This fantasy that if we just streamlined production by mass producing reactors is ridiculous. If you look at what the specific problems and costs were, it's obvious that you aren't going to make nuclear cheap that way.

In my experience apt doesn't just work. To give you a recent example I upgraded LinuxPTP on RPi OS, and the apt version was broken. Ended up downloading source and compiling it myself.

That's the key difference, it really does actually work. The Windows one also has a lot of non-free software, and while I prefer Free software, I need some proprietary stuff, and so do many users.

Seriously?

"We have been working on it for over 75 years, just give us a bit more money and I swear it will finally be as cheap as promised!"

I mostly use F-Droid on Android, not Google Play. It just works, apps have permissions that are easy to control, and other than sometimes saying an app is too old for my version of Android, it all just works.

On Windows I mostly use winget for apps, again few issues with compatibility.

On Linux I often find that software from repos is broken and flatpaks don't work. A lot of stuff comes as a Docker container now, but those can be hit and miss as well. The Docker Compose configuration file format seems to be designed to cause maximum pain and suffering.

Reality TV and social media made the idiots louder, but worse than that it make them easier to manipulate. We saw interference via social media during recent elections and referendums, and traditional media like Fox News and GB News have taken lying to their audiences to another level.

It's basically a fight between billionaires and foreign powers to see how can screw things up the most in their own favour now, and useful idiots are the tools.

GNOME is an abomination, but it's not just that. If you check the video I posted in another comment, the guy talks about how he settled on a Pop OS derivative, which is itself a derivative of Ubuntu, which is derived from Debian, because it actually just worked for the basic writing and note taking he wanted to do. The others failed not because GNOME is awful, but because the two bits of software he wanted were broken out of the box.

The way Linux is, package maintenance is a massive overhead that frequently goes wrong. Linus even commented on it a few years ago, saying it was an inferior way of distributing software compared to competing operating systems, and a waste of the maintainers' time. I tend to agree, the way Android and Windows do it are both superior.

For security we need to be able to modify Javascript, e.g. have a privacy enhancement add-on delete or re-write parts of it. Otherwise it will be abused for spying and DRM.

Linking to 3rd parties is deliberate. It means the browser can use a cached version of that large Javascript framework, instead of re-downloading it and re-compiling it from scratch for every website.

The situation with non-Chrome browsers is annoying. Even Firefox breaks a lot of sites, especially if you have privacy settings turned up. I tried a user agent changer, but Cloudflare detects it somehow even when it isn't active on that site, and you get into a captcha loop.

It must be hell for people with disabilities who need assistive technologies.

One nice solution to this is to introduce a third party, usually the government. In some of the Nordics and in Japan the government negotiates with employers for annual baseline salary increases and on conditions, effectively acting like a union. The actual unions are also involved.

It creates a bit more balance. Not perfect of course, but much better than what most countries have.

The problem is that people inevitably run into some problem with their distro, and their choice is either try another distro and hope it is broken in a different way, or run some command line copy/paste stuff and hope that doesn't bugger things up.

There's a new video like this every week: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FT2bZ2L4e_dw

Guy had an older Thinkpad, one of the best machines for Linux because it has compatible hardware and great community support. Still immediately ran into issues.

The great exodus of people from Windows 10 just isn't going to happen. Many will try it, 99% will give up and go to Windows 11.

You can enable the "this day on Slashdot" sidebar. It's not quite what you asked for, but it does show older posts. The oldest today is Windows iTunes Sells A Million Songs In 3.5 Days from 2003.

Ah, remember when people used to buy music? In a nasty DRMed format too.

Android just goes to show why GNU/Linux will never become mainstream. It fixes the main issues - stable and sane APIs, security that users can actually understand and take advantage of, software distribution and availability.

The fact that it's Linux underneath is hardly even relevant, given that the actual Android APIs have been ported to other operating systems such as Windows.

What's worrying is that they all seem to have stalled when it comes to things people really care about - better cameras, better batteries. Google is the same, the Pixel line used to be about the best cameras in the industry, but the last few years they have stalled with only marginal improvements.

Only the Chinese brands seem to be innovating now, with massive camera sensors and better optics, and new battery chemistry to fit more energy into the same space.

Cheap EVs can drive for 4-5 hours before needing a short stop to charge. Before I bought my current one I looked at some potential journeys, like a 9 hour one from one end of the country to the other. It would need 2x 10 minute and 1x 20 minute stops.

Or rather, the car needs fewer comfort breaks than I do. The battery can outlast my bladder.

Outside of some very niche situations, there really is little point to PHEVs. You get all the disadvantages of a fossil, and the smaller battery limits the benefits you get from the EV side. They aren't even any cheaper to make up for it.

They do that in the UK too. It's been over-hyped, as with most stories about China.

I bought my last car "pre reg", meaning that the dealer bought it and registered the car in their name, and I bought it "second hand" with only a few kilometres on the clock. And when I got it, the dealer hadn't even bothered to register it to themselves, so I am the first and only owner.

It's just the way they discount new cars to fudge the numbers, very very common here. They can shift sales into different months, deal with over-stocking issues at storage locations, that kind of thing. Like all retail businesses, sometimes they need the throughput, sometimes they need the higher margin.