There is no reason why applications which choose to implement both types of interfaces can't do so. There's also no reason why users should be limited to one type of interface or the other. Both things coexist completely peacefully on Android. You can connect a mouse to your tablet (or even phone) and treat it like a desktop system with shitty storage (practically all phones, it takes a lot of power to have fast storage.)

The primary use case for tablet computers in olden times was data entry and acquisition, for example the military used their magnesium-case gridpads to do inventory.

Yeah, but you see, from marketing perspective what sounds better? The Line or the Dot or the Pimple?
They had these 3 choices, they made the more sensible one even though it has nothing to do with a good or sensible city outline.

The biggest problem with Apple for users probably isn't any of their anticompetitive shit, but rather their bifurcated OS. Software which could be sold on both platforms is commonly only on one or the other. Tablets have enough screen and enough power to do real PC jobs but are prohibited from doing them because Apple wants to sell you both an iPad and a Macintosh. Android-based tablets can run emulators to get around these problems, or run full apps which can run on ARM Linux in Termux or another solution. TBF Google seems to have Apple envy and is aiming to lock down their systems more and not less so maybe they will throw away this advantage.

Which is to be commended, but also... The US started from one of the worst positions too. The the absolute worst, but certainly the worst of all the major economies.

If they were cheating by any significant amount, we would know because emissions are visible from space. This article has an image showing how emissions can be traced to individual sources, even: https://theconversation.com/tr...

Satellites can also see reduced smog over China.

We can also see the massive solar and wind installations from space, or you can just get a visa and go look at them for yourself. Plenty of people have. Take a PM2.5 and CO2 monitor with you, for good measure.

Is there any area of science where we are ahead of China? Certainly not satellites.

Do they also provide build tools and allow customers to build and install their own images?

You have to have punishments to stop the people who are stopped by the threat of them. Those people do exist. We don't think about them much because the existing deterrents work just fine on them.

But you also shouldn't waste your time either believing that they will deter everyone, nor that stronger punishments will deter statistically more people. There are always those who think they won't get caught, and those who don't care.

Somehow authoritarians always forget the carrot. The stick isn't invalid, it just isn't a complete solution, and you shouldn't be rushing to apply it in all situations.

What's stopping you? There's definitely people doing this right now. Around a quarter of the continental US is BLM land. Last I looked pig tags were free.

Obviously exponential growth won't go on forever, but we are a very, very, very long way from saturating the available demand or land available for renewables.

Deployment will keep accelerating as costs continue to fall and people see the benefits of producing their own energy. The payback time on the investment has been steadily falling for decades.

Is it that different to what some Western countries have? The US is a two party system. The UK is too, despite recent gains by smaller parties.

Speaking for the UK, the choice is between hard and soft Thatcherism. That's not much of a choice. A vote for anyone else is usually wasted, not counted at the national level.

That is deliberate policy too. No government will change it because they think they can win the next election and gain 100% of the power, rather than a more representative system that distributes it in a democratic way.

It would be nice if the money was invested in alternative forms of rapid transport, like high speed rail. I'd take the train if there was one.

I wouldn't be so certain that China's model won't come to dominate eventually, because we don't seem to be able to fix our democracies. There are clear flaws that are being exploited now, and the inability to adequately deal with climate change while China races ahead is both a moral and economic failure.

I'd very much prefer democracy to be the winning model, but it won't just happen by itself. Look at the rise of populist right wingers - people will vote away their rights and prosperity in exchange for nothing more than rhetoric, if they think that democracy isn't delivering for them.

WebP only got an RFC (9649) in November 2024. JXL hasn't even got that far.

I hope JXL does catch on, but until Chrome supports it that will not happen. Maybe now that it's required for PDF display, Google will be forced to re-adopt it.

To be fair I think the reason they dropped support for JPEG XL is because the reference C library is crap, and last time I looked none of the alternatives were very mature. Hopefully things have improved by now.