>"Quick, cold war!"

Some might argue we already are in several.

>"More military spending!"

Based on China working on rail guns? Seems like not a great reason.

>"Let's invade somewhere! Anywhere!"

Let's get serious.

>"We have nukes. They have nukes. Everybody has nukes. Nobody's a threat to anyone."

You are ignoring how nuclear mutually-assured destruction works. You can't use nukes unless you are willing to be nuked yourself. And that can cascade quickly into total destruction of everyone. But you *can* still fight with conventional weapons, like we have seen many times since nuclear proliferation.

As a side-note, you also can't use the nuclear option if your objective is to productively take over somewhere valuable. Like, say, Taiwan or Ukraine. Because it would ruin the prize/spoils.

>"In RHEL 8.8 we have a total of 4594 known bugs with fixes that exist upstream, but for which known fixes have not been back-ported to RHEL 8.8. "

A simple metric of "number of known bugs" is not a good metric of "security." I would bet the overwhelming super-majority of those bugs would not be security related, and some that are might be very low danger or not even relevant on most platforms.

>"Rolling-release Linux distros such as Arch, Gentoo, and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed constantly release the latest updates, but they're not used in businesses. "

Yes, because time is money. And a rolling release can be a disaster of forced updating/upgrading of everything all the time. You end up with lots of time recompiling things, re-testing things, being held back by commercial software that isn't tested and can't be run, or customized FOSS that you would need to heavily modify again. And if you ARE into commercial support, nobody is going to be able to reasonable support 60,000+ combinations of ever-moving targets.

There are a lot of perfectly valid and reasonable reasons for "enterprise linux", the main problem we have now is that the previous main steward, RedHat (now IBM RedHat), has ruined the space for a lot of people. The crown needs to go somewhere else. And I can see Ubuntu probably going just as rogue/hostile as IBM RedHat in the future. What we probably need is an EL version of Debian.... something, unfortunately, they said they won't do.

Oh wait, they did have a different color. Hmm. So now it seems a bit more frivolous. Just close the triangle, then.

Agreed. Before I looked at it, I thought it would be frivolous. But yeah, it is almost identical, they even used the same red color.

Just close the triangle, like a normal delta, and pick a non-red color. Done.

>"Depends on how old the laptop. I have old PATA laptops that do have space for a 15mm drive (most drives were that tall). But only maybe 4 or 5 years later, the height standard moved from 15mm to 9.5mm. "

But these are NOT 15mm drives, they are taller. No laptop (that I know of) was built to accept drives larger than 15, regardless of how old, because that was the maximum of the specification.

>"Whatever brand of browser you thought you were using on your iPhone, under the hood it was basically Safari."

Just like whatever browser you thought you were using on any device, other than iOS, is basically Chromium... UNLESS that browser is Firefox (with extremely few/rare exceptions).

>"Browser makers have objected to this for years, because it limits competitive differentiation"

Right, those same ones that just base all their stuff on Chromium, handing more and more control over the web to Google.

Well, the reaction to COVID-19 made it pretty much impractical/impossible to do anything. And after, there have been a lot of issues. So I do hope to revisit this. But yeah, nothing done.

Oh, I loved Amarok too, until it was ruined, then moved on to Clementine. Those I use for DJ type stuff. But for just playing music daily, I still use Audacious.

>"Did you also consider potentially increasing prices for electricity over those years? Inflation etc. It's not easy."

I tried to. But that is difficult to estimate. The solar proposals threw in a large increase, one of many assumptions they used to "prove" the validity of what they were selling. I was skeptical it would be as great as what they believe. But, who knows? Tweak assumptions here or there, and it becomes positive or negative. In my case, seemed to usually be negative.

Inflation- well, that I did account for based on lost opportunity cost. But if large continued inflation is expected, capital spending before-hand is a winner. Of course, this was before any huge inflation we have seen the last few years came about, and there wasn't much warning it was coming. Now it is likely way too late (unless you believe it is going to be much worse or continue for much longer).

My ultimate conclusion was that spending the money on better insulating my house would make more sense. Of course, it is a lot more intrusive... my biggest problem is an uninsulated cathedral ceiling, and doing it correctly would make a huge mess and a huge inconvenience. Then the "pandemic" hit and that ruined any such plans. Sigh.

Not sure what those are, but got me curious and just tried "Extra Stereo" in Audacious... pretty wild. Not sure if I love it or hate it :)

>"This is a decision that will delight millions of users around the world."

I have been using Audacious (and XMMS before that) forever. (And under Linux, of course). Classic, simple, functional, easy. And even with the Winamp skin. I fail to see why anyone would care much about actual Winamp code, much less "millions" of people, which I believe also runs only in MS-Windows.

Audacious has always been open-source, like XMMS it was based on, stretching back to 1997, and runs under Linux, MacOS, and MS-Windows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://audacious-media-player...

>"its proven value as an investment for homeowners who wish to manage their energy costs more effectively"

That wasn't my conclusion when I analyzed it a few years ago. At least not the proposals I saw, which had the panels finally paying for themselves many, many years later, at a point they would be worn out and/or likely damaged or ruined by needing reroofing. At most, I would have likely expected a break-even at a time they would then need to be replaced. At worst, I could have lost my shirt. Are people also calculating the opportunity cost of that tied-up money that could have been compounding interest all those years? The cost of removing them when time to re-roof? The service costs when something breaks? (I did). Looked to me like the only ones coming out ahead would be the solar sellers/installers while their customers could bask in their self-virtue gamble.

Yes, could have been where I am located, or the electricity pricing here, or the exact panels proposed, or my calculations or assumptions. Who knows, I did the best I could. But it sure seemed like a mediocre course of action to take. I expected at the time that the economics of it would get significantly better. Maybe they have, but I don't think this quickly, it hasn't been that long.

If I had the money to possibly burn, and was in my last/"forever home", it would be far more attractive.... but only when coupled with energy storage (far more $), and mostly as just a hedge against disaster; creating my own energy-independence (along with a well and septic field). Alas, that dream has been fading.

>"These moves will make phones last much longer and give people more flexibility to decide when it's time to upgrade."

And, equally important but not mentioned, it can help justify spending more on a better model you might not have considered before. I never buy "flagships." They rarely justify the price, especially if they aren't also going to stay as relevant after just 3 years. But they are more attractive to consumers if they know they will be supported longer. So this might not necessarily just be a "loss of revenue" for Google/Samsung (and others who hopefully follow suit).

Exactly. This line:

"Every smartphone has an expiration date. That day arrives when the software updates stop coming"

Is just plain not true. The phone doesn't "expire", I have used ones long after updates stopped. That doesn't mean it is the best idea, from a security standpoint. But it is still an option. The apps will all still update, and usually work fine. The other option is third-party ROMs that ARE still supported. But those are not easy to find/install, unfortunately.

Anyway, 7 years is welcome news. I hope that other Android phone manufacturers will follow suit. As much as I am not a fan of Google, I do prefer Android, and do believe Google has been working hard with manufacturers to make updating easier.

And yet "wireless" charging degrades the battery more due to extra heat.

Or you can just get magnetic connectors/cables. Then charging is just as easy as "wireless" but charging is faster, no wasted power, no extra heat, and no more damaged ports (because you just replace the coupler). They have been a god-send. I have used them for many years, and everyone I show them to is shocked and had never seen/heard of them before.

They only reason they would suck would be when you are forced to remove the dongle. For example, on phones where the headphone jack was needed and used but taken away, since you would then have to use one of those stupid dongles (meaning unplugging the magnetic connector (unless it is data-compatible)). Or if you had to use someone else's charger for some reason.