I have mine mostly turned off/opted-out, too. Particularly on my phone, the only notifications that are audible are text messages, which for me are typically from actual people, or important alerts, such as when my bank completes a significant transfer of funds (such as to my landlord). Everything else is muted.

Here's the thing, though: A lot of people don't want to spend the time to prune their notifications. With so many apps and websites defaulting to sending you notifications, it becomes yet another version of mowing the lawn. (And this is probably by design.)

OK, boomer.

And what is the societal benefit of "weeding out" an entire cohort of students before they have mastered the topic? It seems to me that the primary purpose is for colleges to avoid scrutiny and duck responsibilities for some deficiencies endemic to the education system.

I've seen eight-minute videos interrupted by a five-minute ad block.

As opposed to the literal fascists in the current administration? Because fascists have historically always clamped down on antisemitism.

I think it's pretty similar in Canada, although I can't speak to the comparative levels of complexity. One reason is that, like the U.S., many powers are held by the federal government, while others are exclusive to the various provincial governments. A notable example is the provinces' ability to levy taxes in addition to federal ones. There may also be other provincial records that the federal government does not have direct access to, such as marriage records.

So it "dissolves"... into what? Last I heard, microplastics in our water (and later, our food) are raising ever more concerns about human health.

OK, can anyone explain to me what an "AI-powered browser" will do for me? Will it help me, uh ... browse ... the, uh ... web?

I used Linux as my desktop exclusive for about twenty years. Jumped ship to Windows because I wanted a convertible laptop (specifically a Surface) and the Linux experience was pretty terrible. Didn't handle high-DPI displays well (it required making separate config tweaks for GTK+ and QT, and per-app for other toolkit), didn't handle multi-point touchpads well, didn't support the digitizer, didn't handle display geometry changes cleanly, etc, etc.

They didn't even have WSL at the time, but since the majority of Linux apps I needed were command line anyways, Cygwin and Putty accommodated my needs well enough, and WSL clinched it.

The level of integration with WSL2 now is incredibly slick, with access between the two platforms almost entirely seamless. I've thought about going back to Linux but honestly don't see the point on my main machine.

You really think that trying to port a thirty-year-old code base written for 16-bit x86 processors with no support for modern necessities like character encoding would have been easier?

San Francisco resident here. As far as I can tell from all the various things I've read, the news surrounding this issue is badly reported based on interviews with uninformed and technically un-savvy public spokespeople.

I mean, some of the stories talk about needing to find programmers proficient in "90s-era programming languages." Which ones might those be? I'm unaware of languages that were widely used in 1998 and are completely obsolete today. I'm betting the real challenge is finding programmers proficient in C or even assembly language for embedded systems based on obsolete processors or microcontrollers. That makes sense, but the mainstream press doesn't report it that way because they can't understand it,

So I really doubt the floppy disk issue is a significant problem (and I'm even dubious of the claim that they have to boot the system from floppy disks every night). It's just a savvy PR hook to gain public support for the funding they need to upgrade the entire train control system.

Read here for an official press release from the transit agency that explains the main issue is replacing the extremely antiquated wireless communication system that the trains use now. It's a hardware and networking issue, which naturally needs entirely new control software as well, but not really anything to do with storage media.

Two different things. Tesla only provides driver-assist technology, like you'll find in any luxury automobile these days. "Full self-driving" is a total misnomer, bordering on fraud. WAymo, on the other hand, is truly self-driving, and to do that it relies on tons and tons of mapping and telemetry data. I'm not even sure how it plans to adapt its technology to highway environments, but Tesla is nowhere close.

I think we're still a long way from that. I'm told Waymo has been given permission to start training its vehicles on highways in California, but it has yet to do so. The company rolls its stuff out very carefully and thoughtfully, the way it needs to be.

Nobody is saying it's an epidemic. It's just a major outbreak that's unprecedented in recent decades. Measles is unlikely to become an epidemic in the U.S., because most of us have been vaccinated and the vaccine provides lifelong immunity. Only very foolish people (or people with foolish parents) are contributing the the measles outbreak.

And had you done that in the case of TDAP, you would have gone ahead and had her get the injection anyway, because there are no statistics that suggest or would even hint at what you're claiming was an adverse effect.