"Just because Trump is an idiot doesn't speak to the future"?? Are you fucking kidding me? Here's but one way that Trump's idiocy directly speaks to the future: The 1973 oil shock led to a 3.2% peak-to-trough contraction in GDP in the US. Industrial production fell 13% and unemployment doubled to 9%. Inflation peaked at 12%. The S&P halved in value. The 79 oil shock led to a 2.2% contraction, inflation peaked at 15% and unemployment peaked at 11%. The 2026 oil shock is bigger than both of those combined, and as well as about 14% of net global oil supply being lost, large quantities of helium for semiconductors and nitrogen for fertilizers pass through the Straits (or rather, don't). So the result of Iran exerting its leverage over the Straits as a result of the US / Israel attack will be a severe economic contraction around the world, including the US. It takes 6 to 18 months to hit fully. And it is going to happen in the future and it's the result of Trump being an idiot.

There is reliable evidence that the regime painted at least one missile pink in a propaganda stunt. So what? It doesn't speak to the regime's stability
There is no reliable evidence that the regime has imported 5000 of its proxy fighters, and anyway such a number is absolutely paltry in comparison to the size of the regime's own coercive apparatus. Artesh = 350k; Basij = 100ks; police = 10ks.

You are kidding yourself if you think the regime is close to collapse. It has been *more entrenched* by the invasion, despite the undoubted impact on leadership, the country's finances, and some miltary forces. Asymmetric warfare for Iran requires only drones, fast boats, and mines, plus insurers charging millions more for vessels and flatly excluding traversing the Straits, and none of those are in danger of running out any time soon.

There aren't a lot of AAA PC games these days and Sony's releases were some of the few we got and they were all the very high quality.

But this isn't because they're trying to be evil or anything they just aren't selling enough copies to justify the ports.

If the cost of a PS5 was low I could see that because people would just buy the PS5 and not bother with the PC version but with a PlayStation 5 pushing $700 for the base console that doesn't seems like it wouldn't be the case. I don't know the demographics though but the facts of the matter is they aren't selling enough units for anything except the Spider-Man games.

Not sure how true it is, but it was said that the taskbar problems were due to poor communication between the various developer groups at Microsoft, and not a deliberate decision to remove the feature.

Not to mention, movable taskbars confused no one. They weren't easy to move by accident, and even if those monkeys did eventually type out Hamlet, the resultant side-bar functioned exactly like the bottom-bar. And I'm sure there was a GPO to disable it in corporate settings.

Windows 7 had the best UI with Aero. It introduced the application pinning feature on the taskbar that nobody can live without anymore. People complained about the resource usage, but I ran games for most of a decade with Aero enabled, and it never bothered me.

Obviously it had all kinds of problems too, "best Windows UI" isn't saying much. But it's definitely not the worst Windows UI either. That's probably Metro, or Bob if you count that.

Too late - already pulled over everything important to Linux, so Windows is just a game launcher now. And that doesn't need a taskbar.

The migration wasn't only due to the taskbar, but the taskbar was definitely front-of-mind when making the decision, as it's something in my face every time I use the computer. My other complaints about Windows are years (or decades) old, so this could be seen as the straw that broke the camel's back.

The 3rd party taskbars for Windows might be useful, until they break Windows Update, for users whose employer mandates the use of Windows. But those employers also probably don't allow their machines to install Explorer Patcher.

Ever tried running Windows Vista on a minimum spec computer? Painful doesn't even begin to describe it. That's where we're at right now with Windows 11 but at least in the case of Vista they were doing a bunch of fancy modern operating system tricks that brought new features, albeit stupid new features but still they were genuinely trying new features. The hardware at the time couldn't handle that, you really need it about four times as much RAM and an SSD to do what they were doing and that was just too expensive for oems at the time so when does Vista crawled on anything but a high-end gaming PC.

With Windows 11 we've got all that shit performance but absolutely no new features except the operating system spies on me now and feeds all my data into Microsoft's AIs so they can sell co-pilot to my company after firing me. Or at least that's the goal it's debatable whether or not it's going to work out for them but in the meantime my computer runs like shit unless I run Linux or Windows 10 and both of them have issues with games and other complex software...

The basic idea, which their own people have admitted, came from a old Japanese live action TV series called ultra 7 which is in the Ultraman series.

So it's patently ridiculous, pun intended, for them to be trying to get patents on something they didn't come up with on their own. Never mind the obvious ridiculousness of everything about this.

Money buys power. Money buys control. Money buys countries.

I consider my master degrees as an entry ticket to a job interview. A lot of people that started with me did not graduate. That does tell something. Had an interview where they put me in the room with a few techies. They had a lot of reservations to work with someone that graduated from university. They wanted to check out if I was an arrogant prick. One looked at my resume. Master this, master that, he skipped all that. "Hey, says here you worked behind a garbage truck for two months?" That was my second entry ticket...

All of that can be true at the same, and it is also true that a correct diagnosis does not mean that a proposed treatment is ineluctably correct. And in this case, the treatment attempted has very obviously failed.

But this attempt at regime change has patently failed. You have not accounted for the executional incompetence of the Trump admin. Previous admins have been able to effect many regime changes, including in Iran, but they weren't idiots. This lot, though... they were so stupid they were taken by surprise by Iran's closure of the Straits because they didn't want to believe what they were being told by their own military analysts.

C'mon, it's not unreasonable to assume that the intention was to discuss the limits of the US's ability to exert power that is not an immediate and giant war crime. Attacking civilian infrastructure in the way you describe would be a huge war crime, and on top of that, would also not be any sure path to strategic victory, because it would not dislodge the regime with certainty, and would massively (further) undermine the US's alliances which are already tottering.

And what no-one seems to acknowledge is that Iran has laready struck an absolutely enormous asymmetric blow against the US with the largest oil supply shock in history. It is months away from really kicking in, but when it does, forget about gas at 5 bucks a gallon in the US, the price is going to be much higher than that, and that's merely the start of the problems the US will face. Frankly, the regime most likely to fall as a result of this war is the Trump regime, not the IRGC.

Window 11 is painful to use. Things draw in like I'm on a Pentium 3 with 256mb of RAM.

If you can't spy on me without killing performance don't do it.

If Ebola catches on and goes viral globally it will be a very serious problem. A true pandemic. The current death toll for Ebola infections is around 50%. We're talking Resident Evil/28 days later/I am Legend type shit.

I never quite got all the noise and hysteria about vaccinations going during CoViD 19 on either side and I always said we should - either way - be glad that it's just CoViD 19 and not Ebola 19.

If we now actually have global Ebola 26/27 on the menu, the fecal matter is going to hit the rotary air impeller at levels that will make SARS v2 / CoViD 19 look like a laid-back undressed rehersal during a beach vacation. I sure do effing hope this does _not_ happen.

Either way, I already got my Goggles, professional filter masks, water-filter, cooking gear and gas, etc. when the last reports about a SARS variant came around last Winter. I'm sure as eff not getting caught in some apocalyptic level pandemic without being (somewhat) prepared. That much I learned from CoViD. And everyone else should've too. It would be quite dumb to die an unpreventable death just because you where to cheap to drop 150 Euros on some basic survival gear.

You are probably Gen x. Or at least younger boomer. I say that because what you probably experienced is a unique phenomenon only Gen x saw which was a lot of crappy teachers because there was a whole bunch of people who went to college to get out of the Vietnam draft and they just hung out in college until the war was over. When they were done they had to cobble together a degree and a bunch of them went into teaching and they really suck that it. Most of them became history teachers which is why Americans suck so much at knowing history...

Those guys are long gone and anyone left in education is extraordinarily dedicated because the pay really really really sucks especially after that much education. Also you work a lot. You don't have a choice you can't function as a teacher unless you are working your ass off. You are constantly busting your ass on lesson plans and you spend Summers putting them together. The state gives you guidelines not a complete guide and plan to follow. You still have an enormous amount of work to do there on top of grading all the papers and providing tutoring.

Yeah back in the late 80s and early 90s we had a small rash of bad teachers. They are long long gone but as usual old people cannot comprehend the idea of that change happens and it's something that occurred when they were young isn't occurring anymore. Not sure why old people do that but they all do. I do it too I just try to catch myself doing it and I sometimes fail.