WUT?! As the saying goes, correlation != causation

Also, you've conflated many different things together into an argument that doesn't add up. For starters, here's vehicle sales in the last decade (not to be confused with inventory which is industry speak for production and unsold supply-chain distribution volumes).

The obvious direct correlation with lower inventory is the higher-than-expected sales in the marketplace (US for example). The dataset for inventory is https://www.macrotrends.net/32...

Funnily enough, a longer-term trend with overall slow-down in sales is due to the increased reliability, durability, safety, and repairability of more-contemporary vehicle designs. Instead of a clunker dying before 100K miles on the odometer, now several cars regularly top 200K lifetime miles without any fanfare whatsoever. Thanks to progress in vehicle engineering, even EVs can top 100K miles with only regular servicing and occasional small parts replacement.

Newsflash: Docker DOES NOT OWN the concept or any implementations of 'containers.' And Microsoft is NOT trying to replicate Docker's CLI-accessible implementations of 'containers.' Quotation marks around 'containers' due to them already being sandboxed virtualized compute instances (VMs) and the likes of Microsoft, VMware, Oracle, Red Hat, IBM, and many others before them having already created/developed the entire ecosystem around systems virtualization.

Trying to establish Docker as the pioneer of virtualization is a verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry bold move.

The product/feature naming schemes can get quite confusing but "WSL Containers" (and this news post) are new ways of scripting (or "automating" or "programmatically") the instantiation and destruction of WSL instances via CLI parameters (binary is "wslc.exe") or API calls.

Here's the simplest example/use-case (from within a Windows ecosystem): You setup a webhook on your git repo. The webhook is actually a script build 'agent' (unscheduled task) which spins up a Linux container via CLI script, fetches the latest repo (and dependencies), executes a command (e.g. nodejs build command or whatever), dumps the build output to desired target (e.g. web host directory), then ends its run (agent purges the whole container).

This use-case allows the Windows Environment to maintain systems integrity whilst permitting DevOps actions for utilizing Linux-based resources/dependencies to accomplish software builds or whatever. This Microsoft feature is providing first-party support instead of DevOps relying on third-party tools (e.g. Docker) which can meet this usage requirement whilst also exposing additional impacts that might not align with Microsoft's enterprise customers' usage needs.

I, for one, look forward to testing out WSL Containers via CLI because I personally find Docker's entire platform to be overly resource-hungry and damaging to overall system performance (in my experience).

I had never heard of this novel (Ministry for the Future) but thank you for bringing it up. I'm adding it to my list right now!

For everybody else's reference, here's the Amazon link, https://www.amazon.com/Ministr...

You have GOT TO BE KIDDING, right? Please tell me you don't believe the convoluted nonsense you just spewed; that you're actually trolling everyone.

Cuz... a never-before-seen hypothetical future weather report representing a third-of-a-century-from-now heat wave recurrence...really shouldn't be the current-day weather report that's baking parts of the world woefully unprepared even by their own fear-mongered worst-case-scenario hysterics for global policy changes vis-a-vis impacts of climate change.

In other words, when unanticipated meteorological facts meet alarmist science fiction... yeah... there's something wrong with reality and that's basically the point of the story. Nothing to do with the politicized labels of Warming v Cooling v Change v whatever. We're all on this floating blue orb and we're all suffering as a result. It's not normal. Some predictions got it right... a little too accurately.

Now please go back to being the grandpa yelling at the cloud...

I wish I had mod points for this... Insightful, Informative, Funny... 100% accurate (esp. the further claims of copyright infringement for anyone selling an empty PDF for a paper with the same title).

They're simply taking a minimalist launcher (like the ones here https://techlog360.com/best-cl...) and baking both a hardcoded DNS filter and blocklist... and slapping it onto a flip phone from 20 years ago.

From a device standpoint, it's like the "souped-up" version of a Consumer Cellular Iris (https://www.walmart.com/ip/Consumer-Cellular-Iris-Easy-Flip-Gray/6926754486?classType=REGULAR) or the Walmart/BLU/Tracfone $30 flip phones. With stronger components, it can run native Android rather than the slimmed-down KaiOS (derived from Android but not compatible due to lack of Android Runtimes).

Ultimately, a humongous yawn. Paying premium to NOT be able to check my Gmail acct to complete required 2FA log-ins (from any other device, honestly) is rather dumb and a real nonstarter. It's a mobile device, meant to do mobile things, like reading that email without being tied to a workstation or finding the number you need to call because the doctor's office sent an appt confirmation via email -- so dumb.

You're incredibly generous... I'd spend no more than $20 via Walmart gift cards (that's right, not from my own money... just from some gift cards accumulated throughout the year).

Streaming services already increase service costs just so you can keep accessing the archive at a later date.

Now imagine the increase in your monthly streaming subscription when the various authorities start imposing MORE taxes/fees atop your service costs... for the EXACT SAME CONTENT ARCHIVE... No matter how you slice it, every taxation authority would simply pile-on various justifications for ever-higher fees!

The taxation authorities would charge both the streamer and the subscriber because why not?! If the digital transaction is taxable, then every authority will argue that it is either sales tax, usage tax, business excise tax, or all of the above legal authorities for various line-items.

And even your MVNO would be subject to additional taxation because your dared to purchase your monthly service via an ecommerce check-out process rather than a telephone call or in-person handshake.

The consequences are rather chilling...

Astound Broadband (a merger of Wave Broadband and Astound of California, IIRC) was unable to upgrade my home's wiring to fiber for over a decade whilst increasing fees every year like clockwork (and they've added 50% monthly fees just on administrative costs alone!)... and it took all of 6 weeks for Quantum Fiber to install new fiber from the pole (and 1 more week to re-lay fresh fiber to repair kinks from the previous install on my neighbor's setup so now EACH building has its own dedicated fiber from the pole)... and the performance has been outstanding, pricing has been "for life" (in a good way)... and Comcast only offers dial-up speeds (in 2026!) for the same price as Astound offers janky cable over copper.

Astound + GFiber + Investment Partners will do nothing for existing homes; they're ALL about large apartment complexes and large developer projects -- it's the only way they'll monopolize their income streams regardless of local regulations that stipulate openness to ISP competition.

Of course, with AT&T acquiring Quantum Fiber, lord knows what direction the ISP landscape is going... and the anti-municipal fiber lobbying is forcing the corruption scheme to just keep on going...

You seem to NOT understand the scope of any such designation: The Pentagon's scope is everything within its purview -- distinctly NOT for things beyond the realm of the military's activities. Aspects pertaining to the federal Executive Branch (like DOJ) are outside of the Pentagon's scope.

However, the Pentagon's presidential briefings would make note of the designation for the US President to consider their own actions. And this is what President Trump did by declaring Anthropic is no longer welcome within federal government projects.

The designation does NOT inherently prevent Anthropic from doing business within other private (read: non-government) organizations worldwide. In fact, Anthropic's involvement was strictly as a subcontracted components supplier to Palantir's own Pentagon contract! For this reason, in order for the top brass to "kick out" Anthropic from the Pentagon, they had to add it to an exclusions list (which would contractually permit Palantir to source a different supplier).

All to say that the combination of the Pentagon's and President Trump's actions were contractually required to get OpenAI into the fold... and the real-world implications of the "supply chain risk" designation is rather overblown. I wouldn't be surprised if Palantir originally requested these actions themselves!!!

The "supply chain risk" designation is scoped solely within the confines of the Pentagon (in this case) and its contractor agreements. It does NOT mean that all suppliers are forever forbidden from conducting private business with said risk for private client contracts disconnected from the long tentacles of the Pentagon.

Also, with Trump effectively removing Anthropic from being utilized, that would negate any prospective risk due to it no longer being a qualified component to fulfill any government contracts. (And since the designation only applies to such contracts, the private sector is forever at will to utilize Anthropic for whatever non-governmental work they've been conducting forevermore.)

In other words, the potential "supply chain risk" designation combined with Trump's declarations forbidding Anthropic results in an entire nothingburger.

The actual chronology is something like this: In 2022, LibreOffice Online is effectively abandoned (all kinds of reasons tbh) so Collabora forks it to create Collabora Online. Fast forward by 4 years (February 2026) new LibreOffice leadership votes to veto/undo the previous abandonment vote, thus creating this conflict.

From the public discussion thread, it appears the new Leader wants to take/own the Online solution away from Collabora... in the name of FOSS or something unfounded other nonsense.

IMHO, Libre is trying to undo their past decisions but doing it all wrong. In other words, replaced ineffective leadership with other ineffective leadership. Sigh.

Writing off debts happens very often -- sometimes spinoffs are created for the sole purpose of concentrating debts into a singular entity for the explicit purpose of that otherwise-unknown entity to declare bankruptcy! This is part of the games corporations are legally permitted to do to allow an ongoing concern to not wholly disappear due to some bad bets.

The ONLY action in this Apple Card news that is extraordinary is how JPM recognized the charge (aka wrote off their part of the acquired debts) during the same financial quarter the deal is announced even though the bulk of the migration is taking place over the next two years -- for the card issuance to happen in about 2 years' time.

Just to repeat: writing off debts is common... recognizing those write-offs before public announcement of any deal is, however, quite unusual.

Credit approval rules/processes were securitized by Apple Corp itself (as it's their own branded credit card, after all) which was mostly for Apple hardware purchases with sticker prices and payment plans larger than typical daily consumer spending habits -- How often do YOU plunk down $2000+ on a brand-new credit card promotion for new computer hardware?

There have been stories about this delinquency rate but Goldman Sachs wasn't truly losing any money (Apple paid them back when purchases were from Apple Stores after all) except for GS' own fraud detection measures which might have been insufficient.

The end result? GS could not convert their consumer credit portfolio (across other brands also) into enough stable profit. They left the Apple Card product a financial mess and even provided a $1 Billion USD discount on the acquisition price -- to ease the pain of an actual well-oiled consumer credit company to incorporate the Apple Card business into their existing processes.

BTW none of this is 'unusual' or 'extraordinary' in the consumer credit space. All sorts of brands have been changing hands, and sometimes companies (like Discover) also gets acquired by larger fin firms.