> all life is a growth phase that ends [...] Grow, or die.
I'd phrase it, "all life HAS a growth phase that ends", and "grow forever, and die".

I think a stable population size and prosperity are not mutually exclusive. (I think you're arguing they are.) Productivity is the magic that means you can do this without freezing living standards (because it means the same population produces more value).

I take an opposite view - all life has a growth phase, which ends. Growth is a means to an end (generally, sexual maturity) rather than a continuous process.

If you're talking about population growth rather than organism growth, that is generally constrained by resources and competition. Humans at least have consciousness to perceive that, and thus the possibility of avoiding the worst outcomes of hitting those limits.

"We know what it looks like when a country's population no longer grows. It's not pretty"

If your economy depends on infinite population growth it's not an economy, it's a Ponzi scheme. I don't know what a practical upper limit for Switzerland is but there is one.

I'm in the same boat.

I still buy music, on bandcamp and 7digital mostly. The difference in price between digital and CD is a quid or two, but it's the shipping that's the killer. I always look to see if I can get the CD somewhere cheaper than digital, which still happens sometimes, especially for older stuff that was popular and is still floating around on eBay.

I've slowly been moving my CDs from jewel cases to DiscSox sleeves - I'm not sure why really, as it's quite pricey, but I can't yet bring myself just to sling a whole massive collection on eBay.

Assuming this is the equivalent of the task bar... I may be crazy but to me the natural position is right. In general, because I mostly do web dev and so work with code and web pages, vertical space is far more precious to me than the relatively abundant horizontal space. So I have my task bar/dock as a vertical column on the right, with the Start button at the top, rather than a mostly empty strip along the bottom.

I think there have been desktop systems that had it this way out of the box (NextStep?).

Of course on rotated monitors and vertically-oriented tablets I stick it at the bottom.

Within the next few years most European countries are having elections, and in many of those alt.right, Putin-friendly populists are in pole position (Hungary, Italy and Slovakia are already lost; the UK, France and possibly Germany are on the way). So we'll soon prove we Europeans are just as stupid. In a worst case scenario Ukraine is toast, the EU dissolves, and there's war again.

My little theory is that China will at some point go hard on industrial production of humans, possibly the old school way (enslaving women, most likely in neighbouring countries) but more likely via technology & life sciences - in vitro fertilisation and artificial wombs. I've no idea how feasible that is - probably not very - but I bet they'll give it a good try.

If you're interested in this... the Neal Stephenson book Termination Shock is essentially about a tech bro type who decides to do this in a move fast and break things sort of way. As with all his books he's clearly done a pile of research into how you'd actually do it and what would happen.

So profits go to developers not the market operator (or consumers). That's a greater distribution of the wealth generated, which sounds like a good thing to me. I'd imagine the total number of people employed by app developers far exceeds the number of Apple employees, so in some sense the money is (in theory at least) going to more consumers, just not necessarily consumers of iOS apps.

I suspect people perceive raising children is hard and scary and expensive and stressful, the rewards being less tangible and easily dismissed as parental delusion.

I also think there has been an increasing infantilisation of adulthood since Gen X (people playing video games and watching Marvel movies in their forties) which makes people less willing to give up personal pastimes to take on the responsibilities of family.

Contraception, abortion, and now online porn and an apparently decreasing interest in actual sex amongst the newer generations would also all lead to fewer unplanned babies.

In other words you can offer me all the money and support you want, but if I just don't see myself as wanting to, or being able to, look after another human being and be a role model, it's not going to work.

I've read speculation that the reason the iPhone Air exists is because they're figuring out how to make thin pieces for the eventual foldable.

For balance... I'm always looking for something huge that isn't a flagship Pro Ultra XL Plus megabucks model, because I'm old and the bigger the screen the more easily I can read it.

Thought experiment: in 100 years' time, do we think people will have plastic driver's licences and paper passports?

I'm not convinced they will, barring something like the internet becoming unviable because of runaway cybercrime AIs or somesuch civilisational calamity.

So at some point between now and then those things would go electronic, and I don't have any massive objection to things starting now rather than in a couple of decades' time.

Other countries have done it (Estonia is the one that comes up time and again, and they did it before smartphones existed) and the sky's not fallen in, so I'm not overly worried.

I expect egovernment stuff will make this easier - i.e. the government app that ends up on everyone's phone (digital ID, healthcare etc) could prompt you to answer 1 question from time to time for a chance to win an Amazon voucher or something.

This won't be about helping the driver, it'll be about monitoring them, and gathering data for AI.
Did they run the stop sign before the accident? Did they check the Amazon driver app 12 times per hour as contractually required? Does their gaze linger on men or women? What is the demography of the area they're driving through? etc