As others have already stated, the job market is fine, the stocks are fine, but the ability to afford living day to day is worse than I have ever remembered. Here in my cheaper state here are some random prices:
A bag of Doritos is over $7.
Beef shortage makes ground beef for a family of 4 $14
Gas prices are over $3.70
My grocery bill increased by nearly 50% overall and we are buying less on top of that
Car prices are through the roof, making it impossible for people like me to change cars (I’m hearing they are going to drop again soon)
Rent prices are soaring to the point where it isn’t sustainable
While true, unfortunately the latest government spy bill is bipartisan. It will make end to end encryption for texts and chat illegal, using drug enforcement as the excuse.
Basically, a website can block you or treat you suspiciously based on whether or not this “feature” says that your computer or browser is approved and unmodified.
This can become a problem as more sites adopt this. You can be using a 2 year old device and suddenly your bank stops working because your device no longer shows up as approved. It can be used to artificially enforce obsolescence. The fix would be to buy a new device.
You could be using Linux or a 3rd party browser and many websites will become unavailable to you because they can never show up as approved and unmodified. It basically breaks the open web.
The best part of this is that the AI could not come up with original content. All it can do is repeat what humans already output. I would say games journalism is safe from an AI takeover. Now we just need to get rid of the bot spam.
This is why tech monopolies are bad. Google waited until they had a near monopoly on the browser engine and then pulls this shit. Alternatives still exist though, and people will vote with their actions by either not using Chrome or not using those websites that have DRM.
Creating nuclear power plants should be a high priority. At 112 degrees, AC is not optional. The state should be making sure that everyone has access to low cost, clean energy.
Damn, that’s sad. VIM has been a part of my software development career since the beginning. Thank you Bram Moolenaar for your invention.