Uh huh.

Computers were more expensive in the past. Particularly 40 years ago.

Yeah, I didn't include the Air because it's kind of dual use. There are enough examples of machines specifically targeted at home users it wasn't necessary to give the trolls more room for pedantry.

I was actually there when Jobs announced the Macbook Air. Apple was very much talking up how great it was for business users and people who travel a lot, and BTW probably a good choice for students too. Not like e.g. the clamshell iMac. It only recently got a real colour choice too, and only barely.

What makes you think China wants to project power?

Maybe not the best examples. Genghis Khan did not conquer Persia. He got partway through then got distracted by China, where he died. The Mongol conquest took generations, spread the empire thin, and it broke up to civil war and internal resistance twenty or so years later.

Alexander did conquer Persia, then died about five years later. His empire broke up in civil war immediately.

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/...

iMac, iBook, white Macbook, eMac. The Classic and LC were aimed at the lower end too.

The last 15 years when Apple hasn't had a real mass consumer machine except for the mac mini have been kind of an exception. I guess that's also how long your memory works for.

It would be interesting to compare the AI summary accuracy to

1) Hitting "I feel lucky"

2) A selection of average humans given no-AI Google search

3) A selection of average humans given AI+Google search

4) A selection of average humans

Well, you can make the hydrogen easier to handle by binding it to carbon... Perhaps synthesizing jet fuel with carbon recaptured from the atmosphere will win, since it doesn't require modifying the planes and the new tech is on the ground.

The 80186 existed, but the problem was the 80186 integrated various components such as the clock generator and interrupt controller directly into the CPU, but did so in a way that was incompatible with how IBM built the IBM PC. So the 80186 found its way into some not-quite-IBM-compatible computers like some Tandy models and a few other oddballs including some early PDAs. Otherwise, it it was used mostly for embedded applications.

Lol. There are some pretty good zingers buried in the literature.

I'd add a footnote to my post observing that although mainstream medicine no longer gives patients leaves to munch on, an important "medical" industry called alternative medicine, nutraceuticals, or just "supplements" frequently does. Several studies suggest these are usually shredded mixtures of generic houseplants of questionable origin.

We don't make drugs by giving patients some leaves to munch on. The point of the research was to develop a platform for producing any of a wide variety of common psychoactive drugs in a crop plant. They demonstrated its flexibility by producing compounds from three different kingdoms of life. If you were going to do it for real production you could engineer exactly what you wanted into their system. You might well go for more than one compound because you've got to purify them anyway so separating two or more is no big deal, and you get multiple pharmaceuticals with each harvest.

Strikes are usually conducted after talks break down. Amazon won't even come to the table. There's also the question of whether or not the Teamsters local can get enough people to strike and other considerations. Strikes don't always work in the union's favor.

I can't tell if this is parody or not.

Are they?

This century Russia has engaged in a offensive wars against Ukraine and Georgia, put down a couple of internal rebellions and fucked around intervening in five or six conflicts in their neighbourhood and Africa.

Iran has maintained a few proxy militia groups to counter Israel.

China has... done nothing. Specifically refused to engage in any international military action. Not since Vietnam, actually.

Wikipedia's list of wars involving the US is split into multiple pages, despite the US only existing for a few hundred years. The one for 2001 to present is long, I'm not going to count them. Some of them are anti-pirate operations, mostly legal anti-terrorist actions and a UN sanctioned international actions. There are also some illegal offensive wars, a couple of them massive. Betrayal of allies, torture, lots of war crimes.

Domestically, yeah, the US is a better place to live than Iran, especially if you're a woman, although the US is working hard to change that. Probably better than China or Russia too depending on what you value. Internationally none of them hold a candle to the US of A.