How about Nomore Numbnuts instead? Oh wait, that's not an animal...

I DO wish that would become Ubuntu's motto though - maybe then they'd stop ramming Snaps down users' throats.

FWIW there are some pre-packaged applications that I like and use. But a) I favour AppImage and Flatpak over Snap, and b) I want the choice between APT and standalone. That's a major reason for me running Mint instead of Ubuntu.

He's not being pedantic, but rather historically accurate. They were called programs back then. Referring to them as "applications" was rare, and the term "apps" was even less common, if it was used at all.

That was a long time ago, but IIRC my first computer - a Christmas gift from the boss - came with DOS 4.0. I "upgraded" it to Compaq DOS 3.31 - AFAIK Compaq was the only source for a '3.31' version. I only used 4.0 briefly - I remember not liking it but I don't remember why. It was generally treated with disdain by the programmers and other serious computer users I knew.

At that time I worked on analog hardware, so a computer was still a novelty and a toy for me. Then I got into CAD - no more drafting board needed to create mechanical drawings or schematics, nor to lay out a PCB. Good times...

This Apple has a big, gnarly worm at its core. It's the kind of fruit you polish up and give to someone you don't like.

Then again, it's really no different from any other major corporation, aside from perhaps having a bigger legion of fanbois and other customers who have suspended their critical thinking in favour of convenience, shininess, and/or hipness.

That's not quite accurate. From the article:

"On her first meeting with Marcu, she disclosed she was pregnant, information she had already shared with her previous manager. Marcu, taken aback, responded by informing Ghaderi that she would be 'temporarily' transferred to report to a different employee, Mahesh Krishnakumar."

So in the first place, it seems that she told her new boss about her pregnancy at her earliest opportunity. In the second place, even if that wasn't the case, she had told her former boss. It's not her fault that one hand didn't know what the other one was doing - she was open and up-front about her pregnancy.

I dunno. I think I'd use them to be entertained while I'm stuck with people I don't necessarily connect with but don't wish to offend. I might also use them to look up information regarding a movie or TV series I'm watching on a big screen without having to hit pause. And having a see-through schematic before my eyes while I'm building or working on some piece of equipment might be pretty compelling.

That said, they'd really have to be at first glance almost indistinguishable from my regular glasses - and they'd have to correct my vision as well. I can't imagine that would ever happen, at least not in what's left of my lifetime.

A month ago, almost to the day: https://yro.slashdot.org/story...

Even plant-based sequestration can be a net negative, depending on any resources used to help it grow. Fertilizer production releases greenhouse gases, and over-fertilization of a field causes the release of N2O, which is a particularly potent GG. And if the plants end up rotting or catching fire, there goes all that CO2 back into the atmosphere.

We're still at the magical-thinking stage where we believe we can keep on going the way we are because science and technology will save us from ourselves. In reality we need to start consuming and producing less. It's not as though we even truly enjoy all this excess - if there was any happiness in it we wouldn't be so much like junkies itching for the next fix.

My wife and I shop in "bins" stores where stuff returned to Amazon and the like is re-sold. Much of it is perfectly good and fully functional - who knows why the purchasers rejected it. Yet most of it - countless thousands of tons - is ultimately destined for landfill. When I think of all the resources that went into making and shipping it, only to have it scrapped, sometimes I literally cry.

On the one hand, as TFA mentions, using electrical energy to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, instead of using it to directly lower carbon emissions, seems counterproductive. And the potential negative effects on sea life and pH balance could be catastrophic.

On the other hand, we may already have reached the point where, even if we went to zero greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, temperatures might continue to rise as a result of emissions from melting permafrost, increased forest fires, etc. If that's the case, then we're really going to need carbon capture technologies like this to actually reverse global warming.

Computing power so sweet and so addictive, we're willing to add more big logs to the bonfire which is burning our civilization's future, just to keep the data flowing.

Are the benefits of all this computing power going to be distributed more-or-less evenly? Or is this another "the rich get richer, the middle class gets a few scraps, the lower classes are still more screwed, and more people in third world countries die" scenario?

Apologies for the rhetorical question - I'm coming a bit unhinged lately, thinking about our likely future or lack thereof, and about how utterly stupid and self-destructive we, as a species, have turned out to be.

Thanks very much - that thought never occurred to me, and it makes a world of sense.

I'm happy to be schooled if I'm missing something obvious here, so I have to ask the question: why is it that companies are so reluctant to invade customers' privacy at the request of the government? They do it readily, on a daily basis, to further their own economic ends, so it's hard to see their objections as having a moral or ethical basis. The obvious "we're not getting paid by the government to do their spying" doesn't seem compelling enough under the circumstances, and the "you're not the boss of me" idea doesn't seem to fit either. So what gives?