Most of coal (and gas and petroleum) come from the Carboniferous period between the time plants invented lignin and became trees and the time microorganisms found a way to digest and recycle it. It lasted from -350M to -300M years when dead trees just piled up on each others without rotting. So if you can find a way to burn 50 million years of accumulated carbon in a decade, go for it !

I guess things get too complex after a while and nobody wants to work on them anymore and somebody just goes 'We should write something more simple (and faster and with newer tech)' and it works fine at the beginning but then when you add all the missing things and workarounds and bells and wishes, then you end up with the original product in all its horror...

silent pc is not hard these days. a very old i5 that I built about 8 years ago still does great with 1080p content. I dont care beyond that.

tdp of 65w and less means you can run heatpipes in your pc and with onboard gfx (good enough for video) you have a silent pc.

install all the right ad blockers for YT and you get free 'tv' and generally full control. yes, install linux. no need for win (have not used win since win7 days).

I can also ssh and vnc into my other systems.

zero reason to use the sticks unless you are hellbent on DRM sources.

The definition of reasonable person has been revised downwards.

I suspect most people bought these to flip the bird to the worthless mask culture.

At least now we know forever that paper masks don't do a damn thing for viruses and N95's only work a little for trained wearers.

I'm still seeing mask litter in ditches everywhere. Mass hysteria.

Sounds like they're about to do a massive price hike.

They've started reminding me that I've "saved $11 in shipping costs" when I order a 6-pack of pencils like I'm a drunken fool who has no idea how costs are structured.

No better way to garner good customer will than to end every single transaction with a bald-faced lie!

> There are no trade secrets or anything special in RISC-V.

It's not what's in it that matters, it's what's not in it.

If the Chinese people use chips without backdoors then they will have a global competitive advantage.

Of course Americans could also do that but domestic spying is too important to the fat unearned paychecks of the DC intelligentsia.

They only apply Enron standards to protesters and rioters, not corporate execs.

Worse case is the complex total back door hidden in the A5+ gpu silicon that Kaspersky responsibly disclosed.

100% deliberate and not engineering code. Apple was able to patch in a block - for this one that we know about.

It's believed NSA used this backdoor to spy on Tucker Carlson's Signal messages. If they will spy on an American journalist they will spy on SK military generals any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

SK knows what's up and if anyone at Samsung betrays them they have means and methods.

One more: since you can't upgrade later for $150 you have to pay $450 more up front if you'll ever want more.

Better to buy no-name OEM from Taiwan at this point than big American brands.

I'm so glad I got off the Apple bandwagon when they started ignoring the Mac for iPhone.

I actually had linux running on my MBP for a while before buying a PC laptop to when it was time to upgrade.

Every convenience feature is potential spyware when they could have done it cryptographically secure from the beginning.

I actually had a good chat with on-staff cryptographers back in the 90's. This one gal was a genius at elliptic curves

Those were the days.

I use rsync and syncthing to do those.

I happen to generate all my scripts out of puppet modules with reflection but for just a few devices you can absolutely roll it by hand.

> Sure it sucks, but it isn't dire.

Dropping the kids off at McDonald's at 7am in a snowstorm is indeed dire.

These providers usually have enforced monopolies which always come with wealth redistribution.

Fix all of the above problems before dunking on poor families subject to these policies.

Some of these comments make no sense in the reality that remote schooling is now mandatary and enforced by law.

Kids in poor families who need to be on Zoom 6 hours a day do not have other options claimed here.

Unemployment meetings, seniors' telehealth, etc. all fit similar patterns. There is often no choice given.

Fix those maybe before claiming that a 1GB cap is plenty.

> Wait. Why on earth are you using an account for television.

So you can watch your YouTube videos on your TV?

Cut off the pharmaceuticals for a few years and we'll have all-new politicians.