Photoshop and Illustrator are 2 different tools. While GIMP lacks the full power of Photoshop,
it provides enough functionality for the majority of needs (my employer and many other companies
limit Photoshop licenses to the marketing division; everyone else has to use something costing
far less - like GIMP (or MS Paint)).

An alternative to Illustrator is InkScape. My Illustrator experience is too limited to compare,
but again, it provides enough functionality for the majority of needs.

(I will also mention Visio and an alternative called Dia. While Dia lacks the extensive library
of pre-defined "shapes", it is a service-able alternative. My girlfriend and our daughter often
use GIMP, InkScape and Dia, together, to make things even the marketing people at their employers
are impressed with)

I've never done video editing, but I've met and talked with the people behind
Adventures of Jack UZI.
A completely amateur crew. They used OpenShot for editing. As bad as it is, I don't think it
was OpenShot that was the problem. I've seen worse work done by professionals.

I've used both Ardour (open source) and Mixbus (from Harrison Consoles). Both work very well on
Linux. For a while, there was a boot-able demo DVD for Mixbus. It was based on Linux. (now, they
just have a downloadable demo version). My daughter uses Mixxx on her Linux laptop for DJ'ing.
We both use Focusrite Scarlett series audio interfaces with no problems.

We aren't much into gaming, so can't debate this. (My GF and I like Warframe. Our daughter
used to like Aion (until the game got severely nerfed). We all 3 occasionally enjoy racing in
Super Tux Kart.

Outside of the finance department, at my employer, previous employers and my GF's and
daughter's employers, LibreOffice Calc is more than sufficient for the spreadsheets we
encounter. (For advanced mathematics, we use wxMaxima, which is open source. We
use this instead of either Excel or LibreOffice Calc because it's a better tool for
the advanced math we do.)

Using WinApps or PlayOnLinux, Outlook runs fine on Linux. Also, if your Exchange server
has Exchange Web Services enabled, there are open source EWS clients.

As for security, thanks, in part, to the US National Security Agency (and other contributors),
Linux has built-in security features that require expensive add-ons for MS Windows. The NSA
does use Linux in high security, compartmentalized, need-to-know-only applications. And,
the NSA continues to contribute enhancements to Linux.

Also, Linux has a variety of anti-malware packages available.

For our respective employers, our teams do collaborative product development on Linux - with
no more hassle than on MS Windows. We and our teams say Linux shines in our enterprise
environments.

Flightgear.org is a professional grade, open source flight simulation system that runs on
Linux, MacOS and Windows. It is used in the aviation industry: https://wiki.flightgear.org/Pr...

x-plane.com also runs on Linux, MacOS and Windows. I think there are more. I use Flightgear and
am very happy with it

Even if everyone is playing by the same rules, doesn't mean the rules are fair.

Having more money means you have more to invest. While some investments will fail, others
will succeed. Some investors will succeed more often than fail, while others will fail more
than succeed. Over time, this will result in a very few controlling most of the money.

Whether this is fair depends on which end of the wealth spectrum you are on.

If MS's "Linux GUI" support works like Windows Remote Desktop, then no. It
will be displaying the KDE/Gnome/whatever desktop inside a window on the
Windows desktop.

On the other hand, if they mapped the X-Windows protocol to WinAPI calls
AND, some how forward and map KDE/Gnome/whatever desktop management requests,
then, maybe, yes.

So, fruits are now bad for us due to their naturally occurring ethanol?

No, what we need are alternatives.

At least for grid storage, maybe improved versions of old technology,
such as nickel iron or nickel zinc. While they have less energy density,
they have other attributes that could useful. For example, nickel iron
cells can used both for direct energy storage and hydrogen production
for use in, for example, fuel cells. Also, they are very durable and more
easily recycled.

The gap does not help readability and is a waste of verticle space. More so since ....

The Address Bar is taller by adding extra verticle padding on the top and bottom of the bar. Again, doesn't improve readability, so is also a waste of verticle space

I do use the Compact option, so I will get more than an extra 12 verticle pixels. Since Mozilla is removing the Compact option, I won't have a choice

I never used it, but I know some people who do use it. While I don't care, others do care

While I agree that the new menu sidebar is cleaner, I know people who do find the icons helpful

I have not installed the beta of the next FF, so there may be other changes I dislike

Funny, a co-worker of mine has a son in a school whose IT department has trouble keeping their PC configurations as secure as she keeps her son's home PC.

(At her son's school, the teachers create assignments that include links to YouTube videos to watch, then ask questions about the content. At home, her son tends to get distracted by other YT videos. To stop that, she (1) configured the home network not allow the school issued laptop to connect. Instead, she uses Privoxy to allow-list only the teacher provided links, and her son views the videos on his home PC.)

(Note: she is able to allow-list the URLS in advance because the school emails copies of all assignments to parents.)

(Privoxy runs on her PC and the router is set to route all connections from/to her son's PC through her PC. Her PC also has SSLsplit to allow Privoxy to handle TLS connections)

Exosonic is a US company. Though likely to be acquired by either Boeing or Lockheed if they get close to making something like they are planning.

Rail, hyperloop and similar are great for land based travel, but I don't think (SF writer) Harry Harrison's "Trans Atlantic Tunnel" is practical.

(Even at hyperloop speeds, NY to Paris will be a very long ride without an airliner.)

FAA jurisdiction only extends to 60,000 feet. Above that, no limit. The Concorde could not fly that high, so was limited. The SR-71 could and did regularly fly over 60,000 feet. The acknowledged ceiling was 85,000 but there are claims it could reach 100,000

Could get worse, they could make a Voltage Wagon (scroll down a lot)

And given that said infrastructure relys on government mandated right-of-ways, the infrastructure is indeed publically subsidized.

Then there are many areas where the local infrastructure was directly subsidized by public money. (Like where a town grants some combination of up-front money and tax abatements for a service provided to build infrastructure in said town.)

Then you modify Section 230 to remedy that.

At the time Section 230 was written, no one had any concept of a forum the size of Facebook or Twitter. Back then, AOL was the largest and it tiny compared to today's FB. The intent was allow websites and forums to be able to comply with the Computer Decency Act with out needing the full editorial resources of a newspaper to moderate user contributed content.

Without Section 230, forums would have had to have either no moderation at all, or full on newspaper-style editing. Maybe AOL could have done full on editing, but very few others would have be able to afford/justify the cost.

Today, maybe FB/WhatsApp and Twitter have the resources to do full on editing, but very very few others, if any. Given the amount of spam, trolls and off-topic posts, zero moderation is not an option. So that leaves just leaves dropping user posts completely (or maybe a very very tiny few that the forum owner is able to fully edit/moderate).

Then you have to consider what the hosting services perceive as their risks. From reading the terms of service of a few hosting services (basically banning the same kinds of content the CDA bans), I think it is very likely these will require their customers to either perform full on editing or not allow user posted content.

2 of the shopping malls near where I live seem to disagree. The malls sell pre-paid, mall-branded, debit cards that work like Visa/MasterCard prepaid debit cards, except they only work at stores in the mall where the card was purchased. As far as the stores are concerned, the cards are no different than any other Visa/MasterCard debit card, but, somehow, the mall is able to specify a list of authorized stores. Any store not on the mall's list will get a "card declined" response from the store's payment processor.

So, Andrew Yang's proposal could be implemented similarly. Except that it would be the city pre-paying the card accounts.

Or it could be implemented like a SNAP card, except use would be limited to stores within the city.