* No reasonable RAM upgrade path
* No reasonable storage upgrade path
* for some models, difficulty replacing battery

I would love to get something like the Apple Neo laptop if I knew I could extend its life to 8-10 years by upgrading hardware at the 4-5 year mark at a reasonable cost and replace the battery as needed at a reasonable cost.

Without those options, I'm looking at non-Apple hardware, which means a non-Apple OS and not being in the Apple ecosystem and not giving Apple the revenue stream that goes with being in that ecosystem.

I hope someone at Apple sees this and lets the right people know that their decisions to make hardware upgrades difficult or impossible is costing them future revenue.

At least one of the late-1980s/early-1990s Mac desktops and at least one IBM* enterprise-fleet-targeted desktop were designed for very fast in-the-field repair by corporate IT staff. By repair I mean "unscrew the case, replace the faulty component, screw the case back together, and get the customer back up and running ASAP."

I personally saw computers from both companies that had ONE screw, not counting customer-installed security screws/locking devices. Everything else was held in place by latches, friction, or other easy-to-manipulate no-tools-required connections. You could literally replace any one of the major components with less than 5 minutes of downtime once you'd done it a few times. Floppy drive, check, hard drive, check, power supply, check, motherboard, check, add-in boards, check, various cables, check, case, check. OK replacing the case might take 10 minutes but only because it requires moving all of the other components.

* IBM sold off its PC computing line to Lenovo in the 1990s or 2000s.

The future is to use AI to screen code before it is published to the world.

For code written or influenced by an AI, have a different, independently-developed AI screen it for security bugs.

They were named after people who did some pretty unsavory things during their times in power.

Doing unspeakably evil acts is part of many "successful business models." Whether it's mafia-style threats of "pay me or I will rape/kill your family," eliminate-your-competition/opponent mass-murders-and-take-their-property-as-spoils like you see in some wars ("ethnic cleansing" anyone?), or actually selling the "work product" of crimes (e.g. selling stolen goods or filming a rape and selling the photographs), there is money to be made from acts of evil.

Wait until people are dead long enough for most skeletons to come out of the closet before naming a building after someone.

640 days after death ought to be enough for most people.

The linked article is dated March 31, 2026.

Intellectual diversity makes for better teams.

This is just about what venue the FTC needs to use to prosecute its case.

Cars with Chinese Communist Party spyware or the means to remotely install it are not.

Net result: I'll welcome a Chinese build of a totally disconnected,* manually controlled car if it met US safety standards and was cost-effective to own and operate. "Totally disconnected" pretty much rules out modern EVs.

* obviously connecting to the power grid is allowed, and I'll want to add an aftermarket AM/FM terrestrial radio.

If this were implemented today, by "tomorrow" users would effectively lose control because the governments would find a way to either legally change things so there is no control, or make it very inconvenient to live without giving up that control.

For the sake of maintaining some privacy it's best to not go down this path unless there is a way to prove to independent observers that it can't be hijacked or abused.

No, they don't. Or if they do today, they won't tomorrow.

It's only a matter of time before robots actually have actual fingerprints to defeat this exact thing.

Not unusual.

VPN user or was traveling.

The trick is to ask the right questions without coming across as so nosey that you make well-qualified legit candidates not only say "pass" but tell their friends to do the same.