As Plato said long ago: "Only those who don't seek power are qualified to hold it."

That was our original sleep pattern for most of human history, anyway. Only with the industrial revolution did we change to a singly nightly block of sleep. If anything, your kind of sleep pattern is healthier.

And yet, millions waste their days doomscrolling on apps designed to drain their time and spirit. There is no mystery why it exists, people simply want to fill their lives with something, and with enough time, that desire becomes a compulsion. An addiction that they cannot fight.
An interesting discussion would be this: If social media's value is a net negative, should it be outlawed? After all, we do outlaw drugs and harmful substances. What about mentally harmful products that, like drug addicts, users cannot resist?

I find the second movie to be even more interesting than the first as it asks an even more important question: Are you truly free?
The first one was about the simulation keeping people in a perpetual slumber, with only a rare few trying to wake up. The second one is about those who wake up and try to rebel discovering that rebelling is PART of the simulation. You're there fighting your jailer in this little arena he setup for you to safely blow off steam while you pat yourself on the back for being such a good rebel.
The parallels with our world's activist crowd is staggering.

We're reaching unreasonable hype levels so high that we're entering the "Plain ridiculous" stage now. Can I get access to the "Metaphysically Better" AI? Am sure that, with my feedback, it will become Astrally Supreme. Maybe even Intangibly enhanced.

The most prevalent theory is that the pilot himself, highly experienced with a long career in aviation, tried to turn the plane's disappearance into a mystery by exploiting every known weakness of the system. We can have all the fail-safes of the world, they won't help much if the pilot decides to fly straight into a cliff.
I definitely agree that more data can never hurt, though. The fact that the pilot himself can flip a switch and make the plane "go dark" and vanish from all screens and instruments is rather worrying.

I would argue that you're crippling their lives and careers by thinking that they will turn into highly paid software engineers if you shoved a phone down their throats at an early age. The ones you speak of, you and I and probably /.'s entire userbase, followed these careers by choice. We used computers when it was laughed at to be a nerd because we loved that shit. Not everyone does.
I was one of those shy kids who preferred reading to rowdy playing, but that was my natural affinity, and not my inability to actually socialize and my fried dopamine receptors, something I notice in a lot of these kids who were given an iphone as a babysitter.

If you classify Neanderthals as humans, humanity will have been here for 0.8 million years. if you don't count Neanderthals, then you're looking at the last 300 thousand years as "The human age".
Interestingly, if humans were to disappear tomorrow, of the 800-300 thousand years humanity spent on this planet, the only "meaningful" period that will leave long-lasting traces will be the last 200 years or so. Our actions might be called a geological epoch, yes, yet most of our existence is negligible. Compared to the entirety of our existence, it was only the last blip in the radar that was also, by far, the loudest one.

Last time this happened, right before the 'rona if my memory serves me right, the local coffee shop I frequent was so packed, the owner got tables and chairs out of his own home to get everyone served.
Never have I seen so many groups of friends having a good time since probably 2007.

Because this isn't the local bakery adding sugar to the bread and you deciding to walk out and go to the next one. The discussion is happening for the right to repair, already, but if all automakers start making "connected" cars, what choice do you really have?
Especially with all the laws pushing for EVs conveniently "forcing" automakers to make "smart" cars.

Correct me if am wrong, but the Steam Deck uses KDE, right? This might be a Windows situation where the hardware comes with a certain software by default, inflating its number.
I use KDE, myself. But I think the more interesting statistic would be who uses which DE by choice.

Not to discredit the lockdowns and how much they helped (Am a pharmaceutics bioengi, so I know the science behind it well enough), but I do wonder how many of these deaths happened, not because of covid, but because of everything else surrounding covid.
I know people who fucking burned their skin with excessive usage of bleach, people whose businesses got ruined due to covid, people who drank the fearporn koolaid by the gallon... And, to this day, online discussions have never recovered, with people flinging insults both ways and pulling stats left, right and center, often in topics that have nothing to do with vaccines or covid in the first place.

.exe, huh? Wouldn't have that problem if it was on linux.

Last year we had this story about facebook killing people's batteries. That and, I know that this is an Apple story, but plenty of makers actively throttle your phone's performance with updates to get you to buy the "upgrade", including battery lifetime.
The EU's battery grading is an amazing idea, but there is no point in getting better batteries physically if their life will be kneecapped on the software side, anyway.