@Babygravy9 By that point the boomers (and the generation before them) were already outsourcing all our manufacturing to China. China already had the soft power through trade and the ability to isolate Hong Kong completely. It was inevitable that they'd retake HK at some point.
@TheRPGDummy I buy blurays from charity shops and rip them to my home media server, then take them back to the charity shop for the next hero who wants to screw over Hollywood. Most charity shops don't sell them anymore, which is why you can buy movies for £2 each when you can find them.
I was lucky enough to finish upgrading my nvme drives just before prices started rising. I've got three 4TB nvme drives that have more than doubled in price since then. My friends are seething. Did the same thing with my nas. Bought my last two 18tb drives at reasonable prices. I had to wait 3 months for them because the listed stock was wrong and amazon didn't actually have any, thankfully they still honoured the price and shipped them when they came back in stock (for £195 each more than I paid for them).
@RusGarbageHuman It's not an energy issue, it's a refrigeration capacity issue. They've cheaped out and spec'd for historically "normal" weather with no overhead.
No, it's just load shedding. Supermarkets have been switching their refrigeration gear over to CO2 for supposedly editions reasons (the gas is cheaper), but because they're cheap with capital expebditure they've only spec'd capacity for historically typical summer weather with little overhead. So when it gets really hot, they turn off some of the equipment to keep the rest running. The energy costs are irrelevant since the customer ends up paying for it in the end anyway.