[To answer your question, the figures typically come from CDNs and major websites doing browser data analysis so, while there's quite a bit of wiggle room, they are going to at least be in the ballpark and definiltely not orders of magnitude out.] Personally, I think people are being too simplistic about the stats and likely outcomes and, arguably, focusing too much on entirely the wrong issue.

I totally agree on your main point; 7-8 years is a good run for a specific major release of an OS, or any other software application. You might not like the decision, but Microsoft announced the end of official support some years ago and that we're now approaching that deadline is just BAU and not something anyone should really have an issue with. They're not taking Windows 10 off you (yet?), but they are making it clear that if you continue to run it you're doing so at your own risk from next month. Pretty much everyone, including the FOSS community, does this with older versions at some point. It's been done countless times before, and will be done countless times in the future - in that light, singling out this one specific example isn't a particularly sound argument, is it?

Whatever the percentage of Win10 holdouts is (I've seen recent figures closer to 50%), it's highly unlikely to be entirely down to "lack of TPM". Windows 11 is a privacy raping UI/UX nightmare, so I suspect a large majority of those Windows 10 holdouts have hardware that actually could run Windows 11 just fine, but are actively choosing not to do so. When many of them inevitably get compromised (which they will), it's going to be interesting to see who gets the blame for that - and the fallout from whatever the resulting botnets are used for - in the media, but that's another topic for another day. There will also be another fraction who simply don't know or don't care; the OS is part of the hardware purchase, and if the hardware is working fine then there's no reason to change anything, and they'll only upgrade when things break (likely due to overworked fans packing up after the CPU has been running flat out for several months as part of some botnet or other). Given most users performance needs have hit a plateau, that could be quite a large fraction, and will naturally decline over time. Finally, you'll have the fraction that understand the issue and have legacy hardware, but can't / won't upgrade because of other user-specific reasons - e.g. they just can't afford it right now.

Key point: none of the people in those groups - probably the majority of that 40-50% - are going to be sending their old PCs to landfill any time soon, and certainly not all in one go on October 14th.

The real issue here is that Microsoft has arbitrarily decided - for the financial benefit of themselves and their hardware/advertising partners - to try and force an unnecessary hardware and OS/"telemetry" upgrade, rather than simply put a banner in the setup process starting with something along the lines of "This hardware lacks critical security functionality and your data may be at increased risk...". We know beyond a doubt that this is an entirely arbitrary hardware requirement decision because of all the workarounds posted online showing how to get Windows 11 running on hardware it supposedly doesn't support. That is pretty much textbook abuse of a monopolistic position in the market, and that's the tack PIRG (and the likes of the DoJ, FTC, EU, etc.) probably should be taking; force Microsoft to remove the arbitrary restriction but make it clear that if you don't have TPM 2.0, that's on you. If you understand what TPM actually does, then you probably also have at least a basic clue about PC/network security and will realise that is pretty much zero additional risk outside of some corporate environments.

Yes, there will still be holdouts, just as there still are on even older software releases and Windows version, but at that point it's entirely on them. They've either chosen the Windows 11 path, with all that entails, or they've chosen some other option (trying to secure a Windows version <11, Linux, Mac, whatever) with all that entails. As long as is not a monoculture with a common failure mode, we should be fine with that.

Given the vast amount of data that is collected and sent to the mothership in modern "connected" cars, maybe they realised they can sell that on? Apart from all the obvious stuff like realtime tracking data and telemetry on your driving style while you are are on the road, there's your preferences on playlists, what kind of temperature you prefer (from which health info can be inferred), what stores you prefer and where your friends and family live, (extracted from parking location data), all tied into the real ID you used to buy and register the car - no "dark profiles" here.

It's a model that seems to be working very well for browers and certain OSs, as well as pretty much all of the Internet of Shit. It might cost a bit more and be a lot larger than some connencted $20+tariffs widget, but a modern car is still just another component of the IoS. It's said the margin on a mass market car is around 5-10%; care to bet that the captured data is being sold on to info brokers for a whole lot more?

Or it's a new take on the "RTO Mandate" approach to headcount reduction leveraging a kind of reverse Dunning-Kruger.

Right now, everyone at Opendoor is thinking of their colleagues and wondering if they are in the 15% that won't get the cut. For a team of 20, that means you've got to either truly believe that you're in the top three of that group, are blissfully naive, or will be polishing your CV and getting it out to agencies this weekend, and since company morale just went to shit, there's a pretty good chance that a chunk of those who *are* confident they'll make the cut will be doing the same, because once everyone else is gone they're going to have a lot more work to do. Good luck running the company on the blissfully naive remants.

Yes, there's probably a LOT of deadwood at Opendoor but, like RTO Mandates, this isn't the best way to get rid of it, and will have the same result as RTO; a lot of the best and brightest will be deciding the door they really want is the exit door.

Yeah I was always impressed by that in the UK, but also a bit confused on what the incentive is for banks to build out their networks.

The high out-of-network fees in Canada cause the banks to compete on this... banks with more ATMs in an area will get more customers. As a result we have bank ATMs everywhere.

Out of network ATM withdrawals in Canada cost around $7 if you don't have a premium banking plan... with $3.50 being charged by your bank, and $3.50 by the ATM owner bank.

https://phys.org/news/2025-09-...

Rich people (at the level you are implying) are generally egomanical, narcissistic, sociopaths who have no idea how to do the day to day things in life because they pay other people to do it for them. If you cream off the ~10,000 wealthiest people on the planet and put them into a community of some kind, even with robots to do the bulk of the work, I would still predict you'd rapidly find yourself back with a "1%" of around 100 mega-wealthy people, amid on-going power stuggles that soon turn ugly and gut the robot population (who else is going to do the fighting?).

With the labour pool mostly gone, the total population of meatbags will reach 0 soon after. It'd be like the Golgafrinchan B Ark, only much more so.

Come to think of it, there's probably a pretty decent dystopian short story with some very dark humour there...

Just FYI you're describing exactly what people with bowel cancer go through, a colostomy bag.

Norway has entered the chat

I guess that depends on the volume of the aquifer and the geology. If there's a non-porous layer of rock in the ~1300ft of rock above it then, while the aquifer will inevitably start to collapse creating cracks in the higher layers of rock, it might be some time before enough salt water mingles with the fresh to exceed safe potable water limits. Besides, as long as it's still sufficiently less salty than typical sea water, then it's still going to be a lot more efficient to run it through some kinds of desalination plant than it would be to use ocean water like countries such as the UAE are doing, with a lot less waste brine produced as well.

I guess we'll need follow-up studies to be sure, but with the increasing pressure on fresh water supplies and more turbulent weather patterns making some of the current collection basins for reservoirs less reliable, search for potential alternative sources of potable, or even near-potable that can be readily purified, is probably quite a prudent thing to be doing. Dying of dehydration is not a pleasant way to go.

Agree, this whole study sounds very strange.

It is also very strange that it is SPECIFICALLY recommending a strange new sweetener that is very uncommon.

Funded by either that sweetener, or the sugar industry, most likely.

Treating image search, finance search, travel search, and news search as different "products" is a false flag by DuckDuckGo and others.

When I search for a topic - let's say NVidia - all I care about is are the results accurate, relevant, and actionable.

If they aren't then over time I will go and use a different tool.

Having to go to different places for different kinds of search is just ridiculously anti-consumer and short-sighted - especially in this age of AI. If a ruling like that happened, then Perplexity would just totally eat Googles lunch, not because their results were better but simply because users wouldn't have to go to multiple places.

Seattle gets its fair share of fog and heavy rain all winter long

Meanwhile, Denver will get snow

I don't know how many times one has to say it...

Opinion-based surveys"
  are irrelevant when one has 150 years of actual statistics.

The population in developed economies shrinks - regardless of employment rates. There is ZERO correlation of employment rates to fertility rates. There is STRONG correlation of human development index to fertility rates.

The entire world is on track to be below replacement fertility before 2050. Note that every year that passes, that estimate is revised DOWNWARD. It used to be the 2080s as recent as 2023.

That isn't data... It's a silly lifestyle piece.

Go look at *actual global fertility charts* for the past 150 years.