tal

Unless this is some sort of...I don't know, metaphorical commentary on Brexit or something, I'm not sure that this community is the right place for this post.

The article certainly implies that this relates to AI, but doesn't really provide support for that. Intel dominates all of the numbers here by an enormous amount, and I'm very skeptical that Intel layoffs are because they were able to automate positions

Intel just went through an absolutely catastrophic two generations of CPUs that destroyed themselves and then fell behind schedule on fabs.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/1/24210656/intel-is-laying-off-over-10000-employees-and-will-cut-10-billion-in-costs

Intel is laying off over 15,000 employees and will stop ‘non-essential work’

After losses, the chipmaker is cutting $10 billion in costs.

Also, while I'm not saying that a South African news source couldn't provide reasonable US business coverage, it probably wouldn't be the first place I'd look.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/articles/where-supreme-court-justices-earned-la

Here is a summary of the legal education of the sitting Supreme Court justices.

• Alito: Yale

• Barrett: Notre Dame

• Jackson: Harvard

• Gorsuch: Harvard

• Kavanaugh: Yale

• Kagan: Harvard

• Roberts: Harvard

• Sotomeyer: Yale

• Thomas: Yale

Now go start a fight with Yale too, Trump.

I know that this is a legit military issue, but I really think that the broader problem of a ton of poorly-secured and generally not maintained devices with sensors being hooked up to the Internet should also be addressed.

It's a problem for everyone sticking devices with cameras and/or microphones and Internet connectivity all over.

It just feels like talking about the impact in the Russo-Ukraine war and now on EU border security is looking at the issue through a tiny pinhole, even if military matters are important.

Generally-speaking, USB mice/trackballs don’t need drivers.

Except to program the buttons

No, like...okay. How do I best put this?

"Driver" software is going to be software designed to talk directly to hardware.

In Linux, if you go looking for "driver software microsoft trackball", you probably won't generally find what you're looking for to bind things to mouse buttons.

In Windows, it's common for you to buy a device and for it to be bundled with some software written by the device vendor. That's because the device vendor is writing the software to sell their product. They're selling you a package of software and the device, and they're bundling the software specifically because they want the hardware to sell. While technically the "driver" part is only the bit that talks directly to the hardware, and often there's a lot of other software bundled, it's not uncommon to use "driver" more-colloquially to just refer to all the bundled software.

In Linux, while sometimes vendors do release proprietary software with their hardware, you're more-likely to be using software from some open-source projects. Those projects don't care about how some specific piece of hardware does in the market. They just want the functionality to be available everywhere. So unless a piece of hardware is truly unique or requires some way of specially interfacing with it, you're more-likely to be using a software package that works with many different pieces of hardware. They won't call it a "driver".

In general, for things like mice, the hardware-level stuff is all in the kernel already, because the USB standard already defines how those devices need to act to present their extra buttons; it's not necessary to add additional special software to talk to the hardware. Instead, you're just looking for a piece of software that can send a series of keypresses or whatever when you click a button, something like antimicrox.

Windows games that have integration

not games, other than the profile layout, but system monitors in windows display on it.

Fair enough. Just wanted to moderate expectations. I vaguely recall that Logitech had some other full-size "gamer keyboard" in the past that had a text display with some sort of game integration. I think I remember Teamspeak integration being on the list.

kagis

I don't think that this was it; what I'm remembering was an older keyboard, but:

https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Programmable-Gaming-Keyboard-Display/dp/B001NXDBI6

A color GamePanel LCD displays game stats, system information, VOIP communication data, video playback, image slideshows

I'm guessing that the VoIP there is talking about Teamspeak, and they mention "game stats".

And I don't think that there's an out-of-box way to have something like that running under Linux for your G13 and displaying specific-game-relevant information.

Generally-speaking, USB mice/trackballs don't need drivers. USB input devices look pretty much the same to the OS. You'd want some kind of non-device-specific program to perform macros when you hit particular buttons.

I have not used it myself, but I understand that antimicrox is one such program. I use Debian Linux, and it's packaged there.

kagis

On the G13, the Arch wiki has some discussion. It sounds like the best option there is "g13d". g13d is not packaged in Debian Linux, and would need to be manually compiled and installed if your Linux distro doesn't package it.

I have no idea what the state of software is to display anything useful on the thing. The Arch page says that the g13d daemon displays a logo on it when it starts up, so it clearly can display things, but I don't see any other functionality it provides (e.g. a clock) or what other software there is that can talk to g13d. If you have any Windows games that have integration with it and can display something on it, if that's a thing, they probably won't know about g13d.

https://github.com/brittyazel/g13d

From a ten-second skim, I also don't know whether the thing is set up to modify functionality based on the particular program with a foreground window, which I don't know if is important, if you want game-specific bindings.

EDIT: The G13 also includes a 160×43 pixel monochrome LCD.

There are a couple of software packages I know of that are intended to display various sorts of system information on small, external LCD displays; these would typically be set up on the front of a desktop computer case. It might be possible, if you have the technical chops, to rig one of these up to the G13's display, as they're already intended to display a small amount of information on a low-resolution display.

This includes lcdproc, lcd4linux, and a few others. They won't be oriented towards extracting and displaying data from a running video game, though, if the G13 does that.

EDIT2: Michael Larabel, who runs the Phoronix Linux gaming site, reviewed using the G13 under Linux back in 2009, and at least at that time, it didn't have native support from lcdproc (and he also commented on how that might be useful).

https://www.phoronix.com/review/logitech_g13/3

As far as how the device worked once we got it functioning under Ubuntu Linux, well, the LCD screen is nice (though with LCDproc support it would be a lot better and more useful) and using this 22-key game pad was nicer for gaming than on a laptop keyboard.

goes looking for anything regarding a pharmaceutical breakdown

https://www.euronews.com/health/2025/04/30/eu-commission-slams-first-us-step-towards-pharmaceutical-tariffs

Washington sources around 80% of its active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) from China, India, and the EU. In 2024, pharmaceuticals were the top US import from the EU, including $127 billion (€117 billion) worth of semaglutide, a key component in popular weight-loss medications.

Hmm. That's a lot. That single chemical was imported at three times the value of all motor vehicle imports.

goes looking

I think that Euronews must have that statistic wrong. Semaglutide is big, but not that big. And that doesn't mesh with the above bar chart I provided from the European Commission at all.

https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/semaglutide-market-report

The global semaglutide market size was estimated at USD 28.43 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 10.47% from 2025 to 2035.

looks further

Oh, Euronews must have mixed up the value of the whole pharma import category with the specific chemical. Smooth, guys. CNBC looks like it has it correct:

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/13/trumps-tariffs-will-hit-these-european-union-products-hardest.html

The top U.S. import from the EU in 2024, by category and dollar value, was pharmaceutical products, according to data from the U.S. Trade Census analyzed by ImportGenius. Included in that $127 billion worth of EU imports was semaglutide, an ingredient used in the popular GLP-1 weight loss drugs from Novo Nordisk, Ozempic and Wegovy. The GLP-1 compound was the sixth-largest import from the EU to the U.S., at $15.6 billion.

I will say that, even so, a major price increase there seems like it'd be pretty rough for a lot of Trump voters. Like, semaglutide is something that you'd be given if you're obese.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaglutide

Semaglutide is an anti-diabetic medication used for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and an anti-obesity medication used for long-term weight management.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/10/health/ozempic-glp-1-survey-kff

1 in 8 adults in the US has taken Ozempic or another GLP-1 drug, KFF survey finds

https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/php/data-research/index.html

National Diabetes Statistics Report

Prevalence varied significantly by education level, which is an indicator of socioeconomic status. Specifically, 13.1% of adults with less than a high school education had diagnosed diabetes versus 9.1% of those with a high school education and 6.9% of those with more than a high school education (Appendix Table 3).

Trump's rise back in 2016 was strongly supported by low-education voters in the Republican primaries; I remember people talking about demographic analysis:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-overwhelmingly-leads-rivals-in-support-from-less-educated-americans

Trump overwhelmingly leads rivals in support from less educated Americans

And presently, that's also true for the Republican Party relative to the Democratic Party:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/14/politics/the-biggest-predictor-of-how-someone-will-vote

“The biggest single, best predictor of how someone’s going to vote in American politics now is education level. That is now the new fault line in American politics,” Sosnik told David Chalian on the “CNN Political Briefing” podcast.

Trump’s rise over the past three election cycles, Sosnik argued, “accelerated and completed this political realignment based on education that had been forming since the early ’70s, at the beginning of the decline in the middle class.”

As the US transitions to a 21st century economy, there’s a rift between the people who attain education – “that’s become the basic Democratic Party,” he said, comparing them with people who feel left behind, “that group of voters is now the modern Republican Party base.”

https://www.statista.com/statistics/234534/participation-in-us-public-assistance-programs-by-education-level/

So you simultaneously have:

• Low-education Americans having particularly supported Trump.

• Medicaid (government medical services subsidy for low-income Americans) being slashed by the GOP, which transfers medical costs off taxpayers and more-heavily onto poor people who suffer from medical conditions; low-education Americans greatly disproportionately depend on this subsidy.

• In theory, states could simply increase medical subisidy outside of Medicaid, but the fact that Medicaid provides federal funding causes fiscal transfers across states. Most of the states that pitch in to the federal budget are (wealthier) Democratic states. Aside from New Mexico, which is very Democratic and makes heavy use of Medicaid, most states that heavily use Medicaid are poorer Republican-voting states. West Virgina had the highest level of popular support for Trump in the last Presidential election, had every county get a majority vote for Trump, had the single county with the highest share of Trump support in the US...and the second-highest level of Medicaid dependence.

• Tariffs that effectively amount to a substantial consumption tax on medicine are

assuming these Trump EU tariffs go into force

being put into place. Medicine has a low price elasticity of demand

one is pretty much going to have to pay for that whether it's expensive or not

so I'd think that people who have to have medicine are going to likely have to pay such a tax. They can't easily just not get medicine.

• A major increase looks to be on a drug that is considerably-disproportionately needed by low-education Americans.

I have to say that this kind of adds to some observations that a number of high-profile Trump policies seem to be disproportionately financially bad for Trump supporters.

Started when I was noticing that the Trump administration seemed to be doing a lot of things that looked to be really negative for American agriculture. I'd intuitively expect a Republican trifecta to favor agriculture; rural states tend to vote Republican, and rural areas within states tend to vote Republican. But a lot of things, from crackdowns on illegal immigration (one of the most-economically-important areas for illegal immigrants is agricultural work that requires manual labor) to the likely impact of countertariffs (China has, in the past, targeted American soy farmers with countertariffs, and you normally want low barriers to trade if you're globally competitive, which American agriculture generally is) seem to have real negatives for agriculture. Oh, and cutting SNAP (food stamps, a federal subsidy for food for low-income Americans). It used to be that federal subsidy for agriculture mostly took the form of subsidizing crop insurance, but I understand that over the decades, it shifted to SNAP to help build political support; this combines a subsidy for the poor and a subsidy for agriculture, so one can use political support from both factions.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-commodity-policy/farm-bill-spending

Examples of Farm Act programs provided with mandatory funding include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as well as most commodity and conservation programs.

If you're an American farmer and are looking at a pie chart like that, you probably don't want to cut nutrition assistance...but that's exactly what's happening.

During the first Trump administration, the administration did send financial support to American farmers to help mitigate the damage from the trade war with China, and I was guessing that maybe that'd improve its popularity in the sense that Trump was sending very visible financial aid and the harm was indirect and harder to see, but the material I was able to find, including publications from generally-Republican farming regions, seemed to be pretty unenthusiastic about the prospect of trade wars.

I kind of feel like I'd like to see an economist who specializes in political economy kind of walk through this, because it's left me more-than-a-little-puzzled. I can believe Trump burning someone who voted for him and maybe doesn't have a great handle on the impact of his policies, but one would think that the Republican Congressional delegation would be expected to look out for constituent interests, and these don't seem to do this. And agricultural industry associations like the Farm Bureau have not been happy either, and they're going to have bean-counters who should know the relevant numbers and inputs taking a pretty close look at this:

https://www.fb.org/news-release/afbf-new-tariffs-will-impact-americas-farmers

American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall today expressed alarm about potential harm to farmers resulting from the order signed by President Trump imposing stiff tariffs on the United States’ top three agricultural markets by value. An economic emergency was declared to put duties of 25% on imports from Mexico and Canada, with limited exceptions, as well as 10% on all imports from China. Canada and Mexico both announced they would impose retaliatory measures.

“Farm Bureau members support the goals of security and ensuring fair trade with our North American neighbors and China, but, unfortunately, we know from experience that farmers and rural communities will bear the brunt of retaliation. Harmful effects of retaliation to farmers ripple through the rest of the rural economy.

“In addition, over 80% of the United States’ supply of a key fertilizer ingredient — potash — comes from Canada. Tariffs that increase fertilizer prices threaten to deliver another blow to the finances of farm families already grappling with inflation and high supply costs.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=USA-EU_-_international_trade_in_goods_statistics

Looks like that'd be bad for EU pharmaceuticals and auto manufacturers in particular.

WRT autos, it'd be doing the opposite of eliminating the chicken tax.

EDIT: Assuming (a) that tariffs go into force, (b) stay in place (with China they were cut to 30% before long), (c) exceptions don't show up (with China, electric devices were exempted), (d) and disregarding price elasticity of demand and how readily a given good could be obtained from elsewhere, all of which might, I expect, be substantial factors in impact.

EDIT2:

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/23/european-stock-markets-live-updates-ftse-dax-cac-40-stoxx-600-friday.html

European autos index sheds 3.6% after Trump 50% tariff threat on EU

I guess that'd support an argument of auto manufacturers being impacted.

It is going to kill people

Mostly in states that Trump won, ironically.

https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-states-most-impacted-republicans-plan-medicaid-benefits-2069129

Not to mention that even within that, it will tend to impact older voters, who use medical care at a greatly-disproportionate rate and also tend to vote Republican.

This doesn't have much to do with international use of the dollar.

but doesn’t explain why the administration appears to be more focused on cuts than any particular requirements

Gotta pay for tax cuts one way or another.

I don't think that that's very uncommon. When one "goes to the bathroom", it's understood that this is a euphemism for urinating or defecating, not just hanging out there.