Without knowing precisely how Explorer is structured, it's conceivable that there may be different dynamically-linked libraries and/or execution points for running the desktop and for the file explorer, in which case just having explorer.exe running in and of itself doesn't mean that new modules have to be loaded if explorer.exe process fires up. The solution could very well be to load the libraries involved in file browsing when the desktop opens.

Just guessing here. There was a time when there was a lot more horsepower required for GUI elements than folder browsing, but this is 2025, and explorer.exe probably uses orders of a magnitude more resources now than it did in 1995, because... well, who knows really. Probably to sell more ads and load up more data to their AI.

That, on modern hardware, they have to preload a fucking file browser so that it pops up faster is just an indication of what a steaming pile of garbage MS is. They had sweet spots with Win2k-WinXP and with Win7, but their incoherent need to be a whole bunch of contradictory things --- with AI! has led what was a rather iffy OS and UI experience to begin with to become a cluster fuck of incoherence.

I do most of my day to day work on MacOS and Gnome, and fortunately the Terminal services version I have to RDP into is Server 2016, but every time I have to work with Windows 11 I'm just stunned by just how awful it looks and how badly it behaves.

The capacity of the government of a large jurisdiction like California, or more particularly the US, could bankrupt someone like Musk, so I say, bring it on. Within a decade Musk would have abandoned all efforts, or, even better, be stone cold broke (frankly billionaires shouldn't exist at all, and we should tax the living fuck out of them down to their last $200 million).

We're too afraid of these modern day Bond villains when we should be aiming every financial, and probably every real, cannon straight at them and putting them in a sense of mortal danger every minute of their waking lives, so that they literally piss themselves in terror at the though that "we the people" might decide to wipe them out for good.

... somehow "high," he meant to say, forgetting that Slashdot is Slashdot and editing is verboten.

I'm glad to see nuclear plants coming back online, but let's be honest: oil prices right now aren't "high." They've been steadily declining for almost two years. First-month futures contracts for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil were trading at $57.98 on NYMEX as of Friday. That's about the same price we were seeing in late 2016/early 2017, and way down from the peak of ~$106 in March 2022 right after the invasion of Ukraine.

I also want to see us get over our fear of nuclear energy (another disaster caused by Russian incompetence, lest we forget) but it's bad journalism to imply that oil prices are somehow

Slashdot itself has had a bevy of articles over the years (such as
this) about the harms of social media to developing adolescents.

Is Slashdot part of the propaganda campaign to wipe out digital anonymity?

The data on harms is at least a big chunk of the motivation. Maybe the response to it is a moral panic or maybe the response is proportionate to the evidence. But I think it's going to win out in terms of policy.

If you don't like the proposed solution, I think you better start promoting a better way to implement this kind of intervention that still preserves the protections you care about.

Or people are going to go with the not-better way.

Yeah, no doubt. But for all the good they do me, right?

I use Bing, and I get Microsoft Rewards points for that. Each month, the points I earn are automatically donated to the Wikimedia Foundation. Just sayin'.

Welllll, a bunch of countries use VAT, where you pay whatever is on the label. In the US, what you pay for a product will depend on where you buy it, despite it having the same price on the tag..

"Use" is relative, unless you mean "figure out how to cancel it."

I don't know. From what I can tell, Tizen seems OK. I just don't know how much "software" you really need in a television.

Hell, I don't like it now!

One reason I can think of is that different states and municipalities impose different rates of sales tax at the register. Multiplying a retail price by 8.75% may not always produce an even, round number.

I'm afraid that you, and history, ignored Rosalind Franklin, whose work was vital and also deserved the prize. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

What is this obsession with pedophilia? I'm really getting rather suspicious of MAGA. I suspect your average Catholic priest or Southern Baptist youth pastor thinks about nude children less than most MAGA individuals.