does anyone doubt putin has something on donny?

I live in North Pole, Alaska. When EV's come to a place where it's a 360mi drive at -45F (when we wait for good weather) to visit family, then you will know EV's have arrived. Until I can get 360mi without waiting for a half hour or more to charge my car, I will be sucking long dead plant matter through my car. Not holding my breath.

I live in central Alaska. My drive to see my family is 360mi and I do it quite a few times a year, often at -40F. That's a pretty normal thing here and I have to bet that much of Canada deals with similar situations. It will require a major break in battery technology to allow me to do that kind of a drive with an electric car. I'll be happy to get on the bandwagon then.

I live just down the road in North Pole, Alaska and our local air quality is shite due to the inversion layer that sets up in the Tanana Valley. Eliminating Eielson's use of coal will be a huge win in that aspect. Only time will tell if they handle the spent fuel intelligently.

My first iPhone was an iPhone 4 and it's still in use as a music station for my indoor bike trainer. My iPhone 6 is still just fine which I use for music and video when traveling so my phone battery can last as long as possible. I don't know anyone who has had an iPhone die from battery swelling although I'm sure it happens. Based on my experience and those of family and friends I expect iPhones to work "forever" with the caveat that at some point a battery must be replaced and eventually they may not be available.

I have AppleTV+ due to my iPhone 11 purchase and I enjoyed a few hours of a few shows but on nearly any other traditional streaming service I can scroll through hundreds of offerings. I won't like many of them but when bored I can find something of interest I have never heard of in a genre that appeals to me. Apple TV may slowly grow it's offerings but one new movie or series every month or two isn't enough to keep me subscribing. At this pace I doubt very much it will be available in 5 years. I certainly won't continue my subscription failing a huge deluge of offerings that are of greater interest to me.

You posted my thoughts fairly well other than saying "pendant". Hearing doesn't -necessarily- imply cognition. Some lower classes of animals may have organs with neuronal structures that communicate with vibration sensors to provide feedback that the animal reacts to and I'd probably include that as hearing. But however you define human like hearing, plants don't do it. They react to light. To temperature. To soil types and without any amazement, they react to a vibration pattern that is followed by pollination. Evolution occurs in the plant kingdom too, eh? No huge surprise this is possible but interesting research to be sure.

that's only in an ideal world. in the real world the police arrest people all too often even when there is no crime, witness the many arrests for photography and videography when it is perfectly legal but unwanted by the police. the white house staff photographer was even arrested (and acquitted) for videotaping (photographing?) police. and courts often follow through with prosecutions of people that are, to any neutral observer, clearly innocent. our legal system is broken and demonstrably so when prosecutors fight tooth and nail to prevent exculpatory dna evidence from being used to save innocent people after they have spent years in prison. sad.

I got my gmail address when it was in beta if I recall correctly. It is therefore a simple one like name@gmail.com. On top of that it is a very common name in a European country. I thought it was great to have that gmail address till I started getting all sorts of email meant for another person..then another...I just mark as spam and filter. No problem. Not my worry. Simple solutions for simple problems.

I'm an apple fan boy in the sense that I'm a fan of the OS. I use a Mac (and do support for both mac and win machines) but not because I am in love with Apple's policies. I won't buy an iPhone or iPad, and I'll never buy a song from iTunes for myself. My next machine will be a real debate in terms of the OS. I've watched Windows get better and better in many ways but the feel of the OS is still, for me, nasty. But so is Apple's "my way or the highway" position which this issue demonstrates.

Unless I'm mistaken, Canon dslr's won't allow you to leave them on 24/7 and would not work for a continuous-on camera, which is a typical requirement of a web cam.

This was fantastic. Not sure it belonged in Slashdot but it made my day and month. I dunno who has the time to do all this but it busted the irony meter and made me laugh aloud. Good 'nuff for me.

From what I gather it is NOT easy or possible to duplicate the functionality that existed previously. I have tens of thousands of images. One huge nicety of Mac OS has always been my ability to allow a family member open a jpg in something like Adobe PhotoDeluxe and work on it with that program and save it, then double click on it and have it open in that program, while I do similarly with Photoshop and it will open properly in Photoshop. I now have thousands of images that open in this program or that program...even some that are only used in Final Cut Pro that I can double click on and FCP will then open. I don't think there is any way to transition so my old ability to double click and have the correct application open for all these thousands of files. If I had never taken a picture or written a .txt file with BBEdit it would be less of an issue. But this change would have a huge impact on my workflow and over time would cost me a lot of wasted time. This is one update I will pass on and for me a it's a huge loss of functionality that just drives one more wedge between me and OSX.

it depends mostly on how much data you have. I have a couple of terabytes. I also have a daughter living 5 miles away so I backup at my house to external drives and swap those backups with another set kept at her house. If you have 50megs of data (many people have very small requirements) then an online backup strategy might be very handy. You can even get 32gig and larger(?) USB flash drives that are more than adequate for most people who just want to backup their email and pictures/data. Tape drives are fine for geeks but access is slow and rebuilding a drive becomes more of a chore. Definitely not for mom and dad if they aren't geeks. External drives give total bootability (or the potential for it) and for most people are the easiest way to do a complete mirror of your HD. For data, most people can fit all their data (if they can even find it) on a USB Thumb Drive.