Guitar strings do not generate sound, unless plucked. However there are devices like the Sustaniac and the short-lived Moog guitar that do use electromagnets to induce vibrations in the strings. So you could compare this to the Sustaniac.

EDIT - forgot about the ebow

If The US goes to war against China, we are screwed, because we outsourced our manufacturing to China. We cannot quickly ramp up our manufacture of ships, tanks, aircraft or ammunition. Not only do we lack manufacturing capacity, the entire supply chain is in China / Asia.

In addition, China leads in the critical technologies need for drone oriented warfare, like we are seeing in Ukraine.

In particular, the pentagon has so many suppliers in China. Oh, the KPIs (key pharmaceutical ingredients) are produced by China too. We even had shortage of saline solution when China was having a supply crunch. So when a conflict, let alone a war, broke out with China, what do we do? We ask China to supply us the war logistics?

A fun story, China has the best automated seafood processing factories that meet all kinds of regulations in the world. It's cheaper, a lot cheaper, for Japan and Alaska to send their seafood to China to process, and then sell back to the domestic market. And it has nothing to do with cheap labor but deep R&D of China. So, when war broke out, many people won't be able to enjoy cheap seafood either.

I don't understand how people can ignore a simple fact (is it Milton who pointed that out?): Manufacturing is a "doing" business, not a "knowing" business. Our expertise is forged on the shop floor, not dreamed up in a boardroom, and certainly not bought through outsourcing. There is so much tacit knowledge that manufacturing capability is a living system. It lives in the collective experience of the workforce and the rhythm of the line, not in static documents.

Oh maybe this is the time to quota Thomas Joseph Dunning: With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent., positive audacity; 100 per cent. will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged.

I was a jurist on a murder trial. The defendant had spent 1.5 years in jail awaiting his trial. Then went back to jail after the hung jury did not deliver a verdict.

1.5 years is low for a murder trial. I would suspect the average is somewhere between 2 and 5 years. A lot of the time, if the defendant knows they are cooked, then they are just holding out for a better plea deal.

I've personally met defendants on their ninth year awaiting trial, and during COVID a lot of jails were forced to publish their detainees lists, and I noted some who were over 11 years without a trial.

At age 62, I'm wondering which mythical decade did not alienate software developers?

There was a brief ray of hope in the late 90s, with the startup gold-rush idea that we would all be millionaires soon. Then the I realized the founders had 4000x my equity those companies...

Developers used to be freer to choose their tools, organize their routines, decide the result of their work, acquire transferable knowledge, and had access to their tools without any link to any organization (though that one has been steadily improving instead of post-peak).

There is more to alienation than equity.

My 40 years of alienation was not about equity, I was pointing out that the optimistic "We are all going to be rich" vibe of the 90s was wishful thinking due to the massive inequality in the tech world.

Few teams other than green-field start-ups have flexibility regarding tools or technology. My first job was COBOL, 'nuff said about that. Even at start-ups the leads / architects choose most of the technology, and many of my ideas were shot down, such as using C++ in the late 90s, and using Scala in 2010.

People seem to think agile has increased alienation, when in fact the pre-agile world was also terrible. What matters is the quality of the team, not the methodology.

One comedy that did a good job of depicting programmers with no sense of hope circa 1999 was Office Space.

A friend of mine spent some time living in homeless shelters. Even having one room mate was a problem at times, as many of the people there have mental issues (my friend included).

We need tiers of low cost housing. Some people could make a communal space work, they would need to be able to vote to kick people out. People who are difficult to deal with need their own place, maybe a less dystopian form of mental institute. More like a dorm with mental services and security.

This is part of the advantage of SROs: every person has their own space, with a locking door.

> maybe a less dystopian form of mental institute. More like a dorm with mental services and security.

That already exists. It's underfunded.

Captain Kirk did that a few times in Star Trek, but with less fanfare.

Young Padawan, C++ was once a cool language, and I had to battle at multiple companies before I was finally able to make the career switch from C.

The conventional wisdom was "Where will we get C++ programmers?", "We don't have experience with C++", "C++ is too bleeding edge", and so on. The same excuses people give today to not use Rust, or your favorite hyped language.

If we follow the logic of OP, we will almost never develop new languages, because there are already multiple established languages good enough for any task at hand.

With Trump, assume there will be massive kickbacks and corruption, most likely nothing useful will happen.

My meditation teacher says what works for him is cannabis.

That is what traditional US foreign aid was all about. We give money to allies, they buy our military hardware or farm products. Trump of course has shit all over the system, so who knows what we are going to do now.

We also give out tons of subsidies and tax breaks to lure foreign investment to the US.