Just put it in context: Today Russia struck the Pechenihy Reservoir dam in Kharkiv.
Russia launched the war because they thought it would be a quick and easy win, a step towards reestablishing a Russian empire and sphere of influence, because Putin thinks in 19th century terms. Russia is continuing the war, not because it's good for Russia. I'd argue that winning and then having to rebuild and pacify Ukraine would be a catastrophe. Russia is continuing the war because *losing* the war would be catastrophic for the *regime*. It's not that they want to win a smoldering ruin, it's that winning a smoldering ruin is more favorable to them and losing an intact country.

If you just do time() you are missing a bunch of other important interfaces, gettimeofday(2), and stat(2) along with fstat(2). The stat calls also interface with on disk data structures...

All something that can be done, but not just one trivial thing.

Im can believe that, although it is a kind of weak reason. They could keep 32 bit FreeBSD around and make time_t a “long long”, I mean it is a typedef already isn't it? Sure it would be kind of a pain in that code that assumes it is an int or long wouldn’t work until patched, and the actual hard part would be on disk structures (like FFS inodes) very likely have 32 bits allocated (actually I think the FFS on disk structure had an adjacent unused 32 bit field, if so that one would be fixable!).

I mean that isn’t trivial (it is similar to a lot of the Y2K work people were doing in 1998/1999). It isn’t exactly hard though.

It is easier to drop 32 bit support though, so I can totally believe it.

Where can you get film developed and prints made from negatives nowadays? Bricks & mortar photography store?

The kids like retro point and shoot digital cameras too, like the Canon Elph. Maybe its part the experience of using them, but they also like the output better than iPhone. More flattering, perhaps.

I'm not sure I would really want tiny ATV-sized cars on the road, but there are plenty of superb full sized Chinese EV's too, selling for 1/2 Tesla prices, as well as higher end ones also "1/2 price".

Check out Marques Brownlee's recent YouTube review of a Xiaomi SUV for example. His conclusion "this is a $42,000 car that would compete well against anything in US up to $75,000".

US entry-level car prices have become ridiculous since COVID when the manufacturers have found they can make more money by selling fewer cars at higher prices.

If Trump actually wants to help Americans, then how about allowing Chinese EVs to be sold here, and without tariffs. Some start below $5,000, and for $20,000 you can get something really nice.

They could say no. No-one is stopping them.

You're right. Also a professional baseball player *could* put their bats down and just stand at the plate, but pointing out that it's physically possible is stupid, especially if your argument supporting that "They Can Just Do That" is that baseball players *should put their bats down*.

This is why such people shouldn't be in positions of power.

Again with the should. It's dumb saying "they can do something, but they won't, but they should" because it's a moot point. Yes, they could also write a press release that is an 80 page Star Trek fanfic set in the narrative universe of Mr Rogers. Nothing is stopping them. But what is the value of pointing out something they are physically capable of when even you seem to understand why they won't? It's just a completely meaningless observation, particularly since you couch it in phrasing that suggests it's just a simple easy thing to do? You're trying to have your argument both ways - it makes you sound simple.

at least from other companies, so they can have all the data for themselves

As an ex-Apple employee I can say at least a decade ago Apple didn’t want your data, like it wasn’t a “non-goal” to get it, it was a goal to NOT get it. They viewed it as inherently of little value, but having the data means they have to protect it, a data breach is bad for the corporate image, as is a warrant attack (i.e. any government forcing Apple to give up customer data was also viewed as bad for the corporate image, and it is expensive to decide which things to fight in court and fight them but even worse to just roll over for any request, and far far better to just not have any data so “yes, we turned it all over -- we had nothing, and we made a copy of that and put it in this empty envelope”; most of that was before Apple publicly started pushing privacy as a thing the iPhone (and to a lesser extent other products) bring. Which increases the downside of having anything that can get stolen or legally searched.

I’m not saying Apple does it out of the goodness of their hearts, or that all the board members/upper management actually believe privacy is a valuable thing to offer, but they do largely agree that making a promise at that level and breaking it is bad, or that was the view about a decade ago. Which is a big part of why most Apple product that could make use of more private data don’t really have it unless they can have it on only on your device(s) or as an encrypted blob that Apple doesn’t have the keys for.

Someone useless occupies a high position because he convinces peers he is somehow insightful

Not really useless, he was an ok design lead for iTunes...and I think he did Xcode design a little later as well that wasn’t awful. So I think this was more of an example of being better at getting himself promoted than actually doing the work after that point.

Sure it plays an important role. The problem with it is that the meta-language of modern techology design is enshittification.

I don’t think that is true in general. In specific cases, sure. In this specific case? No, Dye’s designs are the regular kind of shit. He loves information hiding, and isn’t god at usability, aces ability, or legibility. Hierarchy of information isn’t a strong suit either (other then things he hides by default, as opposed to shows by default). Back when he was “just” the design lead for iTunes he wasn’t too bad, running all Apple UX? Nope.

... except instead of shoes becoming the only profitable product to manufacture, it's chatbots. Nobody knows why, but when it's all over, the only survivors will be those who evolved into computer-illiterate deaf-mutes.

Agreed; but it is possible to make a Metro-sized car that is safe by modern standards and still gets 40+mpg. The Smart ForTwo and the Scion IQ are two examples.

This is exactly end to end encryption, and the so-called "security researcher" appears to have no idea what he is talking about. So:

Yes, but only because most Americans are unwilling to drive a Metro-sized car anymore. They've been conditioned to think small/lightweight cars are unsafe or unmanly or etc.

The invisible hand of the free market solves a lot of things, but it's never quite figured out how to avoid the tragedy of the commons. Everybody wants to live on a livable planet, but nobody wants to pay for the technology required to keep that way.