They don't have to. In two weeks nobody will (pretend to) care anymore.

Whether or not I have a sane reason to use port 25 is none of their business.

They just like banning stuff. Guns, child porn, whatever is just a pretense to restrict your freedoms. That's what governments, any and all governments, do.

This is the real problem with the US tariffs. There is no strategy and no confidence from businesses that their investments will pay off. China can do it because everyone knows that the CCP will stick to their plan but Trump changes his mind every hour and no policy can ever last more than an election cycle.

Tariffs/subsidies should be weaned off over time. Their success absolutely does not depend on "local retailers [why are you even talking about retailers when it is all about manufacturers?] deciding all on their own to lower their prices". The external competitors are still there and will just come back when tariffs are lowered, so domestic manufacturers are forced to become cost competitive.

> Tariffs/subsidies should be weaned off over time.

The economic problem is that so long as the production cost imbalance exists, weaning off the tariffs just creates the same market forces that created the trade imbalance (and export of jobs) that created the situation in the first place.

I.e., if it inherently costs $5 to make a "widget" in Elbonia [1] and it inherently [2] costs $25 to make the identical (in every way) "widget" here [3] then while a tariff of $20/widget would make both equal in price, any reduction in the tariff will make the Elbonian made widget cheaper, and a purchaser will be incentivized to buy the Elbonian made one over the "made here" version because they, individually, save money by doing so.

So to maintain the widget making industry "here" the tariff has to be maintained. Any reduction and the cost incentives of "made in Elbonia" reappear, and the local manufacturer sees a corresponding drop in sales.

[1] Chosen only because it is not a real place.

[2] Meaning the local manufacturer cannot possibly produce one for less, due to higher costs "here" (e.g., energy costs, raw materials costs, labor costs, insurance costs, etc.)

[3] Where ever "here" is for the reader.

Is this supposed to be some sort of "gotcha"? The whole point of tariffs is to increase prices so that there is a chance for more expensive domestic producers to establish themselves against foreign competition. It's working as intended.

They don't care if Windows is good or not because they don't make any money on it. Today, the only purpose of Windows OS is to advertise (or force) other more profitable Microsoft products as cheaply as possible.

Windows & Devices is still a $14ish Billion/year or so business for Microsoft. I know that doesn’t seem like a lot, but that’s a lot of money they’re apparently not making which would make their most recent 10K filing with the SEC a lie. It’s apparently enough money they’re not making that they keep screwing with Windows in unproductive ways that make their Windows customers resent them every time they release an update.

You don't need 10x developers. You just need to avoid the 1/10 multiplier of pitting separate development and operations teams against each other.

Why do you think that? I can't really think of a use case where AI would be much help to me in the CAD context.

No, it really isn't. I use Ubuntu daily and not a month passes without a serious issue that no normal user would be able to solve. Last week my desktop completely froze again (as it often does) and Linux broke a mounted NTFS partition when I shut off the power.

Thank you for being honest. This is exactly my experience as well.