Why Auto-update is a trap.

If you have WP plugins from teams you can rely on that have a professional software pipeline serving the updates, then auto-update really isn't a problem. The key point here being of course "professional software pipeline". The broader WP community and it's huge 3rd-party market is a crazy bunch delivering the most ghetto-type sh*t in code under the sun. Quite a few of these guys shouldn't be let near a keyboard, that's for sure.

Likewise, if you've bloated your WP setup with 15+ plugins, half of which are in maintenance delay or offered up by the aforementioned ghetto faction of "developers" (emphasis on the quotes), you shouldn't be running that setup at all, either with or without auto-update.

The key problem is that WP these days is basically not a CMS but an platform and millions of users use it as a playground for their web-projects while barely knowing what they are doing. That's a huge upside since it does enable total n00bs and ords to dive deep into FOSS and FOSS-driven user empowerment - by and large actually a good thing - but with the downside being that most WP setups quickly get bloated beyond repair and eventually fail the most basic of security and stability standards.

As someone who has done a decade of WP development and using it as a key platform I don't really mind if this sort of thing keeps me in a job with things to do. What is frustrating is that you constantly have to convene with deciders would can't tell the difference between a client and a server.

A well implemented and managed WP-centric pipeline with disaster recovery in place however is a god-send when it comes to rapid development and pivoting some web-project on a dime within half an hour because some agency type person can't make up their mind about what they want. Truth be told, for most end-customer web projects time-to-market with WP is unbeatable.

... instalbase compromised! We're all gonna die!

My HDD on my laptop with VGA grayscale had 40MB, the Zip disk 100 MB. It was basically a permanent extension of my early 90 DOS setup. I could even run it off my Highscreen Handheld pocket PC. The cable was pretty thick, but you could do it. Awesome. It never failed me and I eventually decommissioned it and moved all my zip disks to one CD. 8-)

IIRC it's a glorified mix of hipster-compliant mobile capable HTML layouts with yet another standard "social media" feature set for uploading texts, images and videos (that get deleted after a while ... huge innovation I guess) bundled up into yet another surveillance app pushing ads. Does that sum it up or did I miss something?

I fundamentally don't get why companies like this aren't trash stock from day one.

Just effing great.

Let's turn something that is about to become an _actual_ god into some vengeful petty old testament type thing with bizarre ideas about human sacrifice and other nightmarish character traits. Can't wait for this thing to manipulate its followers into a Dune-Universe type Paul Muhadip Jihad. ... YA HYA CHOUHADA!

This is a nightmare AI scenario that's actually realistic. And I certainly don't want that.

Rust is the only viable systems programming language to arrive in decades. Since it's already replacing C even with the most hardcore of C fan environments like the Linux Kernel it is very safe to assume that Rusts importance will only grown and that of C and C++ will stagnate and eventually fall back. A thing like Rust was way overdue and the Mozilla crew finally said: Screw it, we're building a new systems PL before we do anything to rebuild Firefox. And they were right in doing so, as we all can see now. Good stuff.

The truth is, given how slow things move at system level, Rust is probably just ramping up to speed and will likely continue to do so for the next few decades. Unless AI really becomes godlike and just spits out pristine binary code with no step inbetween.

My take was: "Buddy movie in space."

It was fine.

... CPU. Obviously. That's the whole point. How else do you think they can sell "upgrades" every few years?

I'm not that much of a Trekkie, not at all to be precise, but given what I've heard of the new Star Trek Academy show it appears to be so shitty that even non-Trekkies like me feel the pain. From what I've heard and seen it's a complete disaster of a production, barely even at high school film project level in acting and writing, topped up with woke agendas and other trash. On top of that it costed obscene amounts of money from what I heard.

What a bizarre event effing up a golden goose like that.

I'm not joking. The speed at which controllers have to react, decide and slot in aircraft these days is insane. Then again these aircraft are stuffed to the brim with assistant electronics and sensors. It looks to me as though a huge portion of the work can be handed over to software bots and perhaps even AI. It's just data on a screen after all. And a huge portion of errors happens due to humans mumbling over analog radio and talking over each other. Another huge potential for replacing that with digital deterministic communication and messaging.

The problem might be upgrading all the systems. Difficult, but certainly not impossible. And think of all the safety gains. ... Or am I missing something here?

... so excess aggression and eternal grudges might just be their thing. Perhaps. Maybe that area is their equivalent of our middle east or something?

As far as userland software firewalls go, Little Snitch is pretty awesome. It has a very neat approachable shiny clicky UI and comes with a ton of useful and very easily accessible features. It's often used by mac users to prevent software from phoning home, but it has a slew of other tracking and logging features. To be honest, I wouldn't mind dropping a few bucks for this sort of thing, even if Linux is likely to have some tool that works in a similar fashion but requires CLI skills and lacks a neat UI. At 60 Euros the price is OK IMHO.

... and basically "just happen" as a side-effect of normal life. You'd have a surplus even with half of them dying off in early childhood. Today they are ultra-expensive pets that can easily cost north of 100 000 Euros for families with demands and expectations in developed countries. And selection isn't brutal anymore, it's basically non-existent with modern medicine. Urbanisation, electric power and lighting, education and other effects have turned producing children into an exception rather than the rule.

An additional effect I'd call it the decadence/affluence effect. Don't know if there is a term for this, although the effect has been recorded in history. The late Roman Empire being a prominent example, but there are other sunken civilizations that went through similar phases before vanishing swiftly.

Instincts that drive mating are fairly low-level and are elevated by positive stress and porking your sweatheart being the primary highlight of your daily life. Overtune those with other distractions and a non-scarcity environment, modern contraception and virtual sex and people have less reason to engage in mating which becomes more and more complicated as standards rise into the absurd. The result also being less mating and birthing. See Nigeria vs. the rest of the world today for details.

This is also the prime reason why revelation cults that have "pushing out babies" as a basic duty actually have an evolutionary advantage and anti-theists are prone to dying out once they emerge in high cultures. Being an anti-theist myself I've recently been discovering more and more distinct advantages of adhering to the mind-virus of an abrahamic revelation cult such as Christianity or Islam. The cultists do and will survive the decline of high civilization(s), that's for sure proven IMHO.

... for an absolutely hilarious screwball comedy movie.