I'd like to see Asteroid Lehrer crash into and destroy the crater named after Wernher von Braun on the Moon.

Yes, I agree. I run most of my life on a Pi 4: Internet router, Asterisk PBX, SMTP and IMAP server, file backup server, pi-hole, Radicale calendar/contact server, Xymon monitor, etc, etc, and it's just fine.

It was pretty cheap when I bought it a few years ago. Nowadays, a mini PC might be cheaper, but it would likely consume more power, and low power consumption and silent operation was important to me for a server that's on 24x7.

I think the main reason Raspberry Pi succeeds is the quality of the software ecosystem. There are plenty of other SBCs out there, but most of them have very poor software support. The vendor typically cobbles together a janky Linux distro, throws it over the wall and says "OK, it's done!" and never provides upgrades or much in the way of assistance.

Raspberry Pi hardware might be meh and it's certainly not as open as I like, but the software support is the best there is for SBCs. If other SBC vendors want to compete, they'll have to up their software game (and work with the community to get any modifications upstreamed into mainstream distros.)

The limit as t approaches infinity and everything is renamed:

America america. America america america america america. America!

Trump is usually pretty good at coining nicknames; "Super Intelligence" is so lame.

I would have expected something like: "Terrific Intelligence", "TrumpIntelligence", "Golden Braininess", "Intelligence of America" or similar.

That would be a disaster because then anything the AIs or the people controlling them want us to forget, would indeed be forgotten.

It should not be opt-in. Reverse-chronological should be the only permissible way to operate. That way, when you know you've seen something before, you also know you've seen everything following it before and you can stop scrolling.

Nothing affects Freedom of Expression rights. I'm talking about regulating the business models of corporations, not censoring what people are allowed to say online.

The difference is that people who say inflammatory things online won't get the benefit of an "engagement"-based algorithm to boost their speech. And a right of "getting your expression boosted" is certainly not anywhere in the Constitution.

Drugs and booze typically are regulated, to some extent, even for adults.

And I'm not proposing completely banning social media. Just regulating it for everyone to make it less dangerous.

To use one of your analogies: We carefully regulate the purity and safety of over-the-counter drugs. We need to do the same for social media.

This is the wrong approach. Social media is just as dangerous for adults as it is for kids.

We need to ban the current social media business models for everyone. That means: No advertising allowed; only show content from people or groups you actually follow; show content strictly in descending chronological order; do not allow sponsored content; charge people to have an account (Facebook probably makes around $3-$5/month/user, so that's a good benchmark.)

Also: Any sort of age verification as described still gives sites an oracle to let them determine the likely age of a user. If you insist on preventing people from seeing content based on age, the decision must be made purely on the client side. That is, the client will pull down the content as usual, but just not show it. That way, the Web site has no oracle with which to determine the age of the user.

Well, yes. If you can prove intent or criminal negligence, there should be charges laid. But I'm not sure how easy it would be to prove either.

In the Olden Days, when a computer program misbehaved, we called it "buggy".

So... modern computer programs are buggy. What a shocker! The difference is we trust these buggy programs to run our lives to a far greater extent than before.

A small number (under 100) of bank accounts were temporarily frozen. No assets were confiscated/

Completely, 100%, absolutely false.

The bank accounts of some of the criminal convoy leaders were frozen. The bank accounts of individuals who donated to the criminal convoy were not touched whatsoever. The money in the frozen donation accounts was eventually returned to those who donated.

Yeah, I was waiting for someone to bring up the convoy criminals.

Believe me, the USA has far harsher sanctions for anyone who commits a crime. Look up "Civil Forfeiture", which is not nearly as easy to do in Canada.