> all life is a growth phase that ends [...] Grow, or die.
I'd phrase it, "all life HAS a growth phase that ends", and "grow forever, and die".

I think a stable population size and prosperity are not mutually exclusive. (I think you're arguing they are.) Productivity is the magic that means you can do this without freezing living standards (because it means the same population produces more value).

I take an opposite view - all life has a growth phase, which ends. Growth is a means to an end (generally, sexual maturity) rather than a continuous process.

If you're talking about population growth rather than organism growth, that is generally constrained by resources and competition. Humans at least have consciousness to perceive that, and thus the possibility of avoiding the worst outcomes of hitting those limits.

"We know what it looks like when a country's population no longer grows. It's not pretty"

If your economy depends on infinite population growth it's not an economy, it's a Ponzi scheme. I don't know what a practical upper limit for Switzerland is but there is one.

There is little correlation with these factors and low birth rates. The most fertile countries are the poorest African countries, while Scandinavian nations which have comprehensive cradle-to-grave welfare and social programs have seen similar declines to the rest of the developed world.

> The pilot didn't know they were in the stall

Nonsense. The stall warning was blaring at them for much of the way down.

Stall recognition and recovery is one of the most fundamental skills that pilots are taught, whether they are flying gliders, cessnas or airliners. A complete lack of basic airmanship led to the loss of this aircraft.

Side mirrors almost always leave a large blind spot directly behind and close to the vehicle. There's a reason that when firefighters are reversing their appliances they always have at least one of the crew physically get out and watch the area behind the vehicle.

Even a rear window and rear view mirror almost always leave a significant blind spot low and close behind the vehicle, which is why reversing cameras became a thing. When they're done well, they really are significantly safer, as well as sometimes making it a lot more reliable for most people to park the vehicle in difficult spaces.

One of the modern innovations I really would like to have is full AR on my windscreen. I want unexpected hazards highlighted in real time, particularly those that are more easily detectable by non-visual sensors, like big potholes or animals obscured by vegetation near the side of a country road. I want the actual driving line I need to take to follow my planned route through complex junctions overlaid slightly on my view of the road ahead. I want light amplification for night driving, ideally combined with some other technology that can reduce the glare from oncoming headlights to prevent dazzle.

Although I only want all of this if (a) it's implemented well and (b) any additional data it uses is reliably up-to-date and (c) there's an emergency shut-off that instantly clears everything off the windscreen in case anything goes wrong.

Don't worry. You probably have funky modern door handles that don't work when the power goes out anyway. Not that the power in an EV is likely to go out if it's underwater or on fire or anything.

Oh, don't be silly. Next you'll be making even more absurd claims, like that car theft was already a solved problem 20 years ago thanks to immobilisers, or that having separate physical controls for essential functions that you can find and use without taking your eyes off the road for several seconds to mess around with a touchscreen is safer, or that no-one ever hacked 100,000 cars at once from 1,000 miles away back when they didn't have always-on remote connectivity and allow OTA updates to their essential control systems.

Yes, as long as you're the one in the big, heavy car, it's great. Shame if you're the kid it's reversing over though.

Do you ever use reverse gear? What's behind you is pretty important when you're going backwards...

Yes, Apple's shared RAM model really works for them in the context of running LLMs locally. It's a huge advantage. As you say, not much use for those running other platforms, though.

I'm impressed that anyone can afford a new development PC in 2026. I'd need a second mortgage with the price of the RAM, SSD and GPU these days!

Not sure what you're referring to. Let's try it this way.

Imagine you are a manager or a CO and you have an employee who keep spending an enormous amount of time working on the exact thing you hired him for. He gets frustrated when he finds stuff he CAN'T explain, wants to research further, and you just brush him off because you really hired him to NOT find anything.

Google learned to embrace, extend and extinguish right out of Microsoft's playbook. They were excellent students and you can see the results in how email and web "standards" work today.

The difference is that when Microsoft did it the authorities eventually started getting in their way to promote more openness and competition again. So far there is little sign that anyone intends to challenge the way a few tech giants have recently been capturing long-established standards that we rely on for what have become vital services and effectively taking ownership for their own purposes. The governments and their regulators are either asleep at the wheel or, if you're a bit less trusting, bought and paid for.