If you looked at their website, I hope you notice that they're planning on releasing *this year*, so they should have a really good guess on the cost, which they say will be in the [probably upper] 20's. I believe their goal of $20K was based on using the $7500 tax credit for EVs that Trump recently killed in his Big Ugly Bill.

Can't say journald really works based on my very recent experience. Ubuntu did an upgrade to my 24.04 LTS system. When I rebooted after that all I got were black screens, not even a mouse pointer, which told me X wasn't running. I could ssh into the system just fine, which is why I could tell that the logs were worthless as there weren't any errors shown, or at least nothing about video just some apparmor warnings. Eventually I figured out that the upgrade broke the Nouveau (the OSS nvidia) driver. I'd been wanting to move to the proprietary nvidia drivers for a few games and so took this as a sign that now was the time. Once that driver was changed, my system booted normally. Yes, the upgrade created the problem, but the systemd logger was useless in helping me.

Nope, not ignorant but useful. You've already got a working wheel when systemd comes along with its strange unit file syntax that you have to look things up every time you have to work on it (because it's not like it's done it daily to keep it in one's mind). It's really nice to point the unit file to a shell script to start something ... a shell script that's really easy to run on its own and especially to debug, or at least I've never found a way to debug a unit file and get something as useful as what "bash -x $file" gives me.

BTW, creating a new init script wasn't creating a "new wheel". There was a template you could copy, fill in the unique parts, "ln -s" the "S" and "K" files in the proper "rc.d" dirs, and you were done. It was easy to understand and easy to do as an advanced user or a sysadmin, or the creator of a product that needed init files for new services.

A big reason so many distros jumped onto the "systemd bandwagon" is because distros couldn't get their act together and ignored the LSB. Let's not forget that systemd also did the LSB equivalent of putting files in common places so all distros started looking the same from a config standpoint. If there is a positive for systemd, I'll hold this up as their 1 positive. Anyway, this change allowed the distro to be able to share the unit files and so they were suddenly able to do less work. Why it took systemd to force this escapes me because they could have had it without systemd, but they chose to go their own way ... then again, why have a new distro except to go your own way, so I probably shouldn't be surprised at the "extra individualism".

Sigh, conceptually it is like a giant EXE even if it's made up of 70+ modules. Trying to replace a single 1 of them is pretty difficult. Last I looked, there are 3 modules you can't replace at all, journald being 1 of those 3. That being said, if I were to replace one, journald would be it; but at this point, it's not worth my time or the effort. I guess I've gotten used to standing in the muck that is systemd and if I really decide I don't want it in my life there are alternatives like Devuan.

Now, I just create a "/etc/init.d/boot.local" shell script, create a unit file to run it once at boot time at the end, then add shell commands to it to "fix" whatever needs fixing ... something that used to be trivial to do but is now harder because systemd makes me create a unit file.

AFAICT, systemd is really only useful for distro maintainers/providers. For the person who admins his|her own system and general system admins it's a PITA ... all IMO of course.

Except that comes across as a non-answer, sort like people telling me "it can be done use KVM" and stop there, then I never find out exactly how to do what needs to be done to make it work (which may speak more of my search skills). If you have a better answer, feel free to tell me or better yet point me to a website with the detailed answer.

My understanding (backed by a search) is containers are used when what's in it is running the same OS as the host, which will not accomplish my goal of running a Windows guest on a Linux host. Some applications can be run under Wine (which I tend to do via Code Weavers if it'll hit "gold status"). However some just rebel because it needs more stuff running in the background. An example of this is I'm trying to move away from Onenote, which requires Onedrive to be running so I can get the info out and port it elsewhere. I've got a couple of others in the audio/video area where there are no good Linux equivalents and don't run under Wine (or I've never been able to make them work); to be fair, the A/V Linux tools are finally starting to catch up so this area may go away "soonish". So yes, it does seems that I need a full Windows VM for the last handful of programs until I figure out a solution.

I suspect you're speaking from a "company perspective". However, what are individual users supposed to use? What else is as easy to have a Linux base install, install VMware Workstation, and install Windows for those last few programs it's hard to give up (not games) or find an OSS solution for? Please educate me.

That there is more bot traffic may become true as some (many?) people will use "AI agents" to do things, but also some of us won't be using "AI agents". If enough people say "I don't want to use them" or "they don't work for me", then perhaps it won't be so bad the the concern is over-blown.

I don't think so. To evolve would be to change species and probably more like changing its genus or even family; usually it also means to go from simpler to more complex. At best this is "natural selection" and it's probably not even that as it sounds like it just used a different part of its genetics that it has previously not used. Can we please us the correct word? I'll suggest "changed".

That works except for gifts, you'll have to come up with a solution for that. Perhaps at the time of the purchase, if it's a gift you have to name the person who has to show an ID with that name on it.

Also, try:
* limit purchases to a max of 10 tickets per purchase
* only 1 purchase per credit card number, with address so it's also 1 purchase per address too (meaning neither can be reused for the same concert)
* for non-gifts, at least 1 person in the party has to be able to show the credit card used to buy the tickets in order to use the tickets

Those will stop most of the abuse. Those rules don't stop Ticketmaster from selling blocks to resellers and scalpers, but that's a different problem that probably requires the government to fix.

Agree, there is a "chicken and egg" issue.

Disagree. If you have a single residence house in the US, your home is set up for it. At the very least use a 120V plug; that will get you 40+ miles of recharge every night, which is more than the average person drives per day (which is 37 miles). If your garage has a dryer in it, use that plug and get more range per night (or 2 x 120V on separate breakers plus a special adapter to make them into a 240v feed). No re-wiring required.

This is "it depends". If you are going on the major highways, you shouldn't have a problem for most of the US, and even fewer problems on the interstate highways. If you're going off into the back roads, that's what the trip planner app is for. The newer EVs coming out in 2027-2030 are where the solid state batteries will hit the sales lots and will make range an even less of a problem with their charging as fast as a gas fill up and longer range.

We are at the point where EVs will work for ~70% of the US right now if we wanted to (with how people actually drive not how they think they drive). The reason EVs aren't selling is the government making it harder than it should be (constantly changing tariffs and credits) and the cost, plus a LOT of lobbying by the oil & gas industry. Of course, buying a used EV is the cheapest option at the moment. Cost is coming down for new ones and will continue to drop in the long term; in the short term Trump may slow that down some but even he can't totally stop it. Europe (and the rest of the world really) has a lot more options and is doing better for EVs at the moment ... sigh.

Does your EV require lubrication of joints or other spinning things?
Do you want to drive on asphalt?
Do you use plastic for anything, especially in your EV?
Do you have clothes with nylon, rayon, etc ... you know, non-natural fibers? Perhaps shoes with mesh?
Those are just the ones off the top of my head, and doesn't count all of the fuel used to transport even the "natural stuff" to the stores for you.

We'll always have some oil usage, but I am looking forward to a world where the amount used is greatly reduced (although it'll probably be beyond my lifetime).

This reminds me of Verizon back in the 90's saying "We're going to run fiber to every house in Texas". That didn't happen. I don't expect them to really do all of this either, probably no more than in a small area, promote that to show how great they are, then silently let the project die.

Of course it's a PITA to keep up to date because the Node and JS developers live the mantra of "move fast and break things", which is a bad philosophy for commercial development. So project updates are slow and a little at a time, generally to get a new feature or to avoid a CVE that you think affects you.

At my last job, we were at the beginning of a dev cycle which would give us the most testing time, so I started trying to move us forward to a new version of Node, Typescript, and various modules to match. I gave up after about 3 days when I couldn't get things working together, usually because of too much change in the modules which forced structure and API changes. Heck, we even had a module that was on 1.0-rc12 and when it changed to 1.0 the dev did a major API change! Why would anyone do a major API change from an RC to a final 1.0? That's just 1 of the horrors I tried to overcome. Last I heard, they haven't upgraded versions. [This was on a "backend" project, not code in a browser.]

That sort of thing is also why devs will grab 1 function from a module and pull it into their code. Why take the baggage and upgrade burdens of the module and all of the other code for a 10 line function. I wouldn't do that for a module that where security was important, but for some computational work I've done it and don't have a problem with it.

Honestly, the community is its own enemy in that regard and I'm glad to be off that project. My feelings now are that unless you're dealing with frontend browser work, don't ever use Typescript/Javascript.

Skip the "anyone", how about "anything"? Did none of these people see the movie "Eagle Eye"?

I like the idea, but I've found there there are time limits on this. Some games (or programs in general) want certain features available, which is normally expressed by "needs XYZ OS" (where XYZ can be anywhere from Win98 to Win10 depending on how old the game is). If you don't have that OS available, you aren't going to play the game. Sometimes there are work-arounds, but not always. So I hope you have various machines on the different OS's those games require. If the games are not too graphic oriented, VM's can work, but not always.

For example, I have 1 game that was written for XP; it would also play on Win7 but not on Win10. I think that's because it was a "win32" program, but that's just a guess.

If you live in a place where they're useful -and- can be safely ridden, then sure. (I don't live in a such a place being semi-rural, so a car is essential.)

However, if you do that, be sure you armor up starting with a great helmet. We had a 12 year old girl (and friend of my grandson) not overly far away riding one of those ebikes/scooters at full power, so going about 20mph or so, run a stop sign and hit a truck doing about 30 mph (within the speed limit) ... HEAD ON. She somehow lived but is in critical condition. They're not sure what her recovery will be like yet because she's in a coma. Sure, totally her fault for running the stop sign and if she hadn't she'd be in school today. But accidents happen and she could have been doing everything right and still be run over. Had a friend on a motorcycle correctly making a left turn, a person ran a red light and hit him. He spent 3 months in the hospital and walks with a limp to this day. Even when cars aren't essential, they do increase your odds of survival in an accident, of which there are over 16K per day in the US alone.

I will agree with you that no one really needs a Tesla Plaid.

We could only hope that will happen, but I'm dubious as it's in a bank's nature to chase money. If we're lucky, they'll look into the PE firms' history and raise the interest rates of the loans -- which might slow the PE firm down a little. I think the only way to truly rein in the cancer that is PE firms is with legislation, which will also probably never happen.

Then again, I'm probably biased as I got laid off by a Vista buy out and then profit squeeze.