"lock-in" is the word you're looking for.

People can't switch without considerable cost in money and/or convenience. That could be as simple as using two different systems at home and at work, which adds to the mental load.

Windows has been winning for 30+ years because it's familiar shit. Everyone knows it's shit, but at least you already know the taste. Consumers know that if they use Windos their skills trained at work transfer. Businesses know that if they use Windos then new hires don't need basic computer training. Software developers know that if they support Windos, there's a huge market that runs it.

Everyone is locking everyone else into the shit, and Microsofts sits in the middle and laughs.

I would bet that there's an internal competition among the various teams how much utter crap they can put into their respective parts of the OS before the public rebels against it.

Been a non-windows user for two decades now, and don't miss it one bit. Sometimes sad if a cool game is out only on Windos, but I anyway don't have as much time anymore as I used to.

It's not just Windos, though. DOS was equally horrible. I replaced MS-DOS with Novell DOS on one of my PCs for utterly different reasons (better to run a small BBS system on) and that was miles ahead of the Microsoft shit.

It keeps getting worse because we are not the customers anymore, we are the product. Your data is sold, your user habits are monitizied, and the main reason Windows still rules the games market is so kids grow up on Windows PCs and will demand them in their jobs (businesses are the main buyers of the OS).

And probably because Bill Gates is sad if market share falls. And who can stand old men crying?

Close to 100% want it to stop changing. Different states have different opinions about which way.

Does it really, though? Where I am, it gets dark before I get home from work. Permanent DST seems like a big benefit from my POV, because those early morning hours are wasted indoors getting ready for work anyway, but evening hours can be used outdoors.

Pacific time will go away entirely in the U.S. All three states in that time zone adopted laws enacting permanent daylight saving time if Congress authorizes it.

And in general, if the time doesn't change, people can just choose the next zone to the right. No big deal.

Wesley: I see you have six fingers on your left hand. Someone was looking for you.

Count: It's an upscaler hallucination! I swear!

I mean ostensibly, yes, but the reality is that folks have expectations that businesses be open similar hours, and there's a decent amount of momentum involved that you'd have to fight if you changed it. Way easier for regions to pick the time that fits best with those expectations.

Except in the large parts of the country where it at least arguably is, like the bottom half of California, all of middle and western Tennessee and Kentucky, everything to the right of Pennsylvania, etc.

Year of birth?

I find it hilarious that the one time a Republican stands up to the president, it is over something that ~100% of the American public agree with (ending time changes).

The right law to pass is one that gives the states the right to choose permanent DST, and then phases out the changes at the next time change. So at the next time change, if your area chooses permanent DST, you either stay on DST or switch to DST (depending on which time change), and if your area chooses permanent standard time, it either stays on standard time or switches to it, and then you never change again.

And if you pass that right after a time change, it gives the states a narrow window to make the decision, and then you're done with the time change forever.

This is common sense.

Yeah, that's fair. Passing it now would be s**t-for-brains stupid, because a bunch of states have passed laws that say that this will kick in as soon as Congress authorizes it, and if Congress authorizes it a week before the time change, it's going to be pandemonium for the tech industry.

The right time to vote on this is one week AFTER the time change that you're trying to avoid repeating a year from now.

Not really, no. Part of the year, DST feels better, and part of the year, standard time feels better. You have to choose one, but there's no need for it to be standard time.

DST is currently active for roughly eight months out of the year. Standard time is active for roughly four. All things being equal, DST is better for your sleep schedule twice as often as standard time is. So I would argue that permanent standard time is like gluing them at 10 degrees because your house keeps tipping, and you get tired of shifting them to negative five degrees twice a year. It's downright backwards.

DST may not be ideal, but I'd argue standard time sure has h*** isn't.

And again, per capita numbers are uninteresting, because most people in China produce relatively little economic output, and the usage of people producing minimal economic output is uninteresting precisely because that is an indication of an underutilized resource, rather than an indication that this is as much energy as those people will need going forwards.

The eventual expected state of an industrial economy is one in which almost everyone produces significant economic output, because that's just how economies almost invariably develop over time. So in a couple of generations, assuming stable population, their energy usage will absolutely explode as their economy becomes more efficient and larger percentages of people end up doing jobs that produce higher levels of economic output.

That's why the only important metric when it comes to how a country is doing environmentally, IMO, other than perhaps the rate of population growth or decline, is emissions per unit of economic output. Because once you have that, you can compare how much countries produce with how much they pollute. You can also divide it by the percentage of people in that country who are actually producing meaningful economic output and get a good approximation of what that country's emissions will eventually be when everyone starts producing high economic output in a few decades. When you do this, you conclude that China will be a disaster environmentally if they don't stop ramping up coal production.

It really is that simple.

I literally did not say those words or anything like them.

he is.

The minimum that I can't think of a good argument against is that AI needs to disclose that it is AI.

The problem of access for minors is, of course, how to check someone's age online, where as the old saying goes, nobody knows that you're actually a dog. That's nearly impossible without serious privacy intrusions.

Unlike cars, escalators (or airplanes, as one commenter used as another example) are not driven by amateurs. They are either automated or operated by professionals.

The trade-off we had to make was between allowing only licensed chauffeurs to drive, or allowing everyone to drive after a short intro course that teaches you only the basics and very little about SAFE driving. Oh, and you get qualified for life. Not further tests, requirements for courses, experience, etc.

Are roads safe? Fuck no, not by a huge margin. But you'll understand why if you give the task of designing a road network as safe as commercial air travel to a PhD student or a couple of students as the master thesis topic. Surprise: The result will essentially be a rail network. Very little driver autonomy, changing lanes and turning after prior announcement at defined spots only, etc. etc.

To this day I can't understand how we let the general public - for which we know the statistics of how many are suicidal or mentally unstable - into a 1-2 ton vehicle and on a road with opposing traffic not seperated by a solid barrier. So yes, there's a big part of design, but that design is not an accident, it's what apparently people want. Or when is the last time you've seen demonstrations against it?

SAYING that security is your #1 priority and actually ACTING that way are two different things.

The fact that the stock price didn't immediately plummet makes it very clear that at least the investors understood the message correctly: It had an implicit "but only if it doesn't get in the way of profits" added to it.

I mean, if you bet so much on words people say, let me assure you that your upcoming birthday is the #1 priority on my mind and I can hardly think of anything else. ;-)

the Internet was still used mostly by universities and very few businesses had e-mail or a website. Heck, probably more business had Gopher pages than websites.

You are right, though "inertia" doesn't quite describe it. There were also all the anti-competitive actions MS took to lock its customers in. There literally was a lawsuit about it that found them guilty.