“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”

Back in the day, the power to grant corporate charters was wielded much more carefully. I think trouble started when we switched from:
Do X to serve societal need, profit as a side effect.
To:
Profit by all means, manufacture need if it doesn't exist, regardless of societal benefit or cost.

Maybe we don't need congressional approval for every charter, but going back to stricter limits and enforcement of it might be a good thing to do.

Indeed. This is the question I posed in /. back in 2015:
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Couple posters pointed to existing solutions back then, though it seems they were easily hacked.
Hopefully, modern implementations are better.

Not sure if it qualifies as functionally illiterate, but the most prominent thing I could think of was when he had trouble reading the Constitution:
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/...
Don't shoot the messenger; this was reported on multiple sources. You can find the others if you don't believe this outlet.

Not evidence of illiteracy, but Trump is famous for, unlike all other presidents, not being able to digest the daily briefings in writing, instead getting them verbally and in pictures. I think there's no way the same information density can be conveyed without the text, and being able to process the full information is a basic job requirement for a President.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

From what I gather, even if not "functionally illiterate", his reading level is well below what it should be for such an important job. I would even propose that being able to read The Constitution should be a job requirement in itself.

Other evidence, none of which is conclusive in isolation, but demonstrates a general pattern of lack of vocabulary and comprehension:
-Conflating "political asylum" with "insane asylum"
-Conflating "incursion" and "excursion"
-Not knowing what "currency devaluation" means
-not knowing who pays tariffs.

Even if you [the generic "you", not you personally.] support this administration, you shouldn't give them a free pass on doing a crappy job. In fact, that would be incentive to hold them to a higher standard. "It's OK that he's incompetent because I like him." is not good for any of us, supporter or not.

I'm trying to figure out whether that's the best place to attack it (getting the loans part), and I don't have the financial wherewithal to figure it out. The ultimate dodge is when the heirs get a stepped up basis on those assets when it comes time to pay back the loans. That really looks like a rule written by the rich for the rich. Get rid of that loophole and much of the benefit of using trick goes away. (And I say that even though my heirs could potentially benefit from this, though to a much smaller extent than the billionaires.) That, and the ridiculously high inheritance tax threshold.

Another option: both.
As the dementia advances, episodes where he really has no clue what's going on in any way gets more frequent.
However, there may be moments of clarity when he remembers at least some things.

Of course, it's pretty obvious that he's pretty ignorant/clueless about how the world works*, so I'm leaning towards 1. He just says it because he things it makes him sound powerful.

*bleach, light, "groceries", apples in supermarket fridge, eclipse gazing, Hitler's generals, tariffs, asylum, U.S. is spelled US, "excursion", dumb with a "b".

Big clue that he just learned something new is the phrase "most people don't know that".

Sort of veering off-topic, but if one buys Costco gas with a Costco branded credit card, there is an additional 5% "back", which is effectively a 5% discount off of the Costco price. Assuming one would have already paid the membership for other reasons/purchases, this makes the price probably more competitive than the nominal 5 cents difference on the sign. As for lines, staying away on weekends and evenings usually lets one avoid them. As always, YMMV.

Yeah I very much liked to read it as well. Goes to show that some engineers deeply care about the neatness and maintainability of our beloved kernel.

yeah, I was (jokingly) thinking to myself,
Ok, shield one side of the exposure plate.
Attach the exposed side to the astronaut.
Take a spacewalk.
Develop plate.

Tada! Instant xrays.

Earlier in his career he had a law firm with Michael Tang

Last mile wires are likely running VDSL, not POTS or ISDN. Phone service runs through a modem which the user plugs into their house wiring to give the illusion of POTS, but outside the house it is just VoIP

Not contesting your point in any way, but 128MB 72-pin SIMMs exist. Not sure how common it was back in the day, though, and support on the motherboard side is questionable. I know it exists because I had (and still have) one in my Mac Performa 630 (68040).

Let me be the first to complain about the improper use of the DEC logo. Again.
What the heck does DEC have anything to do with this story?

Hmm... re-read the post. Guess I read too much into your use of the specific number 30%. Perhaps there's something in the article, but there's nothing in the summary implying a "30% failure rate" that you stated. If you were just stating that as one possible hypothetical number, (or there's more information in the article) then sure, that makes sense.

It sounded to me like:
"there were 30 crates and 20 oranges in the shipment".
"Perhaps 30 percent of the crates were faulty because..." which is non-sequitur.
That's all.

So I don't play that type of game. Has anyone here played those, and had the gambling feeling over these loot boxes? The summary is rather damning, but I'd like the opinion of an adult gamer.