We require the receiver to maintain their banking details in our payment system. If they get hacked and the details are changed, that's entirely on them - not us. I've received several 'new banking details' emails from our supposed suppliers, and with this setup I don't have to worry about whether it's scammers or not.

Not all companies are profit driven as 1st priority. Some chase profits only to keep the company running to serve other more primary goals - Valve comes to mind here.

While I agree with your premise, the second thing that was sold to CIOs is the lack of required integration between toolsets, as Microsoft products work together "seamlessly".
For CIOs like ours that inherited a 'best of breed, now make them work together' system, they preferred to spend a little more $$$ on product licensing to save on integration spend - and the consequent headaches every time anyone decided to release a new version of their product...
It's also easier to blame the one vendor you have rather than trying to work out which one of multiple cocked something up.

It used to be big blue, then it shifted to Microsoft. I don't know if there's a 'who's next' though.

It's good having test mules for these occasions, so you can run up an alternate OS and try a Windows VM for those specific requirements.

You mean my 4 core 8 thread 4.4Ghz box with 32GB RAM and NVME M2 storage system? It's a dozen years old and still runs fine. Its only issue besides not having TPM for Win11 is gaming has moved on, and the GPUs I've bought since have gone into newer PCs rather than this thing.

Win11 is the epitome of designed obsolescence.

Note that the '570 vulnerabilities' were across Windows and other software, I saw mention of AD, Office, Sharepoint, and Copilot in TFA.

So to compare apples to something like apples, you'll need to look at your authentication system, OS, productivity suite, email server and client, AI, and collaboration platforms including chat, file sharing, and media management.
I'm no MS fanboi - heck I replaced my Windows based NAS OS with ZimaOS earlier today - but props at least that they're doing something.

Now if they can address bloat, stop putting Copilot into everything, and fix weird issues where hardware stops working (but runs fine under other OSes) I'd feel a bit better about them as a company.

Not just that, for most people they will just use whatever came with their PC - just like most people won't look at the version of their in-car entertainment system in case upgrades are available, or Lineage OS for their mobile phone, or their ISP provided router.

My experience already varies by region now, for some reason Windows11 thinks I'm in the US region even though my chosen timezone is half a planet away. Guess which one it uses for syncing the time with?
That's right, it randomly choses between the two.

That depends on whether we continue to let wealth be hoarded by the 1% - 0.1% of people or take measures to reduce wealth inequality. One way leads to Fifth Element, the other towards Star Trek.

You forgot:

Democracy sausages!

Yes at nearly every polling location there will be some organisation (many charity led) with volunteer staff sizzling sausages and onions on the BBQ, offering food and drinks (soda, water, no beer though) at cheap prices.

Normally located within walking distance in any but the most remote locations, it's a fairly quick outing to get your name checked off the roll, take your voting papers, (optionally) vote, and then stick your papers into the appropriate slots.

Not only do you get a very large turn-out, the results give actual numbers on disillusion with all offered parties rather than simply counting those that didn't vote for whatever reason - including inability to get their vote submitted.

I don't care about some basic utilities and whether they run on Linux - there's a damn good chance an alternative is available that runs perfectly. I had a quick run through our licensed software based on minimum annual cost >$100k and the only ones that will run on Linux are because they've already migrated to SaaS.

The only way is through risk to profits, so power plants must be owned by the parent company, no spinning off into a $2 bucket company at any time so when SHTF so there's no assets to cover rectification, and the power plant must be situated next to the DC, so there's risk that the DC is damaged/destroyed/off-lined if the plant also has a problem. Probably want to stick in some KPIs on meeting government audits and regulations as well, rather than making your bonus purely based on profits.

Oh, and for events where there's not enough generation, AI DCs should be forced into stand by rather than residential black outs.

I also had COVID twice and also had some weird mental reactions. For week or so after the second time it was like I was living in 3rd person view rather than the normal 1st person. Glad that's over, it was really weird doing certain things like driving and cooking.

Our state government has a policy on document formats to be used:

Not a bad effort IMO, and potentially a reason why GP send in via ODT format.

We had the same in Australia, except our wholesale power prices are starting to come down. Resisted all the way by conservatives of course, and with some of those still controlling some states the greening process has been slowed a fair bit - previously approved wind farms no longer approved, stopping government backed residential storage and associated virtual power plants - that kind of thing.

Interestingly for this article, SMRs were a point of contention at the last federal election, even though the cost is a multiple of that required for renewables. Thankfully the conservatives lost that round and hopefully the next, which should set Australia up for demonstrating that renewables leads to lower power prices.