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I have systems which have a GUI and yet have no Qt/GTK stuff whatsoever. The less code I can have on the system at all, the less chance that some of it will go wrong. But sometimes you really need a gui config tool of some kind for sanity's sake.

Of course, more and more of those are GTK or Qt apps now so I guess it's not really that important.

I guess the devs didn't either, that's why they made numerous improvements to the file manager.

The story is definitely an Apple story, in part. They are profiting handsomely from participating in this behavior. It's disingenuous to suggest that it isn't about Apple simply because it isn't all about Apple. At best, you're as hypocritical as what you're complaining about.

I don't really know or even especially care whether Pluto should be called a planet, but it seems like the resolving power of our optics should not be the defining quantity.

Well, that's how it works now. Part of being a bank and qualifying for FDIC insurance is reporting all financial transactions over a certain amount, which used to be US$10k. Dunno about now. I'd guess $5k.

Robots are like other machines which have automated away jobs in obvious ways. They are also unlike them in other ways, which will enable them to seize more jobs. And there was significant social upheaval when we moved to manufacturing. It wasn't all for the better, although obviously it provided opportunities for more people. It's also come at a significant cost in sustainability.

Someone makes this complaint every time one of these stories happens. The answer is always the same: Apple posts the big profits, and everyone knows who Apple is. When you say that it seems to come from a desire to attack the company which is recently most successful, you're half right. That's a means to an end. Apple is most visible, so by attacking Apple, you're getting the most visibility. You could simply attack Foxconn directly — these days they actually sell stuff with their name on it — but statistically nobody has actually seen their logo and "connected" (ugh) with any of their products. So frankly, it's really smart to attack Apple as opposed to Foxconn or some other vendor which uses them, and it's really stupid to keep whining about it. (By extension, what does that make me?) But maybe this comment can be referred back to by posterity.

The designs will simply change to make manufacturing easier, and the designs of the robots will change to meet them partway. It's not like this problem can't be "solved", it just hasn't been solved yet.

Sooner or later, the whole phone will just be laminated into one brick which can only be taken apart with exotic chemicals so toxic that you need to keep them sealed away from all that is holy. And then, the terrorists^Wcorporations will have won... but regardless, there will be no need for human assembly, or really any involvement at all. Designs and materials and of course some of the completed parts go in, devices get pooped out on the other end. At least the phones will finally be waterproof.

Have we?

Whee! But, with a tip of the cap to Greg Graffin, progress is not intelligently planned. If you're playing a strategy and you use up the resources in early play then you're going to have a bad time.

Granted, life is more complex than a game with a fixed tech tree. Who knows what technology we'll invent tomorrow, right?

That also eliminates the need for cheap disposable shit that will disintegrate in short order and generate another visit to the crap shack. So it actually eliminates the need for many of the robots as well.

The woeful file manager has been the weakest point of the non-GNOME/KDE Linux desktop for ever and ever amen, pretty much regardless of which one you're talking about. I'm using lubuntu right now and I can't say I'm in love with the one I get there.

The portability of GTK+ is also fairly irrelevant when it comes to a desktop for Unix. As long as you can use it with X11 today and either Wayland or X11 tomorrow, it's a suitable toolkit for the development of a Unix DE.

It would be nice to see GIMP and other apps move away from GTK, but uh, GIMP, GTK, etc. But I don't think it matters much for XFCE. If anything, what I want is for my DE not to be based on a major toolkit. This breaks down when it gets to the file manager, but it's not clear that the fm even needs to be closely integrated with the desktop unless you want icons on your desktop. I don't really feel that I need a "desktop", as it were. I only use it on Windows, and then only because it's easy to get to.

SSDs

Yes, the need to have some kind of open bios (coreboot? pretty lumpy process, though) is real, but that doesn't decrease the need for write protect jumpers.

Amen. A firmware write-protect jumper is the only rational solution. Ideally it goes on the front of the drive so it can reasonably be diddled without pulling drives out of arrays.