It's shame it's gotten this way since it used to be a good paper with good journalists. Now it's just clickbait.
And Christopher Booker is a blithering idiot. I suspect he actually believes the shit he's spouting even though it doesn't pass a cursory fact check. I mentioned those two but there are several more there spouting some highly questionable views.
The rest of it is a direct violation of every one of Eric Raymond's guidelines in "The Luxury of Ignorance" essay about open source interfaces.
No it isn't. Quite the opposite really:
For all the hate GNOME receives it is simple, forgiving, task centric, and generally acts as a facilitator to do other stuff. It doesn't mean it's flawless but it doesn't follow a kitchen sink mentality that could confuse a non expert. I daresay many experts (including myself) appreciate a simple desktop too and if they don't, they can use another one.
What would be interesting is to be able to plug AIs into freeciv - a bit like crobots, core wars or similar games. Then you could pit AIs against each other, perhaps even grade them by strength and allow humans to play them.
The typical work flow for systemd is open a unit file, launch the daemon directly as a detached process. Units can run in parallel according to their dependencies. No script required or 2-stage daemon launch.
So yes systemd can obviously improve boot times. However some debian discussion threads suggest they were just pointing systemd to launch the sysv scripts which seems a bit pointless really and won't do much to improve startup.
Unity changes it around so you go to the side (a good place to put things on a 16:9 monitor)
It's a good place on a 16:9 monitor. Not so good if you have a 4:3 monitor, or multiple monitors or simply want an option to change it to the bottom, right or some other behaviour.
As for being sued for calling them quacks, I assume you mean Simon Singh's run-in with chiropractors. He eventually prevailed (they dropped it after an onslaught of complaints against their members) and the case became a driving force for reforming defamation law.
So the UK should be glad they sued. Libel law in the UK now requires the claimant to demonstrate it caused serious harm and there are defences for honest opinion, academic peer review, and public interest.
Separately, I wish all these self professed wellness "gurus" would jump off the nearest cliff and rid the world of their stupidity.
Elegance and truth are inversely related. -- Becker's Razor