/. used to have a Monty Python rabbit icon. Wonder why that wasn't used.

Real question: What would be the point of that? Even hoarded gold would have no value if nobody but a select group of people could do anything with it.

This country's government is designed to have checks and balances on power. Congress isn't supposed to rubber-stamp every suggestion the President makes about spending -- they're the ones in charge of those decisions. Judges, particularly at the highest levels, aren't supposed to be partisan stooges; they're supposed to follow the law, but that doesn't seem to be what we have now. Nobody outside of the executive seems to want to exert their power, for fear of losing it. Apparently, it's enough to be able to claim having it.

Based on their press release, it looks like it's just the case that Chinese automakers are using them more. On their "ecosystem" list, you don't see any Waymo/Jaguar, Tesla, or other companies making cars for the U.S. market (except Volvo).

A government that's dedicated solely to extracting as much money from the U.S. economy and awarding it as gifts to loyalist oligarchs couldn't screw up a corporation worse than it already is? Ye of little faith.

All these constant "updates," adding and removing features and changing UI elements, are all part of trying to convince customers that the operating system, itself, "needs" to be SaaS.

I had a friend whose job at Oracle was to gin up fake demos of products that didn't exist. When the customer saw the demo and decided they wanted it, the second-tier sales staff would drag out pricing negotiations until the product was actually built. If the customer ever got anything for their trouble, it was an alpha at best.

You mean they're not yellow?

That's the color teeth are supposed to be.

I'm not sure if this is true, but I saw a stat recently: no civilization - and we are a global civilization at this point - has ever recovered culturally once their population replacement rate has dropped beneath 1.8.

That's sobering, regardless. We've got many developed populations rapidly approaching low 1.x ratios, while continuing to import (predominantly, young, male, illiterate) immigrants from what could best be described as "the developing world".

That's not a situation that works out well for anyone, in the end.

This has happened many times over the decades. Osmosis (mostly!) results in the better changes trickling back into mainstream linux distributions.

My least/most favorite example of this is Stormix Linux.

It was based on Debian, back in 1999. It was geared towards a simplified desktop experience and introduced a lot of new things, at the time: graphical installer that detected hardware (and had a broad set of hardware support not found elsewhere); GUI apt manager; and a number of other really clean add ons that made the desktop more usable. It was head and shoulders above all other options at the time.

When Stormix the company failed, and the distro died, the resulting community/developer effort became the Progeny Debian distribution for a short while, and a Progeny package repository. I used that for years.

Arguably, if it wasn't for Stormix, Ubuntu wouldn't have become what it is today, as those efforts were later channeled into Ubuntu.

As with most things in life, it's 2 steps forward and one step back...

That's not a purpose, aka a focus, it's a method.

I dream a lot lately, too. Mine are also in color. But mine, while they contain dreamlike elements, in that some stuff usually happens that doesn't quite make sense, they're generally about pretty ordinary situations, even if things like people and locations are made-up.

As for why I have frequent dreams, I just associate it with getting good, restful sleep.

I couldn't read the full article (paywalled), but the first paragraph mentions night hags, "night mares," succubi, and incubi. These are now all believed to be historical ways of describing the phenomenon of sleep paralysis. Many people who experience this phenomenon describe the experience as terrifying. They see things like a large, shadowy figure at the end of their bed, or crawling toward them, or sitting or pressing down on their chest.

One of the causes of episodes of sleep paralysis can be chronic obstructive sleep apnea. Even if you don't experience sleep paralysis, sleep apnea can also be associated with nightmares.

You know what else is associated with sleep apnea? Stuff like heart disease, COPD, Type 2 diabetes, and even stroke. So, you know ... don't scoff. It's research.

Calling Belgium 3rd world isn't fair at all. It's a fledging 3rd world country at worst, nothing at all similar to the imminent 3rd world country that (say) the UK is.

You spend a lot of time on X, huh?