.
But a part that's missing is the reason WHY companies often prefer to hire inefficient outside consultants that will under deliver, over promise, and often leave you with a half functional system at the end.
It's for class politics and control reasons that managers and executives don't want to invest in on-site talent to expand their skills. They want disposable labor even if it costs them more money in the end, because it's a decision motivated by their power interests. They don't want to depend on on-site talent, they don't want to promote you, they don't want to pay you what you are worth, they don't want your talents to develop.
They want to pay an outside agency whatever amount of money for the promise of a system, because even if the consultant fails they have fulfilled their capitalist due diligence and did things the right way, rather than having had local employees that are crucial to you that you invest in do work for you.
If you take issue with this characterization, I'd ask you why do many people here find it notable that this company had an existing employee develop a system rather than just dragging in the consultants.
I don't disagree that there might be a class issue involved esp in UK workplaces, but there is also this mystery that it seems like everyone knows that the big consultancies fail to deliver much more often than than they succeed by everyone except for the people in management with the budgets to hire these people.
They are parasites on both the private sector, public sectors, and even government policy development. I actually suspect its corruption more than classism.
I am speaking as someone that used to be one of those pink face graduates behind the expensive suits that was horrified at how hollowed out so many of our publically traded companies and government are.
PLCs are often a pain to integrate with multiple systems and are not nearly as versatile and simple as an internet connected pi running python, for certain desired tasks.
Please tell me which PLC you can get for $200 that runs python, can query some REST APIs, query and write to some databases, communicate with several other types of PLC and equipment, check a half dozen types of local sensors, and perform complex operations without purchasing a software subscription or having to be programmed in ladder logic.
Obviously they are suitable to different tasks, but there's a reason someone might reach for a PI to integrate new functionality, including on top of an existing PLC. They're tremendously handy in this environment, not just used because people don't know better.
I mostly agree with you and perhaps this was the wrong article to put my comment on because I think in this case they did well with raspberry pi.
> without purchasing a software subscription or having to be programmed in ladder logic
I am thinking of cases where a small PLC, some industrial sensors and ladder logic is a good, reliable and easy solution, but someone reaches for a raspberry pi and python scripts because that's what they've been exposed to.
I agree adding something on top of an existing PLC can be great too. In my first job nearly 20 years ago, I did machine automation and we always added an industrial mini ITX PC to our PLC panels. This cheaply added datalogging (an advertised feature for the customer) and remote programming capability (usually an unadvertised feature that made us look really impressive when we could fix something immediately without going to the very remote site). Depending on what was available on site, we could connect remotely by the site's internet, by a modem/landline, or by a cellular radio (configured as a modem, as this predated reasonable prices for data plans). Sometimes the PLCs were from the 80s and none of the competitors would quote anything except tearing everything out and starting over, but would could find a way to add to the old system.
Connecting remotely by some official upgrade from the PLC manufacturer was usually technically possible, but impossible in practice to get authorization to gain access to the network, and get things configured to allow access to the PLC from offsite. But dialing up to our own installed modem bypassed all of that, and since a PC is versatile, there was always some way to bridge the PLC's programming interface to the PC.
I recall that we had to go out of our way to find PCs that didn't look like PCs and were DIN-rail mounted. Anything that looked like a PC would eventually get messed with by someone.
WAGO pfc controllers series can do everything you mention. They are "just" Linux boxes with a fully featured integrated I/O bus (with any input/output type you can imagine). They can be programmed in pretty much any language and you can deploy with docker.
That said. Really large factories use DCS. (Distributed Control System) they are horribly expensive but integrates everything in one system. Controller programming, Human machine interfaces, MES and even ERP. Best known to me is ABB 800xA and Siemens PCS7.
Do you notice a trend in the membership of your named organizations, mainly that they seem filled with old conservative men?
Re: "daughters of the america"
"Council of the Daughters of America, a patriotic fraternity, which seeks to aid in preserving and perpetuating the Public School system; to instill a spirit of patriotism into the youth of our land; to place our flag over every schoolhouse; to promote the reading of the Holy Bible therein; and to protest against the immigration of paupers, criminals, and the enemies of our social order"
Ugh, yeah, my queer self is not really looking for that kind of engagement and I doubt they're looking for me.
It has to be noted that there is absolutely an increasing poverty of community life and hyper individualization. It's kind of incentivized in currently existing systems.
I felt this way after losing my religion. Your situation is different for sure.
But I joined a group workout gym with a local owner and a good community, it’s helped a lot with isolation.
I’m in the process of joining a BNI and, being surrounded by people motivated enough to run their own small business, it’s helping a lot.
I’m going to be meeting up with some folks who run a local hackerspace and do a weekly “coffee and code” - that seems promising and I’m hopeful it’ll help a lot.
All of these have something in common:
* A local business owner decided to start a BNI chapter and get a group of like minded individuals together to talk about business and share referrals
* An employee at a gym was disappointed in how gyms operate and wanted to do better, so started a space to bring people together around their interests.
* A smallish group of local hackers got together to create a shared space where they can geek out together
If you look at that list of social groups and say “I only see spaces for old conservative men” and “there is a poverty of community life” - maybe start a space or group for people like you? Or find people who are already doing that. Unless someone creates that space and brings people in it’s not going to exist.
Having the spaces OP listed isn’t mutually exclusive with the existence of any other social group.
Perhaps you could join the local Democratic party? Participate in the process and help candidates campaign!
Or if that is not for you, you could volunteer as a poll worker. While not strictly a club, it is generally the same people very time and the goal is very noble.
Some gyms are great for meeting people. I would say independent bookstores as well!
These were just some examples. There are hundreds of social clubs to be sifted through, and I'm sure that there are some that would love to have you / align with your personality better than the ones which I've posted! Take a look around your town and see what might be available, you might be surprised at what you see.
I'm going to be transparent: I'm interested in a structural analysis as to why there's a crisis of loneliness.
Humans are wired for sociality and interdependence. Our brains pretty much literally wither away, in ways, without meaningful social stimulus.
Given this, I can't immediately simply lay the blame at the feet of individuals as to why people seem increasingly lonely and thirsty for meaningful connection. So what might be some other causes for this type of isolation that seems increasingly common?
People prefer binge watching a 10 episode Netflix show on a weekend rather than hanging out. Or playing video games. Or Youtube. I know some streamers and some people spend 5 hours a day watching them play video games on Twitch. Others spend 2, 3 hours an evening on TikTok or Instagram. Or are on Twitter all day, that's their hang. Or Reddit and 4chan. Or Hacker News!
Even older generations are spending an awful amount time on messaging apps. My father isn't much into that but he's all day on news websites looking for whatever important thing. I know some Guitar web-forums where the average age is between 50 and 60 and they complain all day about kids these days and they Polyphia guitars.
Back when TV was king I remember only going out when the boring stuff started. Whenever I hear the Full House theme song I get the urge to go hang out with my friends. I was really really lucky there was enough boring stuff.
I also remember a teacher jokingly answering why he had 10 or so siblings to a classmate when we were in our teens: "well my parent's didn't have TV".
I remember going to random shops with friends as a teenager to play guitars we couldn't afford, think of video games we wanted to buy, or which anime figures were cool. If we were kicked out, we would go hang in a park, or at the front of a specific building that had cool looking stairs we could sit. Can I even do this today? I can still do the other stuff, but as an adult it seems that this is only possible with my significant other. Whenever I visit, there's no groups of friends in those hobby shops anymore, it's only couples or solo people.
Everything was a social activity back then. Today you gotta call people before you go to their houses because they're incredibly busy with Netflix or some video game.
We need more boredom. Not you and me, but society.
We feel that it is taboo to approach others, rather than try and start a conversation and seem weird we all stare at our phones.
We are also hesitant to try something new, when we were young we had parents who would push us but now when we are independent we no longer have that push.
The thread started gave a list of social clubs, the reply is that all of them are old white men who would not be accepting. Perhaps they had visited each club and experienced rejection but the Eagles and the Odd Fellows don't strike me as particularly conservative organizations. Neither do the Optimists, Kiwanis and Active 20-30.
In order to meet people, you must step out of your comfort zone!
This. Somebody I read noted that streets in Polish villages started becoming empty in the evenings in the same period of time when the windows of houses there began to glow with the light of the TV screens. TV is just easy companionship and entertainment (even if ultimately unsatisfying), and we're a huge sucker for easy.
Why is loneliness more common? Look at the work week. Everyone is working long hours, doesn't get time off, or is too broke to spend it doing social stuff in America or other countries. Lots of fear increases this too, with people working too much social skills go down and mental health issues become an issue. And lack of interactions with others increases fear in general.
Now if you are lucky enough to be well off enough not to have that issue then the second thing is tech replaces people in a lot of areas - food, entertainment, health, ways we connect with others etc. If you had to rely on others more I bet most people would be less lonely in general. Isolation becomes easier the more tech you have available - be it cars or computers it can easily isolate you if you don't purposely avoid isolation. Now tech can bring people together, I'm in a long distance relationship and tech makes it very easy nowadays but it's still not the same, as in person face to face experiences.
But I also think people will always face loneliness in every generation, it just might go by other names.
But people worked a lot more in the past. The 5 day work week is a relatively recent invention. The 8 day work hour is also relatively recent. Why are we having a crisis of loneliness now and not when 18 hour workdays 7 days a week was the norm in a factory somewhere?
The 5 day workweek and 8-hour workday weren't won that long after unvarying (same job every day, same amount every day, no seasonal variation) optimized cog-in-a-machine industrial wage labor started to not just exist, but be common.
Incidentally, a ton of early cinema (1900-1930, say) is very concerned about the dehumanizing effects of industrial (and office!) work, and the anti-social lost-in-the-crowd effects of cities (usually contrasted with rural or small town living) which nonetheless draw the masses with promises of money and glamor. Those seem to have been their major anxieties, in this realm of thinking.
I think it mostly boils down to how trivial it is to entertain yourself these days with a smartphone.
I was just on a weekend beach trip with friends and, at the end of the day, we considered playing some
card games, but frankly we all wanted to just chill on our phones in bed for the last
hour of the day, and we chuckled that we would have opted for the card games back in the days without smartphones.
It’s hard for going out and socializing to compete with solitary smartphone time. And it’s easy to avoid ever doing the former, especially once you need it the most.
This is chilling to hear. Sometimes I really hate the industry I work on. We're really destroying mankind, and it's not in the ways most people predicted. Even Huxley's Brave New World looks optimistic compared to what we're doing.
Smartphones are just the final nail to the coffin. Before smartphones, TV had already killed a of people's sociability (and radio did a lot of damage before TV as well). The book "Bowling Alone" was written well before the era of smartphones.
> Lots of fear increases this too, with people working too much social skills go down and mental health issues become an issue. And lack of interactions with others increases fear in general.
I think fear is an important thing to bring in here, because it's easier than ever to go down a path of "only the specific subculture on this subreddit/discord/whatever understands and accepts you, if you go to the Elks lodge the elderly crypto-nazis will literally murder you. Best to stay inside and post more about how scary those other people probably are"
If you recognize my user name at all then you've heard me bang this drum a few times before, but marketing is among the top reasons Everything Sucks in modern society.
Your attention is constantly being assaulted by people who want to sell you something. In order to sell you something, they have to convince you that you need it, but chances are you don't need it, so they exploit your insecurities.
You're not manly enough, buy our pickup truck.
You're not pretty enough, buy our makeup.
You're not working hard enough, buy our productivity enhancement programme.
You're not healthy enough, buy our fad diet.
You're entitled to money because of a minor screw up, join our class action.
Everything sucks because of that other political party, vote for us instead.
We're encouraged to treat each other as competitors and seek the material above all, because that makes it easier for companies to sell us shit.
We're encouraged to be entitled, because that makes us get angry when we don't get things, like the stuff they're trying to sell us.
Carl's Junior: Fuck you, I'm eating.
The side effect is we isolate ourselves, but that's just fine by them because they are selling us the junk we try to fill the hole in our lives with anyway.
The message fucks us up on a personal level, and that radiates out to the sociological level. It forces us to be defensive with the systems we put in place to keep people connected (email, phone calls, the web, search results, etc.) because they will exploit any opportunity to hijack your attention. Is it any wonder we're wary of connecting with people too?
TL;DR: I was stuck in a local optimum where the screen provided so much relative value, and leaving the screen required so much relative energy and vulnerability, that I’d opt for screen time.
I can only share my experience, can’t do a structural analysis.
For me, it was screens. Not anything in particular about the screen being bad in and of itself, but that the screen was so easy and efficient.
I can do my work better on a screen. I can create more value on a screen. I can have a meeting more efficiently on a screen. I can communicate more efficiently on a screen. I can entertain myself more efficiently on a screen.
Going out requires effort. I have to “get ready.” I have to go somewhere. I might not know people so I have to be vulnerable to cross a threshold of familiarity. I have to either be comfortable with myself and how others see me or I have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. These things pretty much aren’t a problem for me on a screen.
So my default is to wake up, go to a screen to work (I WFH because it’s more efficient), get done with work and find entertainment on another screen. Go to bed and start over again. I just bounced from screen to screen.
Being social. Taking care of my body. Taking care of my mind. These all require effort above that baseline.
It took me a long time to realize and appreciate that I was stuck in a local optimum and being inefficient in the short term was necessary to break out of it.
The commodification of social spaces? If you can’t spend time in places without paying (in the cost of coffee, beer, gym fees, etc ) then that excludes big chunks of people, or they alert ration their social times to some extent
I'm gonna trot this one out again: I read somewhere that people reflexively choose convenience over happiness, and I don't have a source for that but I find that it explains nearly everything about modern life. Sitting at home watching Netflix fails to fulfill all kinds of basic needs, but it's _easy_. Similar patterns are everywhere; our lives are so filled up with the path to least resistance, there's very little room for intentional effort to do things that are actually fulfilling.
The current economic system - capitalism - and the philosophy and behavior patterns that it enforces on people. I saw how the system changes a society first hand when the free market ideology took over the society I grew up. People started to compete with each other, everybody was pushed to make more money, a 'good' career, the youth were pushed to study hard for getting good jobs to acquire such good careers, even as the society started to prioritize monetary/wealth gain before everything else. Social relations, from friends to relatives get loosened as everybody was immersed in his or her own survival and self gain. Worst impacted were the youth, who were pushed to drop social concerns and work harder to secure their future. It caught the youth in their early teenage years by them being pushed to prioritize studying and success over any social relation.
So, in such a society, you enter a rat race very early in your life by starting to study hard for qualifying for a good college, and it chains forward from there on while destroying any social connections that you might have built. You already move to another city when going to college. Then the college itself quite short, merely 4 years, without enough time to create and solidify bonds. That is if the students can even find enough time to socialize in between the classes. Whatever bond was forged gets immediately broken by people moving to different cities, regions or even countries after graduation, to maximize their income and career chances.
By this point the person is already hampered in the social department. Not only he or she was not able to socialize with his or her peers and the system already forced him to isolation and alienation from the peers to compete, but also because his peers have been brought up and educated with the same competitive mentality, the human social traits that our species have developed are already hampered or repressed. The peers are competition, not people to cooperate, collaborate, less, live together to support each other. The co-workers or acquaintances frequently leaving their jobs for a better opportunity somewhere does not help - you know that even if you hit it off with some person you met in your job or locale, that person can move away tomorrow in a flash. Which makes you further wary of creating any social bond that can be broken by next week.
When the entire society is taken over by this mentality that enforces its behavior patterns, there is no escape - everybody is in a fight for survival or bettering his or her circumstances. Its a societal level alienation of people from each other and from what makes us humans a social species.
> By this point the person is already hampered in the social department. Not only he or she was not able to socialize with his or her peers and the system already forced him to isolation and alienation from the peers to compete, but also because his peers have been brought up and educated with the same competitive mentality, the human social traits that our species have developed are already hampered or repressed. The peers are competition, not people to cooperate, collaborate, less, live together to support each other.
Students did the same in the Soviet Union. Graduation exams sorted not just who got which universities (if any at all) but which subjects they would spend their time in. Competition didn't disappear behind the iron curtain.
> The co-workers or acquaintances frequently leaving their jobs for a better opportunity somewhere does not help - you know that even if you hit it off with some person you met in your job or locale, that person can move away tomorrow in a flash. Which makes you further wary of creating any social bond that can be broken by next week.
In the Soviet Union, you never knew when your friends and family would "disappear" either. Many Soviet citizens lived in a state of fear that they'd be next. That also makes you wary about who you associate with.
It should be noted that, empirically, all other economic systems that have been tried are even worse than capitalism as far as people's perceptions of their existence.
Capitalist countries have border guards to keep foreigners from coming in illegally. Socialist countries have border guards to keep their own people from escaping.
Capitalism does not enforce behavior patterns. You are free to opt out and be poor and not compete with others, if you want. You can be homeless, or subsist on minimum wage, or go on welfare benefits, and many do.
Compare this to socialist economic systems, where opting out is illegal and classifies you as a social parasite. "Being unemployed" is a felony that gets you ten years in a forced labor camp. "Complaining about how it is unfair that you are not allowed opt out" is also illegal, and also gets you a stint in the labor camp. That's "enforced behavior patterns."
> It should be noted that, empirically, all other economic systems that have been tried are even worse than capitalism as far as people’s perceptions of their existence.
The modern mixed economy, which has displaced the system for which the name “capitalism” was coined during the early to middle 20th century in virtually every place that it existed at the time the term “capitalism” was coined for the dominant economic system of the industrialized portion of the West in the mid-19th century, has, empirically, not been worse than capitalism as far as people’s perceptions.
If you compare only precapitalist systems and Leninism and its derivatives, you’d be right.
> Compare this to socialist economic systems, where opting out is illegal and classifies you as a social parasite.
The modern mixed economy is the closest (though not a very close) thing to a socialist economy system that has been tried on any large scale basis (its even the closest thing – though again not a very close thing – to a Marxist system, despite Leninists trying to claim the name.)
Vanguardist elite authoritarian state capitalist command economies are not socialist, and not (despite the aspirational claims originally made for them) empirically an effective way of bypassing the need Marx identified to go through a period of private capitalist development on the way to a socialist system.
> It should be noted that, empirically, all other economic systems that have been tried are even worse than capitalism as far as people's perceptions of their existence.
That's patently false. Socialist implementations like the USSR's lifted people from mud huts and being barefood to apartments and space age within the same generation. The only reason that it ran out of steam was because the US, who controlled 75% of world's resources at the time, started an all encompassing economic warfare and arms race to starve it of GDP by forcing it to allocate all to defense. Which is not something hypothetical or anything interpreted by historians - we have the Kennedy administration' internal memos and planning that envisaged this plan and implemented it. If ANYone did even a fraction of that to the US, the US would initiate a nuclear war as can be seen from the various examples during the Cold War. That the Soviets were way too less aggressive and they let themselves to be starved out of GDP has been a fortune for the human civilization for averting nuclear war.
> Socialist countries have border guards to keep their own people from escaping.
That's also a flat out lie that the system propagates to protect itself: Castro opened the doors of Cuba and told anyone who didnt want to stay to f... off in mid 1980. Yet the Cubans are there, except from a few who still think that the Muriel boatlift law is still in effect and they will be getting tens of thousands of dollars in US taxpayer money if they step into US soil from a boat. Otherwise they could just fly in. All the immigration from Cuba has been a few hundred thousand people, most of them people who had a good time during Batista and their relatives. Thanks to US taxpayer money, of course.
You could also leave the USSR at any time by paying back the free education and other services that the state, therefore the society, has given you for free. Which is not even an option in the US, for example - if you are born poor you just stay poor instead of someone giving you anything free.
> Capitalism does not enforce behavior patterns. You are free to opt out and be poor and not compete with others, if you want. You can be homeless, or subsist on minimum wage, or go on welfare benefits, and many do.
First, welfare benefits dont exist in capitalism. They are part of social democracy, first advocated by the socialists in the First Socialist International. So that's not the argument you want.
Second, all that you said do sound like enforcing of behavior. "You dont have to participate - you can just starve". Sounds utterly sociopathic.
> "Being unemployed" is a felony that gets you ten years in a forced labor camp.
There is no such thing anywhere. Don't make up falsities for argument. Doing the same in any country during wartime gets you the same kind of repercussion, including the 'democratic' ones who have all those written in as 'emergency laws'. If any rando like you ever knew what the 'emergency laws' in the most democratic countries involve, you would swiftly lose all the farcical illusions that you had about 'democracy'. Unfortunately such knowledge requires either special interest, or doing service in any NATO country's military or paramilitary tasked with enforcement of such laws. So that the masses like you can remain in blissful ignorance about the legal system that they live in...
...
So basically capitalism is the best system solely because people like you believe in a lot of falsities and lies. Which is of course the only way to sustain a system that kills people when they cant pay for healthcare etc...
Yes, people are different, but you'd imagine that organizations promoting nativist ideology and religious education in schools might also very likely not resonate with a more highly-correlated-with-atheism hackernews crowd, no?
The point being, the offered easy solutions aren't undeserving of critique and we can discuss real reasons people might not be joining these dying institutions. There was an issue in framing and I discussed it.
A la the other conmments around not wanting to hang exclusively with senior citizens, or ham radio not offering the kind of bustling community one might want. Perhaps there's are reasons said organizations are struggling and a reason why people might feel the choice to find meaningful community isn't always easy, when it's disincentivised in society.
Yeah, that's all very fair. I think, though, that there are definitely organizations out there that align with different views. What I was going for in my original post was to give a whole bunch of examples to demonstrate that there are a whole bunch of organizations one might look into -- and there really are, if you look for social clubs, there are loads and loads of them.
I'm hoping that we don't necessarily lump all of these into one category, because social clubs are really very diverse, and I think they're very much worth trying out for those looking for social engagement.
Yeah, some of these clubs have musty old ideals, some are conservative or strictly religious. Then, there are other clubs out there -- perhaps not as wide in size or scale, but still looking for members -- that have ideals that might be more modern, less conservative, secular, etc.
I think a lot of people these days are strictly thinking of grandpa when they hear about these social clubs, or group organizations, so they immediately write them off. But there are good organizations out there, and it might be worth a second look.
You are society when you bring people together. You are isolated when you stay away.
I mean this literally: start a society that shares common values with yourself but is broad enough to include the values of others so you’re not standing on an island alone.
I might be wrong here, but generally when I’ve felt alone and tried to start a society for people like me, other existing societies that overlap shake out of the woodwork and I realize there was a rich network of people to join up with.
For what it's worth, I've definitely noticed an uptick in respect for religion in our type of crowd, often but not always channeling Jordan Peterson's ideas.
I think after losing the last culture war, religion has had to do some real soul searching and is beginning to adapt to the new, hyper-scientific world.
Yes, it's what rfwhyte said. It's literally an externality to the company that people get inconvenienced for hours on understaffed phone lines and end up losing out on money, returns, support, etc. They benefit by reducing overhead and making the support innavigable (thus reducing successful returns/support overhead), you pay the cost with hundreds of hours of your life on hold.
But that's not the point. It's not meant to be intelligible. The point is marketing, aka to misinform consumers. It's working as expected and it happens in every field.
Choosing obscure names that make it extremely hard to compare characteristics within products by a company, much less to compare to outside competitors, is not a bug --- it's a feature.
Try buying a bike and figuring out how to compare it to other bikes by the same manufacturer from this year or last, or try to figure out what features it carries. You're left doing what you always do: staring at 7 tabs with spec sheets and slowly trying to absorb the features of the various "poorly" named offerings
It's anti consumer and I'm surprised there's not more outrage, given that a market purportedly should consist of rational consumers making informed decisions.
Even a completely 'trashed' earth that renders billions displaced or suffering amidst ecological catastrophe is still infinitely more hospitable to life than celestial bodies that are completely devoid of that benefit in the first place.
I was responding to the op saying that humans face extinction. I don't think that true. I think we could have the tech to live in "moon bases" here on earth once it has been rendered a desolate rock. And yes, billions will die.
I don't know if you've worked in industry, but companies actually won't invest in their local employee to get trained on 'industry standard' automation hardware. They contract that out. So you have no one on site who knows how anything works, half the time. The choices are often "pay s ton and have all the traditional investment of time in a contractor setting up PLC hardware and finding external software integrators to do all the other actual useful stuff you want, or just don't do the project because all of that is expensive and resource intensive."