What's changed is that in the early days flash memory was one bit per cell. Now most consumer grade stuff is multi level, so instead of a single threshold voltage that separates a 1 from a 0, there are multiple thresholds that each represent a different binary code.

SSDs sometimes have to re-read blocks with different voltage thresholds to get good data, and make use of error correction on top.

Presumably age related degradation is worse for multi-level flash.

Twitter used to do this with the verified badges, but then Elon started selling them and they became the mark of someone stupid enough to give him money for a blue tick.

It's not a bad idea in principle. A simple cryptographic certificate that government agencies can use to validate their messages. The hardest part will be the UI. Making sure it is clear and not easily spoofed.

Indeed, I've lost count of how many attempts this has been now.

All the extraneous bullshit Microsoft added to the start menu is always lurking in memory for performance reasons.

Fear of facts is a sign of cowardice

School issued devices often don't permit installing arbitrary apps, only those on the approved list.

Most iPhone owners didn't buy them outright. They got them "free" with their plan. Consequently out in the real world I commonly see people with old iPhones with cracked screens. They can't afford to replace them, we don't have an Apple store anywhere near here, etc.

The tariff revenues are needed to cover the tax cuts for the wealthy instituted at the same time, so no.

"An employer can only pay the workers what their output is worth, so if your industry is producing things that are difficult to sell, then you're not going to get a good paying job"

You're blaming the victim. If the employer's plan doesn't include paying a reasonable wage then their plan is crap and they need to go out of business so that someone with a better plan can succeed them.

"The experience of Detroit should be a warning to those who believe that this economic law can be avoided; the car makers sold the same stuff year after year whilst Japanese and German producers made ever better stuff."

That's not because they couldn't do better. They chose not to and depended on regulatory capture instead, preventing others from bringing more superior products to the market. Again it's the employer's fault and no one else's.

I'm guessing it's mostly due to add-ons installed by third party software. There are APIs that let third party stuff hook into Explorer, and the current situation is an absolute shit-show. Because there are so many old and broken ones, Explorer loads them to see if they crash, and if they do it loads them again in compatibility mode, and if they still crash it gives up. Once loaded there are no limits on how slow they are to start up or operate.

Thanks. That link seems to suggest that you can only import data from external storage, not export to it. Is that right? Major limitation if so.

It's like something from that Captain Planet cartoon, or an 80s movie sci-fi dystopia.

Before AI I replaced my flagship Android phone once every 2 or 3 years. Now I am not sure, how can I replace my phone if I do not want AI functionality in it at all?

Either way, when the AI bubble bursts there is going to be a lot of cheap, high-end hardware on the used market.

And what jurisdiction? If they are using European's emails to train AI models, it's going to be the mother of all GDPR fines.

I think that alone is probably a good enough reason for them not to do it world-wide, because even Americans get emails from Europeans, and the possibility of some of that information getting into their AI models and appearing in the output is a huge legal risk.