oblig: https://xkcd.com/1807/

I'm slightly more willing to give a pass to Xorg applications because it's not a monolithic environment supposedly under the control of a corporate entity that should be able to enforce its own standards.

of course you have to authenticate, but you run all of the software to administer it on a client, not sitting at the console. The console had only the most barebones capability, usually user management. The tools to administer ran on the client.

...it makes sense to have a headless server operating system when you're mostly running commodity spin-up/spin-down headless servers. Microsoft's server operating system was still largely based on the idea of running on a baremetal self-contained box, even though Microsoft servers had long, long since been used in the virtual machine space. If anything they're quite far behind the curve on this.

The Novell Netware model adapted to the VM era is what makes sense, where the tools don't require logging in to the server at all in order to administer the environment.

IBM is and has always been a services/consultant business, even when they made products.

I'm not so sure about the UI. The history of Microsoft and UI for the past 40 years is that they're happy to abandon their incumbent UI for different. We saw that with Windows 3.x to '95 and NT4, with Windows 98 and the integration of Spyglass Mosaic Internet Explorer, with the transition from Windows ME and Windows 2000 to Windows XP, the subsequent further transition from XP to Windows 7, and the rework from Windows 8.x to Windows 10. We even saw it with Windows 10 to Windows 11.

They change their UI because their customers don't see the OS being new/different unless they change their UI. If the UI looks the same then the average untrained end user doesn't know the difference and doesn't see a value in spending the money to upgrade.

Parkay.

You base this off of part of a twenty minute Youtube video. I have no interest in self driving cars personally, so I can't say I follow where the US is in this regard.

Aren't there self driving taxis in cities in the US? If they're killing pedestrians and people on scooters, I would assume that it would make the news. If they're killing people in China, it's less likely that we'd hear about it.

Not gonna lie, that is really cool. But that doesn't require self driving nor EV. I'd love to see that implemented in the US.

This is a trade show. I've worked in several industries and attended trade shows. Over half of what is shown at a trade show never happens. Much of what does make it to the public is not as cheap or as good as what was promised. Many things are just complete fantasy. I bought a Cadillac in the early 1980's that I finally got rid of after 360K miles. I could have kept driving it, but the AC stopped working at the same time it developed a leak in the sunroof and some other minor issues. There are Toyota's that have hit one million miles. Those aren't the norm though. I suspect those batteries aren't either, if they are real at all.

I find it amusing that people who doubt everything and anything that is said by the US government or US companies will believe anything said by their Chinese counterparts. I've worked in China and find there are a lot of parallels between the US in the 1950's and modern day China. Perception in China is a lot more important than reality in many cases.

I have friends in Russia, Australia, and other places that import Chinese cars. I've heard the same thing from most of them. Getting parts when something breaks is nigh impossible. Chinese car manufacturers refresh car models every 2ish years. Getting parts becomes impossible because they make a limited number of replacement parts even when a model is still in production, Once it's run comes to an end any parts that don't get carried over to the new model are no longer produced. That 800km battery is pointless if a steering wheel position sensor goes bad and the car won't move and there are no replacement parts available.

The reality is that China was really smart to jump on EV manufacturing. They saw that US, EU, Japanese, and Korean car manufacturers were too far ahead when it came to ICE engines. It made little sense to try to catch up on those as they had a 100 year heard start. Obviously environmental concerns also made EV's a smarter bet as well. Unfortunately having a car that has a better than zero percent chance of becoming disposable once it hits the 3 year mark isn't so good. Suddenly buying a $60k car that will last for ten years becomes a safer bet than a car that's half the price but may need to be replaced 2 or 3 times in that same period.

... is of the kind:
"You should invest a lot of money in OpenAI"
?

Class rank exists and can be used to determine relative capability though.

I have no complaint with the idea that most students simply won't be able to achieve an A-grade if the material is both challenging and taught to proper standards, but I have a major problem with the notion that teachers are required to deny students that have mastered well above 90% of the material an A-grade because other students managed to yet outperform them. I hate the idea of grading on a curve. One should be judged against the mastery of the material, not comparatively against other students during that particular semester.

That said, I have also had college classes where I really should have failed the class but because of the curve, I got an A because I had the highest scores. While some of that reflects upon me, a good chunk of that reflects upon the instructor, the department and its head, and the curricula for that particular course. If students are to be held to high standards then instructors should likewise be held to high standards, and so should their institutions. If they cannot produce results then that should reflect both upon them and upon the revenue they receive in tuition.

It's a shit situation, but why won't any of the surrounding countries take refugees from Gaza? I'll tell you why. Because every time a country has taken in Palestinian refugees they were thanked with armed revolt. In the Middle-East Palestinians are literally called "rats" by the people in other Arab nations. I found it shocking. But other people I've talked with heard the same thing.

Gaza was captured from Egypt by Israel in 1967. It was handed over to the Palestinians.in 2005. In 2006 Hamas was voted into power and that was the last time there were elections. Both Israel and Egypt have blockaded Gaza since 2007; after Hamas removed the Fatah government at gunpoint. Then they spent $1 billion over the following 15 years building tunnels to use in attacks against Israel. They spent another $200 to $300 million per year on rockets and later drones to attack Israel.

So the "Palestinians" who voted Hamas into power in 2006? Hamas, whose stated goal was the destruction of Israel? Hamas, the folks who brutally killed over 800 civilians on October 7? Hamas, the folks who don't wear uniforms and classify all of their combatants as civilians? Hamas, the wonderful people who hide their combatants and weapons in schools, mosques, hospitals, and any other civilian place they can?

It's a genocide when Israel kills combatants who are not in uniform? Israel should just sit on their ass when missiles and artillery are fired from civilian locations in Gaza at civilians in Israel? During that war Hamas stated they would rebuild their forces and attack Israel again once peace was declared.

Was Israel too heavy handed in some cases? Yes. Did some IDF soldiers commit war crimes? Yes. But those weren't supported or condoned by the Israeli government as far as I can tell. Was there collateral damage? Of course, this was a heavily populated area with non-uniformed combatants hiding among the civilians. If Israel wanted a genocide then they could have cluster bombed the shit out of the entire area. Your Wikipedia link states that 70K people were killed and half, 35K, of those were women and children. Yet the UN revised the numbers to 5K women and 8K children. It also states that the vast majority of deaths were civilians. How do we know? Hamas claims their own fighters are civilians. With no uniforms, we will never know the truth.

What genocide?

I spent 20 years working in K-12 in a suport role. The issues vary greatly across population densities and social and economic status. The large district I worked for (~55,000 students) featured everything from schools where every kid must be prepared to go to college, to trying to arrest the pregnancy and dropout rates.

The problem is when education is treated as a monolithic bloc. Issues vary incredibly widely from school to school, from neighborhood to neighborhood. An additional problem is the attack stemming from the anti-tax crowd on public education, eroding budgets and thus paychecks, generating disrespect for teachers, and causing many to leave the profession for something that pays better. That leads to erosion of the system and it starting to break down.

I suppose this is "new" for 4K TV's But Sony's 2008 top end XBR models had "Triluminos" backlighting using full array RGB LED's with local dimming. The MSRP for the 55-inch was $7K.