Apple had a culture of authenticity. Culture dies pretty hard in most cases. I think we will see the last of that culture dissipate, as it eroded so greatly under Cook and Ive. Then the extractive, enshittifying corruption will spread from Apple, too.

There really was something, that began with Jobs and Woz. It wasn't perfect, and Jobs had a way of twisting ethical stances in ends-justifying-means sophistry. But Steve Jobs would never have prostrated before Trump, proffering a solid gold token.

I don't know what era you grew up in, but when I was a child, Sears and Pennys were direct competitors. Sears just had a better catalog and automotive section. People going to malls would go to both to see who had the better deal on competing items. Especially for clothing. Montgomery Ward was a competitor, but they were the Chrysler to Sears/Penney's GM and Ford, the third wheel that no one went to first.

Sears fate was sealed the moment Amazon was created. The "vulture capitalist" just squeezed what value he could from the dying remains. With their catalogue business, and being "America's general store", they were in the perfect position to move from paper catalog to Internet based ordering. They adapted too late. Malls and physical department stores are never coming back at a level necessary for a Sears to thrive. It's Amazon and everyone else now.

Oh, you want profit? This is a surveillance spyware wrapper around the entire MacOS user experience - so if you thought Microsoft's Copilot Recall was invasive monitoring, you haven't seen anything yet.

If Apple won't monetize a user panopticon and partner with governments to do it, OpenAI will be right there, to take the cash.

In my day, the whole world was an "analog bag".

Mainly because my parents were too cheap to buy me the TRS-80 I kept harping about.

I will argue against strict adherence to this statement. Gnome applications written to the project guidelines have become very fine, since the introduction of GTK-4 and libadwaita. I prefer many of these to their equivalents on MacOS.

It's true that most of these fall into a general category of "utilities", and that Windows enjoys a broader ecosystem driven by commercial incentive. But Windows programs are hardly "better' for this, and the widely varied usability is generally sub-par compared to level that's become norm for Gnome/Adwaita software.

100 Big corporation publishes paper claiming to finally achieve quantum supremacy
200 Wait a few days
300 Some random math guy demonstrates how to calculate the same thing faster on a conventional consumer laptop
400 GOTO 100

Inevitable. LOL.

The EU will break up before it truly bans ICE engines. It's not going to happen in our lifetime. Brussels may impose a penalty of some kind on member states that don't comply, but it'll be fairly cheap. Some tax or another will be imposed, everyone will claim victory, and ICE vehicles will continue to roll off production lines on the Continent.

Most people are not "deeply stupid". But that post was deeply arrogant.

On the flip side, one reason I'm sticking with my old cars and not considering buying a new one any time soon is because I really like the fact that they lack connectivity of any kind. They also have real control knobs and no touch screens.

Folger's Crystals already did this experiment this back in the 1980s. Then they publicized the results ad nauseam.

No.

This room-temperature ice is simply a plot device that demonstrates the sheer stupidity of human behavior.

One of the most fascinating aspects of H2O is the sheer number of forms it can take under different conditions.

The coin should show his Mercedes in a handicapped spot.