Unfortunately this is the logical conclusion of letting Microsoft dominate desktop computing for a generation and investing too much in software that relies on proprietary data formats. There isn't much effective competition for many of the users who are still using a Windows desktop, because they're locked in by whatever Windows-only software they still rely on. Those who could jump ship to mobile devices, games consoles, Apple desktop or Linux probably already have.

As you seems you need something more modern and with source available:
Have you given FreeDOS a try?
I my limited tests (retrogaming) it seems pretty stable and useful, though your embed use case might have different requirement (complex network stack or dedicated hardware interface on ISA cards that has only been validated against a couple of commercial DOS versions)

(I think you meant L C D?)

Yeah, that's what I meant by "blocking/filtering".

Passive LCD have poor refresh rate (won't be easy to precisely track a virtual object).

And if you want to have some resolution/precision, when blocking light, the LCD needs to be on a plane that is focused, so you're back at having big clunky optics in front of the eyes which king of defeats the "lightweight normal size glasses," point of the poster above.

Meaning the LCD will most likely be used to shut the whole outside or mask a large part of it (a whole quadrant).

Not black pixels in the view. And thus any virtual layer superimposed on top of the real world is going to be a "floating luminous ghost", unless you go the Magic Leap way and use a special setup room with dim lights (or unless masking the whole outside).

Also, due to how they work (polarization) LCDs will most often block at least 50% (even in pass-through state), so will not be very usable for interacting with the real-world in low-light conditions.

Musical.ly , being another Chinese produced product.
Tiktok doesn't exist in China because it's a western brand.
Douyin is the same product, for the Chinese market.
Both owned by ByteDance.
I doubt they bought Musical.ly for the users. They would have bought it for the licensing agreements they had for music.

When was it sold?
Biden wants it to be sold.
China has claimed the algorithm to be sensitive information and has placed export controls on it, so ByteDance requires permission to sell.

MySQL and Java went to Oracle, not IBM

And it's not a very well done thing, mostly due to the not so stellar resolution even in the middle of the field of view. Works for workload where one doesn't need super fine resolution (e.g.: video editing), but forget about using this with walls of tiny next (not usable for coding, for example).

Another use that some people have experimented and Apple has touted with their "spacial computing" moniker: leaving multiple windows and applet floating virtually around a large real-world space (e.g.: have various control apps for your widgets in the work area, have browser with receipe and cooking timer in your kitchen, etc.) so as you move between real-world space, you get the revelant stuff already open and floating wating for you.

The problem is that, at the price of that Apple asks for the Vision Pro, and at the price one finds electronics on, e.g., AliExpress: for the 3500 bucks that Apple asks for their "Spacial Computer", one can buy 35x sub 100 bucks no-name tablets, and leave actual tablets lying around the real world to have "already opened and ready to use apps" all-over. Meh.

My impression is that this is more like the Newton, when Apple utterly failed at making a succesful portable/pocket computer, to the point that they abandoned the form factor, and it took Palm to teach a lesson in how to actually make a success in that form factor before Apple made another somewhat less lackluster attempt with the iPhone and iPod Touch (after having seen a demo of the Handspring + modem Springboard).

Also Vision Pro doesn't have a killer app.
(The "extra screen while on the move" is very limited in practice due to resolution limitation of VR).
It's clearly more of an early prototype to start exploring the platform, that somehow marketing stumbled upon and decided to push through. As you said it:

Sadly, those pesky physics stand in the way.
(No controllable way to "project black", meaning you need some blocking/filtering;
No practical way to project a picture without at least some optics: all the alternative things - like waveguides - which were tried turned out rather crappy)

There are some attempts at making smaller headsets (e.g.: some like Bigscreen are trying to be as light as an immersive VR can be) or less isolating (e.g.: stuff like Lynx has roughly similar optic to the AVP, but the mask is optional it's also usable with peripheral vision unblocked), but all these are still somewhat clunky, and still cost a lot due to manufacturing scale (compared to, e.g., Quest).
Note that they still cost a fraction of Apple's turd and also weight a lot less.

Because, it's not a fuel?
Yes, demand on lithium is increasing as manufacturer of battery-powered devices ramps-up.

But the lithium in a battery powered device is merely a one time inital affair. Once the battery has been built you don't need any more lithium over the life time of the battery. There's no need to constantly pump more lithium into an EV for it to function.

Contrast this with the fossil fuel pipelines.

That's why switching to EV hasn't had an as dramatic effect on Lithium prices as ICE have had on fossil fuel.
Same reason why even if they EV are more complex to build and manufacturing one has larger climate impact than manufacturing an ICE, ICE's constant guzzling of gas overtakes EV's environmental impact after a couple of years (2 to 3 depending on the local energy mix).

(And similar differences of scale also concern nuclear power generation: yes it needs to "burn" a fissile fuel. But it uses so little of that fissile fuel and it amount for such a minute fraction of the overall cost that even insane fluctuations of prices would barely have any noticeable impact on electricity bills)

EVs don't scale well. At a gas station if you have two people in front of you, you wait 20 minutes.

My home scales quite well, and there are zero people in front of me for both the garaged space and the driveway outside of it.

China didn't buy TikTok, they made it.

I guess technically a private Chinese company made TikTok
It wasn't until 2021 that the Chinese government put themselves on the board of ByteDance

Flash would have to be DC powered.

In which case you get presented with a form in which to enter your payment credentials.