US *admitted that there is no spy equipment on the balloon.

Once again, you are making things up.

The US said the spy balloon was certainly capable of spying, but it did not collect information over the US, in part because of the American response.

"We're aware that it had intelligence collection capabilities, but it was our -- and it has been our -- assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States," Ryder said during a briefing, adding, "As we said at the time, we also took steps to mitigate the potential collection efforts."

And does it explain how air currents can add two thousand pounds of equipment to a balloon?

Sure, it's possible that China deployed a completely novel type of weather balloon. But if so, it should not be surprised by the interception of its unusual balloon when it entered US airspace.

For that matter, if you designed a brand new weather instrument that was carried in the back of a Cessna, and then you flew that Cessna into Chinese airspace to carry out your measurements, then you should expect to be intercepted and probably arrested. After all, Mathias Rust was sentenced to four years for violating Soviet airspace.

But real weather balloons do not follow air currents. They ascend and descend over the same point, so that they can be easily recovered by real scientists. Real weather balloons are also far smaller. Various scientists, not just Americans, said that the Chinese balloons did not resemble the instruments they use.

There have been multiple incidents of Chinese balloons that "flew off course" and ended up over sovereign airspace.

If China doesn't want its balloons destroyed, it will have to do a better job controlling its "research instruments".

And The Guardian referred to it as a spy balloon right in this very article.

Incidentally, the Pentagon said it did not collect information over the US. Perhaps it was intended to collect information elsewhere.

I believe what we have here is the rare double-reverse-whoosh

You don't need capitalism to motivate innovation, as long as you still have warfare.

I'm gonna have to rank penicillin and transistors above lithium batteries.

They aren't defederating everyone. They are selectively defederating the instances they don't like. Or selectively federating the instances they do like. Which is exactly how the fediverse is meant to work.

If you like the instances they don't like, or vice versa, then you should make your account on an instance other than theirs. Which is also how the fediverse is meant to work.

I'm not sure the problem is so trivial.

Long before the existence of IP, people who developed something new would keep their manufacturing process secret in order to prevent competition. Even today, sometimes they still do (in fact, the purpose of patents is to discourage trade secrets).

Now suppose someone invents a new medicine, or a new alloy, or a new machine, or a new algorithm, and refuses to tell anyone how it was made or how it works.

And suppose reverse engineering isn't feasible. Maybe it's too much work considering the value of the product (nobody is interested in reverse engineering your particular favorite shampoo). Or maybe the machine uses sufficiently strong encryption to prevent its reproduction. Or maybe there is some other obstacle.

Again, before modern capitalism these problems were the norm. If you wanted a very particular product, you often had no choice but to find a very particular provider.

As before, at what point does paying someone to help make such a product become exploitation?

Well, good news then. The vast majority of Mastodon and Lemmy users are on just a few big instances.

Those who are not, have their reasons. That's ok, the big instances will still work as you expect. There is no reason to "centralize" people who intentionally want to remain on the periphery