Control trumps access trumps ownership. If the asset is on US soil under US regulations it's controlled by the outputs of the US political system. Any failure of those assets to actually benefit the local population is a failure of the US political system.
In a simplified sense, all assets start their lives as goods, either tradable goods, goods that are used to build more goods, future goods, or things that represent ownership or an interest in any of them.
Land is a bit more complicated. But even land value is conditional in what you can use it for.
By assets I mean things that are durable and can be held and used for long periods of time, some times spanning generations. Yes, land is the ultimate example.
In a more general sense it can also be systems of law (and consistency of adherence and enforcement) that provide the stability and infrastructure for the trade of goods and services. There is a reason that famines are associated with wars: trade in food collapses when stability disappears.
What's interesting about Papua New Guinea's linguistic diversity is how it correlates with its topography. Sometimes steep mountain ranges have effectively separated peoples from each-other for thousands of years, to the point that their languages sometimes became mutually unintelligible even if they were only separated by a very small distance. This phenomenon also occurs in other parts of the world (the Caucuses, the Himalayas), but TTBOMK nowhere else to the degree of Papua New Guinea.
Many of the comments here talking about how phone hardware is capable enough to run a desktop - thereby obviating the need for a separate desktop/laptop - are missing the fact that consumers actually want multiple devices. Also, no consumer electronics company ever makes a successful business model on selling less stuff that does the same thing.
There are real functional/usability reasons for having a separate device (with its own compute/storage) in a laptop form factor, and furthermore if we are honest, laptops are a kind of student/professional fashion accessory (especially Macs), a social-signal that you are a "knowledge-worker". As a result, that form factor is not going away anytime soon.
What Google are doing seems less about the "desktop mode" for Android (though that's a necessary technical step) than it is about having a unified consumer OS experience between Android and ChromeOS, which according to reports, they are planning to merge.
> thereby obviating the need for a separate desktop/laptop - are missing the fact that consumers actually want multiple devices
Do they? What I want is the power of the desktop available when I have access to it (SW & HW), but if the phone is powerful enough (maybe with a small accelerator box for dGPUs to handle gaming/AI), I’m not really seeing the value of multiple devices; it’s just more clutter and stuff to maintain (e.g. SW context, more HW things that can break & require repair, etc). I’m already using remote VSCode to always program on my home desktop computer regardless where I am because it’s easier than juggling clones across machines and forgetting to sync somewhere.
> Do they? What I want is the power of the desktop available when I have access to it (SW & HW), but if the phone is powerful enough (maybe with a small accelerator box for dGPUs to handle gaming/AI), I’m not really seeing the value of multiple devices
Isn't that "small accelerator box for dGPUs" another device? That seems like adding more complexity, not less.
Based on what you shared, I don't think you are representative of the majority of the consumer computing device market. There are real human factors (functional and social) that have resulted in the current laptop and desktop form-factors, and why many attempts to completely replace either have failed.
> I’m already using remote VSCode to always program on my home desktop computer regardless where I am ...
Are you doing your remote VSCode session on a phone? You must need at least a 13" laptop (or phone dock device with a screen/keyboard/battery) for that. At that point, why not just use a laptop, and avoid the complexity of plugging/syncing with a phone?
Sure. But so is the monitor. But it significantly lowers the cost of the experience since I don't need separate CPU+RAM+Motherboard for a desktop.
> There are real human factors (functional and social) that have resulted in the current laptop and desktop form-factors, and why many attempts to completely replace either have failed.
Sure, or maybe the lackluster SW for such an experience is the reason it's failed. No one cares about a desktop form factor. Laptops have clearly eaten that market except for enthusiasts and you clearly see this cannibolization attempt by all players. I don't think they'll stop just because you've declared they've failed because getting this right & winning is a huge advantage.
> Are you doing your remote VSCode session on a phone? You must need at least a 13" laptop (or phone dock device with a screen/keyboard/battery) for that. At that point, why not just use a laptop, and avoid the complexity of plugging/syncing with a phone?
I think you're just grossly misunderstanding what I'm saying. If I can plug my phone into a monitor + keyboard + mouse & the phone can run VSCode with all my extensions, the point of a laptop drastically disappears. Then when I'm done work I unplug my phone and go home. The point of avoiding a laptop is cost - I have a $3k laptop that's not providing any value over a monitor + keyboard + mouse especially when I already need the keyboard + mouse to do any coding. For that cost I could have two massive really nice displays and STILL be saving money. The coding is an extreme example but you can see how simpler versions of this, which is what Android and Samsung are building, can remove the need for many laptops that kids carry around - just put your laptop shell that's just a monitor + keyboard + mouse into your backpack, pull it out, connect your phone, and start taking notes. Moreover, in a corporate environment you can now have multiple people sharing the resources of 1 machine. In fact, many coding shops even just give you a VM to do all your work on with a thin client for the local UI.
> I think you're just grossly misunderstanding what I'm saying. If I can plug my phone into a monitor + keyboard + mouse & the phone can run VSCode with all my extensions, the point of a laptop drastically disappears.
In that case, you are tied to working in places that have a monitor + keyboard + mouse ready to plug into. Perhaps that isn't a problem for your work (or allows you to put needed boundaries around where you work), but there are many people who need to have an 11+" screen and keyboard in arbitrary places, like conference rooms, libraries, classrooms, job sites, etc.
> The point of avoiding a laptop is cost - I have a $3k laptop that's not providing any value over a monitor + keyboard + mouse especially when I already need the keyboard + mouse to do any coding.
I agree that a $3k laptop is overboard. Using a laptop like that for remote-desktop and web browsing has more to do with social-signaling. But it raises the question, did you buy the $3k laptop or did your employer? If it was your employer, is it your financial problem?
For my part, I do personal local development on an $800 laptop (a Chromebook) that works pretty great. If I were only using it for coding tasks with an external display and input devices like you describe, I bet I could just as well use a $200 laptop, but I do care about display quality in on-to-go use cases, so I spent more for a higher end display.
So I'm in full agreement that one should not throw away money at overpriced laptops, but the laptop form factor itself is still pretty indispensable for doing work in arbitrary places. Somehow, I don't see VR/AR goggles that Apple and Samsung are pushing replacing them any time soon.
> I think we've seen this before. Back before phones were "smart" there was one (Nokia, maybe?) that you could put on a little dock into which you could plug a keyboard and monitor.
Still in the "smart" era, but the Motorola Atrix allowed that, but with its own laptop form factor dock.
I had one of these Atrix and laptop docks. It was really good, but sadly way ahead of its time. The desktop was a Debian-based Linux desktop and you could install various ARM packages. Unfortunately, the phone just wasn't powerful enough at the time. The touchpad was also not brilliant compared to Macs (probably better than Windows touchpads of the time). I sold it on ebay to a guy who plugged his Raspberry Pi into it, since the Atrix dock used mini HDMI and microUSB connectors. This has obviously been replaced in the modern age with USB-C.
I am pretty sure that modern phones are more than powerful enough! My wife's iPhone 16 Pro Max would be amazingly useful if not limited by iOS (which always feels like it's hiding true capabilities behind an Etch-A-Sketch interface to me). If you could plug the iPhone in and run a macOS desktop (which hasn't really changed for 15+ years), that'd be great. Thanks in advance.
I have a POCO F7 Ultra which is powerful enough to run LLMs via PocketPal and could easily replace my daily laptop or PC for work if it wasn't scuppered by USB2 on the USB-C port. If I could easily run ollama on the phone via a web interface I would because it's faster than my main PC for LLMs I think!
On Android you can go into Developer settings and force enable the ability to use desktop mode but sadly I can't without proper display support on the USB C.
> Ultimately, InventWood is planning to use wood chips to create structural beams of any dimension that won’t need finishing. “Imagine your I-beams look like this,” Lau said, holding up a sample of Superwood.
I have several exposed PSL beams and posts in my house that cross spans that are too long (~20 ft carrying an upper floor) for dimensional lumber. Because they are stained, most people who are not in construction think it's some kind of exotic hardwood due to the complex patterns made by the wood strands, and don't believe when I tell them it's just woodchips glued and compressed.
Yes, because it's faster. Doesn't really matter if you can afford a 400,000 dollar Rolls Royce if you're stuck in downtown London traffic for 30 minutes. You could've just taken the underground in 5...
They sure do. The ones that can't or don't want to hire a personal driver or go everywhere by taxi anyway. Because driving yourself isn't much fun in a city and you need to be sober every time, too.
I'm skeptical. For nearly any definition of "rich", someone can afford to take an Uber/Lyft/taxi everywhere, at least.
I think the real reason your average rich person would take transit is because in some places, at some times of day, it's significantly faster than driving. But I do believe there's some -- probably fairly small -- subset of rich people who ride public transit simply because they prefer to.
Yes rich people take the Tube/trains in London. It's convenient and often faster than driving, especially at rush hour. Basically everyone uses the Tube except for like, royalty or billionaires or whatever. In fact, people pay a premium (in rent) to live close to Tube stations.
Also, planes are a form of public transport and rich people take them all the time.
This part of your earlier comment confuses me:
> I can't think of any situation where people of greater means accept more limitations.
Probably not billionaires, but millionaires do. I know multi millionaires (6-7 figures) in the US who ride public transportation in places like SF and NYC.
You are confusing a specific situation (a particular school shooting) for the general problem (the cultural and legal circumstances that give rose to school shootings).
> Some of the worst performing schools in my area have the most funding per pupil.
> A bucket of money doesn't solve bad systems, bad administartors, bad teachers and bad parents.
You are describing the situation often occuring in poverty, crime, and violence plagued communities (of which the US has many). In those situations schools need more funding than a more well off area because they are doing more than education: they are default community social support centers, providing food, mental health support, and sometimes even shelter for children who are facing horrible scenarios in their communities and homes.
Pulling funding from those schools without addressing the societal issues will make things worse, not better. Right now, the school is the point of social service delivery.
You missed one that is arguably more important: ownership of assets that provide security, shelter, and productivity.
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