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Comment Re:For Firefox, community has always been at the h (Score 3, Insightful) 25

The prior non-core items were optional and relatively clearly marked; but when they decided to go 'AI' that went out the window. Being able to grub around in about:config for anything that has 'ml' in it does, depressingly, put them ahead of the options of some of the competition; but it shipped on by default and without controls in the normal-user UI. Seems like 'AI' really does something to the decision making even of people who should know better.

Comment Re:So, like Seiko, Kodak devised their own demise (Score 1) 20

Kodak's demise is a little overstated just because they have been reorganized several times; and 'Kodak' is sort of the dump entity. There are still a variety of applications for being competent at thin film chemistry, including semiconductor fabrication, just not so much making 35mm film. So Eastman Chemical got most of that. And some of their medical and otherwise higher-end optics and imaging stuff also got spun off, with the business of not terribly optically interesting cameras under heavy threat from apathy and cellphones left at Kodak proper.

They certainly didn't do desperately well; or they'd probably be somewhere more along the lines of Sony in terms of 'who builds CCDs worth disclosing the provider of?'; but the reorgs appear to have been aimed at separating the more viable business units from the liabilities. Probably so the latter could be tied to the pension plan.

Comment Re:Dumbing down (Score 1) 111

PBS is primarily (85%) privately funded. It will continue to produce shows like Masterpiece, Nova, Frontline, and Sesame Street and people in places like Boston or Philadelphia will continue to benefit from them.

What public funding does is give viewers in poorer, more rural areas access to the same information that wealthy cities enjoy. It pays for access for people who don't have it.

By opting out, Arkansas public broadcasting saves 2.5 million dollars in dues, sure. But it loses access to about $300 million dollars in privately funded programming annually.

Comment Re:Crrot and Stick (Score 3, Interesting) 117

Industrial R&D is important, but it is in a distrant third place with respect to importance to US scientific leadership after (1) Universities operating with federal grants and (2) Federal research institutions.

It's hard to convince politicians with a zero sum mentality that the kind of public research that benefits humanity also benefits US competitiveness. The mindset shows in launching a new citizenship program for anyone who pays a million bucks while at the same time discouraging foreign graduate students from attending universtiy in the US or even continuing their university careers here. On average each talented graduate student admitted to the US to attend and elite university does way more than someone who could just buy their way in.

Comment Re:TL;DR: Gotta keep the bubble going (Score 1) 127

Yes, it belongs to Congress, not the President. Executive orders are literally orders given by the President to the executive branch of the federal government.

So the effectiveness of an executive order is very questionable in this case. If a state passes a law, what's the executive order going to do? Send the Army to invade? What could go wrong?

Comment Well... (Score 2) 60

This will be great for Haiku, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD installs, there's not the remotest possibility there'll be binaries for these. Not because the software couldn't be ported, but because the sorts of people politicians hire to write software would never be able to figure out the installer.

Comment Re:Wayland? Who cares. (Score 1) 46

I have no interest in a giant 4K monitor for my desk. But a 24" 4k monitor would look quite nice. I would want my font sizes to be the same as they are now, just sharper. I find sharper, higher resolution text easier to read as my eyes get older, than blurry text at the same size.

I was just thinking that although my eyes are getting older, I still can see the screen okay. Then I glanced up at the url bar in my browser and noticed I'm browsing the web at 150% zoom. Ha.

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